The air above the Ashen Peaks was thin enough to make a young man gasp, and cold enough to freeze the sweat on his skin before it could drip. General Torven did not gasp, but he felt the cold deep in his joints, an ache that had settled in during the Frostmarch campaign and refused to leave.
He was seventy-eight years old. The Dominion's military regulations stated that a general officer must retire at sixty-five, unless granted a specific waiver by the Grand Ordinator. Maren Thornwick-Ashvane had granted him four waivers. He was the last living commander who had fought in the foundation wars, the last man who remembered what the army looked like before the Mark VIII engines arrived to replace muscle with synthetic kinetic force.
"Again," Torven rasped, adjusting his grip on the blunted training broadsword.
