| Subject: Ok, next part inside. Thanks for waiting. :) |
Author:
Tacroy Bladefire
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Date Posted: 06:29:50 09/10/03 Wed
In reply to:
Scout
's message, "its ok take your time!!!! :)" on 21:53:07 09/07/03 Sun
The dream faded slowly, and painfully, and the Gyrfalcon stirred rsestlessly and turned over in the small bed. His eyes snapped open and he stared at the carved wood of the bedside table, his breathing unusually harsh and strained. Passing a hand across his eyes, he forced himself to take deep calming breaths, his dark eyes shinning with a hidden anger, his face covered with beading sweat. He sat up suddenly and kicked off a dusty sheet. Springing out of the rickety cot which creaked unaprovingly under his sudden movements, he padded over to a large, cracked mirror in the corner of the room and stared at his reflection.
A man of about thirty stared back at im, white faced and shaking. The Gyrfalcon clenched his fists in anger and tried to calm himself down. He wiped sweat off his face with a shoulder and ran his hand through his short curly black hair, gazing at himself with those dark bitter eyes.
That was a long time ago. A very long time. Seerus Ancalgon died years back, he drowned in those waters. He is no more. That part of me died with him...I'm not Seerus anymore! I'm the Gyrfalcon, feared, admired, and respected throughout this whole kingdom!
He whirled around on a sudden impulse and snatched his black scabbard from the back of a chair and buckled it tightly around his waist. Striding over to the door of the room, he found his black cape hanging on a peg, and twirling it about him, fastened it at his throat. He had a second cloak, identical to the first one in every way. He always traveled with a cloak to mask his features when he could help it, and he always had more than one.
He sat down in the chair and reached for his boots. Pulling the first one on, he glanced around him at the small room already tinged with light that had crept through the shuttered windows. The Gyrfalcon smiled wryly.
Finding a place to hide out had been easier than he had expected. Back in Lurk, he had found a complex maze of sewer passages, deep beneath the city streets. They were quite spacious and no dirtier than the filthy streets above them, so the Gyrfalcon had decided to calm them home. The passages were a labyrinth to those who happened to find them, but he soon had them memorized and protected with hostile spells to ward off intruders. He could use them to appear at any point in town and he was never found.
Here, in Herigon, he had expected finding a hideout would be somewhat of a challenge, but it hadn't been. The inns had offered the perfect solution. In the past, before the wars, the inns of Herigon had flourished under the number of merchants, traders, and ambassadors that came to vist the Captital of the land. The inns were reputed to have been beautifully built and it was rummored that every night, they would be packed to the rafters with customers.
But now, people didn't have the money to rent a room in the inns. Either you were rich enough to own a house, or you weren't and you slept on the streets. It was as simple as that. So the inns were closed, sealed to the public, and protected with warding spells from the mages to keep out criminals, thieves, and beggars, in hopes that when and if the economy improved, the inns could re-open without them being trashed and looted.
But the simple warding spells had been no problem to the Gyrfalcon. True, the booby traps had gven him a surprise, he didn't relish the fact that he spent the good part of five minutes hanging upside down from the rafters, but he had disabled them, and set up his own, fiercer spells to insure that any unwelcome intruders would get what they deserved. The Inn of the Golden Stallion was falling into disrepair, but the Gyrfalcon didn't care. It was home for now, and he had grown rather fond of it.
Pulling on his other boot, he stood up and gazed once at the small bed, the rickety chair, and the dirty floor, before drawing his hood up over his face.
He opened a door and strode out of the room, treading lightly down a long, dusty flight of stairs and out into the main corridor. He skirted a large rug which would turn into a deep, deep, pit with jagged spikes of rock on the bottom once stpped on. Turning, he took a side passage, avoiding the main landing which was so heavily booby traped, it was impossible to walk through it and not set one off.
Instead, he exited from a side door, so quickly that only had a passerby been staring fixedly at the inn would they have noticed his appearance. Shutting the door behind him, the Gyrfalcon strode quickly down a long street, silled with poor merchants in their rotting carts, selling whatever bread was left over from the autumn. Smiling thinly, the Gyrfalcon walked quickly past the carts and nobody noticed that three small loaves had vanished into the folds of his cloak.
Turning onto another filthy street, the Gyrfalcin deemed it safe to have breakfast. Pulling out a loaf, he broke it in half with gloved fingers, the snow swirling around him, and bit into it hungrily. He was an experianced thief and if he could get away with stealing, he would. If not, he could afford a few coins from his stash to have it.
Striding around a corner, the Gyrfalcon's dark eyes glazed over almost sympathetically at the middle aged man, groveling on his knees, hands outstretched for a piece of food. Shaking his head, the Gyrfalcon toosed him the rest of the loaf, like the way a person might toss a bone to their dogs. And the man fell upon it like a dog, lunging forwards and siezing it with a cry of delight.
Sighing in disgust, the Gyrfalcon quickened his pace. He shouldn't have done that. He just drew attention to himself again. Kindness was such a strange act that the beggar wasn't likely to forget the tall, lithe cloaked stranger who had given im the food. As the Gyrfalcon turned onto a street to the City Square, he was suddenly halted in his tracks by a deep, vicious growl which rumbled through the air like thunder. In front of him was the house he had visited last night and right next to it, was a score of royal guards and five, huge shaggy hounds, who were all straining against their leashes, growling and staring straight at him. For several seconds, the Gyrfalcon and the guards stared at each other, the dog's growls escalting into barks. And then the Gyrfalcon saw it. In the hands of the foremost guard was his cloak.
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