The Northern Approach

by Jim Galford

  The woman grinned, telling him, “Good choice. Drop the sword and kneel as you should have the moment you saw me. You will not have to watch your companions die if you obey me like a proper house pet. Your dignity for their lives. I am being more than fair.”

  Reluctantly, Raeln let the sword slide out of his fingers and clatter to the ground.

  “Good dog,” said the Turessian. “I won’t ask you to betray your other furry friend, as I’ve found wildlings tend to group up against the rest of us like rapid beasts. I’ll insist on the others telling me. Take a knee, beast.”

  Raeln hesitated and saw the woman was slowly tightening her grip on Yoska’s throat. Lowering his head, Raeln dropped to his knees.

  “Lick my boots.”

  Staring at the woman’s dusty boots, Raeln tried to find any other way. She wanted to break him before she killed them all. Still, he had no options yet. Pride was certainly something he was willing to sacrifice. Leaning forward, he reluctantly licked at her boots, eliciting a merry laugh from the woman.

  Suddenly the undead descended on Raeln as a group, their hands grabbing and scratching at him. He tried to fight back, but unarmed and unable to get any room to maneuver, they quickly dragged him down and pinned him to the ground. Once he was held, they stopped, none of them trying to bite or claw at him.

  “Traitor,” the woman said, addressing On’esquin again. “Do these men mean anything to you?”

  Opening his eyes only briefly, On’esquin met Raeln’s stare and then closed his eyes again. “No,” he replied, though Raeln could see him clench his fists briefly. “The wolf means nothing to me or my mission. There was no mention of him in the prophecy. The wanderer’s kind did not exist in Turess’s time, so they have no bearing on his claims. I have yet to find the six.”

  The Turessian turned and punched Yoska, bloodying his face and breaking his nose. She then released him, letting him fall limply at her feet. “Good to know,” she said, making her way through the pack of corpses and around behind Raeln.

  Raeln could not see what the woman was doing him, laying as he was on his stomach with the undead atop him. He heard a jingle and then cold metal clamped down on his wrists. Manacles.

  “I won’t skin you alive, no matter what I might have said,” she explained, whispering near Raeln’s ear. “If they continue to hide things from me, they get to watch you die slowly. I can wait for my new cloak until after I’m done bleeding you for their amusement. Whether I get the information I want or not and whether they help me or not, I do intend to watch you die, beast. I will hear you scream for mercy before dawn. Trust that you will not get it.”

  Raeln opened his mouth to warn On’esquin, but the woman’s hand came down like a lead weight on his nose, slamming his mouth shut against the ground. She wrapped her fingers around his muzzle, holding his mouth closed as she tied a thick leather strap around it. As tight as the strap was, he could barely breathe, let alone speak.

  “Now we see how much it takes to break them and how much pain you can live through. I dearly hope you are as tough as you act,” she told Raeln, grabbing a fist full of skin and fur at the scruff of his neck.

  Using her grip on his neck, the woman pulled Raeln off the ground and onto his knees and held him there, unable to do anything with his hands chained and her incredible strength keeping him from standing. Only his legs were free, but there was nothing he could do with her holding him. Had she pulled him upright, he could have kicked at her, but on his knees, she would see the movement coming far too soon.

  The woman began walking and Raeln tried to scramble onto his feet, but she was moving too fast and holding his head down. He stumbled along, mostly on his knees, trying to keep from being dragged as she led him into the stable. Twice he fell, and she did drag him over the rough ground and stones until he could get at least his knees under him.

  Leading Raeln past Yoska and On’esquin, the Turessian stopped at one of the stalls and picked something up, though Raeln could not see what it was before she started walking again. This time she pulled him out of the stable and past all of the waiting zombies toward the woods, where Estin had found his parents’ remains.

  Raeln became more frantic as the woman led him past the collapsed village wall and he saw trees around them. She led him right across the piles of bones to the middle of the wooded area where they had found the old ropes hanging.

  “Seven or eight years ago, I got to do this to another batch of your kind,” the woman said, stopping beside a large tree’s trunk. As she did, she let one end of a coiled rope fall beside Raeln’s face—that was what she had taken from the stable. “They wouldn’t give up the location of those who had fled, either. We’ll see if your friends are as willing to watch you die without speaking as these villagers were.”

  Raeln tried to pull free, but the woman yanked on his neck, forcing him upright in a kneeling position. She continued to pull, bending him backward to keep him from being able to move at all or risk having her snap his spine.

  “I got through six of them before the others broke down and told me anything I wanted to hear. Today I only have you, so we need to make this last.”

  As Raeln tipped sideways to free his legs and take the strain off his back, the woman looped the thick rope around his neck and tied it snugly under his chin. The other end she threw up and over a branch of the tree, about twelve or fifteen feet up.

  Raeln kicked the woman in the knee, trying to injure her enough that he could slip free and run for the others. He knew she could heal through most anything he would do to her, but it was a desperate hope.

  She took the kick squarely in the kneecap and did not fall, even though Raeln felt the joint buckle. “None of that,” she warned, grabbing hold of Raeln’s whiskers with her free hand. “There are many ways I can punish you that will not kill you right away.”

  Yanking sharply, the woman ripped all of Raeln’s whiskers off one side of his muzzle. He screamed in pain—or tried to, with his mouth tied shut. Raeln could not see through the tears that came unbidden, but he felt the rope go tight as the Turessian pulled him off the ground by it, tugging him up by his throat until he stood straight.

  Stepping in front of Raeln to look up at him, the woman added, “Your claws will be next. The pain will feel like I have torn your fingers off, but they do not bleed badly enough that you will die. After that, the tail or ears. There are many options. I’ve had a lot of practice over the years and I can assure you that this will not be quick.”

  Backing away, the woman smiled at him, eyeing the rope. He realized she had handed off the rope to a nearby group of zombies, allowing her the freedom to move around without him being able to free himself. “You may wait here to see what your friends do,” the woman told him. The corpses held the rope deathly still and would forever if she told them to, just snug enough that Raeln had to stand very rigidly to ease the pull on his throat. “I will have my pets pull another inch every little while, until your friends give me the information I want or I get tired of their delays and begin carving away chunks of your flesh to motivate them. Should they give in early, I will kill you somewhat mercifully.”

  With that the woman walked away, heading back toward the stable, leaving Raeln alone with the five zombies that held the rope.

  Raeln turned in place carefully, unable to get enough slack in the rope to move from the spot, making the simple act of turning around difficult. Finally he managed to face the stable and the village, where he could see the Turessian woman sitting on an old stump with Yoska lying at her feet. From what he could see, she was eating lunch as she waited for the man to wake.

  Upon noticing Raeln watching her, the Turessian gave him a little wave. A second later, the zombies reacted to some kind of silent command she had given them and pulled the rope a fraction of an inch, making the line across his throat tighten painfully. He was forced up onto his toes to keep the rope from inhibiting his breathing.

  Unable to do anything else, Raeln watche
d the mountains west of the village, hoping to catch a glimpse of Estin escaping to find his family. He felt deep down that even a momentary sight of the man getting to freedom would somehow make enduring what was to come a little easier.

  He closed his eyes and thought of Estin’s children. They would never know this kind of pain, if Estin could get away. There was goodness in the world yet.

  Soon enough, the pain would all be over and he could join Greth.

  Chapter Ten

  “Aid”

  I lose track of the visions now. The pain that I see unfold for the six that I watch and for all the others like them reminds me of so many moments in my short life that I find myself thinking of events already past, rather than those to come. History repeats itself brutally, recreating our roles in the lives of another.

  Loss shapes us all, so much more than gain. I can finally see that now that I have nothing left to lose, now that my wife has abandoned me and my heart struggles to beat.

  Hold your family close, On’esquin. They will be the only treasure that matters when your days near their end, one way or another.

  - Excerpt from the lost prophecies of Turess

  Estin climbed the steep rise of the hills toward the mountains, making decent time, considering the difficult ground. He had long since dropped to all fours to maintain his balance and pace on the slope, something he normally tried to avoid doing, as it made him feel self-conscious with his tail up in the air. With no one else around—other than the fox—he had stopped caring about appearances and wanted to get on with finding his children as fast as he could. He knew that was a silly thought; given the distance, running or walking would make little difference in when he would arrive.

  Coming to the top of the hill he was on, which then descended a short distance before starting up the next, Estin stopped and stood, looking out over the mountains spread out in front of him. They went on for miles, their peaks fading into the grey cloud cover on the horizon. He had honestly not thought about how much of the thousand miles to Corraith might be mountains and how much desert.

  “Less than four hours and I’m already tired,” he mused, reaching down to rub the fox’s head. “This will take a lot longer than I thought.” Looking down at the animal, he asked, “How do you feel about sand in your paws and a lack of water?”

  The fox looked up at him with a horrified expression, her eyes wide. Almost immediately, she went back to watching him with the usual calm stare of an animal that had no idea what he was saying but wanted to listen anyway.

  “I swear, I’ll figure out what your story is before we reach Corraith,” Estin said as he unslung the skin of water from his pack. He turned back toward where he had come from as he sipped, trying to gauge how far he had traveled.

  Estin looked down the tree-lined slope to the dense woods below and past that to the village, where he had left the others. He had not come far—maybe three miles entirely uphill—but it was certainly a good start. By night he would be well into the mountains, and if he could keep up the pace until morning, there would be miles between him and that place. He would be far happier once he could not look back and see the village at all.

  Movement in the village caught Estin’s eye and he thought to watch what Raeln, Yoska, and On’esquin were up to. At such a distance, he knew he would see little more than specs, but in such a small village, he was willing to bet he could figure out what they were doing easily. It gave him something to do while he stretched his legs.

  It took Estin a moment of searching to spot the movement that had initially caught his attention, but he soon found the far edge of the village, where he had left the others. There he could see not three shapes, but hundreds of moving spots that came in from the woods. Standing straight in alarm, Estin searched the area, seeing on the far side of the woods, beyond the rough terrain that went on for several miles, a group of wagons had been stopped. Someone had unloaded something and it was marching on the others.

  “Dammit!” Estin swore, putting a hand to his head. “They’re going to get massacred!”

  Pacing back and forth, Estin argued with himself. He knew the men he had left behind were more than capable in war. Of anyone he had ever met that still lived, those three were the ones he would be most willing to bet on living through an ambush by undead. Still, he had abandoned them. If any harm came to them, he would never forgive himself.

  “Let’s go see how bad it is and get them out of there,” he finally said to the fox, who was pacing with him, watching him for an answer.

  Setting off down the hillside, Estin ran as hard as he could, covering twice the distance he had coming up in the same time. Halfway down, he stumbled and fell, rolling hard across the rocks but coming right back onto his feet and running on, having to ignore the sting of the deep scrapes that covered his arms and legs.

  Estin reached the woods by late afternoon, as the air began to cool. He plunged in, well aware he was making enough noise that a blind and deaf Turessian might know he was coming, but he had no choice. His friends were in trouble and more than an hour had already passed. They could already be dead, but he could not take the chance that delaying would mean their deaths.

  He did not slow until he reached the edge of the village, where the trees thinned. There Estin stopped and caught his breath, trying to listen for combat. He heard nothing, making him wonder if he was already too late. Creeping closer, he moved around the perimeter of the village, watching for anything that moved. He was only dimly aware that the fox had run off at some point while he was approaching the village, though that was hardly a major concern. She would return when she was ready.

  Coming up to the part of the village where Estin had found his parents and the rest of the villagers who had died when he was a child, he stopped and dropped low to the ground as he spotted a mob of silent and unmoving zombies ahead of him. They stood with their backs to him, gathered in a huge ring around a stable and part of the woods, as though they were watching something.

  Estin continued nearly flat on the ground, sliding along below the brush and rocks, trying to keep himself as difficult to see as possible, though deep down he knew that it would be impossible to hide his tail if someone was really looking. He slowed to a crawl, but he knew he was likely already too late to help anyone. Still, without knowing, he would never be able to leave.

  Near the edge of town, Estin found the zombies actually were set up in a huge oval, with the Turessian woman who had attacked them in Pholithia sitting at the middle on a log, looking like she were a queen presiding over her subjects as she nibbled at a sandwich. Behind her, near the stable, were Yoska and On’esquin, who appeared to have been brutally beaten and were tied to one of the thick vertical beams that supported the roof of the stable with what looked like a net. As Estin watched them, On’esquin’s bloodied face healed and a zombie alongside him began beating him again, likely a process that had been repeated many times already.

  Estin continued looking, trying to find Raeln. The huge wildling should have been an easy person to find, but Estin searched the whole edge of town without finding him. Then, lifting his head a little higher, Estin spotted Raeln at the far end of the mob of zombies in a section of the woods, gasping and choking with a noose around his neck. Bloody lines marred his clothing across his chest and back from a whip, which Estin then noticed lying beside the Turessian. Blood covered Raeln’s muzzle from lines that seemed to hint at him having worn a muzzle or taking the whip to the face. From the look of Raeln, he would not last long. He already appeared to be on the verge of passing out, his tongue lolling from his mouth.

  Backing out into the woods, Estin kept going until he reached an area he doubted could be seen by the Turessian or her troops. There he stood up and punched a tree, barely noticing the pain that flared through his knuckles or the blood he left behind on the bark.

  “I can’t do this,” he said, realizing his fox had returned and was watching him expectantly. “There are easily a hundred undead out t
here. I can take ten…maybe twenty if I get the drop on them with magic. Even if I could destroy a hundred, that Turessian will tear me apart. I can’t win this fight…I can’t even make a difference.”

  Estin buried his face in his hands and muffled a scream of frustration. His friends were going to die if he did not do something quickly, but there was nothing he was capable of doing that might help. Anything he thought of would involve adding his own death to theirs.

  “Okay, okay,” he continued, forcing himself to think it through. “On’esquin says I have power. I’ve used it before, I can do it again. Maybe thirty or forty of them if I can make it work…that’s still not going to work. Dammit…I need Feanne! She always was better at tactics! Even if she wasn’t, a were-fox would be able to take half the undead out there.”

  Estin’s hand fell instinctively to the bag with her ashes and pieces of bones. She was far beyond being able to help him anymore. That simple realization stung deeply every time he came back to it.

  “There’s got to be a way.” Estin looked down at the bag of ashes and realized he had people he could ask. People dead a lot longer than Feanne, who knew more about the very kind of magic he used. His own teacher might know some way he could to do far more than he thought possible. It was a desperate reach, but he had very few options left.

  Taking a deep breath, Estin called upon his magic, hearing the voices of the dead pour into his mind like a flood. They whispered and called to him and each other in a jumble that made him dizzy if he listened to it too long. Still, hearing them was the only way he could use his magic and had become a part of who he was over the years.

  Focusing, Estin directed his thoughts not to Feanne, but her mother. Asrahn had been the one who taught Estin everything he knew about magic and had always been a shrewd tactician, even in matters of family. She was the only person he could imagine asking for a plan he knew was likely to kill him, even if successful.