Sons of Ironstorm - Book 4: Griffon's Stand

Chapter 4: Enter Chaos

"They struck with impunity, choosing their targets at will.

And, for the most part, they found their prey unprepared.

The Races were still rebuilding from the fall of the First Alliance,

Civilization was new again, returning to lands that had forgotten it.

So the Reign of Blood began, birthed in death and destruction."

- from 'Crimson Empire: Reign of Blood', a Cadremoor Alliance History

The heavy Kaal Eran cargo vessels eased down the narrow strait in loose formation, the tall walls of the passage looming several spans into the air on either side. While deep enough to make the occasional chunk of floating ice non-consequential, the fjord possessed steep, jagged walls that would shred a wooden hull and severely damage a metal one at the slightest caress. It was the last section of the tortuous path leading out from Maedorin, and easily the most treacherous, especially with the Piceans stepping up their patrols in the waters north of K'Tallus. So the tjor'riin pilots, well-trained by their Kaal Eran task masters, took their time and kept a heavy hand on their tillers as they slid northward along the passage they called Kisse'dok: the Labyrinth.

On the upper decks, tjor'riin lookouts, bundled up in heavy clothing against the pervasive cold that lingered despite the southern hemisphere moving through late spring and into summer, kept careful watch for loose ice. As hard as stone with edges as keen as knife blades and kept such in the cold, dark water, the chunks of ice offered navigational challenges if they became too numerous and forced the vessels closer to the fjord walls. With the slightly elevated temperatures of summer heating the massive glaciers that covered most of K'Tallus in a blanket of ice, massive shards often broke off where the glaciers met sudden land's ends, dropping into the water to float sullenly northward. At summer's height, they became numerous enough to block a number of the waterways making their uneven way through K'Tallus' stony coasts.

Oddly enough, while their sharp, night-adapted vision was busy scanning the nearly black water for pieces of blue-white ice, they were consistently focused on their forward path, leaving their wake unguarded. And thus the lookouts missed seeing the handful of ripples moving towards them, the dark shapes that caused them completely lost in the aquatic gloom that dominated the fjord's belly.

Juhrhiss slowly and silently eased his nostrils and eyes clear of the icy water to examine the stern of the closest cargo vessel, not ten paces from where he surfaced. Now above the chill stuff that encased his body in a sheath of cold, a 'v' forming around his still submerged snout as he continued forward, his tail propelling him reptile-fashion through the water.

The Nahkiwin's examination was brief; time was of the essence. Already the cold had bitten deep through clothing and natural scale-armour to sap strength and speed almost to the point where they were dead in the water. His warriors, each a Steel Fist clan Progenitor, were as hardy and robust as a Nahkiwin could be, able to withstand temperature gradients that would leave modern Nahkiwin comatose. Yet another handful of shades in this water, not ice only because it was saline, and they would begin to sink towards the bottom, Progenitor or not.

Satisfied they would be unseen, Juhrhiss shifted his head slightly from side to side and the ripples following the cargo vessels abruptly multiplied as the rest of the team began to surface. Anxious to get out of the icy water, they nevertheless held their discipline and waited for Juhrhiss to make the signal to attack. Thankfully it wasn't long in coming, a subtle shift of the Nahkiwin commander's heavy head enough to send the command. Then his soldiers were sliding forward through the water to use clawed hands to pull themselves from the chill liquid and onto the cargo vessels' sterns, right into the tjor'riin lookouts' blind spot.