by Jim Galford
“Got some new leads this time,” Finth told him, donning a long fur jacket that Doln had crafted for him. “Some butt-kisser down in the Grinder used to be a room-cleaner in the duke’s keep. Those guys get all the dirt on everyone.”
Estin nodded absently, fitting his fur mantle over his shoulders and checking the straps on his hide clothing. He had found himself skipping fasteners a lot lately and had to double-check most things he did to prevent carelessness borne of lack of concern. Once he was sure those were all in place, he checked again for his swords and his notebook.
“Ready when you are,” he said coolly, pulling up his fur-covered hood up and over his ears to help hide his appearance as they moved through the woods. He also fastened on the heavy bearskin that Feanne had long ago brought back from Altis. He had found it among her things that were left behind and often wore it to hide his tail and as a memento of her. “Do you think the snows will slow us too much?”
“We’ll be there around dawn tomorrow,” Finth answered, checking the sky. “Assuming some lord of snow doesn’t decide to drop his pants and shit on us again.”
Estin began to lead the way mostly east out of the camp, then stopped, thinking.
“You said the last time we were in town that you could not find your old stash of coin back at Nyess’ place.”
“Yeah. So?”
“Do you need coin?”
Finth chuckled and answered, “There was a time when I’d have said ‘yes’ without a thought, monkey. Right now, money doesn’t do me much good. If we had it though, I could pick up some extra supplies while we’re in town. Ulra’s running short on some spices and there’s a few items I’d like to get. But, without coin, I’m as likely to get those as I am a free lay from hightown’s best whorehouse.”
Estin turned and headed north, with Finth following quietly behind. They skirted camp and came up into the thick forest that shielded the pack’s north end from both prying eyes and much of the winds. He continued through this section of woods until he came to an open grove-like area.
There he stopped, studying the trees. This had been Feanne and the ogre’s grove, where they had entertained the local children and come to commune with the woods…and possibly the Miharon. There were some child-sized footprints, but not many. The place had been all but abandoned after Feanne had left. Estin had heard that some of the pack members had actually thrown a small party in the grove when she was gone, but no one had actually admitted to it.
Even with winter still blowing strongly, Estin would have expected the evergreens to be vibrant and full of life, as this part of the woods had long been the healthiest and greenest. Now, they were limp, with many trees losing their needles in large piles.
“Some kind of tree plague?” asked Finth, kicking a pile of pine needles aside.
“Something like that.”
Estin had his guesses. Since talking to Feanne about the Miharon, he had sought out a great deal of knowledge about such creatures. They thrived on whatever they bound themselves to. By all accounts, this one was in some way bound to the woods or the wilds of the mountains. The health of these trees likely had been influenced by its visits to Feanne and the ogre…with them gone, the grove would either die or at least wither back to the same density as the rest of the woods.
Moving through the sickly trees, Estin took a moment to pick out a tree that had once been pointed out to him. The large knotty pine had a distinct ‘Y’ in it about ten feet up. Below it, he spotted a matted section, where the dead bushes seemed to create a circle of shelter. He would have bet on that being Feanne’s bedding place in the grove…where they would have stayed, had she remained. This thought he pushed down quickly, lest it drag him down with it.
Effortlessly, Estin ran up the tree, his hands and feet used to the familiar feel of climbing, using mostly his claws for grip. At the crook he stopped, poking his head into the gap. He was almost surprised to find what he was looking for still tucked in there, though covered with a thick layer of snow. Feanne must have left it there since his arrival and judging by its weight, it still held all the gems and jewelry he had stolen from the duke the previous fall. That seemed so very long ago now.
Hopping down from the tree, Estin tossed his old pouch to Osrinn, who caught the bag with one hand.
“You now have coin for the trip. Let’s go.”
They had not even gotten out of the clearing before Finth whistled and laughed.
“I could choke a horse with this much loot,” he mused and Estin could hear the sounds of the jewels clinking together as Finth sorted through them as they continued on. “Trust me, I’ve tried to choke a few horses. Who’d you rob?”
“The duke.”
“Yeah…that’s gonna be fun to sell, monkey.”
“Will you please stop calling me that?”
“The day you can tell me what your breed’s called, I will. Till then, not a chance.”
They traveled mostly in silence, as was their way, covering much of the ground before stopping for food near dusk. Simple trail rations of dried fruit and meat, hard bread, and wine or water were the easiest to carry and so that is what they had in relative abundance. With no interruptions to their evening meal, they soon continued on, the majority of the trip still ahead of them, but made easier by making it at night when fewer city patrols would be far from the walls.
Through the afternoon into evening, Finth led the way, right up until the sun set, at which point Estin’s superior night vision meant that they switched positions. This allowed them to continue at full pace no matter how dark it got, as Finth only needed to be able to pick Estin out of the darkness and follow him.
Around first light, they got their first view of the city in the distance, while they were perhaps another hour out. They stopped there as they had during their last few trips to look over the inspiring city visage.
When Estin had lived in the city, he had no idea how big it was, nor how majestic it must appear to invading armies. Inside the city, the monumental spires of the duke’s keep were just more stone walls, but out here he could see all four peaks like arrows aimed at the sky, rising far above even the city walls, which were impressive in their own right.
The city itself was nestled in the space between two of the larger peaks on the east end of the mountain range, guarded on either side by the steep stone walls of the mountains, neither of which offered invaders any place to perch above, without the winds sweeping them to their deaths. The east and west were the only approaches to the city, both of which were difficult terrain. Only the east had a road, which serviced all four entrances to the city, after winding its way up from the foothills in the distance.
It was in the foothills Estin now found his gaze drawn, where there appeared to be lightning or similar storms brewing. He could see no clouds, but there were flashes of light every few seconds. He disregarded it quickly, given that it was easily twenty miles away and far down the mountain. That, and the winds were blowing eastward, so the storm would be moving away from them.
“Finth,” he said, checking the sky above them, just in case another storm was brewing like the one in the eastern flatlands, “you wanted me to come here to bring me to Nyess originally. What was the plan?”
The dwarf grunted and rubbed at his beard. Unlike when he had first been taken captive, he had begun taking care of the beard recently, brushing it and braiding it into two long strands that he then usually tossed over his shoulders. From what Estin had heard him let slip, the care a dwarf took of his beard was a sign of his respect for himself.
“In all honesty, he wouldn’t tell me. If I brought you back, he said he could get me back into my homelands. Knew it was too damned good to be true.”
Estin realized that in the many hours they had spent traveling back and forth, as well as several patrols together, he had never once heard Finth mention his home.
“Here I thought you were born in Altis. When did you leave?”
“Who the hells knows? I
left our mining town under the peaks when I was a lot younger than I am now, that’s about all I know. After I came to the surface, I think I spent at least a year or two unconscious behind bars.”
“I take it you did not leave of your own choice?”
Finth spit and the ground and glared at Estin.
“Last year, I would have already slit your throat just for asking, but no…I did not leave of my own choice. I left because they banished me.”
“For?”
“What do you bloody think? Murder. They don’t banish you to the surface for much less. I could have pissed on our king’s throne while singing a ballad about his mother’s skills in bed and just gotten a beating and prison.”
“If you don’t want to…”
“Of course I don’t want to talk about it! May as well though. No sense in keeping it a secret up here. I killed my sister’s husband. Axe to the forehead, so he could see it coming. I even warned him the day he was going to die. The man had no excuse to look so damned surprised.”
Finth squinted at Estin, then added, “He hit my sister. A lot.”
“Good for you, Finth,” he answered, turning his eyes back to the city. “Sounds like you did the right thing.”
“Not when the husband’s the nephew of some random noble. They called me an animal…it’s only fitting where I ended up.”
“Good and bad decisions don’t change based on someone’s rank.”
Glowering, Finth stomped his foot.
“When by the duke’s ass did you learn to be understanding?”
“When I got an abundance of free time to do nothing but think on my own life.”
Finth spit again, then started them marching onward, ignoring the next few times Estin tried to spark conversation. They moved quickly, Finth apparently in a hurry to put the woods—or the conversation—behind him.
It was starting to warm up with the sun shining brightly on them when they finally reached the southern gate, which was closest to the slums of the city. There, they could disappear as needed, but first was the task of getting through the gate itself, which Estin estimated to be a lot more unlikely than during previous visits.
Whereas last time they had come, at least some shifts at the three less-used gates were still guarded by the slovenly human guards who were more than happy to take bribes of food, trinkets, or sometimes even information in exchange for entrance—this time, twenty rotting corpses stood in front of the open gates, their heads hanging at odd angles, as though they were in some sort of morbid sleep. All showed signs of decay and massive trauma during life, with a few even missing limbs.
“Not going in that way,” Finth grumbled, turning them back around and out of sight behind part of the rocky terrain. “You got another way? My next entrance is on the far east side via the sewers.”
Estin looked straight up the wall, trying to see if there were any guards posted there, but he could not see from their position.
“Did you see any archers as we came down?”
“No. Kind of strange, really.”
“Good.”
Estin hoisted Finth and had him hang onto his shoulders and back, despite furious protests. After taking a long slow breath to prepare himself, he set to climbing the wall with the dwarf fighting to get away for the first few feet, then clinging to him. The whole time Finth mumbled oaths to gods Estin had never heard of…and possibly a few whores, judging by the names.
It took him longer to reach the top than he would have liked, but Finth was not exactly light. If Estin had to guess, Finth outweighed the much taller Feanne by almost half again.
When he did reach the top, Estin stopped, bracing himself for the hardest part of climbing the outer walls.
Just before the battlements, there was a two foot lip that stuck out over the walls. Above that, there was only another foot or two before he could pull them onto the actual walkway of the walls.
“How do we do this?” Finth whispered, his voice shaking. “Or didn’t you think this far ahead?”
Estin had no time or breath to argue with Finth, so he just began picking his way more carefully onto the inverted surface, clinging for all he was worth to the larger gaps in the stones. This put Finth between himself and the ground so very far below, leading to whimpers and threats from him.
Soon, he was able to reach over the lip of the stone and feel around for a new grip. The climb was pushing his physical limits, despite all the labor in the wildling camp, so he would need to hurry or he really would drop them both to their deaths.
Finally, Estin found a good handhold and pulled them back to vertical and then swiftly onto the battlements themselves. Once they had the stone under their feet again, he collapsed, exhausted.
“Why would you even think that’s a good idea?” demanded Finth, slapping Estin’s shoulder. “By the gods’ britches that was stupid! Who really stops and thinks, ‘I want to scale a really tall wall just for fun…maybe I’ll carry a sack of dwarf, too!’”
“Yeah…but it worked.”
Estin checked his hands and feet, finding them badly torn up, with deep abrasions on the pads of his fingers and toes. He concentrated on the wounds, summoning the strength of magic that Asrahn had been teaching him, feeling an otherworldly breeze flow through him outwards, then back into the injuries, warming them as vague voices whispered in his mind. When he focused his eyes again, the wounds were all gone.
“Getting good at that, monkey,” Finth said admiringly. “Got yourself a good teacher.”
“The best.”
He stood and looked around. From where they were standing, they could see that the walls were entirely barren of guards, as though there was no further concern for invasion, aside from the gate guards.
Estin looked up, checking the duke’s keep for anything that appeared different, but all he saw were large flocks of crows, circling much of the town.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” he told Finth, sniffing. The breeze was going the wrong way to give him anything.
“Eh, whatever. Get your fuzzy ass moving and we can get down there and see if there’s any other clues about Nyess and where he’s gotten himself off to. If I can’t find him, Ulra suggested raiding the slave pens tonight to see if we can free a few more of your paw-licker friends.”
“You make it sound like you hate us.”
“Yeah yeah, whatever. My mom was a whore and my dad couldn’t tell copper from steel. Happy now? Everyone gets some love.”
“Always the sentimental one.”
“That’s me,” Finth said, snorting, then spitting on the stone floor. “Sentimental.”
In searching for stairs down, Estin’s attention was drawn back to the foothills and plains to the east. From here, he could see far more clearly, though distance still limited the details.
He could see what looked like a vast sea of black moving southeast and it was from this dark mass that bolts of lightning and flame continually erupted, creating the light flashes in the sky he had seen earlier. Spellcasters, he realized. There were a great many of them, waging violent war against their enemies.
The army that he was watching surrounded two enormous figures that made Estin’s head spin to even think about. They were massive metal men, standing so tall that even from miles away, he could see that they were crafted to look like enormous dwarves. These were stomping the ground within their foes, sometimes leaning to punch or sweep at the ground.
“What are those?” he asked Finth, pointing out the giants.
“Oh that’s not bloody good,” noted the dwarf, squinting. “Those are war golems we built a couple centuries ago to clear out a mineshaft that was filled with rock dragons. That type of golem can handle an army by itself and when it’s done, you just have to clean a few hundred pounds of guts off their boots. Two of them could overthrow an entire country. Who in their right mind would set those things into motion? We’ve got laws against even letting people see those things.”
Shaking his head, Estin
tried to make out more of the army, but he had no chance to see them at this distance. Judging by the path they had taken, the troops were likely from Altis.
Turning away from the distant battle, Estin finally spotted the nearest stairs down from the wall into the city and led the way to them. Within five minutes, they were down at the edge of the slums district, trying to get an idea of where they were relative to the places they remembered.
“I’ll meet you back here in thirty to forty minutes,” Finth said, checking the street both directions. “Then we can decide what to do next. I want to check in with my contact before we do too much inside the city.”
Estin agreed and went his own way. He had his own investigation he wanted to do while they were in town and people that he had realized he wanted to see again.
Back when he had lived in the city, he had several shopkeepers who had treated him well. Now, he wanted to repay them. Without having told Finth, he had slipped several tiny gemstones from the pouch with the intent of repaying kindnesses. Though none of these people would likely do more than chase him off with a broom publically, he knew they had all had a soft spot for the homeless, no matter their race. For that, he could think of no better way to reward them, since without their aid, he never would have lived to adulthood.
Turning down one of the cross streets, Estin began to realize that he was walking in plain sight without having to avoid anyone. The streets were empty. Not one person of any race was about. This time of day, though a bit early for the Grinder, there should have been dozens of humans, elves, and dwarves opening shops or just wandering around. If nothing else, there should have been the stragglers from the taverns, stumbling off their evening binges.
Estin turned right and hurried up a block, finding one of the popular—though very rough and dangerous—taverns of the district. There were no patrons out front, or in the alley alongside. There was not even the loud banter he would have expected coming from inside.