The steps were deserted and she could see far enough ahead of her, almost no trees or bushes. The few that made it to maturity, albeit only a ghost of what mountainous vegetation can be,have been strong enough to grow in this rocky place and the soil itself seemed unfriendly to life, dry, ashy and with a vague smell of sulfur. From place to place there were higher rocks of strange shapes. An old, dormant or dead volcano, for sure, gave birth to this relief,and she looked up the steps searching for the tip of it. There was no high and pointy summit, but 2 walls of rock one near the place where she was and one towards the south. Also along the rock, in the distance, she could see some wooden palisades and crude turrets. Turuviel did not need a map to know that the palisades were the keep of Grams, the northern one of the two encampments that proved time and time again too strong to take for good. The southern one, Dar Gazat, was target to some bold night attacks but this one, the one in the north, connected to their supply lines of endless toops and gear, was incredibly well guarded by archers that seemed to never tire or get distracted. That strong archers defense and the natural difficulty to approach the northern keep made the few legendary attempts to attack it useless and costly. She never even heard anyone planning such an attack anymore, not once since she joined the defenders of the moors. She had no reason to approach that keep and search for more trouble than she was already in, so she searched a way towards the opposite direction, towards the south, through the smaller cliffs and rocks, crawling at times, hearing and feeling the dirt under her feet for any sign of anyone approaching her.
The terrain was goins upwards still, a mild slope hill that made visible, beyond its ridge, as she was approaching it, another half-ruined keep, still standing tall and majestic among a fir forest, rare and contorted like touched by the malice that inhabited this places for so long already. The fortress was called Lugazag, meaning The Lookout Post, even by the Free People because it was almost always under the control of the enemy. Rarely, and only by a few stubbornly optimist, it was called Onaedh, The Stone Nest, but she did not feel particularly optimist and she did not want to climb and pass the open ground around the fortress, just to check who controlled Onaedh or Lugazag, not now when she was tired, wounded and spent. She decided to go farther west some and then continue towards the south. Somewhere south of Lugazag should have been an encampment that was sometimes staffed, when the frontline was more under the control of the free people that should have been connected with the outpost south of it by -unmaintained, dangerous but existing- underground tunnels. She was unsure if she would dare to descend there but the option seemed safer than checking Lugazag so for now she only decided to avoid the fortress by a safe distance and under good enough cover.
Suddenly she noticed the spark of a lake under the moonlight and the thirst she did not think about hit her suddenly,reminding the dry mouth, the aching throat, the cough she silenced with care. The lake, or lakes, they braided like a beads necklace under the moonlight, were in the open, under the shade of the second dour rock wall that she noticed when climbing out of the crevasse. She could not tell of their quality from that far but at least no bad smell was reaching her from them. She needed some water and the herbs she collected in the bottle for absolute dire need were suddenly even less appealing. Unless the top blade of the rock wall was guarded just on top of the lakes, and there was no fire telling of such a camp, it was probably safe for her to reach them and use them to drink and fill her bottle for the rest of the road.
