Robert Drake knew that the loose slope of stones and gravel would give way under his weight a fraction of a second before he set foot on it, but by then it was too late for him to stop. His brain had already sent the instructions to his leg muscles and he could only watch, a helpless observer, as they obeyed and completed the step. He felt the ground beginning to move under him in a kind of slow motion as his mind raced, searching for away to regain his balance, and then he was falling, almost breaking his leg again as he slipped twenty feet down the scree slope to lie in a heap at the bottom.

     The seven Ilandian soldiers who were travelling with him ran, slipping and sliding, down to see if he was hurt. They were once among the defenders of Silverlode, a fortress city like Fort Battleaxe which had also recently fallen to the Shadowhordes. By the time they reached him, though, he was already climbing back to his feet, cursing his clumsiness and stupidity at not spotting the unstable patch earlier.

     “Are you all right, Sir?” asked Grantis Fletcher, the first man to reach him. The regimental badge on the left breast of his rusty and dented breastplate bore the emblem of the First Ilandian Pikers and the service bars on his shoulder recorded twenty two years of military service. He gave the priest a quick look over, answering his own question, then turned to scan the surrounding mountainslopes with his serious brown eyes, looking for any enemy scouts who might have been alerted to their presence by the disturbance.

     “Fine, I think,” replied Drake, examining a deep graze on his left hand and wondering whether it was serious enough to merit a healing prayer. After a moment’s thought he decided not and broke the ice on a nearby stream to wash the grit out of the wound before wrapping a not too dirty rag around it. Praying for healing tired him rapidly. Much more rapidly than the clerics of Caroli for whom healing was a vocation. A way of life rather than just a way to maintain peak fighting fitness. Samnos had healed several of their minor injuries already, and the young priest was already feeling tired, as if he'd spent hours straining his eyes to read a book in poor light. There was no telling when one of them might suffer a much more serious accident requiring immediate healing, and the young priest was determined to keep as clear a head as possible.

     He braced himself to endure the pain for the time being, therefore, and pray for healing when they stopped for the night, so that he would have the night to recover from the exertion, assuming that the war God still considered him worthy to receive His divine favour. He wasn’t too optimistic of that, however. Not considering the misfortunes that had befallen him since leaving the city, all of which, he had convinced himself, were the result of his own ineptitude and incompetence.

     Drake’s flight from the doomed fortress city had taken him just twenty miles towards Tharia before his flying carpet had stopped responding to his commands and started veering off to the north, manifesting the malfunction which Resalintas had warned him of. Knowing very little of wizard magic, he hadn’t known that a faulty carpet can sometimes be brought to a safe landing by carefully cutting some of its strands and so he’d just sat there, watching the land speed past a thousand feet below, wondering what to do.

     After a couple of hours, though, the problem had been solved for him as the Copper Mountains loomed large before him, and he had stared in near panic as the massive peak of Carro Taravic loomed directly in his path. By screaming words of command at the carpet and leaning way over to his left, he had just barely managed to miss the mountain, but a few minutes later a massive ridge of rock and ice had risen up ahead of him, colossal and totally unavoidable. There was a field of snow between it and him, though. Over twenty feet below him and probably only a couple of feet thick over hard rock or ice, but it was still a better bet than hitting that sheer ridge full on. He'd taken a moment to pray to Samnos, therefore, and then jumped, curling into a ball to bounce and roll.

     He'd suffered a broken leg, a smashed pelvis and three broken ribs before coming to rest. An ordinary man, stranded halfway up a mountain with those injuries, would surely have perished, but Drake had beseeched the God of War for enough holy power to heal himself before starting to make his way down. His leg still felt a little weak and shaky, though, and he suspected that it hadn’t healed as well as it might have done had he been healed by a cleric of Caroli. It would probably be a couple of weeks before it was completely back to normal.

     After a great deal of effort and several minor injuries, he’d eventually reached the bottom of the high valley and headed south along it, hoping to reach the southern foothills of the mountains in two or three days and praying that the valley didn’t come to a dead end, requiring an arduous climb over another ridge to escape. The next day, though, he’d met up with the seven Beltharan soldiers, who’d fled into the mountains to escape the Shadowhordes. Learning from them that the way ahead was swarming with the enemy and that to go further meant certain death, Drake had reluctantly turned and headed back the way he’d come, helping them to find another way out of the valley. After a couple of days they’d found a low saddlepoint in the valley wall to their left and decided to try to climb out across it, and it was as they were descending on the other side that Drake had taken his fall.

     Drake dusted himself off and continued on down to the valley floor. This valley seemed to run mainly from west to east and gently sloped uphill as they followed it westwards, taking them up into the layer of freezing air that covered the whole planet at an altitude of about seven thousand feet above sea level. It ran along the length of the mountain range, and it looked as though they’d have to climb another ridge, taking them even further up into Tharia’s thin, cold atmosphere, if they didn’t want to follow it all the way to its western extremities, hundreds of miles west of there. What was more, the wind was picking up, sending motes of snow flying around them, and a dark cloud was leaning ominously across the jagged peaks of the mountains ahead. It looked as though a storm was gathering.

     “Fletcher!” called the young priest above the roar of the wind, pulling a borrowed blanket around his shoulders for warmth. “How well do you know this area?”

     “Not too well,” called back the soldier whose uniform, like the others, had extra layers of insulation against the cold. Silverlode was, or rather had been, a mountain city. “We came up here on regular patrols, hunting mountain beasts and supporting the high towns and villages, but I never came this way.”

     “But you know mountains,” said Drake. “You know the kind of terrain we’re likely to encounter up ahead.”

     “It’s more or less like this everywhere, Sir,” replied Fletcher apologetically.

     Drake indicated the storm clouds up ahead. “Any chance of finding any cover?”

     “Not natural cover, no,” replied the soldier. “If we’re lucky, we may come across a deserted trog village. On the other hand, though, a deserted tunnel complex is almost certain to be occupied by someone. Goblins, buglins, shologs, you choose.”

     Drake nodded. He’d heard the same thing, most recently from a group of young adventurers he’d been involved with a few months before who’d recounted their experiences in a deserted trog village a few hundred miles east of here. They’d told him that, when the door leading up to the surface was closed, you could be standing within a few feet of it and not know it was there. He sighed heavily and looked up at the vast glacial valley before them. Miles wide with steep, mountainous sides sloping down to an almost flat, snow-covered bottom in which a thin, silvery stream ran past small clumps of vegetation. The storm would be upon them in just a few minutes, and if they hadn’t found some shelter by then it would be the end of them.

     Not knowing what else to do, they simply carried on walking, staying close to the southern wall of the valley in case they came across the entrance to a cave, a one in a million hope. The wind got stronger, tugging at Drake’s makeshift shawl and threatening to blow him off his feet. The temperature, already around freezing, dropped sharply, numbing his face and turning his hands into useless, frozen hooks. He felt his strength and his will to go on draining away like water through a sieve and cursed the fate that had decreed that he would be killed by the elements like any common peasant, leaving the battle for Ilandia to be fought without him.

     Then Cooper called out, pointing his gloved hand ahead of them, and Drake’s heart leapt with sudden hope, thinking he’d seen a village or a travelling party of trogs or something. The fates were still against them, though, and when the priest looked he saw a group of around twenty men a mile further on. Men wearing the bone armour and skull helmets of Shadowsoldiers.

     So this is how it ends, he thought grimly. And yet, far better to die in glorious battle than freeze to death like a common refugee. Better by far. He gave an order, therefore, and they angled towards the Shadowsoldiers, aiming to meet them on a patch of level ground beside the stream.

     The Shadowsoldiers, wearing warm mountain gear beneath their armour, didn’t wait to meet the Ilandians but shot a hail of arrows while they were still a couple of hundred yards away. The first volley was blown wide by the howling wind, now full of snow, but when they shot their second flight they corrected for the wind and two of Drake's men were hit; one taking the arrow just under the shoulderguard, the other in the thigh. The enemy then spread out in a line, with those at the ends moving in to surround them, and Drake drew his broadsword, struggling to hold it with fingers blue with the cold.

     When they saw that one of their opponents was a priest of Samnos the Shadowsoldiers hung back in doubt, but when they saw how badly he was shivering and how he was struggling to remain standing in the howling storm, when they saw how desperately he clung to the thick blanket with his free hand, they grinned to themselves and closed in confidently, expecting a quick, easy kill. In other circumstances, Drake might have performed the Fearsome Aspect discipline in an attempt to scare them away, and would probably have succeeded as a priest of Samnos in full fighting mood is a terrifying sight even without the power of his patron deity to enhance it. This was a fight he had no intention of avoiding, though. He knew that his death was certain, from one cause or another, and he intended to take a few enemies to judgement with him.

     As the Shadowsoldiers came within striking range, therefore, the young priest took them by surprise by giving a loud battle cry and jumping forward, dropping the blanket and grasping his broadsword with both hands. He lopped off one man’s head with a perfect, well practised swing and disembowelled the man next to him with the same fluid motion, the sword flawlessly finding the narrow gap between the bottom of his breastplate and the top of his waistguard. Each connection between sword and flesh sent a jolt of agony through his frozen fingers but he ignored it, using the self hypnotic techniques he’d been taught as an acolyte to control the pain.

     The other Shadowsoldiers gave a start of alarm at the swift and efficient killing of two of their fellows and paused in confusion, wondering whether it was a good idea after all to attack a priest of Samnos and his escort, and as they hesitated the Beltharans took full advantage of it and joined the attack, one soldier succeeding in sending a third enemy to premature judgement.

     The Shadowsoldiers fought back immediately, their doubts evaporating in the heat of battle. The two wounded Beltharans held back and shot arrows at the enemy while Drake and the other five formed a small defensive circle on the hard, frozen ground. The Shadowsoldiers pressed in close, preventing the young priest from using the same extravagant tactics he’d used earlier. In many ways Drake would have preferred to have been alone so that he could have simply laid about with his broadsword in wild abandon, fighting as many as eight opponents at once as he’d been trained, but as it was he had to be mindful of the Beltharans with him, to remain part of their formation, to help defend them. He concentrated only on the opponents in front of him, therefore, trusting his companions to guard his back, and with great reluctance he dropped the broadsword and drew his shortsword. A much smaller weapon, little more than a long butcher’s knife but murderously sharp and much lighter in his hand, capable of spinning and dancing like a living thing.

     The storm was fully upon them now, the dense, blasting snow reducing visibility to a few feet, and Drake knew that it was only by remaining active that he was still alive. If he stood still even for a single moment, the howling wind would suck the heat out of his body and no amount of effort or willpower would get him moving again, ever. The Shadowsoldiers, who were feeling the cold themselves despite their insulated armour, saw this and fell back, grinning in triumph, and the young priest was forced to go out and meet them. He was immediately surrounded and forced to fight on all sides with only his shortsword to defend himself, and he glanced desperately at where his broadsword lay, almost hidden beneath newly fallen snow.

     Ordinarily, having to face so many opponents, even while armed only with a shortsword, wouldn’t have worried him, and unless they’d included more than one exceptionally skilled swordsman he could confidently have expected to walk away victorious leaving a pile of mutilated corpses behind him. The storm was having its inevitable effect upon him, though, and he could feel himself growing slower and weaker. He could no longer feel his hands at all; his fingers were frozen with frostbite. His blood red robes had gone white with an inch thickness of snow and black spots were appearing before his eyes.. Even the small shortsword was growing heavy in his hands, and he didn’t realise that one of the Shadowsoldiers had run him through until he saw the streams of vapour whipped by the wind from the blood on his blade. His legs turned to jelly and he fell heavily onto the soft blanket of snow.

     Accept my soul, my Lord, he thought as he waited for the killing blow to come. He whispered a prayer to the God of War, then another, and was halfway through a third before it occurred to him that the killing blow was a long time coming. He struggled to open his eyes to see that was going on but saw only a solid wall of whiteness and realised that a snowdrift had blown against his face. Summoning all his remaining strength and willpower, therefore, he struggled to raise his head a little.

     He succeeded, although just barely, and now he could see, and what he saw astonished him. The Shadowsoldiers were all dead; some with arrows sticking out of them, others with burns on their bodies from which streamers of smoke were whipped away by the wind. Spell blasted, he thought in disbelief. Either by a wizard or a priest, but who? Who else could possibly be wandering around in the mountains in this weather?

     The question was answered almost immediately as rough hands pulled him to a sitting position and wrapped warm furs around him. The sudden elevation of his head almost made him pass out and he closed his eyes as a wave of dizziness swept over him. When he opened them again, he saw a figure walking towards him. A tall figure wearing blood red robes over chain mail armour and with a spiked helmet on his head. A priest of Samnos! he thought in jubilation. Thank you, my Lord! Thank you!

     As the figure got closer, though, he realised something was wrong. Most of the figure’s face was hidden by a coarse woolen scarf so that only the eyes were visible, but those eyes had a disturbingly bestial quality about them, with no clear definition between the irisis and the whites, the one blending irregularly into the other. What was more, the priest had heavy brow ridges, and the small areas of skin he could see were brown and hairy. Drake looked at the priest’s helmet, where there should have been a golden griffin badge if he’d been a worshipper of Samnos, but although there was a badge there, the emblem was that of a clenched fist made of iron.

     The priest hunkered down in front of him and pulled away the scarf covering his face to reveal the hairy, snouted face of a sholog. “Hello human,” he said in a bestial voice. “We meet again.”

     With a final sigh of grim acceptance, the young priest finally lost consciousness and collapsed onto the snow.