THE KING OF NOTHING

  Chapter XIX: Fangs in the Snow

  The world had turned white, blind, and silent.

  It wasn’t the pure whiteness of fairy tales; it was a mortal whiteness, an absence of color and warmth that suggested absolute oblivion. The Iron Mountains were no place for the living; they were a cyclopean wall of ruthless granite and perpetual ice, a geological frontier separating the dying North from the very idea of civilization. Here, there were no roads, only directions suggested by slope and madness. The wind did not blow; it howled. A continuous, high-pitched, torn sound that rose from the fissures between the peaks like the lament of a gigantic animal impaled on ice for centuries. It raised ghostly curtains of virgin snow, moving barriers that erased the horizon, confused up with down, and froze eyelashes within seconds, sealing eyelids with a fine, cruel crystal.

  In the midst of that white nothing, where each step sank a boot up to the knee in icy powder that whispered reproach, three black figures advanced. A funeral procession against the blank page.

  Clad in their new ebony wool coats, dark leather trousers, and black boots, Vael, Irina, and Elara were splashes of fresh ink on a virgin, indifferent canvas. The contrast wasn’t aesthetic; it was a declaration of existence. They were an anomaly, a crack in the deadly purity of the landscape.

  Elara walked close to Vael. She wasn’t following him; she moved in his shadow, using his broader body as a living windbreak. The wind, meeting the obstacle, split and roared around them, but to her it came muted, a whistle instead of a howl. At one point, when a particularly brutal gust slammed into them head-on, snatching the breath from their lungs, Elara moved even closer. Her black-leather-gloved hand reached out and grasped Vael’s coat sleeve, not with desperation, but with a possessive firmness. An anchor.

  She didn’t ask permission. She didn’t seek approval. She simply anchored herself. Like a vine to a wall.

  Vael turned his head slightly, just a movement against the hood of his coat. His green eyes, pale in the diffuse white light, saw Elara’s hand, the fingers clenched around the dark wool of his arm.

  "If you get any closer, you’ll trip over my boots with every step," he said, his voice muffled by his scarf but clear. "And falling in this snow is like sinking into frozen quicksand. Unpleasant."

  "It’s cold," Elara replied, her voice arriving muffled, filtered through the black scarf covering her nose and mouth. "A cold that seems to come from inside the bones. And you… you’re always warm. It’s strange. It’s as if the weather decided not to touch you. As if you had your own personal weather."

  Vael smiled, a gesture that barely moved the muscles of his face, and looked forward into the blinding whiteness.

  "Cold is mental, Elara," he said in a didactic tone. "A construct of nerves and expectations. If you decide, truly, in the depths of your mind, that you are not cold, the body obeys. It adjusts. It stops sending those useless alarm signals."

  "That’s a lie," she retorted, not letting go of her grip, even squeezing the fabric between her fingers a bit tighter. "A very pretty lie. But I like hearing you lie. It makes me feel… safe. As if the world’s rules were malleable, and you knew how to bend them."

  Irina, walking a few meters ahead, carving a path with the tenacity of a battering ram, consulting a brass compass that barely functioned at those latitudes, stopped abruptly. It wasn’t a hesitant stop. It was a complete halt. She raised a gloved, clenched fist, holding her arm firm against the wind. The signal was universal: stop. Danger.

  Elara and Vael halted instantly, their synchronicity almost eerie. Elara let go of Vael’s sleeve, but her hand went directly to the hilt of her bastard sword, drawing it a few inches with a dull shink. Her dark eyes, now devoid of any trace of the previous night’s vulnerability, scoured the white wall of snow and fog, seeking the threat.

  "What is it?" Elara whispered, the wind snatched the word, but Irina read it on her lips.

  "There," Irina pointed with two fingers, with the precise gesture of an officer, toward a rocky ridge emerging like the back of a petrified monster about fifty meters to their left.

  At first, there was only whiteness and blue shadows. Then, the shadows moved.

  Silhouettes. Four, five, six. They slid between the rocks with a spectral, almost liquid grace. They were wolves. But these were not the grey wolves of the southern forests. They were Frost Wolves. Legendary beasts of the Far North, the size of small ponies, with fur so white and thick it blended perfectly with the snow, save for their eyes. Eyes of a sulphurous yellow, bright, seeming to burn with a cold, predatory intelligence, ancient and hungry. They were known to hunt in coordinated packs, capable of bringing down a full-grown elk in seconds and dismembering a warhorse before its rider could draw his sword.

  Irina slowly drew her Toledo steel sword, the steel rasping softly against the leather lining of its sheath. The sound, normally insignificant, resonated in the tense silence between the wind’s howls.

  "They’re in a stalking position," she announced, her voice flat and professional. "They’re not fleeing. They’re assessing. Prepare for a charge. On the flanks."

  The wolves, as if they understood, responded. A chorus of low, guttural growls that vibrated in the cold air. They lowered their heads, their powerful shoulder muscles tensing under the fur, their paws anchoring in the snow. They were white arrows about to be loosed.

  But then, something changed.

  The alpha male, a colossus even larger than the others, with visible scars on its snout and a gaze that would have frozen a bear’s blood, turned its head slightly. Not toward Irina, the most obvious threat with her drawn sword. It looked further, to where Vael and Elara stood, slightly behind and to the side.

  Its yellow eyes met Vael’s.

  Vael did nothing. He didn’t draw his spear. He didn’t adopt a fighting stance. He didn’t even frown. He simply blinked, with that expression of absolute boredom, of cosmic indifference, as if observing a particularly uninteresting stone.

  The alpha wolf froze. All the momentum of its charge vanished. A low whine, almost a puppy’s frightened yelp, escaped its jaws. It took a step back in the snow, a clumsy, unnatural movement for a predator of its caliber. Then another.

  The rest of the pack, attuned to every signal from their leader, noticed the change instantly. The coordinated aggression, the ferocity ready to erupt, evaporated. The tension broke. Without another sound, without a growl of protest, the wolves turned. They slipped between the rocks, their white bodies merging with the snow and fog, and disappeared within seconds. It wasn’t a tactical retreat. It was a flight. Pure and simple.

  "They… they left," murmured Irina, slowly lowering her sword. Confusion was a tangible knot in her voice. "Without attacking. Without even growling as they withdrew. I’ve… I’ve never seen Frost Wolves do that. They don’t flee. Ever."

  "Must have smelled we haven’t bathed in three days," Vael joked, taking a step forward and resuming the march as if they’d just dodged a puddle, not a pack of mythical predators. "Or maybe they didn’t like the menu. Let’s go. This stop has made me hungry."

  Elara, without fully sheathing her sword, pressed herself against Vael’s side again, her arm brushing his. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. She knew, with a certainty that burned in her gut, it hadn’t been the smell, nor the wolves’ hunger. It had been him. Something in his gaze, in his mere unaltered presence, had terrified the beasts to the core of their instinct. She felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold, a mix of profane pleasure and reverential fear that attracted rather than repelled her.

  The Flame in the Snow

  They walked for two more hours, sinking into an increasingly desperate struggle against the wind and snow accumulation. The storm, which had been a concert of howls, began to intensify, turning into a solid white wall that robbed them of visibility beyond a few steps.

  "We can’t go on!" Irina shouted, her voice barely audible over the roar. "We can’t cross the Giant’s Pass in this weather! We need shelter, or we’ll become ice statues!"

  Vael, who seemed to be out for a stroll in a slightly windy garden, raised his hand and pointed a finger, not toward the impossible path, but slightly to the right.

  "There."

  At first, Irina saw nothing. Only white. Then, like a miracle through the snow curtain, a flicker. And another. They weren’t glints of ice. They were orange. Warm. Flickering.

  Fire.

  They approached with the caution of wounded animals, shuffling through the blizzard. The lights became more defined: not one or two, but several, arranged in a pattern. A camp. Organized. Conical tents of thick, tanned and waxed hide, set in a tight circle against the wind. Banners planted in the snow, heavy cloth flags flapping furiously, showing an emblem they couldn’t make out. Figures swathed in furs and cloaks patrolled the perimeter.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "They’re not bandits," Irina analyzed, scrutinizing the orderly layout, the disciplined watch. "They have training. Strategy. Mercenaries. A large group."

  A sentry intercepted them before they could reach the first pickets. He emerged from behind a snowdrift, a figure bundled in white furs, a short bow in hand and a quiver on his back.

  "Halt! You there!" he shouted, his voice hoarse from the cold. "Identify yourselves! What are you doing wandering in the belly of the storm?"

  Before they could answer, the hide door of the largest tent—an imposing structure at the center of the circle—was pushed aside. A man emerged.

  He was more than a man; he was a mountain in human shape. A pillar of muscle and riveted steel plates, wrapped in a cloak made from the complete hide of a polar bear, the animal’s head forming a grotesque hood over his shoulders. He carried a jet-black halberd on his back, its blade broad and its haft as thick as a normal man’s arm. He removed his open-faced helmet, revealing a mane of hair and beard, gray, thick, and wild, but with eyes of a surprisingly youthful clear blue that sparkled with curiosity and a certain weary benevolence.

  He was Captain Gallen, of the Silver Fangs.

  Gallen looked at the trio before him: two young women—one with the bearing of a veteran soldier, the other with a dark, dangerous intensity—and a lanky youth who looked more lost than a fawn in a slaughterhouse. All dressed in black, with no baggage beyond their weapons and the frozen desperation in their bones.

  His face, carved by scars and wind-wrinkles, softened into a broad, paternal smile that lit up his eyes.

  "Crossing the Giant’s Maw? On foot? And alone?" Gallen’s voice was a friendly thunderclap, a deep rumble that vibrated in his chest like an empty barrel rolling. "By the frozen gods, you’ve got more guts than sense! Or you’re stark raving mad. Probably both, eh?"

  He made a sweeping gesture with his arm, a sleeve of his bear cloak sweeping the air.

  "Come, come! Stop being icicles! To the fire before your fingers drop off and we have to dig for them with a shovel! We’re the Silver Fangs. We’re no saints, but we get paid to kill, not to share warmth. Come on!"

  The Wolves’ Supper

  The interior of the camp circle was an oasis of heat and relative calm. The tents cut the ferocious wind, and in the center, several campfires crackled, fed with animal fat and resinous wood that smelled of pine and safety. About thirty men and women, hardened by a thousand northern campaigns, greeted them with frank curiosity but no hostility. They were a mosaic of faces marked by ice and violence, but in their eyes was not the malevolence of the bridge deserters; there was the weary pragmatism of professionals.

  They yielded them a space by the main fire, the warmest spot, and handed them enameled iron bowls filled with a thick, steaming stew made from dried meat, roots, and reindeer fat. The trio ate in silence, but their silence was eloquent. They didn’t devour like the starving; they ate with quick, military efficiency, wasting no movement, never diverting attention from their surroundings, even relaxed. Each spoon went to the mouth, each bite was chewed, eyes discreetly scanning faces, weapons, exits.

  Syla, the Silver Fangs’ chief scout, was a woman lean and sinewy as a whip, with short hair white with scars and grey eyes as sharp as the two curved scimitars she wore crossed on her back. She couldn’t take her eyes off Elara. There was something about the young woman in black that didn’t fit: the quality of the steel of her bastard sword, the way she wore it—not as an ornament, but as an extension of her arm—and above all, her eyes.

  Finally, Syla approached and sat on a log facing them, ignoring the bowl of stew a companion offered her.

  "Pretty sword," she said, her voice rough as sand. "Nordic, right? Steel from the high forges of Fjellgard. Good temper. Not a rich girl’s toy." Her grey eyes scrutinized Elara. "Do you know how to use it, girl? Or is it just to scare off two-legged wolves?"

  Elara slowly looked up from her bowl. There was no startle, no forced smile. Her dark eyes, reflecting the orange flames, met Syla’s. They were cold, flat, like frozen lakes under a starless sky.

  "Enough," she replied, her voice clear, without edges, like the edge of her own sword. "Enough to stay alive this long. And to stay that way tomorrow."

  Syla didn’t flinch, but she noticed something else. She noticed how Elara sat: not facing the fire, but sideways, her body slightly turned toward Vael, who was on her left. It wasn’t a casual posture. It was a guard’s posture. She protected her blind back and, at the same time, kept Vael in her peripheral vision. Attentive. Syla observed how, when Vael reached for the frozen water skin between them, Elara handed it to him before his fingers touched it, a fluid and automatic movement, without their eyes meeting.

  "You’re very attentive to your… friend," Syla commented, letting the word drop with deliberate suspicion. "Too attentive for mere travel companions. Is he your brother? Your husband?"

  "He’s my guide," Elara replied, sharp, offering no further explanation. Her tone made it clear the interrogation was over.

  Elsewhere around the fire circle, Luka, the youngest recruit of the Silver Fangs—a boy no more than seventeen with a face still soft but eyes full of a novice’s fervor—couldn’t take his eyes off Irina. He watched her with an almost palpable adoration as she, with methodical and reverent movements, cleaned her Toledo steel sword with an oiled cloth, passing it over every inch of the silver blade.

  "That posture…" Luka said, approaching timidly. "You’re military, right? Imperial. It shows. In how you hold the weapon, the care… I… I want to be like Captain Gallen someday. A leader. Someone who protects his people."

  Irina stopped cleaning her sword for a moment. She looked up at the boy. Her blue eyes, normally severe, softened for an instant, filling with a deep, ancient sadness. He reminded her of the green recruits who had entered Oskara with her, of the hopeful faces she later saw shattered on the ground.

  "Don’t wish to be like anyone, boy," she said, her voice softer than usual. "Heroes usually die first, and leaders carry the weight of all the deaths. Just… try to survive. One more day. And then another. That’s the only merit that matters here."

  Vael, in the midst of this whirlwind of attention and stares, continued eating his stew calmly, watching the flames dance as if they were telling a fascinating story. Gallen, after giving orders for the night watch, dropped heavily onto a log beside him, giving him a slap on the back that made Vael let out a little "oof" and nearly drop his bowl.

  "Easy, lad! Relax!" Gallen roared, smiling. "Here, behind our hides and steel, you’re safe. My Fangs are the best mercenaries north of the Broken River. We’ve faced worse storms and uglier beasts than this night. Sleep easy. No one will bother you."

  Vael nodded, catching his breath, an expression of genuine (or convincingly false) gratitude on his face.

  "You look strong," he said, looking at the men and women sharpening weapons, repairing gear, or joking in low voices. "With people like that keeping watch, we’ll sleep like logs. Thank you, Captain."

  The Ice Trial

  The calm, that precious and fleeting commodity, was broken not by a shout, but by a crash.

  It wasn’t the thunder of a distant avalanche. It was a deep, visceral crack, followed by a roar of breaking stone and ice. A gigantic rock, the size of a cabin, broke free from the cliff overlooking the camp to the east. It tumbled down, smashing everything in its path, and came to a stop with a dull impact that shook the ground, completely blocking the natural exit from the ravine where they were camped.

  And behind it, descending the channel the rock had carved in the snow and ice, came the beast.

  A Frost Bear. But not just any. It was a patriarch. An elder of the species, a colossus four meters tall when standing on its hind legs. Its fur wasn’t white, but a silvery blue-grey, so thick and stiff it looked like armor of ice scales. The tusks, curved like scimitars, gleamed with a dirty ivory color. It was hungry—its ribs were visible under the fur—and, worse, it was furious. The noise of the landslide, perhaps, had invaded its territory, its winter torpor.

  "TO ARMS!" Gallen’s roar cut through the incipient panic. "Formation! Shield line to the east! Archers to the heights! Protect the civilians and the wounded!"

  The Silver Fangs moved with impressive speed, born of years of mercenary discipline. Men with large shields—wooden targes reinforced with iron—formed a barrier between the bear and the camp’s center. Archers scrambled onto the surrounding rocks, stringing their bows.

  But the bear patriarch was faster than its size suggested. With a snort that fogged the air like a cloud, it charged. Not against the full line, but against a weak point. A swipe of its forepaw, a shovel of bone and muscle covered in dagger-like claws, slammed into two shields at once. The sound was of splintering wood and breaking bones. Three men were sent flying through the air, tumbling grotesquely before landing in the snow, motionless.

  Panic, that virus that respects no discipline, erupted. Shouts, contradictory orders, the sound of bows firing and arrows bouncing uselessly off the animal’s armor of hair and ice.

  Amid the chaos, Luka, the young recruit, stood frozen. A stray arrow grazed his cheek, drawing a thin cut. Terror immobilized his legs. He stumbled and fell on his back in the snow, right in the path of the beast.

  The bear, smelling easy prey, rose on its hind legs, a tower of silver fury and hunger, casting a monstrous shadow over the boy. It opened its maw, ready to descend and crush skull, torso, and dreams in a single bite.

  "LUKA!" Gallen roared, running toward them with his halberd held high, but the distance was too great. His blue eyes widened with impotent horror.

  Irina, who was still sitting by the main fire, had just taken a sip from her bowl of stew. She observed the scene: the bear rising, the boy frozen, the captain shouting. She set the bowl down on the trodden snow with exaggerated care, as if it were fine china.

  Then, she looked at Vael.

  Vael was still sitting, chewing the last piece of meat from his stew with obscene calm. His eyes met Irina’s. There was no order, no plea. Just a nearly imperceptible nod with his chin. A slight movement that said: Go ahead. If you want.

  Irina stood up.

  It wasn’t an explosive movement. She didn’t shout. She didn’t draw yet. She simply stood. And began to walk.

  She walked through the chaos as if it didn’t exist. She passed between mercenaries running in terror, sidestepped a rolling shield, ignored the screams. Her black cloak billowed in her wake. She was a figure of absolute tranquility advancing through the eye of a hurricane of violence.

  She arrived before the bear patriarch just as its claws, each the size of Luka’s head, began their final descent.

  "Permission," said Irina, in a conversational tone, as if asking someone to let her pass in a narrow hallway.

  She drew.

  The sound of the Toledo steel leaving its sheath was not a whisper, nor a shriek. It was a clean cut in the air, a sound that for an instant silenced everything else.

  Irina did not block the bear’s blow. No shield could have stopped that force. Instead, she slid. A foot movement so fast and precise it seemed the snow yielded to her. She placed herself just below the arc of the descending claws, inside the animal’s guard, in the blind spot between its forelegs.

  Her sword, the silver blade she had just cleaned with such care, rose. It wasn’t a frantic thrust. It was an arc. A fluid, upward motion, perfectly calculated, using all the momentum of her body as she pivoted. The blade flashed, capturing and reflecting the firelight, the snow’s white, the night’s blue, in a blinding gleam.

  The tip entered through the bear’s exposed throat, where the fur was thinnest. It pierced muscle, tendon, the thick layer of fat, found the spinal column at the base of the skull, and exited out the other side, through the nape, with a wet, final crunch.

  Irina followed through on her strike, pivoting on her planted foot, completing the pirouette. As she finished the spin, she flicked the blade with a sharp, expert motion, sending an arc of dark, warm blood that splattered the virgin snow in a pattern of bright red.

  The giant bear stiffened, suspended in the air for an eternal second. The small, black eyes, full of fury, went out. Then, the mountain of muscle and fur collapsed. It fell on its side with an impact that shook the ground, centimeters from Luka’s boots, as he lay with eyes wide, not yet comprehending he was alive.

  The silence that fell over the camp was more absolute than that of the storm. Only the crackling of the campfires, now ridiculously mundane, and the gasping of the wounded, broke the spell. Thirty mercenaries, veterans of a hundred skirmishes, stared at the woman in black who had just killed a Frost Bear patriarch with a single strike, as if dispatching a rabbit for supper.

  Irina sheathed her sword. Click.

  She turned, completely ignoring the steaming carcass, the blood cooling rapidly in the air, the stares of pure astonishment fixed on her. She walked back to the fire, her steps firm in the bloodstained snow.

  She sat on her log, exactly in the same spot. Picked up her bowl of stew.

  "It got cold," she said, with a hint of genuine annoyance.

  "I saved you some bread," said Vael, passing her a piece of the hard bread he hadn’t touched.

  Gallen, recovering the use of his tongue, approached them with slow, almost reverent steps. He looked at the colossal bear carcass, then at Irina, who was eating her bread with the same meticulousness with which she cleaned her sword, and finally at Vael, who remained seated, watching the flames as if the recent slaughter had been a minor interlude in a boring play.

  The Captain let out a nervous laugh, an uncomfortable sound that broke the silence. He scratched his gray beard with a trembling hand.

  "Wow, lad…" he said, and his tone was a mix of disbelief, respect, and comic confusion. "You have some damned luck. Or a pact with some mischievous god." He jerked his chin first at Irina, then at Elara, who had sat back down beside Vael, her sword now resting against her thigh, her eyes watchful. "Those women… they protect you with their lives. With a skill I haven’t seen in… anyone. You must be a saint to earn loyalty like that. If I were you, lad, I’d never let them go. It’d be like letting a pair of legendary swords escape that decided, on a whim, to follow you."

  Vael looked up at Gallen. His green eyes, which seemed to absorb the firelight, gleamed with a spark of genuine amusement, of profound irony. He looked at Elara, who, upon hearing the captain’s words, lowered her head slightly to hide a dark smile, a curve of her lips that was of satisfaction and shared secret. Then he looked at Irina, who just sighed, a sigh of resignation at the inevitability of being misunderstood.

  "He’s right, Captain," said Vael, and his smile was broad, innocent, that of the lucky village fool. "I am a very, very fortunate man. Without them… I’d be completely lost. They’re my compass and my sword. I don’t know what I’d do without them."

  Elara inclined her head even further, her hidden smile now a smirk of twisted pleasure. Irina brought a piece of bread to her mouth and chewed with determination, staring into the fire as if she wanted to set it alight with her gaze.

  And in the snow, at the feet of the stunned camp, the patriarch bear’s blood was beginning to freeze, forming a dark, glossy pool, red as a cursed ruby on the white, unperturbed mantle of winter. A brutal reminder, in the silence that once more filled with the wind’s whisper, that in this white, dead world, the black shadows walking among them were, by far, the most dangerous things of all.