Into the Desert Wilds

by Jim Galford

  Estin shook himself bodily, knocking most of the loose sand from his fur and clothing. Satisfied that he was presentable for his family, he climbed down into the entrance hole of the den, praying to whatever spirits might hear him that Feanne and the children were waiting for him.

  The den was quiet and dark, the small fire pit in the middle of the room cold. Without the light of the coals that they had often kept burning there, even his eyes had to adjust to the dim light.

  “Feanne?”

  Someone sat up on the far side of the room, rising into a crouch. All Estin could make out was that it was vaguely humanoid, but the shadows played with his sight enough that he could not be sure of anything.

  “Please don’t be Varra,” he pleaded, tensing his muscles. The last thing he needed was his old friend-turned-Turessian showing up again to try and murder him. “If that is you Feanne, please speak up.”

  The figure took a step toward him and snarled loudly, its voice echoing off the walls of the small room. Though Estin could not see most of its features, by some trick of the light the creature’s broken teeth shone clearly.

  Estin tried to backpedal, but the creature was on him almost instantly, bowling him over backward. He attempted to kick the snapping, snarling monster off him, but it took all his strength and focus to keep the undead creature’s teeth off his muzzle and its claws away from his throat. It thrashed violently, trying to break free of his grip, forcing Estin to even use his tail to wrap the creature’s legs tightly to keep it from kicking at his sides.

  His finger slipped off his attacker’s wrist and Estin cried out as one of the creature’s hands raked across his already injured side, reopening the torn flesh. As the creature shrieked with morbid joy, Estin felt some kind of toxin begin to burn across his ribs, numbing the area in its passing.

  The numbness spreading rapidly, Estin fought all the harder, terrified at the idea of being left helpless or weakened against this creature. He slammed his forehead into its nose, knocking the undead back slightly in surprise. Estin used that moment of opportunity, clamping his hand down on the creature’s throat, digging his claws into the soft flesh. With a twist, he tore through its neck.

  Though the creature was far from mortally wounded, it rolled off him, gasping and clasping its hands over its gaping throat. With a wheeze that sounded like it was intended to be a roar, the undead snapped its attention back to Estin, its eyes afire with hatred.

  His left arm hanging numbly, Estin kicked the creature in the face as it rushed him again, then stumbled up the rise and out of the den. Estin had experienced a small amount of luck in the past escaping into the sunlight from these undead trackers, as they seemed to detest the direct heat or light, but he knew it was a gamble.

  Estin cleared the entrance to the den, breaking out into the intense sunlight, hearing his pursuer snarling behind him. Its strong hands clamped down on his ankle, the boney claws biting through his fur and into the flesh, making the skin itch and go numb.

  “Stop that, my pet,” came a man’s voice ahead of Estin. “Let the poor slave go.”

  The fingers on his ankle released immediately, though the cool numbing sensation continued up almost to his knee.

  Looking up, Estin found Arturis sitting on the ground nearby, his black robe’s hood pulled up to keep his face in shadow.

  “Are you quite done running away and killing my ghouls?”

  Estin growled and attempted to stand, but his numb leg and arm made movement difficult. Instead, he looked back at the creature—a ghoul, it would seem—that had attacked him. It now sat in the shadowed entrance of the den, watching him angrily, while blackish blood dripped from its torn throat.

  “If they keep following me, I’ll keep killing them,” Estin answered, trying to sound confident, despite lying awkwardly on the ground because of the numbness in his limbs. “You finally get tired of waiting for them to succeed?”

  “Not even remotely,” answered the human, smiling broadly. “In case you had not yet figured me out, I prefer not to kill useful people. The city continues to operate nicely, so why turn them all into walking corpses? You are much the same. I find you potentially useful, so there is no sense having you killed just yet. If that changes, I assure you, you will know. For now, I prefer to keep you on the move as a bit of light entertainment when I have nothing better to do.”

  Estin pulled himself into a sitting position as he tried to work some feeling back into his arm. Rather than getting better, the numbness had spread across most of his left side, the two scratches’ effects blurring together.

  “Then why keep sending the ghouls? You know I’m hiding nothing from you anymore.”

  The man gestured dismissively. “I doubted you were hiding anything long ago, slave. I have already moved on to new projects, but I chose to keep an eye on you. There is a proposition I wish to make.”

  “No deal. I don’t negotiate with necromancers.”

  Arturis chuckled and replied as though Estin had expressed interest, saying, “The offer I will make is that every time you kill one of my ghouls, I will send another the following day. This will continue until they kill you—which I might add will be after they spend hours eating you. The alternative I offer you is that you tell me in great detail what it was that your old friend Varra wanted for you. Her memories were not spread to the rest of us, so it’s become a bit of a curiosity for me.”

  “She wanted revenge for me letting her become one of you.”

  “Not entirely a lie,” noted Arturis, tapping a finger against his chin. “She had plans for you. I doubt anything so mundane as keeping you around as a mindless zombie, however.”

  Leaning toward Estin, Arturis grabbed him by the jaw and lifted him off the ground.

  “I see magic in you, slave, and thus value. Did the little gypsy girl think she could make you one of us? The rest of my brethren certainly would not approve, but I can see a child thinking it would be acceptable to keep her favorite pet around for eternity.”

  Estin managed to pull his head free of Arturis’ grip, snarling as he did so.

  “Thank you for confirming it,” the man said, leaning back against the rocks. “That gives me a new game to play with you. I’ll see you beg me to become one of us.”

  Dragging himself a little ways away using his one good arm, Estin answered, “You know I won’t accept. I turned her down when I was already dying, so why would I take the offer from you?”

  “Because I have something you want.”

  Estin let that hang for a short time, wondering if he should take the bait. Arturis just stared back at him, unblinking, while the ghoul wheezed and gasped, clawing ineffectually at its throat.

  “Varra offered me immortality and limitless power. We killed her anyway. What can you offer me that you think will motivate me to give up my life and join a bunch of corpse-loving crazies?”

  Arturis stood up, walking past Estin to gaze down into the den.

  “I am betting you wish to know what happened to them,” he said, then patted Estin on the head. Estin flinched away, making Arturis laugh. “You won’t find them—or what’s left of them by the time you decide—without me.”

  The man stepped over Estin and walked out toward the desert, with the ghoul hopping along beside him, its gangly limbs making it look far more awkward then it truly was.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” added the Turessian as he walked, “I will give you back your name if you agree to join me, slave. It may seem like a little thing, but I’ve been told that after years of being called a slave, it begins to demoralize even the strongest.”

  Estin lay where he was, watching until the man had disappeared behind the tall stone pillars. He waited a little longer as feeling slowly returned to his side and leg. Once he was able to wiggle his toes comfortably again, he got back to his feet and headed down into the den.

  There was no way that Arturis had Feanne and the children. He kept telling himself that over and over, trying to ignore the
painful clenching in his stomach. He had to believe it was a lie. The very idea that someone like Arturis had threatened them to destroy Estin made it something he had to deny. Still, he would have expected the man to provide more proof if it were true, if only to brag all the more.

  Estin went back into the den expecting to be attacked again. To Estin, that seemed the likely result of Arturis’ sadistic behavior. Thankfully, the room appeared to be empty, though the ghoul had clearly rummaged through everything.

  The few things that Estin’s family had left behind when heading into the city lay strewn around the back of the cave-like room, with blankets torn and old bits of clothing shredded. A simple pot had been smashed against a rock, denting it. Even the slightly dug-out areas on the floor that had been “beds” for the older children appeared to have been clawed at.

  Moving slowly around the room, trying to find anything that might give him more information on what had happened, Estin stopped near the area where he and Feanne had slept. In the middle of the packed ground, a flat stone had been laid. It did not match those of the walls, but he had seen similar ones outside the den. Someone had dragged it inside and made a point of placing it in his “bed.”

  Estin hesitated, eyeing the out-of-place stone. Bending down and putting his cheek against the floor, he moved slowly around it, trying to be sure no form of trap had been placed on it. The last thing he needed was to lose a finger or two because Arturis thought it would be funny.

  Finding no visible trap, Estin took a deep breath and dug his claws and fingertips under the edge of the rock. With a heave that flared agony through his side, he pulled the stone aside, dragging it away from the bedding area.

  Where the stone had been, a shallow pit had been dug. Inside, Estin saw his first evidence that his family had come back.

  In the pit, a bearskin cloak was wrapped around his two swords. That cloak had been Feanne’s and had survived several winters in the mountains. She had found it with him during the first day they had met and Estin believed she would not willingly part with it unless she were truly gone from this place.

  Among the pack members, the dead were often burned to keep their bodies away from those who would hunt them. In lieu of that, bodies were placed under heavy stones with a trinket or two, left by loved ones. Feanne leaving the cloak with his swords was a fairly clear “goodbye” in Estin’s mind, making his heart sink and his hands shake as he picked up the bundle.

  Estin lifted the cloak from the pit, then noticed something lying under it. It was his notebook of spells, though it appeared to have seen better days. The book had either been beaten against a wall for days, or someone had been reading it almost to the point of it falling apart.

  He set aside the cloak and swords, picking up the book instead. A quick glance inside revealed that while all of his notes on magic were intact, someone had ripped out the pages where he had scribbled down his memories of the last few years, which he had meant to leave for the children. He hoped that meant they had those stories with them, at least until he could find them all again, wherever they might be.

  Closing his eyes as he tossed the book aside, he unwrapped the cloak from the twin swords and pulled it to his face, smelling Feanne and the children on it. Faintly, he could even smell the woods of the mountains.

  Estin fought back tears as he whispered, “I will find you. Whether you are alive or dead, I will come for you.”

  *

  Standing in the middle of the street, Estin watched the elves of Corraith pass by him. Most avoided looking at anyone, least of all a foreign wildling who was bloodied and wearing the fur of an animal over his shoulders. The mass of residents parted around him, letting him silently stand in the street, hands on his swords as he waited for something...

  He just was not sure what.

  “Move it, before I drag you off the streets,” demanded a woman’s voice behind Estin.

  Turning, he found himself facing three of the city guards. Two were middle-aged elven men, whose attention was on the alleys and the people at the fringes of the crowds. The third was a young elven woman—young at least by elven standards—who was glowering at Estin.

  “Did Arturis demand I move?” asked Estin, seeing the nervous facial twitches on the men, showing that they knew of the Turessian. Neither would even look in Estin’s general direction after he used the word. “Or is this a public service?”

  “I don’t give a huff what that man wants us to do,” the woman answered, putting a hand on her sword with a loud jingle of the scale armor she wore. Her other hand tightened on the grip of a small shield, clearly ready to deal with anything he might try. “My job is to keep these streets safe and moving.”

  Estin eyed the woman, evaluating whether she was able to back her demeanor. Though he saw no scars on her heavily-tanned skin to indicate old battles, she carried herself like someone used to wearing armor and facing down an opponent. Even just standing there talking, she maintained a balanced stance that spoke volumes about her readiness.

  “As long as you serve him, you’re not keeping anyone safe,” Estin answered and began walking away, not sure if he was doing the right thing. Really, all he wanted was to see how strong of a hold Arturis had on the city. Since the man always knew where he was, Estin felt there was no sense in hiding anymore.

  Footsteps behind him told him that he might have guessed right about the woman. She was hot-headed, but either not loyal to the undead, or not quite willing to kill on his behalf without reason. Either was useful.

  “I serve the city, wildling. Who do you serve?”

  “Then serve it, not him. When you’re ready to stand up for your people, you’ll follow me. Until then, go with your fellow guards and do whatever your master demands.”

  He kept walking, heading toward the old thieves’ guild. By the time he got there, the day was getting late and the area was mostly empty. Stopping near the point where he would have to leave the street to continue into the guild, he looked back and saw the elven woman not far away, leaning against a fallen stone.

  “Been practicing that speech long?” she asked, pulling her long black hair back into a quick ponytail that exposed her pointed ears. “Wasn’t one of the better ones I’ve heard, but not the worst.”

  Estin checked back up the street and asked, “You didn’t bring the others?”

  “They’re probably off reporting me for talking to some foreigner. Either the commander will order them to arrest you, or he’ll run straight to Arturis to ask what he should do.”

  “Do you care which?”

  The woman laughed and shrugged. “My commander ordered us to lay down our weapons when Arturis and his forces showed up. I should have put my sword in his gut.

  “Now, how about giving me a reason to think you’ll live until tomorrow? You’ve only got about an hour before our dark and scary lord orders people to slit your throat.”

  Estin pulled open his cloak, showing her the blood that had dried across his entire left side. “I’ve been fighting Arturis’ ghouls for weeks. What have you done to stop him? One more day won’t be hard for me to manage.”

  That made the woman grin. “Same thing, but I was smart enough to wear armor,” she noted, leaning forward and pulling out a necklace of bones that had hung under her armor. Estin easily recognized them as broken teeth. She hid it again quickly. “They like to hunt at night. So do I and a few others…I’ve even come across a wildling or two hunting the hunters.”

  “Armor slows me down.”

  “So does dying. I’ll opt for living through my fights slowly, thank you.”

  They stood watching each other for a time as the daylight faded.

  “Will you fight him openly?” asked Estin at last.

  “No,” she replied immediately. “If I thought I could win, yes. With one wildling at my side, there’s no way. He killed almost a hundred armed men the day he arrived. We wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  Estin inclined his head toward the thieves’ gui
ld. “Are they loyal to him?”

  The elven girl laughed and shook her head. “No, but they aren’t loyal to anyone. If you go in there without being invited, you’re as good as dead. I won’t come in to drag your corpse out.”

  Estin turned and headed toward the dark open door of the guild hall, knowing she was probably right. Still, he was done running. It was time to find allies or die trying. It was the only chance he had of seeing Feanne again if she was being held by Arturis.

  “Do you have a name, girl?” he asked over his shoulder, but heard nothing in reply. Estin glanced back and the woman was gone, leaving the street empty behind him.

  Sighing, Estin strode into the guild’s dark entry room. He knew the place was probably empty after Arturis had come in and taken control to torture Estin, but he had to hope there were still some living people there. If anyone in the city knew what was going on and might be willing to do something about it, it would be thieves.

  He picked his way through the various rooms of the building, making his way slowly back toward where the different masters had kept their company. Unlike the last time he had come, every room was quiet and empty, as though everyone had simply disappeared.

  Circling back through the halls, Estin found himself at a total loss. He had expected a handful of thugs to have stuck around, who he had hoped he could bully or bribe into helping. Instead, there was nothing. The whole place had been ransacked.

  Frustrated, he strode back toward the front door a little later, nearly walking headlong into the elven guard, who was leaning against the front door’s frame. Her armor allowed her to fill the door almost completely, blocking him.

  “Not dead yet?” she asked, smiling.

  “No one in here to kill me, I’m afraid. Just you and I.”

  “What’s so important about this city that you’re willing to out yourself in public against Arturis and risk getting your throat slit in there? I thought your people were smarter about keeping their tails out of the fire. I always heard you had instincts to keep you from doing stupid things. Are you feeble in the head, maybe?”