In Wilder Lands

by Jim Galford

  “Lead the way.”

  Finth obliged, guiding them from the alley towards a side-door of one of the neighboring buildings. Inside the dark building, he took several flights of steps up, leading them to a back room on the third floor. Finth ushered them in, carefully checking the hallway several times before following them inside and closing the door. He lit a tiny oil lamp near the doorway, giving them a small amount of flickering light.

  “This is one of my safe houses,” he explained, lighting a small lamp, then kicked his muddy boots into a dingy corner. The massive axe across his back, he dropped onto the floor, where it clattered loudly. “Damned stupid weapon for practical fighting.”

  The dwelling was anything but regal. Old chipped paint was peeling from the walls and in spots, Estin could see rotting boards. The floor creaked as they moved, actually sinking in some spots. Furniture was sparse, consisting mostly of a few tiny tables, chairs, and piles of dirty woolen blankets piled haphazardly around.

  “Does the roof leak?” Estin asked, after peeking around the doorways into the rooms beyond.

  “No. It’s dry here and it stops the wind. Everything should work, including the running water in the pisser,” he said, pointing down a dark hall. “Doesn’t work great, but it’s enough to wash your hands and face.”

  The kits’ eyes lit up and both ran down the hall, pushing and shoving to be the first into the room. They slammed the door behind them and Estin soon heard water and giggling.

  “You look like shit, Estin.”

  “And you look like you’ve been spending my gift rather well in my absence.”

  Finth laughed, flopping down on a small chair that groaned dangerously under his weight.

  “Dwarf’s gotta do what a dwarf’s gotta do. Besides, that gift’s all that let me find you.”

  “When do we go back to the camp?” Estin asked after a moment, easing himself down onto a pile of blankets. The soft fabric made him long to sleep after so long on far more itchy and filthy blankets, but he needed to know what he had missed first.

  “Camp’s gone. Lantonne delivered one of those bloody magic weapons to Altis’ doorstep, inside a smaller golem. Undead got control of the golem, sent it our way. Most of us got out, but the camp is a small crater.

  “When things started to look bad, Lihuan and Asrahn ordered everyone out, while they and a couple of their old friends tried to stop the golem. They kept it from following us, but…we haven’t seen them since. To be honest, I think the two of them actually blew the damned thing early to keep it from following us.”

  Estin felt his hope of returning to his home die. Somehow through all the months of degradation and being ignored, he had managed to hope for seeing the shabby little wildling camp in the mountains one more time.

  He glanced down the hallway, making sure the kits were not returning yet.

  “The grove,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Did it survive?”

  “Not even close. Burned to a damned cinder, along with anything and anyone inside. I could have shoveled the ash into a bag for you, but all that sentimental garbage gives me gas. Was there more you wanted to know? I can tell you about the crater and the burned trees…”

  Estin glared at Finth, but then just looked away, letting the dwarf trail off. That settled it. His old life was gone now. He double-checked the hallway, listening to the kits splash at the water.

  “Icy rains for two straight weeks,” he mumbled, “Now they want to play in water. I will never understand children.”

  “They get to have fun and get all the mud off them,” Finth said, putting his bare feet up on a stool and wiggling his toes. “Can’t fault ‘em for that, after whatever you’ve been through.”

  Distantly, a door closed and Finth sat up, his hand pulling a wickedly-curved knife from under the chair. He put a finger to his lips, then stood and slipped from the room, somehow managing to keep the floor from creaking.

  Estin was too tired to fight, but he found the strength to get his feet under him. He moved to the hallway, not quite ready to alert the kits, but wanting to be ready to grab them and flee if he had to. Beyond the children’s chatter in the water room and the soft sound of the water itself, he could hear voices downstairs, soon followed by multiple people climbing the steps.

  Deciding to be overly-cautious, Estin felt under a chair, finding another stashed dagger. He pulled it free and waited for Finth to return, hoping everything was safe.

  When the door swung open, Estin tensed, prepared to throw his weapon at the leading figure if it was not Finth. Instead, he dropped the weapon with a loud bang.

  Feanne strode in, dressed how he had first seen her more than two years earlier, making his heart skip a beat. She had once told him that the simple leather outfit was her “traveling attire.” Now she walked in as though nothing had happened in all this time, aside from a long fresh cut across her upper chest and shoulder that bled into her white fur.

  They both stood there for a time, staring at one another, until Finth and Yoska came in and closed the door.

  “I see you lived,” Feanne said sternly, her eyes drifting over Estin.

  “You weren’t in the grove when it fell?”

  “Never said she was,” Finth said, chuckling as he sat back down, hiding his weapon again.

  “No, I was not in it,” Feanne said, striding into the room and sizing up Estin. Her tone was cold. “I had begun to wonder if you had abandoned the pack though. You stopped coming to the grove…that much I could piece together. I assumed you were dead or hiding for a very long time, right up until Finth’s sources reported a fae-kin who had seen you just a few days ago.”

  With a flourish of her tail, she sat down on the floor, while Yoska piled several bags in the corner. As she sat, Estin realized that she was avoiding looking directly at him anymore, as though she were lost in thought.

  “Feanne…”

  “I am your pack-leader,” she corrected coolly. “You will address me as such. There may only be a handful of us left, but the right to lead fell to me when no one else suitable could be found.”

  “Feanne, please…”

  “Stop talking, Estin. I would speak with Finth now about our ongoing plans.”

  “You might want to listen to the monkey,” Finth noted, grinning. “He apparently wants to tell you something.”

  “Very well. What?”

  Estin gave Finth a nod of thanks and walked down the hall. He leaned into the water room, finding Oria and Atall practically soaked, but finally free of all the mud that had caked them for weeks. He got their attention and held a finger to his mouth to keep them quiet, then motioned for them to follow him.

  “I am growing old waiting on you,” Feanne snapped as Estin came back into view. “Can we please…”

  The two kits heard her voice and popped around the corner, staring wide-eyed at her.

  “Oria?” Feanne whispered, standing quickly. She looked unsteady on her feet. “Atall? You’re alive?”

  The children stood still, little Oria grabbing Estin’s hand for support.

  “It’s her,” he told them softly. “Go see your mother.”

  The two raced across the room, slamming into Feanne’s legs with enough force to sit her back down, laughing and pulling them close to her.

  “Estin,” Feanne finally said, looking up from the wet bundles of fur in her lap, clinging to her as hard as they could, “I would speak with them privately before I speak with you.”

  Bowing slightly, Estin headed for the door out of the small home, with Finth joining him on his way out and Yoska heading down the hall and out of sight. They wandered down the hall to where Finth checked another door, finding it open and the room beyond uninhabited. They then went inside and into a smaller room than Finth’s, with a large hole in the floor, where moisture had rotted out the boards.

  “She’s not happy with you,” Finth explained once they were safely alone. “I know she’s got some brains in that head of hers, but I think
they got more addled than we thought when she lost the kids. After you left, she was still talking to herself for about a week or two, then up and decided that you had left to go murder Insrin and steal her kids. Craziest damn thing I ever heard, but she was convinced.”

  “Then she won’t be happy with the news I brought her.”

  “Oh?”

  Estin just shook his head.

  “The kits are fine, that’s what matters. But when I left…she snapped out of the depression? I was worried she’d starve once I was gone.”

  Finth snorted.

  “Not even close. The first couple days, she wouldn’t let anyone else near her. She even clawed Asrahn pretty badly. Kept saying that you would be right back, because you would never leave. They finally had to drag her back to camp and Lihuan had her held down and force-fed. Didn’t take long before she at least let her parents care for her.”

  “Were they able to help?” He felt a little sick to his stomach, thinking about having contributed in any way to Feanne’s sadness, even if he could not have prevented it.

  “No, monkey, they weren’t. She was as nuts as the day you left when they evacuated the camp. I had Ulra carry her out, while she screamed at us about how she needed to go wait at the grove for you and her kids.”

  “She’s stronger than all that,” Estin mused aloud. “I can’t blame her for going a little crazy. She’ll sort it all out and understand that I didn’t abandon her. I have to believe that.”

  Finth’s eyebrows lowered as he leaned against the creaking walls.

  “Just because she came up fighting for her sanity eventually doesn’t mean she’s about to think you’re entirely innocent, no matter how much you stroke her…uh…ego. We’ll go with ego, after all, she has kids, you pervert. If you’re going to ride their mom, at least buy the kids a sucker, my mother used to say. It’s only right.

  “As for Insrin…don’t care what you did to him, I’ll give you credit for that one if he’s gone. That tail-sucker bugged the lice off of me, making Lihuan’s camp a downright annoying place to live for a while.”

  Estin glared at the dwarf for a moment, then resigned himself to the man’s dour humor, laughing despite himself. It was so good to be able to relax, though Estin was not quite ready to entirely let go.

  “Finth…I can’t even attempt to follow your thinking half the time.”

  “It’s easy,” the dwarf told him. “Start with a few shots of whatever the tavern sells. Then add a healthy amount of sex, some random lewd remarks, and try to make whoever you’re talking to think it’s all their fault. Not that hard, really.”

  They waited for a time, the silence uncomfortable at least to Estin as he stood there, wondering why Feanne had wanted him out of the room. When Finth spoke again, it somewhat startled him as he had been lost in thought.

  “You ready to come back, what with her being the pack-leader and all?”

  “Just how did that happen, if she was spending all her time pining away, waiting for me to bring back the kits?”

  Finth shook his head as though the thought had not yet settled in for him, either. “When Lihuan died, the pack began to fall apart. Feanne hadn’t found all her playing cards yet, if you know what I mean, even when word of her parents got to her, though she was struggling to be her old self. It was the in-fighting and the constant challenges all over the camp that rattled her and got her off her fuzzy butt…that and not having anyone coming to bring her food anymore. Once she began exerting control over those tearing the pack apart, it was like she’d never left us. Every person she put in their place brought her a little closer to who she once was.

  “I was there during one of the first fights…over whether one guy was in charge or another, both shouting about whether the rabbit wildlings were food or just camp assets. Feanne marched up out of nowhere and tore them both up real bad, never listening to anything they had to say, and not stopping until they both were cowering. By the end of the day, I think she’d fought just about anyone around who had any itch for leading…and a few who didn’t, but got in the way. I really think she was just attacking people to make herself feel better at first.

  “She tells me that she just wanted the fighting to stop at the time and to protect those who were going to suffer from the arguments, but in the end, no one really wanted the job anymore, though I think a few of them might try if they see her slip up. She’s done fine keeping people working together, but I think it’s more out of fear than anything. She just doesn’t have Lihuan’s poise and respect…or years of fear that he built up, mostly through his stories.”

  Estin weighed all the questions that came to mind, unsure what would be wise or safe to ask Finth. He had no idea if the dwarf might be obediently reporting back to her, though he had his doubts.

  “If she’s leading…why is she here? This is about as far from the mountains as you can get and still be in the same lands.”

  “Honestly?”

  “I’d prefer that, yes.”

  Finth looked around uncomfortably, lowering his voice.

  “She thought the kits were dead, Estin. She never said it, but I think she came out here to kill you if she found any reason to believe it was your fault. You were gone more than a year. When you first vanished, she was all tears and moping…then she was depressed for a while, even after taking control of the pack…then she was angry.

  “When she heard that I’d found a lead on a big black and white monkey, she put Ulra in charge and packed to go, without even waiting to see if I was really on to something. Crazy girl trusted me to find you. She spent the whole way here sharpening her claws.”

  “Why did you even come looking for me? For all you knew, I was long dead.”

  Finth shrugged.

  “You people are a bad influence. I could have been spending my time trying to find some sneaky way back into my homeland, but it was almost like I worried about you. Getting to be damned annoying, I might add, especially with how many bloody places thought they had you and didn’t. So many damned raccoon wildlings…”

  A knock at the door interrupted them.

  “Estin,” Feanne said, leaning through the opening door. “Can we speak alone?”

  Finth gave Estin a smarmy smile that made him uncomfortable, but excused himself and slipped from the room as Feanne entered. When the door clicked closed, it seemed to still the room for a time.

  “Yoska is telling the kits some story about how the gypsies were involved in every major world event…it should give us some time,” she told him, sitting down in the corner. “I had to talk with the kits before coming to you. I am sorry I had to do that without really greeting you first. I just had to be sure of how you treated them.”

  “I understand. I just hope Atall wasn’t too harsh on me for being the wrong breed.”

  Feanne smiled, something in her demeanor saying that she did not do that much these days. She absently wiped at the bleeding cut along her collar, but waved him off when he began to move towards her to heal it.

  “He was not, though he said he wished his father would return. That is what we need to speak about.”

  Estin felt his stomach sink. Thoughts of Insrin’s body flooded his mind, against his wishes.

  “Where did you find them, Estin?”

  “Near Lantonne, hidden in a cabinet. Insrin tried to keep them safe from the undead by hiding them.”

  Feanne’s eyes locked onto him, though she looked more sad than angry.

  “Where is my mate, Estin? Speak true.”

  This took a lot longer for him to answer, trying to decide how to break it to her, though he had a feeling she knew the truth in her heart. Her eyes betrayed a keen understanding of what he was going to tell her. She just wanted to hear it out loud.

  “I…I pretty much stumbled on his last stand,” he told her, watching her eyes unfocus and her arms tighten around her chest. “The kits were hidden while his guards fought off the undead army. From what I could tell, Insrin died defending that
cabinet. The kits don’t know he’s gone…it wasn’t my place.”

  Feanne swallowed hard, turning her face from him.

  “Estin, I need the truthful answer to two questions. Just this once, no matter what may come of it. Can you please do that for me? Even if it were to mean that we never speak again after this day?”

  “Anything you ask, Feanne. I swear it.”

  She looked up at him from where she sat and asked softly, “Did you kill Insrin?”

  “No. Whatever I may have thought of the male, he never gave me cause to even consider harming him. He was good to you and the kits. What then could I justify harming him for? The worst I could ever confront him about was abandoning you, which was not my place to do.”

  Feanne closed her eyes, asking more firmly, “Did you have the ability to heal him and not do so?”

  Estin stood across from her, leaning on the wall as he thought through that day.

  “I’ve second-guessed myself a hundred times,” he admitted, trying to find any fault in his actions. For months after arriving at the labor camp, he had questioned himself about whether he had made any mistake. “I sought out his spirit and could not find it. He had been dead a long time, Feanne…”

  “Could you have helped in any way? Anything at all?”

  “No,” he confessed. “For all the reasons I hated the man, I would have done anything to keep him alive, if only so that you could have faced him for taking your children from you. It was not my right to exact your revenge, if any. I would have given my life to put him and the kits in front of you, even if I knew you were just going to kill him anyway, which I did not.”

  Feanne closed her eyes and nodded.

  “Thank you. That is all I needed.”

  She rose to her feet and walked up to him, standing close enough that he could feel her warmth. Gently, she touched the fresher scars on his arms, moving to his side and letting her fingers brush at the cuts on his back, neck, and shoulders. As she came around him, she took one of his hands and lifted it, examining the blunted claws, her expression sad. Her fingers intertwined with his briefly, her long claws alongside his damaged ones.