“The infernal creatures live forever, then?” Hansel exclaimed, forgetting in his excitement to control his voice. Forgetting his disbelief too.

  “Try to remain calm,” Georg hissed immediately. “We don’t want the whole town to know.”

  Hansel nodded and took deep breaths before he spoke again, a little quieter.

  “Dragons live forever?” he asked in a hollow whisper. It was horrifying to imagine living under the tyranny of such monstrous creatures in one’s own lifetime, let alone to imagine that reign stretching out, extending into eternity.

  Would a good God do that to us?

  “They do not,” Georg said immediately. “Rather, I believe that they can, theoretically, but in practice they are killed.”

  “But you said—”

  “By other dragons,” Georg finished. “If you would let me tell my entire story, from the beginning until I reach the present day, you would have far fewer questions.”

  Hansel nodded. Against his better judgment, he was beginning to think that Georg might not be insane after all. He had survived the destruction of their home village, somehow or other—either that or known well enough not to be present on the day of.

  The former merchant’s eyes narrowed at that thought. If Hansel learned that Georg had brought destruction down on their homes, and he hadn’t even faced up to the danger that wrecked their families’ lives himself, then Hansel did not know what he would do.

  But that is a thought for later, he told himself. I do not need to worry about it now.

  “Go on,” Hansel said. “I apologize for the outbursts. It has been a long time, living without answers. I will give no further interruptions. Please. Please tell the story. Give me answers.” Hansel nodded and braced for the truth—or perhaps madness that would be indistinguishable from truth.

  “We had completed our basic training,” Georg said. His eyes took on a faraway look as he continued, “We embarked on our mission. A trek across the border, into the Empire’s heartland. There was intelligence that in a certain area of the Sullen Mountains, sheep and goats regularly went missing. The goatherds had told the Kingdom’s agents more than that, of course—that it was some terrible creature that was stealing their livestock. Naturally, they were skeptical, but they received multiple accounts verifying the events, firsthand sightings, all clustered around a certain mountain peak—one that happened to be near the Imperial Winter Residence.

  “Our superiors were fairly certain that we would find a target there. A member of the Imperial Family who was a dragon—and just happened to enjoy hunting live game rather than eating his meals in the Residence with the rest of the family. The spymaster we coordinated with, Specialist Mendel, embarked with us, so he could connect us with the locals to the extent necessary to make our mission easier. We took a roundabout route to the border—” He traced his index finger across the table in a wide arc—“to avoid the conflict zone. There were skirmishes going on, what later became known as the Battle of Goldkater.

  “We crossed the Renos River and into the Kleine Forest. It was cold out. Early Winter.” He shivered slightly before continuing. “There was light snow on the ground. We were all ready for that, of course. We had the equipment, we had the clothing—all in white, gray, and brown for camouflage—and of course, we had our special training. When you are good at controlling the body’s natural energy, you can keep yourself a little warmer, burning off stored fat more efficiently than the body normally does. If you can tap into energies outside your body, you can pull some heat from whatever living things are around you, even seemingly frozen trees and shrubs. So we got by.

  “It took us three days to cross through the Kleine. Faster than untrained people, but slower than we would have been if not for the snow. We saw nothing of note while we were there, so I will pass over it. Next, we found ourselves at the beginning of the Sullen Mountains. We passed through the Twein Mountains, the first two towering peaks in the range. We needed to go deeper according to Mendel—we were heavily reliant on him, we did not even truly know where we were going—and we were on a tight timetable. We did not know when or if this royal might grow bored of his hunting and return to the Imperial Capital. We marched day and night.

  “With circumstances like that, you lose track of the passage of time, and waking and dreaming life can start to blur together. I saw some beautiful things.” Georg shook his head with a look of admiration in his eyes. “I saw a lone wolf, stalking through the snow drifts after a white hart. That was majestic. I saw a tree outside that some locals had decorated with Christmas ornaments, for whatever reason. It was much too early in the season for that. But the sight reminded me that even though the people there lived under the Empire, they were just people like us. More innocent than us, because the locals there were not trained to kill. And I remember the most beautiful sight of all. We passed one of the tallest mountains, very steep on one side. By some whim of Heaven, the mountain had a river flowing uphill on the other side, so on our side, there was the largest waterfall I have ever seen in my life, frozen solid. It was incredible, and I did something remarkably foolish.

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  “I insisted that the whole group stop for the evening. People in the unit broadly liked and respected me, and I did not make much trouble, as a rule, so they grudgingly agreed. I took out a sketchbook from my bag, and I made a pencil sketch depicting the damned mountain range, with the waterfall at the center—ah, I apologize for my language.” Georg frowned.

  “I do not mind the blasphemy,” Hansel said quietly after a moment. “I do it too. Please go on.”

  “Well, anyway, there were forty-seven of us then—I remember that a head count was taken. Someone kindled a fire to keep us a bit warmer for the evening—and, I think, to improve my light, because they saw what I was doing, why I had wanted to pause. Then, since I was the one who made them stop, the group insisted that I try and make a sketch of them, standing in front of the waterfall, too. So, I did.” Georg smiled sadly. “I made a sketch, and that is all that remains.” The warrior paused to let the implications of his words sink in.

  Hansel swallowed as he thought about this.

  Well, I had no reason to believe this would be a happy story, he told himself. Still, the words from Georg seemed to have lowered the temperature around the two men by several degrees. Hansel could imagine himself in the cold with these warriors. These would-be assassins.

  What went wrong? he could not help but wonder. Hansel could feel that the man who sat across from him was dangerous. Deadly. Georg had always given that impression when the two men crossed paths though it now felt far more intense than he recalled it had been when they were neighbors in Rankelberg. How did forty-six men like Georg end up dead?

  Georg nodded to himself, sighed, and continued his story. “That was the second to last truly beautiful sight we saw during the expedition. The next morning, Specialist Mendel detoured to contact one of our local sources of information. When he returned, he told us that we were behind schedule. We needed to move quickly or risk missing the Imperial Family’s window of winter vacation. We moved slowly up in elevation, walking at double the speed we had before. The environment changed in a subtle way. It was mostly snow and ice, everything around us frozen permanently, not just for the season. When you are standing on permafrost, it’s hard to find anything quite so beautiful as we had before.” He cracked a humorless smile and shook his head. “Just over a week out from the beginning of our journey, I had made enemies. There were those who blamed me for how we suffered in the cold weather—because I had made us stop and thereby delayed our mission. It was grasping at straws, but as the cold gnaws at you, you look for anyone at hand to blame.

  “We kept moving forward. There was nothing to do but that, and the men understood it. Even the ones who resented me a bit didn’t let it distract them from our purpose. We were there to accomplish a noble deed, never before achieved in history as far as we knew. Gradually, most of them grew better at manipulating their energy to regulate their body temperatures. Although there were two of the less talented in our number who went to bed on one particularly cold night and never woke up, succumbing to the elements. Those were the first deaths, and the members of the unit were understandably upset. We grieved them, but we could not take the time to bury them in that frosty, unforgiving soil. We just covered their bodies as best we could and moved on, trusting the cold to preserve them.

  “That had soured the mood permanently on the expedition, we thought. There would be little joy even if we accomplished the mission now, because we had already lost men. Moreover, losing them in that way, when we were still surrounded by the snowy mountains, felt like a premonition of defeat. The men started to whisper talk of magic. It was widely understood that dragons were natural mages as well as being powerful destructive creatures. Some of us started to think that perhaps they were manipulating the weather in this place. They did not want us to reach them, did not want the fight that we would bring, so they were killing us off simply using the natural environment. When these rumors spread to the Captain and Specialist, they called us all to a halt and bluntly told us to stop spreading that nonsense.

  “I think the way they handled it was far from ideal. They threatened to execute any man trying to scare his comrades away from the danger with these ‘unsubstantiated rumors.’ You would be recorded as a deserter, a dishonorable fate for any soldier, let alone this group of men who had been told that we were the cream of the army and destined for something special. Suddenly, the group had a target for their fear and resentment that was neither me nor the enemy. Gradually building as the afternoon went on was talk of a mutiny.

  “I was not interested in betraying the army that I had joined with such high hopes, but it was difficult to calm the spirits of the other men once they had been thus moved. I ultimately volunteered for a perilous role, to act as their spokesman with the Captain and appeal to him for more information about the mission—or else to authorize us to pull back. Abandon the plan and retreat. If the cold alone was killing us, why should we think we were well equipped enough to accomplish the mission? It was weak reasoning, but our rations had run low, we had diminishing confidence in our leaders, and all of us were on edge. I mainly hoped to convince the Captain that the low spirits in the camp were serious. Hopefully, he would do something to address that. The plan was that I would go and speak to him that evening, when we set up camp.

  “Then, when it grew dark, we no longer had any doubts about whether we were moving in the right direction, or any reason to hope for retreat—at least not as far as I was concerned. We witnessed a spectacle in the sky as the sun set and day turned into night. Something at once terrible and beautiful. Two beasts, two dragons, took to the sky. Fighting.”