Mane woke up sweating again. The dream was the same as it ever was, his beloved, his wife, his Ezmiralda beckoning to him, hand outstretched calling to him one moment, then screaming in terror the next. Every night the same dream. Every single night since THE night.
Eighteen months before, Ezmiralda had been with him. The sun beat down on Kennrun, had it not been for the siege it would almost be a nice day, but as it was the people of Kennrun were starving, as were the Ghul’Dar hobgoblin mercenaries and their human allies trapped with the civilians inside the city walls. The food had run out, two, maybe three days before. He wasn’t likely to starve to death today, but Mane Grizznar knew he would starve to death.
At least he and Ezmiralda would die together. Three summers they’d been married, and ten since he fell in love with the witch’s apprentice in the village of their birth. Three summers since they ran off together, taking only his fathers, now HIS sword, and her staff and spell book, and left to join the Gul’Dar.
Three years of fighting, marching, sitting in garrison, and well, soldiering together with her and their brothers in the band, and sometimes with the humans they worked with or for as well. And then three months of this damned siege . . .
Mane looked at the tiny morsel he had hidden in his hand, wrapped in a dirty handkerchief, a single shriveled crab apple. On an ordinary day it wouldn’t be something you would consider food, much less precious, but today it was all he could bring back to Ezmiralda.
They ate, Mane ensuring that Ezmiralda at more than he, and lay together that night, collapsing as the sun was still setting from exhaustion and lack of nourishment. When he awoke in the night, Ezmiralda was gone.
”To Arms! To Arms! To the gate!”
Mane leapt up with a shot, a siege break? Tonight? Now? perhaps he would die in battle still then, rather than starve tomorrow or the next day. He pulled on his dented armor, grasped his father’s sword. Ezmiralda must already be at the line. . .? Confusion over the location of his mate clouded Mane’s mind. She’d left her spell book. Why would she leave her spell book? but her staff was gone.
Mane joined his unit, his wife still nowhere to be seen. Then the battle was upon him, the flurry of the blades flying, the Ghul’Dar pouring out the city gates and breaking the siege, battering back the enemy. Mane hacked away, warily working his way through the battle, careful not to die till he could find his love.
At the height of the battle, as the enemy began to fall away he thought he caught a glimpse of her across the field. Her black hair, blowing in the breeze beneath the full blood moon above, on her knees bowing before a gigantic figure in armor made of bones.
It was then that Mane understood—whoever, whatever, the giant in the bone armor was, Ezmiralda had gone to him, to it perhaps. She’d made a deal with some kind of devil, and her sacrifice had opened the path for their success.
Eighteen months later, and Mane still wept whenever he remembered that night. I will find her. She’s not slain. The Giant in Bones has her, and I will free her from his grasp. Mane poured over her spell book again, for the hundredth, the thousandth time. The symbols made no sense to him at first, the arcane necromantic writings of his wife, but now he could almost decipher them.
She left this for me. The power to find her, to free her—it’s here, in her spell book. I shall walk the Path of Bones till I can kill the Giant in Bones and reunite with my love again. I swear it on my soul, Ezmiralda.
