Bearers of the Black Staff

The Gray Man stood where he was for long moments afterward, savoring the memories, and then he turned his back on the pass and the wards and set out along the valley rim, tracking the creatures.

It was not difficult to do so. They were big and slow, and their tracks were distinct where imprinted in muddy patches on the rocks and within the snowfield. They were moving west now, opposite the direction from which he had come. They followed the snow line for only a short distance before dropping down to the deep woods and their protective cover. They were hunting still, the Gray Man guessed, but keeping close to the safety of the heights and some assurance of the way back. They were thinking creatures, though he doubted their ability to reason overrode their primal instincts. They were brutes, and they would react as such. A lack of caution did not make them any less dangerous. If anything, it made them more so. He would need to find them quickly.

He considered for a moment the ramifications of their presence. It meant that after all these years, the wall was failing and their time of isolation was at an end. This would be difficult for many of the valley’s inhabitants to accept—Men, Elves, Lizards, Spiders, and those singular creatures that lacked a group identity. It would be impossible for some. The sect of Men who called themselves the Children of the Hawk, and who awaited the return of the leader who had brought them to the valley to protect them, would resist any suggestion of an end to the mists that did not involve his coming. Their dogma prophesied that the wall would endure until it was safe to leave the valley and the Hawk returned to lead them out again. Anything else they would call heresy; they would fight against it until the evidence stood before them, and even then they might not believe. Nothing anyone could say would change minds so settled; belief in the invisible, belief founded solely on faith, did not allow for that.

Yet he would have to try. There was no one else who would do so, if he did not.

He glanced downslope out of habit, recalling that the Seraphic who led the Children of the Hawk made his home in Glensk Wood. How ironic it would be if the creatures from the outer world were to somehow make their way to his community and introduce themselves. Would the members of the sect believe then?

Bittersweet memories flooded his mind in a sudden rush and then dissipated like morning mist.

The day brightened as the hours passed, and the sun broke through the clouds to warm the air. The brume clung to the higher elevations, catching on peaks and nestling in defiles, and shadows gathered in the deep woods in dark pools. Now that the creatures had left the snow, the Gray Man could track them less easily. But they left traces of their scent and surface marks so that following them was possible for someone with his skills.

By now he had concluded that he was at least twenty-four hours behind them. It was too long for creatures of this size not to have found something to eat. He had to hope that whatever they had found did not walk on two legs, and that was hoping for a lot. Trappers and hunters roamed these hills year-round in search of game. Some made their homes in cabins up along the snow line; some had their families with them. They were tough, experienced men and women, but they were no match for the ones he tracked.

It frustrated him to think that this was happening now, that the ending of the barrier had come about so abruptly. There should have been some warning, some hint that change was at hand. Wasn’t that what the Seraphic preached? But no one was prepared for this; no one would know what to do. Not even himself, he acknowledged. How do you prepare for the intrusion of a world you had escaped because it was too monstrous to live in? How do you prepare for an end to everything you had believed to be permanent?

He smiled grimly. It was too bad he couldn’t ask his predecessors, those fortunate few who had found a way to survive the horrors of the Great Wars when it had seemed survival was impossible. They would know.