Frostbreath

Nothing in Frostbreath is written down. The packs keep memory the way other nations keep archives, in elders who recite and children who repeat until they can recite. Southern maps mark the region as uninhabited. That is a courtesy the Ulvkin arranged.

The Ulvkin are what the myths call werewolves, and the myths get it half right. They shift. They do not stop being themselves. The cold that kills a southern patrol in a night is the weather they raise families in.

Sixteen winters ago Britannia sent two STARs north with an escort. The packs that fought were killed. An artifact the elders had guarded for longer than anyone can count went south in a Britannian crate, and seven Ulvkin went with it in chains. The elders say the names of the two STARs at every gathering. Ajax. Atlas.

Since then the packs have been drifting south, family by family, toward the river that borders Icegaard. Icegaard's own Ulvkin are supposed to stop them. Lately the elders have stopped saying why they are moving. They only say that the ice under the northern reach has been warm for ten years.