Bones of the Empire

by Jim Galford

  “And they are?” Raeln demanded, crossing his arms. “I’ve come this far. You can’t scare me off now.”

  Eyeing him as though she thought otherwise, Yiral said softly, “Either the armies, the gods, and all people will die in sparing the world, or the world will be swept clean and given over to the dead. Likely, Dorralt makes his decisions based on this. It is the only reason one of our people would raise an army of the dead to fight for them. All indications are that an army of undead was the only way he could gain victory by way of the prophecies.”

  Raeln grabbed the parchment roll and shoved it into his belt. “On’esquin told me once that this is a guide, not the only way. Turess did not know all the outcomes. He only saw a way to get there and what would happen if that way failed. We will write our own ending to this. I will not let a scrap of paper tell me what will happen.”

  “And yet you take paper’s advice?” Yoska asked, quickly lowering his eyes when Raeln turned on him.

  “Enough,” Raeln snapped. “Generals…I want you here, now.”

  The representatives of the various clans hurried forward, crowding in around the table.

  “What are our options?”

  “Few from what the scouts have seen,” said one of the men, laying out a large map of the region. Hills and deep ravines were clearly marked, but unlike any map Raeln had seen of the south, there were no cities anywhere. Given the roaming nature of the Turessian clans, he understood, but it was still surprising. The only item marked on the map, other than hazards, was the temple. “There are armies of ancestors here, here, here, and there,” he said, pointing. “We can go several ways to the temple. The clans recommend circling around to the west and coming in that way, where the land will not hinder us and the winds will keep most storms from us. However, there were thousands of ancestors already marching that way days ago. It will be a difficult fight.”

  “How much time will we lose?”

  “A week, maybe more. Perhaps a second week fighting through the ancestors.”

  “What about this route?” Raeln asked, tracing a line through the hills with his claw.

  “Already twenty thousand ancestors.”

  “And here?”

  “Fifteen thousand.”

  Raeln stared at the man as though he was making up numbers, but several of the other Turessians whispered their agreement. Touching another spot almost at random, he asked again, “Here?”

  “That way is through the holdings of the Irasha clan, who have the honor of protecting the temple and council. They are the largest clan and will resist us. Any who have refused to obey are likely among the ancestors now.”

  “How bad would that clan be to fight?”

  The man’s abruptly raised eyebrows told Raeln all he needed to know.

  Picking up the map and staring at it, he searched for any other way. Finally, he spotted a narrow route through some of the largest groupings of hazards, coming in from the east of the temple. “What about here? It’s close to where we are now and will save us days of marching. It looks like it’s no more than two or three days’ hike.”

  The Turessian actually laughed and pointed out the location Raeln had indicated for the others. They, too, openly laughed, until finally one of them spoke up.

  “War leader, that is not a route anyone would take. It is some of the roughest terrain in all of Turessi and is filled with creatures that do not roam elsewhere. Only a madman would go that way. Even Turess himself forbade travel through that region. It is known as the Maw by most clans for the way it consumes those who enter it. I know of no one who has survived crossing it. There is no point in trying.”

  “Then that’s the way we go,” Raeln declared, feeling the entire area chill as breaths were held and the laughter cut off abruptly. “If no Turessian would go that way, it will be the least guarded. I would rather fight a thousand creatures that breathe than a thousand that do not. We will come in from the east.”

  “It could take us days to pass through that area,” a man pointed out.

  Shaking his head, Raeln replied, “It will take us a week or more to march around the temple and fight our way through an army, if we even succeed. A day or two in the Maw is much faster.”

  “But the north is somewhat less dangerous,” pleaded one woman, who quickly lowered her hood to hide her face when Raeln growled at her.

  “We come from the east,” Raeln repeated, throwing the map at the man who had brought it. “You call me your battle leader, so I am giving you an order. If you wish to divide the army and have us all die to the undead, do so. Until then, you will obey my orders. Come get me when we are ready to march. I want everything in motion before daybreak.”

  Raeln turned and left, continuing to walk while people called out to him in an attempt to argue further. He headed for his tent at first, but then realized he really had no desire to go back to Somn, who tended to faun over him when he was home, brushing his fur and suggesting clothing that he thought accented Raeln’s patterning. The man meant well and Raeln was grateful for his company, but he wanted to see Dalania. She had been distant ever since they had left Jnodin, keeping to herself as he prepared the army.

  Asking several Turessians for directions as he passed, Raeln navigated through the camp, barely noticing the white flashes of fur he saw off to his left, where the bear wildling shadowed him. The huge man had backed off at Raeln’s insistence, but he never got more than fifty feet away. Deep down, Raeln appreciated having someone watch his back, given that Yoska was busy watching Ceran’s backside and Dalania was always off alone.

  Raeln approached the tent where Dalania had last been seen. Back home he would have called out or found some other way to make noise to announce himself. But the Turessians considered privacy a fairly abstract concept and preferred the direct approach. Poking his head inside, he found a young Turessian couple with the boy he and Dalania had rescued from Jnodin. Raeln had seen Dalania with them days prior and had guessed she was trying to get them to adopt the boy. Apparently it had gone better than he had expected.

  “Have you seen Dalania?” he asked.

  The woman shook her head and apologized, and the man thought for a moment.

  “Yes,” the man finally answered. “I believe I saw her out by the watering hole a few hours ago. She is often there with woodland animals. The hunters keep asking if they are allowed to hunt there, but the risk is too great near our only water source. I believe they find the number of animals that visit her to be infuriating.”

  Thanking them, Raeln slipped out of the tent and made his way across part of the camp to a section they had far less security around. A warm spring provided more than enough water, even for the ever-growing army. Despite the bitter cold of Turessi, the pond never froze, steaming endlessly.

  Dalania had been insistent on them allowing wild animals access to it, lessening his surprise that she chose that spot to hide from the clans. Had the hunters insisted on patrolling there, Raeln would have already heard about the fight that came of it.

  Coming up on the wooded area around the water, Raeln called out, “Dalania? Are you here?”

  Several robed men and women appeared from the trees and watched him briefly before fading back into the woods. It was good to know their least defended location was not entirely undefended. At that thought, Raeln looked over his shoulder and saw the white bear wildling waiting about twenty feet away, staring intently at him. There was nowhere for the man to hide.

  Sighing, Raeln continued toward the edge of the spring, where Dalania sat, staring at the slow waves in the pond’s surface. She was still enough that had she not been green against the white and browns of the area, he could have easily missed her. In the southern woods, she probably could have vanished into the trees without much effort. Around her, several white rabbits scattered as Raeln approached.

  “Are you okay?” Raeln asked, sitting down at her side. The moist ground made him uncomfortable in the chill climate, but he chose not to share
that, given how relaxed Dalania appeared, with her toes in the warm water. He hesitated before speaking again, realizing several deerlike animals were watching from the trees. “Dalania?”

  Blinking and sitting up straight, she seemed entirely surprised to see Raeln. “Oh…hello. I was…they…I mean…what day is it?”

  Raeln put a hand to Dalania’s forehead to check for a fever, but she scowled at him and he felt nothing abnormal. “Where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in days.”

  “Usually here,” she admitted, looking back at the water. “I can’t hear them as easily here for some reason.”

  “Them?”

  Dalania brushed at her leaves without answering.

  “The fae?” Raeln asked, genuinely confused. “I thought you had a deal with the nature spirits. What’s going on, Dalania?”

  “The deal was that they can’t claim me until I die,” she explained without looking at him. “If I try to get out of the deal, the fae will kill everything around me. They aren’t breaking the deal, but they aren’t making it easy either. I can hear them talking all the time now. At first it was just the ones that I bargained with, but now I can hear a dozen or more. They’re following us, Raeln. Lots of them. They seem frantic about us going to the temple.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  Dalania shrugged. “You have enough to worry about. As long as we keep traveling, they fade away. It’s when we stop that I can feel their attention press down on me. Even this pond is staring back at me.”

  Raeln took her hand, ignoring her flinch at the touch. “You aren’t going to die, Dalania. We’ll hold them off together. They can’t have you.”

  “I haven’t slept in days,” she confessed, closing her eyes. “When I try, they are there, watching me. I don’t even know what they want. They just stare, as though I should already know. They don’t want me dead, but there’s something they expect to happen.”

  Raeln thought back on the three spirits that had come to take Feanne’s life from her as she lay dying after healing Estin. They had only relented in exchange for something more valuable to them—in this case, Dalania. He had never thought the bargain would matter until her death, given the terms of the deal, but he apparently knew far less about the fae than he thought. One more enemy to worry about—one he knew he could not fight. The fae were not alive and barely had form that a mortal could see.

  “We’ll march again tomorrow,” he said, squeezing her hand tightly. “Sleep while we ride.”

  Putting her other hand over Raeln’s, Dalania whispered, “Get us to the temple before the fae find a way to kill or use me, Raeln. I want to see this end before they take me. I don’t want to know what they want of me, and I hope to end this before having to find out.”

  “They won’t get you. We’re going to go through what the Turessians call the Maw and see how fast we can reach the temple. Once we’re there, we defeat Dorralt and then figure out how to protect you.”

  Smiling sadly, she patted his hand without speaking.

  *

  At daybreak the army set out again, heading northwest toward the route Raeln had chosen through hills he could see in the distance. When they reached them, the army would turn west and hope they were strong enough to make it through whatever lay between the first hill and the temple of Turessi. No one had been willing to discuss the rumors of what lay in those hills, which had somewhat relieved Raeln, allowing him to dismiss the fears as little more than superstition.

  Raeln had tried all morning to spark conversation with any of the Turessians, but they were somber and in poor spirits. That only served to further worry Raeln that he had made the wrong choice. Even the former slaves admitted they were in no mood to talk, leaving Raeln alone with his thoughts. He headed the long column of clansmen, with only Somn and the white bear at his sides. Dalania had been missing all morning, though Raeln had heard she was somewhere near the middle of the column, talking to herself.

  “No storm on the horizon…that’s something,” Somn said, getting a curt nod from the bear.

  Raeln looked over at Somn, who was riding one of the pack horses. “How much do you know about this place? I need to know before we get there. No one will tell me anything, and I’m pretty sure they are measuring me for a box each time I ask.”

  “Not a lot,” Somn answered, keeping his voice low and glancing back at the nearest Turessians. “My sire told me that if I got free of my clan and wanted to make a run for it but the Maw was the only route, I should either kill myself or let the clan do it. Kind of stomps on the incentive to run.”

  An airy cough from Raeln’s other side drew his attention to the bear, who was walking rather than riding. He pointed at the hills in the distance and then at himself. Pulling open the collar of his ragged shirt, he showed Raeln a series of deep claw scars that should have been fatal, from Raeln’s experience. The bear then grabbed Raeln’s bicep, squeezed it, and nodded.

  “I think he’s been there and thinks we’ll be fine,” Raeln translated for Somn, getting a nod of agreement from the bear. “I’m glad someone believes this will work.”

  They rode and walked throughout most of the day and reached the first hill around midafternoon. Almost immediately Raeln could see this was not a place he really wanted to go. The appearance alone spoke volumes about why its reputation was so dire.

  The ground fell away steeply as they approached the Maw, creating a wide ravine broken only by “hills” farther out, which he was pretty sure were actually tall spires. They rose from the bottom of the ravine to stand as tall as the hills on the plains. How high they might be or how deep the ravine was, Raeln could not guess, due to a thick fog that filled the entire ravine. From its depths, Raeln heard the screeches of bats, as well as something else that cut many of the cries short. Each animal scream made his fur stand a little farther up.

  “We can still go around,” offered Somn, pulling his horse back to stay well behind Raeln.

  Looking to the east, Raeln could see the mists at the edge of Turessi without having to strain anymore. They had risen many hundreds of feet, creating a wall around the land that spread as far as he could see in either direction. From the look of things, the entire edge of Turessi was enveloped in a horrific thunderstorm, undoubtedly tied in some way to the mists.

  “No time,” he admitted, shaking his head. “We might have until the full moon, but not much longer. We either die trying now, or we die in that cloud in a few days.”

  “This is what free people do with their time?” Somn asked, sounding horrified. “I’ll take a whip any day over deciding which way I want to die.”

  Laughing—and hoping Somn was joking—Raeln flicked his reins and began the descent into the ravine, with hundreds of living people following him and hundreds of ancestors behind them. Somn and other noncombatants hurriedly dropped back to the middle of the line, while several of the orcs joined Raeln and the bear wildling at the front. Those with him were among the most battle-hardened and scarred members of the army, the few willing to face the Maw ahead of the rest.

  They made their way down the hill slowly—perhaps more slowly than necessary—and soon Raeln had no choice but to dismount. The horse was terrified and fighting him, tugging at the reins until Raeln stopped and put a hand on its brow to calm it. The beast was frantic, trying to get back to the edge of the fog.

  “Take the horse back near the others,” Raeln told a Turessian nearby, who took the reins from him. “It won’t be able to see as much from back there.”

  The Turessian bowed and walked away. He had only gotten a few steps from Raeln when a blur of fog passed between him and Raeln. When it cleared a second later, a long trail of blood led off to Raeln’s left. Neither the man nor the horse was anywhere to be found. Even more disconcerting, the dozens upon dozens of people who should have been somewhat in the path of whatever had taken the two were looking around with the same confusion as Raeln.

  “Close ranks,” Raeln said loudly, shifti
ng to be closer to the orcs and bear. The orcs drew weapons hurriedly while the bear straightened and squinted to stare into the fog. Barely visible, the Turessians closed in those who could not fight in a tight ring of robed warriors. “If something’s going to take anyone, I want to hear combat. No one dies alone. Scream if you hear anything.”

  They began walking again, the crunching of hundreds of feet on the snow making it impossible for Raeln to be sure of any sounds he thought he heard. Everyone moved in procession, first Raeln taking a step, then those behind him, repeated on and on for almost a mile back. They continued that way for an hour or two with no change in the limited scenery and no further attacks. Gradually the path leveled off, and Raeln got the sense of the area opening up, though he could have been in a closet for all he could see. All he knew for certain was that he was no longer descending.

  Raeln’s ears twitched to his left as he heard paws come down on snow.

  Raising his hand to stop the group, Raeln looked over his shoulder to his right, where the bear wildling stood. To his left there were Ildorn and another orc. Nothing that direction should have sounded remotely like padded feet.

  As if in reply, the orcs raised their axes and swords, waiting for a signal to attack.

  Raeln motioned at the fog somewhat to their left and pointed at his own eyes, hoping the orcs knew that meant to watch for threats. Whether they understood or not, they advanced more slowly, keeping their weapons high. A pair of Turessian men moved up from the main force, joining the orcs, their gloved hands looking as weapon-like as the orcs’ steel.

  A rush of movement came from the fog, knocking Ildorn down. Raeln leaped over the man, trying to shield him, but whatever was out there darted away again, fading into the fog. Kneeling while watching where the creature had gone, Raeln touched the orc and found he was still breathing, though raggedly. Raeln glanced down quickly, unwilling to look away from the mists for long, and found Ildorn was clutching a massive gash in his chest that poured blood down his side.