Author's Note: Note: You'll be seeing a lot of this during the course of the whole story. I've finally re-edited Chapter 12. Yes! I can finally have my holiday without that hanging over me! Woot! And I'm satisfied with it too. Good job! Pats herself on the back

Midnight Destiny:

Legendary Assassin

Prologue

The wind was howling through the frosted Yecka trees when they came, Riders, brutal nomads of the Cold North. Many fireside tales were told about their savagery and cruelty, intending to scare younger children into obedience.

They were the stuff of nightmares. When they killed, they did it with relish and cold, cruel laughter. The Riders left no one alive.

Named thus because of the wild Northern horses they rode, they wreaked havoc amongst the citizens of Valhara who made their homes north of the Deep Water. The Riders attacked for no apparent reason a few years after the Nimnal Treaty had been signed as a sign of peace and friendship between our two countries.

After we built our first few settlements and had slowly began to adapt to the colder, harsher life in the North, the Riders apparently thought they no longer wanted to be peace-loving people.

And the Battle of Radrag began.

It was a dark time, a time of war. My village was among the first to fall. I was young, barely eleven when a party of Riders attacked.

They were so swift that the sentries on guard had no time to sound the alarm. We awoke to the screams of the dying, the sound of crackling flames and the war cries of the Riders. Even as we heard the sound of fire, we locked and barred our doors, sliding bolt after bolt in place, knowing that the fate awaiting us outside was far worse than burning to death.

Baby May, my darling little sister awoke from her baby dreams, feeling the heavy, panic-laden atmosphere. My mother picked her up and crooned an old Valharan lullaby, shushing her into silence as we heard the savage snorts of the wild Northern steeds outside our door.

My father held a heavy crossbow in his hand, and my brother, his first bow and quiver of arrows. He had just made them yesterday, showing them off to his friends and bragging about how many Riders he was going to kill to the village girls.

No one expected him to put it to the test so soon.

There were thuds against out front door. It creaked and bulged ominously. Almost too soon, there were the sound of axes being drawn and a new sound invaded our ears: that of steel against wood.

The sturdy oak door, made by my father not three months ago splintered. He had worked hours on it, hewing it into shape, polishing it to a smooth sheen and making sure that there were no stray splinters to hurt my mothers' fingers. Already small slits of light from the fires outside shone through.

My mother hustled me into a trapdoor hidden beneath the kitchen table and I saw my parents hugging each other and my brother trying desperately to look brave. They all had the same hopeless look in their eyes.

And that was the last thing I saw before the trapdoor closed above me and there was no more light. Holding onto my mother’s hand, I followed her through the dark tunnel, the silence oppressive to my overly sensitized ears, my heart beating loudly enough to rival the huge drums of war.

After some time, we emerged from the tunnel into a small clearing a little off to the side of my village.

The first sight that greeted me was that of Mrs. Comb, a kind-hearted widow that made a life selling sweetmeats to the village children. She was dead, hanging from a tree, her body already blue from the cold.

Mr. Latrell was not far away, the woodcutter who had wooed her incessantly last autumn. He was pinned to a tree, a crude-looking weapon embedded in each of his arms and legs.

Their faces carried expressions of outmost horror and pain, so much it made their eyes bulge from their sockets and mouths open in a never-ending scream.

Bile rose in my throat and I threw up my dinner.

Just that evening we had sat around the dining table, talking and laughing at Baby May’s antics when she refused to eat her porridge, banging her spoon on the table and splattering bits of gruel everywhere. Now it seemed a faraway dream, a figment of the imagination.

After hurling up the contents of my stomach, I looked up only to find myself staring at a pair of pink shoes.

No. Not her. It couldn’t be.

With a muffled cry, I turned and ran, ignoring the calls of my mother, running, running.

But the image was already imprinted in my mind; Satin, my best friend. Trampled beneath the hooves of a horse, her fair hair gleaming in the firelight, her beautiful cornflower blue eyes glazed over in the signature of death.

I couldn’t understand all this. I ran and ran, as if I could outrun the hideous truth of it all.

I hadn’t run very far when I heard my mother scream.

I stopped abruptly, my entire body quivering, my brain incapable of coherent thought. Panic held me in her tight clutches, refusing to let go.

I heard a rustle in the bushes, the crunch of boots on snow a scant second before a hand clamped over me mouth, cutting off my scream. A strong arm clamped around my waist, pinning my hands to my side and stilling my struggles.

The man turned me around to face him.

A Rider stared back at me.

His face was the scariest thing I had ever seen. The war paint took on a bluish tinge under the pale light of the moon, blood streaked from his temples, the resulting line of caked blood that ran down the side of his face a ghastly sight. Stubble and a square jaw lent his face a brutish expression. Yellow eyes stared at me as I froze, too frightened to make a sound.

He put his finger to his lips in a gesture of silence. “Quiet”, the Rider said in oddly accented Valharan. “If you not make sound, I let go.” His voice was sounded wobbly, like a young boy’s. He struggled to find words to convey his meaning across and the language sounded broken from misuse.

When I made no move, he slowly removed his hand from my mouth.

Run! My mind screamed.

My mother’s scream rent through the cold night air, high and piercing, overriding all the other sounds of turmoil, this time accompanied by Baby May’s wailing.

I turned, only to have the stranger pull me back. “No go,” he said, pulling me in the opposite direction. “Die.” He looked as frightened as myself.

“No!” I yelled. “Let me go!” I lashed out and managed to land a blow on his stomach, taking him by surprise and his grip loosened enough for me to slip free.

He lunged for me and missed. I ran in the direction of my mother’s screams.

I heard the sound of crashing undergrowth and knew he was hard on my heels. My brain did not yet make sense of this young barbarian who rode with the monsters that was decimating my village and spoke Valharan.

I arrived to a scene of horror. From behind some trees I saw a Rider holding my mother’s arms above her head while two more held each of her legs. Yet another Rider was grunting, in between them. My mother lay helpless, tears making twin tracks down her cheeks. Each scream she sounded earned her a slap. Her struggles availed her nothing. She was no match for the strength of four full grown Riders.

Baby May lay wailing on the snow and I did nothing but watch in horrified fascination. The Riders were laughing. One of them muttered something sharp and guttural and walked over to Baby May, who was crying her baby lungs out. He loosened his axe from his belt and raised it.

A hand clamped over my mouth, stifling my scream and another closed over my eyes, blocking out the hideous scene that would haunt me in the form of nightmares for the rest of my life. Yet, even without sight, I could still heard the swish of steel descending and landing with a sickening sound on flesh and blood.

All was silent in the clearing. A sound of utter desolation reach my ears.

Mother.

She didn’t scream for long. Another thud and she too ceased.

The barbarian lifted me in one arm, cradling me gently against his chest as I just existed, in a state of shock. His grip was surprisingly gentle as he took me further and further into the woods, until the screams of the dying, the sounds of flames licking greedily at thatched houses could no longer be heard.

He was one of them! All my instincts told me to run, but I was still in a state of shock. Unable to move or think coherently. Too dazed to even react when he put me down and drew his sword. Then, I saw his eyes.

He wanted to kill me. No, not the mindless killing that went on in my village, but to give me a merciful death. There was fear in those yellow eyes, and a fearful determination. He did nothing but look at me for a long moment. Then, he slowly lowered his sword and sheathed it. Instead, he drew a wicked-looking dagger that glinted in the moonlight from the bear-hide belt around his waist and cut a lock of my hair.

Voices were approaching, torches carried aloft, low and rough, speaking in the guttural Northern dialect, calling out, “Phalhanthas! Phalhanthas!”

The young man with me froze, and with one swift movement, ripped my tunic down the front and threw himself at me. He quickly made a gash on his own arm and smeared his blood over me.

As the light reached our clearing, Phalhanthas jerked up from my body as if startled and fumbled with the drawstring of his hose.

When they saw him, they laughed. He grinned back at them and called out something in their crude language. He gestured for them to go on and that he would catch up with them later. That much I understood, but the rest of the words were lost to me.

As the torchlight faded away, he unbuckled his ice-bear cloak and draped it around my shivering shoulders. “Live,” he growled. “Go south. Where third sun sets.” He held my gaze for a moment, making sure I understood, before his turned and walked away, leaving me where I lay.

Alone, with the sounds of the night.