175

*11*

A series of loud knocks woke Gregor. He stretched for the briefest of moments before rising from his straw bed and making his way the the door to the room that was his cell. Just inside of the door his breakfast greeted him. Gregor eyed his breakfast and then picked it up and walked over to the crumbling hole that was once a window in this castle. So it was this morning, and so it had been for the past two moons. A repetition that made his situation almost bearable. As though the worst in life could be rendered normal by sheer repetition.

He rested his plate on a flat section of bricks and looked out onto the valley below. More troops were arriving. For the fourth time groups similar to the one that had captured him came tumbling into the valley. He waited, eating, for the sound to reach him. He knew that their entrance would be the same as the others, and the same as the one he had made with his entourage. There.

The soldiers racing on their overly large horses, heads covered in a variety of strange animal skulls, erupted in a series of loud guttural cries. In moments the soldiers within the castle answered the call. Gregor could hear the soldiers guarding his locked door answering the call a moment later then hose with a window view. Prisoner though he was there was something in the warrior cries that made the hair on Gregor's arms stand up.