At a camp on the frontier

The Queen had declared the border realms would be expanded, and her armed forces were mobilized, and so too were the Knights of the Order of St Angraboda; though these few hundred men made up only a small portion of a much larger ****. I was a courier. My role was simple: deliver messages between the Orders' commanders and the frontier camps. General Alric commanded both the rank and file fighting men and the far more deadly but fewer in number knights.

At least that's how it should have been. It wasn't long before my duties took me away from the officer’s planning tents and into the teeth of armed conflict.

I was in a forward camp, more than five weeks of hard travel from the nearest border, when their warriors struck, just as darkness had overtaken the snow covered valley. They attacked just before watch change, slipping unnoticed past our forward sentries.

We never saw them coming.

I was struck from behind and knocked out cold. When I awoke, I found myself bound and gagged with a strip torn from my own cloak. I was lying on the floor of an empty tent near a smouldering fire, where two of my fellow countrymen lay ****, also bound at the wrists and ankles.

“Hey, you’re finally awake.”

I looked up.

The tallest woman I had ever seen stood over me, clad in tight fitting hide and leather. Her hair was the color of the wheat fields my family tended for generations, before I was pushed into military service. Her eyes the color of the lavender from my mother’s small garden. She also carried the largest ax I’ve ever seen.

She smiled and placed her hand on my cheek. "You are quite pretty, I’d wager now that she picks you." She laughed, then she pulled back, placing her finger against her lips. "Shh," she whispered.

"What happened?" I asked, confused by the situation.

"You crossed the Northern Hordes border . And now- well, you’ll see. Sleep, we make for Doth-Ral in the morning."