“Right then, it’s a good long one. We’ll have to break off for lunch and tea, supper, too, maybe. Ah well, here goes. Once upon a time . . .”

Colder than the winter wind howling its dirge through the Southwest Forest.

Colder than the snow blanketing tree, rock and earth in its silent shroud.

Colder than ice that lay on water and hung in shards from branches and bushes.

Colder than these was the smile of Ferahgo the Assassin! Ferahgo was still young, but as the seasons passed his evil and infamy would grow, and everybeast would come to fear the name of the blue-eyed weasel.

His band searched the wrecked badgers’ den, scavenging and snarling over winter food and the few pitiful possessions strewn among the debris. Smiling pitilessly, Ferahgo stepped over the bodies of the slain badger Urthound and his wife Urthrun, the last two brave creatures to stand against him. Stealth and deceit, reinforced by a crew of backstabbers, were the Assassin’s trademark. He had tricked the badgers into thinking this would be a peace conference. Fools!

Migroo the stoat pulled aside a heap of dried moss. “Chief, look!”

Two badger babes lay huddled together, mewling and shivering as they stuck their heads up, lips pursed in a plea for mother’s milk.

Migroo laughed. “That one looks like his father, but this other one, Chief, it’s white. I thought all badgers had stripes.”

Ferahgo tickled their nose tips with his knifepoint. “They’re both males. One is a proper badger, the other is an albino. They might not be orphans today if their parents had not resisted me.”

Migroo watched the point of Ferahgo’s knife. “What’re yeh goin’ t’ do with ’em?”

The Assassin shrugged and sheathed his blade. “Nothing. The winter will take care of Urthound’s whelps.”

Fondling the round gold medallion he had taken from the neck of Urthound, Ferahgo gave one last glance around.

“Now nobeast in the Southwest is left to oppose me. Come on, my Corpsemakers!”

The weasel swept out into the wintering forestlands with his band, a smile still fixed in his beautiful light blue eyes.

*   *   *

Behind him in the ruins of the den the two badger babes, one striped, the other pure white, snuggled against the cold body of their mother. They made pitiful little noises, waiting for her to wake and comfort them. Outside the snowflakes blew gustily between tree and bush, chased by the soughing wind.

It was cold.

But not as cold as the smile on the face of Ferahgo the Assassin.

BOOK ONE

Questors and Runaways

1

Many and many a long season had come and gone since that fateful midwinter day in the Southwest Lands.