There is an edge to the banter of the men as they huddle around the fire, less for heat, than for light. The soldiers talk quickly, hurry to fill the spaces between comments. When it is quiet, they can hear the distant drumming of the eladrin in Winhava, can slowly feel their heartbeats shift to accompany the beating of those drums. And then there are the scufflings in the underbrush, just beyond the ring of tents, too-quickly dismissed as squirrels or rabbits. And when the wind shifts, sending sparks from the campfire to rise to the cold, distant stars, sometimes that wind carries with it a strangled cry that might belong to man or beast. Is it the cry of another elf brought down by the roving eladrin gangs? Or is it the cry of one of the horrible man-apes said to inhabit the unexplored margins of these rolling hills? Perhaps it just the memory of past violence in a land that has known centuries of bloodshed in a war that has crossed from one world to the next: elf against eladrin, eladrin against elf, and both against a race that is never mentioned, but that, for all the men of the Gray Guard know, might be hiding just beneath these very hills.
Old One-eye shivers, and draws his blanket tighter around his broad shoulders. But he is always too cold--in the same way that Hunfrid is always too warm. Kade raises his mug to Nessim as he returns from the elven huddle and continues to regale Bregga with the story of a nine-toed beauty he knew in Neverone, while Bregga slurps Savve’s spicy venison stew from a wooden bowl. “If it want for Savve, I’d of mustered out this outfit yeas ago. Praise to Pelor, wot.”
Blogaming - I think blogaming will be the new hot term of 2009.
ReplyDeleteI even hear blogaming is an accepted practice in certain parts of Utah.
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