THE BLIZZARD ON TGE RIDGE

The freezing drizzle in Town Sogala had turned into a thick, clinging fog by midnight.

In the lower district, the streets were pitch-black save for the flickering glow of iron lanterns hung outside the precinct outposts. The smell of burning pine pitch mixed with the damp reek of the gutters. People stayed behind their locked wooden shutters, listening to the heavy, iron-shod boots of the council guards patrolling the avenues to enforce the new emergency curfew.

Inside her family’s dark kitchen, Rashida stood alone by the wooden table.

Her father was asleep in the small inner room, his breathing heavy and ragged, medicine working slowly through his veins. On the table lay the gold-threaded betrothal contract Master Dorian had left behind. Beside it sat the oil lamp, its yellow flame flickering against the parchment draft.

Rashida reached down, her fingers brushing the cold, smooth bronze ring resting on her index finger, then lingering on the red oak pendant hanging against her chest.

If I sign this, she thought, her eyes fixed on the blank signature line at the bottom of the scroll, I save my father tonight. But I hand Dorian the keys to this gate, and I betray everything Zafaro is bleeding for on that mountain.

She didn't pick up the quill.

Instead, she blew out the oil lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

Moving silently, Rashida wrapped herself in a heavy woolen cloak, pulling the deep hood low over her face. She reached beneath the bench, pulling out a long leather satchel packed with herbal tinctures, dried lungwort, and rolled linen bandages. From the wall hook, she took her father’s small timber hatchet—blunt at the poll, but with a sharp iron blade—and slipped it inside her belt beneath the cloak.

She unlocked the rear door, stepping out into the narrow, rain-slicked back alley behind the compound.

She wasn't going to Dorian’s estate. She was heading into the lower district slums—toward the weaver quarters where the council guards had restricted the flour bins earlier that afternoon. If Hikma and Dorian wanted to use fear and hunger to force her to her knees, they were going to find that the lower district was no longer willing to starve in silence.

The mud in the alleyway was cold, soaking through the thin leather of her slippers within her first ten paces. She kept close to the stone foundations of the granary walls, her breath forming small, white plumes that vanished into the thick fog.

Clack. Clack.

The sound of iron-rimmed boots on the paving stones nearby made her stop. She pressed her spine hard against a rotting timber support beam, her heart drumming against her ribs. Two council guards walked past the mouth of the alley, their long spears resting lazily against their shoulders, their leather jerkins glistening with wet sleet. They were grumbling about the cold, their voices rough and indifferent to the silence of the tenements around them.

Once their footsteps faded into the steady drip of water from the clay eaves, Rashida moved again.

The weaver quarters smelled of wet wool and cheap tallow. There were no lights here; the citizens couldn't afford oil, and the council had confiscated the wood reserves three days ago under the pretense of fortifying the upper district barricades. As she approached the small communal square, a low murmur of desperate voices drifted out from the darkness of a cooperative workshop.

"They've locked the secondary bins," a man was saying, his voice cracked with age and hunger. "If the morning comes and the carts don't move, the children won't make it to the weekend."

Rashida pushed open the wooden door, the hinges letting out a faint, rusty squeak that made the three men inside jump from their stools.

"Rashida?" an old weaver named Mahea asked, squinting through the gloom as she pulled back her hood. "Child, you shouldn't be out. Dorian’s night riders are patrolling the main thoroughfare. If they find you—"

"Dorian left a contract on my father's table," Rashida interrupted, her voice hard, stripped of the gentleness she usually carried when tending to the sick. She unbuckled her satchel and placed it firmly on the cutting table. "He wants the compound. He wants the eastern gate key. He thinks hunger will make us sign."

Mahea looked at the satchel, then up at her face, the deep lines around the old man's eyes catching the faint gray light from the shuttered window. "And your father?"

"The medicine is holding his fever down, but he won't survive a winter without flour," Rashida said, her hand reaching beneath her cloak to touch the cold iron head of the timber hatchet. "The council guards aren't rationing the grain because the stores are empty, Mahea. They're rationing it because Hikma wants the lower district too weak to resist when Dorian opens the northern path."

The weavers exchanged a long, heavy glance.

"The secondary storehouse at the edge of the quarter has six bins of barley," one of the younger men muttered, his knuckles tightening around a wooden weaving shuttle. "But there are four guards at the gate. Private steel from Dorian’s house, not town watchmen."

"Then we don't ask them for the keys," Rashida said flatly. "We take the hatchet to the wood."

High on Mountain Soga, the night was far from quiet.

A blinding snowstorm had swept down from the northern peaks, coating the jagged rocks of the upper gorge in a treacherous layer of white ice. The wind howled through the narrow granite pass like a dying beast, tearing at the canvas tents of the vanguard camp and scattering embers from the small watch-fires.

Zafaro stood on the outer timber breastwork, his shield rested against his knee, his spear clutched in his gloved hands.

The blood on his leather armor had frozen into dark, brittle crusts. Beside him, Corin leaned against a charred oak beam, shivering violently inside his damp cloak, his teeth chattering uncontrollably. The cold up here didn't just numb the skin; it settled deep into the marrow, making every joint stiff and slow.

"They won't attack in a blizzard like this... will they, Zafaro?" Corin asked, his breath billowing in thick white clouds into the freezing air. "Nobody can climb the shale in this darkness."

"Gbantala soldiers were born in the northern snow, Corin," Zafaro replied quietly, his eyes searching the swirling white fog beyond the perimeter wall. "They don't need to see the trail. They know we're freezing, and they know our bowstrings are stiff from the frost."

He adjusted his grip on the spear haft. The wood was slick with frost, freezing his palms through the thin leather of his gloves. His mind briefly slipped away from the howling gale, drifting back down to the small bronze ring on Rashida’s finger.

If the ridge fell tonight, there would be nothing to stop the red banners from marching down into the eastern district before the morning mist could clear.

A low, dull thud echoed through the gale.

Not thunder.

The heavy, metallic strike of an iron grapple hooking onto the timber logs below the wall.

"Guard!" Zafaro roared, raising his spear high, his voice tearing through the scream of the wind. "Alarm! To the breastwork!"

Before the warning bell near Captain Vane’s tent could chime, dark shapes rose out of the snowstorm like ghosts. Gbantala shock-troopers, their iron helmets covered in white grease to blend into the blizzard, leaped over the wooden spikes of the wall.

The night exploded into sudden, terrifying violence.

A heavy Gbantala warrior lunged at Corin, swinging a short-handled iron mace in a vicious horizontal arc. Corin ducked in terror, the weapon shattering the wooden shield on his arm into a spray of splinters. Zafaro stepped in instantly, thrusting his spear forward with brutal precision. The iron point drove through the warrior’s scale mail beneath the ribs, throwing the enemy backward off the ledge into the howling darkness below.

"Hold the timber!" Captain Vane bellowed, rushing out from the command tent with his sword drawn, his face illuminated by the flickering torchlight. "Don't let them clear the gap!"

Zafaro fought like a man possessed, his fatigue swallowed entirely by a cold, deadly instinct for survival. He thrust, parried, and slammed his splintered shield against the wave of dark figures pouring over the wall. The snow beneath his boots turned slushy and red, but he did not give up an inch of the narrow pass.

With every thrust of his spear, he remembered the cold arrogance in Dorian’s eyes at the town gate and the quiet malice in Hikma’s voice.

I am coming back, Zafaro swore silently into the roaring wind, driving his spear through the leather collar of another advancing trooper. I am coming back to Sogala.

The weight of the enemy charge was relentless. For every warrior that slipped on the bloodied shale and tumbled into the chasm, two more seemed to rise from the dark lip of the ridge. The wind tore the torches from their sockets, leaving the defenders to fight by the dim, shifting reflection of the snow and the brief sparks of steel clashing against iron scale mail.

Corin was down, scrambling backward through the red slush as a Gbantala squad leader raised a broad, jagged scimitar over his head.

Zafaro didn't have time to reset his feet. He hurled his heavy wooden shield directly at the squad leader's face, the iron rim catching the man across the bridge of his nose with a loud crack. The warrior stumbled, his sword going wide, and Zafaro closed the distance in a single stride, driving his short hunting knife under the rim of the man's breastplate.

The warrior went stiff, his breath rattling out in a red mist before he collapsed into the snow.

"They're breaking!" Captain Vane’s voice croaked from the left flank, his longsword dripping with dark crimson as he pushed the last of the vanguard back over the timber wall. "Archers, to the parapet! Loose into the draw!"

The remaining Gbantala troopers, realizing the surprise had failed and their footing on the icy shelf was lost, began sliding back down the steep ropes into the darkness of the gorge, their retreats covered by the howling snowstorm.

Zafaro leaned against the splintered breastwork, his chest heaving as the adrenaline began to drain from his veins, leaving his muscles shaking with fatigue. He reached inside his vest, ensuring the hard wooden dispatch tube was still dry and secure against his chest. It was there, but he knew the victory was hollow.

The storm was getting worse, and the main army hadn't even brought up their heavy catapults yet.

Back in the lower district of Town Sogala, the secondary grain storehouse stood like a dark stone fortress against the fog.

Two guards dressed in Dorian’s private livery were huddled near a small coal brazier under the wooden overhang, their heavy crossbows resting against the grain sacks behind them. They didn't see the four shadows moving along the line of the weaver tenements, their boots muffled by rags tied around the leather soles.

"Mahea, stay by the corner," Rashida whispered, her fingers cold around the handle of her father's timber hatchet. "If the patrol from the high street turns down this way, break a lantern against the stone."

The old weaver nodded, his hands trembling as he held a small iron lantern with a cracked glass pane.

Rashida didn't wait for the men to move. She stepped out into the dim light of the brazier, her cloak pulled tight around her shoulders to hide the iron blade in her belt. "Guards," she called out softly, her voice steady despite the flutter of panic in her throat.

The two men jumped, their hands instantly dropping to the hilts of their swords as they peered through the thick mist. "Who's there? The curfew was called four hours ago, girl. Get back to your cellar before we drag you to the precinct."

"My father needs the physician," Rashida said, stepping closer until she was within five paces of the brazier. "The watchmen at the eastern gate said there was an officer here who could sign the pass."

The leading guard sneered, his eyes scanning her dark woolen cloak with a slow, implicit glance. "The watchmen lied to you, girl. Dorian doesn't sign passes for lower district scum. Now turn around before I—"

He didn't finish the sentence.

The younger weaver rushed out from the shadow of the grain cart, slamming a heavy oak timber template across the guard's temple. The man dropped without a sound, his iron helmet clattering against the damp clay road. The second guard scrambled backward, trying to level his short crossbow, but Rashida swung her father’s timber hatchet downward with all the strength in her shoulders.

The sharp iron blade sliced clean through the bowstring with a metallic twang, the tension shattering the wooden limbs of the weapon.

Before the guard could shout for help, the remaining weavers swarmed him, pinning his arms to the stone wall and stuffing a rag into his mouth to smother his cries. They tied his wrists with the heavy hemp cords used for the looms, dragging both men into the dark alleyway behind the storehouse.

Rashida turned to the heavy oak door of the granary. A thick iron padlock held the chain secure across the timber frame.

"The keys aren't on his belt," the young weaver panted, his hands shaking as he searched the unconscious guard’s pockets. "They must have the primary ring at the estate office."

"We don't have time for the office," Rashida said, her teeth grinding together as she raised the timber hatchet over her shoulder.

She brought the blunt poll of the axe down against the iron lock with a deafening CLANG that seemed to echo through the empty streets of the quarter. The iron sparked against the dark steel, but the lock held.

"Again!" the weaver hissed, his eyes darting toward the main thoroughfare where the distant glow of a patrol's torch appeared through the fog.

Rashida didn't look back at the light. She swung again, the full weight of her hard labor in the mountain forests behind the blow. The ancient iron mechanism inside the lock shattered with a sharp snap, the heavy chain sliding off the wooden handles like a dying snake.

They pushed the doors open, the scent of sweet, dry barley and flour filling their lungs after hours of breathing the sour reek of the gutters.

"Take what you can carry," Rashida commanded, grabbing a heavy canvas sack from the floor and tipping the first bin of grain into it. "Don't leave a single handful for Dorian's carts tomorrow. If they want this town, they're going to find it empty and broken."

As the weavers began hauling the heavy sacks into the dark alleys of the slums, Rashida stood by the open door, looking up toward the northern horizon where the jagged silhouette of Mountain Soga was completely lost in the white glare of the snowstorm. She touched the red oak pendant against her chest, the wood warm against her cold skin.

Hold the ridge, Zafaro, she thought, her eyes narrowing as the distant alarm bells of the high precinct began to ring out through the night. The lower district is finally awake.