Sunset of Lantonne

by Jim Galford

  “I’m really not much of a wizard,” Ilarra said after a moment’s contemplation about whether she wanted to admit as much. “I’m not even fully trained. Not really even started.”

  “I can do without the modesty crap,” replied Greth, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the wagon’s side. “My sire…father…spent his whole adult life studying magic—without formal training, but studying regardless—and couldn’t do anything near what you did out there today. If this is you barely trained, my father should’ve gotten out of the woods more.”

  Once Greth’s eyes were closed, Raeln lifted his head and gave Ilarra a questioning stare while continuing to make the soft snoring noises. He had been with her since she had learned to walk and knew what her capabilities really were. Whether Greth believed her or not, Raeln knew something was wrong.

  Ilarra shook her head, mouthing the words “be quiet” to Raeln.

  “You haven’t told us…or at least me…anything about yourself, Greth. You keep mentioning your ‘pack,’ but I can’t even piece together who your people are or what city you’re from.”

  Smirking, Greth opened his eyes and looked over at Raeln, who had already gone back to pretending to sleep. “Not much to say, elf,” he offered softly. “Bunch of dirty animals running around the woods, keeping away from respectable people like you. The pack-leader spends most of his time keeping us from killing each other or coming after your villages.”

  “We don’t hate your kind, so why hate us so much?”

  Greth studied her for a long time, and answered, “If wolves came by every few months and skinned your parents or just stopped by the area to put down a bunch of traps that maim and kill your children when they go out to play, give some thought on how you’d feel about us. I’m betting it wouldn’t be much better than how I feel.”

  “That’s awful. Elves do this to your people?”

  He shook his head. “Elves, humans, even the occasional dwarf. Pretty much anyone working for the slaving or fur companies in Altis finds an excuse to come looking for us. We’re cheap labor…or as my father used to say, meat’s meat so long as it shuts up when you’re eating it. If they can shut us up long enough to make us work, we’ve got value. If not, we make good rugs, I hear. Either way, Altis isn’t inviting us to become citizens anytime soon, even without the whole undead taking over the land thing.”

  Ilarra made a brief comparison with her own peoples’ treatment of the wolves like Raeln and wondered how Greth could even tolerate her, given that kind of experience with the other races. In his place, she could imagine trying to kill everyone in Hyeth the first time she met them.

  “My people,” she started to say, then wished she had kept her mouth shut but was already committed to continuing, “were butchered by their own. Elves and humans turned savage on the plains during the early years of our settling here. They abandoned the villages, but they keep coming back to raid our farms when food is scarce.”

  “Yeah, I met them when I ran from you near the village. Charming folks. Two of them acted like I was the rebirth of their deity and the rest started firing arrows at me.”

  “The clans worship animal spirits, but they have this weird fear of animals that are black and white, like you and Raeln. They attack the rest of us because they say we were intruding on their old hunting lands. Kind of silly when you boil it down…some of them were related to our people generations ago. We’d been there for almost a generation before the rest showed up. My father said that the original tribesmen roamed across four parts of the plains, moving once in each generation to where their fathers’ fathers had remembered hunting. We just happened to pick a spot on the edge of one such hunting ground.”

  “We were much the same with Altis,” Greth told her, closing his eyes and leaning against the wagon’s side. “Lihuan—our pack-leader—told me stories as a child about how our pack had moved through the mountains peacefully for years, right up until Altis realized we were out there. Once they found out we were on ‘their’ land, it became war for at least the last ten or fifteen years.”

  “Can I ask you one more thing, Greth?” Ilarra asked, hoping to catch him before he fell asleep.

  “If I say ‘no,’ will I get to sleep?”

  “If I say ‘no,’ will you answer me?” she retorted quickly.

  “Fine. Yes. Ask your question, elf.”

  “Why are you here? Really, why come with us at all? You could be halfway back to the mountains by now. Within days, you could have forgotten about us completely.”

  Greth’s eyes opened slightly and he smiled back at her in the dim light of the wagon’s interior. “Can’t go home alone,” he told her, reaching down to fish something out of a small pouch on his belt. When he found it, he untangled it on his lap. “I have to find someone or I can’t ever go back. Going back without him will get me killed more quickly than anyone in Lantonne can manage. I’d rather let the furless try to kill me than go back and try explaining what happened to our group out there at the quarry.”

  Ilarra stared at the small item Greth held. At first, she could not recognize what he was holding, but as she watched him unroll it, she began to understand what she was seeing. Rows of leather strands had been sewn into an array of bones and beads, with the remains of several broken feathers attached near the bottom. Only one of the feathers now remained intact, the black raven-like plumage standing out against the rest. The intricate-looking item had been some kind of necklace or chest piece at one time, before being battered and nearly torn apart. She had seen similar items on the barbarians that attacked her village. “What is it?” she asked. “Or…what does it mean?”

  “It marks one who’s been recognized as important to a pack or tribe,” Greth replied, settling back with his eyes closed. He slid the necklace back into his pouch. “That one belonged to our pack’s healer. He was with me when I was caught by the Lantonnian soldiers. It was his fuzzy ass that got us all in trouble out there, but I’ll keep going back to Lantonne until I find him.”

  “You need to bring back the healer or your pack-leader will blame you for his loss?”

  “Not the pack-leader. Pack-leader’s kit will rip my head off and feed it to wild animals if I tried to go back without knowing what happened to the grey-furred fool. She’s got an awful temper when it comes to anything she feels she has claim to.”

  “Her husband or betrothed, then.”

  Greth laughed and shrugged. “Things are complicated in the wilds, elf. Just accept that he means a lot to her and it’s my hide if she’s unhappy about his death. If I can at least get his remains, she will kill the people who did it as part of her grieving. If I don’t…I’m the one who takes the brunt of it. I don’t know if she’ll even remember who went with him on the mission, but I’m not going to risk it.”

  “Was he a friend of yours?”

  Greth shook his head and answered, “He was a packmate. I respected him for his role in the pack, but he was not someone I knew. I did pledge to help him with his suicide mission to Lantonne though. He knew my father and was the last to see him alive…I owed the fuzz-ball at least that much help, given that my father liked him. I let my father down and wanted to make it up by helping the last person he treated as his pup, even if that wasn’t me. I was too busy rebelling against the pack to be there for him and by then, it was too late.”

  Ilarra sat forward, studying Greth’s scars, which were visible now that he had tossed aside his cloak. There were scars all over his arms, neck, and even a few faintly on his face in thinner parts of his fur. He did not have the filled-out bulk of Raeln, but he appeared to have lived far harder in his life.

  “If I may ask,” she inquired, noticing as she did that Raeln’s ears were moving as they talked, “how old are you, Greth? You look like you’ve been fighting for years and you talk like you’re as old as we are. I know you said something back in the village about Raeln being old, but after all of this, I have to say my memory’s fuzzy.”

  “F
our, give or take,” the wolf man replied. “Been hunting with my father since my mom died more than a year ago. When he died…well, I had a lot to prove to the other wolves. Stragglers aren’t exactly welcomed in.”

  “Your pack, they’re all wolves?”

  “Most packs are like that, but ours is a mix of everything we can find. Lihuan thinks it makes us stronger as a group to accept anyone with fur, scales, or feathers. Normally he’s right, but sometimes it can get rough when we’re all starving and a rabbit or deer wildling trots past. Fighting for survival isn’t just against Altis or the weather, no matter how much Lihuan tries to keep it peaceful.”

  “Your people joined together to survive, no matter how hard it is to keep away from each other’s throats,” she thought aloud, eliciting a nod from Greth. “Mine and Raeln’s did the same thing. We’ve just been doing it longer and learned to work together with neither wanting to kill the other.”

  Greth snorted and batted at Raeln’s ear. Despite the fact that Ilarra knew Raeln was at least trying to listen in, he did not move.

  “Elf, we’re hardly alike,” he replied, pointing a clawed fingertip at Raeln. “He’s practically a pet. You can tell me he’s family, but he’s not allowed to talk. That’s slave behavior. I honestly don’t care if your people wanted to put a crown on the head of every wolf that you take in, the result is the same. He’s just a slave without chains.”

  “He’s my brother, Greth.”

  “That’s disturbing so many different ways that I can’t even put it to words.”

  “We were raised together. He’s only a couple months younger than I am. We learned to walk and talk at the same time—though admittedly, he learned a lot faster than I did. Your people have us beat on the growing up part.

  “The oath,” she went on, “wasn’t until we were four. I was too young to really understand it, but he looked like he does now. He made a conscious choice to help my family. It wasn’t my choice to make him take it…”

  “But your people enforce the rules associated with it,” snapped Greth, bristling slightly. “As much as I hate the idea of one of my people living an elf’s life, if he could do it on his own terms, I might not hate it quite so much. Having him practically on a leash and unable to talk just because his owner is present makes me sick. If he was wearing a collar, I’d have something I could tear off in protest, but chains made from words aren’t something I can break.”

  “I don’t want them broken,” said Raeln softly, his even tone cutting through the night. “Ilarra is my sister and I will protect her with my life. Your ways are not our ways.”

  “The mute speaks,” Greth said, patting Raeln on the head like a child, though he was careful to avoid touching anywhere near the wound. “I thought you couldn’t talk, pup?”

  Rolling over onto his side to look up at Greth, Raeln replied, “You talk about breaking a pledge I made. That warrants an answer. Little else you say does.”

  Greth smiled at that, winking at Ilarra once Raeln settled back down on the floor. The wolf seemed to dearly enjoy bothering Raeln.

  Ilarra could appreciate the attempt at playful humor, even if she hated his methods. It was good to see Raeln actually paying attention to anything anyone besides her. She had not even realized just how focused Raeln was until Greth had come along, constantly distracting him from Ilarra. Some small part of her was jealous at having him paying so much attention to someone else, but mostly she was happy to see him interacting with another wildling.

  “I heal quickly,” continued Raeln. “Give me until morning and…”

  “Shut up,” Greth snapped, making Ilarra look up at him in surprise.

  Clearly as shocked as Ilarra, Raeln lifted his head and stared over his shoulder at Greth. “You demand that I talk…”

  “I said shut your mouth…now.”

  Both Ilarra and Raeln watched Greth in confusion. Slowly, Ilarra began to realize he was sniffing at something and was trying to concentrate.

  “This is so incredibly unfair,” he finally announced, hopping to his feet. He rushed to the nearest shuttered window of the carriage wagon, popped it open and looked around furtively. “I was kidding. This sort of thing is not supposed to happen.”

  “What?” Ilarra pleaded, starting to feel the contagious panic without knowing why.

  “Wolves,” said Greth nervously. He sat down on the floor and sniffed the tiny gaps in the floorboards. “Five or six. They’re cutting us off from Lantonne and circling us, if I’m guessing right.”

  “Even I know wolves won’t attack a group of humans on horses,” Ilarra countered, leaning back against the wall of the wagon and giving Raeln an annoyed look. He shrugged and lay his head back down. “Wolves aren’t stupid.”

  “When I said wolves, that wasn’t exactly what I meant.” Greth rubbed his face in frustration and began searching the floor on hands and knees.

  Greth soon pulled clumps of dirt and dust from under the benches that had likely been left by the farmers Therec had acquired the wagon from. He hugged the dirt to his chest and sat down on the floor, rubbing it into his fur and clothing. Once he seemed satisfied with the amount of dirt on himself, he dug his claws into his clothing and began shredding it. After that, he mussed up his fur and looked over at Raeln in annoyed impatience.

  “Werewolves,” he told Raeln matter-of-factly. “Get yourself looking uncivilized or we’re both dead.”

  Raeln rolled his eyes and tried to lay back down, but Greth grabbed his shoulder and yanked him upright.

  “I wish I was lying,” Greth said in such a dire tone that Raeln’s eyes immediately focused and his posture changed. “You and I can get out of his with some clever acting, but she’s going to be torn apart. Get yourself ready to fight if you want Ilarra to live through this.” Jumping back to his feet, Greth screamed out the window at the nearest soldier on horseback. “Hey! Get ready. There are werewolves coming!”

  Ilarra could imagine the man’s reaction without seeing it, picturing it as a mirror for how she wanted to respond. Had she not seen Greth’s panic, she would have believed this to be another of his ruses. Seeing the fear in his eyes cast that completely aside.

  “There are no werewolves, you superstitious savage,” the man called back, slamming the shutters of the wagon in Greth’s face.

  “Can you smell them?” asked Greth of Raeln, pacing in the small space at the middle of the wagon. “They’re close.”

  Shaking his head, Raeln gave Ilarra a worried look, and then his ears shot up in alarm. Sniffing more loudly, he closed his eyes and nodded.

  “What good is dirt going to do you?” Ilarra said nervously, standing as well. She had no idea what to do and wondered if there was any chance of fighting the same way as she had with the bear the night before. “How can there be werewolves this close to Lantonne? How can there even be werewolves?”

  Greth shook his head quickly, continuing to rub at his fur anywhere it tried to lay flat. “They’re real savages,” he explained. “Civilization is the enemy. They want to see it all burn and slowly go back to being wilderness, or so my pack-leader’s daughter always told me with that self-satisfied smirk of hers. The more rough we look, the better our chances. As for why they’re so close to the city…I’m guessing it has to do with the explosion in the quarry. Lycanthropes hate the cities enough they might think the explosion was done on purpose. They’ll blame anyone they can pick off on the outskirts.”

  A howl in the distance quieted Greth and made Raeln’s fur bristle. Seconds later, two or three more voices joined the first. Any doubts Ilarra had melted away in the seconds that howl continued.

  “Raeln,” Greth said, stopping at the middle of the wagon. “Ilarra is your prey. Drag her around like she’s food. Ilarra…play dead. I’ll try to convince the raging idiots that we’re at least similar enough to them that we don’t need to be eaten. They can smell that we’re different, but maybe…”

  A human scream outside preceded the lurching stop of the w
agon.

  “I’ve said that you aren’t a real wolf,” Greth told Raeln. “It’s time to prove yourself. If either of us fails here, there’s not a chance we’ll get to regret it. If we convince them we’re strong enough, they might not kill us…though then they might do worse.”

  The wagon rocked abruptly as something collided with one side of it, nearly knocking the whole thing over. Outside, Ilarra could hear the soldiers scrambling and dismounting. Shouts came from all directions as more curt howls announced the arrival of attackers.

  “Can you stand?” Greth asked Raeln, offering him a hand. “You need to look strong for these guys.”

  Though unstable as he got up, Raeln nodded and clasped Greth’s hand the way Ilarra had seen him do with the warriors back in Hyeth. Something in the touch was a statement of strength that she did not understand, but communicated to Greth that Raeln was intending to fight no matter what the outcome might be.

  Greth turned next to Ilarra, “The door’s locked from the outside. Can you blow it open? As soon as you hear the next howl or scream…”

  Another howl shook the wagon as the sound of crossbows firing and a horse screaming made Ilarra’s skin crawl. Despite her instincts begging her to huddle under the wagon’s bench, she raised a hand toward the door and pulled magic to herself. It came easier than she remembered, thundering into the wood door with enough force to rip the wood apart and fling the pieces outwards.

  Even before the door’s remains had settled, Ilarra felt ill, her whole body burning with fever. She clutched at her stomach and did her best to hide the sensations, but she knew Raeln would notice no matter what she did.

  The men fighting outside appeared to be huddled together, staring at the dimming light of the plains around them. It took several seconds before Ilarra saw anything past them, but when she did, her heart skipped a beat.

  Among the trees and scrub bushes just off the road that were coated with snow, she could see three wolf-like creatures moving around, keeping a fair distance from the wagon and its guards. At first glance they appeared to be wildlings, though, unlike Raeln and Greth, they wore no clothing she could see. All of them walked on their hands and feet like beasts, growling and yipping at the humans. In passing, one looked toward her, its eyes gleaming or possibly glowing faintly yellow even in the evening light.