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with ice. Wolves hunted throughout the Mountains of Skarandos, and there had even been sightings of snow lions. The mountains cut across the horizon like a toothed saw blade, separating sky from land, separating north from south, and this natural barrier was the main and only reason there had not been more wars between the lands of Vagandrak and Zakora; for they were bordered to the west by the vast impenetrable salt plains, and to the east by the Plague Ocean in which to swim, or even sail, was to die.
    And so Vagandrak and Zakora were afforded a wall erected by Nature, albeit a wall with one implicit flaw: the Pass of Splintered Bones, a valley between the towering peaks, a chasm perhaps fifty feet wide in places, as much as a hundred feet in others, weaving like a contorted snake beneath sheer walls of gleaming slate and rock. Nobody knew the true history of the pass, but it was a road of bones: a pathway of splintered femurs; broken clavicles; cracked radius; crushed vertebrae; fractured fibulas; and split skulls, many in pieces, but some part-whole, their dead black eye sockets a sober warning to those who travelled the pass, that this particular place had a very dark and nasty history.
    Scholars in Vagandrak had multiple theories, many involving slave labour, ritual sacrifice and even the magick of the Equiem; in truth, nobody could even begin to know the true story of how many tens of thousands of corpses had ended up paving this twisting roadway through the Mountains of Skarandos.
    However, many hundreds of years ago, after centuries of sporadic battle, after centuries of Zenta tribesmen raiding the southern villages of Vagandrak in the name of honour and earning their manhood, and with increased rumours of a united tribe army, so King Esekra the Great had conceived and built a mighty fortress, named Desekra, four mighty walls with wide battlements and high crenellations, a narrow passage and gate that could be blocked in an instant. And thus Desekra Fortress rose from the splintered bones of thousands of fallen, its stones mined from the very mountains themselves and creating a vast network of underground tunnels deep into the heart of the mountains and out like a web under the plains beyond the walls.
    The Walls: Sanderlek, Tranta-Kell, Kubosa and Jandallakla – leading to Zula, a huge stocky keep, black and grim and foreboding, more like a prison than the core of a fortress. Zula meant peace, in the old Equiem tongue; and it had been here, on his deathbed, that old King Esekra had indeed found peace, secure in the knowledge he had built not just a protective barrier to guard his people of the north. No. It also stood as a monument to the greatest Battle King ever to walk the lands of Vagandrak.
    Now, as winter caressed the horizon and rain filled with sleet slammed down from the towering Skarandos peaks looming overhead, so two soldiers from the Vagandrak Army stood on Sanderlek, having drawn a six hour night watch, from ten till four. They were not happy about the situation.
    Diagonal sheets slammed down at them, rain and sleet and knives, and they huddled beneath oiled leather cloaks, hands outstretched to a half-shielded brazier on which glowing coals crackled and spat.
    Sanderlek stretched off into blackness in both directions, slick and wet and vast, but the two men were more occupied by attempting to bleach warmth from the brazier than standing watch searching for possible enemies in the wild storm beyond the fortress.
    Jagan was a farmer who, thanks to consistent fallow fields over three years, had lost his land holdings to the King. Whilst bitter about the whole situation, and the fact his wife and child had to move back home with her parents in distant Rokroth, he was still young and strong, and knew a career in the army would at least put food in his child’s mouth until he could work out what other profession to invest his time in. Whilst not a massively intelligent man, he was intelligent enough to