Rasthomig's stable, typically silent at this predawn hour, was a cacophonous hive of activity this morning. Sleep-deprived stableboys busied themselves drawing up horses from their straw-strewn stalls. The horses snorted and shook their heads in annoyance as their handlers shoved bits in their mouths and affixed the saddle cinches around their bellies. Shod hooves clacked against the cobblestones of the stable chambers, plate-and-mail cuirasses of the Stewardess' mounted guard clinked and clanked as the knights swaggered over to their steeds. All was nearly ready for the departure for Doma, save for Stewardess Helkha herself.

All of the preparations were finished, her steed readied and waiting in the stable. She was dressed appropriately for the journey; she wore a riding dress beneath an ornate-yet-comfortable doublet of true silk was cinched around her bosom as snugly as a horse's saddle. But in her mind, she was not prepared. Her attention was paid not to her meeting with Ai or the council to which she would accompany the Regent Master, but to her brother's whereabouts. Where could Vadigar be? Why had she not heard from him in so long? As she often did when she was lost in these all-to-familiar anxieties, she stared vacantly. Looking out over the stables, Helkha was startled when Hemigan laid a wrinkled hand upon the Stewardess' shoulder.

"Putting off the ride? I cannot blame you; the ride across Ciskhadania is a long ride to make in a single day," said Hemigan, referring to the sparsely-populated wards of the Fifth Legion to the immediate south of Boria.

"Which is why I elected to leave as early as possible," Helkha replied, turning to face her aging adviser. "We will reach Portus Furcata by sunset. Doma is only another four days by ship from there."

"I know you are not the procrastinating sort," Hemigan nodded, looking silently into Helkha's eyes for a moment. "Something else stays you, and I think I know what anxiety that is." Helkha nodded in tacit affirmation.

"How long has it been, milady?" Hemigan asked, almost whispering. "When did you last speak with Lord Vadigar?"

"It will have been a year's time within a fortnight." A lump formed in Helkha's throat as she recounted their last conversation by scrying orb. Hemigan's eyes widened.

"Where was he? Do you recall?"

"He is so far, Hemigan. He told me that he had crossed the Erg Sea in the Shattered West. I have looked in the library for maps, trying to find where he might be. None of our maps even chart lands that far west. He was beyond the known world, high in a great range of mountains. That's all I know," Hemigan could see tears welling in the corner of the Stewardess' eyes.

"I am so worried, Hemigan. I fear I will never see by brother again; that I will only have that view of him in the scrying orb, so wretched cold, to remember him with!"

"Helkha," Hemigan said in a soothing whisper. "Do not fear. You know your brother as well as I do - better, in fact. You know his resilience better than I, do you not? His persistence? His resourcefulness and tact?"

"Yes," Helkha affirmed.

"How then, can you possibly doubt that your brother is alive?"
____________________________________________________________

Heavy particles of ice fell from a sky of churning stormclouds, plinking against the jagged stone all around him. Vadigar's bootfalls were slow and deliberate; the icy stone was terribly treacherous and a single misstep could easily spell one's doom. The loss of any member of this host could be a heavy setback, but the loss of his own life at this juncture would likely damn all of the soldiers in his command. The exarch cast a glance over his shoulder to his host following at his heels. Marching three or four abreast, they stretched all along this narrow path that skirted along the mountainside, a great snake of warriors that wound sinuously into the distance where the haze of falling snow and ice obscured the host's rear guard. Numbering just over 20,000, his army lumbered along the ice-glazed path at a turtle's pace, winding around fallen boulders, and climbing over rockfalls and talus. Treacherous was an understatement for the trail - a mere goatpath - that wound up and around the jagged slopes of the Crown of the North. The exarch glanced down the mountainside for a moment and stared into a dizzyingly deep crevasse that, Vadigar knew, would become the tomb of any of his men that made a false step. The yawning canyon below served to reiterate the sole command Vadigar gave to his soldiers upon beginning their ascent through this passage: Move deliberately.

"It is best not to look down, [i]Egarko[/i]," a stunted, rat-faced man walking beside Vadigar suggested in the stilted Illyrican that the people of the far west spoke with. "Makes you dizzy... not wise in this place."

"I will bear that in mind. Thank you, Onur," Vadigar said to his guide, focusing once again on the ascent up the mountain path. He firmly planted one boot, secured purchase with the other, and then stepped. It was a tortuously slow pace, especially in the freezing, turbulent mountain air. Speed of passage, however, was not Vadigar's priority. Negotiating the Crown of the North with as many soldiers alive was his only concern. At the head of his army, the exarch was able to set as safe of a pace as possible for the soldiers behind him.

"Good, good," Onur praised, brushing a layer of ice pellets off of his wispy mop of hair. "Your step is cautious, and you do not even shiver in this cold. You set a good example for your men, Egarko."

[i]Our guide is as observant as he is congratulatory,[/i] Vadigar thought, unnerved by the fact that Onur noticed that he was repressing his urge to shiver in the cold. The Exarch had spoken to his sister Helkha, who remained in his homeland of Boria, the night before. He remembered watching her through his scrying orb, her lips quivering with every bout of shivering. He could not afford to elicit a similar reaction from his soldiers. But the fact that Onur noticed this bothered him. [i]His memory is sharp, and he talks too much. I do not like that. I wish I did not have to trust him.[/i]

Onur, however, had proved his loyalty to the Night Mother's cause, or at least Vadigar's cause. Mercenaries in the employ of the Djaam had come to his homeland looking for thralls and sacrifices for the barbarous rites of their masters. Onur explained that he had been in the hills looking for pasturage for his flocks when the mercenaries took his wife, and that they killed his son when he resisted them. Onur had even shown Vadigar the boy's grave. And so when this shepherd offered to guide the exarch's army through the great mountains of the Crown of the North, into the heartlands of the Empire of the Djaam, Vadigar had no reason to question his loyalty.

Similar stories had motivated a great many of the soldiers that now comprised Vadigar's army. When Vadigar left the Illyrican Empire nine years ago on a campaign to conquer the world - known and unknown - in the Night Mother's name, he had assembled an army of some 8,000 Borian volunteers. After nearly a decade, thousands of miles of desert wastelands, and dozens of battles and skirmishes, less than 4,000 of those original Borians remained. Vadigar's army was now a gestalt legion of exotic warriors from seven realms, comprised of soldiers and mercenaries who joined Vadigar's host. Some of these men joined as mercenaries, or in hopes of some share of the spoils of war; but the majority had come to the exarch seeking nothing more than the chance to exact revenge against the Djaam and their lackeys.

Before Vadigar left Illyrica, he had never heard of the Djaam - virtually no one in the Empire had. But as his host journeyed into the lands known as the Shattered West, it became apparent that the Djaam were the dominant power over this broken land. Those that defected to the exarch spoke of a realm of terrifying power far to the west on the coast of the Sunset Ocean. That realm, they claimed, was ruled by men imbued with the power of gods who called themselves the Djaam. The Djaam, it was said, were granted power by their moon god in return for enormous sacrifices. Vassal states all along the periphery of the Djaam Empire were expected to make regular payments in human beings for their continued existence. Their sacrifices to their barbarous god gave the Djaam great arcane power, but created numerous enemies. Enemies that Vadigar welcomed into his ranks with open arms. It seemed that even in this distant land, the Night Mother had been gracious to her servants. For the Djaam and their allies were afraid, and had thrown their armies against Vadigar numerous times. Each time, the exarch and his men repulsed them. Now, Vadigar was at the very doorstep of their empire, with a host capable of fighting a protracted war against the Djaam in their own homeland. How could the Night Mother not be with them?

The switchback path rose up to a flat shelf that skirted along a jagged cliff in the mountainside, running some two hundred paces from the cliff wall to a sheer precipice into the crevasse. Vadigar and his guide led the forward guard of the army into this wider area, welcoming the newfound elbow room they had not been afforded walking four abreast along the goatpaths. Vadigar turned to one of his lieutenants - a seasoned Borian veteran who had fought for a decade alongside the exarch - to instruct his men to spread out on this wide shelf and rest. Vadigar continued alone toward the precipice edge. The exarch stood on a promontory that jutted above the crevasse, where he looked out over the mountainscape that surrounded him. Jagged fangs of ice-blanketed stone surrounded Vadigar on all sides. Even through the haze of the falling snow and ice particulate, tumultuous eddies of snow and ice swirled about the high peaks. But across the canyon, off to the west, Vadigar caught a glimpse of golden sunlight; a window through the blizzard to clear weather off in the distance. Just beyond the profile of a particularly tall and fanglike mountain, the foothills of the lowland countryside could be seen, just now growing verdant in the early spring. The exarch could hear Onur approaching now, and he pointed out into that distant patch of sunlit green.

"That pasturage down there, where is that?" Vadigar asked, directing his guide's view down the hill country where the shadow of clouds could be faintly seen rolling over greening plains. Upon laying eyes on it, Onur smiled wide, baring his yellow-orange teeth. 

"That is Ayt Shardum, Egarko," Onur declared. "The northwest edge of the Djaam Empire. In a week's time, we will be there."

There could be no doubt now in the mind of Exarch Vadigar. The Night Mother was with them.