Chapter IX
Scattered
19th of Early Spring, 376, 5th Era – ???
The coniferous forest was strangely beautiful in the cool, hazy dawn, tossed by the rippling winds. The high, jagged mountains were coated in woods to their peaks, scattered with enormous boulders and spotted with flowering glades. The winter thaw was well under way, bringing the streams, rivers and waterfalls to their bursting point. Odd, exotic birds sung everywhere, as wildlife sprouted in every corner of the mountain range.
Adjusting his scabbard on his hip, General Hafkil thought that he might bathe in one of those streams; he needed the cleaning well enough, and it might be soothing before another night of sleeping on the ground. After rubbing a hand across his suntanned face and through his short, dark umber hair, which was just graying at the fringes, he went to stroking his recently unkempt beard. As his ragged army poured around him on the old, overgrown dirt road going into a verdant basin, he fell into deep thought, falling still in the middle of the path.
Since Early Winter, I’ve been a renegade leading five-thousand soldiers. For three months, I’ve let Darenhar stew. Perhaps he has forgotten about me, and now is the time to attack. But what if it’s too early? That sent him into a mental frenzy, of calculating and thinking of countless scenarios usually ending with him dead and ‘King’ Darenhar the victor.
Wagons and armored men passed him, men in the steel of Hargirm. The armor was plated and rounded, much like Helkrasic styled steel, but the Hargirmians also had coats of chain-mail underneath the shell-like layer. Their arms of choice were widely varied, the obvious sign of an army of scraps, but short-swords and war-axes were most prevalent, as well as jagged billhooks and voulges. Hargirmians used only a little cavalry, so they needed defense against horses aside from shield-walls and archers, which made polearms the preferred alternative.
A presence suddenly came beside him, and he looked to Kcarc, an unexpected friend that he had found in the Western Unclaimed Territory, and one of the reasons he had tarried there, aside from hesitation. Kcarc was a mottled-brown Wolf. A large Wolf, like all of his race, eight feet long and four high, though he was a medium specimen himself. He was of the Timber subspecies among the canines, but his group, containing four-hundred, consisted of southern Painted and northern Mountain Wolves as well. His group was called a Kien, a collection of many smaller packs working together under one chosen Alpha. The packs could always break apart again, but his wouldn’t for a long time yet, unless all of the Wolves suddenly lost respect for him. Which Hafkil doubted would ever happen. Most packs consisted of five to twenty members, while most Kiens were from one- to two-hundred in number. Kiens sometimes worked together, but they never mingled under one leader. And yet, Kcarc had over six-hundred in the Alliance (two-hundred had been held in reserve further south) which made it the equivalent of several large Kiens. One had to have a great amount of respect owed to them to achieve that.
Kcarc sniffed the air briefly as it ruffled his thick fur. “You look to be overthinking the situation again,” the Alpha said in Hafkil’s own tongue; Hargirmian. “You always scratch your beard and paw at your brow when you’re in your head.” Kcarc understood Hafkil well, even if they had only known each other for two and a half months. The Alpha seemed to understand people and human behavior, despite being a Wolf. Or maybe it was because of that very reason. Like humans, Wolves were intelligent, social and passionate. Their instinctual behavior and culture might be completely foreign, but they valued loyalty and benevolence to one another. They fiercely defended their blood-family and close companions.
Hafkil shook his head of the study on Wolves. His mind could torture him sometimes and go from one rant to the next. One in particular he abhorred to go down, but it usually prodded at him the most. “I was just thinking of when it would be the best time to attack Darenhar. Both he and I get weaker by the day, but I don’t want to wait and see who outlasts the other. He needs to be killed, before we can bring Hargirm back together.” He gritted his teeth, because of the challenges ahead.
“I agree,” Kcarc said, choosing to ignore Hafkil’s darkened expression. He didn’t comment on everything the ex-general did. A tan Painted Wolf with a black and white fur-pattern like spattered paint came up to the Alpha and spoke in the tongue of the Wolves. It just sounded like grunts, stifled howls and guttural snarls to Hafkil, but he could detect an urgency in the newcomer’s voice.
Kcarc gave a command, and the hunter (the term for a male Wolf) darted to join several others of his race, who were walking leisurely beside a train of carts and men. Both races had become used to each other over the two months. Well, most of them; some of the men were still suspicious of the giant canines, but they hadn’t caused any unrest purely for fear of the animals.
The Alpha turned to Hafkil, gesturing the man to walk with him down the road. “There was another sighting of that thing. There was a trail of toppled trees like last time, and a collapsed hole leading underground. The scout saw the culprit slip into the tunnel before it caved in.”
“Was it as large as the last sighting reported?” Hafkil questioned, feeling uneasy. The Unclaimed Territory was unclaimed for a reason.
“It seems so. The trail and the hole were forty paces wide.” Which meant, about ninety feet across.
“Let’s just hope that it doesn’t target us, or decide to surface at our camp,” the ex-general remarked. “I’ve seen enough strange wildlife here to suit me; I don’t want to see this giant earthworm up close.” He rubbed his bottom; one of his encounters with the unique fauna of the Unclaimed Territory had involved a four-horned mountain goat, a feisty male who had charged at him from behind. The creature had only been the size of a dog, but the impact had still hurt. Aside from that incident, there had been tiny, rat-sized mule deer, enormous hawks and grizzled bison. All of the Wolves so far had been from Kcarc’s Kien, or they soon joined it.
The flora was also odd; none of the wildflowers in the Territory grew anywhere else that Hafkil had seen, and he had been all over the continent. The trees were also unique; there were pines with cones the size of his head and fatal if they fell onto one’s cranium, as one unfortunate soldier had found out. Several species of broadleaf trees had been spotted, and their foliage had been unrecognizable.
Hafkil looked to the road. He was surprised that anything had been built within the Unclaimed Territory. Perhaps long ago it had been occupied; the road showed signs of ancient cobblestones sunken from age. The ex-general then looked back to his Wolf companion. “Kcarc, tell me again why you’ve come all the way up here. Why would Wolves want to help men?”
“The Wolves are The Guardians of the South. You already know what we have been keeping out of Vaskil. But we will soon need help ourselves, and sometimes that means giving something first. I lead the Alliance Kien, which is dedicated to making allies that will help us in our fight. My . . . blood-brother, Akendel the High Alpha sent me out to finish that mission. He is the leader of all Wolves who claim to be part of a Kien, and I had no choice but to do as he commanded.”
Hafkil had heard of Akendel before. Anyone who had half a mind and ten years of age had heard of Akendel, The White Wolf. Yet, most humans only knew a little of the world of the Wolves. Even after his new friendship with Kcarc, Hafkil had only learned a trifle more about Akendel than a few months before. Kcarc didn’t like to talk about his brothers, but Hafkil couldn’t guess why. There was a third brother, Minchardaac, but not one of the Wolves had mentioned the name since entering Hafkil’s company. He was amazed that the name had ever seeped into human recounts, seeing as how tight-mouthed the Wolves were over it.
Kcarc went on. “You are the first man I have come across who has shown interest in the Wolves’ predicament. Most people run or hide from us, while others are volatile and threatening. A few show us a kinder behavior, but they are little help to us.”
“Well, as soon as Darenhar is dead, and Hargirm healed, I’ll happily help you defeat your enemy. Our enemy.”
“I’m glad that you see it that way,” Kcarc said, then he trotted off to a tiny Painted huntress (the term for a female Wolf) to order her someplace. She obeyed reluctantly, seeming to want to linger around him. Apparently his mate was a Painted, but Sulr led the members of the Alliance Kien who had been left behind in Firemere. Although Kcarc and his brothers had been born in a more temperate land, they had eventually gone south to the desert country to fight for their right to become Kien Alphas. The ‘capital’ of the Wolves was located at the southern tip of Firemere, hence their name of Guardians of the South.
The rest of that day, Hafkil focused on moving his men to a prime spot; they changed their position in the mountains every week or so, especially when they hunted out the area of any sizable creatures, or when that giant ‘earthworm’ showed itself nearby. While undertaking such a considerable task, he thought about what his plans were. Kcarc was waiting for him to make a move against Darenhar, but he was hesitant; he had always excelled as a leader when the majority was on his side, when the decisions to make were easy and clear cut, and when he had a higher authority point the right way to him. He was a good general, not a good king, and out there in the wild, he was practically the dictator over his men. As for the decisions he had to make . . . they were especially difficult, since he had few to choose from, and each leading to a likely failure. Considering the numbers, it was easy to see that he was on the losing end of the spectrum. All of Hargirm was pitted against him, the rebel, and even if many of the citizens of the kingdom were more than willing to overthrow Darenhar, they were mostly farmers and workers. Darenhar was in Theargern, the capital of Hargirm, and a fully walled, fortified dwelling. It was full of his loyal soldiers, and his army could instill fear into the populace, forcing them into obedience and compliance. The whole country had been cowed by the tyrants who had come before Darenhar, and though he had started as a fair King, he had turned sour and evil, so the country was yet again prostrate and trembling.
Hafkil was sick of dealing with cattle who learned nothing from the past. His soldiers were some of the only agreeable men from the capital, and even some of them were idiots. Those warriors who still feared the Wolves were excellent examples. It was obvious that the Wolves were allies. That much was clear, but he couldn’t get it into their inch-thick skulls, even with a hammer and chisel.
Late in the day was when they halted, about ten or fifteen miles away from their last camp. Hafkil had his army set up the encampment to be semi-permanent. He hoped that it would be the last stakeout that lasted more than one night. He would finally make a decision and choose how to move against Darenhar, before Doom chose for him—likely a direction which he wouldn’t prefer.
By nightfall, the camp was set up within the forests of the mountains and along the stony slopes. Fires blazed everywhere, topped with kettles or pans, and bean stew with roast meat hung as aromas in the breeze. Hafkil was set up cozily in his tent—which was only a little larger than his men’s lean-to shelters—and he laid back gratefully on his blankets. That he could call his environment cozy was still a shock, seeing as how he was guest to the most wild stretch of land on Vaskil. Well, one of the most wild. There were two other Unclaimed Territories, and several of the countries had large swaths of untamed wilderness within their borders.
Memories haunted him that night, so he had no appetite like his men. Sa`yae, my beautiful wife. Dela and Fari, my innocent daughters. Even Ainar, my son, though he might have escaped. Darenhar wasn’t looking for men when he sold his people to that . . . that demon. He paused in his thinking, recalling memories of his Firemereian wife and his two adolescent daughters. They had all been beautiful and innocent, but that hadn’t saved them. He hadn’t saved them. He had never been given the chance, but he still tortured himself with the thought that he should have known before it happened. Darenhar sent me on a pointless mission, and when I came back, all of the women between thirteen and thirty winters were gone. All of them. Sold thousands of them like sheep! I’ll skin and gut Darenhar while he’s still alive! I’ll strip and burn the flesh from his bones! He laughed at his own evil thoughts. Darenhar had once been his greatest friend—until the King received the news that his two beloved sons had died. They had fallen in battle fighting for the expansion of their kingdom, killed by Helkrasic arrows. Darenhar had taken note of who had murdered them, and fiery hate had cracked his mind. The man had done everything he could to secure his revenge, which would only stop after Helkras was burned to cinders. He didn’t even care that his own country suffered for it.
Hafkil would have his own vengeance, but it would only kill one man, not tens of thousands of people because of a pointless war. The General fell asleep with thoughts of how he would kill Darenhar, and what he needed to do to get to that end.
*
The small sandstone room was dark and windowless, with a wooden table at its center, and a single chair. An older man past his middle years sat on the table, with a livid, scarred face lit only by the wavering candle at the center of the chair.
Darenhar stuck a finger in his ear. “Helkras will burn,” he stated to himself. “It’s people will cry for mercy, but they shall have none. The family of Mawing will go last, until it is just him, all alone, begging for it to end. But I’ll peel his flesh off and leave his bones to rot before I let him die!” His voice was full of restrained hate that seemed ready to burst free at any moment.
The King of Hargirm abruptly clutched at the right side of his face, which had begun to be overshadowed by a . . . darkness. “We will . . .” a guttural, hissing voice said from the half-formed mouth of the writhing shadows. The man toppled off of the table and crouched low to the ground, panting in a metallic voice. The darkness faded away slowly, his breath returning to normal afterwards.
He stood and shook himself, glancing about with a sneer. “What am I doing here?” he said aloud, as if suddenly becoming sane. The candle on the chair was quietly placed on the table, where it should have been in the first instant. He blew it out.
*
Hafkil woke to a ruckus. The whole camp was in an uproar, and he bolted out of his blankets, half-decimating his shelter just to get out of it. He still had his cuirass and boots on, so he only needed to plop on his crested helmet and strap on his short-sword. Afterwards was just a matter of discovering what was causing such unrest. He didn’t have to wait long to find out; the culprit was enormous.
A gigantic, vicious bear was tearing his way through the camp, roaring and growling at the hundreds of little arrows covering him like a porcupine. He was mottled umber in coating, and matted and scarred all over. He was taller than most of the surrounding trees, and they weren’t imps among plants.
The men and horses were in a panic to either get out of the way or to take the unnatural ursine down. In both cases, they were failing.
“Creator damn you!” Hafkil shouted out loud. What demon had summoned such a monstrosity? The bear had probably stumbled upon them in pure bad fortune, but Hafkil felt like perdition had just fallen in on his head. Again.
He wished for a mage on his side, but no such hope was fulfilled. Magic had been outlawed in Hargirm since the Gelsingean Uprising. Hargirm had suffered by the Gelsingeans in that war, and the country had hated anything to do with Magic ever since. Hafkil thought that most Hargirmians were just envious that they had little to no skill in the arcane field.
Whatever the true facts of Hargirmian jealousy and Gelsingean Magic really were, Hafkil just knew that he had no mages on his side, there was a giant bear pulling his camp to shreds, and he had to kill the thing.
The beast truly was a titan; he towered above the high conifers and toppled the trees at every step. His roar nearly caused seismic waves in the ground. His lumbering footfalls did.
Hafkil picked up a bow from a stack of crates and the quiver that had been laid next to it. He knew that he couldn’t kill the monstrosity—at least not in an single minute—so he needed time, and most of his camp preserved. He needed to lure the bear away, but how he was to manage that was almost beyond him. The damned thing had wakened him from a dead sleep; how was he supposed to think creatively when he hadn’t even relieved his bladder yet or cleared the fog from his mind?
“Attack it from the rear!” Hafkil yelled in the deafening racket. Almost no one heard him, but that was what he had expected, so he continued to relay the order again and once more. In real battles, it was difficult at best to get most of the army to hear a command because the chaos was so distracting. That didn’t mean it was impossible to mobilize an army in the midst of war. As a General, Hafkil had learned that a command trickles, then pours, and finally crests in a wave. He just needed a few men going in the direction he wanted, and eventually others would follow, until everyone that was still alive would be where he wanted them.
By the moment he was in the forest behind the raging bear, he had a good hundred men armed with strong bows and jagged arrows. They loaded a volley into the bear’s tail end, but he just went on to lumber to another edge of the camp to eat a couple of giant plow-horses. The poor beasts didn’t have a second to scream before they were pulverized and dead from the bear’s fangs, turning into nothing more than a shower of crimson.
Hafkil growled, and then laughed right after. He had just remembered something. Those arrows likely just stick in his fur without hurting him, but what about . . . ? The ex-general laughed again and bounded off towards the center of the camp, his men following close behind. The whole encampment was in an uproar, with shouting men, clattering steel, and even roaring flames grown from scattered cooking fires. Whinnying horses ran through the camp, wide-eyed, avoiding anyone who came near them.
Hafkil sprinted through the camp, skimming past death several times as random arrows fell from the sky and wild horses nearly trampled him. Several carts full of grain crashed into the ground in front of him, crushing five men and an equine. The bear was starting to topple and toss things around now.
With a sigh of unmatched relief, the General reached what he had been looking for, and found it intact. A huge mechanical crossbow, concealed under a canvas cover that was still tied down and untouched. He had his men help him uncover it, then they each went to work in one way or another, some guarding the weapon from wild horses or fires, others equipping the thing with a solid steel bolt, and the rest running off to gain the bear’s attention.
Once it was loaded and drawn, Hafkil aimed the thing roughly in the beast’s direction, waiting for it to approach before he released the arrow. He was confident that the crossbow could do the task; likely it could punch through a stone wall at close range. Looking down the sight through one eye, he gripped the handles of the machine and prepared to clench on the heavy trigger.
Through the metal sight, he observed as the bear whipped around suddenly to face some of his archers, then as the beast lumbered over to them, shaking the mountains for miles with each step. He came closer towards Hafkil; the General adjusted the crossbow as was necessary, keeping the center of the sight aimed between the bear’s eyes. The General knew that a bolt aimed towards the heart would do nothing; the ursine was too large for the crossbow to pierce that deep, but a shot that reached the beast’s mind might do the trick. All Hafkil had to do was shoot him through one of the eyes, which was why he aimed between them; he wanted both at hand, so he didn’t aim towards either one in particular.
The camp still raged about him, but the commotion was thinning gradually, and the bear was smashing less men and horses with each step than he had. But he still threw about as many tents, crates and wagons as before, making several land with thundering crashes around Hafkil. Just as a cart flew directly towards him, tumbling to the ground and rolling so near that it almost got in the way of his sights, he pulled the trigger.
With a snap and a whistle, the bolt launched into the air, turning into a blur which flew towards the bear and . . . pierced him in the shoulder. A damn fine shot, but the monster had turned at the last instant, ruining the effect. At least he was limping, now.
Shouting orders to his men, Hafkil helped them load another bolt onto the crossbow and crank the string back again. Hafkil aimed towards the bear’s eyes once more, but it was getting risky; the creature was enraged from pain, and his stomping was shaking everything around, including Hafkil’s aim.
Just turn your head a little . . .
The ursine was already looming above him, two steps away from crushing him under a shaggy paw, and the beast seemed to know it, too, the way he savored the last stretch between them.
Your mistake.
The General clenched down on the trigger, and the bolt struck like lightning, sinking into the bear’s left eye, disappearing upon contact. The beast convulsed, groaned in a long, dying sigh, then wobbled a bit before falling slowly to his flank. The ground shook from the seismic quake that he caused when he crushed fifty or more tents under his extreme bulk. He no longer breathed, and his whole body went lax. The whole region quickly began to reek of death; fire, blood and shit.
Hafkil sighed.
Cleaning up was nearly as much a mess as the creation of the catastrophe had been, Hafkil soon discovered. Never in his military career had he been attacked by a giant bear, and his military history went back nearly three decades. So did his knowledge about wildlife, and that told him that no bear he had ever seen was so large as the one burying part of his camp, smoking from stifled campfires. The ursine must have been an anomaly, hiding out in the deep wilds of the Territory where few ventured.
The Wolves had made their resting spot in another part of the woods, but the chaotic noises from the men’s encampment drew them to it. When he saw the dead ursine, Kcarc trotted up to Hafkil and asked what in Creation had happened. The General recounted the incidence as he inspected the ruins of half his camp, pausing to order his men about and organize them into groups. Perhaps by the end of the day everything could be put up and gathered properly so that they could move the next day. But, after the bear, Hafkil was less eager to move onward. Killing the beast had emptied the area of one more predator; moving into a new region might just land him in the clutches of another monster. Maybe it was time to consider moving back north, into Hargirm.
I could move the army to Baeron and take up a defensible position there. Baeron was a city south of Theargern, separated by the Aragen lake. It was a good, large city, if somewhat worse for the wear that Darenhar had bestowed on all of Hargirm. No. If I move back to Hargirm, it has to be to take Theargern, or Darenhar will burn me where I stand.
The insane King had certain . . . assets that could prove very deadly, unless he had lost them, which wasn’t impossible. Darenhar had starved and abused the region around Theargern, an act which would soon damage him and the army serving him. The rest of Hargirm wasn’t much better; with bandits and outlaws pouring in from better-tended countries, the other cities were stranded from each other and barely able to defend themselves. Contact had been lost, and Darenhar had removed the defending armies from the major cities, conscripting them to himself while he simultaneously killed off the lords and ladies who governed the cities. The roads and countrysides were dangerous, and the cities were still trying to build themselves up with the scraps they had been left. So far as Hafkil knew, most of the country wasn’t starving. If Hargirmians knew one thing, it was to farm, and in enormous quantities. With the armies gone and people killed off from raiding vandals, the cities probably had too much food. He didn’t think that Darenhar had stolen their food, because the King didn’t seem to leave the walls of his fortress for anything.
Hafkil shook his droning thoughts away and finished his explanation to Kcarc. Baeron is not a fit plan, he mused as they came to stand before the dead bear. Everything is made of wood there; all Darenhar would need is a pair of Emberstones to set it off. Darenhar was very good at burning cities down—he had done it before. One of them had been his own.
Kcarc sniffed at the bear absently, smell to a Wolf being like sight was to humans. “At least this bear can serve one purpose,” he stated. “My Kien can eat its fill on this creature, and you could have your soldiers cook the meat for themselves. It should provide days of food for you. Bloodhunter Blessed us as well as Cursed,” he added, naming the Wolf deity of the hunt, of battle and death.
The General nodded, dispatching the idea in the form of an order to a nearby soldier. The camp was still crawling like ants as the army picked up, but there would be a few unneeded men throughout the group who could get to work on butchering the bear. They would work on the southern side of the beast. He told Kcarc that the Wolves could have what they wanted of the north side, which sent the Timber Wolf trotting off to go retrieve his Kien from a nearby mountain slope.
Hafkil went to coordinating his army, seeing to it that his men fixed salvageable wagons, gathered and stored away shelters, corralled the horses, bandaged the injured, put out small fires, and took what supplies they could from the area. Wood could be chopped and stacked, the bear obviously provided food (which soon piled up into crates, skinned and cut into slabs) water from nearby streams was stored into barrels, and supplementary foods were harvested. Some mushrooms were poisonous, but Hargirmian Shields and Yellow Plates were unmistakable. Some wild grains were found, and odd tubers which had been discovered as edible since they had first entered the Unclaimed Territory.
Sooner than he expected, Hafkil found that the breaking camp was in good order. Kcarc found him again after sending the Alliance Kien to feast on the giant bear—it would take them a while just to get through the thick fur. That tiny Painted huntress followed after him, seemingly because she had nothing to do. Kcarc didn’t seem to mind her presence, and went on to take a place beside Hafkil.
The Timber gave him a wry grin. “Odd that your camp should be attacked by the animal whose name you share,”
The General nodded absently, more interested in studying the work his men were doing to put everything back together. He had gained a name among the populace of the continent; most knew him as The Bear. He didn’t understand why it had started in the first instance. Perhaps because he had always fought on the battlefield without allies? Or was it because he had yet to make a retreat in his career? Well, he had retreated from battles, but not from wars.
He didn’t really care about what people called him; he just wanted his family back, and Darenhar dead. He wasn’t sure if he would get either, and that bit at him.
That night was lit with the cook fires of the Hargirmians, and the smell of cooking bear pervaded through the cool breeze. It was not the best smell, nor the best taste, but they were used to worse, so it was a welcome change.
Holding counsel around a fire with his most trusted men, Hafkil put forth his plan to finally move north to enter Hargirm. Kcarc was there also, with the two highest of his Kien below himself, both pack Alphas.
The commanders and captains all seemed relieved to be leaving the Unclaimed Territory, wanting to be in their homeland again. He knew that the main dissension running through the army—aside from the Wolves—had been the delay at returning home, and while it hadn’t lost him the respect he had gained from his men, it had made them wonder at his plans. The news would make them happy in that moment, but they might soon be Cursing his name, if his planned attack on Darenhar went afoul.
The idea was to cut the head off the demon, essentially. It would have to be a very secretive attack, one that would see Darenhar and his top commanders dead before they knew what had happened, and their remaining assets killed or freed, depending on which would be best for the situation. The Wolves would work as a distraction, one that would make Darenhar curious, but unable to connect with Hafkil.
The men applauded his plan—it was a fair one, better than any of them could think up of. Kcarc agreed to work the part that Hafkil had put in front of him, eager to be done with Darenhar and started with the south.
Once the design was laid out, the leaders went to inform their contingents of the need to strike camp early in the morning, and Hafkil was left alone as Kcarc bid him a fair night. It wasn’t a very restful one, if that was what the Wolf had intended; the General was kept up all night refining his plan and thinking of his family. I will try to free you . . . perhaps The Creator will give me the strength to do it . . .
The morning of the twenty-first was bleary and drizzling, chill and windy. In short, not a day that a man would want to trudge through, but Hafkil was determined, the men anxious to get to Hargirm. They wanted to get away from the Unclaimed Territory, which had hounded them all over its expanse, attacking them at every step. Several Dragons had been spotted, if only in the distance, but at night, several soldiers had been plucked from the ground by wings in the dark. Whatever had done that had been too quick to be identified, so it was something other than a Dragon. And to add to that, they had discovered that just a pinecone could kill.
Yes, it was certainly time to get moving; they had overstayed their welcome, the giant bear being just a kick in the bottom to shoo them out the door.
There weren’t many horses to spare for the men as the equines were being used to haul the wagons and carts, so it was a matter of walking to get out of the Territory, as it had been to get in. Thirty or more miles a day was the minimum, but the tortuous paths of the mountains would make it half the distance. Still, they weren’t too deep into the Unclaimed Territory, so it wouldn’t take above fifteen days to get out. They took the only known road in the area through the mountains, the road which had led them into the Territory by winding lazily through the chains of peaks.
Kcarc sauntered beside Hafkil on the journey, his Wolves scattered throughout the host of men, usually in tight-knit packs. The umber-coated canine held his head high, pointed ears pricked up alertly, eyes looking around keenly, as was every Wolf’s habit.
He licked his black, velvety nose. “Did you see that?” he asked abruptly, breaking a silence full of bird noises and tapping rain.
“No. What did you see?”
The Alpha gave a sidelong look to an area in the thick, mountainous forest. “I thought I saw a . . . glimmer. It could have been anything, I suppose, in a place like this.”
Hafkil looked in the direction that Kcarc was, but saw nothing. Wolf vision was a little weaker than a human’s, but his own eyes were a little fuzzy from age, which very likely set them at Kcarc’s level. “I don’t see anything. Let’s just hope it isn’t another surprise.”
“Yes,” Kcarc agreed, slowly pulling his eyes away from the empty forest. “Let us hope.”
Thankfully, the rain didn’t slow them down that day; it would take more moisture than a dribble to muddy the road. The area was naturally dry like a tinderbox, prone to fire. Its rivers and streams only ran full because of the spring melt which still attacked the remaining banks of snow on the peaks. By nightfall, the ground was well soaked, but still solid enough to handle the passing of wagon wheels. The army camped just off the road to either side, setting up small fires with trouble in the fine drizzle. Bæl`diis, the Blood-Stone might have been visible if not for the cloud cover.
Hafkil was roasting a potato over a fire that was set up under a large Singing Oak, a tree which had yet to regrow its leafs for the year. It provided a little shelter, but the fire still hissed with raindrops, and his potato was cooking slowly. He strained his throat as he yawned. A good night’s rest seemed called for, and he was tempted to start his sleep that instant, if not for the fear of being kept awake by a gurgling stomach. Still, he thought that he would at least remove his cuirass to prepare for his bedroll, giving him the ability to fall into his blankets the second he finished eating. He was just unbuckling the first strap when the howls began. The Wolves had taken their shelter just south of Hafkil’s camp, maybe a hundred paces off, but their signal was easy enough to hear, as if the canines had been screaming in his ear. Kcarc’s entire Kien was in an uproar.
Hafkil’s men responded quickly, going for their weapons and raising an alarm to wake those who had all the consciousness of a stone when they were asleep. As it was, Hafkil had only half-drawn his short-sword when the enemy came pouring out of the woods. Roughly clad men jumped out of the trees from the south, yelling and hollering with blades bared. They were even scrappier than Hafkil’s force, with leather, iron and steel armor mingling on each man, and weapons of every variety.
A mud-spattered savage swung a spiked flail at Hafkil, the steel ball whistling through the air over his head. Despite decades of experience, the General’s mind still went blank, forgetting all abstract thought, working only to survive. He would regain cohesive thinking when his life wasn’t immediately in danger.
The short-sword screeched its way out of the sheath and flew across the flailing man’s throat. It still surprised Hafkil to see such crimson fluid spray out of a human throat.
His own men were suddenly at his flanks, spearing and slashing at hoards of the vandals, making blood fly in the air. Their own life-force spewed to mix with that of the enemy’s. Hafkil had always noticed that it was hard to discern enemy from friend in the midst of battle; despite physical differences, on either side, the screaming sounded the same.
Wolves leapt out of the forest behind the savage men, tearing them apart brutally with their fangs. One or two of the canines were felled by steel, but all of the dozens of men were soundly put down. The noises of battle could be heard roaring in the distance in several directions, but Hafkil’s vicinity was clear of bloodshed. His battle-frenzy faded, meaning that he could concentrate normally again, so he quickly set his men about to picking up wounded allies and preparing for another attack.
Kcarc was among the Wolves to have helped in the battle, the Alpha’s mouth stained with the blood of men. He looked to Hafkil after studying his fallen comrades. “They came at us from the south; there seems to be hundreds of them. These ones slipped past us, so I came to help before they could ambush you. It looks as if I was too late,” he added, looking at the dozen or so of Hafkil’s men who were dead, eyes staring blankly at nothing.
“It was unavoidable,” Hafkil said briefly, hefting his sword. “Let’s see that the camp is roused,”
The Wolves loped to either side of him as he jogged through the camp shouting for his men to arm themselves. Most were awake and fighting, it seemed, but that didn’t mean that things were going well.
A massive weight pounded into him, throwing him into a ditch. He lost the grip on his sword, almost panicking, but feeling relieved a second later when he realized that it was Kcarc who had toppled him. He might have killed the Alpha in a moment of fright. That raised the question of why the Wolf had jumped on him at all. It was answered a second later as hundreds of arrows whistled overhead, barely kept at bay by the wall of the ditch. Hafkil’s men further off weren’t so fortunate. Their shouts of agony didn’t last above a second before they were cut off. One of Kcarc’s companions who had been too slow to duck down into the trench fell over silently, flank feathered with arrows. Hafkil and Kcarc moved along together, crawling through the ditch until they found a thick copse of trees for cover. Once they were standing properly again, protected by the trunks of the trees from enemy sight, they found that the chaos of battle raged all around them in the form of screaming, howling and clashing of steel. The rain continued to fall, and it had started to pour harder, but somewhere to the west, Hafkil saw a glow spreading through the forest, the indication of a cook fire gone wild.
Hafkil had the mind to go out and check on the situation to get some answers—who was the enemy? How many were there? Could his men throw them off?—when a male Wolf jumped into the clearing, slashed over with wounds. The carnivore growled in a sort of laugh, then leapt towards Kcarc, jaws gaping for his flesh. The Alpha did not hesitate to grapple with his own kind. He proved the better fighter, despite getting caught unprepared. When the wild Wolf laid with his neck mauled, blood pooling in the rainwater, Kcarc spat and shook himself. His fur was getting matted with water, so Hafkil was sprayed with the excess liquid.
The General rubbed water from his eyes. “Why did he attack you?” he sort of demanded, shock starting to dig into him. “Isn’t he from your Kien?”
“No,” Kcarc answered, looking around cautiously. The battle’s noise had shifted, but much of it still sounded nearby. “He has a different smell. I think he was from our enemies. By the blazes of Haercesh, where did they all come from?”
Hafkil sighed. Enemies with Wolves on their side; who could that possibly be? Darenhar could never have gotten Wolves to side with him. Even a good king would have found it impossible, unless there were others like Kcarc out in the world. He drew the knife at his belt to replace his lost sword. “Let’s rally our forces—quickly,”
They leapt out of their place of safety, running across the muddy, leaf-littered ground, dodging between trees and slipping down slopes. It was rough mountain terrain without a doubt. Hafkil soon found himself with a voulge, taken from a dead man’s hands, while Kcarc gained several Wolves from his Kien, after risking his distinctive howl to gather them.
The camp was a large affair of tents, wagons, lines of horses, cook fires and barrels, spread throughout the forest and its elevations. It was all chaos, now.
Hafkil and Kcarc did their hardest to rally the army to them, but they found that there were more enemies than allies left, and their own small contingent dwindled rather than grew. The wildfire tore through the encampment, burning men and horses on either side. The crackling roar of the towering flames and the screams were deafening. At the southern end of the camp, Hafkil could faintly see a marching army moving north, towards him and Kcarc. A very large army, extending out of sight into the woods, though it was made up of savages. Surrounded by a catastrophe, it took a moment for them to realize that columns of enemy soldiers mixed with Wolves were advancing from the east and west as well. Only the north was left for escape.
There was nothing Hafkil could do against a force of such size. Nothing, except to flee. “SCATTER!” he bellowed, hoping his men would recognize his voice, if any could even hear him. “SCATTER!”
The soldiers with him listened to his command, running north and spreading the order without stopping. Many were taken down by the enemy, but most made it into the woods, where they had a successful escape, some of them on horses. That left him and Kcarc alone with only a few loyal soldiers who would rather go against Hafkil’s word than leave him. The Alpha had sent his Wolves off to gather the others and flee with them, but again, two remained behind with him, a Mountain hunter and the tiny Painted huntress. Hafkil thought that the latter was there because she adored Kcarc.
With that small company to assist them, they followed close after the others who had fled, though their own escape was fraught with disaster. Arrows rained all around while the marching armies broke into a sprint to overrun them.
A grisly Wolf jumped onto one of Hafkil’s men, but when he killed the beast (partly assisted by the rampant arrows from his enemies) his soldier was dead. The other hunter aside from Kcarc fell with a spear in his eye, hurled by a hulking man from a distance. They continued forward, but the armies had closed in, a scattered mesh of enemies that wasn’t quite a flood, but prevented them from taking more than two steps forward at a time. Soon it was just four companions, two canines and two humans who realized that it would be a battle to kill and die rather than to escape.
Fire and rain ate at the ruination around them, howling in rage, battling against the other.
Hafkil gained a slash on his forehead, just over his brow. The blood that streamed down his face felt no different from the rain, except for the warmth that it radiated. It blurred his vision, almost preventing him from seeing his soldier fall to an arrow. An arrow taken in Hafkil’s place.
The Painted had taken several arrows as well, but it was her own kind who killed her, pulling her into a storm of blades and teeth. She howled and looked to Kcarc in a panic, her eyes begging for his help. It made the Alpha pause, even in battle. Perhaps he had returned her affinity for him in kind.
Now The Bear and the Wolf were alone, back to back, the enemy truly a sea around them. How quickly things could change, even in one moment.
The men and Wolves boiled around the two, closing in, stepping on the dead to reach them. Firelight lit them all eerily.
Hafkil threw a knife into one man’s face, turned and split three more open with his voulge. He ducked under a pouncing Wolf, bringing his polearm up to draw its innards out. Kcarc howled as he took a vandal’s head in his jaws to fling the man about, knocking over men and warding off attacks from other Wolves. The man was a frayed rag once Kcarc was finished with him.
As one, the circle of enemies leapt forward. Lightning rent the sky in pieces, the first bolt to have struck. The thunder tore across the battlefield.
“STOP!”
It was hard to discern if it was the thunder or the demonic voice that made the entire army stop in its steps. Regardless, the men and Wolves halted, then as one pulled back a step from Hafkil and Kcarc, both of whom were bloodied well.
The speaker revealed himself as a bony Wolf with matted gray fur, standing atop a rocky outcrop, framed by a crown of flames. Howling with the most grating, thunderous voice ever heard from a mortal body of his size, the Wolf leapt down and pushed through his army, approaching Hafkil and Kcarc.
“Hold still!” he screamed at a soldier who dared to shift his feet. “I’ll tear your heart out and show it to you!” That was said with no indication of turning back on his word, but it seemed the punishment would have to wait for later; he continued to approach the two remaining warriors. When he came out of the ring of enemies surrounding them, entering the clear space with the two, he regarded both with a gleefully violent look, his yellow eyes glistering with unmatched wildness.
“Two who will not give up,” he mused in the Wolf tongue, looking to Kcarc. “What are your names?” he asked, expectant, almost excited.
“Kcarc,” the Alpha answered, curious but stoically reserved. “And Hafkil,” he added, since the General couldn’t answer for himself; he knew little of the Wolf language. “Yours?”
“Keelkzar,” the bony Wolf said, grinning slowly, his lips drawing back and up to reveal wet, reddened fangs. More thunder cracked in the sky. The army watched, shifting uneasily with their weapons at the ready. Keelkzar looked around casually, firelight flashing in his eyes. “It would be a shame to kill the false High Alpha’s brother in unfair odds. I would rather face you on even ground. This Hafkil looks worthy of a second chance as well.”
Kcarc bristled. “Akendel is the High Alpha,” he insisted, even if he sounded reluctant to proclaim it.
Keelkzar smiled further. “Not where I come from. The Black Wolf is High Alpha, and only The Overlord has power over him. Akendel is a mite before our power.” He looked to suck up Kcarc’s building rage, using it to fuel himself with volatile fire. “I’ll give you the chance to run north and prepare for The Invasion; I’ll be chasing you. Next time we meet, I expect you to give me a better battle.”
With that, the gray Wolf turned with a leap and pushed through his army, screaming at them to form clean lines and prepare to march. Hafkil and Kcarc were given a clear path to leave by, which they took before Keelkzar decided in an insane fit to change his mind about their worthiness. A Wolf like him couldn’t be trusted for anything except unpredictability.
With fire and ruination behind them, they fled at a run, Hafkil jumping up on Kcarc’s back when the hunter told him to do so. The Alpha could move them faster that way, and swiftness was needed at the moment to outstrip the enemy. Wind and rain ran past them as the trees blurred by to either side. Kcarc found the road, not slowing his pace for a moment, even as he relaid to Hafkil what Keelkzar had said. His words were clipped by heavy breathing as he dashed along the turns and slopes of the muddy road, firelight diminishing behind them, becoming a weak glow.
Hafkil clutched at his friend’s thick fur, hanging onto Kcarc’s back with his legs. His mind raced feverishly. “It sounds like he means to attack Hargirm,” he referred to Keelkzar. “It’s so weak right now that the cities would fall to him easily, with an army of that size. The countryside would turn to ashes. I have to warn the people!”
Kcarc glanced back at him briefly. “Are you sure that they haven’t just earned an attack like this? Let Darenhar deal with it. Perhaps Keelkzar will defeat him. Maybe they’ll do us a good deed and both kill each other.” Kcarc could be merciless at times, when things looked logical.
“No!” Hafkil protested, and then hung on desperately as the Wolf took a dizzying leap. “That would cost too many innocent lives, even if they are like cattle. I want to warn the cities that are in danger. Maybe I can get to Darenhar, and convince him that he is about to be under attack.”
“What?” Kcarc was shocked nearly into silence.
“I would get him to fend off Keelkzar, and then kill him. If I approach him alone, he isn’t likely to kill me immediately.”
“But he’s mad;” the Alpha panted, “he might do anything,”
Hafkil sighed forlornly. “I can’t defeat Keelkzar myself, and I can’t have the cities evacuate, even if they would believe me. They can’t fight for themselves. That leaves Darenhar as the only force who can do anything about it. I’ll turn it over some more, but I don’t see any other way around this.” Somehow he knew that Darenhar was the only way. Destiny always seemed to laugh at him, twisting his arm until he went in the last direction he wanted to go.
Kcarc noised his consent and carried on north. Like two bleeding, blind fools stumbling together in the dark, they fled into the night, chased by their own terrors.
Keelkzar followed Kcarc and Hafkil north for two days, though they were soon many miles ahead of him and out of sight. That mattered little; whether they thought he was following them or not was unimportant. He just hoped that they did, simply because he wanted them to be like sparrows before a fox. Their deaths would be his, but later. He had meant that he would chase them north when The Invasion began. They likely hadn’t understood his use of words—The Invasion wasn’t to start for a long while, so they had much time to prepare for his coming.
After the two days passed, he directed his army through the pass he had used to get in the north area of the Unclaimed Territory. The mountains were such inconvenient terrain; one had to twist through them to get past certain ranges of peaks. It had been necessary to go one way just to turn around and go the other direction two days later. They took the pass south.
Chapter X
Misfortune
11th of Mid Spring, 376, 5th Era – Waendel, Vaelandol
Screaming. All around him. Distant wails melded with nearby shrieks and the roaring, splintering of flames. Fires climbed up the walls of buildings, eating away at the dry wood like kindling. Smoke billowed into the sky in enormous, black plumes, its hazy covering gushing along the streets and filling the houses to bursting. The sun was a crimson blur, when it could be seen at all.
A huge, supporting timber for a warehouse fell outwards, towards the cobbled street with a sickening groan. With a shuddering quake, it landed in front of Mithourn, inches away from his feet. Heat from its charred, glowing surface blew up at him like a gale. He stepped back, but turned to see that the street behind him was blocked with a collapsed building. That one had been toppled by a catapult. Another earth-quivering crash resounded from across the city as another siege engine struck. More screaming. He jumped over the fallen beam before him in a confused panic. He had to get away; he had no other thought in his mind, other than that he wanted the screaming to stop.
A burnt man howled as he writhed on the ground, still flaming. Mithourn stood mesmerized for a second before running on in horror. He had nothing to kill the man with, nothing to end that suffering. It didn’t matter; he had to get out.
He tightened the water-soaked cloth around his mouth and nose, to keep from choking on the smoke and ash. His eyes felt like they were on fire, and they blurred over with tears. Everything reeled wildly around him as he scrambled over anything not alive with flames. Even with that precaution, his body felt baked; his sweat was roasted from him.
Through smoke-clogged streets and flame-cloaked alleyways he went, and the thundering of catapults followed him. The howling flames licked at his heels and the screaming of men, women and children stalked his Soul. He didn’t know which he was trying to escape more.
Abruptly, he skidded to a stop, his boots skidding on the ash that already coated the ground. He blinked back his tears of pain and saw a battle being waged in a large street flanked by flames that were the height of trees. The fighters were fools, and he cursed wordlessly as he bypassed the skirmish. Any battle there was useless if they didn’t escape the dying city. Those who didn’t burn would choke or be buried.
A woman tumbled out of the top story of a lodge, flames leaping from her clothing and her hair. She shrieked and then landed limply on the ground in front of Mithourn. She was dead, but the little boy who had been in her arms was saved from death because her body had taken the damage of the fall. He was unconscious, but unburned. Mithourn scooped the child into his arms without a thought and navigated the city. He approached the low wall that kept him and the city contained, seeing the barrier through glimpses in between the houses. More crashes resounded in the distance as catapults continued to hurl flaming hay bales and tar-coated boulders into the city. He would get out; the wall was just up ahead. A way opened itself to him, a straight, undisturbed street that led through a gate out of the stone wall. He sprinted towards the opening to freedom.
A boulder smashed into the arch of the gateway with a thunderous roar, collapsing the exit and sending rubble out in a momentary nebula. The rainfall was of stones, and one of them struck Mithourn in the temple. His consciousness fell into the void.
Mithourn woke up in his room in The Trader’s Inn and sat up in his bed, panting. He blinked back a dampness in his eyes, feeling sweaty all over. Another one of his nightmares, but one that had relived an exact moment in his life. Danefall. It had been a Hargirmian city north of Theargern, before it was burned down. Darenhar had set it aflame, he had destroyed his own city because the Helkrasic were occupying it. Mithourn had been a mere cadet at the time, in the beginnings of the war. He had been rescued from the burning city by some fellow soldiers. They had never told him of what had happened to the boy.
Coming out of his bed, he took a deep breath. He took one step towards the window nearby his bed and swiftly stubbed his toe with a loud cracking noise. After he swore at the bedpost, he washed his face and cleaned his nose (the spring pollen was well underway and stuffing his nasal system) and then dressed in the rest of his armor. He almost never took off his cuirass, especially since he had become a Kingsguard for Kelestil. One could never know when there might be an attack. He buckled on his sword and took his pike in hand before going out his door to find Kelestil. He knocked on the door to her own room, and she came out ready for the day. She expressed her desire to go out into the woody mountains surrounding Waendel, and Mithourn had no argument against taking her along one of the paths into the forests.
They were joined with two Kingsguards when they exited The Trader’s Inn. The day was hazy but bright, the sun still resting behind the eastern peaks. Birds flew high overhead, in the open air and around the sides of the bluffs.
An off-duty Kingsguard in casual wear came rushing up to them from out of the street. “I have a message for lady Kelestil,” the young man said urgently, holding out a thick piece of folded parchment for the girl.
She took it nervously and began to open the sealed paper. “Who gave it to you?”
“A Gelsingean woman came up to me while I was buying loaves from a bakery, and she handed me this letter, saying that The Trader wanted it to be delivered to you, my lady.”
Mithourn looked up at the sign hanging over the lodge they had just left; The Trader Inn. The High Captain remembered the man, known only as The Trader. He practically owned Waendel, even if he didn’t govern it, and no one disagreed on the point that he was the richest man on the continent, more wealthy than any King or Queen. As it happened, Mithourn had saved The Trader’s life once, when a Hargirmian raid attacked Waendel. It had been pure chance of course, but The Trader claimed to pay back all of his debts, and Mithourn hadn’t collected yet. Not that he intended to; he had no need for riches.
Kelestil refolded the parchment. “It’s an invitation. The Trader says that he feels I should be his guest instead of staying in his cheap lodge.” She explained this to Mithourn, and gave him an almost questioning look. She usually sought his approval before making a decision; she had never been in charge before in her life.
Mithourn thought that she should make her own decision that time. Either way was just fine to him. “It’s your choice. But if you refuse, you would need to send a return letter,” he added as a piece of advice.
Kelestil nodded. “Let’s go meet The Trader.” She took a step forward and then stopped to look up at Mithourn again. “Do you know the way there?” she asked, looking embarrassed.
He exhaled before answering that he did in fact know the way to take. He took the lead while Kelestil dismissed the Kingsguard who had delivered the message, sending him to inform the other soldiers of where she was going. She knew how to do that much, at least. The other two accompanied them through the town.
They went to the center of Waendel, passing by men and women leisurely going about their business, sometimes tugging a horse along, or leading a pack of goats with bells around their necks. A busy farrier shop rang with pounding metal somewhere in the distance.
The Trader’s abode was a large, sprawling mass using the architecture style of Waendel, but with far more ornamentation, such as two towers rising above the rest of the single-story mansion, surrounding gardens and fine stonework. The mansion had yet to be robbed because there was little to steal; The Trader was rich, but ultimately, no one knew what he dealt in or where he kept all of his assets. Whatever the case, he could produce riches when it was necessary and pay for extravagant products when he wished.
When they came to the wide, decadent double-doors that marked the entrance to the mansion, Mithourn took the steps up to the barrier and knocked firmly. Kelestil trailed after him closely.
The doors swung open, revealing a doorman, and then they fell shut with a clack. “Just a moment,” the doorman said from the other side. “I’ll go find him,” he explained, and then his voice faded deeper into the house, shouting out for The Trader, saying something about tax collectors.
Eventually, after moments of waiting, the doors came open again, and a middle aged fat man in fine silks gave them a scrutinizing look. “Now you listen here, I paid last month and if you try to wring me again–” He stopped wagging his chubby finger as realization dawned on his face. “Mithourn, old chum!” The Trader spread his arms wide in welcome, and then ushered them in hurriedly. “Come in, come in! My cooks thankfully have breakfast set out.” As he took them through the various rooms of the mansion, he added, “I apologize for my doorkeeper mistaking you as a tax collector. Those scum bother me almost constantly. Oh, but you aren’t interested in that, are you?” He stopped suddenly and took Kelestil in with his eyes, perplexed. “By The Creator, Mithourn, is this your daughter?”
Mithourn had to laugh; he guffawed openly before he answered, “You have it all wrong; this is Kelestil, the one you should be welcoming. I’m just her Kingsguard.”
The Trader’s jaw dropped as he understood his mistake. “I humbly beg for your forgiveness, lady Kelestil,” he said as he doubled over in a bow, a miracle if his belly was taken into account. “It was just that you are so tall for a girl, and well, I thought that there just might have been a resemblance between you two.”
“It’s all right,” Kelestil forgave, blinking at his explanation. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I thank you for saying that, your majesty,” he said, noticeably dramatizing the honorific he used for her. Kelestil bit her lip and gave Mithourn an amused look while The Trader gathered himself up from his bow. “Now that I know both of my good guests, why don’t we share breakfast together?” He led them into a large dining hall lit by ceiling windows, attended by several servants, and filled with enormous dishes still steaming with warmth. A quiet, young Gelsingean woman joined them at the table, moments after The Trader had shooed the servants away and taken a seat himself. She could be called pretty, but nothing more than that. She had wide, round and perceptive eyes with stunning golden irises, as all people of the Gelsic race had, and she was willowy and tall, with long, wavy blonde hair, and a plain dress in comparison to The Trader’s expensive apparel. She had a youthful face, so she could have been ten years younger than Mithourn. Or she could have been a thousand years older; it was hard to tell with Gelsingeans, especially if they were full-blooded. Pure Gelsingeans were immortal, unaffected by time, and even half-bloods could live for many thousands of years, only aging in the last few years of their lives.
“Ah, Sorrel my dear,” The Trader addressed the Gelsingean. She just smiled silently at him, like a daughter to her father. Mithourn had seen her when he was last in Waendel, and he knew that The Trader treated her like a daughter. She must have been adopted, because The Trader was no Gelsingean, and he seemed to have more interest in gold than in women.
While the Kingsguards remained standing in the corners of the room, Mithourn ate a little of the plainest food. Kelestil however invited herself to try as much of everything as she could. He suspected that the food was the reason why she accepted The Trader’s request to accommodate her. After they ate, The Trader had some of his servants go to his own lodge to carry Kelestil and Mithourn’s things to his mansion, where they were respectively placed in luxurious rooms.
Kelestil seemed ecstatic about her new chambers, but Mithourn didn’t really care. The lodge or The Trader’s own dwelling both had advantages and setbacks, so he was satisfied either way. Whatever bed he slept in, wherever he was, the nightmares always found him. Always.
*
Ten days after leaving Hrimrin, Leyfian and her two companions came to the base of the Western Mountains in the morning, when the sun stood behind them and made the great wall more fantastic with its golden rays. The peaks rose suddenly out of a gentle plain, rising to heights of fifteen-thousand feet or more. That was just the beginning, as the highest peaks were yet to be seen, and some of them supposedly rose over ten-thousand feet higher than what Leyfian could see.
The Western Mountains there near central Caldkere were forested to their tops, and only a few of the highest peaks still held any snow. The mountains were bluff and stony, with jagged turrets rising sheer out of the green slopes at odd angles. The forests were overgrown and wild, and extended far out into the plains as well, made up of broadleafs and only a few conifers. Clouds grew among the mid-point of the mountains and above, misty cumuli that gave mystery to the higher slopes and stone formations. Patterned birds sang shrilly in the morning light, while the grass was still dewy from condensation. All sorts of animals lived in the area, from elk and martens to insects in the undergrowth and fish in the streams.
Leyfian looked to the mountainous wall as they approached it from a few miles off. Her, Gelvir and Kanni were riding along an old dirt path that was frequently overstepped by the patchy forest. It was good enough to travel by, but it only went through a few villages. The last hamlet they had passed was two days behind them.
She rode ahead of her companions, hair tied back and her head half-concealed by a wide hat. She listened absently as Kanni chattered with Gelvir, telling him a story of six companions who all miraculously choked on their own spit and died at the same moment in the same place. It was a joke about chance and the probability of things, and Leyfian was fairly certain that something like that was absolutely impossible. Kanni always had funny tales to tell, most of them fictitious, but some of them also from her own experiences. The mage seemed to have a lot of strange things happen around her.
The morning was just a little chilly, but it made the whole morning more brisk and exciting. A new day was dawning, and Leyfian spent most of it admiring the steep mountains and their busy wildlife. She tried not to look back west, where Mount Caldkere could still be seen, if only hazily. She did look back, just to study Kanni and Gelvir, who seemed to be getting along more amiably than they used to. Oh, they had always been courteous to one another, and Kanni treated everyone like an old friend, but this was different, and Leyfian wanted to know what had changed. She always wanted to know things, but she was afraid that she would never learn all that she wanted to know.
Well, as long as I learn what I need to know, then I’ll make peace with being ignorant about the rest. That sent her onto a wholly different path in her mind, and she missed hearing Kanni’s story about a short man who got struck by lightning in the midst of a forest of giant redwoods. If I could just know one thing, I would choose to know what went wrong in the past to send the world on this path. Or would I rather know how to combat what is happening now? She sighed gratingly. I just wish that I didn’t have to worry about this. I wish I could just live my life how I want to. I would raise Kelestil without being bothered by the rest of the world, if I could.
Her father had taught her about Destiny and Doom when she was growing up, and he had never entirely given up on guiding her on the path he had chosen. The irony was that she agreed with him. Certain things had to be sacrificed for the world, and however much it hurt, two months away from her daughter was better than having the world suffer. Of course, that thought didn’t make it feel any better, and she held a quiet grudge against her father for it. Why couldn’t someone else do it in her place? He would have answered and said that she was the only one who could be trusted with such an immense responsibility. Sometimes it seemed that Mawing believed he had a prophetic sense, like the power Akendel, The White Wolf was renowned for.
Leyfian hadn’t realized that Kanni and Gelvir had been flanking her for some time, and she was surprised when the mage put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You look about to cry. Don’t get too upset; we’ll be home soon,” Kanni assured. Leyfian smiled back at her. Kanni really was a ray of light in the dark. If the mage started to despair, that was the day the world fell into the inferno, or worse. Well, that was a little overmuch, but the principal was the same.
“Yes,” Leyfian said, “we will be home soon.” Just saying that felt like a cool breath of air after having been stifled for a long while.
Gelvir was silent, but his mute sympathy spoke in words.
That whole morning they worked their way into the mountains, admiring the majestic beauty of the landscape and talking in spurts. Gelvir was mainly silent while the two women talked eagerly, but even he had a few things to say, usually in reply to a question about the wildlife. Leyfian had never noticed that he had such knowledge in the area of animals and plants; it surpassed her own skill in the field, and she had read just about every book that was ever written about fauna and flora. She was like a Book-Beetle, except that she didn’t actually eat the pages out of her books.
When they stopped for the night, halting by evening to set up small lean-to shelters, Leyfian pulled out her giant tome to flip through it. Kanni started the fire with an explosion from her hands, giving Gelvir a smug smile as he put his Emberstones back into his pack. He wrapped them carefully and separately, so they didn’t have the chance to collide in his pack and combust. He went to hobble and tie the horses around the camp, in four different areas so that they could create a warning if any intruders tried to enter the campsite.
Leyfian snuggled under her shelter to read, looking in particular for a certain passage in her atlas.
Jelril
An unidentified ruin in northeastern Caldkere, it is nestled within the forested peaks of the Western Mountains. Some owe its construction to the Tulmalin, but that is only one of many theories. It has Bihfyyan symbols carved into its walls, but none of these have been translated. The time it was built is uncertain, but judging from other similar structures around the continent, it seems to originate from 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, and some believe it to be far ancienter.
Leyfian knew that Bihfyyan symbols were an ancient form of writing, whose origins were still unknown. Such old writings might hold some answers.
Mawing had suggested that she explore the ruin on her return journey, to see what she could find. She thought that it would likely be a waste unless they could locate someone who could translate the symbols. Such translators were rare and difficult to find.
She sighed; things could be so difficult, especially if one knew only a fraction of the story. More like a smidge next to the mountainside.
As it got darker, she put her book away and climbed under her blankets. She found it difficult to sleep in the open, and Kanni’s eventual snoring didn’t help. Gelvir seemed to have trouble going unconscious as well, except his problem likely arose from wariness, because he had his back against a tree, his eyes studying the dark suspiciously. Eventually she did fall asleep, partly because Kanni stopped snoring suddenly, and also because of sheer exhaustion.
In the morning, they broke up camp and went onward to the north. Leyfian decided to let her companions in on her plans, just to have two extra pairs of eyes on the lookout. She still couldn’t believe that they had yet to question her, to pry out of her why she had left so unceremoniously. Maybe they had suspected that she would break of her own accord.
“We have to keep a lookout for a ruin,” she said, bursting the silence they had cultivated as they went along an old road to the north. Hopefully that old mountain path could lead them where they needed to go. “It should be laying on the side of the road, but it might be overgrown and hard to see.”
Gelvir of all people had a question. “May I ask why we are searching for a piece of rubble, my lady?”
“I need to . . . look for answers. My father said that this ruin should hold some of them.”
The soldier was satisfied with that, and Kanni didn’t have questions of her own, so they went on quietly, scanning the sides of the road. The mage said multiple times that she saw a ruin, just to take it back and laugh wildly, when Leyfian made a vexed look at finding nothing. Sometimes Kanni’s humor could get out of hand.
Several days passed like that, and each new morning, Leyfian felt a little more excited; she was so close to seeing Kelestil again, if all had gone right and her daughter was waiting in Waendel for her. She was surprised when that excitement and expectation suddenly vanished one morning, and she felt sick and hopeless. Only, it wasn’t a sickness of her body, but something deeper in her, as if her Soul was feeling ill. Even odder, Kanni said that she had the same sensation, but on a higher level, and even Gelvir felt wrong. They continued forward, regardless of the feeling.
They hardly noticed that as they went along the road, the world around them became grayer and deader.
*
Kelestil woke up with a sick feeling in her gut. Not something physical that would end with her last meal on the floor; it was something that gnawed at her and made her anxious. She couldn’t figure what it was, except that there was something wrong in the air.
She looked around her room in The Trader’s house, taking in its expensive décor. It was offensively luxuriant, but she could appreciate the bright colors and geometric shapes. Nothing wrong there. She went out of her room and down the halls of The Trader’s mansion, looking around, ignoring the few servants and trying to find what was causing her discomfort. In her little search, she came across Sorrel in one of the open courtyards that was bursting with plants. The young woman was sitting quietly on a stone bench in the corner of the area, with a book in hand. She wore a plain green dress with long skirts that almost reached the ground, and a belt that was strapped around her slender waist.
“Hello,” Kelestil greeted her, and Sorrel lowered the book to reveal her golden eyes.
Putting the book on her lap, the Gelsingean smiled pleasantly. “Good morning, lady Kelestil,” she said in return, with a soft, calming voice that resonated pleasantly.
“Just Kelestil, please,”
“Of course,” Sorrel assented, moving aside so that the girl could take a seat on the bench.
Kelestil dived right into it. “Do you know how to make Magic?” she asked. “I’ve heard that Gelsingeans are powerful mages.”
Another smile, but that one a little disappointed. “I can use Magic, but it is very weak. I’m afraid that I have only a little skill. I can try something, if you like.”
Kelestil nodded eagerly. Her mother had some Magic ability, but Leyfian had only been able to reliably make little colored lights. The Keep’s mages were too serious to make any demonstrations, except for Kanni, who had sometimes played with Kinetic Magic to entertain Kelestil.
The garden in the courtyard was just beginning to bloom, so it was green, but much of the winter’s decayed material still remained, so Sorrel took a dead twig off the ground and held it in both of her hands. Her wide eyes took it in as she held it close to her face, and her brow furrowed with concentration. Nothing happened. She closed her eyes and squeezed the twig between her fingers. Kelestil was locked onto the young woman, unmoving on her seat. Several moments passed, and she watched with a little less interest.
Sorrel sighed, dropping the twig. “I guess that I–” She cut off with a strangled yelp. The instant she had dropped the stick and sighed in defeat, the whole garden had exploded with growth. Kelestil was enraptured with the sight as flowers bloomed in mere seconds and shrubs unfolded new leafs. A sapling grew two inches and spread out several new branches before stopping its sudden growth.
Sorrel blinked in disbelief. “The Magic liked what I was doing, I guess.” She leaned down to pick up the original twig, which had greened significantly after falling from her grasp. A little bud opened at its tip and brought forth a small red flower. She offered it to Kelestil, and the girl accepted it excitedly.
“That was amazing!” Kelestil exclaimed. “What else can you do?”
“Just little things here and there, if I concentrate. Even by normal human standards, I’m weak in Magic. By Gelsingean expectations, I’m not even worth mentioning.” She sounded angry at that, like the whole Gelsic race had rejected her in some way.
“Could you teach me to use Magic? I always asked my maea if she would teach me, but she always said that it was too dangerous and that I wasn’t old enough yet.”
“I . . . I don’t think that I could teach you very well. I would be a terrible Ascendant because I hardly know what I’m doing myself. I could tell you what it feels like to use Magic, though. Would you like me to tell you?” When the dark-haired girl nodded vigorously, Sorrel went on in a very studious manner, with her hands on her lap except when she made a gesture to demonstrate her meaning. “To have Magic is like having . . . another arm or a new level to your being, something as unique and essential as your mind or your body. But it doesn’t feel anything like them. It’s more—it’s more ethereal, like grasping light or holding water in your hands without it slipping through your fingers. Except when you fail, like me, then it’s always slipping through. Am I making sense?” Yet another enthusiastic nod. “Well, when I use it—successfully—it feels like all of the blood in my body is flowing towards what I want, but it is a deeper, more powerful essence that is actually coursing through my being. If I can hold it long enough to use it, then it all rushes out of me and does what I want. If I fail, then it all evaporates.”
Kelestil suddenly felt a new surge of illness come over her, that same, odd sensation that she had woken up with. Sorrel closed her eyes for a moment, seeming to push down a horrid feeling. “Did you feel that?” the Gelsingean asked. When Kelestil answered positively, Sorrel stood up. “Let’s go see if anyone else felt it.” When they asked the inhabitants of the mansion, they found that no one else had experienced what they were feeling in the air. They asked Mithourn last (it seemed that he had just awakened) and he just answered: “I always have a bad feeling; what are you talking about? This isn’t new, it’s always been there.”
Kelestil and Sorrel both agreed that he was just grumpy and tired. Whatever the truth, they decided to stop their search and settle down for breakfast. Afterwards, they were still feeling badly, so Kelestil suggested that they go outdoors and breathe the mountain air. Mithourn of course had to accompany them out into the city, but he could be convinced to leave the other Kingsguards at the mansion.
They passed through Waendel, which was maintaining its usual hum of trade and agriculture. Once they were on the outskirts, Sorrel took the lead, saying that she knew a beautiful trail that led up a nearby mountain.
Following a dirt path that consequentially followed a bubbly creek, they went slowly up one of the sheer mountains, climbing in amongst a forest with its lively birds and skittish rodents. Sorrel managed well on the rough terrain despite her long skirts, hopping from stone to log and back onto the ground in graceful leaps. The landscape suited her, and she reveled in it, while Mithourn just took the place as a bland matter of course. Kelestil was awed by the mountains, even after days of being surrounded by them, but her excitement was dulled by the deathly feeling inside of her. She wondered if her mother was safe, and if Leyfian would be in Waendel soon.
They eventually came to a fair height, where the town could be seen before them, and mountain peaks spreading in all directions around it. It felt very lonely at that height, and Kelestil could see that Waendel was only a pocket of civilization encroached upon by complete, untamed wilderness. The horrible feeling inside of her gained in strength, and she noticed that Sorrel stiffened abruptly.
“Let’s go back,” Kelestil said, tugging at Mithourn who was staring down at Waendel.
“Why? What’s wrong?” he asked, suddenly reluctant to leave.
“That bad feeling got worse, that’s why.”
He seemed skeptical, but when a guttural growl echoed out of the forest behind them, he nodded and cautiously led them back to the town. Sorrel seemed ready to be sick the whole while.
After that day, the feeling remained, and Kelestil found herself thinking about her mother more and more, and with increasing worry. She knew that Leyfian might be late by a week or more, and her mother wasn’t late yet, but still, she couldn’t shake off the feeling that something might happen to Leyfian along the road. That suspicion never left her over the days; it only increased, and with it came nightmares that tortured her in the dark hours, dreams of her mother covered in blood and dying from terrible wounds. She would wake up crying and search out Sorrel to be comforted. Mithourn was too gruff to be any great solace, even if he tried.
Even with that as the truth, she still sought him out on the nineteenth, after another of her nightmares which woke her in the morning. Inspiration had taken her, and she approached him were her eyes still reddened from sobbing. Mithourn put a hand on her shoulder and gave her a little squeeze.
“Find my maea,” she said simply. “Follow the road going through the Western Mountains and find her.”
“Is that . . . wise, Kelestil?” Mithourn countered carefully. He thought it a very sudden change of events, and he didn’t quite trust her to be alone without him. She needed protection from herself as much as from everyone else, and he didn’t know if any of the other Kingsguards could handle her properly.
“She’s in trouble!” Kelestil burst out, stomping her foot angrily. “I command you to go save her. Go along the road in the Western Mountains until you find her. And then bring maea back.” Two months without seeing her mother had been painful enough, almost unbearable from the loneliness, but if she found out that she would never see Leyfian again, Kelestil would be broken. Just thinking of that too vividly brought up more tears. “Please . . .” she begged, looking to the ground, sight blurred.
To her surprise, Mithourn took his hand away so he could give her a full bow. “As you command, Kelestil,” he assented, and then marched off quickly. It took him only an hour to gather supplies and saddle up two horses. King Mawing had already told him the road that Leyfian would take to meet them in Waendel, so he needed little information to start in the right direction. He said farewell to Kelestil before he left, saying something to Sorrel in a low voice, and he gave a few words to The Trader who had come to see him off. Then his horses were off in a gallop down the road out of Waendel, and he was gone.
Kelestil prayed to The Creator that he would come back soon, and with her maea in tow, with that familiar warm smile directed at her. Sorrel directed her back into the mansion, murmuring softly about getting her something to eat, and helping her get her mind off of any worry. She followed her friend, but she didn’t stop worrying.
*
On the evening of the twenty-third, the forest in the Western Mountains was quiet. Deadly silent. Hardly a breeze stirred, and the sun cast a bloody light on the landscape. Bæl`diis and Orøs were sinking with the sun in the west, and Dus`ridyian was beginning to show on the eastern horizon.
Leyfian felt tired, weighed down by something oppressive and dark. Kanni had been slumped in her saddle, moaning to herself all day, and Leyfian didn’t feel much better. Gelvir tried to put a comforting hand on the mage’s shoulder, but she just jumped in her seat and looked around wildly. It didn’t seem as if she were searching for what had touched her, but for something in the woods.
“It’s Black Magic,” she muttered. “Evil, evil sorcery—the worst I’ve ever felt. It’s either that or something none of us have ever heard of. Maybe . . . maybe it’s even Dark Magic.” She spoke more to herself than Leyfian or Gelvir.
The soldier held a worried look for her. Maybe he thought that she had lost her mind somewhere along the road. “Is there a difference between the two?” he asked.
“Yes,” Kanni answered forlornly. “Black Magic is just sorcery, anything evil at all. But Dark Magic is a whole other force, an opposite to normal Magic, the force that most mages pull from.” She fell into a dark silence. But then, she suddenly brightened, as only she could do. “Oh look, there’s the ruin.”
That time, Kanni was not joking, and a decrepit dome of stone could be seen on the ascending side of the road, surrounded by the forest. It wasn’t very large or impressive, and Leyfian thought that it was ready to collapse, but they stopped by nonetheless, tying their horses’ reins to some pines while scouting the area. Gelvir thought to make a camp there, if it seemed safe enough to sleep under. But first, they had to find the entrance. The roof had slits in its top to allow sunlight in, but the actual threshold into it was difficult to find. Eventually, Gelvir found a draping curtain of vines, moss and saplings, and he cut them down with his broadsword, partly revealing a large archway.
A cold breath of air came out, and Kanni cut off a scream. “Creator help us! It’s in there!” And then she was gone, dashing off in the opposite direction of the ruin. Her terror was real, because she bypassed the horses and went on foot down the forested slope of the mountain. Gelvir cursed, gave Leyfian an indecisive look, and then ran off after the mage. Leyfian was speechless. What had gotten into their heads? Kanni had never looked so frightened in all the years that Leyfian had known her, and Gelvir had sworn to protect the daughter of the King above all others. And there he went, abandoning her without a word.
What should I do? She felt like running after them, but she knew that her help would be practically useless. She would die from a heart attack before catching up with them. They would come to their senses again, and by then, she would have already extracted everything she needed from the ruin of Jelril. Then they could be off.
With her whole body shaking slightly from anticipation, and fear for her friends, she went to her horse, got every spare piece of parchment she had and also a large piece of charcoal. She went into the dome, ducking under the overgrowth and coming into a dusty passage. The walls were plain, so she continued into the large, inverted bowl of the main chamber. There was a dark passage in the back which made her shiver because her imagination could make it into something worse than it was. The stone walls were coated in thousands of Bihfyyan symbols. The characters were extremely complicated and difficult to read, much less rewrite, which was why Leyfian had decided to take rubbings.
She made an ethereal Light with Elemental Magic, because the evening light was far too weak to make any reliable illumination inside of the ruin.
Leyfian sighed. What was her father thinking? The ruin needed a team of explorers to take down all of the writings. The best she could do was record as many of the symbols as she could. She just had to decide which ones were the most important.
As she ciphered which parts of the carvings to copy, she constantly worried over Kanni and Gelvir, while simultaneously fighting off the unnatural sickness inside of her. She decided firmly that they would get as far away as possible from Jelril before nightfall. There was something definitely wrong about it, and its evil would only increase by the night.
Still, there was not a sound from the outside, when there should have been war drums pounding out the rhythm of fear in the air. Her heart was pounding well enough on its own, and it started to throb painfully. Calm down; why am I getting frightened over a feeling in the air and an old ruin? I should be afraid of a heart failure more than anything. But she wasn’t, and she couldn’t stop her breaths from becoming more labored and in quick pants. I should have gone after Gelvir and Kanni, she thought regretfully as she sat—collapsed—on a fallen stone. She clenched her eyes shut and held a hand over her heart, waiting for it to slow down. It still persisted to overrun itself. When she opened her eyes again, she noticed something on the wall that she hadn’t upon first entering the ruin. There were Ferirgrisi runes cut into the stones at wide intervals, on top of the original Bihffyan symbols. Leyfian knew how to read a little of Ferirgrisi, at least.
I have been waiting for so long . . . I have been waiting for so long . . .
An unrecognizable noise echoed out of the dark passage at the back of the chamber, and Leyfian bolted to her feet and faced the gaping hole. Her Magical light winked out, and all Magic strength in her was drained. Her eyes adjusted to see by the dying light of the dusk, but what she saw was terrifying to her very Soul. The moss hanging from the ceiling turned to dust and fell to the ground in gray, ashen piles. The light itself seemed dead and colorless. Darkness writhed from every surface with searching tendrils.
Everything fell still. The wavering sun rays, the very dust in the air stopped its motion. Without moving, the darkness encompassed everything. Leyfian’s heart halted, and her verdant eyes emptied. In a timeless landscape, she fell over like a frozen statue, feeling nothing as her body pounded into the ground without a noise. Her eyes gazed at the floor blankly, remaining empty of life.
She and everything had become . . . nothing.
Chapter XI
Perfect Innocence
6th of Mid Spring, 376, 5th Era – Western Hargirm
The infant girl was swaddled in a hammock across her mother’s chest, a perfectly comfortable place. She could not move her head nor her legs because her muscles had not yet developed strongly enough for that, but she could move her arms and hands. Instead of playing with her mother’s dark hair, or the woman’s fingers as they brushed at her hair and cheeks, the baby tried to catch the light. The bright, aureate sunlight. She couldn’t understand why she could not grasp and manipulate the golden rays. The stuff was in her hands, and she still couldn’t take hold of it. Reaching out, she clenched her stubby fingers, only feeling her palms and the ethereal warmth of light. It would take some time before she learned that the light could not be held—only cherished, and stepped into.
The hills and plains seemed endless. It drizzled, and then it became dry and warm. The days were blindingly bright, the nights cold and dim. The land was empty of civilization, except for huge crops in the far distance which were spotted and swiftly avoided. They crossed a river and then a road going north, to enter a hilly area with hazy knobs in the north dictating mountains. Each day was a hike of fifty miles or more across rugged terrain. Yet, despite all of that discomfort, Faeyl was happy. She missed her family, but her adventurous spirit had arisen along with her maternal instinct. Her baby daughter came first, but when all was taken care of, she would enjoy the journey, and indulge in exploration, whenever it presented itself.
Call me an idiot, she thought, but I’m beginning to trust these Wolverines—well, some of them. I don’t like how some of them look at me as if I’m their next meal, but Fælwiix and Bæri`rr and Ta`vik all seem to look out for me and my baby . . . and for no reason other than to protect us. She wondered why, as the days flew past, and she grew accustomed to living in the wild. Fælwiix imprisoned me . . . but he doesn’t treat me like a prisoner.
Fælwiix and his commanders would take shifts in carrying her, and they had begun to teach her the harsh Wolverine language. She couldn’t mimic their brutal, inhuman tongue, but she could start to understand what they said when they spoke in their native language. Fælwiix first taught her what certain words of command meant, such as run and hide, or others like get behind me, and be quiet. It was all to help her understand what other Wolverines might say to her when Fælwiix or Ta`vik weren’t around to forewarn her in the Caldkarien tongue. Faeyl just hoped that the need never arose for her to be without them—while she was traveling with the army, at least.
It was a bright morning on the sixth when they set out, Dus`ridyian hanging enormously in the sky with its verdant continents and azure seas. The Blood-Stone also hovered lazily in the clear heavens, but Orøs was too far to the north to be seen. The hillocks were dewy from condensed moisture plucked from the air over the night, and they were chilly in the morning, even if the sun vowed warmth to come.
Under Fælwiix’s command, the army went to moving the instant the sun cast enough light to see by, but he stopped quickly when he heard warning calls from the scouts who had gone several miles ahead. It wasn’t a distress call, but a sort of hoot that advised a halt until the scout could return with a report. So they halted, and Faeyl tried to keep on her feet while the Commander went off to speak with Ursik and another about sentry formations. She observed her baby with an exhausted smile—an unstoppable grin of happiness—and barely noticed the hulking umber form that loomed up beside her. Her daughter squealed excitedly as Bæri`rr looked closely at her. His furry, whiskered muzzle still made Faeyl nervous when it was so near her baby, but she had grown accustomed to the Wolverines and their ways, which meant she could sense that he was among the best of them. He had nothing but good will towards her and her baby. His eyes always had a bright, warm sheen to them, like melted gold. His voice had a kindness to it, even if his words were the equivalent of inane noises to Faeyl’s ears.
“Bkaki,” he said quietly, and then walked off with his paws making noises in the Axehead Grass, on his way to go check on his resting inferiors.
Well, until recently, it had all been inane sounds; now Faeyl knew that bkaki meant perfect in Wolverine. She beamed with pride, and then looked at her beautiful baby by the light of the early morning sun. Plump from the milk that came from Faeyl’s own breasts, the infant never went hungry, and Faeyl made sure to eat enough herself, so that it would remain that way. A tuft of dark brown hair had continued to grow from the baby’s head ever since her birth. Her watery eyes were a mixed hazel blue for the time, though that might change as she grew. Faeyl hoped not; her baby’s eyes were so pretty to look at, like beautifully fractured sapphires.
“Is she all right?” Fælwiix came up to her side, trying to ask the question with indifference. He had sent Ursik off shouting orders like a feral dog; the fourth-in-command liked to yell, it seemed.
“She is bkaki,” Faeyl replied, testing her knowledge on the Wolverine tongue.
Something like a smile touched Fælwiix’s mouth, if Wolverines could even be said to smile. “You butchered it,” he referred to her pronunciation, and then went on, “But that’s good; the journey isn’t hurting her.”
He looked at Faeyl as she hid a smile and turned to fumble around with her bag. Something twinged inside of him when he realized that she would have to stay with him for a while longer. He would have to protect her well to make sure she didn’t die before he could get her home. That whiff of blood in the air had been a passing sensation, but he had taken it as a sign to keep her close, and to double his precautions when he moved.
“Have you decided on a name for her yet?” he asked the young woman, well aware of her predicament. He didn’t think that Faeyl would keep the name the Wolverines had given her baby, not after the trouble they—that he—had caused her.
“No,” she answered and turned back to him, her secretive grin fading from her lips. “How do Wolverines choose a name?” she asked.
“Like you humans,” Fælwiix answered quietly, “we give our kits whatever name we think is right.” He explained it almost as if from personal experience. Sadness resounded in his voice, a heavy reverberation that clashed with his usual fiery temper.
I wonder if he has any offspring of his own, Faeyl wondered, and was about to ask him, when he walked away. Picking up her bag, she followed him, holding her daughter in the crook of her arm. The invalid played with her hair while Faeyl listened carefully to what Fælwiix and his warriors said. The Wolverine Commander had approached two of his scouts as they returned from their patrol, and they all conversed in their own tongue, speaking urgently as the wind brushed past. Their ears twitched as flies tried to land on them.
Faeyl understood little of what was said, but she did pick out two words, north, and slaughter. Fælwiix stood still for a moment after sending the two scouts away, tapping a paw on the roots of the grass.
Faeyl went up to him tentatively. “What did they find?” she inquired, hoping she had misheard the two words that she had deciphered.
“Fifty or so people from a village, all dead. It appears to have been a raid by savages. It explains that smell of blood from earlier,” he muttered as an afterthought.
“We should go and see if any of them are alive!” Faeyl exclaimed in horror, her eyes widening. “Someone might need help!”
Fælwiix shook his head. “That would risk our position. The bandits could still be near.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Faeyl insisted, “Not if I can help them . . . Please. You can take care of a few outlaws, can’t you?”
As Fælwiix pondered for a moment, Ta`vik came up from behind Faeyl and stood beside her. “I’ll take her there,” the third-in-command offered. “And if there are any survivors, she can question them on the details of the attack.”
Fælwiix was silent for a moment longer before nodding decisively in agreement. “Make it quick. And Ta`vik, only watch her from outside of the village,” the antheran said. “If anyone is still alive, they can’t see you. Faeyl,” At that, he turned to her, “you have to find out what happened, and most importantly, learn where the bandits went so we can avoid them. Don’t mention a word of us to any survivors; they could spread our whereabouts if you flap your tongue too much.” He still had his usual bite when he talked to her, though he had dulled it over the days.
My own miniature mission . . . Faeyl smiled for the odd humor of it, but then remembered what was at hand. She might be endangering her own baby, and one Wolverine to watch over her from outside the village wasn’t any comfort. She hesitated, but her kindness soon won over, so she followed Ta`vik north, walking through fields of pastureland, passing by aimless cows and sheep. Several were butchered and dead; just that was enough to turn her innards over, make her heart pound nervously. She held onto the right to turn back at any moment if she wished, though she kept from flaunting it just yet. Leaving alternatives in any circumstance had always been a habit of hers, and she was quite used to scrapping one plan for another in a small moment of passion. Only, that time wouldn’t be for a frivolous interest, but possibly for her very life. And more importantly, her baby’s.
They came to a knoll that overlooked the village, where Ta`vik halted, scanning the nearby horizons for movement, but finding nothing. He then stood on his hind legs like a bear and inhaled the wind, siphoning through multiple smells meticulously before he took his nose out of the air and looked to Faeyl. “It is clear, you can go,” he affirmed, gaining a nervous nod from her.
As Faeyl approached the village with cautious, shaky steps, a putrid smell ravaged her nose, making her scrunch it involuntarily; she knew that it harbored death. She veiled her child with a cloth, to block some of the stench, and to prevent her daughter from seeing what was inside the village. Babies shouldn’t be made to see evil things, even if they wouldn’t remember it later in life. Her aunt Kaylin had said that forgotten memories could poison a person’s mind without them knowing it, and those occurrences could happen when the individual was an infant.
Faeyl herself looked away from the sickening sights; she had never seen death like that before. The violence and bloodiness made her stomach heave. She recalled the husks of the Tulmalin where they had laid in The Forge, but that had been otherworldly, unreal. This . . . this was a nightmare.
The worst lay at the center of the village, around the main well. She staggered and then tripped to her knees from horror, looking at the bare soil, but a ghost of what she had just seen lingered in her sight, torturing her eyes, her mind. Her Soul.
“This is . . . horrible.” How can humans do this to each other? Faeyl’s spirit faltered. Her heart guttered and her fingers trembled as she stood up faintly, slowly backing away. She was going to leave, abandon the place of perdition. It had been a mistake from the start; what was she doing, wandering into a raided village? She should have just . . .
“Valle . . . gelu.”
The voice that called out was faint, in pain. She stopped, torn between fleeing, or helping whoever was in need, just the reason she had gone there at all. Overcoming her own fear and horror, she walked shakily to where the voice had sounded, praying to The Mountain that the poor Soul wasn’t just tortured rags. She went around the edge of a scrappy house, and saw the source of the voice.
Sitting against the side of a mud shed was a boy, just a few years younger than Faeyl. He was beaten and bruised, and both his legs were broken at the knees. Dried tears had made trails down his dirty face, but his eyes were blank of them now, staring jadedly at the carnage around the well.
Faeyl knelt down next to him, and offered him some of her own water. He turned away from it and stuttered something in Hargirmian.
“Do you have any other wounds?” Faeyl said slowly, but the boy didn’t understand anything of what she said. Not knowing the Hargirmian tongue meant that she would have to try sign-language. But as she attempted that, a look of fear and awe swept across the boy’s face, and he lifted an arm to point behind Faeyl.
“Gulvedi!” he shouted out loud.
Faeyl looked around herself. “Bæri`rr!” she exclaimed, the antheran looming just behind her. More Wolverines, including Fælwiix and Ta`vik, were scouting around the area, sniffing the place to its foundations. Some looked grimly at the wasteful slaughter, and were reminded of their own wars. It was an old enemy, death was. Not the affliction itself, but the way it was brought about.
“What are you doing here?” Faeyl asked, for the moment forgetting the panicking boy.
Fælwiix looked at the one survivor and saw the boy’s condition, looking hard of face, but solemn in his eyes. “We came after you, and once Ta`vik poked around the other side of the village, he signaled that it was empty,” the Wolverine Commander explained. He came close to the survivor. “So this is the only one to live?” he asked no one in particular. The boy stiffened in fear, while his eyes reflected his wild terror. Fælwiix snorted angrily. “They let him live to torture him,” he concluded and backed away, looking off to the well. The nightmare hardly seemed to affect him, but then, he had seen his own brothers and father get spilled and torn to the ground, right as it happened before his eyes.
“We have to help him,” Faeyl said, as she saw the boy calm down. He had likely determined that he wouldn’t be eaten in that moment.
Fælwiix looked at the invalid’s shattered knees. “No,” he stated, “he would only slow us down. You can run and take care of yourself, if it comes to it, but he can not. I’m not about to adopt every urchin I see.”
Faeyl’s heart stung. “But you can’t just let him die here!”
“Yes, I can.”
“Well I won’t leave him alone to stare at that-that thing”—Faeyl pointed to the horror around the well—“ until he dies of starvation.”
Fælwiix remained stoic. “You can either move him somewhere else nearby, or I can end him now,” he said quietly to her. “Since he can’t understand what choices I’m giving him, the decision remains for you to choose.”
Faeyl looked back to the sole survivor. He was in pain, mortally disabled, but he could easily live if he were just given the right care. “I could help him, and get him to another town,” Faeyl said.
Fælwiix laughed a grim, dry laugh. “Another town?” he said, “Look around you; this village is destitute, and obviously sustained itself. No roads lead here—it’s in the middle of nowhere. You don’t even know where you are on the map, so trying to find civilization out here would be a strike in the dark.” Fælwiix had successfully taken all hope away from Faeyl, though his aim was to keep her from doing something rash. “And anyways, all of the horses were butchered or stolen. And he won’t be walking on those legs again.”
“Just shut up!” Faeyl burst out, trying to think. She closed her eyes for concentration, but sounds persisted around her, distracting her. It always seemed that when one was in a state of need, they never had the mind to think properly, or the surroundings to warrant improvisation. The shuffle of Wolverine’s paws echoed in her ears, her baby’s restless cries grated the air, the jingling bell and frightened bray of a mule welled up to her side.
She opened her eyes and looked for the mule. A Wolverine was stalking him playfully, but the weasel’s intent was to kill, with his form held low like a cat’s, his fangs bared and glistening. The mule trotted away, having stumbled unwittingly into the village, and wanting nothing more than to get out again.
Faeyl stood quickly to run after the animal. “Stop! Don’t kill it!” she shouted to the hunting antheran, just as he readied to attack. He didn’t understand, readying to strike anyways, when Fælwiix yelled a command to him. The Wolverine looked sulkily at his Commander with a restrained growl, then stalked away.
Faeyl caught the mule by the collar and calmed him down, rubbing his nose while making soothing noises. She coaxed him into the mud hut that the boy laid against, then shut the ratty door so he wouldn’t escape. Before Fælwiix could question her motives, she ran to the largest hut, gathering anything of use. She stuffed it into a potato sack and tied it up. A canteen was to be found, but it was empty, making her look instinctively across to the well.
No. I’ll never go near there, she thought, averting her eyes, and instead filled the canteen with all of her own water. She could easily refill it at a creek, while the boy could not.
Once that was all done, she strapped the supplies to the mule, then brought him outside. She signaled for the Wolverines to back away.
“A mule can not keep pace with us,” Fælwiix said to erase any idea she might have had. “Anyways, it won’t come near us of its own free will.”
Faeyl’s heart was wrenched again, but she settled for a quick nod, blinking back the pressure in her eyes. She already knew that crying couldn’t sway the Commander. “I thought you would say that,” she said, but prepared the mule for travel, regardless. “I’m sorry I can’t do more,” Faeyl apologized to the boy as she knelt down beside him, even if he could never understand. What he did understand was that he was meant to ride the mule. Faeyl forced the mule to sit down using the leash as a rein. She then helped the survivor crawl onto the strong animal’s back, forcing the mule up onto his hooves afterwards, and then handing the leash to the passenger.
Faeyl looked at her handiwork, but saw that the boy’s broken legs dangled helplessly as he rode the mule. “I want to splint his legs,” she stated to Fælwiix.
Fælwiix looked to the sun impatiently, thinking all of her preparations useless. The boy would never survive, and she would likely die out in the open if given the chance to go with him. Better to end the child’s suffering sooner instead of prolonging it needlessly. He thought of cracking the whelp’s neck, but pushed the idea away. “You have until we hunt and harvest the livestock. Then we leave.” He was nearing the end of his lenience. Turning in a leap, he rounded on his strolling warriors, shouting commands to them, making them spread out to find fresh game.
Bæri`rr stayed behind and watched over Faeyl from a distance as she collected string and wood planks. She did the best she could in such a short time, knowing the Wolverines to be fast and effective hunters, especially with slow cattle and fluffy sheep. The mooing and distressed bleats of the livestock echoed over the hills, then dissipated as they were finished off swiftly, mercifully.
The boy grunted in pain as she dealt with each limb, but the support that each splint gave would prevent his legs from swinging and bumping around agonizingly while he rode the mule.
“Da vay . . . da vay,” he said over and over, for each kindness that Faeyl did for him.
After finishing the splints, she had just a moment to find two staffs that could work as crutches for him. After waving at him finally and urging the mule forward, she watched as he directed the equine uncertainly north, slowly, but getting away from the village nonetheless. He looked back at her and did his best to wave in thanks, but it ended feebly. Faeyl held up a hand in return, feeling hopeless and tired.
Bæri`rr stood by her side and looked with compassion on the survivor, then turned to Faeyl once the boy was over the first hill. “Get on,” he said in Wolverine, and Faeyl obeyed, having learned those words earlier. She took a seat on his thickly furred back and they left the village, just as a murder of crows approached from the horizon, a cloud of black come to feast on death.
It was evening when Faeyl brooded over the incident that had occurred just hours before. She rode on Fælwiix’s back, swaying her hips to his flowing gait, much like how she would on a horse.
Her eyes were stained with a certain pain that would never fully leave her for as many years as she lived; she had seen what evil humans could accomplish, and it had tamped down her previously irrepressible inner brightness, as well as tore at her Soul. Anger stirred in her such as she had not felt before. She hated whoever had ransacked that village, wished a thousand Curses on those faceless murderers she had never seen. And, new ire formed against a certain Wolverine, coming back when it had only begun to fade.
“Why couldn’t you let the villager come with us?” she piped up suddenly, speaking to Fælwiix as evening hung red in the sky, and the Wolverines fled from it.
“That mule would never have kept up and refused to come near a Wolverine. And I wouldn’t spare one of my warriors to deal with him gingerly. I already told you the boy couldn’t survive without your help, which made him more of a liability than you are. He would have been left behind eventually, and I don’t waste time on unnecessary chances.”
“So why did you let him go?” she questioned with heat, feeling hopeless again. She hated depression like a plague. “You couldn’t exactly tie his tongue in a knot like you wanted to do for me.” Faeyl looked the Wolverine Commander in his yellow iris as he glanced back at her, fiery rage building up in her gray eyes.
Fælwiix looked back at the army trailing into the distance behind them. “Because I did not think he would survive.”
Faeyl glared at the sky in anger. “You’re cruel. A complete, heartless heap of fur and dung.”
“Maybe,” Fælwiix said, unperturbed by her insults for him; he had dealt and been dealt far worse. “I won’t say that I love humans,” he added, gaining a glower from Faeyl, which could be intense, when her bubbly personality popped. “Nor do I hate them; I care for my own kind first of all. That is why I’m going to war.” He hid his other thoughts from her, even if they might have appeased her anger. I didn’t take him in because he might have endangered you. I let him go because he might have a chance. Because you gave him that chance.
“So?” Faeyl questioned, ripping him from his sad thought. “Are you here just for yourself?”
“I’m here to protect the Wolverines, by keeping the north safe from invasion. If humans or any of the other races benefit from my sacrifice, then all the better. But the Wolverines are most important,” Fælwiix stated. “And that means finding the Tulmalin without delay.”
Faeyl remained silent afterwards, her original hate for the antheran returning as a tide did to an ocean shore. But she softened suddenly, as an unexpected thought came to her. Your own comes first? Then why did you risk your mission and your life to save me from burning in Mount Caldkere? And you at least allowed me to help that boy . . . maybe you have some kindness after all. She smiled faintly, but it faded quickly because that boy would almost certainly die. Her aunt Kaylin had told her when she was young to think of positive outcomes so that they would have a greater chance of happening, and it had worked for Faeyl . . . to a degree. With that thought, she sent all of her hope—certainty—to the injured villager, and prayed to The Mountain for him to find safety. A faint rumble sounded in the ground, making Fælwiix pause, and that was that.
When the army stopped in a woody area to rest for the night, Faeyl distractedly played with her daughter, who was still wide awake for the time, and full of energy. Bæri`rr laid nearby, resting his head on his large fore paws, and contentedly watching the baby play with clumps of grass. Twilit hills surrounded the quiet army, whispering softly with a spring wind.
Fælwiix collapsed nearby Faeyl and closed his eyes. I hope we find the Tulmalin soon, he thought, the army needs armor . . . I’m putting my trust in Faeyl . . . the Tulmalin said that their secondary forge was in Hargirm. I would expect, in the mountains. Naturally.
He quickly faded into sleep, but before he lost consciousness, he heard Faeyl talking cutely to Innocence. His heart twinged strangely. I’ll have to leave them somewhere safe before the first battle . . . wouldn’t want them to get hurt. But not yet.
“In which direction do we move today, Fælwiix?” Ta`vik looked to his Commander, who stared closely at a dirt-drawn map on the ground, seeing it by the morning light of the forest-diluted sun. Faeyl had traced a rough outline of the immediate geography around them, from what she could remember out of her own head. There on the bare dirt laid the outline of Hargirm, one of the four largest countries on the continent, though it was mainly empty and in anarchy at that time. The village from the day before was proof of that disorder. The King of the country, Darenhar, was reported to be insane, and no one bothered to claim otherwise.
Fælwiix noted the simply drawn triangles that represented the Central Mountains. They extended from the northern border of Hargirm into its heart, and then died out as hilly plains towards the south. He grinned slightly, because Faeyl’s style of cartography was similar to his, whenever he drew maps for a reference.
“Faeyl,” the antheran said suddenly, and when she came to his side, he pointed a single claw to the mountains. “Do you know who lives there?” he asked, more as a test than a question.
“Other than the Tulmalin? How should I know? ” Faeyl said curtly, feeling irritable, for no particular reason.
Fælwiix smiled knowingly, ignoring her bad mood. “We move northeast.” He turned to look at his army, which was spread throughout the woods; the Wolverines stretched and readied their limbs for another long trek, some of them climbing the trees to limber up. “Whether or not the Tulmalin are in those mountains,” the Wolverine Commander said loud enough for many of his warriors to hear, “we will check on our old friends and see if they can help us, and then pick up our journey south again.”
Friends? Faeyl pondered, almost sarcastically, Who could be the friends of the Wolverines? More Wolverines?
The mustelids moved out of the small woods and into the plains, after seeing that they were alone in the wilderness. A few deer fled from them, but otherwise, the gray-green plains were empty of obvious life.
Faeyl walked beside Bæri`rr, since the Wolverines had begun the day at a slow pace which she could match. Fælwiix also traveled alongside them, but Ta`vik was nowhere in sight at the moment.
As she walked between them, Faeyl listened while they talked to each other, most likely about their war plans. The sun shone warmly on her in the wind-tussled day. She had no clue that they were talking about her.
“When are you going to release her, Fælwiix?” Bæri`rr inquired critically.
“That isn’t important right now,” the Commander retorted. “Right now we just need to focus on—“
“It is important,” Bæri`rr interrupted. “Our journey will only get more dangerous as we go on, and soon there will be battles—you don’t want Faeyl and Innocence to accompany us that long, do you?”
“The Tulmalin—“
“They won’t travel across Hargirm just to deliver her safely home, don’t make excuses,” Bæri`rr argued, and added, “I can take them back myself.”
“I need you here as second-in-command,” Fælwiix stated instantly.
“Then Ta`vik can, or one of my own warriors,” the antheran suggested.
Fælwiix sighed. “I need him as well, and I don’t trust anyone else to guide Faeyl home, even if they are your warriors. She stays with us for now, so this conversation is over.” I will get her to safety, but I can’t afford to send her home.
The Commander sped up and strode ahead. Bæri`rr growled in frustration and caught up with him, leaving Faeyl alone with several other Wolverines. They looked at her in curiosity, and some even in hunger. One of them came closer as Faeyl walked, to peek at the bundle that her baby was wrapped in. The Wolverine’s eyes were wild and lit with a lust for flesh, a dangerous glint that made Faeyl squeak. The giant Kak`sikgul that the army carried with it was rationed out weekly, and given in small portions. The Wolverines could travel easily and were strong from the strange meat, but they were hungry, always hungry.
Faeyl stopped suddenly, hoping the weasel would walk on, but he stopped as well, and came even nearer. He sniffed her, then brought his nose to her baby, his whiskers brushing against her. She backed away, even as other Wolverines poured around her and her strange pursuer. She bumped into a furry moving mass, causing a voice to erupt behind her.
“Faeyl, what are you doing?” Ta`vik said, sounding exasperated and surprised for the first time.
“Get me out of here!” Faeyl pleaded, quickly jumping onto the back of her savior, confusing him further—until he saw the hungry Wolverine. Ta`vik saw the disruptive warrior, growled a command to him, then pushed forward through the column, towards Fælwiix and Bæri`rr. The two were in a heated disagreement; an obvious thing to see even from a distance.
“You are beginning to care about her, I can see it,” Bæri`rr said as Fælwiix looked straight ahead. They were well out of hearing range of the army.
“I’m not,” the Commander denied. “I’m merely trying to keep my word, and I’ll get her home again, when I’m ready.”
“That’s it, when you are ready. She doesn’t have any say?”
“Faeyl is a prisoner, and prisoner’s don’t get a choice.”
“Then why are you so lenient with her? Why is she even alive?” Bæri`rr questioned. “You would have killed anyone else if they had found us. But you let her live, even risked yourself for her.” Fælwiix was silent, glowering at the hills in the distance. “Was it because of Innocence?” A growl, almost in acknowledgment. “And now you’re fond of them, and don’t want to let go of them,” Bæri`rr concluded, and sighed. “You always were over-controlling of those that you cared about. You could never let go, even if they were gone,” he continued, “Like your brothers . . .” Fælwiix hissed at the mention of that, and whipped his head around to glare at Bæri`rr. His friend continued anyways. “. . . and your kits.”
“GAHHH!” Without a second’s warning, Fælwiix knocked Bæri`rr to the ground, pressed his head into the dirt with a paw, looking into those suddenly fearful eyes, his own lit with choler. “You never knew when to snap your teeth together,” he whispered hatefully. After that, he stepped away from Bæri`rr and let the antheran stand up, turning his gaze to the north with an obvious strain; he was holding back, for Bæri`rr’s sake, and perhaps for Bæri`rr’s safety. “Go check on the rearguard, now!” he shouted. His friend left without a word, head held low, sorrowful eyes cast to the earth.
As the second-in-command passed by Ta`vik on his trek back, he looked to Faeyl with a cryptic expression. “Don’t go near Fælwiix right now,” he warned, and Ta`vik slowed down, to keep away from the steaming Commander.
They were both wise.
“Commander Fælwiix, we have found a sizable river just to the east,” a scout reported by midday.
“Which way does it run?” Fælwiix asked. His voice was cool and controlled, as it usually was when it came to leading the army and advancing the mission. Unless something about the mission pissed him off; then he would explode. His more personal raging was kept under a firmer rein, because he didn’t want anyone else to be informed of it.
“Northeast. There wasn’t any sign of humans or any other kind of civilization for as far as I could see,” the scout added, knowing the necessary criteria for a rest stop: empty wilderness.
“We will divert there,” Fælwiix decided quickly. The order was spread through the army, so they soon came to the running river, flanked by groves of wild evergreen trees and tall grass. The Central Mountains could be seen hazily to the north, more defined than they had been a day before. The Wolverines found their way down to the level of the water and drunk madly, having gone several days without a drink.
As they took their time doing that, Faeyl, under the watch of Bæri`rr, gathered water from upstream in a small pot. She used her Emberstones to make a fire and boiled the water down, filling her canteen with it afterwards and then drinking the excess. She did that all while feeding and cradling her daughter. She liked to think that she had become skillful when handling her baby. Hopefully her skill would prevent the infant from dying on the journey.
A while after all had reveled in the water, Fælwiix came to where Faeyl had prepared her water, looked grudgingly at Bæri`rr, then glanced to Faeyl. “It’s time to move again, we’re going to follow the river for as long as it leads north.”
Faeyl rode on top of Fælwiix, and watched as Bæri`rr walked to the back of the army, lonely. She smiled when Ta`vik came out of the column to accompany the second-in-command all the way to the rearguard.
“How did you and Bæri`rr become friends?” Faeyl asked after long moments of silence.
“That is a story for another day; I think you should be asking more immediate questions than that,” Fælwiix redirected, still moody about his argument with his friend. Grudges were his specialty, when it came to cultivating something for long periods.
Faeyl persisted. “You’re angry at him, but what did you two fight over?”
The Commander growled in frustration. “Be quiet, if you’re just going to ask stupid questions.”
At that, Faeyl sniffled quietly, the rude accusation feeling like the worst insult thrown at her. She didn’t understand it, she just felt incredibly sad and cried. Her emotions were getting out of hand recently.
Damn it, Fælwiix thought regretfully, I didn’t mean to make her break down . . . For Creator’s sake, I just don’t want to be reminded of . . . the past.
That day passed sullenly, as did the night, and then the early morning of the eighth came around, being lit by Dus`ridyian before the sun had even risen. Faeyl was awake, staring at the near void of the sky, unable to sleep. The soothing noise of the river did nothing to alleviate the pain all around her lower abdomen.
Stupid Moon Cycle, she thought heatedly. It’s come back already. Why does it have to be so painful and inconvenient? She finally understood why her emotions had been more erratic of late.
Whilst sighing, she stood up. Taking her daughter gingerly in her arms, she made her way by the strong moonlight to the river. She took off her boots and dipped her feet in the water, keeping the baby on the shore. She wanted to keep her mind off the pain with the coolness of the watercourse’s liquid.
A Wolverine loomed suddenly above her baby, sniffed, and then another one joined him. A pair of yellow eyes accompanied a pair of blue, and both looked about, then narrowed down to study Faeyl as she hurried to hoist her daughter against her shoulder.
“Faeyl, what are you doing out here?” Fælwiix called out.
“I-I was trying to relax,” she said vaguely. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Kæ`ii here smelled blood. We are searching for it,” Fælwiix explained. “Why would you come out here to relax?” he asked with a tinge of concern in his voice, almost mistakable for indifference.
“I was just . . . restless,” Faeyl answered simply.
The Commander put his concern to the side, turning to follow Kæ`ii, who scouted northward up the river. Faeyl quickly put on her boots and went after them, walking slowly though, so as to keep her balance on the rocky shoreline. Just as she came to Fælwiix’s side, she saw that Kæ`ii had swum into the river, to retrieve something. When he returned he had something large in his mouth. He threw it to the ground.
Faeyl yelled out and stepped away. It was a dead man, with an arrow sticking from between his shoulder blades.
“I wouldn’t doubt if it were the work of more bandits,” Fælwiix muttered. “It was a recent murder, too. Not more than a quarter hour ago.”
Faeyl’s heart sickened. Not another slaughter . . . those poor people.
“Wake up the troops,” Fælwiix commanded the keen-nosed Wolverine. “We need to start early today so that we can go on with extra caution.” Kæ`ii left quickly, leaving Faeyl and the Commander alone.
“Your not going to try to help whoever was attacked, are you?” Faeyl asked.
“They’re already dead by now,” Fælwiix answered Soullessly.
“You don’t know that! Why do you have to be so damn cruel?” She huffed, all of her emotions jumbled and confusing. “Why can’t you show other people the kindness that you show me?” she said softly.
Fælwiix was caught off guard, What? Kindness? How could she say that? Or even think that I have been good to her, after all I’ve done? “B-because . . .” Fælwiix paused, turning away, raising his inner walls, and steeling his heart again. “You should remember; my own kind comes first.” He said it darkly, then walked back to the resting place of the army.
Damn it, Faeyl cursed to herself, tears of disappointment blurring her eyes. Stupid. Why does he have to act so heartless? What happened to him that he can’t love anymore? Grudgingly, she went and followed him back to the encampment, picking her way among the Wolverines as they stirred. The Commander had gone to talk with the other leaders, and Faeyl went just close enough to listen.
“Smoke is rising in the north,” Ta`vik commented as the antherans began to wake and move about. “That is most likely the village that was attacked; we should avoid it.”
“No,” Fælwiix disagreed. “We need to assess the situation, to see if the attackers are still there or if they moved on. Me and Bæri`rr will scout the area, and return here afterwards, so keep the troops in place, but ready, like always.”
Ta`vik nodded, before going off to spread the information. Fælwiix beckoned to Bæri`rr, and they began following the river northwards, when Faeyl stepped in their way, halting them.
“Take me with you,” she said as firmly as she could.
“What is it this time?” Fælwiix asked impatiently.
“I want to see what happened to those people, and help them, if I can. Like last time.”
This world is too dark for you, he thought grimly. “Very well, if you want to endanger yourself and your baby, I won’t stop you. I won’t delay my march either.” His eyes wavered as he stated it, but his voice remained stoic.
Bæri`rr looked sadly at them both.
They went north in silence, and thankfully, Faeyl’s baby had already had a waking fit recently, so the infant would remain quiet and sleepy for hours to come before repeating the process all over again.
The smell of smoke was in the wind, but surprisingly, as they neared the gray cloud, no stench of burnt flesh attacked them. As they came to a tall hill before the smoke column, they understood why. They gazed over the crest of the hill, where they began to hear the cacophony of upraised voices.
When Faeyl looked down at the village, where a bonfire was being stoked, she saw that it had indeed been bandits who had overrun the town. But they weren’t slaughtering the inhabitants—they were torturing them. Faeyl turned away, realizing that as many voices that shouted out for glee, twice as many were yelling in horror, fear and pain.
I can’t take this anymore; I hate it! Why do the innocent have to suffer like this? She looked to Fælwiix, who stared mesmerized at the scene. Jaded with horror, at least, not with interest.
The Commander saw that most of the inhabitants were kept imprisoned in one of their own houses, but some were tied to stakes and beaten, or forced to watch, helpless, as the outlaws subdued and ravaged some of the women.
“Help them! Please!” Faeyl begged, but Fælwiix just continued watching the village. Faeyl held her daughter near, feeling her Soul wrenched mercilessly from herself once again.
The Wolverine Commander watched as a brigand went into the house substituted as a prison, and came out with an infant, handling it roughly in front of a bound man.
“Are you really heartless?” Faeyl wept suddenly.
The bandit placed the baby on a table and dangled a long, thin dagger over the infant, just to panic everyone watching. Even some of the outlaws tried to pull him away, but he shoved them back and suspended the knife once again.
Fælwiix growled, as something inside him snapped. That could have been Innocence about to be ended right there. His pupils dilated as Ravaging took him over, a fighting madness which often took over Wolverines. He roared abruptly, announcing his presence with his own grating voice, and charged down the hill towards the stupefied bandits and villagers.
He leapt onto one vandal, then another, tearing their flesh with his claws, rending them apart with his teeth. Each one he captured soon turned to a spray of blood, and fell mangled to the ground. All fled from him, including the inhabitants, who believed that he was wild and insatiable. He chased after the brigands, wanting to destroy all of them for daring to hurt an innocent.
“All of you will DIE!” he howled. His voice broke off as a fleeing savage was caught in his jaws, and was compressed until the taste of iron flooded his mouth. Shaking his head from one side to the other, he threw the rough shape of a man out of his mouth, making the corpse land on a cottage’s roof. He saw several brigands fleeing up the hill he had come from, but he left them to be dealt with by Bæri`rr. The Commander chose instead to spar with some bandits who had the courage to attack him with sharpened steel. His mind was in a hot, ruddy haze of anger and battle lust; his Ravaging almost made him thoughtlessly insane, but the memory of that threatened child kept his mind focused. The bandits needed to die. Every one of them.
“Faeyl, get out of the way!” Bæri`rr commanded, seeing armed men approaching. She ran to a secure distance, but then stopped, staying near the Wolverine to see what happened, and to keep his aura of safety near her.
Several of the outlaws emerged at the top of the hill and engaged in a losing battle with the giant, but one skirted around the animal, spotting Faeyl. “Vay hess! Vay fendis des gulvedi!” he yelled in the Hargirmian language, brandishing a hefty spear.
Faeyl didn’t understand a word of it, she just saw a crazed man approaching her with a piece of sharpened metal. He clutched it in both hands, and then charged forward, steel tip aimed at her heart.
“Saha henning geh hala kely vay crannd!” he bellowed, eyes lit with desperate insanity. Mere feet away from her, he threw the spear with all his strength. Faeyl was unable to move, frozen in fear, as the shaft left the hand of the bandit. It was too late, anyways.
A furry brown mass flew in front of Faeyl. The bandit shrieked and blood flew into the air.
For a moment, she didn’t know what had happened, so staggered back with panic, then focused her eyes on the body before her. Bæri`rr lay at her feet, pierced in the heart with the spear.
“NO!” she screamed, heedlessly running to the Wolverine’s side.
He was sprawled on his flank, and he looked sadly at her, then contentedly at Innocence. “Bkaki inyuiseyæn,” he whispered deeply, and went limp. His eyes gazed emptily into the sky.
Faeyl felt a molten fire build within her, filled with sadness, anger, regret, hatred. She gingerly pulled the spear from Bæri`rr’s body, and turned to the bandit, who had been swiped across the legs with four claws. He hemorrhaged onto the ground, and crawled pathetically away from the downed Wolverine. He shook with maniacal laughter.
“Vay Fesvel reles! Sa helid ina ke vayu gulvedi!” he shouted irately.
Faeyl ignored his chatter; she just approached him with the dripping red spear. She rested the head on his chest, above his beating heart. He smiled evilly at her, seeing how broken she was, even if it was at the cost of his life. The hate, the fire that coursed through her was unbearable. She wanted to press that spear into the man, pierce his heart for vengeance, but . . . it would only fuel her with more hate. It would never leave her unless she resisted it.
She threw the spear down the hill, her eyes dazed and blurry from tears, from colliding emotions. Going to kneel beside Bæri`rr, a good distance from the dying man, she didn’t notice Fælwiix coming from the village, or the bandit as he pulled out a knife and slit his own throat, preferring to die by his own hand than the paw of a Wolverine.
“What happened?” the Commander asked, much calmed after finishing the last of the vandals. “Faeyl, is Bæri`rr—” he began to say, but saw the blood pouring from his friend’s heart.
“He . . . died,” Faeyl said in between sobs. Innocence echoed her mother.
Fælwiix collapsed. “No. Not again.” He bowed his head sorrowfully. When he raised his eyes to look at Faeyl, she was terrified. “Who did this?” he said dangerously.
Faeyl pointed to the dead bandit, causing him to walk over to the man. She nearly vomited when she heard the sound of flesh being torn apart.
“Why? Why must they all be taken from me?” Fælwiix asked the heavens, the remains of the bandit having been thrown violently away. “Every one of them. Gone. Now there are none. Not one of them is left!” He came to look at his deceased friend, blood staining the dark fur around his mouth.
“Fælwiix,” Faeyl said faintly. “I’m so sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have done it,” the Wolverine muttered. “I shouldn’t have tried to save those damn insects!” he roared. “Nothing! Those people are worth nothing! They weren’t worth this.”
“Fælwiix, please,” Faeyl almost whimpered, “don’t say that. What you did was good. It wasn’t their fault this happened. It was-it was because of me.” That was one of the bravest things Faeyl had ever done. She almost regretted it. Fælwiix turned to her, his eyes feral with confusion. “He died protecting me . . . it was my fault,” Faeyl added, looking to the ground: she expected the worst.
“Go,” Fælwiix said simply.
“Please forgive me!” Faeyl burst out. “I would’ve done anything to prevent this from happening.”
“Go, now,” the Wolverine prodded again.
“I don’t want to leave you!” Faeyl wanted to do something to comfort him, but he pushed her away with a paw. She walked weakly down the hill to sit at its base, realizing that her heart didn’t just ache with sadness, it was warm as well, glowing with something else.
Fælwiix looked down at the motionless form of Bæri`rr. “How did we become friends?” He recalled Faeyl’s question from earlier. He closed his eyes and visited the past through his memory.
*
The sun shined so brightly that it seemed a cruel jest that it should glitter on such tainted ground. On sparkling ice crystals it refracted colorfully, until the warm blood flowed over it and painted it crimson. From the bodies of slaughtered Wolves and Wolverines it flowed, their faces and bodies rent apart and torn open, eyes gazing emptily to the clear sky.
Surrounded by the carnage, his paws buried in the tattered flesh of his enemies and his family, Fælwiix’s expression was blank. He had killed the last Wolf—a wild one, but he didn’t know that. He had seen his brothers die violently; one with his head torn off and another with innards mangled.
Blood swirled around his paws. His father’s blood. The antheran’s face had been bitten away; the spray of blood had blinded Fælwiix’s eyes.
What was happening to him? His eyes, they were flooding with tears, but not to clear the blood out of them. He had never felt that before, felt so weighed down and . . . broken. His eyes wavered as they flitted from one dead corpse to another. For the first time in his life, he was disgusted by torn corpses.
A choking gasp sounded from one of the Wolverines; his brother with the underbelly bitten and slashed. He came to his kin and reached forward with a paw. His brother drooled pools of blood, his head sinking deeper into the melting snow. His eyes were filled with so much pain that wouldn’t go away. His eyes pleaded for it to end.
Bringing his teeth to his brother’s throat, he rested them weakly there. He bit down suddenly, severed the neck and watched as his last friend went slowly limp.
His tears fell to the blood and snow. His Soul felt shattered as it flickered within him.
A form rose above the snowy end of the slope off in the distance. A lone antheran approached him, ignoring the corpses and coming to him directly. “Come out of this,” the newcomer said, leading Fælwiix out of the carnage. Fælwiix didn’t respond to the stranger, he just stared hollowly at the snow as he plodded through it. “You need a river to take the stain off your mind. I’ll lead you to one. What is your name?”
“. . . Fælwiix. Who are you?” Fælwiix finally managed to say as they left the dead behind them. The stinging in his eyes had gone, but the wound in his Soul was no less gaping. It would heal to be torn open again, but his new companion would always be there to help him mend it again.
“My name is Bæri`rr. I think we may become good friends.”
Chapter XII
Fydal
8th of Mid Spring, 376, 5th Era – The Central Mountains, Northern Hargirm
Faeyl observed as the inhabitants of the village slowly trickled back to their dwellings, taking care of the wounded, and disposing of the deceased bandits. What remained of them. She saw as a man was untied from a stake, weeping gladly as he retrieved the unharmed baby from a rough-hewn table. A woman was huddled against the wall of a hut, clinging to her ripped clothes with a blank stare, but several other members of the village went to make sure that she was not alone.
It was terrible what they had gone through, but because of Fælwiix, they could heal from it instead of suffering the death that the savages would have given them. Because of Fælwiix—
The villagers stopped their work suddenly, and several began to run back out of the village, crying out in fear and fleeing the Commander as he approached from the crest of the hill.
“He won’t hurt you!” Faeyl assured the people once she understood what was happening. They didn’t know what she meant, until she went to the Wolverine, and redirected him back up the hill. Hesitantly, they looked around, and started organizing again, some of them clutching farming tools and cleavers for weapons.
“Faeyl, I wanted to request something of you,” Fælwiix said as they came to Bæri`rr’s resting place.
“What is it?” Faeyl felt her eyes dampening again.
“You can create fire; I want Bæri`rr to be burned, not to rot out here. Could those stones burn him? Would you do that?”
“Of course!” she answered, and felt her heart brighten, seeing that Fælwiix didn’t hold any hatred for her. “I just wish I could reverse time—I would have done everything differently, I wouldn’t have gotten him killed.” She trailed off into sniffles.
“What?” Fælwiix said in disbelief. “Faeyl, it was the bandit who killed Bæri`rr, not you. What Bæri`rr did . . . I wouldn’t hesitate to repeat his action.” Did I just say that out loud? He never liked to get soft and gushy where others could witness it.
Faeyl smiled wider and happier than she had since bringing her daughter into the world. “I knew you were good—you don’t want to show it, but you do have kindness, and so much of it, too.”
Fælwiix was silent, but heard her clearly. A small ray of light pierced the tragedy of his loss. Maybe I haven’t lost everyone . . .
They stood before Bæri`rr, while Faeyl rummaged through her bag to find her Emberstones. Knowing how powerful the stones were, she didn’t bother to pile any kindling or wood around Bæri`rr, she simply struck the stones together and placed them underneath his body. The top of the hill was rocky, and it was only charred from the growing flames, so the incineration of the Wolverine was contained. Faeyl and Fælwiix stood beside each other, watching as the body of Bæri`rr was consumed in light and slowly disintegrated. Neither of them seemed to notice the smell of burnt flesh; they only saw light. Bright, freeing light.
When Ta`vik and the army came to investigate the delay, the two hardly acknowledged the new arrival. Ta`vik bowed his head to the burning mass. “May you find peace in the end and in the next beginning,” he said to Bæri`rr, or to the deceased’s spirit. He then went to the edge of the knoll to look upon the rebuilding villagers. They observed him with fear, but continued with their work, prepared to hide at any instant.
“Commander, what are your orders?” Ta`vik asked after several moments of silence. The fire crackled and sizzled in the quiet that followed. “Faeyl, go see if any of those people know of the Tulmalin or their whereabouts,” Ta`vik ordered, looking intently at Fælwiix after Faeyl had reluctantly left them. “Do you want me to lead the army while you grieve?” the new second-in-command questioned.
“I can still lead,” Fælwiix said quietly. He was not insulted from the suggestion because the death of his friend distracted him.
“I don’t question your ability, only your condition. We can not let your sorrow send the army into detriment. Consider it a day off,” Ta`vik said logically.
“Fine,” Fælwiix yielded after a moment. “But refer to me when there is anything important to be decided on. Get moving, then.” His hardened shell began to close around him again, as he locked all of his grief inside, to be dealt with silently. “I don’t like that we’ve been seen by an entire village. Let’s pass like wraiths.”
Ta`vik nodded, then turned to the army. He began listing orders in an almost mechanical voice, though his eyes did reflect a sadness for the loss of Bæri`rr. As the army moved north, skirting the edge of the village, Fælwiix went directly into the dwelling. He glanced to the top of the hill, where his friend’s body still burned brightly. He turned and found the inhabitants either hiding in their houses or standing still as stone in terror of him. Fælwiix didn’t care what they did, he just wanted to find Faeyl. He discovered her at the center of the village, where she was trying to converse with an old man. The fellow obviously didn’t speak Caldkarien and looked bewildered as he fingered a pipe of his.
“Faeyl,” the Commander interrupted. “It’s time to go, we’ll leave this village alone now. They’ve dealt with enough for one day.”
The old fellow with the pipe watched Fælwiix in fearful amazement, as the Wolverine walked in and out of the dwelling without attacking the villagers. He gasped when he saw Faeyl mount the beast and ride the antheran like a horse. He and the entire village scurried indoors when they glimpsed an army of the beasts marching around the edge of the village. None of them would come out for some time.
The Wolverines did not take note of that, and only continued on, glancing fleetingly in curiosity at the village. Dus`ridyian disappeared in the west as the morning came on, and was replaced by Bæl`diis, the moon that the Wolverines had named.
That day was full of hard travel, and so brought the army closer to its destination. The mountains were finally entered; they were green with the blooming of spring, yet stony and coated in stubborn snows at their highest reaches. They were covered in the warring aspens and pines, but broken up by cliffs and jagged outcrops of gray rock.
The river led into the foot hills, and showed that its source was The Central Mountains chain. The canyon it carved through the mountains was made up of the many layers of their innards, and those rocky walls towered thousands of feet above the Wolverines as the mustelids passed between them.
Ta`vik led the army, making his way along the gravelly shore of the wide, swift river. Birds of the spring chattered noisily, and he spotted several otters floating contentedly down the watercourse. He could swear that they had laughed at him earlier. A pleasant breeze rustled through the undergrowth and complex realm of the mountains, carrying with it pollen, which made some of the Wolverines sneeze. Ta`vik hissed with a sneeze, then another and yet a third one, all done in quick succession. He wiped at his black nose with the back of his paw, then smeared his paw in the rushes at the edge of the river.
When he spotted a steep slope out of the canyon, he ordered the army to divert up it, into the thick forest where some Skyfirs clung. The army came under the shadowy protection of the trees, and went near the peak of that particular mountain. The trees swayed in the wind along with the Hanfodel flowers, while the sun shone light throughout the forest from its zenith in the cloudless sky. Ta`vik found a huge outcrop of stone, the flattened top of the canyon’s cliff. There he gathered a hundred or so of the Wolverines, while the rest wandered throughout the woods.
“The Tulmalin have always been secretive and well hidden from the world,” he stated loudly to the group that surrounded him, feeling awkward to use his voice so strongly. “Only those who knew them from the start ever knew where they dwelt. I hope to find them here, but I know that we can find our old allies in these mountains. No matter how deep they’ve hidden in these crags, we must find them, and perhaps they will know where the Tulmalin live.
“You hundred scouts will go in groups of three, and comb the mountains for our allies—either one of them. Go as far as one day’s journey, and return here if nothing is found. Find the river and follow it back here if you become lost. The army will rest here for three days, and no more. Then we will move north again to continue the search.” Ta`vik then directed each group separately and sent them on their way.
Fælwiix came up to him once he had finished guiding the scouts. “Well done, Ta`vik,” he congratulated privately.
The recently raised second-in-command bowed his head in acknowledgment and respect. “How are the food stores?”
“The Kak`sikgul meat has not rotted all this time, but it is beginning to now. Not that it matters. The remaining food is only half of what we started out with. Each Wolverine can carry a single elk now, when we had been carrying two each from the start.”
“Well, if Faeyl’s map renditions are correct, we are nearly halfway down the continent. We have been traveling for almost two cycles of the Blood-Stone. We should last two more, if we calculate for it and supplement with other sources of food. With the fish of the river, I suspect we could feed part of the army, if we set some to hauling out the larger specimens and–” For once, Ta`vik cut himself off, realizing that the Commander was not in a tolerable mood for his rantings.
Fælwiix was silent as he looked into the sky, and saw the Red Moon near the peak of the heaven’s dome. Once it had passed and come back to that position twice over, the army would be starving. “Have the army hunt in these mountains and eat their fill, to preserve the Kak`sikgul stock. Don’t waste time with the fish.”
“As you command,” Ta`vik agreed, and went off to order the troops, though he reserved the thought of fish for his own personal appetites.
Fælwiix was alone afterwards, and gazed at the almighty forested mountain slopes and the snowy crags far above them. He believed that Bæri`rr would have enjoyed the sight. He turned and reentered the forest from the rocky plateau, walking past his warriors, who gave him their respect. Journeying out of the sight of his army, he wandered along the steep slope of the mountainside, weaving in and out of sunlit glades and across snow-wrought streams. He just wanted to journey without a particular destination, as his unceasing mission hadn’t allowed him any frolic for the last two months.
He followed a small gorge, which had been carved through the center of the mountain by crisp water, water that splashed and soaked his paws. The walls raised twenty feet above him, while trees made a verdant roof over the small canyon, all speckled with aureate light. At the end of the stony waterway, he found a dale with a glistening lake, surrounded by a forested shore, encircled by canyon walls and topped with a green mountainside. The lake was fed by several springs and two roaring falls. Water fowl of all types swam in it or rested near its shores, especially Gulping Herons, and several elk could be seen drinking from it on the other side. Some Cat’s-Paw Lilies grew on the edges of the water, where Lily-Hopper Mice leapt from one pad to another without disturbing the plants.
He dwelt there for only a moment, before he left to return to the army’s new base. Once there, he found Faeyl sitting and staring into the depths of the mountains, with Innocence held in her arms. She pointed to a flock of ravens in the distance, then told her little daughter all about them. The baby didn’t understand what was said, but tried to imitate her mother by making incomprehensible sounds.
“Faeyl, I have something to show you.” Fælwiix came to her side, and she looked up, her gray eyes content. Without saying a word, she stood to follow him, smiling irresistibly at the beauty of the mountains, a landscape she had never seen before. The single Mount Caldkere couldn’t match the glorious sight of many crags stacked on one another, even if it was the tallest peak in the world.
Fælwiix led her by the path that he had memorized, so she carefully trailed after him. When they came to the stream, she leaned against him for support as she navigated the gravelly creek. Innocence gawked quietly at the passing scenery. When they came to the lake, Faeyl sat on the grass near its coast, sighing with mixed feelings of awe and love.
“It’s wonderful,” she proclaimed softly.
“I suppose it’s time that we found something refreshing, after all that has happened,” Fælwiix said, laying down next to Faeyl. He looked out to the wind-blown water grimly, his brow wrinkled with strain, while his whiskers twitched disconsolately. “Faeyl . . . I’m . . . sorry I forced you into this journey. I wish I hadn’t. I never wanted you to be in danger.” Fælwiix looked to her, but she just smiled even wider.
“I’m not sorry, at least, not any more,” she said, “Innocence is still safe and happy. I wouldn’t go anywhere else in the world if I had the choice. It was horrible at times, but this is my journey; I won’t disown it. And you’re here, which makes it better.”
Fælwiix laughed with a sort of growling sound. He had never expected her to react like that. Then again, she had never been logical nor predictable from the start. “You said Innocence?” he confirmed, glancing at the chubby infant.
Faeyl nodded. “I’ve decided that will be her name; I want to honor Bæri`rr in some way. He chose perfectly.” She tenderly held her daughter up to Fælwiix. “I said the first day we met that I would never let you touch her, but I want you to, now. I want her to touch her protector.”
Fælwiix looked into Innocence’s wide eyes. He glanced at Faeyl, and then stretched his head forward. Two little hands reached towards him. They grabbed a hold of his nose, and Innocence cried. “I’m guessing she doesn’t think much of her protector,” he muttered with good humor.
Faeyl laughed. “No, she’s just hungry, or spooked.” She cradled her baby, leaning against the Wolverine, her guardian, and pushed her face into his fur. She breathed in deeply, the aroma of wilderness and dead animal assailing her nostrils. She loved that smell; it reminded her of Fælwiix, Ta`vik and Bæri`rr, though the last was just a memory.
A memory I won’t ever forget . . .
On the next clear morning, Faeyl sat on the mountainside again, to stare out across the landscape, loomed over by wondrous cumulus clouds. She was particularly interested in a strange stone outcrop; it looked like a tower in shape, but it was all wild stone in texture. It was a part of the stony flank of the mountain that stood directly across the river from her. Sparse vegetation blanketed the flattish clifftop.
To her side she had a small fire stoking, just enough to cook a piece of venison that Fælwiix had offered her earlier that day. She had never been a particularly adept cook, but she enjoyed experimenting with the food. She attempted to smoke the meat by smothering the fire and letting the fumes run all over the roasted doe. It tasted terrible. But Faeyl was hungry and didn’t care that it was burnt. She needed to eat consistently if she wanted to keep feeding Innocence properly.
By the time Fælwiix came to see where the coarse smell of smoke and flesh originated, Faeyl had decimated the meat and her fingers were covered in grease. “I should have given you that earlier,” Fælwiix observed.
Faeyl nodded enthusiastically, but kept eating otherwise. After a moment of munching in silence, she swallowed and pointed to the strange tower-rock formation. “Doesn’t that look odd? I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you?” She said it quickly, then went biting into the venison again.
Fælwiix studied it with his less keen eyes. He began to laugh from some ironic realization. “You found it.” He snorted. “It was in plain sight.”
“The best place to hide,” Faeyl added, accidentally spewing food.
“Yes; the Tulmalin like to camouflage many of their surface structures, from what I’ve heard. This has to be it.”
Faeyl wrapped her remaining venison and stuffed it into her pack. “Let’s go see what’s inside!” She picked up her bag and checked that Innocence’s sling was firmly attached around her own shoulders. She was beaming at the prospect of another adventure.
“No Faeyl, you can’t go there, yet,” Fælwiix commanded.
Disappointment instantly painted her. “Why not? I want to see it too!” she complained childishly.
“I’ve been thinking of what could have attacked the Tulmalin at Mt. Caldkere,” Fælwiix began quickly, to abate any further complaints. “Whatever it was, it may have followed them here and sent them fleeing again.” He looked waveringly at Faeyl and Innocence. “If that is the case, then the demon could still be lurking in the darkness of the Tulmalin’s home.”
“Oh, right.” Faeyl stifled her adventurous spirit; she didn’t like the idea of a demon being even a thousand miles away, much less just across the river. “Be careful then,” she said fondly. “And watch out for demons.” She smiled weakly, and hoped there weren’t any beasts that Fælwiix would have to contend with.
Fælwiix gave her a toothy grimace before going off to gather a scouting company. It took him mere moments, with a voice like his.
After crossing the crisp river, Fælwiix and ten other Wolverines ascended the mountainside, each trying to find the most navigable trail. The Commander looked for a way up that would be easy for Faeyl to climb without any risk of stumbling. Once at the crest of the mountain, they fanned out along the rocky outcrops and searched for the disguised tower. If it was hard to spot from far away, it was twice as difficult up close, because only small parts of the structure could be seen at a time when so near. An hour passed, and by that time Fælwiix started to suspect that he and Faeyl had only seen an illusion. Each scout came back with a negative report, having found nothing but dirt and stone. The tenth seemed to take his time.
When that last scout finally returned, Fælwiix was impatient and frustrated. “Well? What did you find?”
“A cave entrance, Commander,” the antheran informed.
“You’re sure?” Fælwiix asked swiftly. “Where did it lead?”
“I don’t know, I only followed it briefly. It kept going.”
“Lead me to it.”
The cave started as a strange, crooked tunnel that meandered near the surface of the rocky mountain slope, occasionally breaking into the sunlight, but it gradually led deeper, until it burrowed completely into the enshrouding stone. It took a moment for Fælwiix and the other Wolverine’s night vision to adjust. A mere second later, their vision had to devolve to its diurnal state, as little glowing blue stones began to appear along the sides of the tunnel. Fælwiix became hopeful, and trotted forward. He quickly rammed into a solid wall. His nose stung.
“What in Creation?” he growled. The barrier was the natural, stony dead-end of the passageway, the fact of which made Fælwiix bristle. “Where in Kal Hallavik was this going?!” he yelled, naming a land of eternal frost, which the Wolverines used as a swear word. He pounded on the wall with his paw, clawing the layered stones furiously, then used a more universally understood curse: “Fuck!”
He gave one last effort, shoving himself against the stone, pushing in with his shoulder. It was a fruitless affair, but he had to implement his frustration somehow. Fælwiix had about sapped his anger when he heard a click, and felt the barrier begin to slide inward. A low grinding noise followed, as stone scraped across stone. He pressed harder, feeling two doors separate from each other as he came between them. The other Wolverine came to his side and aided in his struggle. The doors opened suddenly and melded perfectly into the flanks of the threshold, matching the rough-hewn walls of the continuing tunnel.
“Yes,” Fælwiix panted, “the Tulmalin are very secretive.” He entered the new passage, but he had just made it through when the doors began to slide shut of their own accord. His warrior was sealed off. “Stay there!” he ordered the scout through the rock of the barrier. “I’ll be back shortly.”
The blue stones were everywhere now, in the ceiling, on the floors, lining the walls. Only, they seemed to be smaller and fainter than before; they were a natural ore in that segment of the tunnel. Strange, small plants and Glowing Wraithcups sprouted wherever the glowing mineral was, making the cave seem like an eerie, subterranean jungle. Fælwiix must have followed a half mile of that twisting, wild burrow before he came to the end of the passage. A smooth-carved door stood before him, standing guardian at the cave’s end. After studying the barrier closely, he pushed an elevated geometric symbol in the center of the artificial wall. The door slid into the ground with hardly a sound. On the other side Fælwiix found himself faced with an odd looking man, dressed strangely in a well-cut robe and with an weird face, in comparison with other humans.
The stranger was unafraid of the Commander. “Welcome, visitor, to the city of Fydal,” the man said in Caldkarien. His voice was neither masculine nor feminine in tone, instead taking on a somewhat alien reverberation. “I am Forgemaster Hroww, and this,” the Tulmalin gestured to his side, where a stony limestone golem stood nearly inanimate. “is Oremaster Stonehelm.” The golem took a raspy breath, which kindled its fiery veins and heart. Hroww turned back to Fælwiix. “I would inquire, what services may the Tulmalin render for you?”
“I need armor. One and a half thousand suits of it.”
Hroww smiled, unfazed, and gestured down the hall.
When Faeyl was escorted into the home of the Tulmalin, she was awed. She had followed Fælwiix, who had returned after hours of being away on his search. It was nightfall as he led her and fifty Wolverines through the winding cave, to the button-activated door. From there, one of the strange Tulmalin met them, and led them through the many expertly carved passages, which went in all directions and were lit with golden stones instead of blue rocks. Sunstones and Mooncrystals, the guide explained. Other Tulmalin passed through those corridors, on business of their own, all with strange faces. They had long, slender noses and extremely slanted eyes, which were thin and catlike.
Faeyl tried not to gawk at the Tulmalin people, but she couldn’t help admiring their strangely elegant women and strongly built men. The clothing style was odd; the men wore geometrically designed robes and utilitarian tunics, while the women had loose pants with petal-like skirts flowing to either side, with blouses that likewise had pointed, streaming mantles. Children wore simpler clothing, while all shared the common trait of shining jewelry and metallic hems.
The Uqauli, the stone golems that the Tulmalin had a symbiosis with, awed Faeyl even more. When they passed the residential district of the sub-city, they came to the area known as The Forge, an inferior imitation of the workshop in Mount Caldkere.
The speechless Uqauli were everywhere, and there were just as many Tulmalin, working the furnaces and forging steel. The Super-forges lined a highway that extended into the distance, the whole road and all the platforms hanging in an abyss. A cavern surrounded The Forge, too large to reveal any of its extremes to her sight. Stone roads and stairs led everywhere, stretching into the darkness in each direction, spotted with golden lights. Small slivers in the cavern’s ceiling revealed Orøs’ dim illumination from high above.
In The Forge, the fire-related structures used in shaping metal lined the highway, but also extended to the sides, where tributary floating paths led, making a miniature city of fire and ash. The whole place flickered and glowed with the light of a million embers.
The Uqauli acted as hammers, pounding the hot metal into shape with their stone limbs as the Tulmalin held the objects in place, and instructed them in an alien language. The molten veins that coursed through each of the Uqauli all came to a glowing heart at the center of their torsos. The heart pulsed with light after each breath the golems took, and the light flowed through each vein before it darkened, only to be ignited again. None of them looked alike; each had variously shaped limbs and differently arranged bodies, some looking like hulking men and others seeming rather like upright beasts of indescribable shape. There were several ‘subspecies’ as well, those who were of limestone, like Oremaster Stonehelm, and others of granite, or shale. Some roared with breath as they made the cave ring with their hammering.
Fælwiix came to the center of The Forge, where Hroww stood, observing some of the smiths work. “These will be the first of my army to be armored, Forgemaster,” Fælwiix addressed, nodding towards his fifty Wolverines.
Hroww acknowledged their presence with a glance and a stroke of his short beard. “I will lead them to the armory to be measured with the greatest of diligence,” he assured the Commander. “Each piece will fit as if it were born to the Wolverine.” Hroww stepped towards Faeyl with interest, his alien gaze piercing through her. “You are the guest of the Wolverines, Commander Fælwiix has informed me.” He sounded intrigued, yet his face showed that nothing surprised him. “This is no place for a mother and her child to be; you shall be escorted to an accommodating dwelling.”
“Oh, but I was going to stay with Fælwiix and—” Faeyl began to say, when Hroww gave her a firm look.
“I’m most certain that your new chambers will be very comfortable,” he said, his nonsexual voice suddenly becoming masculine and compelling.
Faeyl looked nervously to Fælwiix, but he hardly looked at her. He just gave a subtle nod, and looked quickly away. She looked back to Hroww. “I guess . . .”
The Forgemaster didn’t wait for the answer to be completed. He smiled pleasantly in the firelight, and then turned to speak to a hammering Uqauli. “Oremaster Stonehelm, if you would be willing to take our guest to a matching dwelling, I will speak with Fælwiix for the present time.”
The golem responded to the Caldkarien speech by ceasing its work and walking to and past Faeyl. After this, Hroww ignored her and went on to speak to Fælwiix as he escorted the Commander and Wolverines further down the highway.
Hroww’s voice faded into the distance. “You are not the first unexpected visitor to have arrived. Just a few warm eves ago . . .”
Faeyl realized that she was alone. She looked suspiciously at what little could be seen of Fælwiix, and then turned about. A few paces away, near the entrance to the residential district, her Uqauli escort stood as a statue would. Its equivalent of a head seemed to stare at her with unseen eyes, but other than that, it stood patiently and radiated very quietly.
Faeyl saw that she was meant to follow it. She walked dejectedly towards the golem, watched by the prying eyes of the Tulmalin smiths. The Uqauli broke its stillness and walked with stony footfalls. As it led her through the residential district, its breathing became heavier and grittier, sounding labored yet perfectly natural. The golem didn’t have a mouth anywhere on its limestone body, its torso simply expanded and contracted rhythmically. From the glowing crevasses in its body, dust fell and landed on the ground. Faeyl felt a thrill begin to rise in her, as she came to terms with being abandoned by Fælwiix.
I’m being guided to my room by an Uqauli! And the Oremaster, whatever that is supposed to mean, she thought, just as Stonehelm stopped abruptly, raising an arm to gesture at a wooden door. Faeyl came around the Uqauli, and looked at its head. Two points of converging veins made molten spheres that shifted as one. They focused on Faeyl, and she realized that it did have eyes, but how they worked, she could never know.
“Thank you, ah . . .”
Of course the Uqauli couldn’t speak, but she saw that it recognized her, and could sense what she had meant. It walked away, out of sight.
Faeyl turned to the door and nervously opened it.
“The Kuldaki are stirring again,” Hroww explained as he brought Fælwiix and the other antherans to the first chamber of The Armory. The place was held in a large cavern, all lit with Sunstones and “That is who attacked us in Mount Caldkere, and why we had to flee from our origin forge.”
“I thought that they were destroyed ten years ago,” Fælwiix observed darkly. It was terrible news, and might add complications to his campaign.
“Merely resting,” Hroww answered. “Or perhaps bothering another region of the world.”
“Well, there are only two of them, which one was it? And where might it have gone?”
“Judging by its form at the time the demon laid siege to The Mountain, we suspect that it was Soul Skulker. It took the shape of a Dragon, which legend states is the demon’s preferred form. We didn’t take a care to see where it had gone.”
The Commander grunted. “He and Nether Wraith are the only two Kuldaki, you’d think that they would have been snuffed out by now,” he muttered, hoping that neither of the demons came near him or his army.
“You neglect that they are only two in number, but unmatched in dark power,” Hroww corrected. “It takes an even more powerful warrior to destroy them. That strange visitor I mentioned,” he added.
“It wasn’t . . . The Kuldaki Hunter? Dak`kcar?” Fælwiix gave Hroww an exasperated look. The Forgemaster nodded. The Commander gave a sigh of pity and respect combined. “That old war-hound has been hunting the Kuldaki for centuries. I thought that he at least had breathed his last.”
“He came to us injured,” Hroww nodded in agreement and grimaced. “A recently lost arm, newly healed but still infected and poisoned. He will die soon, regardless of what he does. He requested that we make him armor, to prevent such injuries in his future battles. His ice-forged weapons were decaying quickly in the warmth here, so we were glad to help him acquire Arium counterparts.” Hroww gathered a thought. “We have heard news that in Yindyr the last of the colonies had been wiped out.”
Fælwiix nodded. “It’s true, the Wolverines haven’t seen Dak`kcar’s kind in over ten years. The Yindarians were exterminated by the demons he hunts.”
Hroww sighed. “We hadn’t the heart to tell him, that like the Kuldaki—“
“—he is the last of his race.”