The northern borders smelled of blood and lamb fat.
The camp sprawled across the grassland like a scar — hide tents, bone fences, fire pits dug into the earth. No order. No formation. No military precision. Just the raw, organic, 'we-are-here-because-we-are-hungry' sprawl of a people who had been pushed from their lands by drought and famine and the endless, 'nothing-grows-here-anymore' death of their homeland.
They were not from Eldoria. They were not part of the civil war. They were from beyond — the barbarian tribes of the northern wastes, where the grass ended and the ice began. Brute men. Muscular men. Men whose bodies had been built by generations of killing beasts with their hands and surviving winters that would freeze a civilized man's blood solid.
