The Legend of the Deathwalker

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The moon hung like a sickle blade over Dros Delnoch and Pellin stood quietly staring down at the Nadir camp in the lunar light below. Thousands of warriors were gathered there, and tomorrow they would come screaming across the narrow strip of blood-stained ground, hauling their ladders, carrying their grappling irons. They would be baying for battle and death, and just like today the sound would terrify him, seeming to penetrate his skin like needles of ice. Pellin was more frightened than he had ever been in his young life, and he longed to run, to hide, to throw away his ill-fitting armour, and race south to his home. The Nadir kept coming, wave after wave, their raucous battle cries sending their hatred ahead of them. The shallow wound in his upper left arm was both throbbing and itching. Gilad had assured him this meant that it was healing well. But it had been a taste of pain, a bitter promise of worse pain to come. He had watched comrades writhing and screaming, their bellies opened by serrated swords. . Pellin fought to push the memories away. A cold wind began to blow from the north, bunching dark rain-clouds before it. He shivered, and remembered his warm farmhouse with its thatched roof and large stone-built fireplace. On cold nights like this one he and Kara would lie in bed, her head resting on his shoulder, her left leg warm on his thighs. They would lie together in the soft red glow of the fading fire, and listen to the wind howling mournfully outside. Pellin sighed. 'Please don't let me die here,' he prayed.

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