The Northern Approach (15 page)

Hopping back into the water and nearly screaming with the pain of moving his wounded leg, Raeln caught On’esquin’s boot with one hand and pulled him to shore. It was slow going, maintaining his balance on one foot while dragging a man that was likely half again his own weight, but he eventually got them both onto dry land.

As soon as Raeln reached the shore, Yoska went to On’esquin and checked him, giving Raeln the time he desperately needed to sit. He tried to ease himself down, but his leg would not move, and any time he tried, the pain from his hip was incredible. Finally, he resorted to getting as low as he could on his good leg and then fell over, catching himself with his arms and lowering himself the rest of the way.

“He is not breathing,” warned Yoska, shaking his head as he pushed against On’esquin’s chest in an effort to clear any water left in his lungs. Each time he thumped the man’s armored chest, On’esquin would cough up a fresh mouthful of water. “Did he overstate his ability to stay alive?”

Raeln pulled himself over to the other men, trying hard not to put any weight or pressure on his hip. Once he reached On’esquin, he pushed Yoska aside and began pumping the orc’s chest, getting far more water out with his greater weight and strength. After two hard pushes, On’esquin gagged and coughed and then breathed on his own, though he did not open his eyes.

“We’ll wait here overnight. Neither he nor I are in any condition to travel,” Raeln told Yoska once he was sure On’esquin was not going to stop breathing again.

The gypsy nodded and looked down at Raeln’s leg, but did not comment. After a minute, Yoska began rummaging through his pack, clearly taking inventory of their remaining supplies. The frown that gradually deepened across his face told Raeln all he needed to know about what he was finding.

Raeln lay down on his back and tried to ignore the pounding pain in his hip with no success. Then, realizing he was able to lie flat, he fumbled for his own pack and found the bag was shredded and empty. “I have no food,” he noted aloud, groaning. “What do we have left?”

Yoska made an annoyed click with his tongue and shook his head. “Maybe one day worth of booze. Plenty of water, but no way to carry it. Most of what I had is gone. Green man has few spare weapons and maybe a few bites of food. Was good thing we ate well yesterday.”

“Then in the morning, we figure out where we are and hunt until we have enough supplies to go on. There have to be fish in the water.”

Laying back down, Raeln tried to let sleep take him, but it would not come. Instead, he found himself staring over the small lake at the outlines of the mountains. In the deeper sections of woods that seemed always in shadow, he could feel eyes watching him or his companions. All he could think of was the endless clattering footsteps he had heard following them in the dwarven fortress as he longed to take turns patrolling with Greth.

“The Lost”

If they have already failed, my predictions from this point forward mean little. I see disaster, I see death, and I see loss. A child’s death keeps coming to me, though I do not know its significance, beyond being a symbol of what will come. I feel the breaking of bones and gasps for breath, but what comes after is a blur.

Not all of these things will come to pass…in fact, none of them might.

Let them find what was lost and embrace it. Only through their understanding can progress be made. Then and only then will they find their way out of the hunting grounds created to trap them.

The hunter has become the hunted, yet they do not know. Gather the prey and turn on the hunter quickly.

-
         
Excerpt from the lost prophecies of Turess

Raeln stood at the edge of the wide woods, which stretched in both directions as far as he could see, rising ahead of him as the foot of the mountains gave way to the steep slopes beyond. Among the trees he could see nothing, as though the shadows defied the sun that shone down on him. He could hear movement out there, but nothing caught his eye.

Turning, he looked back at the city in the distance. Lantonne, in all its glory, stood waiting for him to return. On the plains between himself and the walls of the great city, he could see his mother, Asha, and his sister, Ilarra. They watched him, waiting for him to come back.

“They will wait like that forever. You know that, right?” asked a familiar voice from the direction of the woods.

Raeln turned to the woods and saw Greth standing near the closest tree. The wolven man stood casually, as though he had been there the whole time, his tail wagging with amusement as he watched Raeln. His clothing was as Raeln remembered when they had first met—a mismatched assortment of Altisian garments scavenged from merchants.

He smirked at Raeln and crossed his arms. “Go, be with them if that’s what you want,” Greth went on, nodding toward the plains behind Raeln. “There will always be cities to go back to. Run as far from the wilds as you can. This is a dream. You can go where you want.”

Walking toward Greth, Raeln touched his dark grey fur, having almost forgotten what it felt like and how he smelled. It was painful to look at him, knowing this could not be truth. As much as his mind shouted at him to wake up, he struggled to stay asleep, to have another fleeting chance to see Greth.

“I miss you,” he said softly, ignoring Greth’s teasing eye-roll. “I can’t do this.”

“You managed to go on just fine before you met me, idiot.”

Chuckling at Greth’s confrontational demeanor that had taken him so long to understand, Raeln pressed his muzzle to the other man’s, wishing he could do that again in his waking life. It would never happen again, though. The final time he had been with Greth was as he drew his last breath, tortured and dying after facing a Turessian—judging by scents and the garb they wore, Yoska’s own daughter. He wanted to hate Yoska for that, but Raeln could not even bring himself to ask the question. It was probably better that way.

“What will you do?” Greth asked him, making no attempt to pull away. Instead, he brushed at Raeln’s facial fur with his claws.

“I…I don’t know what I can do,” Raeln admitted. “I’m hurt and struggling to find the strength to keep going.”

Greth pushed Raeln away a few inches so he could look up into his eyes. “You know how this ends for us,” Greth said, showing Raeln a dagger he had produced from somewhere. “It’s how it always ends.”

Raeln closed his eyes and shuddered, knowing exactly what Greth meant, then lurched as he woke. Any dream ended like that.

“Raeln, you need to see this.”

The heavily-accented voice jarred Raeln out of the brief nap, and it took him a moment to think who could have been talking. Memories of the last few days came back quickly, and he looked around, trying to get his bearings.

The area where they had camped for the last two nights was still relatively dark, though a soft light had begun to illuminate it, hinting at sunrise at any moment. Yoska knelt in front of Raeln, still clutching his side but clearly feeling well enough to be up and about. He looked worried, which in turn worried Raeln.

Looking past Yoska, he saw On’esquin was awake, though he appeared ill, propped against one of the beached pieces of stone with his hand to his face. Raeln could smell vomit and wondered idly whether On’esquin was still getting some of the water he had swallowed out of his body.

“What’s going on?” Raeln asked, seeing nothing around them that might warrant the man’s obvious fear.

“I patrolled while you slept and saw much that makes me think staying is unwise,” Yoska explained, motioning toward the far side of the lake, where the waters continued down the mountain as another river. “I help you walk so you can see. The green man has already looked and is quite unhappy, though that might be because he drank the whole river.”

“That wasn’t what I said,” noted On’esquin, his deep voice sounding more hoarse than normal.

“No, you babbled about prophecy and doom. I chose to ignore that and say you were unhappy. The rest is your worry, not mine.”

On’esquin smiled and nodded.

“Come. We go see what is happening, yes?” asked Yoska, offering Raeln an arm.

“You’re more hurt than I am,” Raeln objected, getting his good leg under himself and pushing himself off the ground. With an unsteady hop, he got up and faced the gypsy.

Yoska stared at him in confusion and checked his own side before saying, “Am I? I have small cut. You have broken leg. Your people are not so good at judging others’ injuries, no?”

Raeln walked in the direction Yoska had indicated, trying to keep nearly all his weight on his left leg. With each step he had to at least let the toes of his right come down, but even that sent waves of agony through his hip. He hobbled along anyway, knowing there was little he could do about it and thus no reason to let it slow him down any more than necessary.

It did not take Raeln long or much walking to see what was bothering Yoska. He had gone no more than twenty feet along the shore of the lake when he realized the moon was still high and daytime was at least two hours away. The dim light came from somewhere else, specifically the area past the lip of the plateau they were resting on. It was ominous getting predawn light from below the mountains rather than above.

Coming to the edge where the mountainside dropped off toward a canyon below, Raeln could see a huge swath of the space between peaks was filled with the same glowing mists he had seen several days earlier at the destroyed camp. This time the mists seemed to be lingering, swirling about in place without going anywhere, as though attempting to work up the speed to create a whirlwind. If Raeln were to guess, he thought maybe they were trapped between the mountains, but then he remembered what the mists had done to the top of the last mountain and decided the mountains probably would not stop them.

To compound the issue of having the mists so close, Raeln could see the only reasonable way down from the mountainside on which they stood was straight through part of the mists. Through the glowing cloud, he could make out faint animal paths that descended toward a huge lake in the valley below. If they could not take those paths, they would have to somehow climb down the sheer sides of the mountain, which he knew he would not survive with his leg so badly injured…and lacking any ropes or climbing tools.

“Was not there when we stopped,” Yoska noted, coming up beside Raeln. He stared down at the vast cloud sadly. “We are in good place for trip, but is not so good if we are stuck, yes? From here, is no other way to go. We cannot get into dwarf tunnels or back to easier foothills east. River goes right through cloud.”

“No, it’s not so good to be trapped between a mountainside and a man-eating cloud,” replied Raeln, turning toward On’esquin and hobbling toward that part of the smaller lake’s shore.

On’esquin honestly looked awful. His arm had been wrapped with scraps of cloth to slow the steady bleeding from the cuts he had gotten falling over the waterfall. Dark-black rings under his eyes looked to be caused by profound exhaustion. Even one of his tusks was chipped badly. Judging by his sweating and shaking, On’esquin might even be suffering a fever.

“What’s happened to you?” asked Raeln, trying to figure out how to sit down. Instead he chose to stay standing for the moment until he could get somewhere he would not be judged for showing pain when he collapsed. “You said you couldn’t die, but you look like you aren’t far off.”

On’esquin nodded and looked up at Raeln wearily. “I honestly don’t know, Raeln. I made it down the falls without any problem, though I had started to feel faint. There were dark elven tunnels nearby, so I explored those, hoping to find help. They were no better off than the dwarves, I’m afraid. When I came back, I slipped on the rocks…that is all I remember.”

“Have you ever felt like this before or come so close to dying?” Raeln asked, not sure how to really phrase such a question.

“I’ve never encountered anything like this. The mists must have brought something with them or somehow changed the way my gifts work. Even that seems unlikely though, given that I have touched the mists before. Whatever has happened, I cannot even feel magic here. In two thousand years, I’ve never been so distant from it, even though I cannot use magic myself. It’s as though all the magic has been sucked out of the air…and me. The mists tend to do exactly the opposite. To be fair, I have never seen them linger in one place this long and that may be part of the reason.”

Reaching down, Raeln touched the bandages on On’esquin’s lower arm. “How severe is this? I don’t have magic, but I don’t look like I’m going to fall apart,” noted Raeln, lowering his voice in hopes that Yoska could not hear.

“Loss of magic would not kill me, if that’s your concern,” the orc replied, smiling weakly. “In that, I am quite different from the ones we keep referring to as Turessians. What it is doing is making me age normally and suffer all the ill effects of the last few days. For all I know, I could have caught a cold or other disease. There is no way of knowing what all the repercussions are for someone in my condition and extreme age. I’m the only one, so your guess is as good as mine. My eldest relative died at less than a hundred years, making me well over twenty times her age.”

“Will this pass?”

On’esquin shrugged helplessly. “No idea, I am afraid. Whatever is going on down the mountain from us is powerful. Until those mists move on, I’m at the mercy of this old body. Once they are gone, I am hoping I will recover.”

“Then we wait it out. You told me the mists will keep moving. Sooner or later—”

“You should continue on, Raeln. We don’t know how little time we have left.”

“Or how much. We can’t go far with me not knowing why I’m traveling and Yoska barely able to read the prophecies. We have to wait for you to recover or we won’t make it far anyway.”

Relenting, On’esquin agreed, though Raeln could tell he wanted to argue the point further.

Limping away from On’esquin and past Yoska, who had emptied his pack onto the ground and was going through every item from it, Raeln made his way out to the edge of the plateau and looked around again. In the dim light of the mists far below, he could see several ways down the mountain, though they all led straight to the mists. He continued looking until he found one that appeared to pass through a dense section of woods, a likely location for animals to have fled toward when the mists came. Given the recent warm spell the mountains had been having, there was a good chance for berries or other foods.

“I’m going hunting,” he announced and started down the path, trying his best to keep his gait from looking like he was entirely crippled. Thankfully, neither of the other men said anything or tried to follow him.

Making his way down the path until he reached the first of the trees, Raeln checked over his shoulder one more time to be sure he had not been followed. He could not see anything up the hillside, giving him some assurance of privacy. Ahead of him, most of the forest appeared intact, though one wide swath had been stripped bare by the passing of the mists. He turned to avoid that area completely.