In Wilder Lands

by Jim Galford

  Easing his way quietly into the fray, Estin kept his head low and crept towards the body, while Linn continued to push back against the dragon. It took Estin a while, doing everything in his power to look unthreatening as he inched forward, until at last he could touch the fallen woman. When he did finally get close enough, he checked her and found that she was barely breathing. Much longer and she would have died.

  Reaching out to the spirits, Estin let the magic flow into the woman, feeling her pulse strengthen almost immediately. Once he was sure she would not die, he grabbed hold of her and began dragging her away, eliciting a roar from the dragon, though Linn intercepted it, holding it back.

  Soon, Estin was far enough back and Feanne grabbed the woman’s other arm, helping him get her to safety.

  “We’re clear, Linn!” Estin called over his shoulder, trying not to be louder than the shouters.

  Linn began backing away from the dragon, but it tried to jump on him, belying its size with how swiftly it struck. It bowled Linn over and clawed at his body, while trying to get its jaws onto his head. Through it all, Linn kept the shield on top of himself, struggling against the weight of the beast.

  “Tend to her, I’ve got this,” Feanne said, rushing out onto the field.

  With a wave of her hands, thick root-like vines reached up from the ground, entangling the dragon and dragging it back off of Linn. Almost as soon as the vines grabbed at the dragon, it started kicking and flailing, tearing the vines to shreds, but this gave Linn enough time to reach his feet.

  Linn delivered one final thrust of his weapon as the dragon struggled with the last of the vines, driving the blade into the creature’s neck. He held the weapon there as the dragon fought for a few more seconds, then collapsed.

  “I hate these things,” noted Linn, leaning on his sword. “I’m just so glad I’ve never had more than one attack at the same time.”

  With his patient stable, Estin joined Feanne as they approached Linn, who sat down hard on the ground, kicking away his broken shield.

  “So this is a dragon?” Feanne said, touching the still animal. She walked its length, studying it as she went. “Impressive creature.”

  Linn shook his head.

  “Not really. Same type of creature, but barely a dragon. The legends say dragons are a lot bigger, but they haven’t been seen in a couple hundred years, if they ever existed. This is more like a tough lizard. If it was a real dragon, I would have been the first one running.”

  Estin took his own turn admiring the beast, sitting beside Linn. From there, he could stare up at the massive jaws and razor teeth. He realized that if it had managed to get a solid bite on Linn, the fight would have been over immediately. Shaking his head at the idea of going near anything like that, he headed back to find the orcish woman beginning to stir.

  Estin knelt beside her, listening as the barely conscious woman groaned one word over and over. At first, he could not quite make it out, but as she got stronger, the word became more clear.

  “Undead…”

  The word rather surprised Estin. Any other time it would have terrified him, but with the dragon lying dead nearby, he was not expecting it this time.

  “You were attacked by a dragon,” he said to the woman, checking her for fever or other injuries.

  “No,” she grunted, shoving Estin away. “Dragon got me coming back. Got sloppy.”

  “How many?”

  The woman groaned and shook her head.

  “Ten, or so. Don’t think they saw me.”

  “Were you alone out there?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and trying to sit up. “Left Finth out there. He’s making sure they don’t get closer.”

  Estin waved down several of the people who had been standing around.

  “Get her back to camp and make sure she’s taken to one of the other healers.”

  The men and women agreed and helped the injured woman to her feet, leading her away.

  “Feanne!” Estin called out, catching both her and Linn’s attention. “We have a situation.”

  Feanne seemed to watch his face for just a moment, then her body language tensed and she practically dragged Linn over, with several of the pike-bearing warriors joining them.

  “What’s going on now?” she asked as she approached him. “Did you find out where the nest is?”

  “Not even close. We have an undead incursion on the south end of the valley. She was coming to let us know when she found the dragon the hard way.”

  Linn whistled softly, shaking his head.

  “Why was military service during a war less exciting than spending time with your people? I assume we’re going to go save the valley?”

  “We are,” Feanne said, her voice angry. “Do we have eyes on them, or are we tracking the woman who was attacked?”

  “Finth is out there. I can follow the woman’s trail to the general area, but then we need to hope he’s alive and still following the undead.”

  Feanne helped Estin to his feet and began towards the south, leading the mad rush for the southern narrow passage through the mountains that led back into the foothills. They were running hard, closing on the start of the south entrance to the valley within minutes.

  When Estin checked behind him, they had a group of ten following them through the dense woods, all armed and grim-faced. He doubted that any of them had not lost a loved one or even their home cities to the undead war. It did not take much urging to get as many armed troops as they needed when the dead marched on them, or even the rumors surfaced that they might be.

  The trip through the narrowed section of the valley took them more than half an hour, as the walls of the mountains closed in on both sides, but then began widening as they left the valley. They slowed at that point, with Estin and Feanne leading the way, pausing every so often to sniff the ground, check prints in the snow, or check the trees for indications of anyone passing through.

  Estin found that the trail was meandering through the patches of trees, as though the woman and Finth had been collecting firewood from fallen branches. Finally, he reached a spot where the path of the woman’s trail ended, her scent turning sharply back towards the valley, while Finth’s continued onward, now directly southwest.

  “We’re close,” he noted, hurrying his own pace.

  The vague smell of death and decay began to grow stronger and when Estin looked to Feanne, her own nose crinkled with the awful scents. The farther they went, the worse the odor became. It was definitely the right direction.

  “Stop tromping around like a golem with an itch,” grumbled Finth, hiding amongst the trees. “Get over here!”

  The group diverted into the trees, most of the warriors staying back a good distance so that they could get some cover from the thick trees.

  “There’s more than a dozen of them, just down the hill,” Finth explained, pointing farther down the mountainside. “No directions, so they’re just wandering around, trying to eat the squirrels and birds.”

  “They’ll still report back to their masters the moment there’s someone with control over them,” Feanne reminded him.

  Estin ignored them both as they discussed tactics and wondered aloud how the undead had gotten so far into the mountains without any leadership. Instead, he watched the hillside, where he could just make out the humanoid shapes, dark against the light snow-cover. They shambled slowly in various directions, one or another sometimes lurching after something, then groaning and resuming their walk in whatever direction they were then facing.

  He could hear Feanne talking about rushing the undead after circling them to prevent any from escaping, but he felt something was not right. Sniffing the air, he picked up the faintest whiff of smoke and flame on the breeze.

  “There’s more out there than just these,” he said to no one in particular, though he was not sure if they heard him. “We need higher ground. I need to see what else is moving in the woods.”

  Estin realized that Feanne an
d Finth were arguing and likely no one had heard him talking. Their bickering over proper tactics for fighting a group of undead was not helping the situation in his opinion, so he just began walking away, heading up the slope of the mountain. In his mind, either they would follow, or they would still be arguing when he returned. Only Linn followed him, falling in at his side.

  Though his feet kept slipping on the loose rock, Estin hurried his way up the sand and stone mountainside, until he got to a rock outcropping that would give him a good view overtop of most of the nearby trees. Hoisting himself up onto the rock, he moved out to the edge, awed by the miles he could see to the south and east, with only part of the west blocked by mountains.

  Linn came part way up the rise, but stopped and sat down when the path became too steep. He glanced occasionally up at Estin, but said nothing.

  Like so many others he had traveled with, Estin could see a fear of heights in the man and chose not to say anything.

  The undead just south of his position were not visible from his perch, but what he could see was a trail of smoke a little farther south, snaking its way for miles. Though he could not be sure, it appeared to be moving towards the undead and thus straight towards the valley.

  Estin leapt off the rock, taking a nasty tumble as he slid on the loose ground. He got back to his feet as fast as he could, running back to where Feanne and Finth had very nearly come to a conclusion about their plans, with Linn trailing him the whole way.

  “Stop arguing and shut up,” he ordered the two, ignoring Feanne’s shocked expression. He knew he would hear about it later, but he did not want to waste time right then. “There’s something coming from the south. There’s a smoke trail, like someone’s burning the woods.”

  Feanne’s annoyance at his interruption vanished in a flash as her ears went straight up in anger. If Estin knew her at all, he knew that the idea of the woods burning would become a priority, regardless of whether she still served the forest spirits.

  “Approach cautiously,” she told the group, waving them towards the south. “Do not engage until I give the order.”

  The group moved quickly, with Feanne leading the way as they skirted the group of undead. Even Finth nodded and began stalking southwards, keeping near the trees as he drew a long knife from somewhere in his fur jacket. In the rear of the group, Estin followed the others, his nose high as he tried to gather any extra information.

  “Fan out,” Feanne commanded softly, waving the warriors far and wide around the edges of the loose group of undead. Linn led the group of warriors, directing them around rougher terrain and open areas where they would be more easily seen.

  The shambling corpses groaned softly, several stopping as though they had heard the living approach. Despite Finth’s earlier statement that there were about a dozen, Estin could make out nearly twice as many, most scattered nearby and several practically dragging themselves, as their legs were damaged or missing entirely.

  Crackling and a wave of smoke washed over their group, forcing them to the ground to avoid choking on the heated air. It was such a change from the icy winter air around that gust, that Estin felt as though his skin had been cooked in that brief moment.

  When Estin looked up again, the undead had grouped up, running headlong into a line of blazing figures. The flaming humanoid shapes marched into the area, burning the ground bare behind them as they attacked the undead, the fire igniting the dry corpses as the two types of creatures grabbed at one another. Neither force held any weapons, using claws and flame to destroy their enemies instead.

  “What the queen’s ass is going on?” Finth asked, sitting down on the ground to watch the battle. “Since when do elementals give a squirrel poop about undead?”

  Twenty of the flaming humans remained after burning the undead to ash, having lost only a couple of their own.

  “They are likely bound by a wizard, or some other power,” Feanne whispered back, motioning to the rest of the group to stay low. “If their orders are to destroy the undead, they will obey completely and ignore us in the process.”

  Estin watched the elementals as they milled about, turning towards one larger flame elemental that stood nearly ten feet tall. He guessed that they were receiving new instructions by the way they waited, “watching” the larger figure. Seconds later, the whole group began to turn and leave, even as a cool mist fell across his back, dampening his fur.

  The mist grew stronger and Estin looked around, even as the flame creatures came to an abrupt halt.

  Coming up the eastern slope, more elementals flowed, rather than walked, their watery bodies soaking the ground as they moved. These were just barely humanoid, made entirely of water that shifted their appearance one moment to the next. In their passing, long streams of water steamed and re-froze, coating the mountainside in ice.

  “Someone’s been busy if they’re controlling those, too.”

  Feanne turned around and followed where he was looking, then gasped.

  “Everyone, run!” she exclaimed, getting to her feet and practically dragging Estin along. “This is about to get bad if we’re caught in the middle!”

  As their group stood, the fire elementals began marching towards them, the woods burning in their wake. The moment they saw the water elementals, the entire group turned, rushing into battle, as the water elementals did the same.

  Estin and Feanne led the way, running for all they were worth as explosions rocked the hill behind them. Flames washed over the area, while water splashed into the trees and then instantly froze, shattering them. Every step became hazardous as the heat scalded them and debris flew by, pummeling their backs.

  “Do not lead them back!” Feanne called, her voice mostly drowned out by the fires that were rapidly engulfing the woods and the deafening explosions of the breaking ice. “Get to high ground!”

  Up they ran, detouring well past the entrance to the valley and up into the mountains proper. The ground became difficult very quickly, both from the steep slope and from the loose snow that coated it, but they pushed on, sometimes dragged upwards by Estin or others. He found himself pulling Feanne and many of the armored soldiers up the steep rise, as they had not been prepared for climbing.

  They eventually reached a ledge high above the woods, where Feanne stopped driving them onwards and they all collapsed on the stone ground, gasping for breath.

  Estin sat up as soon as he was able and did a head count, finding that they were down three people. A check down the hillside showed no one. He got to his feet and moved through the group, re-counting one more time.

  “They’re gone,” Linn said, grabbing his shoulder. “If you even think about going down there to find them, I’ll knock you out and carry you home. Feanne’s orders.”

  “I know, I know.”

  As the others rested, Feanne was the first to go out to the edge of the stone precipice, looking out over the nearby lands. She then looked down and nervously backed a few steps back from the edge.

  “The war has not gone well,” she said, sliding along the rock to sit down with her legs hanging off the edge. “Estin, you need to see this.”

  Pulling free of Linn’s grip, Estin went to her side, then felt his heart sink.

  From one section of the plains to another, the war against the undead could be seen even as many miles as they were from the heart of it all.

  Vast stretches of land to the southeast were on fire, columns of smoke rising so thick that the sky was like pitch. Where the land was not burning, Estin could see blackened ground that led off as far as he could see. South of where he thought Lantonne stood, he could see a narrow—at least it looked narrow from where he stood—jagged line of flame across the land, belching fire into the sky.

  To the east and a little farther north, the land looked as though winter had come hard and fast, blanketing much of the area under a layer of snow that he was willing to bet was ten feet or deeper. Vast sections of the plains were frozen solid, while another part had been turne
d into a deep blue lake. Snow fell in sheets, cutting how far he could see to the northeast dramatically.

  “So that’s why they tell us not to play with elementals back in the tunnels,” Finth said, shaking his head. “I always thought it was because they didn’t want the wizards to burn their hair off. Never thought someone bringing in an elemental would destroy the world.”

  “I’ve seen elementals before,” answered Feanne, not taking her eyes off the horizon. “Elementals are not this dangerous. They are a threat to the land, but this is nothing like what I have seen.”

  Estin squinted, picking out something that stood out against the burned lands.

  “Is that?”

  He pointed at the small shape. From their distance, it looked to be about the size of a human at the bottom of the mountain. However, they were a great many miles from it, making it potentially hundreds of feet tall. The blazing shape walked across the burned lands and in its wake, flashes of light marked the appearance of legions of tiny sparks.

  “Some kind of elemental general?” asked Linn.

  “No idea,” Feanne told him, turning away. “We need to get back home and stay there. I want everyone to start thinking of ways to block off all entrances to the valley. I doubt there’s a way, but if we can, I want every avenue of those things finding us cut off.”

  From the corner of his eyes, Estin saw a shadow sweeping across the tops of the woods, heading towards the plains. He looked up as a vast winged creature flew down from the deepest parts of the mountains, swooping down from the sky as it raced silently towards the flame-blackened southern lands.

  “Now that,” Linn said, backing away from the edge, “that is a dragon. By the lords of the realms…that’s a real dragon.”

  Estin was frozen where he stood, unable to stop watching.

  “Estin,” called Feanne firmly, somewhere behind him.

  The dragon swept onto the plains, the land under it frosting in a wide swath, as though its very passing could create ice. It flew low over the land, heading straight towards the distant elementals, gliding on the winds, despite its size.