Location:Northern Clan territory — patrol boundary, Iron Ridge settlement
Date/Time:TC1855.01.13
They smelled the smoke before they saw the warriors.
Three days of walking across the permafrost. Three days of the vast, exposed, honest landscape that Bjorn had described and that Raven had thought she understood from the description, and didn't — because understanding the north from description was like understanding fire from a painting. The painting showed you the color. The fire showed you the heat.
The cold was a constant. Not the seasonal cold of Seven Peaks' Frost Season, which arrived with politeness and departed on schedule. This was the cold of a world that had made a permanent decision about its relationship with temperature and was not accepting appeals. Raven's formation-enhanced clothing held, but the cold pressed against it from every direction with the patient insistence of something that had time and knew it.
