And Northern, who knew that mist, felt the old cold settle behind his ribs.
Then the mist reached the yard, and the vastness came apart.
It was not one creature. It had never been one creature. What had looked, through the boiling dark, like a single giant shouldering down four hundred winters of stone was a host — dozens of figures pouring through the breach in a spearhead so tight, so perfectly interlocked, that they had moved as a single silhouette. They came down the rubble slope without breaking stride, without a sound, and the worst of it — the thing that dragged a low moan out of the recruits around him — was how human they moved.
