Chapter 49 - A New Alliance

Dawn stained the borderscape a pale silver, painting the jagged peaks with the glisten of hoarfrosted pines transformed into crystalline sentinels. There on the back of my mare, heart hammering inside my breastplate, I gazed at the clearing where we'd called the summit. Thick mist writhed about the scuffed stones arranged in a crude semi-circle, a natural amphitheatre that reverberated with the prospect of peace—and the sound of war.