The Shadow Rising.

Chapter 1. (Scarecrow)

Chapter 1

Scarecrow

Year 231, month 11, day 330, of the second Glynravian kingdom. The Saint only speaks truth.

Raym, was lying on his bed, with nothing to do as the hours passed, he was waiting for his father to return home. Raym, was eighteen years old, with brown hair and greenish eyes. He was a healthy and strong man, and he knew he should be helping his father in the battle.

His father had refused, saying that Barmon needed to have people alive to work on the farms. Raym, knew that his father just wanted to keep him alive, but Raym wanted to keep his father alive too. Their argument had ended with his father taking Raym's, longbow and hiding it.

Raym had searched all over the village during the day. But nobody had seen it, or heard his father talking about it. Raym had then spent the afternoon searching their house. The house was only one floor and one room. So Raym thought he would find it after only a little while, he didn't.

He had now been thinking about possible hiding spots, for three hours. And Raym had realised were he should have looked first. Sara his mother, was buried just a short way into the forest at a small shrine to Saint Elyn. She had died during one of the wars, Duke Bramon had been fighting.

An arrow from a longbow, claiming her life. Raym's father always said she had been the most beautiful woman in the world. Raym had a hard time believing that his father, had been able to get such a beauty to marry. They were not exactly rich, or in the Dukes favour.

Raym's bed was getting uncomfortably hard now, all the straw in it flattening, as Raym spent hour after hour on it. Perhaps he should go looking for his father? He was very tempted to go but that would only make his father angry.

Raym was a man of faith and he, always tried to follow the messages Saint Elyn, had given to humanity on her death bed. And one of them was to never disobey or anger your elders, which to Raym didn't seem to important. But it was the Saint's own word and then it must be.

Other than that, she had said to man, to never kill each other and focus on the shadow. Well that one was broken all the time, by everything from bandits to nobles. Even the order of the Saint broke it, as they controlled their cities with an iron hand.

Raym was sure that they needed to be a bit hard too catch the shadow touched, but some of the stories he had heard, were the stuff of nightmares. A travelling merchant had once told him, that they had hanged one hundred peasants, as one of them was shadow touched. Raym wasn't sure why they didn't only kill the shadow touched, but the order probably, had a good reason.

Raym was brought from his thoughts as someone knocked on the door. He sat up on the bed, trying to see out the window. The sky had a strange green tint to it, that Raym had never seen before.

He couldn't see who was at the door, so he asked instead.

“Who is it?” Raym felt very exposed without his longbow.

“Open you bastard, it's cold outside.” That voice made Raym smile. It was his best friend Matt and Raym was sure he had a new funny idea to kill some time with.

That was the thing Matt did best. He always had a new, stupid idea for him and Raym to try. Raym could clearly remember one time when they were sixteen. That had been a really dangerous one, if they had been discovered, they would have lost a hand, but that they didn't know then.

Raym and Matt had found a hornet nest hanging very close to the arrow storage. The arrow storage was an old stone building on the edge of the village, it held all the village's arrows and was extremely important for the village.