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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 7240936" data-attributes="member: 143">Chapter 92The wagon seat jolted under Bredan, driving a sharp stab of pain through his already aching posterior.  He’d thought that riding a horse had left him sore, but two days riding a wagon had awakened a whole new series of torments for his already battered body.  Not that he’d spent all that much time riding; when the wagons weren’t bouncing on the increasingly terrible road they were waiting while Bredan and the other survivors of the giant ambush hacked through fallen trees, cleared rockslides, or engaged in other backbreaking and usually dangerous tasks to allow the wagons to continue forward up the next ascent.  It wasn’t all climbing, of course.  The descents were in some ways worse, the drivers riding their brakes while Bredan stared at narrow drop-offs where a slip of a wheel could lead to the wagon and its entire team being dragged off cliffs that varied in every way except for the likelihood of death if such a fall occurred.The wagon jolted again, harder this time, and Harvin yanked his reins and lunged for his brake.  The wagon rattled to a stop.  Bredan didn’t hear anything different in the sound, but he’d learned to trust the old driver’s instincts.“Think something’s broken?” Bredan asked.“Only one way to find out,” Harvin said.  He made no move for the edge of the seat, but cracked his back and reached into the bed behind them for his waterskin.Hiding a grimace, Bredan got up and hopped down from the wagon.  At least there was enough room to move around; their current stretch of road took them through a thinly-wooded valley before it rose again in yet another climb.  The other two wagons had stopped just ahead on noticing that Bredan and Harvin had called a halt.  Bredan could see that Quellan had already dismounted and was heading back to check on them.  Up in the lead vehicle, Glori was standing atop the uneven heaps of supplies in the bed, a hand held to shade her eyes as she looked to see what was happening.  Bredan offered a reassuring wave before he bent to check under the wagon.He was hardly an expert, but he’d gotten to know the wagons and their workings in more detail than he’d wanted over the last few days.  This wagon had been damaged in the ambush, including a cracked axle, and it had taken most of their spare parts to complete a hasty repair.  Bredan’s skills had come in handy, though he might have been less enthusiastic if he’d known that the drivers would all defer to him from that point forward.  He couldn’t blame them, not really, not after the man who had hired them along with most of the soldiers that were supposed to protect them had died in the ambush.Everything looked okay, but Bredan crawled under the wagon—hoping that Harvin had set the brake firmly—and tapped a few spots carefully with his hammer.  The repairs seemed to be holding, though he wouldn’t want to take this wagon on another trip without a full overhaul.  Mentally he amended the thought; he didn’t want to take any more trips with a wagon train for about, oh, fifty years or so.As he pulled himself out from under the wagon and stood up again Quellan arrived.  The half-orc looked as indestructible as ever, though Bredan knew that he’d stinted on treating his own wounds until all of the injuries suffered by the others had been healed.  There had been more damage to go around than he and Glori combined could heal, even with the cleric’s Prayer of Healing ritual, and it hadn’t been until the morning after the fight that they’d finally been able to address the worst of it.“Everything okay?” Quellan asked.  Bredan knew that his friend was asking about more than just the wagons, but he just nodded and said, “It’ll hold together for a bit longer, anyway.”Quellan nodded and looked up at Harvin.  The old man was holding his waterskin in his lap as though wishing it was something stronger.  “Orrek thinks we’re getting close,” the half-orc reported.  The driver just shrugged and tossed the skin back into the bed of the wagon, then took up his reins and looked down as if Bredan was the one holding them up.Bredan didn’t say anything to the man as Quellan trudged back to his wagon, he just circled around to the far side and clambered up onto the seat.  The horses looked as tired as he felt, and a few were taking advantage of the pause to crop at the straggling weeds that grew thick along the edges of the road.  He had barely settled back into his seat when Harvin snapped his reins and the wagon started forward again.Bredan didn’t mind that his companion was not particularly garrulous.  He had a lot on his mind, even leaving aside the threat of another ambush or an encounter with one of the hostile creatures that Haran had said lived in these mountains.  He still had no explanation for what had happened in the battle with the ogres.  He hadn’t told his friends, not yet.  He knew he could talk with Glori, at least, but somehow in all the chaotic bustle that had followed the attack, and the way they had all collapsed into their bedrolls in their camp that night, he hadn’t gotten the chance.  He had managed to ask enough vague questions to confirm that none of the others had seen what he’d done, if in fact he had conjured a magical shield out of nothing and summoned his sword into his hand from over the cliff where he’d dropped it.He’d tried to repeat either feat, but the failure of his tentative experiments had hardly left him feeling reassured.  He had no idea how one cast spells, but he couldn’t remember anything remotely like what Glori or Quellan did when they used their magic.  Or even Xeeta, with her inherent gifts.  He wished she was still with them, so he could ask her.  The tiefling woman seemed to know a lot about a great many things.He was jolted out of his musings again as the wagon shifted under him and he realized they’d reached the far side of the valley and the next ascent.  The original builders of the road had cut a winding route that kept the grade from becoming too difficult, but even so the horses had to strain to bear the weight.  Harvin muttered to himself as he snapped his reins, but he never reached for the whip set in a niche in the wagon seat next to him.Up and up they went, the road bending around and around until it felt like they were going in circles.  The valley fell out of sight behind them but still they kept climbing, each curve revealing still another ahead.  Sometimes those curves were sharp enough that Bredan lost sight of the lead wagon, and when that happened he always tensed, his hand sliding seemingly of its own accord toward the hilt of his sword.  He’d left his crossbow tucked into a gap between two barrels right behind him, within easy reach, but thus far the weapon had not been of much use.  In fact, he realized with a start, he had yet to hit anything with it since he’d bought it.Intellectually he knew that the climb had to come to an end eventually, but he was still caught by surprise when they came around another bend to see the other two wagons stopped just ahead.  Harvin spat a curse and yanked back on his reins, perhaps a bit harder than was necessary.  The horses were all too happy to stop, and the wagon came to a halt a good twenty paces behind the next one ahead.The lead wagon had stopped just below a bend that appeared to mark the final stage at least in this climb, just below an exposed crest that had nothing but empty sky and a few far-distant peaks behind it.  Bredan could see that his friends had already dismounted from the wagons and were heading up to get a look.  He quickly jumped down and headed after them, trying not to sway too much as his sore backside protested at the rapid movement.Willem was standing on the seat of the second wagon, his crossbow loaded and ready in his hands.  “Do you think we’re there yet?” he asked Bredan as he passed.  The smith could only shrug; how was he supposed to know?The others had turned off the road just shy of the crest, cutting up a slope too steep for the wagons to a jut of stone surrounded by weeds.  There was a solitary tree there, stunted and bent but with enough growth to offer at least some cover.  Glori, Kosk, and Quellan were all standing next to it as Bredan struggled up the last stretch of the ascent.  Glori was the only one to turn at his approach.  There wasn’t any immediate alarm on her face, but her expression was enough to have him hurrying the last few paces.What he saw almost took his breath away.  The Silverpeak Valley wasn’t that big, a few miles wide at its narrowest point, curving away as it extended into the distance, its exact dimensions lost within a dense expanse of forest.  Its sides sloped sharply on this end, promising another death-defying descent, though Bredan couldn’t see the road from this vantage.  He could see where it ended, however, the town of Wildrush clearly visible along the banks of the stream from which it took its name.  They were too far away to see much in the way of details, certainly too far to see people, but what they could see awakened a fresh stab of dread in Bredan’s gut.“For once, it looks like trouble beat us here,” Glori said quietly.“It doesn’t look like the entire town was burned,” Quellan said, one hand raised to shelter his eyes in an echo of the gesture Bredan had seen Glori make earlier.  “In fact, most of the damage seems focused on the northern edge of town.  Maybe they repelled an attack.”“Maybe it was just an accident,” Glori said.  “A spilled lamp, gotten out of control.”“Or maybe Murgoth’s forces decided to come this way after all,” Bredan said.“We’ll not find out from here,” Kosk said after a moment’s pause.  “We’d better get moving, if we’ve any hope of getting there by dark.”The others turned around and started back toward the wagons.  Bredan glanced back for one more look into the valley.  For some reason, he felt as though his life was about to change significantly once he started down that road, and not in the plummeting-to-his-death kind of way.“Bredan, you coming?” Glori called after him.“Yeah,” he said.  But it took an effort to turn his gaze away.Chapter 93Stones shifted under Kurok’s feet as he stumbled up the steep slope.  The ascent was treacherous, and the bare ground offered little in terms of support; a rock he reached for to steady himself might well give way at his touch.  He’d already slipped a few times; more than a few, if his knees were any guide.The rise ahead looked much the same as the hundreds he’d climbed in the days since he’d left Scar Canyon.  He was exhausted, and not just because of the hard pace he’d set.  Even now he frequently lifted his head to scan the skies, and every unexpected noise had him turning swiftly, his magic stirring instinctively at his call.  But his luck had held; the dragon had not elected to make an appearance.The sun edged below the crest ahead, casting the hillside into shadow.  The absence of light felt reassuring, though it meant they would have to stop again soon.  He and his companions had no difficulty in the dark, but other things haunted the mountains in the night, things he was not eager to confront.  Already they had had their share of encounters, though nothing that had been a real threat to their progress.  And those interludes had given him a chance to evaluate his new allies.The ground began to level out ahead of him, and he looked up to find that he had reached the crest.  A mistake, to let his thoughts wander so, but even the Blooded were ultimately mortal flesh.  He would need to rest before he reached his destination.But as he continued forward, he realized with a start that his destination was right in front of him.The valley spread out like a curved blade.  His vantage was near one narrow end, where the two sloping sides converged to not quite a point.  Directly ahead and below him was a vast sea of green, a dense forest that could have hidden anything within its fastness.  Somewhere within that expanse was what he had come here to find.  He imagined he could feel it pulling at him, but that was likely just a byproduct of his weary mind.His eyes were drawn to the northwest.  The fading sun was still bright enough to blind him, and thick forests and rise and fall of the terrain concealed whatever details that were not fogged by distance.  But he thought he could see faint wisps of gray rising into the sky before the wind caught them and tore them apart.  He pinned those markers onto a mental map, then nodded to himself.  Only then did he turn, slowly, lifting one hand and forming it into a fist.The column parted as it reached him, the worgs and their goblin riders passing to each side.  The Bloodriders did not stop to take in the view as Kurok had; they barely slowed before they found the best routes down the opposite slope and poured into the Silverpeak Valley.Kurok remained where he was until they had all passed him.  They were as tired as he, mounts and riders alike, but it took less than a minute before the last straggler had joined the column in the descent.  The lead riders were already almost to the fringe of the uppermost trees that clung to the rocky slope.  The odors of his army swirled in the air as a lingering reminder of their passage.Kurok took one more look at the landscape that stretched before him, then he followed after them.There was much to be done.* * *I'll continue the story in December.</blockquote>

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