Knights of Ferlonia

PROLOGUE

The first snow of late autumn fell soft but relentless, and in the dark void of a starless sky it left a trace of its passage only in the faint glimmer of the incandescent globe that advanced slowly, preceding Anker's unsteady steps. His boots crushed the thin blanket with a crackle, and in the shape of their footprints there was only a transparent slush that was cyclically swallowed up by the night.

Anker grunted with exertion. He kept his mouth open to catch his breath, and the cold air with each breath seemed to pierce his throat and lungs with tiny needles. The snowflakes, driven by the wind, clung to his eyebrows and beard, melting into icy and sticky rivulets. The burden he carried on his shoulders grew colder and stiffer. Madja's breath could no longer be felt on his neck, and by now the doubt that she was alive or dead was giving way to a grim certainty.

The scratches on his shoulder and side burned intensely, but Anker tried to ignore them. That endless, desperate blind march certainly didn't help to distract him. Darkness had fallen for more than an hour, the snow was inexorably covering the path, and Anker had completely lost his sense of direction.

He could only pray that luck would lead him to a shelter where he could wait for the first light of dawn.

At the next step his left ankle gave way, making him fall to his knee, and then the weight of Madja unbalanced him, causing him to fall face down on the ground. Anker left Madja's knee for a moment and pulled himself up unsteadily, then grabbed her vigorously so as not to fall again. With his face dirty with snow and mud, Anker could not hold back his tears and let out a cry of despair to the sky.

Anker considered himself primarily responsible for the terrible situation they had gotten themselves into, and the guilt was crushing him. There seemed to be no salvation on the horizon, and even if he had found it, there was still no way out of that disaster. Once he returned to civilization, his future would be forever tarnished.

With difficulty Anker climbed the next hill and then, unexpectedly, a hundred yards away, he saw a flickering flame.