The biggest change for Judeau, after leaving the Healer, turned out to be the nights. His nightmares grew more intense again, and some nights they brought friends: He would wake up in a panicked, cold sweat in the most ungodly hour of the night with the demonic brand stinging in his palm, and he soon learnt that when the mark on his hand hurt, it meant that some evil spirit had gotten wind of him and was coming for his blood. The more dangerous the creature or the more of them there were, the worse the pain would become. A welcome, if slightly perplexing, warning function of the magical rune. Thirgynn theorized that it was to tease the demons� or dark spirits� appetite by making Judeau suffer more, but admitted that he had no way of knowing for sure.

Apparently fully prepared for this from the very beginning, however, Thirgynn quickly made it a habit to set up protective runes around the camp as they settled, and whatever these did it seemed to be enough to neutralise the weakest apparitions. However, there were some that had to be dealt with violently - and on those nights everyone slept poorly.

The creatures that the brand attracted seemed mostly to be different kinds of ghosts - at least, that was what his companions referred to them as. Often pale blue, glowing, vaguely humanoid shapes like the ones that had attacked him and Samina the night that the brand had reappeared, but not always. One kind were mere wisps of greenish light that contented themselves with hovering tentatively at the edge of the magical rune-barrier (Samina called them Jack-o'-lanterns, Taskkarr called them pathetic), another kind crept through the same with bodies that looked almost tangible: Human-like creatures shaped out of what most resembled soot-black smoke, with only two brightly blue lights burning where the eyes should be (Ghasts, apparently). And once, on a particularly busy night, a well-decayed, walking corpse bumbled clumsily into their camp and almost managed to get its hands around Judeau�s neck before Steelwing could stab Helios deep into the rotten creature. The resulting wet, foul-smelling explosion, right in his face, served as nightmare-fodder for Judeau for a few weeks afterwards.

But however frightening, none of these nightly haunts were in any way a match for his companions, and once Thirgynn started putting temporary runes on Judeau�s and Samina�s weapons each night, even less so (�Only to make them magical, you know, so they can affect the ghosts. Don�t expect them to cleave boulders.�). Also, regardless of how difficult a night had been it was never even enough to slow them down.

Nonetheless, Judeau was starting to feel very uneasy around nightfall.

Not that he didn't sleep like a log on the nights when there were no supernatural disturbances: Between Steelwing's rigorous and relentless training, and the forced pace that the dwarves insisted on keeping, he was far too exhausted not to. So, all things considered, it wasn't really surprising that he completely lost track of time. He did notice that it slowly got colder, and according to what he learned from Samina, whom he often talked to during the travelling hours, though they were heading towards colder regions the changing climate was really a lot more about the shift of seasons than their geographical position.

His companions also changed - even if the dwarves did so far more noticeably than the elf. Taskkarr and Thirgynn both grew thick, impressive beards at a speed which was nothing short of unbelievable, but whereas Taskkarr let his coarse, reddish-brown tangle grow free and completely unkempt (though when it reached down to the lower part of his ribcage, it somehow seemed to stop growing of it's own volition), Thirgynn showed a decidedly more coquettish behaviour when it came to grooming: The miracle-worker kept his chalk-white beard carefully cropped pretty close to the chin (and it still displayed an enviable thickness), and meticulously combed back his equally chalk-white hair with an odd-smelling paste, that he mixed up himself from ingredients purchased in one of the larger villages they had briefly passed. Taskkarr kept his head shaved - a daily grooming exercise that almost took as long as Thirgynn's.

It took longer to notice any change in Steelwing, but as the shade on his head slowly became less and less like stubble (the elf appeared to have no facial hair at all - at least Judeau never saw him shave), Judeau realised to his surprise that the Crusader's hair came out as silver-coloured. Not grey, not white, but silver with a distinctly metallic sheen. If it hadn't been so fine and flighty, it would almost have looked like an extra helmet.

The season changed, his comrades changed, and maybe he himself changed a little as well, but their firmly east-by-north eastern course never did. And one day, just the same day that the first snow fell onto its mighty slopes, they reached the towering mountain chain in which the dwarves, apparently, made their home.

*
Judeau leaned back a little in the saddle and closed his eyes, turning his face to the sky. When he opened them again there was only white-grey nothingness before him, sprinkled with small, fluffy dots that looked dark grey against the brightness of the sky. Judeau smiled, exhaled and let go of the tension in his shoulders. Knowing how to create these little bubbles of privacy whenever the opportunity presented itself was a skill that had kept him sane through many an arduous campaign, and what better opportunity could there be?

There was just something so irresistibly pensive about the first snowfall. It would almost feel like sacrilege not to succumb to this cool, gentle pull on his mind and float out into this white stillness�

He closed his eyes again as one of the fluffy dots came floating down a little too close to his face, and he felt it land like a soft whisper on the side of his nose. Then it started to tickle and he brushed it off, straightening up again as he did so.

The bubble prevailed. Still with that nice, mildly wistful calm inside of him, Judeau leisurely let his gaze wander over his surroundings. The plains had long ago given way to forest and the forest had given way to hills, and the hills had gradually become the mountains they had been using for landmark � and now it was with some trepidation that they were slowly making their way up the craggy mountainside.

Not that the murvels were having any trouble navigating the narrow path - the huge bear-dog-rams plodded along on padded paws just as easily as they had on the open road. Packer and Steelwing's elfhorse, Vistari, had it a bit worse and were starting to fall behind. There had been a short debate (Samina's initiative) on whether to take the long way around and spare the horses, but Taskkarr had realised that this would delay them by a whole day and had fervently opposed the idea. If Judeau had needed any more convincing of the urgency the dwarves felt towards going home and restoring their honour, that heartfelt tirade would have done the trick for sure.

But now the two dwarves seemed to have reverted into concentrated silence. Leading the way up the mountainside, Thirgynn slightly behind Taskkarr, the stout little men seemed almost to communicate through telepathy as they navigated each indiscernible turn and slope without exchanging so much as a glance - but Judeau admitted to himself that it was far more probable that they were tracing a path intimately familiar to them both.

Steelwing rode last and Judeau could hear by the irregular, soft footfalls that the long-legged elfhorse was slowly losing ground to the rest of them. He wondered how long it would take for the Crusader to give in and ask the group to dismount. If he didn't, Judeau might just have to - although Packer was doing a bit better as far as climbing was concerned. For now, though, the scout decided to wait and see. Maybe Steelwing knew something about the path ahead of them that he didn't.

Just ahead of Judeau rode Samina, looking surprisingly broad-shouldered and just a little bit funny in her thick bear fur coat (at least he assumed it was bear) against the cream white and equally shaggy murvel she was riding. It almost looked like the poor beast had sprouted a strange, brownish-black appendage on its back - if it hadn't been for the smooth, brown leather of the saddle that separated the two.

Maybe it's murvel-fur, Judeau idly thought to himself, brushing away another snowflake that had landed on his cheek.

The female bounty hunter seemed to have been caught up in the tranquil, contemplative mood of the snowfall as well: Leaving Kariss to leisurely follow his fellow murvels, she gazed off to the side, out at the slowly whitening mountainside and the barely discernible landscape below. She didn�t seem so scared of the height now � though, admittedly, it was far less steep and acute here than it had been in the Great City � and Judeau even thought he saw his own wistful smile mirrored on the pale, scarred face.

Judeau closed his eyes again and took another slow, deep breath of the crisp mountain air. It was a good day to be alive.

He opened his eyes just in time to see Taskkarr and Thirgynn make a quick, impossible turn and disappear right into the mountain wall. Samina soon followed, and still Judeau couldn't see the cleft until he was right beside it. It wasn't very wide, just about enough to let two murvelbeasts pass side by side, if their handlers were careful and not in a hurry. The cliffs rose up steep and forbidding on both sides, preventing almost all the snow to reach the remarkably smooth and even floor. Just a little too convenient - Judeau strongly suspected that they were getting very close to the dwarf hold now.

Then, only about a stone's throw into the narrow pass, both dwarves suddenly stopped, Samina and Judeau coming to a surprised halt behind them.

"Taskkarr? What's wrong?" Concern and a hint of annoyance shone through in Samina�s voice as she reined her beast in.

"We should have been hailed by now."

Taskkarr's voice was quiet and calm, but had a certain quality to it that effectively popped Judeau's bubble of tranquillity - the shade of apprehension.

Suddenly the passageway seemed a lot more narrow, not so much sheltering as entrapping. The entire group fell silent and an air of intense watchfulness immediately surrounded them. Judeau glanced upwards at what he could see of the bright grey sky, and the jagged cliffs that cut it off from further view. They really were terribly vulnerable here - just a few crossbowmen or, for that matter, a couple of good, old-fashioned boulders would put a swift and sad end to them all.

He realised he was holding his breath and exhaled carefully, soundlessly. The gentle scraping as the elfhorse uneasily shifted position behind him rung through the tense silence and multiplied eerily between the stone walls. After a brief moment the scout thought he heard an irregular, whooshing sound, and soon realised that it was Thirgynn who was sniffing at the air.

"Do you smell that?" Taskkarr's deep voice was a grimly quiet rumble.

"Trolls," Thirgynn replied, equally subdued. "And blood." He shifted uneasily in his seat, then turned towards the demon hunter. "It's very faint, though... It doesn't have to mean anything. Maybe we haven't been hailed yet simply because they haven't identified us yet... It could be so."

Taskkarr's only reply was a semi-affirmative grunt.

After a brief moment, Samina shook her head. "I hate to say this, guys, but I've got a really bad feeling about this."

"I can hear..."

Whatever it was that Steelwing could hear, it, along with the rest of his words, was completely drowned out by the sudden, powerful blast of a horn. Packer snorted and shied, as did the elfhorse, and even the murvels seemed startled. At first the sound appeared to come from all around them, but as it wore on and on - and Judeau's heart slowed down a little - he realised that it was actually coming from further up ahead. And quite some ways, at that.

"No..." Taskkarr sat stiffly upright in his saddle, staring ahead with wild, unseeing eyes. His horrified whisper rose to a howl as he dug his heels into the sides of the black beast and set off towards the sound at top speed. "Noooooo!"

Thirgynn was after him in the next instant, bending low over the neck of his grey beast to reduce wind resistance - or to be able to hold on more tightly.

"Yah!" Samina managed to stay in the saddle as Kariss took an unexpected leap after his running comrades the moment she gave the command. Before Judeau had had a chance to gather his wits Steelwing blasted past him in a flash of silver and had left even Samina behind when the scout - only a moment later - dug his heels into Packer's sides and took off after them.

The pony was a bit faster than the murvelbeast, so when Judeau caught up with Samina he allowed Packer to slow down a little � keeping in pace with the bounty-hunter.

"What's going on?" He shouted to be heard over the clatter of his own horse's hooves, magnified against the stone walls. Samina turned to look at him, her jaw set in decisiveness and her eyes radiating apprehension.

"That sound," she shouted back, "Was the call of Oothark�han, the great dwarven war horn. Hearing it here, now, can mean nothing but bad news!"

"War horn?" Judeau leaned out a bit closer to Samina. "Like what? What could it mean?"

She gave him a look that confirmed all of his fears.

"You're a soldier, Judeau. What do you think it means?"

After a brief silence, the scout spoke up again - this time without taking his eyes off the road. "Samina, we're heading right into it, aren't we?"

"Yeah," she conceded, sounding a bit strained. "Pretty much. Listen, Judeau, I know it's not the brightest idea to go rushing into a situation like this where we don�t know anything about the danger except that it�s acute and serious, but we are a team and I, for one, will not let Taskkarr and Thirgynn ride into this whatever-it-might-be all alone. �Sides, it�s easier to get a grasp of the situation once we�re out of this passage��

�Yeah, okay, I follow,� Judeau interrupted, �It�s just that� I think I already have a clue as to what�s waiting up ahead.�

Samina shot him a confused glance. �What?�

Judeau felt his face harden into a serious frown. �My hand hurts.�

She said nothing more, but Judeau thought he felt their mutual speed increase, just a little. He wasn�t too keen on getting closer to the source of the malignant presence that made the brand in his palm sting like this � and it just kept getting worse � but he knew only too well that his best chance of survival in a situation like this was to stick as closely to his non-human companions as possible. And they were up ahead of him, very decisively heading straight into the lair of the beast � so to speak. As he had done so many times before in his life, Judeau resigned to stick close to those who might be able to hold his back, and make the best out of the situation as soon as he had a decent grasp of it.

He had no idea of just how grim that situation would turn out to be.

They burst out of the cleft like bats out of hell, but came to an astonished halt as the sheer enormity of the scene before them literally knocked the air from their lungs. Before them laid a huge, open space between jagged mountaintops, like a titanic basin. Far off to their left the stone wall opened up like a wound around what must once have been an enormous and impressive gate - one of the mighty metal doors that had fitted in it still hung there, bent and disfigured far beyond what should be possible for such thick metal.

Before the ruined gate, pretty much covering the bottom of the basin, laid the remains of a small town that had been as burnt and ravaged as a battlefield. And a battlefield was precisely what it was.

From the open wound in the mountain poured an endless onslaught of stout, bearded warriors, some mounted on murvelbeasts, some clinging to terrifying, armoured machinery that almost seemed to move on its own. What they met was a tidal wave of very mixed creatures, most of which had two arms and two legs. There were small, greenish-black critters that swarmed the dwarves in packs, larger humanoids with heavy armour that were just a little bit too broad and beast-like to be properly human, and huge, lumbering, horribly human-like monsters that moved through the chaos like horses through a hayfield, as well as a variety of other more or less human creatures, all mixed together in the blood-soaked melting pot of the battlefield.

Judeau could not, however, immediately see anything resembling the creatures he was expecting to see. Judging by the searing pain shooting out into his fingers and up towards his elbow from his branded hand, they were definitely there, but the very same pain also made it difficult to concentrate on anything but immediate impressions. He found himself shaking his hand as if trying to cool off a burn.

He couldn't help noticing the smell, though - as always, it assaulted his nose without fail. The universal stench of the battlefield: Smoke and blood.

After an instant of this shocked silence, Taskkarr let out another howl of equal parts despair and rage in unintelligible Dwarfish � but it was actually Thirgynn who took off towards the ruined gate first, Taskkarr and Steelwing soon in hot pursuit.

"Hey!" Judeau called after them, "What are you doing?! Come back!"

"No, they're right," Samina interrupted, "We have to get in there, and we have to do it now, while the battle wages. Come on!"

At that moment, the authoritative tone of her voice was so exactly like Caska's that Judeau almost instinctively fell in behind her. Then, as they cleared the little slope and entered the outskirts of the savaged town, he found himself and rode up beside the bounty hunter, leaning over to shout - this time to make himself heard over the sounds of battle:

"Why? You've got an explanation as to why we're throwing ourselves headlong into a war zone?"

She didn't look back at him and for a moment he thought she wouldn't answer, but she did:

"Because of your curse and... because I recognise those banners! Trust me - if they weren't busy fighting right now, you wouldn't stand a chance! Neither of us would!"

"What? What are you saying?"

"I can tell that you're really feeling your curse now, and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if there were both demons and undead here - dark elves love to use that kind of creatures in war."

"What elves?"

"Dark elves! Sick, twisted creatures, and utterly ruthless. They'd be thrilled to let their monsters hunt you and the rest of us down - for sport, if nothing else. In there-" She pointed towards the huge opening in the mountain with her entire arm, almost as if she could stab it with her index finger and pull it closer by sheer willpower. "-Is the only place within miles where we can be safe."

Judeau was just considering pointing out that an enormous, yet completely blown-out gateway that even seemed to be the target of an attacking army did not really meet with his definition of "safe" when suddenly, up ahead, the wall of one of the last standing houses exploded outwards, right into the flank of Taskkarr's murvel. The beast was hurled sideways into Thirgynn's grey steed and both dwarves were thrown from the saddle, landing in a pile of fur, limbs and rubble on the other side of the street.

Emerging from the cloud of dust and debris came one of those enormous, human-like creatures that Judeau had spotted in the mayhem a bit further towards the centre of town. Through the shock and surprise, the scout caught an impression of yellow tusks, small, red eyes, bluish-grey skin over freakishly bulging muscles and an expression of wicked triumph on a flat-nosed face.

It was unexpectedly fast, too. The knife that Judeau had aimed at one of its red little eyes whistled past its face as the enormous beast drew back, raising one horrible, clawed hand above its head. The sword-like claws would have torn into the recovering dwarf-murvel bundle before Steelwing � who had gotten a little bit ahead of them � had even had time to turn his elfhorse around or Judeau had drawn another knife, but it never did. Instead the creature jerked, howled as if in pain and slowly began to topple sideways.

In the next instant, Taskkarr came leaping out of the cloud of dust and debris raising his two-handed hammer high above his head. Without hesitation or mercy, the demon hunter brought the massive hammer down on the monster�s head in one powerful swing, and the resulting, loud crack and spatter was most reassuring. The whole thing was over before Judeau and Samina had caught up with them, and they arrived to find Taskkarr crouched down over something that the giant monster had dropped as it went down.

Judeau did a double-take and realised with a surge of gut-wrenching nausea that the thing on the ground was, in fact, a dwarf. Or half a dwarf, to be more precise. The pieces of him that were still attached � most of the upper torso, head and arms � showed such signs of having been brutalised that even Judeau, who hadn�t hesitated to pitch in at the Hawks� infirmary after a tough battle, felt distinctly disturbed. But what really made his stomach turn was the fact that the broken dwarf was still alive, breathing and talking. His skin had the pallor of death and his voice was nothing more than a whisper but he spoke earnestly and apparently comprehensibly to Taskkarr.

Judeau caught a few words of the one-sided conversation as he came closer to the two.

��Zur�Vorh, kuzhakka vazj� but you�re back� Rahk-kriztekh! � They need you�!�

Taskkarr nodded and grunted and when the injured dwarf showed signs of slowing down even further, he quietly interrupted:

�Tell me your name.�

The other dwarf took a few pained, shallow breaths and tried to swallow once before replying.

�Yrikk� Grimnur. Vonkhuzann.�

Taskkarr pressed a fist to his heart and spoke with thick-voiced sincerity, �Your name shall be remembered, Yrikk Grimnur Trollslayer.�

A slow but blissful smile spread out over Yrikk�s pale face and he nodded with obvious effort, returning Taskkarr�s salute with a painfully trembling hand.

�Then� I can finally� die� proud.�

And, as if he had finished all that he needed to do, the broken dwarf let his head slowly fall back against the ground and breathed his last, ragged sigh through smiling lips. But not even in death did his hand release its tight grip on the handle of a vicious war axe, the head of which was deeply embedded in the back of the monstrous, blue-grey creature�s knee.

As Taskkarr got up from his kneeling position, Judeau couldn�t help but notice the tears that ran from the demon hunter�s eyes before they disappeared into his beard, but he could not say if they were for Yrikk or for whatever it was that the broken dwarf had told him. Judeau�s glance once again shifted over to the dead body.

�How� could he still be alive, still fighting� unbelievable.�

Taskkarr, reaching for the reins of his murvelbeast as Thirgynn offered them to him, shot the scout a cold iron glare and rumbled: �Willpower, manling. Not so unbelievable if you are a dwarf. We are not easily slain, even with wounds we can not survive. But we have no more time to dawdle! Hurry, to the Gate!�

He was mounted and moving within a heartbeat, and the rest of them fell in behind him � but not before Judeau had seen the Crusader give the dwarf corpse a quick salute. Giving it an instant�s second thought, the scout did the same. Willpower, eh? Actually, I don�t care what anyone calls it: you were amazing, friend.

As the small, motley team rushed towards the swell of battle and the shattered mountain gate beyond, another thought formed over the increasingly distracting, stinging pain of the brand:

Nothing ever changes. Just when you think it's over, another battle waits right around the corner.

Sheesh� I wonder how we're going to get out of this one.

Then all other thoughts were drowned in the deafening bellow of Oothark�han, the great, unseen dwarven war horn.

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