The land began to slope upwards almost immediately upon passing through the west gate, as the rough hills which surrounded Highburn started to become full-fledge mountains. The town of Highburn disappeared from sight rather swiftly, it's shadowy buildings melding into monotone haze. It was even darker and colder out in the open then it was inside the village walls, and a scarce few of those lonely people were not visited by thoughts of turning back. The uncertainty of having not but inky black and driving chill all around was unsettling.
Rinus and his unit were arranged in a circle around the villagers, both to protect them against possible threats and to watch for stragglers. Their lofty perch atop the horses gave them a good view of the entire congregation, "good" in this case meaning "visible". In truth the only thing they could see definitively was the snow directly in front of their faces. The crowd of villagers appeared like a large black mass, shuffling this way and that, it's position marked only by a few meager blotches of flickering torchlight.
Shilas Onde and the other woodsmen were at the very front of the group, along with Rinus and a few of the soldiers. For now, no scouts were sent ahead, as none but the hunters knew the way, and said way was not exactly easy to spot. A track did exist, running up into the hills, winding around through cliffs and gullies until it eventually reached Rickety, but it was by no means a large, noticeable arrangement, especially not during the winter. It took nearly an hour of weaving about in a generally westward direction for the men to finally find the path.
"I don't see it." Buyir sat atop his horse and peered as hard as he could in the direction that the guide was pointing, but not even his sharp eyes could make up for the lack of knowledge he possessed of the area. He just couldn't see any kind of recognizable road.
"Strait that way." Shilas said, pointing towards a seemingly impenetrable wall of fir trees. "It'll be clearer once we get out of the trees and start climbing."
"Wait, so what we've been doing for the last hour hasn't been climbing?" Buyir asked, glancing back the way they had come. Even over the short distance that he could see, the surface of the ground sloped downward considerably.
"Hell, no. We've not even reached the Gullies yet."
The Gullies was an area west of Highburn that, as expected, consisted of a great number of gullies, valleys, and ridges. It was there that the rolling foothills and moorlands around Highburn officially became mountains; where the farthest roots of those mighty peaks stretched out and created a dramatic, saw-tooth like landscape, a kind of jagged ridge-line before the actual geography began. It had been explained to Buyir before, and he had mixed feelings about it. They would be much more sheltered in there, so the wind chill would be significantly less, but the physical strain of traversing that type of terrain would doubtless take a heavy toll on the villagers.
"Very well." Buyir said with a grunt. Turning in his saddle, he waved his torch through the air. Several other torches behind him waved in reply, and the company began to move again, with Shilas leading the way into the thicket of fir trees.
~~
Jutani, who was near the back of the entire entourage, got a unique view of the huge mass of darkness that represented the villagers suddenly being joined into a much larger mass. The torches that dotted the crowd here and there began to break up and flit about in a zig-zag motion, and for a few horrifying moments he thought that the enemy army had suddenly appeared out of the darkness in front of them and was about to sweep them all away.
This was, of course, not the case, and once he realized that the large mass was actually a great stand of pine trees he relaxed considerably. It was a pleasant surprise, once he finally entered the woods himself, as the conifers closed in about him and partially shielding him from the wind. The faint scent of sap drifted upon the air, and the tall shapes of the trees around him formed a comforting wall, a safe boundary, as opposed to the shear emptiness they had experienced so far.
~~
Although the trees did provide shelter and a sense of comfort, Rinus knew they came with their own perils. Getting lost and separated from the group would be fairly easy, and so the unit would have to be extra vigilant. The thicket was also not very hospitable to their wagons, which were struggling to get around trees and over fallen logs. All in all, they would be going pretty slowly for the next few hours.
Rinus navigated his horse on it's winding way through the trees as all of this went through his head, following Shilas and the other hunters along some invisible path through the forest, as the ground gradually sloped up towards the Gullies, and ultimately the Mountains themselves. After that, he knew not, but he didn't want to think about it right now.
