March Across the Salt Wastes

South of the Whispering River, the verdant pine forests and rolling snow-clad hills of the North gave way abruptly to a desolate expanse of cracked gray alkali flats and burning salt wastes known as the Southern March. For three days, the grand army of the Northern Sovereign Commonwealth marched across this arid wilderness under a harsh, copper sun. Moving sixty thousand soldiers through a waterless desert was a feat that…