Stealer of Flesh

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All around the unseasonal blizzard raged. Chill flakes of snow landed on Kormak’s face. His feet felt numb, his clothing sodden. Hunger made his stomach growl. Cold leeched the strength from his limbs. He drew his cloak tight about his tall spare form but the wind still cut. He knew that he could not go much further and that he was doomed if he did not find shelter soon.

He pushed a strand of greying black hair from his eyes and squinted into the darkness. Night and snow made it difficult to see more than a few strides ahead.

He was not even sure he was on the road any more, the old route the Oathsworn Templars had taken to the Sacred Lands. The snow had piled up so he could not see the ancient flagstones the First Empire had placed here millennia ago. He was lost in this white wilderness.

This was not the way he had expected to die. When he had sworn his oaths as a Guardian he had thought he would fall in battle with some remnant of the Elder Races who had ruled the world before the coming of Men. There had been times when he had faced death by dark magic or beneath the curved obsidian scimitar of an orc. Once he had seen his end written in the eyes of a lovely vampire. He had not expected to pass in a way at once so terrible and so prosaic, to fall frozen where his brethren would have difficulty finding his body and recovering his dwarf-forged blade.

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