(Disclamer: Right...Me owning Teen Titans...I wish.)
Time goes on, and ages pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades into myth, and even that is long forgotten. In the Third Age, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. But it a beginning.
Below the cloud-capped peaks that gave the mountains their name, the wind flailed into Westwood, and beat at two men walking with a cart and horse down the rock-strewn track called the Quary Road. For all that spring should have come a good month since, the wind carried an icy chill as if it would rather bear snow.
Gusts plastered Beast Boy's coat to his back, whipped the earth-colored wool against him, then streamed it out behind him. He wished the coat were heavier. Half the time when he tried to tug it back around him it only caught on the wind again.
As a particularly strong blast tugged the cloak out of his hand, he glanced at his grandfather over the back of the shaggy bay mare. He felt foolish about wanting to reassure himself that Ghorin was still there, but it was that kind of day. The wind howled when it rose, but aside from that, quiet lay heavy on the land. The soft creak of the axle sounded loud by comparison. No birds sang in the forest, no squirrels chittered from a branch. Not that he expected them, really; not this spring.
Only trees that kept leaf or needle through the winter had any green about them. Snarls of last year's bramble spread brown webs over stone outcrops from trees. Scattered white patches of snow still dotted the ground where clumps of trees kept deep shade. Where sunlight did reach, it held neither strength nor warmth. The pale sun was to the east, but its light was crisply dark, as if mixed with shadow. It was an awkward morning, made for unpleasant thoughts.
Winter had been bad on the farm, worse than even his grandfather could remember, but it must have been harsher in the mountains, if the number of wolves driven into Westwood was any guide. Wolves raided the sheep pens, and chewed their way into the barns to get the cattle and horses. It was no longer safe after dark. Men were prey as often as sheep, and the sun did not always have to be down.
Ghorin was taking steady strides on the other side of Bell, using his spear as a walking staff, ignoring the wind that made his brown cloak flap like a banner. Now and again, he touched the mare's flank lightly to keep her moving. With his thick chest, and broad face, he was a pillar of reality in that morning, like a stone in the middle of a drifting dream. His sun-roughed ceeks might be line and his hair have only a sprinkling of black amoung the gray, but there was a solidness to him. He stumped down the road now impassively. Wolves and bears were all very well, his manner said, things that any sheep must be aware of, but they had best not try to stop Ghorin from getting to Tamm's feild.
With a guilty start Beast Boy returned to watching his side of the road, Ghorin's matter-of-fact attitude reminding him of the task.
Two small caskets of Ghorin's apple brandy rested in the lurching cart, and eight larget barrels of apple cider, only slightly hard after winter's curing. Ghorin delivered the same every year to the Winespring Inn for use during Edmond Tine, and he had declared that it would take more than wolves or bears to stop them this year. Even so, they had not been to the village for weeks.
As Beast Boy watched from his side of the road, the feeling grew in him that he was being watched. For a while he tried to shrug it off. Nothing moved or made a sound amoung the trees, except the wind. But the feeling not only persisted, it grew stronger. The hairs on his arms stirred; his skin prickled as if it itched on the inside. He rubbed irritably at his arms, and told himself to stop letting fancies take him. There was nothing in the woods on his side of the road, and Ghorin would have spoken if something was on the other. He glanced over his should and blinked. NOt more than twenty paces back down the road a cloaked figure followed them, black, dull, and ungleaming.
It was more habit than anything else that kept him walking backward alongside the cart while he looked.
The follower's cloak covered him to his boot tops, the cowl tugged well foward so no part of him showed. Vaguely Beast Boy thought that there was something odd about the man, but it was the shadowed opening of the hood that facinated him. He could see only the vaguest outlines of a face, but he had the feeling he was looking right into the stranger's eye. And he could not look away. Queasiness settled in his stomach. There was only shadow to see in the hood, but he felt a hatred as sharply as if he could see a snarling face, hatred for everything that lived. Hatred for him most of all, for him above all things.
Abruptly a stone caught his heel and he stumbled, breaking his eyes away from the dark man. Only a outthrust hand grabbing Bell's harness saved him from falling flat on his back. With a startled snort, the mare stopped, twisting her head to see what had caught her.
Ghorin frowned over Bell's back. "Are you alright, lad?"
"A stranger," Beast Boy said breathlessly, pulling himself upright. "A stranger, following us."
"Where?" The old man peered back warily.
"There, down the..." Beast Boy's words trailed off as he turned to point. The road behind was empty. Disbelieving, he stared into the forest on both sides of the road. Bare-branched trees offered no hiding, but there was not a glimmer of another person. He met his grandfather's questioning gaze. "He was there. A man in a black cloak."
"I wouldn't doubt your word, but where has he gone?"
"I don't know, but he was there." A pause. "He was."
Ghorin shoke his grizzled head. "If you say so, lad. Come then. We'll check for footprints." He started towards the rear of the cart, his cloak whipping in the wind. "If we find them, we'll know for a fact he was there. If not, well, these are days to make a man think he's seeing things."
Beast Boy abruptly realized what had been so odd about the follower, other than his being there at all. The wind that beat Ghorin and him had not so much as shifted a fold of the black cloak. His mouth was suddenly dry. He must have imagined it. This was a morning to prickle a man's imagination.
With a worried frown he peered into he woods around them; it looked different than it ever had before. Almost since he was old enough to walk, he had run loose in the forest. The ponds and streams of Westwood was where he had learned to swim. Nowhere in all of his travels had he found a place that frightened him. Today, though, the Westwood was not the place he remembered. A man who could disappear so suddenly could reappear just as suddenly, maybe even right beside them.
"No, nevermind." When Ghorin stopped in surprize, Beast Boy covered his flush by tugging at Bell's mane, turning around. "You're probably right. No point looking for what isn't there, not when we can use the time getting on to the village. And out of this wind."
"I suspect that I could do with a mug of ale where it's warm." Ghorin said slowly. He clucked Bell into action and they were off again, nearly to their distination.
(A/N: Hmm...A rather boring chapter if you're the type to leap for battle scences. Don't worry. They're coming. In the next chapter, the other titans will be introduced. PLEASE R&R! puppy dog eyes)
