The Northern Approach

by Jim Galford

  “Passing through Jnodin is the only way to take a living army from Turessi to the lands south, thanks to the poison swamps, though we are still easily a two weeks from Turessi’s true border. To make matters more interesting, once we have passed Jnodin, we will find ourselves moving endlessly into winter. Those living in the north are rarely prepared for the south and the south for the north. Only the residents of Jnodin live in both realms, but even they would not hazard going around the mountain.”

  A voice behind the group made them all turn to look at Feanne, who was talking mostly to herself in a wispy tone as she stared at the floor of the wagon with eyes focused on another place. “The poison swamps,” she said, fidgeting with her tail, brushing it absently with her claws. “She said that they were the worst place that they traveled through. Most of their companions died there. The few who survived were lucky, more than skilled. In that place the animals were all toxic. Even plants were nearly all death to eat. Only the most hardy or fortunate managed to live through and make it past the walls to continue south. Half the survivors were immune to even the most poisonous plants of the mountains by the time they reached Altis.”

  “Who said that?” asked Estin immediately. “Where did you hear that, Feanne?”

  Blinking as her eyes came back into focus, she looked up at Estin, then the others. “I don’t remember. It was a female, though. My mind is filled with images of cats when I think of her. She told me this when I was a kit, to warn me never to go north.”

  “Your mother, Asrahn,” Estin told her, closing his eyes in momentary reverence. “She told you the stories about her and your father’s escape from Turessi. They were slaves there when they were young.”

  Feanne’s calm snapped and she growled at Estin, baring her teeth as she backed away. “Why would we go back to somewhere that my parents fled?” she demanded, backing up until she touched the wall of the wagon.

  “This is not a choice we made lightly,” On’esquin told her, sitting down hard on the floor. “When and if you remember, you will understand why we have no other choices left.”

  Digging her claws into her fur around her ears as though trying to drown out thoughts, Feanne said to no one in particular, “She made me swear. I swore not to ever go there! I can hear myself promising.” Feanne yanked up her pant leg and stared at a deep scar across her thigh, just above the knee. “That was why she told me,” she went on. “A fur trader nearly caught me. I cried for hours at the pain, but the cat told me that pain could be controlled. She told me that to show it would encourage those who wished to hurt me. She showed me how to suppress it and appear stronger than I was, so that I would not have to cry when the furriers came again. They would never be able to hurt me again.”

  A tear ran down Feanne’s muzzle and she shook her head as she slid down to sit in the corner, while the others watched.

  When Estin did not move, Raeln inched toward Feanne, trying not to look at all intimidating as he approached. “What else do you remember?” he asked, easing himself down onto the floorboards to keep from looming over her. Slowly, Estin came to his side. “Anything else?”

  Feanne shook her head and sniffled, as the fear and frustration vanished from her face and her tears stopped. Looking up at Raeln, she said in an entirely calm voice, “It feels like someone else’s memory. I won’t spend more time thinking on it. Crying will never help me get through this world. I’ll have no regrets weigh me down as I approach death.”

  Raeln looked up as Estin whimpered, but the man said nothing to explain.

  “We should keep moving,” Raeln told them, to much agreement. He went to the back door of the wagon and opened it, his eyes immediately catching movement in the distance behind them. “Can anyone see what that is?” he asked the group.

  Whatever was out there was coming up the road, though it was still a long way off. Estin, Feanne, and On’esquin all took their turns looking and admitted they could see it no better than he could.

  “Is wagon,” Yoska told them eventually from his perch at the front of the wagon. “A large wagon, like this one. Our friend from the village has found us, yes? I saw it yesterday and it is gaining on us.”

  “There is no way she could have tracked us for weeks after we burned her wagons,” Estin objected, though he looked worried.

  On’esquin replied, “Who would you send after the one who claims to have a prophecy in his hands that could stop your plans for conquering the known world? I would not send an incompetent. I would send my best tracker and give her unlimited access to the resources of the realms under my control. I would even guess that she was the one who fought the army in the last town. Given that I have fought Dorralt’s generals in the past…”

  “He knows what to expect of us,” Raeln finished for him. “Yoska, get this cart moving. I want to be through Jnodin before she can catch us. I need Dalania up there with him to defend against anything that goes after the horses. With this swamp’s reputation, a druid might be just what we need.”

  “I would rather not be left alone with the gypsy,” admitted Dalania, looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  Yoska laughed and bowed grandly at the window into the wagon. “My lady. I am gentleman, yes? Reputations are just that…they are made up to make us sound so much more interesting than we are. You will come to no harm with me.”

  “Estin will be up top watching for the enemy,” Raeln told Dalania as Yoska waited patiently. “If you need to switch off with him, do so. We don’t have time to argue about who we would rather spend our watch with.

  “On’esquin and I will take the first round of sleeping. Wake us in four hours for the next pair. We probably will not get another chance until we pass the city. Feanne, collect water in the canteens before we reach the swamp. I don’t want to need anything while we’re in that place. The Turessian won’t need to stop to eat or drink, so make it quick.”

  Everyone scattered, taking their assigned positions around the wagon, leaving Raeln and On’esquin alone in the dark interior within a minute. Seconds later, the wagon rocked and began its way down the slope into the swamps, while Feanne could be heard running through the brush just outside.

  “We are taking the first rest period?” asked On’esquin, keeping his voice low as he sat down in front of Raeln. “I sleep an hour or two every few days. You sleep little more than that. If I were more certain of what goes through your head, I would guess that you do not intend to rest.”

  “No,” Raeln admitted, sitting down on the floor in front of On’esquin. “I need your help.”

  “Does this have to do with the vixen chasing after you like a child with her first interest in a man?” the orc asked, grinning wickedly. “I thought not.”

  “You noticed?”

  “I doubt anyone has not, Raeln. There are reasons Estin leaves the two of you alone when you spar. He cannot watch his wife pursue another without pain.”

  “That isn’t why I wanted us alone. Her and I worked that out, so I think it’s at an end.”

  On’esquin studied Raeln’s face and then nodded knowingly. “You have been trying to find your calm,” he noted. “I have felt the change of late and I appreciate it. The gypsy makes me jittery and agitated most of the time and Estin makes me want to run recklessly into danger without forethought. Feanne’s rapid shifts between anger and emotionlessness only makes matters worse. The dryad is…she is beyond my ability to read.”

  “We have no idea what we’re walking into, On’esquin. That city could be entirely filled with undead, or it could be like Pholithia and still have living who are willing to harbor us for a time. As much as I hate to admit it, none of us are as ready as we need to be for this.”

  “Raeln, I have been ready for two thousand years. In as much as I fear Estin’s sacrifice has cost us the advantage we needed, I think this group has a good chance of making it to Turessi.”

  Raeln watched the man’s expression and saw something evasive in his eyes. “Can we accomplish what we’re go
ing there to do?”

  “With all the armies of the lands at our back, I do not know, Raeln. Turess did not see outcomes, only possible ways to get there. Worse still, the person that those ways were intended to stop had access to some of the prophecies as long as I did. He has closed as many to us as possible, though Dorralt guesses at the meaning of the words, as I do. That is why he exterminated every orc and wildling he could find between Turessi and the oceans. He believes that by turning the nations against our kind, we will never be able to challenge him. He had centuries to indoctrinate distrust.”

  “The man is not an idiot,” Raeln admitted. “He will be waiting for us.”

  “Of course he will. We need to be smarter than he is and exploit his failings.”

  “Such as?”

  On’esquin thought on that a moment and replied, “He still seeks a dragon to be part of his family of lifelike undead. He wants to unite the nations under his own banner. Most of all, he believes this all is his right and duty. Any man is more dangerous when he believes he is doing something for the greater good. Dorralt is no different. He is nearly mad, but he still thinks he is heir to all the lands by right of birth. He honestly believes that we are the ones standing in the way of peace and a new future for Turessi.”

  “That’s not much of a failing to be exploited.”

  “I did not claim it was. It is a failing, but not an overly useful one.”

  Sighing, Raeln rubbed at his neck, trying to ease the tension that always seemed to plague him.

  “This is not calm, Raeln.”

  “I am aware,” he snapped back, noticing On’esquin was grinning again. “It isn’t easy to relax when all of our lives rest on perfect execution of plans we haven’t even made. I’m responsible for—”

  “No, you are not,” cut in On’esquin sharply. “Were you responsible for Greth’s death?”

  “Yes! He trusted me. I went out and left him alone with that creature.”

  “Did you intend to do that?”

  Raeln paused, unsure of what On’esquin was getting at. Eventually, he answered, “Of course not. If I had known—”

  “Then you are not responsible. You are not responsible for my death any more than you are for his. You only bear responsibility if you helped cause it.”

  “In a sense—”

  “Stop,” growled On’esquin. “You did not cause his death, you saw him through his last moments as his dearest friend. None of us had the ability to save him, thus sparing us from the blame of his death.

  “Every person in this group made the choice to come along, Raeln. They know the risks and have faced death already in the past. They have no illusions that you will single-handedly spare them from Turessi’s wrath, any more than they believe the cities will rise up and help us. These four people are willing to die because they know it is the right thing to do and they have nothing else to return to. If they had anywhere else to be, do you think any of them would have accompanied us?

  “I told you in the beginning that we were to be six, bound by loss. That loss may extend to us, as well. No amount of magic, skill, or determination can ensure that any of us will live another minute, let alone until we reach Dorralt’s doorstep. I have known this for centuries and you need to know it now. More importantly, you must accept it.”

  Raeln’s tension eased, though not through relaxation. Knowing the person driving them ever northward did not think they had much chance was liberating in a way, easing some of the pressure on him to make everything work out. “Did you give that same speech to your troops in the last war?” Raeln asked, smiling despite himself.

  “I did. In the end, nearly two-thirds of my troops had died, but we had every one of Dorralt’s generals crushed under our heel. It was a costly victory, but it was a victory. This will be much the same, I fear.”

  “Was it worth the losses, knowing what you know now?”

  “I believe it was, Raeln. Dorralt may have gotten free and repeated his war with much greater success, but we bought these people two millennia of relative peace. I would die a thousand times for something that beautiful. Once more is a small sacrifice to hope that I can do it again.”

  “I wish I had your faith in us,” Raeln admitted. “I’m afraid of dying, even as I want to face my death once and for all.”

  “We all fear death. Even I still fear it.”

  Taking a deep breath, Raeln rolled his shoulders and struggled to relax. The frustrations and anger that had plagued him for months had begun to ease, knowing he was not responsible for everyone. He had heard it before from his own sister, Greth, and many others, but for once he listened. Such a small thing and it took such a weight off his shoulders.

  “At least you found your six,” Raeln offered, chuckling. “That should be something.”

  Smiling grimly, On’esquin replied, “It would be, I admit. Sadly, we are at five. In all the prophecies, I was mentioned separately. In this matter I must ask you something, Raeln.”

  “What?”

  “I ask that you swear that you will keep this next part to yourself.”

  Raeln’s calm shattered, knowing something awful was coming. Nodding, he mumbled his agreement.

  “I have read the prophecies a thousands upon thousands of times,” On’esquin told him, opening the rolled parchments and smiling sadly at them. “I am clearly mentioned every few verses for nearly the whole of the prophecy. Then, when the first mention of standing in Turessi occurs, I am never mentioned again. It is my belief that I will never lay eyes on my homeland again, Raeln. I accept this, but I am not ready for it. No person, mortal or god, is ready to face their own end. That alone is what I fear. I do not bear your burden of responsibility, but rather I bear the knowledge that I will die with my task incomplete. I have spent a great many years coming to grips with the idea that I must trust others to do what I cannot.”

  Raeln stared in dismay at On’esquin as the man put away the prophecies. “You told us that they are not set in stone,” Raeln said quickly. “Nothing in there is absolute. They are just guides for what might help us. One possible way.”

  On’esquin smiled and nodded. “I am very much aware,” he replied. “Now…you wish to relax and find the strength you once had, without the fear that makes you hesitate and make mistakes…”

  For the next hour, On’esquin talked Raeln through the steps of relaxing before a battle. His methods and expectations were different from those of Raeln’s teachers, but the man had clearly faced the same struggle himself many times before. Soon Raeln managed to find a simple calm within himself that felt as refreshing as a week of sleep. Meditation that had eluded him since Greth’s death came at last, and with it, peace and acceptance of what was to come.

  What might come, he reminded himself.

  *

  The swamp was far larger than Raeln had expected, spanning miles. He had thought the watch shifts would last a few hours, with each person taking a turn resting, but he had believed that would bring them up to Jnodin’s gates after a single rest. After resting, he had spent a shift on the roof of the wagon, watching the speck in the distance behind them, and now sat alongside Dalania at the reins, with perhaps a quarter of the swamp still ahead of them.

  “The horses fear this place,” Dalania announced, snapping Raeln out of his staring into the distance. “This place is more dangerous than we thought. You were right to have me remain awake. I can feel creatures out there, watching us. I can smell the poisons the infest everything here. This is not just nature being dangerous…this place has been made more lethal by something unnatural.”

  Raeln sniffed, trying to pick out anything, but his sense of smell was dulled by the constant scent of decaying plants and mildew. He could tell there were animals out there, though identifying them through the other things his nose picked up was impossible, at least for him. Greth, he thought, would have been able to pick them out easily. “Keep them calm. It will be a long time before we can leave, and the longer we can keep them fro
m spooking, the better.”

  Dalania agreed, giving him a look that told him there were limits to what she could do for the animals. Still, she did not say it, which he appreciated.

  Reaching back behind the seat of the wagon, Raeln picked up one of two canteens Yoska had left them, filled with water Feanne had gathered before getting far into the swamp. Uncorking it, he raised it to his mouth and stopped, smelling something a little off about it.

  Almost immediately, Dalania stopped watching the path ahead and stared at the canteen, her brow crinkling as though she were trying to identify the same scent.

  Raeln tilted the canteen, pouring a little of the water onto his hand. He could not see anything strange about it, but Greth had taught him to trust his instincts more than his rational mind when it came to matters of the wilds. Left to his own instincts, Raeln knew he would have avoided water that smelled like that.

  “Have you had any water?” Raeln asked Dalania.

  “No, though I likely will not need much in this area,” she said, looking back to the horses. “The air is moist and I can survive on that for some time. It is one of the benefits of being part plant.”

  Raeln glanced at the vines and leaves that covered Dalania and noticed her skin had grown even more green than normal. In anyone else that would have concerned him, but for her it was likely a good sign.

  “Yoska!” Raeln called out, and the gypsy’s head poked over the top of the wagon. “Did you drink any of this water?”

  “We have wine still, why would I drink water?” the man replied, looking somewhat indignant. “If you question the water, we pour some alcohol in it to make it good, yes?”