The Nether Scroll - Lynn Abbey [54]
He half-expected death with every step Hopper took.
There were two kinds of traveling in the Greypeaks: treacherous and weird. The rocky trails were the treacherous part. Little more than glorified ledges, the trails weren't much wider than a horse's rump. They left Tiep riding with one stirrup banging into the mountain and the other hanging out over a whole lot of nothing. Worse, the trails weren't clear. Say what you would about the Zhentarim, if they claimed a trade route, they sent crews out to keep it clear of rock falls and water cracks. Here in the Greypeaks, when Hopper planted a hoof, there was no telling whether the ground would slip or stay firm beneath it. The horse was lathered from nerves, and so was Tiep.
Still, he'd rather be up on the ledges than down in the valleys. The valleys were the weirdest part of their traveling. Tiep had never set foot in anything like the Greypeak valleys. Neither had Dru or Rozt'a, nor any of their horses. The goblin had a name for the place, in his own language, of course. The word sounded like a cat getting sick; a human tongue couldn't hope to pronounce it. The best Druhallen, who knew the name of almost everything under the sun, could call it was bog and forest.
Bog because, once they started seeing the valleys for what they really were, they could see that the Greypeaks were a huge bowl, ringed with mountains and part-way filled with water. The water had rotted some of the inner mountains, turning them into a mare's nest of broken spires and spines. Where the water should have become a lake there appeared to be solid ground. Solid, that was, until Hopper set his hooves on it, then trees as tall as ten men standing together started quaking. The floating forest swayed like reeds in the wind when six horses moved through it.
Tiep had thought nothing could be more sick-in-the-gut scary than the shifty ground- until the dog-faced goblin announced that there were giant leeches under the bog. The dragons that Sheemzher said dwelt in the unbroken clouds sounded better than giant leeches. He heaved a sigh of relief when the goblin led them onto the rocks again.
They climbed in earnest after that, crossing the spine of a dead mountain in the middle of the bog. They'd cleared the crest and were on their way down to the bog again when Cardinal-the gelding Galimer usually rode-lost his footing. In less time than it took to scream, the chestnut had fallen into a dry ravine. Bones stuck out of his forelegs. With a safety rope tied between his waist and his horse, Druhallen scrambled down and put the animal out of its misery.
"Helm's mercy," Rozt'a said, with one hand on the rope and the other on Dru's horse. "Be grateful Cardinal carried our gear and not Galimer."
The fall hadn't hurt the blankets and bean sacks they divvied up among the survivors, and Tiep didn't object when Rozt'a decreed that they'd all walk, leading the horses, from there on. Two feet were steadier than four, even in the bog.
Dru and Rozt'a each led two horses, Tiep led Hopper, and the goblin took the point alone. They were in the bog, not all that far from the ravine where they'd left Cardinal, when they heard the hooting and hollering of scavengers. Tiep told himself he wasn't going to look back over his shoulder once they were back on stone and above the quaking tree-tops, but Dru called a halt and he succumbed.
Big mistake. They had clear sight on the ravine and poor Cardinal. The scavengers were more than beasts, less than men. They'd butchered the horse on the spot and were eating him raw. Tiep wanted to say that the scavengers were Sheemzher's kin but the truth was that though the size was about right, the scavengers were uglier than any goblin and odd. Most of them were gray, like the mountains, rather than red-orange like Sheemzher. Some of them had faces that thrust out like a bear or weasel's. One had a long furry tail, another, a ratty one, and one had what looked