The night wind brought with it the cold chill of death and the scent of age and decay. The sky was still black with clouds blocking the lights of the stars and moon. The ground was damp, soaked through after the torrential rains that had swept through, only minutes before.  Far in the north the distant sound of thunder could still be heard as it rolled across the sky. All was still in the valley; the normal night sounds still absent so shortly after the storm.
     Sheltered within a small stand of trees several paces off the hard packed dirt road that had remained solid even after the downpour, a young man sat listening.  His breath rasped in his lungs as he gulped down deep droughts of the ice-cold air.  Blood still seeped slowly from the deep slash in his side and his eyes never stopped their ceaseless movement as the searched the night.  His heart pounded in his heart like he had just run a race.
     He strained his ears, listening for any sound not common to the night.  There was a twang of a bowstring from somewhere in the dark. The man turned towards the sound but his movement was halted suddenly and he fell lifelessly to the ground an arrow shaft protruding from his chest.
 
 
 

     The snow drifted slowly to the earth, blanketing the ground in waist high drifts.  The sky was a crystal blue, cloudless, with the sun shinning brightly in the eastern sky.  A light breeze carried with it the smell of fresh bread baking in the village nearby.  The snow reflected the sun’s rays in a blinding display of light that boggled the mind.
     The sun climbed higher in the sky as the day wore on, and clouds rolled of the snow covered plain. Dark carrion bids bean to fill the sky and the light breeze from the east became a chill wind from the north.  It carried with it the smell of war and death, and the full bite of winter.  The building clouds began to darken and turn black with the day growing short, blocking the light of the sun from the sky.  Until at sunset, even the blood red rays of sunset were barely perceptible. The snow poured from the sky in blinding turrets, whipping around the small house of the little town and tearing at the men’s cloaks as they hurried home.  As the two great armies approached the plain the wind turned colder than the grave itself, and the women closed their shutters as they prepared for supper.
     In the last dying embers of the day, the light almost completely gone from the sky, the armies charged the field. Slowed slightly by the snow, but even that would not bar them long.  Not even the chill wind could quench the fire of hatred in their hearts.