Winter's Gift - Part I

In a departure from what I was originally planning, I've decided to follow up the re-launch of this blog with the first part of the first story I've been itching to share. Winter's Gift is, at its core, a story about family. The tale follows Gidwyn Greylocke, a Dwarf of the Great Mountains, and the bond he shares with his daughter.

Winter's Gift will be released in nine parts over the next few months, and will then be followed with a couple of relevant Lore posts pertinent to its background. 

I would also like to draw your attention to the new style of banner that heralds this story, lovingly put together by my talented and beautiful girlfriend. Previously, I've used edited photographs I've taken myself or free for commercial use images that have been edited. This is the first time a story has had its own artwork - very exciting!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the first part of Winter's Gift!

That night, the snow fell harder than it had ever before.

        Above the jagged and impassable peaks of the Great Mountains, the pitch-black clouds were so thick not even a sliver of moonlight could break through their oppressive, swirling wall. Wind screamed through the narrow gullies and craggy pathways that criss-crossed the faces of Ulan-Dûz, Basrad-Fol, and the peak that Men called the Skytalon, along with the hundreds of other mountains in the huge range. Their cracks and fissures were quickly lost beneath a flawless blanket of white, becoming death-traps hidden beneath a curtain of cold white – a single misstep would mean certain death for anyone foolish enough to risk the passes in such weather.

        Yet, cloaked and hooded, Gidwyn Greylocke weathered the storm. Heavy crook in one hand and the other keeping his cloak wrapped around himself, he forded the snow-swathed mountains he knew so well. The snow and wind burned his face, though his thick, dusky-blonde beard protected his cheeks from the worst of the winter’s onslaught. He even hummed a jolly song to himself as he pushed through the waist-deep sea of snow – though none could have heard his quiet singing over the wind’s scream.

There were few Hrudun Dwarves permitted to spend time in the Upper-World. Though in recent years the Synod of the Flame had allowed more and more Halflings to leave the Underkingdom and return from surface lands beyond, it was rare to find a Dwarf who lived on the surface and so frequently made passage to the Old City. But that was part of Gidwyn’s job.

The plucky Dwarf raised a hand to shield his small, beady eyes from the onslaught of slashing snowflakes. ‘Kunyiera!’ he cried in a sing-song voice, the final syllable a high-pitched, musical inflection. ‘Kunyieri, mythrela commen!’

My loves, come back to me, Gidwyn thought as he cried out his strange, song-like call. He paused to listen as the roaring wind plucked and carried his voice high over the mountains, silencing him in moments. This storm; t’is no place fer ye.

For a few moments, the Dwarf held his breath and leaned hard on his crook. He focused all his attention on the blaring wind around him and tried to listen through it. He closed his eyes, strained his ears, and focused with all his might.

A sound: singular, faint, distant. It was little more than a quivering cry, almost completely lost to the wind and snow, but Gidwyn could hear it.

There.

         The Dwarf set off at as much of a run as he could manage. He pulled his heavy fur cloak around his shoulders and adjusted the hood as he went, barrelling head-first through the snow. His huge, heavy leather boots sent great clouds of white flying into the black wind as he ran. I’m comin’, he thought as he went. I’m comin’.

           Gidwyn knew the crags of the Hrudun Druria – the Great Mountains – as well as the braids in his beard. He knew that three more paces to the right was a fissure hidden by snowfall that, should he misstep, would swallow him up and shatter his body. He also knew that, up the sharp stone rise to his left, was a particularly loose-looking wall of rocks. He watched them as he ran past, getting ready to dodge and roll should they come tumbling down upon him – but they did not. Praise the Fire that they do not fall this night, the Dwarf thought as he ran.

The inhospitable, jagged landscape that touched the clouds above could support precious little life, but Gidwyn had found a way. In fact, he saw a great beauty in the hostility of the land: the razor-like peaks and jagged gullies were more beautiful than any statue the masons in the Underkingdom could forge, and Gidwyn loved how first thing in the morning the sun danced in the ice that froze like glass around the grey stone of the mountains.  It was all part of the wonder for the stocky Dwarf.

The sharp, cry-like noise came again, much closer this time. After a few more moments of near-blind advancement through the battering wind and snow, Gidwyn could see his goal. Faintly highlighted against the great white sea all around them, and clinging to the edge of a crag, was a small shape. It was, perhaps, the size of a dog, though the small knobbles on the small beast’s forehead and its cloven feet identified it as otherwise.

Gidwyn raced through the swirling snowstorm to the edge of the deep crag. ‘There y’are, m’ love,’ he said as he laid flat on his stomach, dangling his arms over the edge of the rise.

The baby greatgoat before Gidwyn was terrified; its eyes were wide with fear and it shivered in the freezing cold. Somehow – a miracle of Fire, Gidwyn thought – the small creature had managed to balance itself on a jutting stone a few feet below the edge of the precipice. The Dwarf had no idea how it had manged to get out of his sturdy stone barn, let alone how the creature had managed to get itself stranded in such a place.

The Dwarves of the Great Mountains had a long and rich history of empires, kingdoms and conquest. Wealth flowed like blood through the hallways under the mountains, yet few realised the importance of one simple animal to the survival of the Hrudunni. Without the greatgoat, there would have been no kings, queens, palaces or temples. The greatgoat was the humble animal which carried the Underkingdom on its back: providing everything from milk, leather and meat, to muscles that could bear burdens and backs that could be ridden. Peace and gold may have been plentiful in the Underkingdom, but Gidwyn knew that it was the broad shoulders of the greatgoat that had carried it to prosperity.

‘Too clever fer yer own good, eh?’ Gidwyn muttered into the snowstorm as he shuffled towards the edge of the precipice, his arms and hands extended below him. He ignored the two-hundred foot drop before him; he had seen much deeper, after all. Throatslash Crevasse ain’t all tha’ scary, aside from its silly name, Gidwyn thought as he reached out towards the baby greatgoat once again.

With more than half of his short frame jutting out into the nothingness of the crevasse, Gidwyn finally placed his large hands on the goat. The small animal let out a bleat of joy as it felt the well-known, rough hands of the Dwarf on its small body. Despite the urgency and danger, Gidwyn carefully picked up the small animal and cradled it for a moment, before tucking it inside his thick cloak, retreating back over the edge, and making a run for home.

It took the Dwarf little more than a half-hour to reach the robust stone structure he called his house. The farmhouse in which the greatgoat herder lived was shaped like an iron pot: squat and round, with bulging sides and a heavy, timber-reinforced roof. It was a large building, set in the shadow of a large rocky rise. A fat chimney stuck from the centre of the roof, though the house lacked windows which, in the cold of the Great Mountains, did little more than let warmth escape. Beside it was a structure of similar shape, size and build in which Gidwyn kept his goats. It even had its own chimney, for on cold nights like this, Gidwyn would light a furnace in the centre of the room to keep his greatgoats warm.

When he had built his home, Gidwyn had done so with nights such as this in mind: every greatgoat herder knew a story of a distant friend or relative who had built his home with windows and had them shatter in a wind, slicing his face up, or who had built his house too high, just to have it topple onto him during a storm. But Gidwyn knew he was safe – his home was a veritable fortress which the screaming cold and furious wind would never breach.

Gidwyn rushed to the thick wooden door and hammered on it with his fist. ‘Eoina,’ he called out, ‘it’s me. Let me in afore I freeze!’

There was a clunk from the far side of the door and the heavy wooden bolt was drawn back. Golden light spilled out into the snowstorm for a moment as Gidwyn rushed inside, and seconds later the mountains were once more plunged into darkness as the door was slammed and bolted behind him.

Gidwyn paused for a moment on the other side of the door to catch his breath. Blessed heat washed over him and he felt himself smile. It was strange to step from such boreal savagery into the gentle warmth of home; a large fire-pit sat in the middle of the single, circular room that made up the house, over which a dinner of sausages and bacon was cooking, filling the warm air with a rich and salty smell. Around the fire sat a number of figures: three large, wolf-like dogs, five greatgoats, and a single Dwarf-man. To one side of the home was a large bed covered in furs and cushions, and beside it was a small shrine to the Fire: a stone altar no larger than a loaf of bread, atop of which sat a candle of deepwax, a thick, herb-scented blood-red stick of wax that took months to burn down. The rest of the home was undecorated, for its character came from the dried meats and herbs that hung from its rafters and shelves, and from the pots and pans that were hung from a large rack over the fireplace.

‘Did ye find ‘im?’ Eoina said from behind Gidwyn.

Gidwyn turned to look at his wife – A finer and more ‘andsome woman I ne’er saw, he thought as he looked at her. Stout and strong, with arms that could wrestle a boar and a face ringed with fire-red hair that could make hearts melt, Eoina’s expression was one of concern. Gidwyn let her wonder for a few more moments, enjoying the way her small nose twitched as she waited anxiously.

‘Aye,’ the Dwarf said gently, opening his cloak and letting the greatgoat kid hop onto the stone floor. The small greatgoat bleated appreciatively before rushing off to join the others around the fire, where it nestled in amongst its pony-sized kin.

‘Course lil’ brother found ‘is goat!’ A voice cried from the fire. ‘It is wha’ ‘e does after all!’

Gidwyn smiled at the Dwarf-man beside the flames. ‘Ye didnae worry fer me even a lil’, Galahad?’

The other Dwarf-male, Galahad, waved a hand. He was a broad fellow, with heavy shoulders and arms, a head full of braids and a beard plaited into a great, ornate rope. ‘Nae,’ he said, picking up a large tankard and taking a long glug. ‘Ye woo ‘em goats like ye wooed Eoina – not sure ‘ow ye do it, but yer damn good at it, Fire be praised!’

Eoina clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes. ‘Pipe down Gally, ye cheeky sod,’ she said, picking up a blanket and crossing the wide, warm space to find the stray kid. ‘When are ye gonna ask Torith to marry ye, anyway?’

‘Eh,’ Galahad grumbled, ‘probably never if ‘er pig-‘ead father gets in the way any more.’

Whilst his wife and elder brother discussed Galahad’s struggling love-life, Gidwyn removed his cloak and filled himself a mug of mead from a barrel he and his wife kept close to the door.

‘Any other visitors recently?’ Galahad was asking Eiona as Gidwyn sat down by the fire amongst his three wolf-like dogs: Karveth, Coren, and Synera.

The three animals were enormous by the standard of both dogs and wolves: closer to ponies in size, Hrudun Vjalhindes were exceptionally rare and highly intelligent creatures – allegedly the forefathers of werewolves. Gidwyn had found the trio when they were pups, abandoned by their mother, and reared them as his own.

 ‘Visitors?’ Eoina responded, reaching down to pat Karveth – the largest and shaggiest of the three wolf-dogs, with mismatched, gold and blue eyes. ‘Oh aye. Had a Human party from Altmeria a few weeks back, remember Gid?’

‘Oh, nice bunch,’ Gidwyn said, sipping his mead, enjoying the warm flavour spreading down his throat. He reached down and scratched Coren’s chin in the spot he liked it. Coren was the smallest of the three wolf-dogs, with a soft, light brown coat and a sharp face. The enormous animal let out a low, happy grumble. ‘Shame, awful shame.’

‘Aye, t’is,’ Eoina said with a sigh. ‘We always try an’ dissuade ‘em, but tha’s the thing wit’ them Humans: they’re determined t’ ‘ave a first person t’ do everythin’.’

Gidwyn nodded his head reached across to where the silver-coated female wolf-dog, Synera, lay and slowly ran his fingers through her shaggy haunches. She was his favourite – Although a father shouldnae ‘ave favourites, he told himself.

‘Aside from them, nae,’ Eoina continued. ‘Explorers getting’ fewer an’ fewer. Those Vidorians rarely get far either, oft not beyond Axefall Canyon.’

Galahad laughed. ‘Really? I know Dwarf-lads still wet behind the ears and wi’ no hair on their faces who could make it further than tha’!’

Gidwyn shrugged. ‘At least the Empire’s boys turn around an’ go ‘ome. Others don’t.’ Gidwyn chewed his lip for a moment. ‘Sometimes find ‘em frozen stiff out by Axefall a few weeks later.’

‘Y’ ever search further?’ Galahad asked. ‘Go up to the Last Cairn?’

‘No,’ Gidwyn said, shuddering. ‘Ne’er beyond there.’

There was a moment of melancholy silence as the weight of Gidwyn’s words sank in. The Great Mountains were a notoriously inhospitable environment, even amongst the hardly Halfling-folk. The Humans of the Empire and its adjacent provinces, however, had a fascination with the Great Mountains. Legends of trolls and wyverns, of giant wolves and dragons guarding ancient treasures often attracted parties of adventurers to try and scale the Great Mountains. They would struggle through the snows up beyond Axefall Canyon, towards the Last Cairn and then head beyond it towards Orthân Vaarl. After that, none of them ever returned.

Some of the Halfling-folk told stories of a curse upon the mountains; those who were not pure of heart and light of soul would be cast down from lofty heights, to fall and be broken on the rocks below, a punishment for their transgressions. Others told tales of terrible creatures that dwelt in the black crags and encircled the mountainous peaks: ancient basilisks and wyverns, creatures of pure frost and snow with a hatred for all life that would torment and destroy any warm-blooded creature that dared enter their frozen realm. Gidwyn put little faith in such folklore, but he himself never dared to take the highest paths around to the north side of the Great Mountains. Occasionally, he lost a goat up that way – but when he reached the Last Cairn, he would go no further. The crags and fissures of Orthân Vaarl wait beyond the Cairn, and nowt but death lingers there.

Gidwyn’s farm was, as far as he knew, the highest-altitude settlement on the southern side of the Great Mountains – he knew little of the north-facing side, for the crags and gullies he would have to navigate to get around the mountains were too dangerous even for him. As a result, every now and then, a party of adventurers would appear at their door. Some simply wanted to spend a night in the warmth, whilst others often threatened loot and plunder, having realised the Great Mountains held nothing but snow and death. Gidwyn and Eoina never had a problem with the looters, though; one snarl from Karveth, Coren or Synera often saw off any would-be thieves – even some of the older greatgoat rams could get extremely aggressive. An’ no-one wants a goat the size o’ a bear buttin’ ‘em.

‘Any thoughts on when yer gonna ‘ead back to the Old City?’ Gidwyn asked his brother in order to break the silence.

Galahad shrugged. ‘Not outstayed me welcome already, ‘ave I?’

Gidwyn laughed. ‘Yer always welcome, brother.’

Galahad grinned at his younger sibling. ‘Few days,’ he said. ‘Wait fer the worst o’ this storm t’ pass, then ill ‘ead back with the convoy tha’ delivers yer next load o’ supplies. Sound good?’

‘Very good,’ Gidwyn said with a nod. ‘No campaigns?’

‘Nae,’ Galahad said and shook head slowly. ‘Queen Ffyon’s like ‘er mother – peaceable. Though rumour ‘as it there’s trouble in the south.’

‘Above or below?’ Eoina asked.

‘Above,’ Galahad responded. ‘Tha’ Empire o’ the Vidorians ‘as been on-an’-off at war wit’ itself for the last year or two. Looks like things may be heatin’ up again.’

Gidwyn sighed and shook his head. ‘Well, ye jus’ be careful, brother,’ he said to Galahad. ‘Ye an’ Eoina are all the family I got left, an’ I’ll no be seein’ either o’ ya taken away jus’ yet.’

Galahad grinned at his little brother and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Ye’ve nowt t’ worry ‘bout, Giddy,’ he said with a broad-faced grin. ‘Nowt at all.’

The rest of the evening was spent sitting around the golden-glowing firepit amongst the snoring greatgoats and Gidwyn’s wolf-dogs. Light-hearted tales of old were told, and laughter was had as more mead flowed and the small family spoke of happy times shared together. They were oblivious to the chaos outside the walls of the squat home, and of the darkness that the screaming wind brought to the mountains.

*

Gidwyn and Galahad arose early the next morning, leaving Eoina to rest. Clasping wide-bladed shovels in their hands and dressed in thick fur cloaks, and with Gidwyn’s three wolf-like dogs at their heels, the two brothers stepped out into the beautiful, white-light of the stunning new day.

         The storm had passed and left only the thinnest, fluffiest clouds in the sky. The cold sun shone down on the Great Mountains, making the ice-capped tips of the jutting, jagged rocks that surrounded Gidwyn’s home glitter like stars. The snow, almost up to the brothers’ shoulders, was untouched and lay like a flawless carpet across the flat places amongst the mountains. The white world shone like the sky, and Gidwyn sighed happily.

       ‘Yer a lucky fella, Giddy,’ Galahad said to his little brother as they stood in the doorway together. ‘Very lucky indeed.’

       Galahad smiled. He and his brother were looking south. Through the gaps in the jagged peaks and a few scudding dregs of cloud below them, lay the land known as the Imperial Heartlands. Long, rolling green pastures stretched out below for hundreds of miles, basking in the sunlight of a bright winter day. Miles below them lay a patchwork of fields, villages, estates, and towns, all so perfectly placed Gidwyn often found himself wondering if he was looking down upon a painting drawn by a divine artist.

        Gidwyn and Galahad stood for a few moments longer, following the thin, vein-like rivers and tributaries that wove their way across the emerald green lands miles below, before eventually Galahad pointed to a large, white shape on the horizon, glittering under the sun like the new snow.

         ‘Is that the Imperial Capital?’

         ‘Aye, Vidoropolis the Humans call it.’

         The two stood in silence for a few moments longer, drinking in the incredible view. ‘How come I’ve ne’er seen it before?’ Galahad asked.

         ‘Rare t’ get a day this clear,’ Gidwyn replied. ‘C’mon; the goats ain’t gonna wait forever.’

         Shovels in hands, the two Dwarf-brothers set to work clearing the snow outside the wide, round, stone-built home and its adjacent barn. They laughed and joked as they went, jolly in the crisp-cold morning. As soon as they had carved a pathway to the stone barn in which Gidwyn kept the rest of his herd, the younger of the two Dwarf-brothers pulled back the heavy bolt on the wide wooden doors and flung them open before standing to one side.

      The herd of sturdy, pony-sized goats with heavy, curved horns and wide, cloven feet began to pour out into the snow, gambolling and kicking as they went. One Dwarf-brother stood either side of the doors and began to count as the large goats spilled out into the fresh snow, kicking and leaping as they went.

       ‘How many did ye get?’ Gidwyn called to Galahad once the final kid was out.

       ‘Twenty-four,’ the elder brother called back.

       ‘Praise the Fire, ye can count.’

       ‘Cheeky sod.’

       Gidwyn directed Galahad to the heavy sacks goat’s feed – a mixture of dried grains and the hardy lichen and bracken that the goats foraged beneath the snow that the goats ate when wild – then set off with his three dogs at his heels to find the kid that had been lost in the storm the previous night. He found the young animal close to its mother’s hooves, standing in the snow she had already stamped down. Gidwyn was glad to see the kid was unharmed and apparently unfazed by the traumatic events of the previous evening, and bleated happily when it saw him.

             ‘Did y’ hear tha’?’ Galahad called suddenly, his voice quietened by a sudden hiss of mountain wind.

              Gidwyn turned to look at his brother, who was carrying a large hessian sack out of the house. ‘Hear wha’?’

              Galahad held up a hand for a moment, a heavy frown on his brow. ‘Tha’!’ he called again.

         Gidwyn’s eyes narrowed. He pricked up his large ears and held his breath, listening hard through the chorus of bleating and hoof-stamping around him.

And there it was. Far-off and just caught on the gentle wind that blew through the peaks, was a high-pitched, pained cry. To Gidwyn, it sounded like a greatgoat kid in distress. But tha’s impossible, he thought as he listened to the strange, distant sound. I’ve counted ‘em all – I’m no short.

It came again and Gidwyn’s eyes narrowed. It was too high-pitched to be a greatgoat of any age. ‘Somethin’ ain’t right, Gally,’ he said darkly. ‘Somethin’ definitely ain’t right. Stay ‘ere wit’ the herd, I’m gonna go ‘ave a look.’

Without another word, Gidwyn set off through the snow, heading north-east. Soon, his home was far behind him and he could barely hear the sound of the bleating greatgoats and Galahad’s curses as he struggled to empty the feed-bag into the large wooden trough attached to the side of the stone barn.

Soon, the only sounds Gidwyn could hear was the whistle of the winter wind through the high peaks and crags around him, the sound of his heavy boots in the deep snow, and the strange, faint cry borne to him on the whistling wind.

It was definitely getting louder the further northwards he headed. He passed Iron Peak, the twisted spire of stone that jutted like a spearhead from the mountainside, and soon had gone as far as the fissure he called the Devourer – a massive, maw-like opening in the stone that swallowed up anything that did not know of the small, rickety rope bridge built across it a half-mile from where Gidwyn was standing.

Gidwyn never went beyond the Devourer unless he could not help it – it was his border with the North Passage, the deep, rocky gulley all adventurers went into and never returned from. But still the high-pitched crying was on the wind, and it was perilously close now. Gritting his teeth, Gidwyn hurried onwards, a chill colder than ice touching his heart – that of fear.

The Dwarf soon found the rickety, swaying rope-bridge, and the cry was louder than ever before. On the other side of the wobbling wooden structure lay a flat, snow-covered plain the likes of which Gidwyn infrequently walked upon and did not know so well. There could be all manner o’ new cracks an’ fissures formed since I was last ‘ere, the Dwarf thought as he hesitated. Yet the cry came again – piercing and shrill. With a growl of anger, Gidwyn stepped onto the swaying, ice-covered bridge.

It was wide enough for a wagon to fit across, though why anyone would bring a wagon this far northwards in the Great Mountains was incomprehensible to Gidwyn. Gripping the rime-scarred rope to his left, Gidwyn carefully made his way across the ice-covered wooden planks that made up the bridge. ‘Whoever built this was a bleedin’ fool,’ the Dwarf muttered as he went. He was not afraid of heights, but the dizzying drop down into the Devourer below him was enough to make even Gidwyn’s stomach turn. Fang-like rocks glittering with ice and frost thrust up towards him, promising to tear his fragile form apart. Yet still the strange cry continued.

Gidwyn breathed a sigh of relief when he made it to the other side of the bridge and immediately began his pursuit of the strange noise again, doing all he could to forget about the nauseating trip across the bridge. Treading carefully, Gidwyn made his way across the wide, flat, glittering plain of snow that stretched away from the Devourer and towards another set of rising and falling peaks. ‘Ow much further? he thought as he went, but he knew it would not be long, for the cry was almost piercing now.

But even though the sound was close, his courage began to wane. As he hurried over the darkening mountainside, pushing through the thickening fog of cloud that closed in around him and began to sap his breath from his lungs, he saw a squat, pillar-like shape slowly materialise through the mist before him.

The Last Cairn.

Gidwyn felt his heart beat a little faster. Framed through the clouds against the dark stone of the mountainside, the Last Cairn was little more than a large stack of heavy rocks around which someone had tied a long length of blue cloth that snapped in the wind like a whip – a crude effigy for the mountainside, its ancient meaning long since lost. But behind it loomed Orthân Vaarl – the terrible maze of ice-scourged and frost-entombed crags and canyons that twisted and writhed in between the great peaks to the north.

But Gidwyn had given the Last Cairn a new meaning. The Last Cairn was, for Gidwyn, the point of no return. Nothin’ lives beyond there, he told himself as he slowly walked up the steep mountainside towards it. Crags and gullies that could swallow entire armies, creatures left long-undisturbed, and a world scarred by an aeon of unbroken and infallible cold.

Then Gidwyn put his foot on something. He frowned, for it did not feel like the snow-covered stone. Alarmed, he fell to his knees and began to frantically dig away at the snow beneath him with his hands, tossing great white plumes into the air as he went.
As he dug through the recently fallen layer, the snow at his fingertips began to change colour: first, there were a few spots of red, but before he knew it, Gidwyn was scooping whole handfuls of red snow and tossing them aside. This is no’ good, he thought as he dug. Really, really no’ good.

Suddenly, his fingers touched something that felt like cloth beneath the red-dyed snow. Gidwyn closed his fists and pulled. The object was heavy, but Gidwyn was strong – decades wrestling greatgoats had left him as sturdy and dependable as the creatures he farmed, and that was in addition to the natural brawniness most Dwarves developed from adulthood.

Rising to his feet and clutching whatever lay beneath the snow in his strong fists once more, Gidwyn gave the object one more heave and felt it come loose. The snow shifted, like a sheet of fresh parchment being crumpled in a fist, and Gidwyn almost leapt back in horror.

Gidwyn found himself looking straight into the frozen-blue face of what looked like a Human. A pair of cold-hardened green eyes stared up at Gidwyn, the frost transfixing them into an expression of shock and horror. A snow-filled mouth hung open, and twisted, icy fingers grappled at a long, heavy arrow buried in the figure’s stomach.

For a moment, Gidwyn was at a loss. He stared at the corpse, dressed in a heavy green cloak and wearing ornate, fur-lined leathers and with the crude arrow embedded deep into his stomach. When Gidwyn went to put the corpse down, the figure’s hood fell back, revealing long, brown hair and a pair of pointed ears.

‘An Elf…?’ Gidwyn breathed. He looked like a soldier, but Gidwyn had never seen an Elven soldier before so he did not know for sure. There was an empty scabbard at the figure’s waist, though other than that there was no signs of looting on the body.

The cry came again. This time, it was extremely close.
Gidwyn sprang to his feet and began to run through the snow as fast as he could. Great flakes of white stuck in his beard and the sunlight breaking through the clouds onto the snow before him made his eyes hurt, but he was determined.

Suddenly, he noticed an odd shape sticking up out of the white carpet before him – ornately decorated and green-painted wooden sides with a canvas covering straining under the weight of the night’s snow. A wagon? Here? Gidwyn thought, continuing to hurry forwards.

As he reached the snow-battered wagon, he stumbled into the remnants of a campsite. The handful of tents had collapsed in the snowstorm, and around the guttered-out campfire in the middle of the small ring of ropes, poles, and torn cloth, were more bodies. All were Elven, all were dressed like the first, and all were full of arrows and criss-crossed with bloody slashes.

For a moment, Gidwyn stood in the snow-covered camp utterly dumbfounded. He had seen the dead before – sometimes he would happen across unfortunate climbers or Dwarves who had mistimed their voyages – but he had never seen anything like this. There was so much pain. So much blood.

The cry came again, long, pained, frightened. Gidwyn turned and looked at the snow-covered wagon. Partially hidden beneath the fallen snow he could see two dead horses, their flanks and throats full of the same crude-looking arrows that peppered their frozen masters. Gidwyn took a step towards the wagon as the cry came once more and carefully clambered onto the driver’s step, then poked his head inside.

Gidwyn’s heart sank as his eyes adjusted to the relative gloom within. It was a large space, full of furs, cushions, and a few boxes and barrels of foodstuffs. There were two adult figures Gidwyn could make out: a man wearing a fine silver-blue robe, his body covered in stab-wounds and a long dagger in his frozen fist, and beside him lay a woman, her dress torn where she too had been slashed and stabbed.

The two Elves held one-another in death, their faces frozen in pain and sadness, their bodies covered in blood and wounds. Between them, wrapped in a thick bundle of furs, was the source of the piercing wail Gidwyn had heard from his home.

On the edge of tears, Gidwyn stepped into the wagon and crossed to the back where the couple were sprawled. He looked down at the bundle that lay between them and into the bright-blue eyes of a tiny baby she-Elf, wailing and bawling in fear and sorrow, knowing that something was terribly wrong yet unable to comprehend the tragedy written in blood around her. The hair on her head was as white as the snow through which Gidwyn had charged to find her, and her ears were long and narrow, pointed at their tips.

Gently, smiling as best as he could despite the tears in his eyes, Gidwyn reached down and picked up the bundle. ‘Hush now, lil’ snow-child,’ he said gently, rocking the baby in his beefy arms. ‘Giddy’s got ye, ye’ve nowt t’ fear anymore.’

The baby girl looked up at Gidwyn with her enormous blue eyes and let out a happy squeal, before reaching out of the furs around her with a tiny hand and taking hold of his beard. Despite the horror wrought around them, Gidwyn could not help but laugh.

‘You’re a wee thing,’ he said gently, getting to his feet, ‘but don’t ye worry. Giddy’s ‘ere. Giddy’ll look after ye, little gift o’ the snow.’

With one last glance around, Gidwyn tucked the baby girl inside his cloak and leapt from the wagon. He set off at a run back the way he had come, going as fast as he could. He left the slaughter behind, cradling its only survivor in his arms.