[22 years ago]
The great warrior took a deep breath of the cold winter air and tried to settle his mind. The snow was getting ever worse and in the few moments they had stayed at Breaker’s Point, already a thick layer of snow had accumulated.
He turned so his back was against the wind. It would be easier to travel in that direction, but the nightstalkers were clever and would think of that. That direction would be their first choice.
But the nightstalkers would take every precaution. They would calculate that their information about the Snow Witch’s location is less than six hours old. They would then calculate how far their prey might travel from Breaker’s Point in that time. They would then move swiftly to encircle that perimeter and start to constrict it.
There are three towns that might be reached in the available time, but Morgan and Alandra could not go to any of them for the same reason they were not now headed to Dunsmith with Norman Gilead and his companions. The nightstalkers were already there. Waiting. Searching.
The warrior again breathed deeply of the cold winter air. He shook off some snow and then closed his eyes. He could feel Alandra’s nearby presence even though he was not looking at her. The unknown in all this, for him, was her and what she could do.
Could she make the storm worse to forestall any nightstalker search?
Could she magically change their appearance enough to allow them to slip through the encirclement?
Could she transform them into woodland creatures who surely then would not be detected by the coming threat?
He focused ever deeper on his breathing and eventually his mind became calm. In the stillness, he suddenly knew what to do.
He turned back to Alandra and was struck somehow again as always by the intensity of her gaze. She smiled sweetly, knowing he had solved her puzzle, and anxious to learn what the solution is.
“We must visit old enemies of mine,” he declares grimly.
“Enemies?” She frowns. “What enemies? Why enemies?”
He purses his lips, unable to find any words for a long time. “In truth I hold them no animosity. Never did… but I killed a great many of them.”
Alandra’s lips form an involuntary O and suddenly she feels the cold outside when before she did not. The great silence of winter descends upon them.
“We should go,” he eventually urges.
“Yes,” she accedes. “Why did you kill them?”
He matches her gaze but cannot hold it. “They opposed me,” he eventually says before turning mostly into the wind and setting their path.