There were only going to be five of us on the expedition, Father John, Seth, two of my grandfathers trusted men at arms and myself. I would have preferred a party made up entirely of my men, but all of my men were busy improving the fighting abilities of the castle's fighting men and couldn't be spared from that task easily.
The only reason Seth was going was because he was useless as a teacher and he had insisted on going so repeatedly that I had finally given in. Father John hadn't seemed overly excited one way or the other, when I told him that he was to accompany us.
He was a hard man to read. I had detected that he and my grandfather were not too keen on each other, even though my grandfather had raised him from boyhood as a son. Pulling myself up into the saddle I headed for the side gate as I was followed by my four companions.
We left the castle quietly not wanting to attract any attention, as we made our way through the early morning mists out into the wide valley beyond. I drew Flin up briefly to look back the way we had come. The castle was breath taking with the morning light cascading down upon it.
I had only been here a few weeks and yet it already felt like home to me. I hated to leave its calm assurance and beauty and go back into the world and the troubles I had left behind me there, but it had to be done. I pulled Flin back around and let Father John take the point, as we started out on our journey out of the Valley Lands and towards the dark shadowed world of the Attorgron Forests.
The low arching branches of a Patna tree spread its large leaved foliage over the jumble of boulders that we lay concealed under. Nestled in and amongst the boulders we were all but invisible to the people in the clearing beyond. I wished we were invisible to the bugs too.
They swarmed around us in clouds of stinging annoyance. The insects were just one more item to add to the long list of things that I hated about this forest. I did have to admit though that my grandfather's hiding place for the knowledge of our ancestors had been ingenious if not downright brilliant. Of all the places to hide something that countless people were turning over rocks left and right to find this had to be the best and least expected option, as well as one of the more deadly. In this unlikely clearing in the midst of the forest lay several crude wooden hovels. At the one end of the clearing was an uprising of stone from the forest floor. Its summit barely cleared the canopy of the surrounding forest. It was covered in vegetation, but it was obvious that the stony monument was of human construction and of a very old origin at that.