14
The Raptor's Ascent
Tolburt stared intently at Gamlin's map, his eyes squinting nearly shut in the overcast morning's grey light, and muttered darkly under his breath.
They were four days out of Woodhaven, and Julian could understand his annoyance. The map was anything but precise. A few squiggly lines that indicated branches of streams running down from the mountains. A pronounced valley that arced to the northeast, and finally a prominent peak that looked across a narrow vale to the outcropping that formed the Raptor's Ascent. It made the trek seem easy.
Of course, there were not two or three, but a dozen branching streams coming down from the mountains in the vicinity of Woodhaven.
That was not an exaggeration, either. In their first day climbing from the foothills into the
