I had never come this far north before, never been to the Cold Lands. Someone, years ago in a roadside tavern, told me the people of the Cold Lands have such cruel and vicious gods that cause their people to live cold hard lives. He also told me that their soldiers patrol the borders looking for strangers, regarding all as spies, invaders and villains.
It didn’t surprise me then when, after only a few hours of crossing the ill-defined borderlands to the Cold Lands, a patrol of soldiers intercepted me. At least, I presumed they were soldiers; they wore tattered remnants of what once may have been uniforms. They were armed of course, but then most that travel the roads are armed, much as I am, and know how to defend themselves, much as I do. I knew there would be little point though in offering resistance to the patrol that surrounded me on that road. None of us knew each other’s languages, so it was by gesture that they indicated they would escort me to the town that lay like a smudged shadow in the misty distance.
I was quite happy to go with them. It seems to be either cold or rainy in the Cold Lands, or on a bad day, both. Furthermore, as the man I met in that tavern so long ago said, most days in the Cold Lands are bad days. Maybe the gods of the Cold Lands want it that way. Maybe the people of the Cold Lands owe some huge debt to those gods.
Whatever the reason, it is not a happy land… but then few lands are. Most though manage to be happy every now and then, but the Cold Lands do not… not ever.
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