The Rovere's Return Chapter 1

It was a dirty night in Tuscany's godforsaken High Casentino. The feared Tramonta gale blew unremittingly and brought the first flurries of snow tumbling like disoriented lapwings on a bender. In countless stone houses hidden among the high forests hunger laid its calling card. The year had been a disaster: a cold spring followed by a burning summer. The late frosts had laid waste all fruit blossom; the summer drought and unknown gripping humid heat had withered and stunted tree growth. The vital chestnut crop - bread for the poor - had all but failed.

As the thin ragged light faded Dionysus Falterona took down his old hunting rifle, recylced from his time on the White Front in Italy's disastrous IWW.  With the weak light of an olive oil lamp he slipped from the house into the gale outside.

The trees above him were crashing and clacking together, the normal silence of the forest replaced by a low roar high in the tree tops. Further in the distance he could hear the wind smashing through the Douglas Firs on the nearby ridgetop. The darkness was total but the noise and wind gave the hunter an advantage if he could close in on his prey. As he turned a corner on the steeply rising forest track  ...