The Northern Approach

by Jim Galford

  “I have no idea,” On’esquin said, looking around furtively. “I turned to watch you, and when I turned back, he was gone. Slippery man, that one.”

  “He won’t get far with his wounds,” admitted Raeln, heading down the path in pursuit of the other scents. It was already getting hard for him to pick them out, the night’s rain gradually covering their passing. “We need to hurry or they’ll lose us in the mountains. There are four scents that came through after the others.”

  Raeln pushed on, jogging across the wider sections of the path and slowing to a cautious walk on the narrower. Soon the scents became stronger, but they mingled with the stench of the long-dead. Zombies had come through within minutes of those he was seeking. Not a large force, but enough to make the whole place stink of death.

  Stopping on one of the narrower sections of the path, where the stones dropped off nearly a hundred feet to the woods below, Raeln scanned the area for any movement. He could smell zombies close, but he could not see anything in either direction. Looking down, he saw movement in the trees. There were bodies hanging in the upper branches, as though they had been thrown off the ledge.

  “We’re close,” Raeln noted, pointing out the zombies. “Someone must have pushed them. That someone is who we want, I’m betting.”

  Despite his desire to hurry, Raeln slowed to a crawl, trying to deal with the narrow ledge. Once, he had thought himself fine with heights, but nearly falling off a mountainside had shaken that belief. He managed to cross the path slowly by keeping his thoughts on the healer, though it took nearly a half hour, putting them far behind whoever had passed through before them.

  At the far side of the path, Raeln started down a trail that went down toward the bottom of the mountain, but then stopped and sniffed at a second trail that went up. Both had lingering scents of the wildlings he had been following. He could not be certain which way was correct. Both were recent—possibly only a few minutes—but his ability to pick out smells was not as refined as he would need to be sure of his choice.

  “We should split up and hurry,” he announced, pointing at the lower path. “Go that way and meet me back here in a half hour. They aren’t more than a couple minutes ahead of us, so we should find them fast, before someone else does.”

  Taking the high trail as On’esquin jogged down the descending one, Raeln headed up a winding path that kept sharply turning through the trees. He could see little of what was coming, making him nervous that he might be walking into a trap. The scents were definitely getting clearer, and he soon could pick out the healer’s scent, as well as his children and one other. He could not be certain, but he thought the fourth was a fox who smelled remarkably similar to the children.

  Raeln rounded another curve and slid to a stop, facing a nearby wall of mists that cut off the path. The dimly glowing cloud swirled around a cave entrance, pouring into the cave as though it were seeking something the same place he was. Other tendrils wrapped around the peak of the mountain, covering it as though searching for more ways inside.

  The scent was strong now, telling Raeln he had gone the right way. That was little reassurance when facing the glowing cloud On’esquin had warned him about. The other wildlings had come through less than five minutes before. He probably could have thrown a stone and hit them if he could see through the mists. They needed him.

  “He doesn’t know for sure that it’ll kill me,” Raeln told himself aloud, walking up to the edge of the mists. The wildlings were in that cave—he was certain of it. He could clearly smell them now. “Please be alive when I get there.”

  Closing his eyes, Raeln ran into the cave, charging straight through the mists. Pain flared across his skin as though hot ashes had been thrown onto his fur, but the feeling soon passed and cooler air washed over him. When he looked around again, he was inside the cave, where the light of the mist was all that gave him any illumination. The flowing tendrils clearly lit the path ahead, though they mostly filled the passage. He would have to walk through them repeatedly if he were to get to the wildlings.

  “Hold on, I’m coming!” he shouted and plunged into the mists again.

  This time the sensation of falling into snow or being battered with ice assailed his body, making Raeln shiver and slow his pace as his muscles trembled. The cold rapidly turned back to heat, varying every few feet within the glowing cloud. Through it, he attempted to use his nose more than his eyes to find the path.

  The scent came to an abrupt halt, and Raeln looked around in confusion, wondering where the wildlings were. He should have been atop them, but he stood waist-deep in the mists that flowed through the tiny passage in the mountain. The scent around him indicated they had been there seconds before, but no trail led away.

  Slowly, the mists that came up to his waist began to make his legs ache, the pain spreading through the rest of his body. It felt as though his bones were on fire, but Raeln had nowhere he could go to escape.

  A rumbling crash around Raeln gave him only a second to shield his face as the cave collapsed. He fell to the ground, curling into a ball to attempt to minimize how badly crushed he would be, assuming the collapse did not entirely fill the cave. Then the sounds were gone, replaced by a creaking that seemed very out of place.

  Opening one eye tentatively, Raeln found he was not in the cave anymore and the mists were rapidly receding. Around him were the walls of a small unlit home, covered with artwork and sculptures in a style he had never seen before. Lying near his feet, two men in loose cotton clothing lay staring at the ceiling, the pale look of their skin telling him they were long dead.

  Raeln slowly uncurled and tried to grasp what he was seeing. At first he believed the mists had somehow snatched him, taking him somewhere else, but then he looked out the open front door and saw the hillside leading up to the cave he had entered. All of the scents he had followed were gone, swept away with the arrival of the house, complete with its own scents.

  Stumbling out of the house, Raeln stared in complete confusion at the mountainside he had climbed to get there, then turned around and regarded the house that now sat where the peak of the mountain should have been. Nearly fifty vertical feet of stone was gone, creating a flat plateau atop the mountain, occupied only by the slightly leaning home and the mists that were rapidly retreating down the back side of the mountain.

  “Did you find them?” called out On’esquin as he came up the path, but Raeln could not find words to answer.

  The orc lumbered up to the door of the house and looked at it suspiciously. He gave Raeln a queer look and then marched into the house, glared at the contents, and soon came back outside. “Mists?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” Raeln answered, barely hearing himself speak as he stared at the home. Even the construction style was foreign to him. The men inside wore armor with insignias he had never seen before. After years of military training, he had thought he knew all the insignias used in the region.

  On’esquin reached back and closed the door of the home and then smiled at Raeln. “You surprise me yet again,” he noted, patting Raeln’s shoulder. “You got lucky that it didn’t touch you. The mists connect different times and places, but they destroy anything that does not have the power to resist them. No mortal being can touch the mists and not be torn apart. Even the Turessians, myself included, risk being destroyed if the mists catch us.”

  Raeln looked around until he saw the mists far below on the mountainside, sweeping away toward the south to rejoin with the main cloud. He rubbed the bracelet he wore nervously—which was hot to the touch for some reason—wondering what had just happened and where the wildlings he needed to find had gone.

  “The man…his children…” Raeln managed, staring in dismay at the house that did not belong. “Where did this come from? Where are they? I had them…I was right there.”

  “Judging by the sand and style of structure, I would guess the Corraithian desert. The people you sought might be there, though they will likely be in worse shape than th
e bodies I saw inside. Most mortals are torn to pieces and scattered across the area in a fine red mist where the cloud chooses to spit them out. No matter what we might wish, they are gone, Raeln. There is nothing we can do. Pray these were not the ones we needed.”

  Memories coming to him in a rush of the mere minutes he had spent with the kind wildling man and watched his children suffering through their stay at the slave camp, Raeln felt as though he had lost another person in his life. The plaintive eyes of those children came to mind, making his chest hurt. He did not even know their names, but he had dearly hoped those people would be unharmed and he could be the one to save them. Now, the man and his children were as dead as those down in the valley, despite their struggle to escape. He had failed them twice.

  “Your search is over, On’esquin,” spat Raeln, his sadness immediately replaced with anger. “There are no other people here, and the four that survived the battle are gone. Your prophecy failed us. We’re going back to the camp.”

  “It’s never that simple with prophecy,” countered the orc, setting off down the way they had come. “Prophecy is not what most would tell you. It is a glimpse of one possible solution to a problem, complete with one or more ways it can be resolved. If our four companions are dead, we might be able to replace them. Failing that, we try without them. The prophecy only tells us the most likely way for us to succeed, not the only way. In truth, Turess may have known that we would likely die without their help, but that does not mean we cannot find a way. More importantly, six of us were not going to stop the Turessian army without an army of our own…there may still be time and ways to remedy this.”

  Grabbing the man by the back of his armor, Raeln spun him around and jabbed one of his long claws into On’esquin’s ribs where the gypsy had cut him. On’esquin did not as much as wince, meeting Raeln’s glare calmly. “You owe me answers,” Raeln growled. “I’ve followed you from Lantonne. I’ve followed your search for people that are already dead. Everywhere I go, I see more death and destruction, but I never get answers.”

  “Do you honestly believe the best place to discuss our plans is in the middle of the mist clouds, surrounded by the dead? I will answer now if you wish, but from a tactical mindset, I would assume finding shelter where we will not be found might be prudent.”

  Half-snarling, half-sighing, Raeln nodded and motioned toward the path. They set off immediately, their travels silent and brooding as they made their way down into the valley where the battle had raged hours earlier.

  As they passed, Raeln could not help but look up at the dead children again, wishing he could so something to make everything right. Even giving them proper burials would change nothing, and taking the time to cut them down could put himself and On’esquin in danger of being caught by whatever had done it in the first place. Reluctantly, he continued on without saying anything, knowing he would regret it later.

  It was dawn, the sky lightening to a deep purple, when they reached the path out of the valley toward the stream and the first bodies they had seen. On’esquin pushed on silently, steering them well clear of the dead and guiding them along the mountains as they left the pass, heading farther south and away from the way they had come. He paused several times, looking around and picking the route that took them deeper into the woods rather than out of it. Then, with the sky brightening quickly, he stopped and grunted at Raeln before unfastening his weapon belt and tossing it to the base of a tree.

  “We should be far enough away to speak freely,” he said, unbuckling the second of his three belts that held all of his supply pouches and setting them down near his sword. The third Raeln had rarely seen him take off, as it held his heavy armor in place. “You have questions and I will answer them. Think carefully, as I do not make this offer lightly, nor do I intend to offer it again soon.”

  Raeln thought on all the questions he could have asked while staring at the man’s belts lying on the ground. Both were as worn and cracked as his armor, and from the look of the pouches, he carried a month’s supplies or more at all times. He was always prepared, but for what, Raeln had no idea.

  “How old are you?” he asked instead, drawing an amused smirk from the orc. “I probably don’t want to know the answer, but I’ll ask anyway.”

  “A fair question.” On’esquin sat down and propped his back against the tree. “I will answer another question to answer this one.

  “I have been waiting to hunt the Turessians and their leader, Dorralt, for a bit more than two thousand years. A hundred years before that, I served my lord Turess as his friend, and later his apprentice after my own master betrayed our trust. Likely, I was not much older than you when I began my service, chasing down Dorralt’s original generals.”

  Raeln pointed at the gash in On’esquin’s armor. “That is what you mean by service? Are you one of them or not? You’ve claimed you aren’t, but you’ve referred to ‘mortals’ and you don’t bleed. Orcs don’t live any longer than humans.”

  The orc touched his side and nodded. “That is part of my service and is also the mistake I made serving my original master. He sought powers that we were not meant to have. In doing so, I was his first experiment. In a sense, I was the first of the Turessians you fear, though I am not like them in many ways. And yes, I can bleed, but I choose not to.”

  “You’re undead.”

  “No,” On’esquin snapped quickly. “I am something else, though I don’t know what words describe it, either in my language or yours. I will not die, but I do not hear the voices of the dead like Dorralt and the others. My curse takes me a different direction.”

  “You live forever and don’t feel wounds that would kill others,” Raeln argued, pacing around the shadowed woods as he spoke. “Tell me how that’s a curse.”

  “A curse is a burden put on you that you cannot cast off and is a weight on your shoulders,” On’esquin explained, closing his eyes. “I offered to help my master, Dorralt, before I knew what that entailed. I did not choose what I am and I did not ask for the burden of this insane prophecy. Most importantly, I did not ask to outlive my own children, the grandchildren of my friends, even my whole clan. I have listened as generations died and nations fell, bound by only two tasks until I find a way to die.”

  “What tasks?”

  On’esquin shook his head. “That is a topic for another time and place.”

  “No, please, tell us these tasks,” came a new voice, making both On’esquin and Raeln straighten and look around. “Is long walk you made to get here, so I hope to hear full story, yes? You make this old man tired.”

  Sitting against a nearby tree was the dark-skinned gypsy that had attacked On’esquin back in the mountains. The man had On’esquin’s weapon on his lap and the contents of several of his pouches already spread out on the ground, though Raeln had not seen him arrive or touch the bags.

  The man eyed a tin container, sniffing at it, then shook his head. “You bring no good supplies, either,” the man went on, dropping the tin to the ground with a clang. “How you live so long with such poor food, I wonder? Is a magic thing, no? I have never liked magic, even when my kin learned. Give this man a knife and some kind words, and he will do much more than most wizards, yes? Wizard with knife in his throat is not better than any other man.”

  Raeln dropped his hand to his sword, ready to attack the man, but On’esquin raised a palm, warning him to stop.

  “Do let your friend attack if he desires,” the gypsy told them, smiling broadly. “My wounds no longer bleed, so is good time for some exercise, no? My second wife often says I need to teach more young men their place. My third say I need to exercise more to keep my boyish figure.”

  Looking the man over, Raeln saw the dried blood that coated the side of his shirt where the wound had been visible earlier in the night. Now he could make out what appeared to be mud, packed with leaves. The man had made some kind of poultice to keep himself from bleeding out.

  “Why are you here, human?” Raeln demanded, t
ightening his grip on his sword’s hilt. He cared little for On’esquin’s warning glare. This man had already proven himself dangerous and a nuisance. “Explain yourself.”

  The gypsy held up the rolled parchments On’esquin always carried that bore the full text of Turess’ prophecies. It had been tied to the orc’s remaining belt and he never allowed it to leave his side. “A little thing I found earlier,” the human said, eyeing the parchments. “Like the green man’s face, these have old words of the northern people on them. These people declared war on all lands and people, killing many of my family and friends. I follow you both to see why enemy of these lands walks around without his army. First, I think I kill you both and figure it out later. Then I hear green man say he hunts crazy dead men, and I think maybe we talk this out like the city-folk always wish. Is good plan, yes?”

  “And if we say it’s none of your business?” Raeln asked.

  “Then I kill you and see if I can kill the green man. Is good challenge and practice for when I find more like him. Will be epic battle, or I convince the bards that it was.”

  Growling, Raeln drew his sword, but before he had brought it to bear on the man, the gypsy had drawn two long knives of his own and lay them along his thighs. The man was still seated, but he seemed more than ready for Raeln to rush at him.

  “Enough!” shouted On’esquin, getting to his feet and marching over to stand between them. “Raeln, lower your weapon.”

  Raeln kept his sword ready, not lowering it an inch.

  “You,” On’esquin continued, looking at the human, “put yours away so we can talk.”

  The human smiled even more broadly, but he did not put his weapons away, either.

  “We are trying to find ways to fight the leaders of the Turessian army,” On’esquin said to the man, softening his tone. “You’ve fought them and know what they are capable of. Would you be willing to do it again?”