Land of Dragon

20

The Saddle

The storm had finally caught them.

Clouds rolled in, tall and black, top-heavy like an anvil. The afternoon sun withered to gloom and the rain began, falling first in spits and dribbles, then smatterings, then dense, wind-driven sheets that drove over the mountainside. The broad vistas of the Dragon Lands seemed to drown in it and the world shrank until all that Treylen could see through the rain were the backs of his fellow hunters and the jagged slope a few paces ahead.

All that day they had hiked…it was not the endless up and down that Treylen was accustomed to at the abbey; here, the mountains were tight together and the abutting slopes and ridges snaked around the steeper peaks and deeper chasms. But now they were going up, gradually at first, then quickly the mountainside grew steeper until at last it was only by finding hand and footholds on the slippery boulders that they progr