In Wilder Lands

by Jim Galford

  Estin swung his sword wide, but she easily danced out of his reach, grinning all the while, shaking her head sadly as he missed her over and over.

  “Whether you’re alive or dead, I’m not giving up my weapons just because you say to!” he shouted at her.

  “Smart.”

  Feanne hopped sideways, using a tree to bounce past Estin and land behind him. With a sharp kick, she sent him staggering forwards.

  “My pack!” she called out, raising her face to the sky. “Come and aid me!”

  Estin’s ears went flat to his skull as howls echoed through the woods.

  “You have but a few minutes to win this fight,” she advised him, standing more calmly.

  Partially out of fear and only a little out of need to beat her at her own game, Estin leapt in, his leading sword deflected easily by Feanne’s claws. His other weapon was ready and following in a guarded strike at her midsection.

  With a practiced twist, Feanne took the sword from him and shoved him off balance.

  Rolling with the shove, Estin used the momentum to whip his tail out as hard as he could, striking Feanne in the chest and knocking her to the ground. The sword she had held went flying.

  “Call them off!” he demanded, dropping his other weapon and pouncing atop her, struggling to grab her hands before she could claw him.

  They fought for a short time, her trying to dig her claws into his legs or chest while he grabbed for her wrists. At last he got hold on her arms, only to find that she was considerably stronger than he was. With only a small effort, she turned his grip around and she took control of his arms, using them to flip their positions, with her now on top.

  “I can hold you here,” Feanne told him, that sly smile creeping back. “The wolves will be here any time now.”

  “Won’t they kill you too?”

  “No. That is one of my skills. The wolves cannot see me, no matter how hard they try. I just need to stay out of their way.”

  Estin struggled, but she pinned him to the ground. Somewhere not too far away, he could hear the pounding feet of many animals.

  Using his usual last resort, Estin brought his long tail up, looping it around Feanne’s shoulders. With a tug, he yanked her arms to her sides, confining her. She fought, but could not free herself.

  “This is not going to work!” she told him, straining to break free of his tail. Each time she relaxed for a moment, he was able to tighten his grip on her. “Estin, they will tear you apart.”

  “They will tear us both apart. Did you forget you’re wrapped in my tail?”

  Though still stuck to the ground by her weight with her kneeling over his stomach, Estin used his leverage to pull Feanne down until she lay on his chest, face-to-face with him.

  “Who dies first if you’re on top?” he demanded, staring into her angry eyes until she finally blinked.

  Feanne closed her eyes and hissed something he could not recognize. The sound of footfalls faded away.

  “They are gone. Now let me go.”

  “And if I don’t? Maybe I like this. Maybe I just want to wait and be sure there’s no wolves coming to eat my face.”

  Her eyes went deadly.

  “If you do not release me right now, this will turn from training you to self-defense and from that to a lesson about treating gaping wounds.”

  Estin considered briefly, not really wanting to let her go. He knew he would never admit it to her of all people, but the close contact and physical struggle had been exhilarating. Had she only been his breed, he might have asked…but he knew she would kill him for even suggesting such a thing, so he released the tension in his tail, freeing her.

  With a back-roll, Feanne dropped into a defensive crouch, apparently expecting him to strike again. When he only sat up, she eased herself back into a sitting position.

  “What was this all about? Why play dead and then try to kill me?”

  Feanne smirked and looked over at the blood spatter on the ground.

  “I needed to see whether pure instinct would overtake your intentions,” she explained. With one hand she picked at the thickening blood on her neck. “Asrahn wants to be sure that you will defend the pack with your life. This is not something we really expect from non-predators. When things go badly, your instinct is to run every time.”

  She wiped at the blood, then seemed to notice his eyes on her neck.

  “Goat blood. You really need to sniff before assuming.”

  Estin felt foolish, but then checked where the large wolf had fallen.

  “And what was that?”

  Feanne followed his gaze and answered, “That…is not something you need to understand yet.”

  “The others?”

  “There were no others. It was a trick that a friend helped me with.”

  “What if I had killed you, Feanne?”

  She stopped cleaning herself and cocked her head quizzically at him. With a skillful hop, she was on her feet.

  “I have far more tricks at my disposal than you can counter just yet,” she told him, picking up the sword near where she had fallen. “Even had you managed to strike me down, I was prepared with magic that would heal a wound or two and allow me to keep fighting. It is one of the few healing spells I can manage. If that failed…well…I would have been fine.”

  Feanne threw the sword off to one side.

  “Can you fight me with your claws?” she asked, raising her own.

  Estin got to his feet. He was still unsteady, but the break had been enough that he felt he could try. Uneasily, he raised his hands, trying to hold them like she held hers during the fight, but found himself wanting to make fists. The harder he tried to act like he knew how to use his claws, the more humor he saw in Feanne’s eyes.

  “I wouldn’t even know how to try,” he finally admitted.

  Feanne approached him and took his hand in hers. She unfolded his fingers and touched his claws gently, forcing his fingers mostly straight.

  “These are weapons, just as surely as the swords are,” explained Feanne, moving his hand through motions that he felt resembled those of sword strikes and blocks. “You cannot directly stop a sword, which is our only weakness. Without your swords though, you will move faster and be able to avoid attacks that currently you must deflect.

  “In addition, you have more weapons than I do.”

  She pointed at his tail, which he shifted behind him from where it was drifting aimlessly.

  “You use it when you cannot find another weapon,” Feanne observed. “This will not do. You need to rely on it. My claws will cut through thin armor and the flesh beyond, but yours will be stopped more easily. Your tail is far heavier and agile than I would have guessed possible in any wildling. Use that as much as you use your claws or swords…I doubt anyone will be ready to deal with three attacks at once.”

  She taught him slowly, showing him how to defend himself and even sometimes get an attack in with his claws and tail. At times he guessed that it was the same way she taught children to use their bodies as weapons. Thankfully, she was also patient, working with him to refine the basic skills he already possessed.

  Only once did things go badly that night, when Estin accidentally thumped her on the nose with the tip of his tail when trying to use it offensively. She had bled horribly and Feanne had to stop teaching to spend an hour with a rag held to her nose. Luckily, they had been able to laugh at the absurdity of it all, their idle talk stretching well into the night, once the mood had been set and her nose had stopped bleeding.

  Chapter Six

  “Pacts”

  The new dream was a distinct replacement for all of the old ones. It was nice to finally have a dream that did not feel like torture.

  Each night, I would see the moon begin to rise and it filled me with dread. I knew what was coming. Legions of wolves came down from the mountains, dragging off my friends, my family, anything in their path. Sometimes, the dream would take it one step farther and the wolves would seem to pull the
woods away with them as though they could steal the very world from me.

  I had purpose now. I still dreamt that I could heal others that were freed from the wolves, but now I was not alone. Always at my side was Feanne, fighting to protect people. I would never equal her skill in combat, but I could try and there were always more of the snarling, snapping wolves to practice against.

  Hours of battle in each dream was a jumble of blood and fur, claws and teeth. I felt both pain and exhilaration as I fought to not only save the pack, but to make Feanne proud.

  In the dream, she was very proud of my improvement and skill. I saw so much more of her smiles there than I did when waking. They were not the malicious smirks or the evil grins, but rather genuine smiles. She was my truest friend. My ally.

  Having spent just over a week with Feanne in the woods—mostly owing to his general incompetence in her eyes with regards to violence—Estin hardly felt the hard ground anymore. He now awoke at the base of one of the field’s trees, having slept soundly nestled between its roots. His body hurt, but it was a good hurt in his mind. Muscle pain was part of the training and he was getting that from the moment he woke until he fell asleep each morning. It had become the routine—a painful one, but welcome.

  Yawning so hard that his jaw ached, Estin pulled himself upright and blinked away the sleep, trying to determine where Feanne was at. Nearly every time he woke, she was either gone or leaving to set up some new trial for him. Each seemed to have its own purpose, playing off of some inherent weakness she saw in his personality that would weaken him as a warrior.

  Today, Feanne sat with a small fire burning in front of her with fish skewered and cooking in the smoke. She did not appear to notice him, focusing instead on turning the fish.

  “So what’s the game for today?” he asked her.

  “There is not one.”

  “Just fighting practice?”

  “No.”

  “Running for endurance?”

  “No.”

  “Then what? We go back to the camp?”

  Feanne looked up at him and he swore she looked nervous.

  “Tonight,” she started, then checked the sky, where the sun was nearing the peaks, “you will need to make a decision.”

  “Regarding what?”

  “That is not my place to explain. I put out the call for an old friend to visit. He would like to speak with you before you return to camp.”

  “Who is this friend?”

  Feanne did not answer and in fact did not say another word as they ate and until well after sunset. When they had nothing to occupy their daily preparations, she just sat with her hands folded and that nervous look on her face, staring at the ground.

  Having built up his own worry after watching her like this all evening, Estin was jittery by the time Feanne raised her head and sniffed the air.

  “It is time,” she told him, standing.

  “Where are we going?”

  Feanne lowered her face so that she stared down at the ground, her ears flattening back as she answered, “Nowhere. He’s already here. Stand and present yourself.”

  Confused, but having learned to obey her directions lest he be “trained” into an early grave, Estin rose and smoothed his battered and torn jacket and adjusted the swords at his sides. He searched the woods for any indication of a newcomer, but turned full-circle, finding nothing. As he returned to face Feanne, he found a pitch-black wolf standing over her, its eyes nearly two heads over the top of her ears.

  The wolf seemed to be made entirely of shadow, the wisps of darkness drifting in the breeze as fur would on a normal beast. Unlike the animals of the forest, whose eyes reflected light and seemed to glow one color or another, this one’s eyes actually did glow with an eerie purple light. Its jaws were slightly open and a faint mist rose on its breath, washing over Feanne, who continued to stand passively facing Estin, her head lowered, as though if she were to acknowledge the creature, it might strike.

  Without so much as a whisper, the wolf stepped around Feanne, carefully moving to avoid touching her. Paws that could have flattened Ulra came down silently, the shimmering claws on them biting inches into the ground.

  “This is the one you have been training?” asked the wolf, though its mouth never moved. The voice seemed to come from the woods around Estin in the form of a deep whisper. “He is young.”

  “I was the same age, if not younger,” Feanne observed, still keeping her head low.

  “He still has the look of one who does not believe he is an adult. He wishes to be a child. Can he take the responsibility?”

  “You asked me to bring him when he was ready. I believe he is ready.”

  The wolf took another step towards Estin, who felt as though his very soul had frozen to the spot. He was not specifically scared, but he also was not sure he could speak. Or possibly breathe. He just had no idea what this thing might be or why Feanne had called it.

  “Wildling, as the people of this world call you,” said the wolf, “have you received any training in magic thus far?”

  Estin tried to find words, but they just would not come.

  “You will speak, or I will snuff out your life and that of the one who called me. I have no patience for fear.”

  A flush of anger at the idea that this creature could expect that level of obedience brought back Estin’s ability to think clearly and speak.

  “I have not, though I am to be taught healing magic soon.”

  Laughter in many different voices echoed through the woods, but somehow felt as though they were all a part of the wolf’s being.

  “You are an independent warrior. Why would you seek the path of helping others, when you can be so much more than them?”

  “I have no pride in what I am. I have a duty to the pack and…”

  “You have a duty to what you are. You are an animal, at least in the same sense that I am. With every breath, you know that. The instincts are there and the Keeper has trained you to use them selectively to be far more than your breed could normally hope for. This is both what you are and what you are meant to be by your bloodline.

  “The creatures of the woodlands and wilder places are far closer to what I am and what I represent. This is why I sought out the Keeper and why I now approach you. I find your kind endearing and prefer their service over so many others.

  “With the power of nature, the elements, and the fae guiding your hand, do you not think you could do more for your people? The Keeper knew that she could and so she chose wisely to accept our offer. Will you, too, be as wise as she has been? Ask questions as you must, but number them no more than three, lest I grow tired of being questioned and instead destroy you both.”

  Estin stared into the wolf-creature’s eyes, feeling the radiating power from the being. It was overwhelming, giving him a feeling of it burning into him.

  “What do I have to gain from agreeing?”

  “You will be taught more quickly than another could ever learn on their own. The magic will be yours, with all of its power, much of it from the moment you agree without the years of training. You will possess the power of lightning, flame, stones, and water to strike at your foes. You will possess strength and fury to tear at those who would harm the woods…and your people. Even the gift of healing would be accessible to you. Every aspect that magic represents will be at least a small part of what you will be given and many more gifts that I will not reveal to anyone who has not accepted.”

  “And I must do what for you?”

  The wolf’s strange scattered laughter echoed around him again.

  “This was not a question that the Keeper thought to ask. It is a wise one.

  “I will require of you your presence when it is needed. There will be no debate, no hesitation. You belong to me and will act when directed. You will be another of my weapons in this world, striking at those who would harm the glorious life that exists only in the wilds. Should my gaze fall on something that I believe is a threat to the wilds, y
ou would destroy it first.”

  Estin looked past the wolf to Feanne, who was being careful not to lift her head. Even her tail was still. He kept his eyes firmly on her as he asked his last question.

  “Lastly…what can I offer you?”

  “You are the apprentice of the Keeper. She has taught you as a warrior, which I find complements my gifts greatly. Her thoughts lately have dwelled on your continued improvement and fine qualities. I could not help but explore the possibility of taking on another of her skill for my ends and her interest in you draws me. Most of all, you would offer another mortal shell to further the needs of the wilds and my people specifically.”

  As the wolf mentioned Feanne by her title, her ears flinched. It was barely visible and Estin could not even be sure that he had seen it, but he trusted his eyes.

  “I decline your offer,” he said calmly, returning his gaze to the wolf’s glowing eyes. “I am to be a healer for the pack. It was intended for Feanne, I believe, so it would be wrong of me to also choose another path.”

  “Do not take this offer lightly, mortal. I will not come again. Refuse again and you will have lost your chance for a bargain that would grant you far more power to help…and to harm…than you will learn from any teacher.”

  “I said that I decline,” Estin repeated firmly. “Your offer is appreciated, but unnecessary.”

  The wolf turned to look at Feanne briefly, then dissipated as though the smoke it was made from had blown apart. Though its form vanished, the voice spoke once more, fading into the night.

  “Remember what you have chosen. Nature does not forgive easily.”

  The clearing went silent. They stood there quietly for what he guessed were minutes before Feanne collapsed to her knees.

  Rushing across the space between them, Estin stopped in front of her.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  Still not looking up, she answered, “That was the Miharon. It is an ancient fae forest spirit.”

  “What are you doing with the fae? My father taught me as a child that they were not to be trusted and that they seek to control our world, one person at a time through trickery.”