The snow fell thick in the dale that night. Covering trees, roofs, and thresholds alike, laying the fields down for winter’s rest. It was a not a night for old men to be traveling.
“Lords preserve me,” Alarik groans.
By Winter all but the lowlands trail had become impassable, and that one was fraught with its own dangers. So, any reasonable man would have stayed away. Not Alarik. Ice, underneath a thin layer of snow threatens the Sagenhort’s every step.
“Come you. Come Mule, quit digging in.”
At last Alarik seemed to be nearing the end of his journey. Fifty years of running and seeking – running from those who desire what he carries. Seeking, the next unlucky sod whose job would be to keep it from them. Luck at least was with him tonight. It had been peaceful and uneventful. Everywhere the old man looked blue smoke rose lazily from chimneys.
“I hope it is the end,” he said, shaking snow from his woolly cap. “Yes.” His voice perked. “I can feel it in my bones, this town will be the one.” Alarik replaced the hat and moved on.
It was the second hamlet in two weeks and the last such place that any sane man might call home. The old man, the Sagenhort stopped, his eyes briefly tracing the outline of a mountain that loomed above this town. He pursed his lips in thought. At least this side of the Greyfall mountains.
In a neighboring alley two cats fought. The old man turned his shoulder to this. Somewhere else nearby sheep moved around anxiously, their bells betraying them. Alarik can’t fight back the frown that wants to surface. The last time he was here he mistook those for the morning call to Temple.
“What was this place called?” Names, while important, always seemed to clutter together in his mind as of late.
“Grey blotches of buildings,” he mutters. “They all look the same. So, this must be…”
Gebeorg. An unimaginative town’s name, for a dreary existence below the Skaduhorn – below the greatest mountain in the known world.
And the pass that all men feared to cross.
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