Chapter 364: Barbarians of the White Snowfield (1)

“There are so many,” Serena whispered.

Huts crowded the snow like stones set in white mortar. At first, it looked like a small village, then the scale unfolded and the pattern kept repeating until the eye lost count. It had to be hundreds. A thousand lives or more moved behind those walls of hide and packed snow. Serena tried to picture a thousand people with the hard weight she had felt from the three who had once followed Ketal out of this land, and her throat tightened.

Ketal’s mouth thinned. “Their number has fallen. It should be three times this.”

A tribe able to bend the cold needed thousands. The Primarch had taken more than it gave back. Ketal clicked his tongue once, a sound that condemned the arithmetic, and then set it aside.

“So then,” he said quietly.

They would have to go in. However, his feet did not move at first. It was not fear. It was a refusal that rose without end. The horizon pressed against old bruises. He had promised himself, once, that he would never face it again. Some promises grew teeth.

He exhaled and stepped forward. The choice felt heavier than armor. He led them toward the ground the barbarians called their own.

Two men stood watch at the entrance. Ketal’s eyes flicked, and a hint of surprise touched his voice. “They are keeping watch.”

“Is that not natural?” Helia said.

“They did not accept the natural,” Ketal replied. “I explained why a boundary needs eyes, and they refused. Bone teaches what words cannot. After that, they posted guards because habit took root where understanding would not.”

He had expected them to abandon the habit the day he left. The post remained, even if the guards nodded and half slept between breaths.

“So these are the barbarians of the White Snowfield,” Hashvalt murmured.

Helia and Serena had looked such people in the face before. Hashvalt had not. He studied the two at the gate. At a glance, they looked no different from Ketal. They wore furs cut for movement, and the plain dignity of bodies made for work. He felt nothing like the gale he had imagined. In truth, their shoulders did not even look as if they carried the weight this world would demand.

Are these truly barbarians?

he thought, and held the question behind his teeth.

He moved closer. When he crossed a certain point, both men turned their heads in the same instant.

“Who goes there?” one said. Sleep fell from their faces like dust shaken free of cloth. They took their axes in the same motion. The air changed as if a storm had stood up.

Helia and Serena gathered holy power by reflex, strength answering the old road of their will. All three of Ketal’s companions carried the Hero’s weight, and that gave them a way to listen to pressure as clearly as to sound.

Wait,

Hashvalt thought, and his breath caught.

The barbarians possessed strength equal to that of Heroes. The measure was unmistakable—clean and exact. The barbarians set their feet as if to rush.

Then they saw Ketal.

Both stared. Their pupils flared wide, and confusion crossed their faces like pain. They shook their heads as if throwing off a bad dream.

Ketal stepped forward so the light fell on his ash hair and said, “Kaan. Begoma. It has been a while. Have you kept your breath?”

“Oh...!” one said, just breath given a shape.

“No way...!” the other answered, and then both voices found the word.

It was truly Ketal. Joy ran through them like heat under ice. They threw back their heads and shouted into the cold. “The king has returned!”

***

The cry leapt the fence and struck the huts. Voices caught and lifted it higher until the snow underfoot seemed to shake. Barbarians spilled out, dropping knives and meat and tools. They saw the man at the gate and forgot what they had been holding.

“Our king!”

“Chieftain!”

The words beat in time with feet.

They ran until they ringed him. The circle closed before Helia and Hashvalt could slip free, and Serena pressed herself to Ketal’s shoulder without knowing when she moved. It was not closeness that pulled her. It was charge and weight. The barbarians’ presence broke over them like a wave and kept breaking. The sensation of being ringed by predators woke old bones. Even with holy power steady in her hands, Serena felt iron on her tongue.

Helia gulped. At least a few dozen in the crowd carried a pressure that would demand respect even from her. The place had grown its own sky.

“Quiet,” he said. “Step back.”

Their king had spoken. However, they had no instinct for obedience, and of course, they ignored him.

“Our king!”

“The chieftain has returned!”

Hands reached out as if to prove him by touch. The circle pressed in.

Ketal sighed. “I know better than to expect sense.”

He lifted his fist and struck the nearest barbarian square on the forehead. The motion was small, barely a draw of the arm, yet the force behind it was absolute. The man’s feet left the ground as if the earth itself had tilted beneath him. He flew backward, slammed into a wall, and slid down, leaving a trail of powdered frost in his wake.

Hashvalt gauged the power behind the strike even as it landed. Had he received such a blow without preparation, he would have lost the breath to remain standing in moments. Ketal had turned that same crushing force upon one of his own kind without a hint of hesitation or ceremony.

The barbarians did not snarl. The one who took the strike rubbed the dent where his skin went red and stood again with pride in his eyes. Only then did the crowd settle. The circle opened enough that Serena could breathe without tasting iron.

One of them leaned forward as if sharing a secret. “You truly came back!”

“I said I would,” Ketal answered. He pointed with his chin. “Greta. I do not break my word. I also have favors to ask.”

His gaze traveled the faces and then the mass as a whole, counting without counting. The line of his mouth went tight. “Is this everyone?”

𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

“Everyone,” came the answer, “aside from the few out hunting.”

“A thousand,” Ketal said. “Perhaps a little more. One third gone.”

The Primarch had taken its price. Ketal clicked his tongue once and let it go.

“Enough. Where is the current chieftain?” Ketal asked.

“She is here,” someone called, and the bodies drew aside as if cut.

“I am going to her. Make way.”

They moved with a speed that would have brought a drillmaster to tears. The snow parted before them.

Men who looked as if they would never hear any voice but their own answered him without thought. Helia saw the truth without the need to name it and spoke anyway, soft as a prayer that did not ask for anything. “He is... the king of the White Snowfield.”

***

They followed the cleared way into the central hut.

A barbarian woman sat cross-legged inside as if she sat on a throne made out of the floor. She threw her head back and laughed when she saw him.

“

Wahaha!

Chieftain! You came!” she cried. “I heard the noise and wanted to run out, but you said a leader must always hold weight, so I piled as much weight as I could find on my body and kept still.”

“The weight was not literal,” Ketal said. “Leave it.”

He sat opposite and met her eyes.

Her body could stand in a mirror with his and not look small. Fine cords of muscle scored her arms and her shoulders. Strength lived in her without the need to shout. The room felt warmer just for it.

“Have you been well, Hekate?” he said. “Chieftain of the tribe.”

Hekate laughed, and the sound tried to climb the walls.

“I am working hard,” she said. “I am doing all the things you taught me to do.”

Ketal had carved the meaning of duty deep into their bones. He had never spoken of leadership through tales or words but through the language the tribe understood—action, command, and survival. She had learned from that example and made the lesson her own. The tribe still endured, standing firm against the cold, and that enduring presence was proof enough of what he had left behind.

“I am glad you returned,” she said with a bright ease that felt strange here.

Her eyes slid past him and noticed the others at last. She tilted her head, almost childlike on a body built for war. “Who are the three behind you?”

“This is Serena,” Ketal said. “She travels with me. Greet her.”

“H-hello,” Serena said.

What is this

, she thought, and could not make the thought quieter.

The feeling that rose off Hekate was strange and foreign. It did not press hard, yet it pressed everywhere. It felt natural, like breath, as if the body had forgotten how to be small. Serena had felt something like it once.

The Ugly Rat had come down in the North and stained everything it touched. That stain had been presence more than force. Hekate’s pressure felt like that. It felt like standing near something that had learned to be more than human by being less.

Is she human

? Serena wondered, then let the question drop because it had no use.

“I am Serena,” she said more steadily. “I follow Ketal.”

“Serena,” Hekate said without interest. Her eyes narrowed at Serena’s thinness. “Why are you so skinny? We must feed you.”

Helia stepped forward next.

“I am Helia,” she said. “I serve the Sun God as a Saintess. It is good to meet you.”

Her face held a practiced calm. Barbarians outside the White Snowfield spat at the names of gods and struck those who served them. She had no reason to expect better here. Ketal could stop a fight after it started, but the tribe did not look like friends to reason. She drew holy power into bone and made ready to move without wasting thought.

Hekate only tilted her head.

“A god?” she said. “What is that?”

Helia blinked. Ketal saved her the trouble of building a lesson on the spot. “Think of it as the same thing you call nature.”

“Ah,” Hekate said, and nodded. “You gave that thing the name Sun God.”

Understanding settled in effortlessly, clear and complete. In that instant, Helia grasped more than any number of sermons or lessons could have offered. The barbarians held no hatred for the gods; such thoughts had no place in their world. They lived beyond divine sight, sealed within a land untouched by the heavens. What others called gods meant nothing here. The names that shaped faith across the world were no more than passing weather in this realm.

The rules of outside did not cross this border without changing shape. Hashvalt spoke last.

“I am Hashvalt,” he said. “I came into the White Snowfield and have been living here.”

Hekate bared her teeth and looked at his sword. “I want to fight you.”

Fighting spirit and the clean heat of killing intent rose as if a bell had rung. Hashvalt moved without choosing to move and gripped his hilt. Even at the lowest measure, the power in her stood high above his.

If she strikes

, he thought,

I will measure only whether I live.

Hekate reached for her axe without the slightest hesitation. Ketal’s response was immediate. He brought his knuckles down against her head with a muted thud, the sound heavy and dull, like solid wood struck by stone. She grunted and rubbed the place where he had landed.

“If you want to fight, do it later,” Ketal said.

“It has been a while since you hit me,” she said. “All right.”

Hashvalt found the breath he had been holding and let it out. Introductions ended as plainly as they began. Hekate’s smile returned as if it had only stepped behind a door.

“If the king has returned,” she said, “then he will lead us again. Good. That is good.”

“No,” Ketal said.

He cut through the shape of her joy like a knot he could not use. “When the work is done, I can stay for a time. That is all. I will not return to the tribe.”

“I am not fit to be chieftain,” she said. “It is hard.”

“Endure it,” Ketal said, his tone unwavering. “You challenged me, and we fought a thousand times. I told you that if you ever managed to wound me, even once, I would stay. I would give you what you sought—my seed.”

Serena hiccuped. Ketal did not look at her.

“But you never wounded me. That was the promise.”

Hekate still looked as if promises had nowhere to sit in her mind. In this tribe, assent rested on weight, not words. Ketal knew that. He let out a small breath that sounded like a man setting down a pack.

“When this is over,” he said, “I will remain for a while. Hold until then.”

She wavered. “I—”

“Do you want to die?” he asked her mildly.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. She rose all at once, shoulders easy. “It is good that the king returned! We will hold a festival! It has been too long.”

“A festival?” Helia said, startled.

The Mortal Realm needed minutes the way a wounded man needed clean cloth. There was no time. Ketal caught her wrist when she would have spoken.

“They will not stop if I tell them to stop,” he said. “When it comes to this, they do not follow my orders. Let it be.”

“I understand,” she said.

Hekate stepped out and shouted. The call ran over the snow and returned with feet. The tribe moved in a way that did not look like a bonfire or drums. People checked the edges of tools and the flex of bows, tied straps tighter, and pinned furs so they would not catch when bodies broke into a run. The place set its teeth.

Ketal turned to Hashvalt. “You said you wanted to experience the barbarians.”

“I did,” Hashvalt said, and doubt lived in the words.

“Our festival is not the kind where people drink and sing,” Ketal said. “It’s something different.”

They spared only brief glances at Helia and Serena. The women appeared too young and too slender to stir the tribe’s attention. Hashvalt, on the other hand, drew their eyes. He looked like something honed and foreign—a weapon shaped in the Outside world, the kind the tribe would test to see whether it was worth keeping or breaking.

Ketal clapped him on the shoulder. “Do your best to live.”

“Do I have the right to refuse?” Hashvalt asked him, already knowing.

“Do they look like people who hear refusal?” Ketal said.

Hashvalt said nothing.