Atlee Pine Series In Order Novels & Stories

Mara – Ashfang Pack Beta The pines were too quiet. That was the first thing Mara noticed as she stood on the southern ridge with the watch guards. No birdsong. No wind. Just the stillness of a forest that knew what was coming and held its breath. Below her, Ashfang's camp was a machine in motion. Warriors moving in rotating formation drills. Blacksmiths finishing blades lined with mountain iron. Runners relaying messages between command tents and border patrols. Even the Omega healers were busy, gathering medicinal herbs and boiling poultices in copper pots.

The trees that grew here were splendid long-leaf pines, shooting up straight as arrows almost a hundred feet before they broke into palm-like branches; and many of them were so large that the turpentine gatherers had been able to chip them on both sides, and hang two cups on them. For about two hundred yards this park-like growth lasted, where his horse’s feet trod silently on the thick layer of pine-needles; then a slight descent took him out into the open ground. The sunlight seemed blinding after the shade of the woods. The sky was hazily blue, radiating an intense heat. High overhead two buzzards soared in circles. The ground was a tangle of gallberry-bushes, and Joe rode through them by