There were many things which made the continent of Gol unsuited for most people to live in. Flint had spent much of his life killing most of them, but in all his years he’d never quite managed to put a musket ball through the weather.

The wind slashed at him as he forced his way up the trail, gripping the fabrics of his cloak and clothing firmly with a gloved hand and pulling them tight around his body even while he held the other before his face to try and break the gale. It was a fierce one, carrying a cold that numbed fingers and toes within minutes- and howling like a wild dog as it patrolled the area.

It was actually possible to see it in the air by studying the trajectory of the millions of pea-sized icy chunks that it dragged after it. Flint would have preferred to have no way of knowing, at least then he’d have been able to avoid getting pelted by the natural projectiles.

The Wreathed Mountains had killed a lot of men, but they weren’t going to kill him. They could chill the air around him, batter him with gale-force winds carrying chips of moisture too solidly frozen to be called snow in lieu of ice, but they would never kill him. Never him, never Flint Locke.

Someone stumbled at the front of the group, one of the larger men, and for a moment Flint thought he’d collapse. It was a tenuous thing to witness, his heart lurched at the sight of it, at knowing that with their pittance of remaining food and muscles enfeebled by the cold, the remaining dozen members of their group would have no choice but to leave any who couldn’t walk on their own.

It was a relief to see him right himself and continue. A relief, but not a surprise.

Gol was a vicious, bastard shit-hole of a continent. Practically every living thing on it wanted to kill everything else, even mystics- those privileged few who could wield the powers of the arcane as they saw fit- were not guaranteed safety from its more dangerous predators. It was for that reason that the people living in Gol were some of the toughest bastards outside of the Butchery.

There was another spike in the wind, this time the force of it tugged at the weapon on Flint’s back. He found himself smiling slightly, its familiar weight being more a comfort to him than each one of the men sharing his journey over the mountain.

The people living in Gol were tough, but it would be unfair to assign them all the credit for surviving. Flint was not a mystic, and it was thanks to his musket that he hadn’t died from that fact.

Something came over the howling wind, a low and guttural roar carried through the air by sheer volume rather than pitch. Flint recognised it instantly, and by the stiffening of the backs ahead of him he wasn’t the only one.

Orcs.

Flint kept his ears pricked for any more war-cries, though he didn’t expect to hear many. The first had been at least ten leagues down the mountain, the next wouldn’t come until the orcs began to close in. On flat land the creatures could have run his party down easily, thankfully their enormous, muscled forms worked against them when scaling a steep incline with uneven snow underfoot.

His thoughts were scattered as his eyes began to ache, and reluctantly Flint knew that he’d need to blink once more. He grimaced as the frost clinging to his eyelashes threatened to fuse them together.

They continued for some time, each of them taking one trudging footstep after another- all moving in both unison and utter silence. It was a mix of steely determination and molten fear that kept their feet moving. With orcs behind them they’d need to set up a defensible camp sooner rather than later, and with their food supplies and the imminent blizzard less than a month away, digging in for a night meant death unless they made thirty miles of progress first.

Eventually, that threshold was met. The group came to one of the points marked on their map as a potential “safe” place to settle for the night, a large, relatively flat expanse located just before yet another steep slope. Several pine trees grew on the outskirts, and it was directly between a sheer, icy cliff face and a lethal thousand-foot drop.

Having stopped and made camp numerous times already, each man in the group knew exactly what their role was. Two of the heavier ones took axes to a smaller tree, hacking away for firewood. A wiry man took the duty of starting the blaze which would use it, and the rest of them began deploying their temporary shelters.

It was amazing what a man could carry in a single pack. Flint himself could still vividly recall his shock when, on his first day of training as a raw recruit in Wrath, his superior officer had plucked a sleeping bag, cooking pot and various other instruments free. He’d carried only the first two of them with him, however. Packing stopped space from being an issue, but the less weight he needed to carry the better.

Part of Flint sincerely wanted to join the majority of his temporary companions in setting up his own shelter, too.

Even the thin fabric of his sleeping bag would be bliss compared to his clothes alone, lying flat with the wind breaking against something other than his face was as close to paradise as he could imagine.

He didn’t, though. Flint was a soldier, and even before he’d heard the orc hunting cry his duty was clear.

Some ten paces from where the fire was being started, a boulder lay in the ice. Had Flint been a mystic he could have used his great strength to pluck the torso-sized chunk of stone free of the ground, carrying it closer to the centre of their soon-to-exist campment before sitting.

Unfortunately he didn’t have that luxury, and with no ability to move it the rock was simply too far from the rest of the group to be safe. That left Lock still standing uncomfortably, pack dumped on the ground next to him and coat flapping tediously as he fiddled with his musket.

The wheellock was a brilliant invention, and if Flint were given the chance to shake the hand of any man in the world- it would surely be whichever fae had first coined the design back in Singularity. Unlike the more primitive flintlocks, it used a complex mechanism involving a steel gear to grind against a chunk of pyrite- resulting in a gun which would fire ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

Flint’s own wheellock had been hand-made by Dava Scruth, a fae gunsmith who was to the art of weapon-making as Gilasev Menza was to magic, or so the saying went. Unfortunately on a mountain top with thin and an ambient temperature of around minus fifteen degrees, even a miraculous mechanism such as that would only be so reliable.

It was for that reason that he’d made a point of fiddling with it just enough to remove any frost which may or may not have been dangerously located in any of the areas vital for function. He was less worried about his pistols, safely tucked within his coat as they were, Flint reasoned that his own body’s warmth would have kept them functional.

Ordinarily he could have performed his maintenance within ten seconds, but the climate had robbed him of the dexterity he’d drilled so often to obtain. His fingers were sluggish, slow, clumsy. Like each one of them had been magically transfigured into a thumb. By the time Flint had finished inspecting the spring of the gun’s dog, a sudden light emerged from several paces to his side- followed by a wave of much-welcomed heat.

Turning and stepping closer, he continued his work in the illumination provided by the fire. The sounds of wood being chopped were still clear in the air, and a single glance at the flame confirmed that it had yet to be fed any of the large logs required for a long-term burn. Regardless, its petty brightness still made his job ever so slightly easier.

Minutes later Flint’s work was completed, and he finally let himself begin to relax. Reaching back into his pack, he drew out the sleeping bag and splayed it across the ground just a few feet from the flames. It made a serviceable seat, or at least a section of ground that wasn’t made out of snow.

One of the other members of the group drew out a pot, filling it with water and placing it over the fire wordlessly. Throwing in a few herbs from nearby, they began to stir the liquid. It was then that, among the ten of them who weren’t still chopping, they discussed who would be hunting, and who would be on watch.

As it had been for each of the fourteen nights before, Flint was unanimously agreed by all to be more suited for watch duty. He couldn’t say he blamed them, there wasn’t a soldier in Wrath who hadn’t heard of Flint Locke the voidborn, and likely no more who’d choose anyone else to watch their camp when he was available.

That didn’t mean he liked it though. His reputation was good for dealing with nobby commanders, but the expectation that he’d do the impossible seemed to cause plenty of issues for him. Being volunteered to stay up on watch more than anyone else when he’d rather get his discomfort over with by hunting early on was one of them, and he sensed that the reason he was being dragged to Bermuda so that some pampered princess could have a decent body guard was another.

Eventually, inevitably, the jobs were assigned, the four-man hunting crew wandered away from the warmth of the fire- searching for rabbits, rock-dwellers or wood-shanks to feast upon. Flint watched them leave, sighing silently to himself.

A man couldn’t choose what he was best at, he supposed.

***

The second howl was around thirty hours after the first, by Flint’s reckoning, and it sent a deeper chill through him than even the malicious climate of the mountaintop had managed. He’d lived for nineteen years, killed orcs for almost ten of them, and in that time he had grown more familiar with the monsters than he’d have ever wished. He knew the difference between the roars they made simply in excitement, and those that signified a hunt.

The savages had found their scent, Teary-Eyed God only knew how with the whirling winds and frosted-air. It could’ve been any number of things. The smoke from their fires, the shit from a poorly covered latrine- even something so unavoidable as their natural body odor, frozen sterile though their sweat had become. The specific tell was irrelevant, all that mattered was what came next.

Though the terrain hindered them more than Flint’s party, the orcs had previously been kept from them only by a lack of direction. Their hunting cry had been obviously closer than the first, meaning they had already shaved a terrifying amount from the distance between them. They were gaining fast.

The climate had just become Flint’s second deadliest foe.

***

Setting up camp on the fourth day after the orc’s initial roar was a terrifying, and frighteningly concentrating experience. As nerve-wracking as it was to stop moving for any reason mere hours after hearing the barbarous monsters only a few miles away, there was nothing like wracked nerves to shake a Wrathman back to his roots.

Each member of the group worked with almost mechanical discipline. The fire was started in record time, and a pile of firewood had been prepared from a felled tree less than an hour after- the work of some Hauler augments, men whose bodies had been magically strengthened to more quickly force three-stone cannonballs down artillery barrels.

There was no hunting party formed, instead the men who’d have otherwise been idle prepared for an assault. Warmth and fire had been a priority, but once enough wood had been gathered to feed the blaze for a night, the excess was put to other uses. Four men dug a trench, four more focused on whittling the points of some suitably straight and thick sticks into makeshift spears. The shoddy weapons were placed protruding from the ground at roughly a seventy-five degree angle, covered with snow which was then stamped tight to hold them in place.

Flint doubted they’d actually slay any charging orcs, but even the thickly built muscles of a greenskin’s stomach wouldn’t save it from being at least wounded if they charged onto the spears fast enough.

Longbows were prepared, the strings held near the fire and treated especially well- even under the frigid conditions they’d mostly been used, the weapons could kill rabbits. If they were to be useful tonight, however, it would take every gram of their elasticity.

For his part, Flint’s routine was very much similar to the nights before. He took a little more care with his weapons, and his maintenance was greatly aided by the adrenaline-steady fingers with which it was performed, but the essentials were more or less the same. In some strange way, he felt better than he had in weeks.

Standing guard against shadows was one of the most terrifying things he’d ever done. Surrounded by sleeping companions, no company but his musket and himself- all the while staring out into the spot where the campfire’s light died, hoping to whatever God might be watching that he wouldn’t need to contend with figments and blood crypts in the place of real, tangible, shootable orcs.

There was no need to hope now. Flint knew he’d be attacked, and while that sent rivers of boiling fear coursing through his veins, that same fear sharpened him like nothing else in the world. Along with the certainty of fighting a familiar foe, it left him steadier than he’d been in a long while.

None of them ate that night, or at least none of them ate a full meal. The jitters that came before any great fight would have emptied their stomachs of anything they tried to fill them with, even if they’d spared the men to gather enough for the filling to be done in the first place.

It was better that way. Hungry men fed on nothing but salted meat jerky and dried fruit rations were deadlier by half than those left sluggish as their bodies digested a full, hot meal of stew. That deadliness didn’t stop the bullets of panic from ripping through their group as a final, terrible roar washed over them from further down the mountain path. It was louder by far than any that had come before, even a layman could have deduced that the source was frighteningly close.

The orcs followed the sound, predictably only moments behind. Flint had responded to their cry instantaneously by concentrating on one of the arcstock crystals he kept tied within his clothing. It was a small thing, barely two ounces and constructed from low-grade material- the total energy it could store was roughly comparable to a mystic of the Saint level, or so Flint had been told.

Becoming acutely aware of the antimagic aura around his body, Flint dragged it inwards, concentrating on its shape above all else and using it to almost squeeze the crystal. When confronted with antimagic, any inert magic- that was to say, magic not actively being directed by a mystic- would naturally be displaced and move away from the opposing force. The reaction was the exact opposite of what would occur with any non-magical form of energy meeting its opposite, but then “magic” and “annoyingly unscientific” were almost synonymous.

As the magical energy stored within the arcstock crystal escaped, Flint shifted the shape of his antimagic aura once more- this time parting it slightly, creating a tunnel devoid of his pariah influence. Surrounded by its anathema as the magic was, it immediately shot down this tunnel- heading right for Flint himself.

He suppressed a grin as the magic flooded him, animating every cell of his body in a way he wouldn’t have imagined possible were he not being subjected to it at that very moment. Flint swore he could feel the energy within himself, coiling like a pit of vipers- all muscle and power, yet harder to control than a bonfire. It was an exhilarating feeling, knowing that his mortal body was being pushed past the realm of possibility by such an unfathomable natural force- akin to running with the wind at his back. Made all the stronger by his having refrained from partaking of it since his mountain trip began.

Two hundred feet away, the orcs charged. Their great bodies, over seven feet and bloated to the point of hideousness by the unnatural masses of muscle packed under their skin. Tusks split their lips in permanent grins, contrasted by their almost armour-like foreheads resembling a perpetual scowl.

From this range, in this darkness, with this snow, none of the other men would have been able to make out any real detail on the creatures- even the Hotshot augments, men imbued with supernatural vision and accuracy, would likely have been limited to correctly estimating their numbers at twenty or so.

Flint could have seen as much even from twice as far, at this distance the descending horde was nothing more than a set of easy targets. He wasted no time in firing on the first.

Orcs were not clever creatures, or at least not normally. What they lacked in brains were generally compensated for in muscle, rather than extra effort being placed behind their thoughts. Flint had seen some warbands, typically those numbering in the hundreds or more, which nonetheless managed some meagre technological advancement. Armour made from inch-thick leathers or bone were not an uncommon sight, and when combined with the natural toughness of their wearers they could render even musket shots non-fatal.

The creature Flint shot wore no such armour, and while his skull was likely thrice as thick as a man’s, it was not nearly thick enough. From a hundred metres, a musket could punch through over five inches of solid wood. A half-centimetre slab of bone did predictably well, and with his magic-enhanced vision he clearly saw the creature’s head snap back as a mushy spray of greyish-red globules exited the newly-made hole in its forehead.

By the time the orc had begun to fall, Flint had started hurriedly reloading his weapon. By the time it had become an obstacle for the things behind it to trip over, he was cocking back the wheel mechanism.

He fired once more, and hot sparks were spat from the barrel of his musket, the entire length of the gun jerking back with the force, and yet to Flint’s temporarily enhanced strength, holding the weapon steady took almost no exertion. Another creature fell, this time one of its eyes disappearing in place of a gore-filled tunnel.

Flint hurriedly began to reload again, glancing at the damage done by his fellow travellers and not liking the result. Besides him, only four others of them had muskets- and their sharp cracks were drowned out by the sound of his own. The remaining seven men wielded longbows instead, weapons capable of downing a man with certainty- yet Flint had never seen their performance against greenskins.

He finished reloading, cursing to himself as he spilled a quarter-ounce of gunpowder.

The orcs had reduced the distance between them and the defending men by half as his third shot rang out, and yet taking the time to count Flint noticed with no small amount of satisfaction that his own side’s efforts had already claimed five of the beasts.

One shot after another filled the night, the orcs dropping to the ground- enormous bodies surely making sound, but having it smothered by the winds around them.

Their numbers were less than ten by the time they reached Flint’s group.