100TWC - Day 14: Judgement

It was a perfect afternoon for walking. Sunny, but not too bright. Warm, but not too hot. A light breeze to freshen up a brow damp with exertion. The sky such a solid crystal blue that Reg thought if he reached up and struck it with his stick it would ring like an expensive wine glass.

Birdsong echoed from a nearby copse, filling the air with the sound Reg always associated with summer. With his boyhood spent walking in the woods and fields. A happy sound. He knew, vaguely, that it wasn't really happy. The birds sang aggressively, declaring their territories and defending them against all-comers. Reg understood that, deep down. Understood it, and was intimately familiar it. He'd spent most of his adult life defending territory of one sort or another. Had served time for it, in fact.

He never expected to get out of prison so soon, yet here he was out in the country air once more, his polished old oak staff in his hand, a stalk of long grass between his teeth, and a clear path before him. He smiled and stopped for a moment to take in the view. To his right, a meadow stretched gently down a slight incline to a large copse which nestled at the bottom of the valley. Beyond that the rest of the valley's secrets were hidden behind a curtain of summer haze. To his left a high stone wall curved away both in front and behind until it too disappeared from sight. The path on which he walked, dried by the sun, consisted of nothing more than dirt and small stones. It was edged with neatly cropped grasses and occasional wild flowers. Reg noticed with almost imperceptible surprise that none of the dust from the path had settled on his boots or trouser bottoms.

He exchanged his chewed grass stalk for a fresh one, adjusted his grip on the smooth wood of his walking staff, and resumed his trek beside the curve of the wall. He had just begun to wonder what, in this beautiful out-of-the-way place, would need such impenetrable protection as a twelve-foot wall, when a gate came into view around the bend. Fully half again as tall as the wall in which it was set, the gate was more ornate than anything Reg had ever seen. Filigree threads wrought of the finest gold and copper patterned the uprights and cross-pieces of the gate, which appeared themselves to be of gold. Each of its two halves vaulted up to an enormous golden crown set atop them both and which, although it must have been in two pieces to allow the gate to open, appeared to Reg to be whole.

The gate was closed. Beside it, an old man sat on a wooden arbour seat, his eyes closed and face turned to the sky, enjoying the warm afternoon sun. As Reg approached the man turned toward him and regarded him with piercing blue eyes.