Athel Loren's strength has one great ebb. When winter closes in, the forest's spirits sink into dreamless sleep, the trees stand still and brittle, and Orion, the wood's undying king, is dead until spring. In those months the eldest realm in the Old World is at its most mortal, and the Eternal Guard exist for exactly that season. Drawn from the highborn houses of the glades, they take up the twin-bladed spear-stave and swear the winter oath: that while the king lies dead and the wood cannot defend itself, they will be its roots and its branches both.
They fight in deep, bristling hedges, each warrior's stave weaving with the next until the line is less a formation than a single thorned organism. It is bitter, graceless, holding work — nothing like the swift unseen war the asrai prefer — and that is precisely its honour. Every Eternal Guard knows the arithmetic of the vigil: they garrison the grave of a god, and if they can only hold until the thaw, the god himself will rise to relieve them.
Order of battle
