Prologue

The air chilled Max to the bone even as he pulled his wolf-skin furs around him tightly. The storm had come out of nowhere in the middle of the night, besetting the caravan when most were asleep and if it weren't for the night watch captain, a gizzled old fox with one eye, who had roused everyone up to get all the wagons moving again, they surely would have been snowed in.

Moving or not, everyone was miserable and coated in an ever thickening layer of white powder as the wagons trundled down what could have been or could not have been the road that led from the port city of Eastormel to Arlfen where the spices of distant lands of Pak sold for a high prices to various merchant companies that then exported all across the Kingdoms. If they ever got there.

Max looked up from his exposed seat on a wagon with glazed eyes at the vast white blanket that fell from the sky and cursed to whatever diety that came to mind for this curse. This was supposed to be an easy job. Guard the caravan and get paid before moving further west, but it was just his luck that winter decided to rear its ugly head more than a month earlier than what was normal. He then silently cursed his companion who sat next to him silently, seemingly unaffected by the chill despite not wearing anything bar a pair of leather breaches and the massive two handed zweihander that was strapped across his back.

"Aren't you even the slightest bit cold?" Max managed to say through chattering teeth.

Gerund turned his snake eyes towards the human and snorted, puffs of smoke coming from the green dragon's nostrils. "This is nothing like the winters in the Taelis mountains. Frostbite in seconds, fingers snapping off in a minute and dead in two minutes." He looked up at the sky, a forked tongue quickly slithering in and out of his mouth, snatching a single snowflake out of the sky. "This is a hot summer's day in comparison."

Normally Max would have rolled his eyes at that, but he was too cold to be annoyed by Gerund's usual disdain. Instead, he blew into his hands and tucked them under his arm pits where the last of his body heat seemingly ran off to.

*Just a little further,* Max thought to himself. They had almost been to Arlfen, a day or two out, according to the fat merchant with bejeweled fingers and crooked teeth, who had hired him and Gerund.

Speaking of the merchant, Max glanced around the five wagons that made up their caravan, looking to the rear where the merchant's opulent coach normally was, but saw nothing.

"Gerund," Max said. "Where's the fat man?" Max referring to the name he had dubbed to the merchant since his actual name was far too long and complex for Max to bother to try and remember.

Gerund turned his head to look back and frowned. "He's vanished." He then stood up. "Vanished with my money," he then added with a growl and without warning, leapt off the side of the wagon.

"What are you doing?" Max yelled out, causing several of the other guards in other wagons to glance back at him.

They also noticed that their charge had vanished and the wagon train came to a creaking halt.

"I'm gonna go find the fat manling. I want my money," Gerund yelled without looking back as his form began to fade into the swirling snow.

"Vaal's breath," Max cursed and with cold stiffed limbs, he clambered off the wagon as well and began to chase after the dragon.

They weren't alone either. Three other guards, also not wanting to lose their source of payment, had disembarked and quickly raced over to follow Max and Gerund. The rest stayed with the wagons and the valuable cargo, since they were still in an area known for its highway men and worse.

Max couldn't tell where they were going. The snow had fallen thick enough that the wagon tracks were already filled in and indistinguishable from the rest of the ground. So he followed Gerund, who walked at a brisk, confident pace. Max didn't even think about questioning the dragon's sense of direction, such a think would set the dragon off and give Max a half hour lecture about weak 'manling' eyesight and how much better the cave dwelling race of dragons, or Druli, as they called themselves, were at damn near everything.

They walked for several long, cold minutes. Only Gerund didn't shiver or was hunched against the wind and Max envied him that. He felt as if his fingers were going to fall off and looking to the other guards with them, he figured they were feeling the same way.

Eventually they found the merchant's opulent carriage. However, there was no merchant. There was however, the dead horses that had pulled it and the coach driver who was slumped over his reigns with frozen blood all over his chest.

"How did this happen," one of the guards, a tall, olive skinned man with enough furs on him that he could've been mistaken for a bear if one squinted their eyes enough, asked as he paced around the side of the carriage and peered inside through the ajar door. "It's empty."

"Even with all this snow, we should've heard a struggle," Max chimed in as he gazed around into the surrounding woods as if he could pierce the whiteout and see where the merchant had gone.

"Taken quickly and by surprise," Gerund grunted and paced to the back of the carriage and looked down at the snow behind it. "I see tracks here. Snuck up from behind, dispatched the driver and then got the fat manling before he could cry out in alarm."

Another one of the guards, a shorter one with an impressive mustache that was beginning to grow icicles looked at the same patch of ground and Gerund. "No offense, master Druli, but I don't see anything."

Gerund merely chuckled and stomped towards the treeline. "He was taken this way. C'mon I reckon we can still catch up to whoever did this."

He didn't wait to see if anyone would follow.

Max was glad to at least be moving now, having to go at a light jog to keep up with Gerund in all of the snow. Blood was moving through him and he wasn't feeling the bite of the cold as much.

"How far do you think we have to go?" Max asked after stumbling over a branch hidden in the snow.

"Not far," Gerund said, not showing any sign of struggling in the snow.

He had always been like that. An immovable force that only a mountain could even think of slowing down. Even then, not for very long.

"These tracks are already getting quite fresh, so keep it down. I don't want them to spook."

At that, Max kept any further inquiries to himself. Plus, he didn't cherish the idea of chasing whoever it was that had taken the merchant further into the woods if they picked up their pace.

The other guards were beginning to struggle as well, but after overhearing Gerund, were keeping any words to themselves as well.

The snow had begun to come down more like a light misting rather than the blinding fall it had been before, increasing visibility and also not covering tracks as much, which Max started to notice.

There were quite a few. A mess of booted tracks that led in a wide arc deeper into the woods. There was also a set of more peculiar tracks as well.

"I thought that they had been pulling a sled," Gerund mused as he noticed Max inspecting the long gouge in the snow.

"It's too fluid," Max remarked, pointing out how the track lazily winded back and forth across the snow, while the footprints mostly stayed straight and true.

"Naga," Gerund said with a particular level of hate that Max never liked hearing.

There were many things that the Druli disliked and a few things they truly hated. One was sailing. It was rare for a Druli not to get sea sick, the dragon's preferring hard ground under them, or nothing at all since they were renowned for their flying machines that had every other species marveling. They also hated confined spaces. Despite living in the mountains, their Hoards, as their cities were called, being on the sides of mountains or on top. On the occasion that they did venture into the mountains, they built vast, monolithic in nature, spaces with high vaulted ceilings and great empty spaces. The last thing the Druli hated were Naga. It wasn't something Max knew too much about since Druli rarely talked about their history with outsiders and the little that Max had learned was that the hatred between the two races stretched back millenia.

Gerund's eyes took on a peculiar red tint that only occurred when his blood was really pumping and that meant he was getting ready for a fight. Max drew his sword, a long sword etched in the runes of some forgotten language and hilted with a large obsidian chunk that, despite the properties of it, never chipped or cracked.

The Druli drew his massive zweihander from his back, hefting it as if it were no heavier than a stick. The blade glowed a faint blue with the swirling shapes of Drulic runes as if sensing the coming fight.

"I'm gonna scale those snakes," Gerund muttered to no one in particular before he began to run off through the snow.

Caught off guard by the sudden speed at which they had been abandoned, the rest of the humans raced after Gerund. Even then, the dragon quickly faded behind the branches and the trees, leaving only prints in the snow to follow.

Any thought that he wouldn't see Gerund again quickly faded for just as quickly as he had faded, shouts and the sound of battle quickly rose up.

Without looking back to see if the others were still right behind him, Max drew his sword and pushed past the snapping branches until he stumbled into a clearing where carnage was already well underway.

Gerund was surrounded by a large patch of red, steaming snow. The bodies of two men, in various states of dismemberment feeding more red into a wider pool.

Two Naga, massive, slender snakes topped with the body of men draped in furs, swung halberds, whicb any normal man would have had trouble lifting, effortlessly at Gerund all the while a dozen men jumped in and out, taking swipes as well.

The Druli ducked and weaved between the sweeps of the deadly halberds and using a backswing, decapitated one of his attackers, sending a fountain of arterial spray into the air.

Hoping to catch Gerund with his guard down from the swing of his massive sword, one of the Naga stabbed with its halberd, aiming right for the center of Gerund's chest. Yet, there was no connection. The blade stopped mere inches from the Druli's chest and a look of astonishment came across the Naga's face.

Remarkably, even though he couldn't bring his zweihander back around in time for a parry, Gerund was able to simply let go of his blade with one hand and catch the shaft of the halberd, stopping it as if it were a mere stick thrust by a child. No matter how much the Naga tried, it could not move its weapon neither forward or back.

"Nice try," Gerund growled and pushed the blade away, putting the Naga off guard as it was forced to stagger back to avoid having the butt of the halberd's shaft from being shoved into its face only to find that Gerund was already half way through a swing that connected with the Naga's head. The impossibly sharp blade slice easily though the shoddy helmet that Naga wore and all the skin, bone and blood of its body.

The Naga stood unmoving for a moment as the blade left its head. If Max hadn't just watched what had happened, he would have believed that there was anything wrong with the Naga. That is, until the entire top portion of its head slid off, revealing a pool of pink brain matter that sloshed onto the ruined snow as the Naga fell over.

There would have been a time when the sight would have sickened Max, but that would have been years ago. He had seen far worse a thousand times over. Unfazed, Max charge into the melee, catching one of the humans unaware.

The man gave a low groan as Max's runed blade slid effortlessly through his shoulder blades and appeared out the front of his chest.

Max kicked the dying man off his blade and managed to carve a red trench across the back of another before his presence became known.

Breaking off from the Druli and the circle of death that existed around him, four men came at Max, who drew up his sword, blade out in a perfect McGregor form that he had learned as a young student at the academy.

The first man, a somewhat short and unkempt man in a leather jerkin, swung at Max in a clumsy attempt to take his hand off. The sweep went wide as Max spun to the side and used that momentum to cut the man across the side of his ribs. Frothy blood spurted out and he fell, but Max had no time to admire his perfect counter as the second man stabbed as him. He dodged this quite easily.

It was child's play really for Max. The unpracticed attempt of these men. It almost felt insulting that he needed to waste time with them and as if answered by one of the many gods, Max didn't have to.

An arrow sprouted from the neck of the second man, sending him sprawling to the ground, clutching the wooden shaft.

The rest of the guards had arrived.

The guard who had shot the arrow knocked another one and fired again, missing, but drawing the attention of the two attackers who took long enough to process this new threat for Max to slip away and head towards Gerund and his fight.

The two guards with swords quickly engaged the two men and Max pushed them out of his mind.

Gerund had slain the men who had stayed to fight him and was in a furious contest of martial skill.

Blades spun too fast for the eye to follow between the two scaled warriors. Each swing was parried and immediately brought into another swing. It was quite possible that the dead men around Gerund had died simply from being too close rather than being consciously taken out.

Max kept that in mind and circled around the back side of the fight, knowing that even if getting close would spell death for him, his presence would be enough of a distraction to the Naga to give Gerund the upper hand.

It worked. As Max came up behind the Naga and edged ever so closer, the snake couldn't resist glancing back. It was only for a split second, but that was all the time Gerund needed.

The head came from the body cleanly, a bemused look of the Naga's face as it spared through the air and disappeared in a deeper snow drift.

Then just like that, there was silence. The three guards had taken care of their two attackers easily enough and with that, the sound of battle, the screams of the fighting and dying, all went away.

Gerund wiped his sword on the rags of one of the dead before slinging the weapon onto his back. He pulled a knife from the sheathe of another and approached the dead Naga.

"That was some fight," Max said as he walked closer to see what Gerund was up to.

"Pfft," Gerund blew out the exasperated breath. "Hardly. They never got close to me."

"That Naga seemed to keep you busy for a bit," Max said and stood next to Gerund as the Druli inspected his kill, but for reasons unknown to Max

"Would've finished it quicker if I could've just taken it apart at the torso." Gerund ran a scaled hand across the abdomen of the Naga. It seemed distended and it was a marvel that it was able to move so fat..

"Why couldn't you?" Max asked as Gerund slid the point of the knife between two scales of the Naga. Max was about to also ask what he was doing when with a quick jerk, Gerund slid the blade down the length of the Naga's dead body.

There was a sickening squelching noise and one of the guards who had walked up to see what was happening, retreated, holding a hand to him gut and mouth as he fought to keep his last meal down. Organs, a twisting mess of entrails spilled out as well as a very large and veiny sack, which Gerund wasted no time in attacking with the knife.

At first, the sack resisted at first, but with more effort from the ridiculously strong Druli, it gave with a deflating hiss.

Max stepped back, covering his nose as the stench reached him, but gaped in awe as the fat merchant spilled out of the sack.

The man coughed and wheezed as fresh air hit his lungs.

He started screaming, but a slap from Gerund silenced him.

The merchant, eyes as large as saucers, looked up at Gerund.

The druli jabbed a finger into the man's chest. "I'm going to want double for this."