Dobrogost trudged across the wall, booted feet crunching the snow underneath. His cheeks were frigid, standard issue protection was an open faced helm with a simple nose guard, and his mouth needed to be uncovered so they could shout to one another over the blowing wind. It was a cold night, this night. Something was in the air other than the snow, but he could not begin to guess it. Vaguely, he could see the flickering flame of a torch a few paces ahead of him, desperately trying to stay alive as the snow fell. 

He passed by Pyotr, a soldier that had enlisted around the time Dobrogost had entered the watch. They gave the salute and a "Sve chisto" to indicate they had seen nothing of note, and the two continued on their way across the wall. Another twenty minutes and Dobrogost could enter a guardhouse and warm his hands by a fire. Snow flecked his brown beard and his lips cracked painfully. Hopefully they had some hot cafea to sooth himself. Another month and they would be in what Banian's considered spring. 

"Vino aici! Aici!" 

"Idi syuda! Nuragk!" 

Dobrogost turned, and squinted as he gazed into the night. At first he saw nothing in the gloom, but moments later, fellow watchmen ran into his sight like aberrations. They sprinted, carrying leaf-bladed spears and hustling past him. A solder he recognized as Oleg, one of the men about ten years his senior, ushered him to follow. 

"What is happening?" He asked in their mother tongue. 

"The dead," Oleg stated grimly, giving Dobrogost a mere glance before he marched to join the others. Dobrogost followed, grabbing at the arming sword he had at his hip, taking three yanks to pull it out. The frost had made the blade stick. It's why he preferred the axe, but they had insisted on swords. He had even gotten a hand-me-down straight blade rather than the sabers the veterans used. Eight years under the Boyar and he still felt like a newcomer. 

He followed the others, hard men all. They had congregated at the archway above gate, and when Dobrogost pressed through to see what they were gazing at, he gasped. 

A cloaked man stood there, his robe untouched by the flowing wind around him. Behind were figures. Multitudes of dark figures, lankily swaying and moaning like the dreaded dead of the recent scourges past the mountain passes. But those he could handle. It was the herald itself that gave him pause. The cloaked man did not speak himself. No, rather he held a spear, and upon it was the head of a young man. A decapitated head, blood dribbling down its open neck. 

The head began to speak. 

"You have in your quaint little town a woman. A woman in black, though I know she was brought into town naked as the day she was born. She had hair as dark as her soul and eyes that could cut through your heart. You must go and fetch her, and give her to me!" The head cried, and cackled at some hidden joke only it could comprehend. "Bring her, or suffer this town to burn in the flames of the hells from whence I came! Go forth now, for I lack the patience of my great master."

The men almost tripped over themselves to go and fetch what was likely a half a dozen women, though a few that had been on the roster earlier that day knew just who the bodiless head meant. A supposed boyina who was also a suspected witch. Luckily, the woman herself had done the talking at the gate that day. They did not recognize her beau's voice, even if it was dramatically shrill and muffled by the rough weather. 

Neil waved his head around like a standard. He was having fun with it.