The column of riders passed through the gate in the hunting lodge's palisade wall, entering the forest beyond, and to Baron Erling Fayle, the world around him completely changed.
It changed the way it always did when the last walls of civilization fell behind, and the wild places took their place. The grey morning light, already thin enough to feel like a permanent dusk, dimmed further as the canopy of western hemlock and red cedar closed overhead like a temple's vaulted ceiling. Here and there, a few of the huntsmen carried torches to push back the gloom in the earliest hours of the morning as they ventured into the dense forest of the Lothian's hunting preserve.
Suddenly, the sounds of the lodge, the clatter of servants clearing tables, the baying of hounds still waiting their turn to be released, the jingle of harnesses, and the voices of men, all of it grew muffled and distant, swallowed by a forest that had no interest in the affairs of lords and their hunts.
