Bones of the Empire (50 page)

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

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

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

“No promises,” she said, smirking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You don’t trust him?”

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

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

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

“About four hours…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I would have been one of them.”

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

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