Seidrik Galadorn, Lion of the North:

Dagger in the Dark

by Kenneth Chivers

Xinn had run his horse to death weeks ago, chasing his master's quarry, and now he was worn down to nothing but the gear on his person, which among other tools common to stalkers and assassins, included a deadly artifact of his former life, a tool of his service to Lord Mor'Dhal.  The Dagger of Unduen was forged by the dark arts perfected by his master.  The blade had an evil will that thirst for the hearts of good men.  The dark power in the blade could stop a man's heart with a scratch or have the man put in a slumber that only Lord Mor'Dhal could wake.  These weapons also had a habit of exacting their creator's punishment for failure.  Reflecting on the dagger and the hunt he had been on over the past months brought back all too vivid images of the night that dragged him screaming out of retirement.

Over the past few months of stalking Seidrik Galadorn, a Paladin from the Northern Kingdom, Xinn had learned that his quarry had been an orphan at the Church of the North Cathedral in Luxor Embra, city of the embracing light, and capital of the Northern Kingdom.  The zealots in the Church of the North had a prophecy of a child with jade eyes and hair of burnished bronze, a child who would lead them on a Holy charge against the vile tyrannical rule of Lord Mor'Dhal, the Witch King. 

In Xinn's mind, all of that was horse dung dripping from the mouths of the fanatical crusaders that the Church of the North had always been.  One man's evil was another man's way of life, right?  Why his master was so focused on finding and killing Seidrik was beyond Xinn, but what mattered was his master's will to see this man killed.  His target was well armored, and probably full of his righteous fury, and desire to see the Glorious Witch King of the South destroyed, so that the light of the Northern Sun would bring hope and peace to the south.

Xinn now twirled this long yellow blade in his fingers as he sat on a barrel at the front of a dark alley next to the Green Wall Inn of Redbank.  Redbank was a small town that made its living off trade from local farmers and the great river that wound its way from the bright North to the swamps and marshes deep in the twisted South.  A backwater trade town of no particular consequence to the great Northern states or the power to the South, it had somehow held onto its independence and took no care to the events outside its patrols.  This was the perfect town to take down his pray and vanish into the night with some gory proof for his master.  The emotions of alarm and hunger coming from the dagger in his fingers told him his target was getting closer.
    


Seidrik Galadorn lay slumped on his warhorse Amhir, a great beast nearly 18 hands tall and nearly as wide as two men, barded in the armor of the Northern crusader fashion of interlocking steel plates and chain.  Seidrik's own plate mail armor had been forged and blessed by the Crusader Priests of the Light, it's material gifted by the Augermaidal Dwarves in the mountains bordering the great glacial plains north of the Northern Kingdom.  The once burnished steel and bright white and gold cloak were now dulled, torn and dented from his harrowing journey South.

A shrill cry of Orcs howled out from the forest he had just exited.  Scanning the forest with hard Jade eyes, Seidrik offered a soft prayer for aid from the town of Redbank nearby.  Gripping the black arrow shaft that pierced his side, Seidrik knew that the arrow would pull him to his doom if he turned to fight the hunting Orcs, and hoped they would stay to the trees and tend to their wounded, and the light willing, feast on their dead to buy him some time to find aid.  “A Crusade was a journey made by a few for the sake of many” his adoptive father Oam had told him.  “It is wrought with glory and ruin and fought with faith and will.”

Where was the light taking him that he should be forced to go alone?  Few he had found on this journey had offered any assistance, and those who had were dead long distances behind him, a path of death is what he seemed to be leading.  He didn't know his parents, only that they had died in a border raid and that he had been found as a baby, swaddled and hidden in a barn.  What he did know was what the Church of the North had filled into his head; training him for the Crusades since the day he could walk.

Straightening in his saddle and shifting awkwardly to relieve pressure off his wound, Seidrik looked toward the dark town of Redbank.  Soaked by the continuing downpour and darkened long past sunset, the town looked deserted, except for the lights and sounds coming from what looked like a large Inn.  Seidrik urged his horse toward Redbank, seeking the shelter of the Inn.

Amhir stopped in his tracks just a hundred yards from the border of the town and a low grumbling erupted from his chest.  All thought of his wounds and his morose thoughts vanished as Seidrik drew his sword out of its scabbard.  The blue steel hummed in his hand, a warning that a tainted soul was nearby.  The tainted were the hounds of the Witch King, people and beasts who had sworn their souls to his dark cause.

“Forward Amhir, one more battle tonight before we find our rest my friend.”
Amhir approached the Inn again, this time with the alert walk of a trained warhorse feeling the approach of battle.