Bones of the Empire (63 page)

Estin fought to keep from shouting at him, but finally relented. Lowering his head, he nodded slightly, at which point Turess released his wrists. Reluctantly, Estin slid away from Arella and over to Feanne, whose eyelids were moving as though she might wake at any moment.

Sliding his arms under Feanne, Estin pulled her up into a seated position, leaning her against him. Once she was upright, she shook her head as she opened her eyes, jerking as she came awake. In a second she relaxed, putting one hand on Estin’s chest either to support herself or to acknowledge he was all that was keeping her from falling over.

“I…the werewolves,” Feanne whispered, blinking hard. “All I remember was a flash of light. Where are my troops?”

Estin brushed his fingers across the blood-matted fur on Feanne’s face, and she smiled, though she kept her eyes nearly shut. “Most of them are still out there.”

“Most?” she asked even more softly, resting her cheek on Estin’s shoulder.

Turning slightly, Estin gazed at Turess, who still knelt on the far side of Arella. As Estin looked, Turess gently closed Arella’s eyes. He lifted his head and met Estin’s eyes briefly, shaking his head as he did. An hour earlier, Estin had not even been sure a werewolf could die in battle. Now, the strongest of them lay dead.

“Yes, most of them are still out there,” Estin repeated, sliding his other arm under her legs. “You can’t help them like this. We need to rest for a little while.”

Feanne opened her mouth to argue, but when she looked up at him, she quickly closed her mouth again and reclined against Estin. He had expected that she would fight him about leaving the battle, but her sudden submission surprised him. When she did not say anything, he lifted her with a bit of effort and limped toward the more sheltered section of the woods. There, dozens of tents still stood, abandoned by their owners in light of the sudden attack. It did not take him long to find their tent, leaning slightly since its posts had been partially dislodged from the ground. Slipping inside, he sat down hard on the blankets they had left on the ground and pulled Feanne onto his lap to rest.

Estin stroked Feanne’s fur near her ears as he closed his eyes to wait. It was not long before her whiskers twitched and she opened her eyes again. She looked around frantically for a second until she realized she was not in the battle anymore.

Relaxing, she reclined into his arms. “How bad this time?” she asked eventually, picking at the crumbling, burned sections of her cotton shirt. “I remember a flash and the screams of the werewolves. Not much after. I…I think I woke briefly, but I am not sure.”

“You almost died…again. I think you took a lightning bolt to the chest.”

Feanne snickered at that, putting a hand to her ribs. “Why do we nearly wind up dead every time we go somewhere together? I’m starting to think you’re bad luck, Estin. I didn’t die this often before we met.”

“Me?” he asked, digging his claws into her fur a little more forcefully, the way she did to him when he was being obstinate. “You still have more scars than I do, and you got most of them before we met.”

“Somehow still your fault,” she said, grinning. She stared off at the wall of the tent as though seeing somewhere else. “I never thought I would say this, but I’m very tired of fighting. Why do you think that is?”

“I could say old age, but that’ll get me hit. How about it’s nature’s way of telling you that you’ve taken more of a beating than anyone should endure and it’s time to stop? That and we’re both sick of watching the people we know die.”

“I can accept that,” she replied, pulling one of his arms around her. “What will we do without the war? When it’s over and we can go back to the kits…what then? This is all I’ve ever known. I’ve been fighting since I was Oria’s age…younger, even.”

Estin bent down and nuzzled the top of her head between her ears with his cheek and whiskers, making her ears flick away as he tickled them. “We’ll go home. That’s as far as I’ve thought. We both need to stop fighting. Maybe spend some time away together.”

“Corraith isn’t home, Estin. I hate that place.”

“It’s where the children are. It’s home until we find somewhere better. We’ll start looking for a new home as soon as we find them.”

Looking up at him, she said, “I want a garden, Estin. I have no idea why…I have no desire to eat plants on a regular basis, but the thought of only having to worry about them seems somehow peaceful and calming. No one dying, no more wondering if you or I will wake up each day. Just plants, growing slowly. I think that’s what the ogre of the grove wanted, knowing that his time was coming. I want to find that kind of peace before I die.”

“You’ll have a garden,” he promised. “Just a few more days of this and we’ll take the kits somewhere nice and we’ll make them help you build a garden. Then they can take care of us in our retirement.”

Feanne’s quizzical look up at him through her lashes told him she had no idea what he meant.

“Retirement…it’s a city thing,” he went on. “When someone is old enough that they don’t want to and don’t need to work anymore, they pass on their profession to someone younger and then they bully their children into caring for them.”

“Have you met our children, Estin? Neither I nor my parents ever raised a kit who would watch out for much more than their own survival.”

“We’ll teach them, then.”

“Can you imagine Oria caring for us when we’re old?”

“I can, but it makes me want to stay here with the army, Feanne.”

Feanne laughed and nodded, resting her head against his chest and digging her fingers into his shirt and chest fur. Somewhere in the distance, a booming explosion told of ongoing battle. Sighing, Feanne said softly, “We have to go back down there soon.”

“Soon. Not now. We’re both too weak to fight yet.”

“It won’t matter how tired we are if the battle reaches us,” she insisted. “I will let you convince me to rest a little longer. After that, we will go win this war, with or without an army.”

“Fine. I’ll win the war for you. Only because you asked nicely, though.”

They lay there, listening to the screams and the never-ending rumbles of magic, until the sun rose and began to warm the tent.

His thoughts roaming from one thing to another, Estin asked, “Why didn’t you shape-shift for the battle?”

“I did,” she said into his shirt. “I changed back when I felt myself weakening. I needed all my strength when we got to the Turessians, and I wanted to save as much strength as I could for Dorralt himself. By the time we got close to their wizards, they were pounding all of us with magic, trying to kill the werewolves before they could get within reach. It was all I could do to stay ahead of them.”

“You failed.”

Feanne growled playfully and jabbed Estin in the chest with one of her sharp claws.

A commotion outside drew Estin’s attention, and he slid from under her to poke his head out of the tent. She sat up and stretched her arm to test her strength.

Outside, fifty or so soldiers were dropping back into the area with the tents. He could see several of the wildlings with them, and Turess beside Linn, though he had acquired a bad limp in the time since they had last spoken and his robes were grey with dust. Nearly every person Estin saw was nursing some form of injury.

“Battle’s coming to us,” Estin said over his shoulder.

“It always does,” she replied sadly, hopping to her feet. Taking a deep breath, she touched the exposed fur along her side and winced. “No more time for rest. It’s time to save the day again, Estin. One more time and then never again.”

Estin drew his swords and stepped out of the tent, right into the heart of Linn’s remaining army. Linn showed no surprise as he motioned for Estin and Feanne to join him while he walked. It was not until they had gone a short distance that Estin noticed Linn’s chain armor was stained with blood and he had stuffed rags under it to staunch the bleeding. Somehow, Linn managed to look as strong and capable as ever.

“We’ve been cut off from our best warriors,” Linn explained as he threw aside his shield, which Estin realized was burned and had several deep gashes in it. “Werewolves are on the far side of the undead, along with a group of dwarves, the bears, and the damn toughest badgers I’ve ever seen. What you see here is all I can count on having left.”

Estin stared in horror at the hundred soldiers who had pushed back into the camp area. They had entered the fight with nearly nine hundred, and even with a decently sized group separated from them, it meant their losses were incredible. He could not even fathom losing so many that quickly. Guilt nagged at him, even knowing he would have likely just died with them with as weak as he had been earlier. Even now, his hands shook slightly.

“What can we do?” Estin asked.

Feanne ran off to bark orders at a group of soldiers who was having difficulty keeping their weapons up. She would motivate them through a show of her own strength, no matter how weak she actually felt.

“Do?” Linn laughed sadly. “You can pray to whatever you believe in. Anything else is just buying time. There are thousands more of them coming. They will sweep over us and leave nothing behind.”

Estin saw many of the wounded soldiers and those who were normally not warriors were kneeling near the back of the lines. They all whispered prayers to whoever their people worshipped. Those who remained in the front line made gestures of supplication to their gods. Many of those who did not appear to be in prayer held items such as small pictures or similarly personal memorabilia. Everyone was settling their affairs, knowing death was coming.

Looking up at the sky as he sought words of his own, Estin saw the shimmer of the mists nearly enveloping the whole region. Only small patches of blue sky remained open. It was somehow eerily fitting that the mists had taken even the beauty of the dawn sky from him. If they were all going to die here and now, the gods the humans always claimed were looking down on them would see nothing. Everything they did here would be forgotten in the face of the Turessian armies.

“Kerrelin,” he whispered, closing his eyes tight enough that they hurt. If nothing else, it kept others from seeing the tears he was fighting. They did not need to know he was on the verge of breaking. “Whatever, whoever, and wherever you are, find a way out of this for us. Not for me and not for Feanne, but so that our children do not grow up alone. So that all the children of those here today don’t grow up alone like I did. Let me see my children one last time, if only to say good-bye. If you exist…give us this.”

A distant cry drowned out the shouts and screams of the warriors. It grew in intensity until Estin opened his eyes to see five winged shapes tuck and dive through a gap in the mists far above. As though frantically trying to grab the descending creatures, the mists swirled and closed off the gap in the sky. But all five creatures were well past the mist’s reach. They spread their wings again, leveling off within the safety of Turessi.

The creatures split their formation, with the red and two blacks racing eastward, while a green and grey made one quick circle overhead and then tucked their wings again. They fell like stones from the sky, diving straight toward Estin and the soldiers.

“Dragons,” Estin whispered, feeling his whole body tingle with a mix of fear and exaltation. “The gods have heard us. She heard us.”

“They didn’t save us in Lantonne,” Linn reminded him, though he patted Estin’s shoulder with his thick glove. He, like many of the others around them, appeared to be uplifted by the mere sight of the dragons.

The dragons rapidly approached the undead, one from the south and one from the north. As they flew, steam billowed from their mouths as they neared.

“They’re trying to save us again. Just the fact that they came back says they’re as scared as we are of this war.”

“My family always told me the gods don’t exist,” Linn said, pausing as the dragons swept over the trees close enough that braches were ripped free and sent flying into the living army. “They also told me that if the day came when I found out they were wrong, I was to pretend that I believed all along. Today’s that day.”