The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1) by William Meighan Page A

to feel on a cold autumn night, but then his thigh had probably kept it warm in his pocket.  Thinking of Aaron and Sarah Murray, in cruel captivity somewhere ahead of them, he finally began to doze.
    When Owen opened his eyes, he was looking out over the little valley towards the old watchtower. The gorns’ fire there had burned down, but he could still easily see two figures sitting near it. A movement about five paces to the left revealed a third standing facing a bush. He could not see the fourth; he had probably taken up watch in the tower.
    Silently, he opened his broad wings and dropped from the tree. He flew low towards the tower, angling toward the gully that they planned to use later that night. Marian had been correct. The bottom of the wash was sandy, with thin bushes growing along the sides. The bushes had lost their leaves for the coming winter, but they should still provide them with enough cover to approach the tower unseen if they were careful.
    Owen gained altitude once he was west of the tower, and soared around it once from a safe distance.  As he remembered from the previous night, part of the rampart on the southern side had fallen, but the structure still looked basically sound.  It was built tall and round with a narrow stone staircase that wound part way up the outside starting on the western side to a door opening to the south that was set at about twice the height of a tall man.  The remnants of the door had been pushed inward and were sagging on their hinges.  Owen reasoned that the thin stairway and the high door would make it difficult to assault the tower against an alert defense.  There was no room to swing a battering ram from the narrow landing before the door, and only one man at the most would be able to assault the old oaken door with an axe.  Heavy stones or hot oil dropped from above would make that axeman’s task more than perilous.
    Owen circled the tower one more time, but could not see any sign of the fourth sentry. Downwind of the tower he caught the faint but distinct smell of fresh blood, probably from the game that the gorn had butchered for their dinner. After his lesson of the previous night, Owen dared not land on the battlement wall, and he also did not want to alert the gorn by loitering too long near the tower, so veering off to the west, he took up the trail of the villagers and their guards.
    Owen flew for several leagues, following the path as it wound up into the Grey Hills until he saw what he was looking for.  There, laid out much as it had been the night before, was the enemy’s camp with the villagers huddled into small groups in the middle.  They had not traveled as far this day as they had on the first.  The terrain had been rougher, had climbed more, and they must have been exhausted from the impressive pace that they had maintained during the days before.  Had it not been for the watchtower, Owen suspected, he and his friends would have closed the gap substantially before having to stop for the night.  As he circled the camp from a safe distance, trying unsuccessfully to get a glimpse of Sarah, Owen deeply regretted that delay.
    As he had the night before, Owen continued to the west to see if he could determine where the invaders were headed. Up and into the west he flew, the snow topped mountains of the West Wall looming up ahead.  About an hour beyond the camp he suddenly saw a great walled castle on a granite outcropping with a commanding view of the surrounding valleys and the majestic mountains rising steeply to the west.  At first, he seemed to see flags and pennants flying from the massive outer walls and the turrets of the central keep, and men in strange uniforms with great halberds on their shoulders marching in patrol on the ramparts, but as he grew closer these apparitions faded and he realized that he was looking at the stone ruins of a fortress long abandoned.  Like the watchtower, it too had suffered from centuries of neglect.