The winter wind sweeping through the half-logged path stirred the snow-covered trees into threatening creaking, their branches threatening to dump their heavy loads if sufficiently motivated. The cold reminded Saevia of her first campaign into the lands of the Fosii. Mercifully, they weren't dealing with much in the way of altitude at the moment, just frigid air and frequent snowstorms.

Godric leaned forward on his warg's back, elbows resting on the front of his saddle. The tower of a warg-rider was perfectly comfortable in the furs he wore over his armor. It was barbarian in style, but practicality won out and the Legate couldn't blame him in the slightest. Even with extra thermal layers beneath her black armor, she occasionally rubbed her hands together for warmth. "There is an ambush, as expected," Godric reported.

"How many?" Ialia asked. The semi-aquatic woman was more accustomed to warm climes in the south, looking positively miserable even with thick cloth beneath her armor and a scarf covering her blue hair instead of her helm. The nictitating membranes beneath her eyelids blinked closed whenever falling snow came too close to her pitch-black eyes.

"Several hundred."

Ialia snorted at that.

"I assume there were heretics among them," Saevia said pointedly. "That magnifies their ability to wreak harm. Even if their spells cannot directly pierce our armor, anything that might change atmospheric conditions to our disfavor could be dangerous."

"More than half were spell-blades," Godric confirmed. He straightened up and then leaned back with a twist, popping his back audibly. "How do we want to play it?"

Saevia pursed her lips thoughtfully at that. "They will expect the legion to follow the road, where they can hit us through the trees. If we leave the road, we will be unable to marshal any kind of formation, the forest is too dense," she said thoughtfully. She turned to look at the big legionary waiting attentively at her side. "Malleus, give the order to pitch camp without construction of a wall. Every legionary is to be prepared for battle and ready to fall into formation."

He saluted and retreated to pass on her instructions to the different messengers that awaited eagerly for any word.

"We've only made half a day's progress," Godric observed. It was more question than critique.

"True," Saevia said. She smiled thinly, anticipation for battle thrilling through her veins. "But I find often that good things come to those who wait."

"You think they'll leave their ambush spot to attack?" Ialia said thoughtfully.

"I think the sight of a camp without a wall will be rather tempting," the Legate said, undoing her mask-like visor and pulling off her helm. The cold burned against her cheeks. "We do not need large formations to deal with them, not if we position ourselves carefully. They will have eyes on us already. We are past the point where we can disguise our presence."

"Three legions and full contingents of auxiliaries are rather noticeable," Godric said with a chuckle. "Particularly with Thornholm and Sandgata under our heel."

The sound of hooves through snow drew Saevia's attention to her third auxiliary commander. Sverrir looked as sour as ever, his dark hair and short beard wild from the wind and snow. He swung down from the saddle of his huffing horse, throwing her a salute the moment his bowed legs touched the ground. "There are more on the rear of our column."

Saevia laughed at that, a genuine smile creasing the corners of her eyes. An attempt at a flank both showed supreme ignorance of Imperial ability and of the two other legions following on Fourth's heels. "How many?"

"Two hundred and forty-three," Sverrir reported. "All of them looked like what passes for trained warriors here. There were some bearing the markings that Frost-Breaker said were reserved for death-speakers."

"I saw the same to our vanguard," Godric said.

"So they plan to supplement their ranks with the fallen," Saevia murmured. "Is Beleth aware?"

"I sent my second to inform him and the other angels," the dour cavalry officer reported.

"That will need to be dealt with or we will have a larger problem," the Legate said thoughtfully. She rubbed at her chin with her quivering hand, brushing against a healing scrape from her last sparring match with Malleus. He knew she would murder him for holding back, so she had her fair share of bruises. Not nearly as many as he did, however. "Godric, take your wargs east and circle around to the rear. Your job is to cause enough disruption to their ambush that our immortals can contend with their death-speakers at the flanks. You can move through the snow with ease compared to traditional cavalry, and doubly so the Immortals. I think they'll be pleased to finally flex their muscles."

The warg rider saluted. "Understood, Legate. Any other instructions?"

"Make it known that anyone who brings me the head of a death-speaker will earn a band," Saevia said, referring to the trophies awarded to soldiers for the killing or seizing of enemy leaders. The simple silver armbands, each marked with the date of their owner's victory, were highly prized by legionaries and auxiliaries alike. She knew Godric's brash warg-riders would be looking forward to the bragging rights that came with such feats.

"What about those to the front?" Ialia asked.

"We will engage with our infantry when they approach," the Legate said. "We have two archangels and three visages with every century."

Ialia grinned, showing her mix of human and needle teeth. "That does seem rather like overkill."

"When we are finished, the snow on the path to Eskaldr will be melted by the heat of their blood," Saevia said with her composed calm despite the electric excitement coursing through her body at the anticipation of a real battle. "That will make progress significantly more satisfying and potentially even easier. Ialia, move your people to the middle of the formation with Sverrir's cavalry. We will form square around you."

"Thank you, Legate," Ialia said with a salute. Everyone knew her people were the most vulnerable to the cold and currently not at their full strength as a result. They were still deadly, but not quite as devastating as normal, particularly not with the rivers frozen over.

Saevia's instructions rippled outwards through Fourth Legion and it slowed to a halt. Camp was pitched in minutes without the time taken to construct a wall, but everyone stayed in armor with weapons on their person and shields beside them. The tents were all set to be easily cut down and nothing was in place that would block their ability to link up into deadly formations.

It was a waiting game now, and Saevia was highly confident that her patience far exceeded that of their enemies. She put her helm back on and moved back to Command, giving Tribune Marcius a nod as she approached. The young man seemed utterly unconcerned by the coming battle, a pencil dangling from the corner of his mouth as he stared down at one of their supply ledgers. He looked up at the sound of her boots crunching through the snow and stood rapidly, giving her a sharp salute. "Malleus says we are waiting them out."

"We are," Saevia confirmed.

"A SUITABLE STRATAGEM."

Saevia turned and saluted the archangel as he approached. Beleth still wore the form of a man, about eight feet tall. His malleable metal body was bipedal at the moment, head studded with many obsidian eyes of varying sizes and shapes. "We have death-speakers in the enemy ranks, Revered One."

"A new wrinkle," Marcius observed. "Is it true that they can animate the dead?"

"THAT IS WHAT OUR LOCAL CAPTIVES HAVE INSISTED," Beleth said. "IT WILL TAKE CONSIDERABLY MORE THAN THAT TO BREAK IMPERIAL MORALE."

"Particularly with two archangels," Saevia observed. She sat down on a stump, and pulled a whetstone out of her belt pouch to touch up the edge on her sword while she waited. "We have not faced with their death-speakers before, they have not even seen our archangels. A learning experience for both sides."

It was an hour before the unmistakable howls of the wargs pierced the air to the south. Marcius leaped to his feet, but Saevia held up a hand. "Wait," she ordered. "The rear centuries and Immortal contingent will have that well in hand. Those at the front need time to realize what is happening before they launch their attack."

The moment she heard a roar of wind from the front of their formations, Saevia was on her feet. She pivoted to see a blizzard pouring towards them out of the forest. There was no way it was a natural storm, bearing down with supernatural focus.

"Form up," she ordered through her speaking stone, a command that would play in every centurion's ears.

The legionaries snapped into formations and braced for the storm in an instant, spears and shields ready for the attack.

Saevia looked over at the archangel beside her. "Would you care to introduce yourself to them, Revered One?"

Beleth strode towards the front without a word, his black robe billowing in the howling gale. The archangel raised both hands the moment the enemy could be seen moving through the flurries of snow.

There was a catastrophic explosion of lightning over the heads of the legionaries, a massive charged bolt hitting their enemy's lines and arcing from mailed body to body, destroying the first two ranks of the enemy.

As soon as the scorched bodies hit the earth, they rose again, twitching and jerking like marionettes, slowly growing more and more confident in their movements. Saevia smiled to herself.

"Is something amusing, Legate?" Marcius asked as he donned his own helm.

"Once Beleth and Shedim hit full stride, I wonder how long it will take those death-speakers to realize they cannot reanimate ash," she said, testing the edge of her sword on a sheet of paper before donning her helm and snapping the visor closed.

"For the Imperium!"

Shedim appeared out of the snowstorm to their left. The great tree-like archangel towered over the legionaries at his ten-foot height, plowing forward through the wind that nearly swept the mortals around him off their feet. He seemed to be picking up speed, not moving as casually as Beleth. Then again, with his unusually thick hide for even an angel, he was perfectly suited to wade into the enemy.

"I WILL BREAK THEIR STORM," Shedim intoned as he passed them.

Saevia grinned ferociously behind her visor. "This I have to see," she said, moving forward on the archangel's heels. The wind was hampering the legionaries' ability to form up, but it didn't seem to trouble their enemy in the slightest.

Thaumaturgy, however, was a different story.

Shedim wound his hands in a strange circular pattern as he passed through the Imperial front lines. There was a ripple across the enemy lines as he displayed his rather unique understanding of Void. Suddenly, at the center of that formation, gravity intensified a dozen times over. Bodies hurled through the air, slamming together into a twisted mass of bodies so crushed that even reanimated, they would be nothing but splinters. The archangel's next movement was a slamming backhand that sent four unaffected enemy warriors flying into the distortion.

"I had heard stories," Marcius said, a proper awe for the divine in his voice.

A wave of ice shards rained down on Shedim, shattering on his bark-like armor. The archangel's power hummed through the air for a moment, collecting like the charge before a lightning strike. One sharp movement of his hands brought the enemy slamming down against the ground. The sphere of bodies at the center exploded outward, hitting their allies as shrapnel.

The winds sputtered and died. The moment they could move freely again, whistles sounded an Imperial advance to support their archangels. Black-armored units formed together seamlessly into a v-shaped advance, leading on either side with the aim of engulfing their enemy.

It hadn't been a fair fight from the beginning, but Saevia was enjoying every moment of it. There was something so intensely satisfying about seeing Shedim at work, not that Beleth's lightning was any less impressive. Explosions lit the night like a thunderstorm had settled at ground level, devastating thaumaturgy wreaked by expert hands.

These would-be ambushers were learning exactly what Skarde Frost-Breaker had learned in one brutal night: on the battlefield, the Imperium had no equal.

Saevia shifted her focus for a moment, speaking the command word that selected out her warg-riders' commander. "Godric, status report!"

"Immortalis Aelius has decapitated the last of the death-speakers where we are. The lines are quaking and soon they will rout."

"Capture or kill them all. I want no survivors going to warn Eskaldr of their failure," Saevia ordered sharply.

"As you command."

The enemy was too heavily armored in their mail for arrows to have a good effect, so Saevia felt no need to bring Commander Odovacar and his men into the fight. If it weren't for the snow, she would have sent Sverrir to sweep behind, but she had no way of knowing what the summoned storm had done to the terrain, particularly at night. Imperial eyes could pierce the darkness, but her auxiliaries other than Godric and Ialia's people had more difficulty.

She would likely have to have Godric and his wargs mop up after the battle on the front as well. Fortunately, infantry in mail armor were not going to outpace the ferocious beasts.

A figure appeared out of the last of the storm, a death-speaker by the painted runes across his chest and helm. The black painted skull on an otherwise silver helm was a universal symbol for death. The bodies closest to Saevia shuddered to life, clawing their way up from the ground to run at her, first on all fours, but then on two feet.

Saevia's whistle had an immediate answer, shrill and defiant as it cut through the night air. Legionaries on either side of the sudden advance slammed together, forming a wall that the undead slammed into. The dead warriors had to be hacked to pieces to stop them, but that could be accomplished more easily than the enemy expected courtesy of Imperial breeding and metallurgy.

Saevia ghosted around the sudden clash, whistle still biting. A rank of legionaries turned, surrounding the death-speaker with their spears even as he struggled to raise dead as swiftly as he could.

"I want him alive," the Legate ordered over the speaking stone.

The legionaries circled in on him closer and closer, boxing him in with their shields before pummeling him into the ground with the hilts of their weapons. Saevia stepped forward and the ranks parted for her now that the death-speaker was on the ground. He raised a hand weakly, weaving a gesture in the air as he tried to gasp out an incantation.

The Legate slammed her heel down on his hand, shattering the bones as she ground them into the frozen earth. She leaned down and grabbed him by the strap that held his helmet, wrenching his head back so that he was looking up into her eyes, holding her sword against the flesh of his throat where the mail gapped because of the angle of his head. "I have plans for you, death-speaker," she said, his language dripping off her tongue with cold contempt.

She rather enjoyed the horrified look in his eyes as a visage appeared behind her, revealed in its celestial form: metallic skin with barely a suggestion of a human face and two unblinking obsidian eyes. "Please," he gasped out, no longer fumbling for an incantation.

Saevia's expression was steel. "Save your breath, barbarian," she said coolly. "For you, the angels have many questions." She glanced over at the visage and returned to her own language. "Take him to the other prisoners, Haagenti. Shedim and Beleth will want to learn about his powers."

"Please!" the man cried out in terror as the angel seized him, struggling to get away.

Nothing in Saevia's dead soul moved for him. Pity was not an emotion she typically experienced and she was not about to start now. "Haagenti, if you would?"

The angel let the fury of the divine pour into the man's body in a torrent of agony. He screamed, but only for an instant before the sound was cut off by his entire body locking up for a long moment, unable to even breathe. As soon as the angel released him from his divine torment after a moment, he slumped into a limp, rag-doll like state. Haagenti was strong enough to maneuver even the dead weight of a man in armor with ease, picking the death-speaker up and slinging him over one shoulder.

Saevia nodded to the visage as Haagenti went on his way before looking back at the combat as it unfolded. The enemy was shattering. Shields fell as armored men turned tail and tried to flee. Many would not make it more than a few steps without being pierced by spears or consumed by the powers of the archangels. Some would escape temporarily, but so far none of the locals had managed to successfully elude Godric and his wargs.

In that moment, she felt the satisfaction of duty inching towards fulfillment. Now there would be little between them and Eskaldr, and all of it would be known to her after the interrogation of prisoners.

The third city of the Red Mountains was now that much closer to falling to the gods of the Imperium. In her heart of hearts, Saevia found that idea most pleasing.