[Nano novel] Chapter fourteen: In a world of snow.

Taliesin woke to a freezing cold world full of snow and blowing wind.  He was lying on his back in a forest, and the snow all around him was melted to form a large circle that surrounded his body.  He sat up, shivering and scared.  What had happened?  His memory was a little fuzzy, but he remembered climbing the mountain stairway, and how upset he was with himself for falling asleep on his way up.  He thought about Dragon Bane, and felt a pang when he realized that he would not be able to untie the poor horse from the tree.  Hopefully someone found him before something really bad happened... because he was pretty sure that getting back again was not going to be easy.

In his hand, he still held the waystone from the forest back on the mountain.  The paper was still wrapped around it, and the ink had bled and marked the palm of his hand and his fingers.  He wondered how much heat had been produced by the rainbow that brought him here; last time he had traveled through the rainbow's light, he had not woken up until the next morning, as far as he could tell.  But it was so cold here that he doubted he could have slept all night here without becoming frostbitten if it weren't for the fact that the rainbow's power obviously heated everything up in the vicinity of its touching down.

He got up, and put the stone carefully inside his bag, which was still looped over his shoulder.  His clothing was all completely dry, which was unexpected.  He had thought that the melted snow would have meant that he would be at least partially damp.  He wished that he understood what really happened when the rainbow took him.  It struck him then that he was lost again.  And this time, he was lost in a world that appeared to be significantly less friendly than the last.  At least he was wearing leather boots - they should keep his feet dry and warm for a while. 

There was nothing else to do but find out where he was, so he left the oddly melted circle in the midst of the snowy woods, and crunched through the layer of snow for a while.  He had no specific direction he was going, and he worried that he might not be able to find his entry point again; but he figured that, at least for a while, he should be able to follow his foot prints back to it.

He walked, his ams wrapped around himself to stave off the cold for as long as possible, until he came to the edge of whatever wood it was he had found himself in.  The snow was blowing heavily beyond the border of the trees, and he hesitated to leave the relative safety of the woods.  Suddenly, he was grabbed by both arms and dragged into the clearing, and rough voices yelled at him in a foreign tongue.  He struggled and fell to his knees, and tried to put his hands up over his head in surrender.

"Don't hurt me!" he yelled back at them.  "I can't understand you!"

Two large men, covered in what looked - and smelled - like uncured animal skins, stood over him, menacingly angry looks on their large and rather ugly faces.  They gestured and scowled and made angry sounding remarks at him, and both of them were waving dangerous looking weapons very close to his head.

"I'm not here to hurt you!" he shouted, and ducked, as a very sharp looking, hefty knife flew mere inches past his left ear.  "Let me go, please!"

They gave up shouting at him, and began to converse, still loudly, with each other.  They had let go of his arms, but he was too wary to try and run off at this point.  One of them might throw one of their sharp knives in his direction; and he thought he saw a tomahawk or axe or something tucked into one of the ugly men's belts.

He rubbed his arms - they hurt where they had grabbed him.  He was very apprehensive, and more than a little bitter that Tristan's bright idea had led him here to this other world, a completely new one again, and who knew how difficult it would be for him to get back to Ava or even back to his own home.  He sighed loudly, which caused one of the men to grab his arm again, yanking it in an unnatural direction.

"OW!" he yelped, his heart leaping into his throat.  Were they going to kill him?  In response to his fearful thought, the foreign man hauled him to his feet and began to march him across the clearing, away from the wood, followed by the other man.  At least they weren't going to kill him just now.

The wind, which he had been mostly shielded from while in the trees, was very strong out here, and it was either picking up snow from the ground or snowing properly, but whichever it was, Taliesin was getting a lot of it in his eyes and lashes.  He started to shiver.  His coat, while warm enough for he milder climate he had just come from, was not lined nearly enough to protect him from the biting wind and the snow.

Soon, they came in sight of a large camp.  At least, from what he could make out through the blowing snow, it was a large camp.  There appeared to be tents very close together, probably made of the same kind of skins that they were wearing for clothing, but he could not see much more than that.  The closer they came, the more excited the two of them appeared to be, because they started hollering back and forth to each other again, and their voices sounded more and more agitated.  He hoped he wasn't being taken in to be summarily executed.  Of course, if none of them could understand him, he was not certain how he would ever be able to explain what he was even there for. 

What AM I here for, anyway?  This was a mistake.  I had no idea it would happen.

They hauled him, each of them holding one of his arms, into the largest of the tents that he could see. The sudden change of atmosphere from the overly bright, snowy outside to the warm, slightly stuffy, and very dim interior, was startling.  He blinked hard, trying to adjust his eyes to the lack of light.  One of his captors called out loudly, and he began to see that there were at least a dozen others like the two of them inside this tent, sitting around a large wooden table.  Nobody spoke at first, but they all stared at him, balefully and suspiciously.

One of them rose, from the head of the table, and Taliesin could see that he wore some kind of crown on his head.  He must be their leader, which must mean that his fate was in this foreign man's hands.  The two captors let go of his arms then, and he sank awkwardly to his knees, worried that he would do something offensive without realizing it, but so afraid for his life that he was willing to beg for it.

"Please," he said, but the leader barked a single syllable at him, and he was silenced.  The leader walked up very close to him, then grabbed him by the front of his shirt and lifted him straight up off the ground.  Taliesin's feet left the ground altogether, and he was frozen in shock and fear as the giant of a man inspected him closely.  Grunting, he let go, and Taliesin barely got his legs under him so that he didn't fall into a heap.

After that inspection, the group of large, smelly-skin-covered men ignored him completely.  His two captors seemed disappointed that nothing else had happened, and they poked him rather violently in the arms a few times, then wandered off to have conversations with other men in the tent.  Taliesin remained standing, completely unsure about what he should do next, if anything.  Had he been given sanctuary?  Was he still a prisoner? 

Before he had to decide what to do, however, a smaller man walked into the tent, and spoke to the leader in the foreign language.  So far, Taliesin was under the impression that the language was mostly made up of guttural grunting mixed in with monosyllabic yelling.  After the smaller man spoke to the leader, in a very short conversation, he turned to Taliesin, and to his amazement, said, "Come with me."