In Wilder Lands

by Jim Galford

  Walking up onto the platform to stand in front of Estin, Feanne just looked at him for a moment, then turned back to the silent crowd. The only sound was Olis, still gasping and squirming on the ground, kicking the reddening snow around as he struggled to breathe.

  “I have asked this before today, but some of you were not here when I did. I ask one last time: Who would lead in my place?” she asked, raising her voice so that no one could claim to have not heard her request. “Who here is willing to take this burden? Step forward and tell me why I should step down and let you lead. I will not harm anyone who just wishes to speak their mind.”

  The camp stood silently, some people looking around, while others watched Feanne to see what would happen next. Not one person moved forward or spoke. The awkward silence was only disturbed for Estin by the kits nervously squeezing his hands as their heads darted back and forth, looking for anyone who might be next to attack their mother, almost daring the crowd to try.

  “Very well. I want him removed from my sight,” Feanne said more softly. Finth began waving people over, who rushed to the body. “If someone wishes to heal him, he is not welcome in this village anymore. Throw him or his remains outside the valley for the four-legged wolves to feed on.”

  Feanne stood there as several people dragged off the body, leaving a red trail in the snow. Once Olis was no longer visible, she looked up slowly, sweeping the crowd with her gaze.

  “I am and will remain your pack-leader, so long as I can help this pack by doing so.”

  She turned partially, gazing sidelong at Estin.

  “Today was supposed to be a happy day, not one of challenges. Today, I declare my choice of mate. There have been some who question my decision in this. Does anyone wish to say that I am not worthy of this male, or him of I?”

  This time the whispers were far quieter. Estin guessed that if there were any objections regarding her being weak for choosing a non-predatory breed as a mate, they died with Olis. He watched the gathered people, seeing a few now giving him far more accepting nods. He could only assume that they had decided to accept whatever Feanne chose as the way it would be.

  Feanne eventually turned from the crowd and fully faced Estin, her stern demeanor fading instantly. The rage was gone and her eyes were sad as she approached him, her hand pressed to the bleeding cuts on her stomach. When she got near, Estin could see that she was shaking slightly, as she pulled her cloak from the ground and onto her shoulders.

  “I am sorry,” she whispered, stepping close to Estin. Nervously, she tried to cover her bloodied hand, even as Oria searched through her own outfit and produced a scrap piece of cloth for Feanne. This, she took readily, wiping her hand as clean as she could. “I did not want there to be bloodshed today, of all days. I have spent more than a year wondering what it would be like to stand here with you, only to have to kill to get here.”

  Smiling despite the grim moment, Estin freed his hands from the kits, then took Feanne’s hand in his. Gently, he touched the scars on her arm with his other hand, tracing the lines with his fingertips. Estin could not help but smile as she shivered.

  “We’ve been stuck with bloodshed since we met,” Estin reminded her, meaningfully glancing down at his own matching scars. “Why should today be any different?”

  Feanne smiled weakly, then gave both of the kits the most reassuring smile she likely could manage.

  “Shall we do this?” she asked, looking back up at Estin.

  “Yes,” came Yoska’s overly-loud answer as he approached the platform. “Is time for this, no?”

  Estin felt about as horrified as Feanne had at killing a pack-member, feeling Feanne tense beside him. He had entirely forgotten the vague threat of Yoska’s attendance, but now felt it acutely. The gypsy had climbed onto the platform just behind Feanne, grinning broadly. Estin could only think that Yoska was about to do something that would make the entire day into a great embarrassment and he wondered how he could spare Feanne from that…or keep her from killing Yoska.

  “I have spoken with many about your ceremony and been assured that it is boring,” Yoska noted, shaking his head. “This will not do. The death of your enemy before saying vows is good custom, but not quite gypsy way. You will wait for me, yes?”

  With that, Yoska ran off, leaving most of the crowd looking between him and the platform in confusion. Only the gypsies in the crowd seemed confident in the outcome, many smiling and giving Estin knowing nods.

  “Do we just go ahead, or do we wait?” asked Feanne, standing so still that Estin could not be sure she was breathing. She kept her back to the direction Yoska had left.

  “I have no idea.”

  They just stood there, waiting as the crowd began mumbling about the delays. Soon, the kits were fidgeting and Estin felt Atall trying to steal from his pouches without being caught—one of the child’s favorite games when he thought Estin was ignoring him and, he suspected, something he could blame Yoska or Finth for.

  At last, Yoska reappeared, this time with his entire clan following him back through the crowds, wheeling carts bearing casks that Estin recognized as the gypsy clan’s private stash of alcohol. There was very nearly enough to drown the entire camp. The fact that they had this much left after the loud party the night before for another wedding astounded him.

  “Now,” announced Yoska, coming back to Estin and Feanne, even as his clanmates began unstopping the casks and forcing cups into every hand they could find, “the camp may begin drinking to toast your marriage. You may begin once the drinks are flowing, but you may not have a drink yourselves until you both say ‘yes.’ This I must insist on, or I fear one of you will find another excuse to escape.”

  Feanne thumped her forehead against Estin’s chest. Sighing, she looked up a moment later, holding his face near hers as the gypsies began singing and making far too much noise.

  “No more distractions and no waiting on that man’s rules,” she said, touching his face softly. She pulled his face closer to hers, giving him a happy lick across the cheek just below his ear, then took a knee in front of him and said for everyone else to hear, “Estin, will you accept my proposal of a life-mating, knowing fully who and what I am, to bind our fates as one for so long as our hearts still beat?”

  “I accept without hesitation,” Estin said, trying to ignore the giggling of the children.

  Estin took Feanne’s hands and stood her back up, taking his own turn on a knee. He clung to her hands as he knelt, trying to use her to steady his own nerves, while giving Oria a quick glare when she gave his tail a tug. He knew for sure that the kits were definitely trying to unnerve him when Atall managed to steal one of his pouches right off his belt and made no effort to hide it.

  “Will you accept me as your only mate, no matter the thoughts of others, to bind our fates as one for so long as our hearts beat?” he asked, barely believing that the words were his own. Just speaking them somewhere other than his own mind took his breath away.

  Feanne smiled coyly and hesitated, just staring at him, her eyes glittering with mischief. She waited long enough that Estin could hear a couple of the louder gypsies begin to question whether he had misspoken something. Finth went so far as to loudly suggest that he try repeating himself, in case she had not heard him.

  “Of course I accept,” she finally said, pulling him back to his feet. “This life-mating is our oath and our bond. Let nothing break it.”

  An uproar of cheers, cat-calls, and other sounds rushed across the crowd, though it was far more muted among the wildlings. All of this Estin was happily able to ignore, looking between Feanne—his life-mate—and the kits, who were bouncing around, cheering.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “A Rift Between”

  More than two years after I had met her, I was finally bonded with the person I had always loved more than anything. I could hardly believe it, despite Yoska spending far too much of his time giving me advice that no reasonable being would offer to another that was not th
eir mate.

  Those were by far the happiest months of my life, unquestionably. Every moment of them was a blessing, especially given the turmoil in the rest of the world, while we hid in our valley, secure in our defenses, through the rest of the winter and well into summer.

  I still was not quite free of the dreams, but they were not the ones I had grown up with anymore, either. Details had warped with time, becoming something new, but I could certainly recognize the dream for what it was.

  In this new dream, I found myself outside my home when the attack occurred. Invaders rushed into the village, their grotesque undead faces visible in the distance as they grabbed at the other pack members, attempting to drag them off. The most haunting image of this part of the dream were the children I saw butchered by these creatures.

  The cries for help came from every direction and I ran to aid as many as I could, knowing the risk to myself. It was what I did as a healer. I needed to protect the pack, no matter what. I fought against one of the invaders after another, knowing somewhere deep down that these should have been bandits and furriers, but that was not this dream. Now, they were undead, their purpose more direct—they needed more corpses, using us as the raw materials that they required.

  I finished off yet another of the monsters, reeling with the injuries I had taken. I had to be sparing with my magic, as I knew so many more people would need healing before the day was out and my own wounds would be by no means fatal. Thus, I pushed on, fighting right up until the moment I heard Feanne’s scream.

  There is no sound in the world that can cut through your mind’s defenses like the person you love crying out in pain. You may believe in your own inner-strength, but when that cry comes, every learned moment of pride and vanity goes away and you are left with the panicked fear of a child, running to their aid and praying that they still live. You will make mistakes, but it cannot be helped.

  In this dream, I would burst into our house and find Feanne lying on the floor, bleeding from a head wound. At her side, a black-robed Turessian—I was never really sure what else to call them, given their own people’s admission that they were abominations—stood over her, holding a chain leash that I knew would choke her to death if she was not already gone.

  Time was short, I knew. If Feanne was still alive, that leash needed to come off quickly, or she would not be. For some reason, I knew I could not bring her back to life—perhaps my magic was consumed already, or perhaps the dream just needed it to be so.

  Growling and shouting to get the creature’s attention, I rushed at the Turessian. I dodged his first attack, hoping to grab the leash from him. I knew it would take a long time to beat the man in a fight, so I wanted to be sure that Feanne was safe first. Unfortunately, the man was stronger than I was, by a great deal. He held firm as I caught hold of the leash, stopping me from getting it away from him.

  Before I could react, he struck me across the side of my head, knocking me to the floor beside Feanne. I could barely think or move from the pain, as I struggled to find those little whispering spirits that would help me heal. My mind just would not focus, would not call out to the powers I needed to save both of our lives.

  I looked up then and in the far doorway I could see Atall and Oria, their faces drawn with fear. I knew what was coming behind me, but I did not want them to see it. These children had seen too much already and should not see their parents die. If I could not save myself and my love, I would at least spare the children this.

  Praying that the Turessian did not notice them, I mouthed the only thing I could think of.

  “Hide!”

  “You sure you’re okay?” Estin called down from the little perch he had stopped on.

  Oria and Atall glared up at him with nearly mirrored expressions as they struggled to make their way up the steep rocks. They pushed on, sometimes gaining a bit of ground, but more often slipping back to where they started.

  “It’s too steep,” Atall told him, having slid back off the rock for at least the fifth time. “We can’t do this.”

  “Yes, you can. Don’t listen to what your mother says about climbing. Just take your time and look for the handholds.”

  The kits continued trying, stopping every so often to grumble and complain about the difficulty of the climb. Each time, their own stubbornness kept them trying, until at last Atall made it up to Estin, followed very soon after by his sister.

  “I told you it wasn’t too steep,” Estin said, giving Atall a poke. “C’mon. We’re almost there.”

  Estin led the way up the remaining section of mountain, nearing a small plateau where he often went to escape the village…and to hide when Feanne was angry with him, or at least in his general direction. That part he had left out when he had told the kits about the place, prompting their immediate demands that he show it to them.

  When the kits had run straight to Feanne, begging her to let them go see the place, she had laughed herself to the point of tears at the idea of the two kits struggling up the steep mountain, but had agreed. Estin figured that she had expected them to give up and come right back.

  Now, hours of climbing later, he doubted the kits were nearly as eager as when they had started, but they had toughed through the difficult journey. For that, he was rather impressed and proud of them, though he knew much of their drive to make it up the mountain was related to the stubbornness they had inherited from Feanne.

  “Right up here,” he told them, hoisting Oria, then Atall up onto the ledge. He slid the rope he had tied to himself and to them mostly onto the ledge, then hopped up himself. “This is where I go to watch the world.”

  The ledge had been Estin’s favorite spot in the area since he had discovered it during his exploration of the peaks earlier in the spring. From where they were sitting, he could see for at least fifty miles out onto the plains and about half as far back into the mountain range. Clear skies like there were on this particular day were always the best, letting him relax in the bright sunlight, while watching the horizons.

  “What’s that?” Oria began, pointing at some random shape in the distance.

  “And that?” added Atall, also fixating on something that Estin could not even hope to identify.

  “That,” Estin explained, picking things he actually could see clear enough to recognize, “is the new lake from the water elementals, where our scouts think their leader is, or at least where the portal to their lands might be. South of there, that blackened crater was once the largest farmland I had ever seen, until the fire lords began burning the area. Still south of that, you see that shape there?”

  “Yeah,” mumbled Atall, squinting.

  “We think that might be stone elementals, building some kind of city or base or something.”

  The kits stared off into the distance, trying to make out what he was pointing at.

  “And here’s my favorite thing to watch,” he added, indicating a spot nearly north of them. “There is where the dragons are fighting the elemental lords.”

  At the location he had shown them, Estin had seen at least half a dozen dragons, their immense winged shapes visible for miles. During all of his visits in the last month, the dragons had been circling that area, as faint explosions of magic could be just barely made out. The warfare would continue day and night, with some of the magical detonations so brightly visible that they made Estin’s eyes burn.

  They watched for a while, the kits silent—for once—as they stared at the seemingly unending battle in the north. While they watched, one of the dragons flew off, crashing into the mountains.

  “They killed a dragon!” whispered Atall, his ears flattening. “I thought the dragons were immortal!”

  “That I don’t know about, but I’ve seen the dragons fall several times. They always seem to come back into the fight in an hour or so. I think they just need a rest, sometimes.”

  Estin sat with the children on the ledge for more than two hours, watching the brightly-colored battle rage on. As it was getting l
ate into the afternoon, the dragon that had fallen flew back into the fray, rejoining its kin, much to the amusement and cheering of the kits.

  “Alright, time to head back before your mother thinks I threw you both off a cliff,” he told them, standing to begin the climb down. “You’ll need to…”

  Estin cut himself off as a sound like tearing fabric echoed across the mountains. He began looking around for the source of the sound, but could find nothing that would have made anything like it. As he searched, his eyes did fall on movement far below, near the entrance to the valley. Whatever it was, it was moving quickly, heading straight into the valley.

  “We need to hurry,” Estin said, grabbing Oria under one arm and snagging Atall with his tail, as he yanked the rope off of them. “Please don’t tell your mother about this.”

  He stepped off the edge of the cliff, catching himself as he fell, then hopped down the side of the rock wall, dropping ten or fifteen feet with each fall. The kits screamed the whole way down, though he was not sure if it was for fear or enjoyment, nor did he have time to find out. Whatever was coming up the valley would likely beat him back to the village if he could not get down fast enough.

  The same climb that had taken most of the morning with the kits this time took Estin twenty minutes carrying them, though by the time he reached the bottom, his arms and legs ached and he wondered if he could still run. He stood on the ground for a minute, catching his breath, while the kits looked both ways repeatedly, trying to spot whatever he had seen earlier.

  A loud and crisp horn blast echoed through the valley’s entrance, the warning signal from the scouts if intruders had been found. Abruptly, the sound faded to a strangled bleating noise and went silent.

  “Run!” Estin ordered the kits, pointing the direction of town. The three of them bolted for the village, Estin hoping that they were well ahead of whatever was coming.