### 347

The north gate guards, tired after the long night’s watch, grumble wearily at your demand for the gate to be opened. ‘What’s the hurry?’ growls one guardsman.

‘Matter o’ life and death is it?’ sneers the other.

The portcullis finally clanks open and you leave the town, riding the broken dirt track towards the distant hills and the frontier town of Syada. Grey-brown grasses brush your shins as you cross this wild, uncultivated plain. Accompanying your ride is an unnatural silence which is broken only occasionally by the cawing of ravens circling like vultures overhead.

By midday you are among the hills. The terrain becomes increasingly rocky, undulating like a storm-tossed ocean. The tall plains grass has given way to sad little plants, scraggy and deformed, stunted by the winds that sweep down from the barren wastes of Ogia. The track passes through a narrow valley where a small stone cabin stands beside the entrance to a disused mine shaft. As you approach the cabin you see a face at the window.

If you wish to stop at the cabin, turn to 85.

If you wish to investigate the mine, turn to 120.

If you wish to continue along the valley, turn to 152.