Bones of the Empire

by Jim Galford

  “It’s not about strength,” he answered, though he had no idea if Feanne was even listening. “There’s something else to it. We will ask once she’s recovered and not a minute sooner.”

  “Why wait?”

  “Are you losing your mind, Feanne? If I was lying dead out there, how would you react if someone walked up and asked you the easiest way to kill others like me?”

  “I…I understand,” she replied softly, no longer looking back. She appeared genuinely ashamed for having even asked. “I’m sorry. I sometimes forget to think of Turess and Rishad as people and not as weapons.”

  “The lack of fur?”

  Feanne gave him an annoyed glare from the corner of her eyes. “They are Turessians. We have fought them for so long. I have trouble seeing them as anything but the enemy.”

  They continued on in silence until they reached the rest of the caravan that followed the army. Falling in with them, they walked steadily northeast toward the temple, picking up the rest of the soldiers along the way. Arella was left behind, mostly at the overprotective urging of her fellow werewolves, standing watch in a wide circle around her. Even the werebears and dire wolves chose to come with the army, rather than stay with Arella. Once they were far behind, Estin heard the mourning cry of a wolf echo through the hills. There had been far more between Rishad and Arella than friendship, that much he knew from that cry.

  The massive group marched well past the last of the twitching undead bodies and up into the next section of woods shortly before dawn. They continued until the sun was low again and the wood began to thin, hinting at an end to the cover the trees could provide. There, they found a secluded area that was reasonably defensible and began the task of rebuilding the camp and basic fortifications around it, as they had every time they traveled. The mood was somber and quiet, despite the day’s victory. Apparently, even those who did not know what had happened could feel the change in their leaders at having actually spoken to their true enemy.

  If Estin had his way, the group would have marched on, since the undead army could—and likely would, given that Dorralt knew they were there—return, trapping them. He knew even with the small army at their disposal, there was no chance that everyone could keep going for another day or two without rest. He and Feanne would have hunkered down in the wilderness to rest only briefly and then run as long as they could, trying to get to the temple before anything else found them. The hundreds of others with them would cut their pace to about a quarter what they could have managed on their own. From what he heard whispered, their pace put them nearly two days from the temple…much too far to push on.

  Once the last of the tents were up, meal preparations began with haste throughout the camp. Estin saw Turess scurrying past the cooks, carrying a stack of books he had gathered from somewhere, but he did not even slow when Estin called to him. Whatever he was doing, it completely occupied his attention. Something in the way he hurried about reminded Estin of the nervous determination of the soldiers, sharpening weapons and mending their armor. This was Turess’s way of readying himself for a horrific battle.

  “I should go clean up,” Feanne said on their way to their tent. She held up a hand matted with blood to emphasize her point. “Will you be at the tent when I arrive?”

  “If not right away, I will soon,” he answered, pressing his muzzle against hers. “Stay awake until I can come back, please. We should talk about what happened today.”

  “No promises,” she said, smirking.

  Smiling back at her, Estin pulled away and headed through the camp in the opposite direction. He followed his nose, unable to rely on memory, given the way the camp was constantly being rebuilt. Thankfully, the scent was one he had known long enough that finding it even in the huge gathering was not overly difficult.

  He made his way to an old tent near one edge of the camp. The canvas was worn badly, with holes that had been patched so many times, there were spots with more stitching than cloth. It was the same tent he had passed more than once years earlier when he had spent his days healing Feanne’s pack back in the mountains. Somehow it had survived years of war and moving about the region.

  “Alafa,” he called out, hearing a little squeak from inside the tent. “May I come in?”

  Antlers preceded Barlen’s head out of the tent. He grinned broadly and waved Estin in. Estin found he had to duck both the canvas flap and Barlen’s antlers, which always managed to be in the way, as though Barlen had no idea they were there most of the time.

  The inside of the tent was cramped, even for the two deer. They had few possessions between them, consisting largely of their clothing, worn blankets, and the newer suits of leather armor Linn had likely forced them to wear during scouting runs. Most of the remaining space was occupied by a small fire to keep the place from getting quite as cold as the outside. At first Estin saw nothing personal at all among their scattered belongings, until he looked up at the tent’s peak. A mangled old clay sculpture, patched together after it had been shattered years before, hung from a string.

  “I found it,” Alafa said softly, pulling a blanket over herself up to her chin as she smiled, her ears twitching. “You can have it back if you want. It took me months to put all the pieces back the way Ulra had made it, but it’s pretty again now. She wanted you to have it. I was just keeping it until I found you and our pack-leader again.”

  Estin reached up and tapped the clay sculpture of the sun with his claw. Ulra—Feanne’s personal bodyguard—had made it for him during his first days with the pack. It had been smashed during a dispute with Alafa’s family, and he had cast the pieces into the woods the day he had gone to be with Feanne. It was an eerie reminder of years long past, when things had been, if possible, more complicated.

  “Keep it,” Estin said, twirling the clay on its string. “It suits you better than where my life has taken me.”

  Barlen sat beside Alafa and put an arm around her as she shivered. They both looked up at Estin with eager anticipation that made him uncomfortable. All of the deer in Feanne’s pack had been like that, either running from something or staring at someone, waiting for them to say something “exciting.”

  Clearing his throat, Estin sat across from them. “I want you both to leave,” he said, once he could find his voice. Estin had to lower his eyes to the ground to avoid the heartbroken stares of the two wildlings. “Go…have a life somewhere safe. Neither of you should be out here. You have each other. Run to the farthest parts of Eldvar and don’t look back.” Alafa’s sniffles made Estin’s heart ache, but he had to keep going or he knew he would cave and let them stay. Staying meant he would have to close their eyes someday soon when he found them dead. They were all that was left of the old pack, and he could not let them die alongside him and Feanne. He knew all too well what was coming for anyone who stayed. “I want you both to be somewhere you can be happy, and that isn’t here. There are still a few gaps in the mist northwest of here. Please…”

  By that point, Alafa was sobbing openly, and Barlen was not far behind. Estin opened his mouth to plead with them, but Alafa leaned forward and planted a hand on his nose and mouth hard enough that he wondered if it might be bleeding.

  “Don’t tell us to go away,” she begged, holding up her other hand to quiet Barlen. “This is all we have left.”

  Estin gently pushed Alafa’s hand away. “There has to be somewhere, Alafa.”

  Barlen spoke up quickly. “No, there isn’t. When the pack fell, we ran for weeks. We found a new pack…and then they died to the undead. It took us a few more months, and we found some gypsies who took us in…and then they died to Turessians. All the towns were empty and the woods were as dead as our old friends. This is where we need to be, Estin. The world is scattering either from the mists or the Turessians. We’re safer here than anywhere else. How long do you think we’ll live, just the two of us?”

  Estin stared into the male’s eyes and saw he was not exaggerating. He had seen horrible things, but he
hid that behind the skittish and already-nervous nature of his breed. It was a way of coping. “You don’t need all of these soldiers, Barlen. Have a horde of children somewhere hidden away, and don’t ever think about this place again…”

  Alafa let out a pained groan and fell forward onto the blankets, burying her face as she cried. Leaning over her, Barlen clung tightly for a while, until Alafa managed to compose herself somewhat, though she kept her face hidden.

  “We had children,” Barlen said, stroking Alafa’s fur. “Three. They were born shortly after the pack was wiped out. The Turessians killed them in front of us. All we could do was run. We didn’t know how to protect them.”

  Estin could not find words as he watched the haunted look on Barlen’s face. Thoughts of Atall’s death came to him unbidden, cementing his sadness with anger. “I won’t send you two away if you want to stay. We lost a child too. Tell me what you want me to do to help and I will, but I won’t ask you to leave again.”

  Sniffling as she wiped her eyes, Alafa sat up and mumbled her thanks before looking past Estin, squealing, and ducking under the blankets. A second later, Barlen did the same thing, both of them trembling, Barlen’s antlers making it look like a smaller version of the tent they sat in.

  Looking over his shoulder, Estin saw Feanne standing in the entrance of the tent, wiping her hands on a damp towel that had been stained red. She walked in slowly, her paws crunching the dry ground under the various blankets, until she stood over the two deer.

  “Leave us, Estin,” she said, taking a knee and carefully pulling the blanket down. Both deer wildlings clamped their eyes shut and hugged each other. “I need to talk with our finest scouts.”

  Touching her back lightly in thanks as he got up, Estin walked to the flap of the tent. He watched Alafa and Feanne hug, with Alafa crying on Feanne’s shoulder. The last thing he saw as the canvas fell between him and them was Feanne pull Barlen into the hug.

  *

  Unable to sleep for more than an hour or two with Feanne still gone—either still consoling the other wildlings or trying to keep morale among the soldiers up—Estin finally gave up on rest and went to wander the camp. The place was never truly still, despite the late hour. Patrols walked the perimeter, and dozens of people talked or retold the day’s feats of skill for those who had missed the battle. It was the same each night, with war stories from places Estin had never even heard of.

  He wandered alone for a while until he happened upon Linn, who was hard at work repairing broken links in his armor.

  At Estin’s approach, he set aside the armor and his tools and smiled up at him. “Couldn’t sleep, either?” he asked, motioning toward another stone that had been rolled over to act as a seat. “Most of us can’t sleep more than once or twice a week. Started around the time we entered Turessi. The orcs claim the place is haunted. Personally, I think we’re more afraid of what we’ll find at the end of this hike.”

  Snorting at that, Estin replied, “May as well be haunted. Most hauntings sound a lot less scary than where we’re going.”

  Linn grinned and nodded. “Do we have a real plan yet? Mine was to charge in and hope we could stop them before they killed all of us, but I’m betting there’s better ways to handle this. I’ll admit—to you, not to the others—I haven’t engaged the Turessians directly since the pack fell. I don’t know what to expect. I may be the leader of this army, but I’m not looking forward to facing the Turessians head-on.”

  “Feanne might agree with your plan,” Estin said, with only a touch of sarcasm. “Turess has other thoughts. I was actually looking for him. Last I heard, he has plan that I’m hoping has been fleshed out a little.”

  Linn’s smile dropped immediately at the mention of Turess. “West about five minutes and up one of the hills. My scouts found him when they were looking for any indication that the enemy was coming after us. He’s out past the line of spikes, and he can stay there, for all I care.”

  “You don’t trust him?”

  Frowning, Linn shrugged. “I trust you and Feanne. Everyone else has to earn it. I can’t help feeling that anyone with ‘Turess’ in his name is probably not working in our best interests. He can’t want to see his people lose this war.”

  “His people are the clansmen, not the one sending the armies of the dead after us,” Estin explained. “I think he wants his people to win the war, which means we need to. His brother does not seem to be his favorite person, and that’s who’s leading the undead.”

  Linn stared at the ground for a while before turning his attention back to Estin. “How long has it been since we saw each other last?”

  “About four hours…”

  “Don’t be daft. I meant since you got separated from the rest of the pack.”

  “For you, a year, maybe a little more,” Estin said, knowing it had been a lot longer for him than Linn, given the method of travel he had taken. He chose to leave that part out. For Estin and Feanne, it had been a year, plus the year or more they spent in Corraith. “Why?”

  Linn reached behind his seat and pulled a bundle of cloth from under his cloak. He tossed it to land at Estin’s toes with a loud metallic rattle. “I’ve been carrying those for you since I found them. Thought you might want them back, or your kits would want them, if I couldn’t find you. I intended to track down where you fell in the mountains and leave them there.”

  Sliding off the rock and kneeling beside the bundle, Estin slowly unwrapped two swords he had not seen in a very long time. They had been purchased in Lantonne before its final days and were still gleaming the way they had the day he had bought them. The shopkeeper had told him they were enchanted, though he had never given it much thought. Strapped over the swords were pieces of old leather armor that had once been a fine suit Feanne had made for him. Now they amounted to little more than greaves and shoulder plates.

  “I lost the swords when I fell,” Estin said, picking up one. It was remarkably light. Once he had thought these swords were a little lighter than most, but after years of carrying heavy and badly made weapons, it felt like a feather. “How did you find them?”

  “We came back after the mists left,” Linn said. “When we didn’t find your bodies, I took that to mean you were alive and would come back to us, sooner or later. Given what you’d already survived, I was betting on seeing you again. A lot of people thought I was crazy.”

  “I would have been one of them.”

  Linn chuckled. “None of us planned to be here, that’s for sure. Go…find your Turessian and beat some plans out of him. I want to know what my job here is, other than keeping the army marching in a straight line.”

  Thanking Linn, Estin tied a loop in the cloth that held the swords. He draped it over a shoulder until he had time to fasten them properly to his belt. He walked past a few dozen campfires and out into the woods, where a great many scouts and soldiers greeted him in passing.

  Exiting the camp itself, Estin passed hastily built barricades of sharpened trees meant to slow a charge by their enemies. Beyond that, he made his way slowly up the hill Linn had mentioned. He could see a single torch stuck into the ground at the top. He took his time, knowing Turess probably did not want visitors if he was working alone. Looking over the distance between the camp and Turess’s hiding place, he wondered at the need for so much secrecy at the risk of being caught far from help.

  Coming to the crest of the hill, Estin walked out of the trees to find Turess had turned the hill into a makeshift study, after clearing away most of the snow. Dozens of books lay open on the ground, and several rings of magical script had been drawn into the dirt. Turess knelt near one of the circles, facing away from Estin. A low ring of stones and brush kept the whole place from being visible at much of a distance.

  “I came to talk,” Estin said, tossing his swords near a pile of books. “We need to discuss our plan.”

  Turess did not answer, but instead waved his hand furtively with his back to Estin, as though trying to throw something
.

  Shaking his head, Estin moved slowly around the clearing, eyeing the script that had been drawn in the snow. It was entirely illegible to him, but the style appeared identical to the writings on the wall of the temple in Jnodin. The script was always in a circle and had been repeated around the clearing, as though Turess was trying to remember all the words.

  “You left me there to die!” hissed a man’s voice, and Estin realized he had never heard Turess sound like that. It was familiar, but not Turess. “The empire was built on our blood! You made me into this, as much as he did.”

  Inching closer, Estin tried to get a clearer view of Turess, but he was certainly alone. As Estin neared, Turess twitched and reached back, pawing at the ground. Then Estin heard his strangled gasp for breath. Something was not right, but Estin could not initially see what.

  Rushing around to Turess’s front, Estin saw Turess was fighting against something that was crushing his throat. The indents of fingers pressed into his flesh and his eyes bulged, but there was nothing around him that Estin could see. A chill wind was about all the threat he could find.

  Estin shifted his sight to see magic and found there was a faint shape of a man standing over Turess. He aimed at that shape and wove a quick spell to push the target away, loosed it, and watched as the man tumbled backward. Turess collapsed and gasped.

  While Estin watched, the humanoid shape flared more brightly and vanished. When he blinked back to his normal eyesight, a ghostly man, his eyes flaring yellow briefly, advanced on Estin, floating across the snow without leaving a trail. The ghost was unmistakable.

  “Oramain…shit,” Estin swore, looking around frantically. There was nowhere to hide and no one within range to help. The ghost could probably kill most anyone from the camp anyway. “Turess, run!”

  The ghost raced toward Estin without moving its legs. Estin reached for his weapon and realized he had left the swords out of reach, but close enough to see. Oramain crashed into him, giving Estin the sensation of a snowstorm hitting him with gale-force winds. He tumbled backward and slammed into a tree as the ghost fell over him, chilling him to the bone. Then, just as suddenly, the cold was gone.