Yo! I'm back!

I've been sick this last week, pretty much unable to write or do anything at all. But, now I'm back. For the next two weeks or so I'm probably only going to be able to release a chap every 2 days or so, but after that it oughta be back to daily releases as usual.

enjoy the new chap!

twice.

049 - The Great Hunt

The hunter barreled down through the ruins of the camp yelling breathlessly. Pete eyes sparked. The Griffon! A moment earlier he'd considered abandoning the hunt altogether. But, for a Writ of Honour and fifty gold? Pete leapt to his feet, dashing over to the breathless hunter.

"Where!"

"On the other side of the Horn, in Sable gorge!"

Pete threw down his broken spear and snatched up another, setting off immediately. He ran up the slopes out of the camp. The many hunters sat round the campfire or clearing the debris of the ruined camp were slower to react.

For a moment there was silence on the slopes of the Horn, then a piercing shriek filled the sky. Like thunder direct into the spirit of every man, the hunters rushed to their feet, gathering any weapons or tools they could and chasing after Pete.

Chasing them, Carl Lang and his guards, the scholar with a grin as wide as his face, panting and yelling “Pete! Wait up!”

Below on the path leading to the hunters camp the procession of heroes slowed. From the middle Gunner urged his black warhorse into a canter, pushing past the knights on white horses. “You hear that Isabella? Ha! The cry of my prey!”

“Your prey? Humph.” Isabella snorted, spurring her horse up the slopes a little faster. The many knights riding at her side did the same, raising a cloud of dust.

“Hey! Hold up!” Gunner cried out. His warhorse stood no chance against the lighter knightly steeds here in the mountains. Gunner dug his spurs into its side and yelled “Come on!” chasing after beautiful huntress and her knights.

Down below on the path the silver carriage trundled on up the hill. At the sound of the commotion a man's head popped out from between the carriage window curtains and looked first at the hunters, then at the two fast disappearing heroes. The man yawned massively and vanished back into the dark interior, his silver carriage trundling slowly on.

There were many paths around the horn, a hundred animal tracks carved down the centuries by countless creatures living on the upper slopes. Above the tree line there was a long steep incline that slowly became bare grey slate, weather worn, scarred and cracked. The slate grew steeper, from harsh slope to sharp hill to staggering cliff, rising above the lower slopes almost as if a single giant stone finger were poking up from beneath the earth.

This was the horn, bare grey stone, cracked and crooked spire piercing up above all the other mountain peaks, up into the sky as if stirring the clouds with its snow tipped fingernail.

On one side of the horn were the plains, the flatlands and rolling hills and forests and river and towns and cities; all the farms and busy lives of men. On the other side stretched the snow capped mountains, a seemingly endless expanse of grey and white, sheer cliffs and wretched barren valleys. They stretched on, even from up high you could not see the end of them. On the other side of the mountain? The wilderness, the place beyond man, beyond civilization.

On the opposite side of the horn from where the hunters camp lay was Sable Gorge, one of nearly fifty mostly unexplored rifts in the mountain side. The many gorges ran for miles and miles, deep cracks with sheer cliffs worn smooth by countless streams and rivers. Many of the cracks were just that; no more than crack. Other formed ravines, lush with trees and life and a slurry of water oozing its way along their bottom. A few of the cracks, formed over the many hundreds of thousands of years formed into gorges, a wide river running nearly the year round at their bottom.

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The Sable Gorge was one of the largest of the gorges on the reverse of the Horn. It ran from up near the sheer grey cliffs almost all the way down to the deep valley between the Horn and the next mountain. The cliffs of the gorge were smooth, worn by the relentless waters and impossible to climb without hooks and nails to hammer into the stone, or a rope tied to the cliff top.

It normally took a hunter five days to make a journey the full way around the horn, for the most part this was because there were no clear ways across the many gorges, and because of the difficulty in scaling the mountain passes. But from the hunters camp on the slopes of the horn to the Sable gorge was not that far, that is, to the top of the gorge, the part where it was deepest.

Here, on the upper slopes in the shadow of the Horn itself opened the Sable Gorge, a deep dark pit, the roar of rushing water echoing endlessly of the smooth gorge cliffs.

Many a year ago an intrepid hunter had taken it upon himself to hammer in a dozen iron hoops and nails in one side of the gorge, attaching countless chains and lengths of wood and rope to form a ragged ladder down into the depth.

“Skrieeeeee!” The shriek of the Griffon resounded thunderously off the gorges walls. Pete staggered, stopping at the top of the rusted chain ladders and peering down the reverse slopes of the Horn.

Above Sable gorge the beast circled, its wings outstretched, its terrible pointed beak and lizard tongue opening and shrieking again and again “Skriee! Skrieeee!” The Griffon shrieked, suddenly pulling its two hawk-like wings into its body and swooping down into the Gorge.

Pete heard another shriek bouncing off the cliffs, the sound of metal clashing against stone and a huge clatter of claws, a terrible crack and crunch of stone against stone. From down the Sable gorge rose a huge cloud of dust, blowing up into the sky and vanishing.

Another clatter of claws and “Skriee!” As the Griffon rose into the skies again, shrieking and circling above. Pete hesitated, looking down into the gorge and out along its top. Down or up? Catch the beast from above, out in the open, or go down and risk it in the narrows of the gorge?

As Pete hesitated the many hunters chasing him caught up, breathless and panting they stood around Pete, none choosing to go ahead.

“Alright!” Pete roared. “You lads, go along the top of the gorge, the rest with me! Take the ropes, and the nets, you got the nets? Good lads!” Pete leapt onto the chains, lowering himself into the depths of the gorge. The cliff here was more than two hundred feet high, near the deepest part of the whole gorge. Behind him followed half the hunters, the other half rushed over the rocks and trees that lined the tops of the gorge down the slopes of the horn.

“Skriee!” The Griffon’s unearthly shriek pierced through the air, bouncing of the walls of the cliff. This would normally be a thing of terror, a thing that would fill a hunter's head with fear . . now, the many hunters eyes shone with greed, with the promise of wealth, of honour!