The two thousand Lycan vanguards were roaring, their massive silver-blue limbs thumping against the sulfur crust as they passed around heavy iron flagons of fermented pine sap. Behind them, the human engineers who had wired the local detonation lines were weeping openly, their soot-stained faces flushed with the sudden, intoxicating rush of survival.
They had not won the war; the Floating Palace still drifted over the northern horizon like a white stone scar. But tonight, the ledger of Saint Aurelius had registered a definitive deficit. The uncalibrated variables of the North had taken their first clean bite out of the machine.
Gwen stepped away from the roaring perimeter of the victory bonfire, her silver-iron breastplate hanging loose from her right shoulder, her hands still stained with the dark copper grease of the salvaged air-cannons.
