excert: work in progress

The town lay beneath him, a sprawling dark blemish across the valley. A few fires still glow sending trails of smoke from the blackness of the valley into the darkened blue of the evening sky. The scent of wood smoke reached even to the high on the hillside; here the lush grasses gave way to tough scrubland and hardy weeds that could survive in this rockier landscape. . Beside him in the dark lay a green bottle heavy with the scent of the local scrumpy. He generally shunned the tavern. Most night it was full of little old men with very tall tales. Stories of cities run on magic firelight and great beast that took to the air as easy as the bird’s, stories of dark doorways hidden in the caves.  He recalled one afternoon, heart racing, pricks of perspiration on his young brow, peering into the darkest of the caverns on the far side if town. The warmth of the sun on his back and yet he had felt cold gazing into the hypnotic blackness, lost to all but the thrill of the forbidden and unknown. 
As a child he had lapped up their ramblings wide eyed, as his father sat in a dark corner, a sombre drinker who was loathe to leave his only son at home with the girls lest he grow up ‘sowing hems when he should be sowing either crops or war’. ‘Pray you never have to fight son pray the gods bless you with a lifetime of peace.’ He’d mumble gruffly as the cloudy cider took its toll. ‘There are things out there boy, things a man’s eyes shouldn’t see.’ Usually, by this time, his face so close  the fermented breath was stifling and the greying bristles of his beard scratched at his listeners chin. Intense bloodshot eyes, making the piercing blue more intense, eyes locked on his own with an intensity that told the usually cheeky boy to keep silent and listen.  The only gaze he recalled more intense took him again to that day at the caves. He shook his head as if to clear the memory. Swigging again at the bottle he passed the thought off as an overactive imagination.  As he mused one hand absently traced a pale scar on his chin.  Pulling his cloak in against his body he decided the evening was cooling off and perhaps it was time to head back down the little track home. Leaving the empty bottle he negotiated his way along the well known route, though it was dark he knew every step, moving so smoothly and quietly he soon seemed to disappear into the night, merely a darker moving along the hillside.
         Behind him, where the discarded bottle lay, two point of red light glowed.  A high pitch screech pierced the night. Chilling: unnatural. If someone had listened closely enough they would have heard a reply far in the distance. Then with the sound of scurrying and claws scratching at rock the eyes were gone.