Into the Desert Wilds

by Jim Galford

  “We have to go!” screamed Sirella somewhere near Estin’s ear, as hands helped pull him upright.

  Dazed and unable to see straight, Estin felt as though the voices were pulling him down, demanding attention that he could not spare. They called to him, though not by name, speaking as though they were right there with him, discussing his fate. The effect—as well as the fact that the voices came from within his own head—made him so dizzy he could not stay upright, and he fell hard.

  Estin felt as though he were going to throw up as he suppressed the voices, pushing aside the magic that came with them. He could not trust that he could control it during the upcoming fight to escape, so he had to believe he was better off without it.

  Slowly, the voices subsided, letting Estin hear the disorganized cries of people fleeing. He looked around where he lay to find the shabbily-dressed wildling nearby, watching him quietly. When he turned the other way, he saw that Sirella was standing alone, with four zombies nearing her, her sword tip resting on the ground.

  “I’ll stop them so you can get past with our new baggage,” called Sirella over her shoulder. “Assuming you are done having that little fit of yours.”

  Estin pulled himself upright—helped somewhat by the other wildling, who watched him wordlessly—then surveyed the area around them.

  The slaves had broken free and were pushing through the approaching undead as a horde, several being dragged down by the corpses at a time, but far more escaping into the desert beyond. To the west, far more of the withered dead marched steadily toward their location. The south was a disaster, with the ring of wagons keeping people from escaping more than one or two at a time. Those who fled to the main entrance of the village would have to go through Arturis.

  Unsheathing his remaining sword, Estin prepared to join Sirella in battle, but she waved him back with her free hand. To date, he had seen her send many men to their deaths to fight for Corraith, but he had yet to see her truly fight.

  “Let the furless lady do this,” whispered the wildling female, surprising Estin. She tugged at his arm. “We should run away.”

  Estin shook his head and walked toward a group of the nearing zombies, who would have circled Sirella shortly after she engaged the first few.

  “I do not leave behind anyone I travel with,” he told the female, who wrinkled her muzzle in annoyance. “You can either run with the others, or wait until we clear a path here.”

  As the female wildling looked toward the eastern group of slaves, Estin watched as Sirella’s weapon burst into flame through some kind of magic. The woman smirked as she raised it, bracing herself for the creatures about to reach her.

  “I will stay near you,” confessed the wildling at last, stepping behind Estin. “You have weapons and seem to have an idea what you’re doing. They have neither and are a long run from here. I want to save my strength to run when we have a clear path.”

  Estin readied himself as the first corpse approached weapon-range. His stomach knotted nervously as he thought about how any mistake he made could kill the unarmed female standing behind him. To his knowledge, it was the first time he had fought in years with anyone who was not a combatant, other than his children.

  With a ring of steel on bone and crackling of flame on flesh, Sirella dove into the lead group of corpses, their sightless eyes and slack jaws shattering as her sword burned through them.

  Estin only had seconds to watch the white-hot path of Sirella’s weapon weaving through her foes before his own targets neared him, their broken fingers reaching for him.

  Twisting his heavy sword to cut across three of the mindless creatures’ chests, Estin had to stumble backward as they pushed on. A second slash broke one of the zombie’s arms and battered a second, but they did not slow. His third attack—even as the jagged fingertips of one creature tore fur from his shoulder—dug deep into the face of the lead corpse, knocking it to the ground, where it continued to thrash and attempt to stand.

  “Estin!” called out Sirella, who now stood in a pile of twitching and smoking bodies. Ahead of her, the desert was clear.

  “Now do we run?” asked the wildling behind him as Estin parried the grasping hands of the zombies and backpedaled.

  “Yes, now we run.”

  By the time Estin had kicked one zombie off-balance and cut the hands off the second, the female had made her way to Sirella. The two paused only long enough for Estin to break away from the undead before running.

  Estin took off after them, the groans of the dead behind him mingling with the cries of those trying to escape the village. No sooner had he passed the last of the invaders than Estin heard a resounding explosion behind him.

  Glancing back as he ran, Estin watched as one side of the village erupted in flames. At first, he thought that Arturis had caused it, but when the smoke cleared briefly, he could see the necromancer’s rage as clear as could be even at such a distance. From all Estin could see, the gypsies had set off explosives to slow their attackers.

  A second later, the dunes shook and began to collapse, filling the entire village with stone and sand. A wave of airborne sand flew out from the area, then settled as the rumbling ceased.

  Running faster, Estin dug his feet into the sand to catch up to the women that had gotten far ahead of him.

  *

  Two hours later, Estin collapsed into the pile of blankets he had bunched up on the floor of the once-abandoned house where he, Sirella, and her “army” stayed. At most times of day or night, there were ten or more people passing through, mostly coming in to drop off information for Sirella or take a quick nap before leaving again. The larger portion of those who were in service to Estin—the idea was comical even to him—would come through every few days just to get updated information.

  To keep the others from finding his hidden room in the basement, Estin had dragged the pile of blankets into a corner of the main room, where he could watch the strangers. The basement was off-limits for the most part, once Estin had convinced Sirella that having her people somewhere that could not be watched was an inherently bad idea.

  “Where did you learn to fight like that?” asked Estin as he curled up on the blankets. He knew deep down that he probably looked like a cat the way he bedded down, but dignity was among the least of his concerns.

  Sirella snorted and shrugged. She tossed her sword to one side of the room with a clatter that woke up several sleeping men.

  Estin watched her for a little while longer, but Sirella said nothing, grabbing a flask of a local alcoholic beverage that he found bitter. She made a point of sitting down facing away from him as she began drinking. This was also part of their routine, with Sirella and many of her people drinking to excess nearly every night as some kind of ritual Estin did not understand.

  Sitting up, Estin thought to push the issue, if only because she did not want to talk about it. That thought vanished as the wildling slave—former slave, he corrected—came over and stood between him and Sirella.

  Spreading her arms, the female motioned to a fresh outfit she had gotten somewhere and donned. A simple shirt, bodice, and ankle-length skirt of earth tones made her look like she belonged in Corraith far more than Estin. She somehow managed to wear it like the style belonged on her, which was more than Estin could say for his family when wearing elven-styled clothing. The foxes always looked like they had robbed someone and taken their clothing.

  “Do you like what you see?” the female asked, picking up the edge of her skirt. “It’s been a long time since I had clothes that didn’t smell of mice and drunken gypsies.”

  “You look much better than when I found you,” Estin admitted, smiling at her. “A dress suits you better than rags and chains.”

  Smiling, the female pulled a brush from the back of her bodice and slunk over beside him, slipping onto the blankets. Saying nothing, she curled up against him and began brushing out tangles in her fur.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, leaning back against the wa
ll away from her. “You’re free. You should go…somewhere. Somewhere not in my bedding.”

  The female wildling rolled onto her side and stared up at him, draping her tail across his lap. Brushing her neck fur more slowly, she never took her eyes off Estin. Though her behavior was foreign to Estin after years among predatory breeds, he recognized flirtation in any form and this was it.

  “I haven’t met one of our people before,” the female said softly, staring at him intently enough that Estin felt uncomfortable and had to look away. “Have you?”

  “I lived among a wildling pack for more than a year,” Estin offered without thinking, pulling his legs out from under her black and white tail. “I’ve known many wildlings.”

  The female’s eyes narrowed. “I meant our kind, not wildlings. It’s not like we’re all the same.”

  “No,” he admitted. “My parents were the last ones I saw, but that was when I was a child.”

  The female nodded and rolled onto her back to watch Estin upside-down, smiling slightly at the snickers of the others in the room. From what Estin could see from the corners of his eyes, he and this female had become the most interesting thing in the room.

  “I don’t even remember my family,” she mused, brushing a hand across Estin’s leg and the other across the snug bodice she wore. “My masters have taken me across a thousand miles of lands in my life and you are the first I found. You were the one to break those chains, I might add.”

  “You’re…” Estin flinched and swallowed hard as the female’s hand brushed him uncomfortably far up his leg, “…welcome. Please, just thank me by finding a good life somewhere…”

  “I am trying to thank you, but you’re being evasive. Why? Please tell me you aren’t one of those men who chases the other tail, so to speak.”

  Estin froze, staring at the female. He could not believe she was being this blunt with someone she did not know, let alone in a room full of people who were unabashedly listening in.

  “You are awfully forceful for a slave,” he noted firmly, trying to not let her control the situation. “Explain yourself. And what’s your name?”

  The wildling smiled and brushed her long tail in what Estin realized was intended to be a seductive gesture…and to his surprise, he realized that because it was working. He had never thought of tails as enticing, but apparently he had not given it enough thought.

  Shaking his head, Estin got to his feet and stepped away from the female, glowering at her as she curled up on his blankets. He had to actively ignore the grins of Sirella and a few others, who were watching as though this were the greatest entertainment of the year.

  “You are easy to manipulate,” mused the female, pulling the blankets up along her head like a pillow. “The other wildlings said that most breeds’ males were this simple. I hadn’t tried the tricks they told me of until now. My name is Lorne and thank you for the bedding.”

  Estin snarled and stalked away, determined to avoid conflict with the first of his kind he had met, though the desire to follow Feanne’s tutelage and maul the female was tempting.

  “Hey,” called out a scarred dwarven man, catching Estin’s attention. “You forgot something.”

  “What?”

  “Your testicles. Over there,” the man said, barely managing to point at Lorne before he and several others near him burst out laughing.

  Sirella kept staring out the front window of the house, but added, “Don’t look at me, Estin. Stand up for yourself or as far as I’m concerned, she owns you. Kind of ironic getting mastered by a former slave.”

  Roaring as best he could in frustration, Estin walked back to Lorne. He reached down and dug his hands into the blankets, yanking them out from under her. With a yelp, the female clattered to the floor, looking genuinely surprised.

  “I have lived among predators in the wild for a long time,” Estin snarled at her. “You’re not going to be my master, understood?”

  Lorne smiled broadly. “Good. Then maybe we can move past proving who is in charge and go back to being who we are? I promise not to play with your instincts unless it is for a good reason. Is that fair?”

  Estin sat down slowly, laying the blankets across his lap as he did so.

  “Who are you?” he asked cautiously, eyeing Lorne from ear to tail as she rolled onto her stomach. “I mean, where are you from? How’d you get here?”

  The female bore the usual signs of slavery. Scars on her wrists and neck thinned the fur there. The little he could see of her shoulders under the edge of her loose shirt showed him just a few lash-scars that ran almost up onto her neck from farther down her back.

  “An unowned wildling now, I assume,” Lorne said, propping her head on her hands as she watched Estin, tail wagging in amusement. “Before being brought here, I was a seamstress in the southwest. Long before that, I was the handmaiden of a lesser noble’s daughter far to the south.”

  “How did you get here?”

  Lorne grinned at him, her white teeth a sharp contrast to the black fur of her muzzle.

  “I got myself sold to the gypsies on purpose,” she admitted. “Rumor was that Corraithian wildlings were free and that the wealthiest among them would often buy…companions…from among the slaves. Living as the servant of a freed wildling almost ensured that someday I would be free. They forgot to mention the undead armies and the fall of Corraith. These things, I’m guessing, limit my chances of being a citizen.”

  Estin had to laugh at that. The absurdity of meeting another of his kind by pure chance in the middle of a warzone was far beyond belief.

  “You are free now,” he told her. “Just like me and my…like those of us who wear no chains.”

  Lorne studied his face briefly and then reached out and gently tugged a single blanket from the pile in his lap.

  “You belong to another,” she noted, no longer teasing as she lay the blanket down in the corner. “I’m sorry. I would ask that you stay close, as we are the only ones of our kind here, but I will not ask for more. Is that fair?”

  Laying down the remaining blankets near her, Estin curled up close enough that he could still feel her warmth and smell her scent as though she were beside him. He said nothing, but closed his eyes and sought sleep, knowing Sirella would insist on an early scouting of the town to determine how badly the results of the attack on the gypsy camp were.

  As he drifted to sleep, trying to ignore Lorne’s scent, Estin realized that she had shifted a little closer. When he peeked his eyes open, he found that she lay between him and the wall, letting him shield her from the others in the room.

  He had seen similar behavior among the newer members in Feanne’s pack, letting those they trusted sleep somewhat closer to perceived danger. It was an instinctual action among those who were afraid, though Lorne gave no indication of that. Had Estin not lived in the pack, he doubted he even would have noticed.

  Still, he thought on how good it was to know he was not the last of his breed. Lorne gave him a glimmer of hope that allowed him to sleep peacefully for the first time in weeks.

  *

  “Wake up already!” barked a female’s voice, shaking Estin by the shoulders.

  Snarling and biting at the blurry face near his, Estin came awake slowly, realizing that Sirella was the one rousing him.

  “Is he always like this?” asked Lorne, sitting on a chair nearby. She had changed into yet another skirt and blouse that appeared to be of human make, but had been modified slightly to allow for her different shape and tail. Where the clothing had come from, Estin had no clue.

  “In the mornings, yes,” Sirella groused, releasing Estin’s shoulders. “He’s not a morning person at all.”

  “Our kind aren’t,” Lorne admitted, yawning widely enough that her jaw cracked a little. “I have lived among humans and elves my whole life, but I will never be used to your schedule.”

  Estin blinked hard, trying to shake away the dreariness that plagued him, fogging his mind. Mornings were always like this,
but were worse after exertion like the run from the gypsy camp the evening before.

  “Why are you still here?” he asked Lorne, pulling himself upright. Vaguely, he realized that her scent was on him. She must have draped her arm or tail over him as they slept. “You are free. There is no reason to stay here.”

  Crossing her legs and letting her bare foot bounce absently, Lorne looked to Sirella. “Is he being sweet and trying to protect me, or is he seriously trying to rid himself of me?”

  Sirella grinned and watched Estin as she answered. “The boy is an idiot, like most. He’s trying to keep from doing something he’ll regret when he finds his wife again.”

  “Oh?” asked Lorne, ears perking. “He has a wife? I knew he had someone, but I wasn’t sure he was ready to share. I figured since she wasn’t here, it was just someone he cared for in passing.”

  “I’m still here,” Estin said, but the women ignored him.

  “He does. Whines about her all the time.”

  “And I thought I was the only one of our kind he’d seen.”

  Sirella laughed, replying, “Probably true. From what he tells me, he is married to a fox.”

  Estin’s skin prickled with a mix of anger and embarrassment. Why that would affect him after so long, he had no idea.

  “Please tell me that is just a phrase, like calling a well-dressed human a vixen,” Lorne said, looking over at Estin. “It isn’t, is it?”

  “No. She’s a fox wildling.”

  Lorne got up and walked over to him, her large eyes drifting over his face, then down over his chest and shoulders.

  “I can see you aren’t lying,” she observed. “You look as though a pack of foxes mauled you, not just one.”

  Lorne’s clawed finger came up to brush the scar on his cheek where a wolf wildling had torn his muzzle open before he had taken Feanne as his life-mate. From there, her hand drifted over the scars on his shoulder where dogs had bitten and clawed at him the day he had met Feanne.