The woman with dragon's blood rode a great black stallion, snow crunching beneath his hooves. Her crimson hair was pulled back in a braid, and her golden eyes scanned the forest for any signs of danger. Behind her, a man with curly black hair rode on a mare. His face, clean-shaven for most of his life, now grew dark stubble which itched and bothered him continuously, such that he kept fidgeting in his saddle.

  "You need to stop that," said the dragonblooded woman, whose name was Nessalir. "It's distracting."

  "I am a son of Remura," replied her companion, the scholar Iarius. "We do not grow out our beards like Northern barbarians. I can't even recall the last time I went so long without shaving."

  "You'll get used to it."

  "Stars help me if that happens."

  Nessalir turned in her saddle and regarded the man. He was smaller than her, though this was far from unusual. Nessalir was a tall and well-muscled woman, and even the mightiest of warriors could often seem small in comparison. She watched as Iarius rubbed at his chin and pointedly did not look at her, and she smirked.

  The Remurans were a strange people. They boasted one of the greatest empires the world had ever known, and yet a little bit of chin hair was enough to cause them such strife. Nessalir did not see why his sparse beard should bother Iarius so--certainly it made him appear more like a man and less like a boy. She imagined that his complaints would die down once they spent some time in town; many were the women of the Northern Lands who would appreciate a well-spoken and educated man who did not resemble a child.

  But such things would have to wait for now. Nessalir had taken a contract, and Iarius, ever eager to chronicle her exploits, had followed without a second thought. The evening before, the pair had arrived at the village of Watervine, and the headman had been eager to receive a warrior of such renown as Nessalir the Red. He had wasted no time in welcoming the mercenary and her companion to his humble village, and likewise he wasted no time in telling her of the danger that Watervine had of late found itself in.

  Not far from the village, at the top of a hill, sat an ancient fortress. It was a ruin of the Karkhosian Empire, that mighty civilization that reigned over the world for a thousand years before collapsing, suddenly and with no recorded explanation. For longer than anyone knew, this fortress ruin had stood overlooking Watervine, and in all that time there had never been any problem.

  But that changed a month ago, when terrible, inhuman howls began to emanate from within the fortress walls. A group of brave but foolhardy young men had departed Watervine to investigate, but none had ever returned.

  Nessalir listened to the headman's tale, and in the night she stood in the village square and listened as the wind carried the strange and terrible sounds from the ruin to her ears. The headman offered her a price of twenty silver--a modest sum, but a fortune in a village as small as this--if she would journey to the ruin, discover the fates of the young men who'd gone before her, and put an end to that terrible howling.

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  She agreed, and in the morning, Nessalir and Iarius set off for the fortress.

  Now, they directed their horses down an old forest road, covered in snow and broken by plants that sprouted up through years of disuse. Trees surrounded them on all sides, and the closer they drew to the hill and the fortress, the less they heard the sounds of birdsong.

  As they reached the base of the hill, and the old stone fortress came into view, Nessalir heard a branch cracking somewhere close by. Immediately, she brought her horse, Huunang, to a halt, and signalled to Iarius that he should do the same.

  "What is it?" Iarius asked, his voice low.

  Nessalir did not reply. Her reptilian eyes scanned the trees, her keen eyesight taking in every little detail she could. Something moved in the undergrowth, and Nessalir tensed as her battle instincts warned her of imminent danger. Without a word, she dismounted Huunang, and drew from her belt her sword and her handax.

  Her sword she held in her right hand, which bore the pale, pink flesh of her human heritage. Her ax she held in her left, which was covered in red scales, with fingers that ended in red claws. Her scales likewise ran down her neck and her back, covered mostly by the tough leather hide and mail she wore, but they ended in an inhuman that should not hide: a thick red tail, which swayed back and forth as she braced herself for combat.

  She slid her feet into position, and prepared for the attack she was certain would come at any moment. No sooner had she readied herself than a man covered in rags leapt out of the forest, wildly swinging a sword at her neck.

  Perhaps a lesser warrior might have been caught off-guard by the ferocity of the attack, but there were few warriors in all the North like Nessalir the Red. She stepped back and raised her handax, hooked it over her opponent's blade, and with a flick of her wrist, disarmed her attacker. His sword went flying into the shrubbery, and Nessalir thrust her sword into his gut.

  She expected blood, a grunt of pain, and for the ambusher to collapse. But he did not bleed, and instead he attempted to claw at her face with dirty fingers and filth-encrusted nails. Now Nessalir saw his face, bloodless and gaunt, his eyes gone from his socket, and she realized that she did not now fight a living man.

  "Draugr!" she shouted, warning Iarius of the threat they faced even as two more rag-covered men leapt from the trees. She heard Iarius' horse let out a frightened whinny, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him clinging to the reins as he desperately swung his own sword at the undead which menaced him.

  Scowling, she ripped her blade from the draugr's gut and kicked the moving corpse away. It stumbled and fell against a tree, and Nessalir whirled around just in time to parry another draugr's sword as it sought to strike her from behind.

  Knowing that hesitation meant death in the face of such foes, Nessalir wasted no time in bringing her ax down upon the draugr's skull, splitting its head apart and sending it collapsing into the dirt.

  Iarius cried out as more draugr emerged from the trees. Nessalir hefted her weapons, took a quick count of how many undead combatants now faced her and her companion (five, by the look of it), and charged.