The Northern Approach

by Jim Galford

  The man with the black-and-white tail continued trying to wake the woman, tears rolling down his face as he attempted to restart her breathing. Finally, he collapsed onto her, hugged her tightly as he sobbed, pulled her head to his neck, and clung. “I can’t use magic,” he admitted, gently lowering the woman to the ground and trying again to use pressure against her ribs to help her breathe. “Something’s keeping me from using magic at all. I have to keep trying…”

  Raeln watched helplessly as the man struggled with the corpse, trying desperately to wake her. The fox woman was already far gone and nothing seemed to do more than jar her body. Even the impacts of the man’s hands on her chest did not push any blood from her side, where Raeln could see muscle and bone through the ravaged flesh. She was dead and had been for some time. Even with a total lack of skill in helping the wounded, he could see that.

  “You need to let go,” Raeln pleaded, trying to grab the man’s arms. If he kept up, all he would do was continue to injure the body or possibly hurt himself.

  In reply the man lashed out at him, snarling like a wild animal and clawing at Raeln’s face, leaving painful scrapes across his neck and muzzle. The other man dropped to a low crouch like he was ready to attack Raeln, practically sitting atop the woman in an attempt to keep Raeln away. Raeln had seen similar behavior from actual animals, usually protecting their food or young. Any rational thought was gone, replaced by utter panic in the man’s eyes.

  Raeln rolled onto his foot and hopped away, holding up his hands defensively. The man he was looking at was entirely different from how he remembered him. The last time Raeln had seen him, the man had been sad and quiet, worried more about his children than himself. Aside from scars from months of wearing manacles as a slave, the man had looked unmarred, despite something about him being more comfortable in the wild than Raeln had ever been.

  Now, the man seemed to have changed dramatically, despite only a single year having passed since Raeln saw him last. Deep scars marred one side of his black muzzle, reaching back into the grey and white of his face. The black claws that blended into the black fur of his hands, once trimmed by the taskmasters at the slave camp where Raeln had met him, were fully grown and sharpened, made obvious by his apparent willingness to use them against Raeln. The black fur of his feet had been burned almost down to the skin from walking, making Raeln wonder if he had run nonstop for the last few days since his departure from the valley where Raeln had picked up his scent. The scars looked quite old, though Raeln knew they could not have been there too long.

  Whatever this man had been through in the months since Raeln had seen him last, much had changed, and he seemed not to recognize Raeln at all.

  “Calm down. We can find a way to help her, if it’s still possible,” Raeln pleaded, slapping aside a half-hearted attempt to claw at his muzzle. The man seemed out of his mind.

  Without a word, the healer backed away from Raeln and hunkered down over the fallen woman. His anger and attempts to hurt Raeln died away almost immediately as he looked at her, collapsing against her, tenderly brushing at her face with one hand. The man let out a cry of absolute anguish, as though his emotion alone might bring her back. “Wake up,” the man begged after his cry had ended, pressing his forehead against the fox woman’s. “Please, wake up. I can’t do this alone, Feanne. Please don’t die…”

  Raeln had no idea what to do or say. He sat down slowly, trying to hide his pain, and lowered his eyes, letting the man grieve. Dearly he wanted to help, but knew his skills had never leaned toward healing the wounded. Even if they had, the other man was far more of a healer than he would ever be, and from what Raeln knew, no healer could save someone whose body had already gone cold. By the look of the fox woman, she was well past any help. Even with all the resources of the great city of Lantonne before its invasion, Raeln was unsure she could have been brought back with all of the magisters trying.

  Time passed slowly as Raeln waited for the man to even acknowledge his presence, but that acknowledgement never came. Instead the man continued to weep over his fallen love, softly mumbling requests for her to wake up, to come back to him. He whispered about going somewhere and about having to get back to “them” before dark. Raeln could not be certain, but he guessed the healer was speaking of his—perhaps their—children.

  “We should go,” offered Raeln, reaching for the man. “We’ll give her a proper burial…”

  Hissing like a cornered animal, the man bared his teeth to warn Raeln off. Once Raeln lowered his hand, the man relaxed again, ignoring him.

  Thinking back on his own losses, Raeln began to understand how the man felt. He had learned control over his emotions, fighting to hide how he felt from others as one relative after another had died on his watch. This man had no such control over himself and did not care to learn it, at least not yet. He was entirely lost to his grief, mourning the death of possibly the most important person in his life. Raeln had felt shame at mourning where others could see him, but this man was willing to let anyone and everyone see his pain.

  “Your wife,” said Raeln, sighing and looking toward the distant mists that had stopped retreating. At any moment they could drift back toward where they sat, giving them maybe twenty minutes to flee if that happened. “I’m so sorry. I will wait as long as you need. I will not leave you. I owe you that and more.”

  The man seemed not to hear him at all, focused entirely on the fox wildling in his arms. He slowly brushed at her fur with his claws, smoothing out the mattings and scraping dried blood from other spots. “We were supposed to die together,” said the man at length, still not taking his eyes off the woman. “Both of us took him through the mists. Our lives for our children’s. It seemed so simple. I wasn’t supposed to outlive her…”

  Raeln fought back tears of his own, thinking back on the worried looks the man’s children had given him the previous fall. Few parents would have given anything less than their lives for their young, but that did not make the man’s loss any less. With the children missing as well, Raeln had to wonder if they were at the bottom of the lake.

  Sniffling, the man slowly eased his wife to the grass near the muddy shore of the lake, taking a shuddering breath to steady himself. He looked up at Raeln as though for the first time, his orange eyes drifting over Raeln’s clothing and then up to his face. “I know you. A long time ago…” the man said, his brows furrowing.

  “Not so long,” admitted Raeln, unable to look away from the fox’s body. He remembered looking at his own love’s remains as still as hers. Even seeing a stranger’s remains was painful. “We both have been through much since then.”

  The man nodded grimly, clasping his wife’s hand to his chest. “It’s good to know others lived and fled those lands,” he said, smiling weakly. “And it’s good to see grass again.”

  “Not that we’ve fled far. If I were you, I would’ve covered a few hundred miles or more by now after what they put you through.”

  Looking up, the man gave Raeln a confused stare. “What lands are we in?”

  “You have no idea where you are, do you?” Raeln asked. “Honestly, I don’t either, though we’re somewhere northwest of Lantonne in the mountains. Thirty miles west of Altis at most, near the dwarven lands.”

  The man looked around at the mountains and then up at the sky. Sniffing, he blinked in clear confusion and tightened his grip on his wife’s hand. “We did flee,” he said, laughing, though there was no humor in it. “A thousand miles, they told us. We were supposed to be safe there. This was where the danger was. The desert was safe.”

  Raeln leaned forward, the sadness of the moment lost in his shock at the statement. “You’ve been gone not even a year. At most, you could have gone nearly that far, but you would never have made it back by now—”

  “I know where we went!” cried the man, baring his teeth again. Sweeping his tail around the woman, he seemed determined to cling to her any way he could, shielding her from Raeln. “The mists took us. We�
�a year? Are you an idiot? I watched my children grow up. They found mates of their own. It’s been more than two years since we left. I think closer to two and a half by now, though I can never tell when the weather doesn’t change.”

  Raeln’s mind raced with the memory of tracking this man just days earlier. He was sure he had the right scent. There was no way he could have been wrong. One of the other scents with him even matched the woman that lay dead between them. Still, he could see the differences in the man’s face. He had aged in the year since Raeln had seen him and his scent seemed to confirm other places Raeln could not name.

  “We will bury her and I’ll take you to my companions,” Raeln offered again, this time getting no reply from the man. “They’re up the mountain a little ways.”

  Nodding absently, the other man brought his wife’s hand to his cheek and brushed her sharp claws against his muzzle.

  “What did this?” asked Raeln.

  That seemed to cut through the man’s grief and he growled deep in his throat as he answered. “A Turessian named Arturis. He’s dead, though. I have all the revenge I’ll ever get. His kind will never find him at the bottom of a lake.”

  “You killed a Turessian?”

  The man nodded grimly and then went back to grooming the corpse. Each attempt to clean her fur seemed more desperate, more of an action borne of lack of anything else he could do. “I don’t remember if you ever gave me your name,” the healer said, his eyes still on his wife. “Back then, I was just another animal with a leash. I didn’t really think about names.”

  “Raeln.”

  “Good to meet you, Raeln,” the man replied softly, picking dirt out of the woman’s white fur. “I know I never gave you mine. I’m Estin, and this is…was…Feanne.”

  “Estin?” Raeln was stunned. This was the man Greth had sought to bring home. This was the man Yoska had spoken of being dead. No coincidences, On’esquin had told him many times, but this was too much of one for him to let it go. “I found your camp…”

  “Which one? They’ve all fallen. The first cost her family their lives. The second cost us our friends and sent us to that horrible place. What camp do you think you’ve found, Raeln?”

  “The one where Yoska fought to help you escape.”

  Estin’s tears came back in force and he hung his head still farther, clinging desperately to Feanne’s hand. “Dead…all my fault,” he said so softly that Raeln was not even sure he had spoken. “I was responsible for keeping them alive.”

  “He’s not dead,” offered Raeln, but Estin seemed not to hear him. “I brought him with me. He’s up on the hill.”

  “Yoska, Finth, Ulra, Atall, Feanne…so many others. They’re all dead because I couldn’t save them.”

  Raeln realized Estin was talking the same way Raeln accused himself. He had blamed himself for the deaths in Lantonne, his mother and father’s murder, the loss of his love, and the loss of his sister. This man was no different, carrying the weight of deaths he could not have done anything more to save. If anything, Estin had been far more capable of saving others than Raeln with his magic, but there was only so much a single person could do.

  “Come. We’ll go see Yoska. Anything we can do to help…”

  Raeln let that trail off, knowing how insignificant their help would be in light of the body in Estin’s arms. She was likely all he cared about now and was the one thing no one in Raeln’s party could help him with. Her death would be Estin’s to bear, the same way he alone dealt with Greth’s.

  Nodding and wiping away his tears, Estin slid his arms under Feanne’s body and picked her up. Once he had settled her weight, he looked to Raeln with an entirely blank expression, waiting. From the look of him, he would have followed Raeln off a cliff for all he cared.

  Struggling back onto his feet, Raeln led the man toward the mountain path that headed to where he had left the others. Estin followed silently, never looking at the path or even at Raeln, his attention only on Feanne as they picked their way up the trail, with Raeln having to stop often to catch his breath after the difficult climb with one usable leg.

  Eventually they reached the lip of the plateau near the smaller lake where Raeln had left his companions. As he came over the top of the path, he saw the two men sitting around a small campfire, roasting some form of animal over it. They looked to him impassively before their eyes widened in surprise as Estin came up the path behind him.

  “Estin!” called out Yoska, hopping to his feet and running past Raeln. Estin seemed not to notice even him, but Yoska went with him over to the fire, helping to carry part of Feanne’s weight. Gently they sat the body off to one side of the fire, where Estin then practically fell to the ground. Yoska sat down across the body from him, his attention drifting between the two.

  “Where did you find him?” asked On’esquin, coming over to Raeln. “Do you have any idea what this means?”

  “No coincidences…I’ve met him before. He saved my life,” Raeln replied quickly.

  On’esquin’s eyes narrowed and he cocked his head to look at Raeln. “This is the man of black and white that alerted me to the prophecy’s beginning,” he told Raeln. “I met him on the other side of the known world. How did he come to be here?”

  “Mists passed through and he swam out of the lake. Said he was traveling from somewhere a thousand miles away, but—”

  On’esquin cut him off. “He doesn’t lie, Raeln. I met him on the far side of the mountains, past most of the western deserts. Or rather, I will meet him there…that happens a while from now. Maybe a year or so.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Magic never does, especially when it’s broken this badly. I’ve had two thousand years to ready myself for this, and I am far from ready. That man has survived what immortals fear.”

  Raeln gazed over at Estin and saw the man had one hand held over Feanne’s wounds, concentrating hard enough that he was trembling. The wounds did not close or change in any way, but he continued trying, straining himself in an attempt to use the magic that had so easily healed Raeln months earlier.

  “This is caused by the same effect that weakens me,” admitted On’esquin to Raeln. “Nothing he does will work until we leave this area. It could potentially extend quite some distance. It is too late, anyway. He will hurt himself if he keeps trying here.”

  “Then let him,” Raeln snapped, more harshly than intended. “He’s lost his wife. He gets all the time he needs and wants. We’re going nowhere until he’s ready to move on.”

  On’esquin regarded Raeln coolly and then bowed his head in acceptance. “This is your choice, not mine. Let me know when we will travel. Be aware, though, that this man’s grieving will not bring you any closer to those you’ve lost.”

  Turning before Raeln could reply, On’esquin went back to the campfire and sat with his back to the others. He picked a piece of meat from the animal roasting there and held it in his large hands, as if he could not decide if he actually wanted to eat it.

  Looking back at the others, Raeln saw Yoska now knelt over Feanne’s remains, holding a hand over her forehead as Estin stared at the man with a distant look in his eyes. Yoska was saying something, but before Raeln could limp over, he finished and touched the woman’s neck reverently with his open hand and sat back.

  “What was that? Some kind of funeral rite?” Raeln asked, wincing as he sat with them.

  “Of a sort, yes,” Yoska replied, reaching out to squeeze Estin’s wrist reassuringly. “My people do not believe their dead ever truly leave us behind. So long as family and descendants still live, the ancestors are with them, guiding their path and teaching the next generation. Is small comfort in times like these, but knowing that she watches us is something to help, yes? I can think of no better person to watch my back than this woman. Even the Turessians will think twice before crossing her spirit.”

  Estin nodded grimly and Raeln noticed he had dug his claws into the palms of his hands, causing blood to drip down ov
er his legs and the ground. Raeln knew that feeling all too well. He was trying to use pain to snap himself out of a grief that threatened to consume him. From Raeln’s experience, it would not help.

  Looking past Estin, Raeln spotted a pair of gleaming eyes farther down the hillside watching their party accusingly from the darker shade of the trees there.

  Raeln almost wished whatever was out there would attack. Then he would have a way to punish something for all the pain he had witnessed in himself and others. Whatever was out there following them would die if it came close enough.

  Chapter Five

  “Saying Good-bye”

  Darkness will embrace one to bring them together in those early days, while animals walk among them. The path will be unclear and broken. Anger will guide their direction and set their fates into stone.

  Nothing can fill the void that loss creates. Know this, betrayer, and you will know what your companions feel. You will know that loss in time.

  - Excerpt from the lost prophecies of Turess

  A week had passed before the last of the mists disappeared from the horizon, having turned farther east and drifting away through the mountains. Seeing the valley below free of threats had spurred a fresh enthusiasm in On’esquin, though it had done little to change the others.

  Raeln’s leg was entirely crippled and there was some fear he might lose his foot if circulation continued to worsen, though he had mostly ignored the warnings from Yoska. He had argued with On’esquin on and off for days about the pointlessness of them attempting to bring him along, but neither On’esquin nor Yoska were willing to even discuss the idea of leaving him behind. Instead, Yoska had fashioned a crutch for him from some of the dead trees in the area, giving him at least a little more mobility, though Raeln knew it would not get him across the mountains. More importantly to him, he was a warrior who could no longer walk. There were few uses for someone like him.