“How does it look?”

Carefully, I gripped my companion by the shoulder and pulled him away from the slippery stone wall. He left behind stains of blood on the cobalt rock; strands, thick and black, sticking to where he once rested. In the flickering firelight, what little I could see was pure horror. Three deep gashes, each about three inches apart, were scored across his back from left waist to right shoulder. A mess of torn flesh, muscle and tendons, he had been ripped to the bone, right through his thick furs and leathers. In the freezing temperatures, the blood seemed to flow less willingly, but this made the injury no less grim. Slowly, I let him roll back to his resting place against the wall of the cave. The heat from the fire warmed the rock that encased us, forming droplets of water that either dripped from the jagged ceiling or slid their way down the curved wall. I wiped my hands on the moisture, trying to remove some of the blood that coated them.

“I’ve seen worse”.

“On a gutted pig?” He chuckled breathlessly, his voice rattling.

“You just need rest. The wound will heal enough by morning.”

He gave another, hollow laugh and smiled, a crooked, disbelieving smile.

“You make it pay, won’t you?”

“We will.” I insisted, putting my hand on his shoulder.

I looked the dying man in the eye, hoping that some of my confidence would inspire him to keep on fighting. He just gazed back, his eyelids drooping. I could tell he was tired. So very, very tired. He didn’t seem to have the energy to fight, or to even care that he was facing his last moments. Harsh winds wailed past the entrance to the cave. A blizzard was tearing through the night beyond our little shelter. I could feel the bitterness of the frozen world outside. The dwindling fire a meagre offering compared to the unrelenting nightmare of snow; little protection against the sharp, icy winds that crept their way into our abode.

By the time dawn broke, I was huddled in the deepest corner of the cave, wrapped tightly in the fur cloak I had thought would keep me warm in these unforgiving mountains. My companion lay dead, taken either by his wounds or the ice that encrusted his lips and eyelashes. The fire had died about the same time he did. So long ago that it no longer even smouldered. The blizzard had cleared, but snow still fell. It almost never stopped falling in the mountains. In a stupor of hunger and sleep deprivation, I emerged from the cave. The sun had only just risen above the towering mountain peaks, but shone so brightly between the gaps of grey cloud that swarmed overhead I was nearly blinded. Its rays streamed off every flake of glossy white snow, snow that coated everything in sight; from giant boulders jutting from the canyon walls, to the trees that lined the deep valley sprawling away over both of my shoulders.

We’d found our hideaway halfway up the side of the valley the night before. As night fell, a lucky break in the barrage of snow meant the dark rocky archway caught my eye, a striking contrast against the white world that surrounded it. In a rush of cries, blood and panic, we’d scrambled inside. There was no sign of that now. No sign of the frantic night before. The snow made everything so elegant; so calm; so clean. I had no idea where I was going now. I had no idea what I was going to do. The man that lay dead inside the cave was the smart one; my problem solver. The man that lay dead somewhere in the snow before me was my navigator; the one who could tell me where to go. I was just the muscle. The farmhand with a large sword and the will to swing it.

Wait for the next episode 😉

And I was alone.

My father had always warned me about coming into the mountains. There were two truths in life, he used to say: That the mountains were no place for farm folk, and that Uncle Ryle was a no good swindler. I’d learnt as a boy that my Uncle was not a swindler, he was just better at business. But many years later, I was finally learning my father wasn’t wrong about everything. But I had a purpose for being here; we all had a purpose. And we knew there were risks.

There was nothing left for me now. Nothing left but to finish what we started. I dug my boots into the snow beneath and trudged on. Where I was travelling — east, north, west, I had no idea — but I knew what I was looking for. I knew what I was hunting. Wraiths left behind a sort of luminous mist wherever they moved, like the shimmering trail of a slug. This was how we knew what had slaughtered the people of the village. This is how I knew what had killed my father. Often the trails meant it was easy to avoid the wraiths, but I wasn’t looking to avoid this one.

We’d found it already, or I should say, it had found us. Its bright frosty-blue eyes had emerged from in the encircling blizzard last night, appearing as if from nowhere out of the gloom. I immediately took a swing and missed, but it didn’t. It took out my navigator with a slash off its left claw, falling away into the blizzard, lost in the night forever. In the same movement, the beast carved up my companion with the right claw. There was no chance to defend ourselves, no chance to fight after that. We just had to run. It had now taken everyone from me. The last survivors. My family, my home. I couldn’t even go back to the farm, not really. Growing food on the frozen plains that lay in the shadow of these hellish mountains was damn-near impossible. Getting the conditions right in the frigid temperatures, where ice never left the ground, took a lifetime of experience and my father had not yet managed to teach me all I needed to know. Twenty-two years apparently was still not enough to be a farmer in a world ruled by frost. All I had now was my goal, our goal. To kill the beast that stole my future.

We weren’t even sure why it was in the village. Not in my lifetime, nor my father’s, nor his father’s before him, had a wraith left the mountains. He used to tell me all about them, as the hearth crackled away. The stories had grown even longer of late, with the new mining going on in the mountains. They brought to the village some new stone fuel, and with it, the fire burned longer than ever — which meant the stories just kept on going. Stories of monstrous creatures in the mountains..........

Bloodthirsty demons of an old world. My father would regale me with tales of wraiths cutting down weary travellers and seasoned knights alike. He himself had never seen one, nor had anyone I knew, but we all knew what they were. The stories were as old as time. The miner’s work got me asking even more questions about my father’s rules, though. Why were they allowed into the mountains if they were so dangerous? Apparently, a combination of military convoys and fire-wielding sorceresses kept them safe from both the elements and the wraiths. I was a bit disgruntled with the notion that I was so incapable when they were not. Those feelings had long since passed.

I wandered through the frost-touched valley for what seemed like an eternity. The land was beautiful, but baron. There was no food, no warmth, and no life, save the snow-laden pine trees that reached on for miles. I was feeling weaker and weaker by the minute. I had lost our supplies in the rush the previous night. The pack of food was now buried under inches of snow. I knew I’d never find it. I didn’t bother to search. Between dazzling brightness and dreary gloom, depending on how covered by clouds the sun was, I started to feel my resolve wain. I wanted to quit, to give up and leave this glorious, deadly place behind. But I couldn’t. I thought of the mangled bodies of my family. The guilt was overwhelming. Had I been there, not out in the city chasing women, I might have been able to fend off the beast.

The village wasn’t home to many able young men, only three, and none had been around when it came. Then I thought of my companion in the cave, the frost surely still biting at his quickly freezing corpse. The guilt was worse still. As they wept over their families, my heart filled with rage. I felt the anger wash over me, masking the pain — I knew that now, as the cold bit at my own heart and began to thaw the fiery anger that burned inside. I had to almost drag our navigator into the mountains, and now he lay dead within them. My companion was only slightly more willing. The wraith took both his wife and daughter, but even he wouldn’t have set foot on these treacherous slopes if I hadn’t driven him to it. I goaded him, playing off his torment. I had to kill the beast, it was the only way to unburden my guilty conscience.

Was the wraith that attacked us last night the same that cut down the villagers? It was impossible to say. They all looked identical, apparently. We didn’t know exactly how many were living in the mountains, but we did know was they were mindless killers and even if I slew the wrong one, I’d redeem myself by culling a true vision of evil. Wraiths were ancient creatures, powered only by a lust for death. I was always told that they didn’t consume the flesh of their prey, they took the very life from them and fed off that instead. I didn’t believe it, and I was still not sure. Except for the massive slashes across his torso where the wraith had cleaved him as he worked in the fields, my Father looked as he ever did when I found him. I expected the draining of life to look more dramatic, but maybe it wasn’t something you could see.