The years slipped by and my hair grew grey and my beard white. I can now count three-score and three winters against my name. As my physical strength declined, I discovered life’s compensations, such as the increased wisdom of experience. The greatest boon, however, were my grandchildren. The most recent addition was Torsten and Reika’s daughter to number with Aella’s two boys. Whenever I gaze upon their fresh, innocent features, my mind returns involuntarily to the dreadful day many years before at Hampsthwaite when I gazed with horror on the two children callously slain by arrows in their backs—unfulfilled lives, nipped in the bud, stolen by fiends from Hell. But the leader of the demons had a name and he was not so far away—Edred, son of Rixinc.
Like a recurring nightmare, his hazy cou
