Ashley Riot would have no sense of time if it wasn't for the irrevocable changing of the seasons. As if the bite in the air and the harvested fields were not clue enough, there was the woods themselves. Most of the trees were dark green pine and silver fir, eternally green. It was the patches of crimson, pumpkin, and gold that betrayed the autumn season.
If I go much farther south, I'll need to find a place to winter. I have no wish to be on the road when the snows start. One winter fighting snow and sleet was enough.
He had seen a map of the country when he first came into port. It had been hanging on the wall above the port master's desk. Allemagne was odd in that the farther south you went, the closer to the mountains you got and the colder the weather became. Along the northern coastlines it had been summer like despite the fact that it had been well into autumn.
Now Ashley woke up to find the leaf litter covered in frost, bitter fog weaving between the trees, and the wolves of winter howling in the distance. The days of false summer had long since given way to the changing seasons.
He had entered the Dark Forest over three weeks ago. Villages were few and far between, hamlets carved out of the encroaching forest through sheer stubbornness. They were all wooden houses with fanciful carvings, protected from the wandering Dark, and wandering wolves, by stonewalls. Fields were small and surrounded the villages, holding back the woods by aid of the plow.
The villagers themselves were distrustful of strangers, wary of anyone who would brave the narrow winding trails of the Dark Forest for whatever reason. They asked few questions. They gave few answers. For Ashley, still on the run from Parliament and the Church two years after Leá Monde, it was a perfect hiding place.
It had been almost four days since he'd last seen a house: a single dwelling long abandoned, its fields choked with weeds and vines. It had been over a week since he'd seen an inhabited house. The sun was in the process of setting. If Ashley didn't find a village soon, he was going to be spending another night in the woods.
Not that I have much to fear in these woods. The Dark runs thick here, and the rood on my back protects me from it. Even as he thought that, the sounds of a wolf howling in the distance caught his attention. If the Dark has warped the wolves like it has warped other things in these woods, I can look forward to them licking my hand like hunting hounds.
He had almost cut one wolf in half the first time that had happened. Leá Monde left him jumpy about things such as dark twisted wolves running towards him. It didn't help that he sometimes forgot the rood he carried on his back protected him from all but the most mundane of evils.
And every time I think about the damned mark, I can feel it crawling between my shoulder blades. There are times I wish Sydney was still around. I would carve the damn thing off my own back and give it to him just to be done with it.
False twilight fell under the towering trees. Should I keep walking and hope I stumble across a village or should I stop and make camp? Ashley was going to have to make a decision soon. If he waited much longer there would be no light to see by.
He had just taken off his pack when he heard the tolling of church bells. Ashley's head came up at the sound. It's just sunset. That's no reason to ring the bells as if the demons of Dark were at your doorstep. Not unless a festival day that had snuck up on him. As many days as Ashley spent on the road, it wouldn't be the first time.