Aster shifted uncomfortably under the weight of the pelt over his shoulders. 

Sunlight beat down on the train of hundred Watchmen and rangers as they sat atop their scrawny mounts. The clouds of the day before had melted into a scorchingly warm morning. The sun was not yet halfway to its midday throne yet its rays were no less hot. The curling odor of sweat milled between the columns of huntsmen between their thick pelts, wool jerkins, and the heavy flanks of their horses. Dust rose from the ground in billowing clouds with every hoof stop and boot print, occasionally eliciting a fit of dry coughing from somewhere along the line. 

Around the two columns of Watchmen that spanned the length of the street through the square was another crowd gathered to see them off. Wary faces again decorated the backdrop of the dull stone mansions and shop faces that formed the wide assembling area. Men, women, and children, gaunt-faced at the gruesome parade, lined the cobblestones with grimy faces staring blankly up at the pelt-armored hunters. 

Why must they do that? Aster regarded. Have they nothing better to do but stare at one army coming and another going? 

Aye, a voice from somewhere inside whispered. But this time they know they might never see the coming of this army again. 

It was too warm for him to shiver. Instead he laid his ax across his lap on between his waist and the pommel of his saddle while his fingers attended to the pelt crossed on his chest. 

That morning each Watchman was again issued a bleached white wolf pelt to wear for the parade. It was the first time he had been given such a honor - and the last, he mused - but Endel had insisted that the Watch would appear united beside the moonwalkers, 'even if it meant cladding boyish fools in the firs of another man's battle,' as Endel so eloquently put it. His arm scratched his jerkin under the arms of the pelt that draped over his chest, feeling the stickiness of sweat already collecting. Metal clanked under the fur and he recalled the Watch's armorer frowning at him when he first put it on. 

"Stand up straight boy - your soul might be broken but your back ain't. Not yet at least," the wizened, muscular crone had barked. "That's steel plate, that is," he knocked on the wolf fur. "Sown right into the skin. That'd stop an arrow or a wolf's teeth, I'd wager." He offered a wink in a watery, blurry eye. "Not an ax, though. Not more than once at least." 

He clenched his ax shaft remembering the words. Beside him Endel was hurling himself over the small saddle that rested on a scrawny beast appearing entirely too small for his bulk. 

"Throat-torn corpse," the captain was mumbling under his breath. 

"I'm sorry?" Aster murmured. 

"Moonlight, you better be," Endel snapped under his blanket-like beard. His mouth snarled to spit another word but he was interrupted as a small company of men approached. 

At its front Emereld wrinkled his nose at the company. "What is this?" His thin voice snapped like a whip in the face of the warrior. "You ride to battle, captain, not a fair."

The creases on Endel's face deepened with his scowl. "I know it better than any man in this line. What of it? We march as an army beside another -"

"As rangers and hunters, not a court of nobles or pompous pike-men. Your richest garb and cloaks are fair enough to welcome wayfarers but to go on a march is most inappropriate." 

"To Astfall with your distaste," the Watchman spat. "If you ride with us, Mir,  feel free to keep filling my ear. Otherwise I welcome taking your leave." 

Endel turned from the governor, plainly ending the conversation. Behind him a hunter carried a war horn that he gestured should be put to use. The man touched the instrument to his lips and blew a long blast. 

"Move out," his voice bellowed along the line. The call was taken up by several others in lesser tones before the clomping of walking hooves drowned them out. 

Faces stared down at them from the wall as the horses walked through the wide mouth of the North Gate with eyes as dull as the stone they stood on. Golden rays of sun seemed to mock the gruesome parade. Light as bright as sparkling jewelry pummeled the joyless crowds with scorching heat while threatening to break the backs of the riders before they had even touched the border of the wood. 

Outside the silent walls of Arcath Narenhior's host waited. The moonwalkers' horses stood still as the stiff bows of the wood in the heat without so much as flicking their tails at the black flies that buzzed naggingly over the grass. Each warrior still donned their shadow-armor in a sea of black against the green plain, broken only as a lone figure broke from the line to approach Endel. 

A pale hand removed a helm fashioned in the shape of a raven. Motionless steel wings formed the cheek guards of the armor while feathers that appeared to fall from the metal bird lined narrow eye slits. A fanned tail swept down the moonwalker's silver hair while the lifeless bird's head bowed to submit its dagger-sharp beak to cover the warrior's nose. 

Narenhior nodded to Endel. "A fine morning to you."

"As hot as the sun's forge if you ask me," the captain snarled, "but if it strengthens your arm, well enough. Are your men prepared?" 

"Are our donned, horses saddled, and arrows fletched," the elf nodded again. 

"Well enough then. My line will divide to let you in - best our rangers take the rear and aft so as to not let anyone get lost." 

Or take off without us, Aster murmured in his mind. He did not need to voice the words - Narenhior's eyes made clear his understanding. 

"So be it." 

The elf steered his white charger back to where the remainder of his lines stood stoically. Calls went up in words Aster did not understand while Endel hollered orders down the line. 

"Perhaps you'd rather another Captain road at your flank," Aster offered once the grizened warrior had returned his glare to the elves as they formed up within the columns of Watchmen. 

"Like dawn I would," he scoffed. "You'll stay within my ax reach or you'll wish I dropped you from the wall when my hand was on your throat. You die when I decide. No sooner, no later." 

Maybe I should take solace in that? Aster anxiously shifted his interest on the assortment of armament the moonwalker's wielded instead of dwelling on the captain's words. 

They reached the edge of Astfall before the last of the moonwalkers had fallen in behind them. It was just as Aster recalled from the day before, though he cherished the coolness of the shade more than he had the afternoon prior. Thick Elderwoods grew like monuments to the spreading might of Astfall's timber realm, though the distance between them left enough light trickling in to make the ride nearly pleasant. 

Snippets of conversation crawled up the line as the huntsmen entered the wood. Faces sized up the trees with looks of admiration, terror, uncertainty, and disinterest, but no one could deny the urge to examine their imposing presence. 

Endel frowned under his beard and diverted his gaze after taking in the sight. 

Wrapping the reigns of his shaggy horse around his hand, Aster did his best to find the beauty in the scene. Birds clad in the most wondrously kingly colors of blue, red, yellow, and green fluttered in the trees. Their songs called back and forth, filling the space between the swooping branches in sweet melodies. Roots spiraled like ancient ropes through the rich, brown soil like bindings of some ancient god tasked with holding the vast forest to the earth. Occasionally leaves would rustle with a musty waft under hoof in a pleasant percussion with the vocals of the wildlife around them. Rays of light continued to trickle through the treetops in a rain of light that dazzled across the forest floor. 

But other, more foreboding signs could not be ignored. Crows fluttered amid the trees, silencing beautiful songbirds with their deep caws and sharp beaks that chased off the smaller birds. Grass melted into the ground under a stiff blanket of dead leaves that reeked of decay and decayed a more treacherous net of coiling roots. More than one horse dropped to its knees trying to step through the precarious blanket of wood that knotted its way through the forest floor, only to be hauled back to its feet by its shaken rider. Each faithless step brought the beasts and their riders deeper into the wood, choking out the golden sun as the patchwork of bows thickened into a blanket. 

It seemed hours that they plodded along. Aster shrugged the wolf pelt tighter around his shoulders, suddenly chilled in the dense shade. Thick wood surrounded them like walls. Trees grew no farther than several feet apart save a narrow trail of some six or seven that the rangers led the company through with meticulous care. 

An order for halt was abruptly sounded by a horn some ranks in front of them. Darkness had fallen over the caravan, obscuring most of the view of the landscape. Endel heeled his horse, driving it toward the front of the column. 

"Captain," one of the rangers acknowledged. "Looks like we've made it some fifteen miles." 

"Fifteen miles?" Aster blurted, not far behind. "How could night have fallen with so short a distance behind us." 

Endel grinned wickedly. "It ain't night boy." He swung his ax toward the front of the vanguard, challenging the boy's eyes to make out a sight not far in front of them. 

A massive tree, rising some twenty feet in width and indescribably high, split the scant trail they traveled on. Around it lesser sprigs curled in submission under the huge nest of serpentine roots that clawed outward from its huge base like spikes around a woodland creature's keep. Jagged branches protruded like pikes in cracked tines starting ten feet up the trunk. Lines of black death riddled the otherwise unmarked bark of the tree, testifying the the corrosive sickness that choked out its lower branches but left its upper bows thusfar alive. 

But what was hung from the tree was the true sight to behold. A banner, or what once might have been one, hung in tatters from the spear-like sticks of the tree's lower branches in a tapestry of green. Its stitches frayed and dye faded, the sigil was illegible. 

The ornaments hung that around it more than clarified the message - two skeletons, white enough to clearly distinguish in the dark, hung like cruel puppets from rotted cables in the trees. Thick ropes knotted like the roots at their feet around their wrists and ankles, fastening the lifeless limbs in silent shapes of submission. 

"This is Astfall," Endel grimaced. 

HEY MY PEOPLES! I STARTED A NEW BOOK! If you've gotten this far then you have just read the first ten chapters of my newest work, Dusk Over Arcath. It is a little darker than Blade of Erogrund, but takes place just east of Niron (though some 200+ years before). This one I intend to keep up with, and wrote the first 10 chapters and the Prologue first just to be sure that I'll be able to keep it going. It only took about three weeks, so hopefully I can keep churning them out for you guys, though I'll be starting full time work next week. 

Please let me know what you think through comments, votes, PM's, or anything else you can think of XD. Also, please let me know if you have any ideas, want to see anything from certain characters, or have anything else that you think should be added. You guys really are the best, and I hope that this year break I took hasn't scared anyone away. Happy reading!