Bones of the Empire

by Jim Galford

  Raeln nodded and thanked the child. He searched the area slowly, wondering if they were getting themselves into a trap. But stopping halfway down the slope would be suicide and cost them a great many of their people. He hurriedly motioned the group on, and they followed, the giant leading them again.

  They reached the bottom of the slope relatively quickly, and the fog lessened as though they were beneath it, allowing Raeln to see a large village spread out along the basin. Cramped-looking huts dotted much of the area, right up to the edge of a small steaming lake, over which much of the fog seemed to hang. Spread across most of the open area, dozens of the bearlike tusked creatures stood watching as Raeln and the others made their way toward them. Many of them clutched small fuzzy—and somewhat less moldy—versions of themselves as they stared in horror at both Raeln and the nearest of the Turessians who followed him. Many picked up spears, though they did not appear ready to attack. Instead, they watched the one leading Raeln. It motioned at the others to lower their weapons, which they did reluctantly.

  Then Raeln realized there were others beyond the creatures in the valley. Near another slope out of the village, huge mounds of decaying human corpses lay, the ground around them covered with dried blood. Many were torn apart, their limbs tossed unceremoniously back onto the pile. Some continued to move and groan, though most of them were too broken to move.

  “Quite a battle here already, no?” Yoska asked, sounding out of breath as he came up beside Raeln. Ceran hustled along behind him, unable to quite keep pace. Raeln looked past them, trying to find Dalania, but she had not come with them. “Ceran say Turessians never come out of here alive. Is not so surprising now that we look around.”

  Raeln nodded and followed close behind the creature leading them. “These things hate the Turessians. They have no idea what to make of me. I’d be willing to bet they’ve been picking off Turessians for generations…” Raeln stopped at the side of a cage made out of wood, stone, and even bones on the shore of the lake. It held a single robed man.

  The man looked up at Raeln, allowing his tattoos to be seen before sneering and spitting near Raeln’s feet. He shook his head in dismay as several more Turessians joined Raeln at the cage. “Dorralt thought you might come this way,” the man said, grinning madly. “This was just the reserve we had waiting. We are coming again with a force twice as large—”

  With a grumble, the creature that had been leading Raeln reached into the cage and tore the Turessian’s throat out, along with a good chunk of his face. The man slumped lifelessly, and the creature tossed the bloody fistful of flesh away. After a moment, the Turessian in the cage started to move, which honestly did not surprise Raeln at all. He had come to expect anyone serving Dorralt would get back up.

  “You cannot kill me!” the Turessian announced as he sat back up, though he backed away from the creature. Then, with a spasm that shook his body violently, the man’s eyes glowed with a red light. Looking around, he stared at Raeln before laughing again. “Raeln. I see you found a way to get close, beast. I must give you credit. I had been certain the other army was your main force until now. No matter. I prepared for this. Even now I’ve got more than enough troops coming to greet you. I may not be able to exert my will here, but I will be sure—”

  A second of the monstrous creatures walked over as Dorralt spoke, threw open the door of the cage, and grabbed the man. Turning and walking away while Dorralt shouted and fought to free himself, the creature dragged him to the lake’s shore. Once they reached the water, the creature hurled the Turessian into the cloud hanging over the lake. Raeln watched as the air rippled and tore the body apart. A faint shimmer of inky blackness appeared over the lake, then slowly faded away.

  “That’s…” Raeln swallowed hard as he tried to put it to words. “That’s the same thing that opened near Lantonne. The mists came from it…”

  Ceran finished for him. “That is one of the holes in Eldvar that Turess spent his final years trying to close, according to legend. None of us had believed one could be so close to the temple. I cannot imagine how anything could survive so close to one this long. There will be none of the glowing mists here unless something drastic happens to that tear between worlds.”

  Turning his attention back to the creatures that filled the village, Raeln began to understand. Whatever they were now, they had likely been something else many generations ago. Being close to the hole near Lantonne had been enough to kill dragons. This hole was small. Living their whole lives near it had possibly warped and twisted these people—who were maybe once actual bears or wildling bears—into what he saw now. If it were true, the wolves that had attacked at the entrance had probably been dire wolves at one time.

  “Did that actually kill him?” Raeln asked, pointing at the cage and then the rapidly fading darkness over the lake.

  The tusked creature stared at him, not understanding.

  “Is this how you’ve been fighting them?”

  The bear-creature chittered something and walked away. It passed a group of similar creatures that were throwing the broken zombies into the same hole in the air over the lake. For all appearances, that was how they disposed of their enemies, and Raeln could not dispute it being effective. Nothing actually hit the lake. The black spot in the air pulled in everything they threw at it. If a thrown body came up short, black tendrils shot out from the hole, grabbing it and pulling it in.

  Raeln watched in amazement at the calm routine of the bear-things as they cleared away the fallen. This was apparently nothing new to them, judging by their behavior. He was so entranced by the ease with which they were getting rid of the enemies that his own forces had struggled against that he almost did not notice as his guide came to a stop beside another of the creatures. Unlike most of the others, this one’s hides and ragged clothing were trimmed with white fur and the occasional feather.

  “Hello?” Raeln offered, unsure what to do as the creature eyed him. He looked over his shoulder at Ceran, who shrugged and backed up a step. Even the white bear wildling appeared uneasy. “We just want to rest before passing through to attack the Turessian temple.”

  The bear-creature made a soft growl noise and drew a stone dagger. When the people behind Raeln tried to react, more of the creatures closed in on them with spears. Everyone froze where they were, with Yoska holding both of his knives ready and Ceran with her hands up, prepared to unleash magic on the creatures. Behind them, the Turessians were all held tightly by more of the bearlike monsters, though the unmarked people were mostly ignored, leaving them free to draw their weapons and watch Raeln for a cue. The vast majority of the army was still coming into the valley and likely had no idea what was happening.

  The creature in front of Raeln beckoned him forward and made a motion with its free hand toward his arm. Unsure what else to do, Raeln raised his hand, which the creature grabbed roughly in its powerful paw. Slashing at Raeln’s lower arm with the knife, the creature sniffed and eyed the wound with suspicion. Raeln forced himself to remain calm, knowing any battle with these things would end badly for both sides.

  Soon the creature huffed and nodded, releasing Raeln’s arm. Their guide them pulled him aside, as another grabbed Ceran and tugged her toward the one that had cut Raeln. The creature with the knife made the same gesture toward her arm that it had for Raeln.

  “They’re checking us,” Raeln said, getting a surprised look from Ceran. “They want to make sure we’re not like Dorralt’s undead. It waited to see if the wound closed.”

  “That’s all?” Ceran asked, smiling. She quickly offered her arm to the lead bear-thing, and it sliced a thin line across her skin.

  After about a minute, the creatures pushed her, Yoska, and one of the orcs toward Raeln. They were creating two groups—those who had passed the test or did not need to be tested, and those who had to be checked yet.

  “This could take a while,” Raeln said, looking over the few dozen Turessians he could see nearby. There would be hundreds more, fa
rther back. It might even take hours for the whole army to gather in one place. Patting at his bedroll, he asked the guide, “Where can we rest?”

  Chirping like a bird, the creature led him to a huge open space near the village, but situated such that it was surrounded by the stone pillars on one side and the lake on another. There would be no way into or out of the area without going through the village. As they entered that part of the valley, Raeln’s bare feet felt softer soil, and when he studied the ground, he recognized the signs of a plow having been used there.

  “They farm something here,” he told Yoska, who may or may not have heard him. “I’ll take it. A lot better greeting than I could have hoped for.”

  Sheathing his knives, Yoska pulled his bedroll off his back and lay it on the ground for Ceran. “You set sights too low, friend. Better greeting would have been with party and drink, not with stabbing and corpse-tossings, no?”

  “I’ll take what I can get,” Raeln said, laying down to rest while he could. There was no telling when he would have another opportunity.

  Closing his eyes, he tried to meditate, but found himself sound asleep. He stirred briefly when Somn came to rest beside him on one side and Dalania the other, though only enough to realize they were there.

  *

  “Raeln, is time to wake up. Things get weirder than usual, and this is me saying so.”

  Jerking awake and rubbing at his eyes, Raeln sat up, somewhat surprised that he had fallen so deeply asleep. He had meant to rest, not sleep. Given that they were in the middle of one of the most deadly parts of Turessi, with Dorralt well aware of their presence and strange monsters watching over them, the last thing he had wanted was to be unaware of what happened around him.

  When Raeln cleared his vision and saw what was happening, he instinctively dug his claws into the knife wound from the day before to be sure he actually was awake. He was happy to find Somn and Dalania still asleep, though Dalania trembled and kicked like a dog dreaming.

  Standing in the middle of his army, most of whom were sitting up on their own bedrolls staring, were nearly a hundred of the strange bearlike creatures, with the white bear wildling from Raeln’s army among them. The creatures were all carrying weapons and had donned armor made from bones Raeln recognized as a mix of wolf and human. When he looked at them, the bear wildling gestured broadly at the group and grinned toothily at Raeln.

  “Are they joining us or attacking us?” he asked the wildling, who glared at him. “Okay…the first thing I said?”

  The bear nodded.

  Apparently, Raeln’s army had just grown again, and he could not even guess why.

  Waking with a yawn, Dalania sat up beside Raeln and smiled at the large group. Reaching past Raeln, she shook Somn gently, waking him as well. The two exchanged what looked to Raeln to be conspiratorial smirks.

  “How…?” Raeln asked, still staring at the creatures, who had placed themselves among his own troops as though they belonged. “Are they helping us now?”

  The Turessians appeared as confused as Raeln, so he turned his attention to Dalania. He saw a large feather tucked into her hair that looked identical to the ones the tribe’s shaman wore. He turned the other way and saw Somn with a similar feather tucked into the fur behind his left ear. Both of them gave him innocent smiles that did not even begin to convince him they had nothing to do with it.

  “Start talking, both of you,” he insisted.

  Neither said a word.

  Raeln got to his feet, finding much of the strain in his legs had faded during the brief rest. He tested his weight on each paw, pleased that much of the numbness from the weeks in the winter snows had faded from his toes.

  “Yoska!” Raeln called, hearing shuffling from the army.

  Yoska came running, while Ceran walked more slowly, watching the exchange from a distance. “What’s going on? These two won’t talk.”

  Yoska slowed as he approached Raeln, glaring at Dalania as he did. Pointing an accusing finger at her, he told Raeln, “If she does not talk, we might never know. I try every greeting I have learned across many lands, but they do not speak my words. Dalania comes along and talks in their language. Is very disheartening to be called ‘wanderer’ and have seen half known world, and girl who does not get out much speaks words of creature we never met before, no?”

  “Marakeer,” Somn corrected, then winced and flipped over, trying to look like was asleep when Raeln stared down at him. A moment later, he peeked over his shoulder at Raeln before sitting back up. Reluctantly, he added, “She made me promise. Something about trying to make it look like it was your doing that they joined us. If you’re going to make a big deal about it, I can’t very well hide everything.”

  Raeln turned in place to glare down at Dalania, who was nervously wringing her hands. He could not stay mad at her, and within seconds he felt guilty for even looking at her with anger. Taking a knee beside her, Raeln forced Dalania’s face up with a finger under her chin, making her look at him. “I’ve already got an army,” he reminded her, cocking his head toward the hundreds of Turessians. “You don’t need to lie to them about whether you recruited or I did. Just tell me the truth…how can you talk to the Marakeer and what did you promise them?”

  Dalania reached up and brushed some of her green hair away from her face, letting her fingers linger on the feather. She pulled her chin away from Raeln, staring for several seconds at the Marakeer shaman, standing with the other filthy-looking creatures, apart from most of the Turessians. “I don’t honestly know,” Dalania said, hanging her head. “Okay, not entirely true. I should have said that I don’t know how to talk to them. Whatever the fae did to me is still getting worse and having more influence on me.”

  “How much worse?”

  Yoska sat down quickly with them, his earlier agitation dropping away and replaced with worry.

  Dalania frowned and fidgeted a little longer. As she sat there, Raeln realized something had changed in her appearance. It had likely been subtle, happening over time, but Raeln saw thick lines in her skin. Normally her skin was green-tinted but otherwise no different from any other human’s. Now she was fully covered in bark the same coloring as his skin. As though realizing what he was looking at, Dalania hugged herself, trying to cover the skin of her arms.

  “I didn’t even know I was talking their language at first,” she explained, trembling. “I…I started to panic when I knew what was happening…that they were controlling me.”

  Sliding over to sit beside Raeln, Somn quickly added, “I saw the way they were eyeing her when she got scared. They’re still animals, Raeln, at least as much as you or I. They would have torn her apart. I just stepped in to help keep her calm and offer some advice as she talked. Got a hug for it too. If you want to feel jealous, feel free.”

  Raeln scowled at Somn momentarily. Once he managed to move past the snide comments at the end, Raeln took a deep breath and put an arm around Somn, hugging him. “Thank you for keeping her safe when I was careless.”

  Instead of the hug in return he had expected, Raeln was surprised to have Somn shove him away and look around nervously. After a moment, Raeln realized what he had just done. He checked over his shoulder and saw many of the Turessians were openly glaring at him—something that had become less frequent in the last week. The simple act of hugging someone had lost him some of their favor.

  “Right,” Raeln muttered, dropping his hands to his sides, lest he accidentally brush either Dalania or Somn. “Were you able to learn anything about them, Dalania?”

  Dalania beamed with pride as she gazed at the muck-covered, moldy, bearlike Marakeer group. “They are primitive socially, but they have an oral history dating back almost two thousand years. They consider the Turessians to be demons. Their legends tell of the Turessians hunting their ancestors—who I believe were regular bears—and the darkness coming to help them. It made them strong and wise, teaching them how to kill those with the markings of death. They tell stories of how t
hose without fur will all be killed and eaten to appease their fallen ancestors and one day reclaim the lands above the mists, where wolves will no longer hunt them.”

  “Why are they helping us? I’m marked, the Turessians haven’t changed, and we certainly aren’t leading them to any great destiny.”

  Dalania shrugged and finally turned her face to Raeln. “After I started talking with the shaman, she explained that they had been killing Turessians to protect their land from the west. They have some kind of belief that all bad things come from a stone place a few miles outside the fog. I could hardly disagree. Remember the mention of the empire’s bones in the prophecy? They call it the Old Bones.”

  “They actually want to go with us just for a chance to attack the temple?”

  “It would seem so. They’ve never had Turessians come from the east before, and they hold a special reverence for wolves, given that they are the main predator and a good food source down here. When you showed up with the markings of a Turessian, they didn’t know if you were here to wipe them out or to lead them to the light. They see you as a blending of their worst fears and their greatest hopes…. It did not take much to convince them that you are the way to bridge the gap between fear and victory.”

  “Please tell me this isn’t another prophecy, Dalania.”

  “Not exactly. They’ve been arguing for a few generations about whether it was time to destroy the furless demons of the west. Your arrival convinced them that even demons are willing to help them crush the lord of demons. They see you as a demon that has taken the shape of something noble to challenge the other demons. A good demon, if you will.”

  “Did you explain to them what we’re really doing and that it has nothing to do with gods and demons? I don’t really want to lead them into a war with them believing we’re doing something we’re not.”

  Dalania’s happiness faded instantly. “No. You need them, and they will be destroyed this close to the temple, now that Dorralt knows they’re here. They either fight with us or they die alone. I explained what I could, but I’m afraid they see this as a religious war of sorts. Nothing I tell them will change that. They would rather die at your side on the field of battle than wait here for the ‘demons’ to come and destroy them.”