It was an indisputable triumph, a victory that would be sung in taverns and courts. Three thousand Imperial soldiers had crushed an unruly horde of six thousand barbarians. None could deny the significance of the day
For a fleeting moment, Emperor Mavius allowed himself to gaze back through the corridors of history, perhaps the recent victory against an enemy that had not walked south for three hundred years, caused him to draw correlation with the past.
In his mind's eye, he thought of the days when the Empire was but a the kingdom of the Hand, its reach confined to the southern slopes of the God's Hand Mountains. Those peaks, towering and austere, had once marked the line between civilization and untamed savagery.
