The Snowline Companies
Northern rescue troops trained to keep roads open before fighting over them.
Every company carries sledges, saws and grain before spare weapons. Captains may abandon a pursuit to recover civilians without permission. Torren wants to seize the measuring stations; his best officers warn that an occupied station requires the same skilled workers whose loyalties he doubts.
Its role in the current crisis connects ordinary work to the larger dispute over who benefits, who pays and who is allowed to describe what happened.
Torren trains soldiers to cut sled runners before he lets them carry swords.
Aranestel’s combined escort and rescue fleet, divided over its own history.
Brynvale’s road crews and garrisons, inseparable because a frozen road defeats both.
Hedra records the sound of furnace valves by making notches in a wooden flute.
Meret married into the crown while working as a nursery grafting apprentice.
Sena marks ropes with colored threads identifying the crews who made them.