The Highland southroad

The road from Wolfmere down to Luna. Its stops, north to south:

Under the old pact, the north holds the passes and Luna keeps the great roads supplied.

From the books

In The Highlander, the southroad is the tournament road that carries Eira Ironvale from Wolfmere Pass to Luna after Dagna's death. Above it, the road drops in red steps from the pass towards pine country. When Varkhul the Unbent strikes the Red Stair, the Red Moot names the hunt because the southroad cannot be safe while the beast bleeds into the snow. Eira travels with two Ironvale riders, the Crowbrook traveller Sable and the forge boy Eirik Emberlock, and the party argues over pace from the first day.

The road south

The upper road runs through border holds that are neither fully Highlander nor fully bound to Luna. Their roofs are lower than mountain halls, their windows broader, and luminarite chips hang over doors beside red ore charms; in one village a Crowbrook saint token is turned backwards so as to offend no one. At Rusk Ford a shardback boar wedged beneath the bridge holds up a caravan of three families until Eira kills it, and the caravan passes on news of Luna's crowds and of Fae travellers turned away from inns. At Marris Ford a ferryman refuses Sable passage over her Crowbrook charms, and at Lark's Hollow a Luna patrol demands that Redress be bound in peace cloth before declaring Eira an allied champion. Beside the Charon shrine on the nameless ridge, Eirik leaves a copper for the dead.

Graycut Inn shows what the south thinks of Highlanders. Its low common room is hung with boar tusks, bear claws and a polished wyrm scale, and its keeper asks whether Eira really wrestled a snow bear at twelve. By morning he has painted a red sword on his signboard and renamed his strongest ale Highlander Fire.

Below the snowline

Below the snowline the road softens into mud and pine shadow. Farms crouch in hollows without walls high enough for danger, and Highlander blood thins into borderfolk who build steep roofs for mountain weather. Varkhul first strikes here, turning towards the lower village lights, and the final fight comes at the road shrine, a small stone shelter with a road rune, three benches and a bell, where travellers leave red ore chips for Orun, wax for the Light, a coin for Charon and a carved leaf perhaps meant for the Fae element gods. After Eira kills the beast, the place briefly becomes holy to strangers, and pilgrims and opportunists come to collect bone chips until Sable confiscates them.

The North Beacon stands on a chalk ridge where the last hard country gives way to Luna's outer farms: a white tower threaded with luminarite, flying gold flags, its lens bright enough to paint the road in holy colour even under cloud. Pilgrims kneel at the sight of it; Highlanders usually spit to one side and walk on. When Eira arrives its light is flickering gold, blue-white and purple, and its captain is burning coded strips that report Alerion dead and the slums breached.