The Steppeborn: The Art of War and the Broken Path

The hill was slick with ash and morning frost. Every breath steamed in the cold, but sweat already clung beneath armor. Kael crouched behind a crag of black stone, eyes fixed on the crude towers ahead. Smoke twisted from dozens of fire pits. The drumline stood at the center, four towering wooden scaffolds built from tree trunks and bones. Goblins manned them with thick clubs, pounding out deep, pulsing rhythms that echoed across the valley like a giant's heartbeat.

Each strike sent signals—to the orcs gathering below, to the shamans pacing near the fire-altars, to the warbeasts leashed near the pens. If those drums kept beating, the entire horde would wake in unison.

They had to die. All of them.

Kael raised two fingers. His team moved with him, melting from shadow to shadow. Ten Stormguard. Three Qorjin-Ke scouts. His wolf, silent at his side. They were ghosts against the rising light.

At the base of the first tower, a goblin scratched itself and spat into the grass. It didn't hear the arrow that split its jaw. Didn't scream. Just fell sideways, twitching as blood bubbled from the corners of its mouth.

Kael drew his blades.

He was in the camp before the body hit the ground.

The goblin on the drum tower saw the flash of steel a second too late. Kael surged up the wooden scaffolding like a wind-born shadow. His boot caught the drummer's knee. The creature shrieked. His blade took its tongue. The second blade drove through its eye. Blood poured down the steps as the body sagged, half-hanging by intestines that caught on the railings.

The drum fell silent.

Kael dropped beside it, already moving toward the next.

To the east, one of the Qorjin-Ke had set fire to the oil-stained tent near the second drumline. The flame caught fast. Smoke curled black. Screams followed.

Another goblin reached for its horn. Ryoku's throwing blade pinned its hand to its own throat. Then he was there, driving his spear up into its mouth and through the skull, the point bursting from the top like a red blossom.

A warhorn blared. Too late.

The second drum silenced under the weight of a crushed goblin corpse. Bruga had simply thrown one of their own into it, then smashed the top of the tower with his shoulder like a battering ram. The wood buckled. The drum shattered. The drummer tried to crawl away with broken legs, dragging himself through ash and filth. Bruga stepped on his back and drove a hatchet into his spine, cracking vertebrae like glass.

"Drum two down," he snarled.

Kael moved to the third. But now the camp was stirring.

Orcs burst from tents, snarling. Half-armored, drooling, eyes red from sleep and bloodlust. One charged Kael with a cleaver. Kael ducked, let it pass, then slashed the backs of both knees. The orc dropped screaming. Kael stepped on its head, twisted, felt the skull collapse. Blood sprayed up his shin like a geyser.

Another orc raised a hammer. A Qorjin-Ke scout leapt onto its back, sank twin blades into its collarbones, and rode it down as it thrashed and gurgled in the dirt.

A third drum started up again. A goblin had taken position, striking wildly, shrieking in panic.

Kael's eyes narrowed.

He threw his blade.

It spun once, twice, and landed with a wet crack in the goblin's throat. The rhythm stopped mid-beat. The creature tumbled, gagging on its own blood as it clawed at its neck.

Then came the real tide.

A dozen orcs surged forward in a wall of brute mass. Armor stitched from skin and chainmail slapped together. One wore a necklace of dwarf skulls. Another had tusks capped in iron. Kael braced himself.

Before they reached him, Ryoku's squad cut through from the side. Precision cuts. Arterial slashes. They didn't block—they redirected. They didn't charge—they slipped around and behind, carving tendons and throats.

Still, the orcs kept coming.

One caught Kael's arm with a hooked blade. His pauldron tore loose. Blood flowed. The orc grinned, until Kael stepped into him and drove his blade up through the chin and into the brain. The orc spasmed, jaw locked open, tongue twitching. Kael let the corpse slide free.

Screams echoed behind them. Fire rose near the center drum.

Wen Tu's mist crept along the ground, green-gray and heavy. Goblins fled into it and did not come out. Roots burst from the soil, snaring legs, snapping bones. One goblin's mouth opened to scream but filled with moss and vine. It choked as its ribs shattered inward, pulled tight by something unseen.

Atop a ridge of broken shale, Nyzekh knelt beneath a stone overhang, watching it all unfold. His helm sat beside him. His eyes, white-gray and still, absorbed every shift in the camp below.

He saw chaos blooming like infection.

The drums were falling, one by one. Signals cut. Fear rippling. The horde was vast, yes. But now it stirred without direction. Like a wounded beast waking too late to defend its throat.

He breathed slow and deep, the cold air sliding into his chest like smoke.

This was the moment he had studied for. Every night in the chamber beneath the Gale Citadel, while the others meditated or sparred, he had traced old war scripts, mapped ancient formations, reconstructed shaman call structures from forgotten languages. He had watched Kael's footwork. Timed Ryoku's kill zones. Memorized Bruga's charge radius.

He had seen this battle before it happened. And it was unfolding perfectly.

A goblin shaman below began chanting near the final drum tower, arms raised in frenzied prayer. Fire licked up from a brazier. Warhorns cried. The last rhythm began to rise again.

Nyzekh whispered to himself.

"Not yet. You don't get to breathe yet."

He rose, blades drawn, voidlight coiling around his limbs.

Below, Kael had already started his charge.

The shaman never finished the chant.

Kael climbed the tower in a blur of motion, slammed the shaman's head into the drum three times until the skull caved, and the final beat died with it.

Silence fell.

Nyzekh watched the camp buckle under its own weight.

They were ready.

Wen Tu stepped beside him, eyes wide.

Nyzekh whispered without looking.

"They don't know what to do without the beat."

Wen Tu nodded.

"Then we start the next movement."