Into the Desert Wilds

by Jim Galford

  Twirling his other sword to bring it around the ghoul’s grasping hands as it came at him again, Estin drove the other weapon into the creature’s stomach. Though the ghoul choked on blood that began trickling from its mouth, it backhanded Estin, knocking him over backward.

  Dazed and bleeding down the side of his face and muzzle, Estin tried to stand, but realized he had no weapons. Even with all his magic, at such close range the ghoul would tear him apart. He simply did not have time to form the thoughts and patterns that would make up a spell.

  Estin closed his eyes tightly and waited for the burning sensation that would come with the ghoul’s diseased claws.

  “Stop making me get involved!” Sirella cried out, as Estin opened his eyes to see her drive her foot into the side of the ghoul’s knee, breaking it.

  The ghoul screamed and stumbled away from the woman, then seemed to notice Estin’s second weapon for the first time. It slapped the partially-embedded weapon free, sending it clattering away. The ghoul tried to do the same with the first sword that was hilt-deep, but gave up immediately when the weapon would not move. With another cry of anger, the ghoul turned to face Sirella.

  While the two circled slowly—the ghoul hobbling as it went and Sirella looking genuinely annoyed, rather than fearful—Estin felt at his wounds. The tear in his side was bleeding again, but it was the cuts on his face that concerned him. They were close to his eye and had begun to cause the lids to swell. Thankfully, he was feeling none of the tingling numbness that the ghoul’s claws could inflict.

  Using the extra time he had to make sure he could fight again, Estin drew some of his magic into the injury, reducing the bleeding and swelling. It would swell again in time, but he knew he would be able to at least get through the fight before it got too bad.

  Estin pulled himself back upright, while Sirella parried several of the ghoul’s attacks with her single sword, blocking a swift kick with her shield.

  With a deft lunge, Sirella tucked her sword under her other arm, grabbed Estin’s sword from the ghoul’s chest, and flipped it over her back into the air.

  The sword flew high, but Estin watched it as it soared toward him. He plucked it easily mid-flight and advanced to stand at Sirella’s side as the ghoul shrieked angrily at them both.

  “Your fight, not mine,” reminded Sirella, stepping back. “Prove you’re worth the trouble.”

  The ghoul jabbered incoherently and inched away, eyeing the two of them. From what Estin could make out, it was unsure who the greater threat was. Orders to kill Estin or not, the ghoul was trying to size up its opponents and protect itself.

  Estin partially closed his eyes to focus again as he sheathed his sword. The magic flowed more easily now, rushing through him from the spirits down through his limbs and into his fingers with a chill tingle.

  “He is strong again,” whispered a voice that came out too clearly among the others, making Estin flinch and dismissing his previous theory that he had to be near death to make out their words. “Perhaps he can act where we could not.”

  “Or he will die gruesomely,” came another, before fading back into the jumble of disembodied voices.

  Concentrating through the encroaching voices was far more difficult for Estin than when he learned to ignore the original whispers that came with healing magic. His attention wavered and he very nearly lost the spell he was working to form, which the ghoul appeared to notice.

  Shrieking again, the ghoul rushed at Estin. It practically flung itself at the hand he was channeling the magic through, as if it knew what was coming and sought to protect itself the only way it knew how.

  Despite all the distractions, Estin finally managed to bring the spell together. He waved his hand at the ghoul, very nearly punching it in the chest as he released the magic outward with a rush that burned across his fur and down his arm, even making his claws tingle as it left him.

  The ghoul shuddered and came to a stop, close enough that its rancid breath stirred Estin’s muzzle fur. It wavered once and then collapsed, its body rapidly disintegrating into a pile of dust.

  “You didn’t mention you could do that,” remarked Sirella, coming up beside Estin and patting him overly hard on the shoulder. “Good work, despite all.”

  “Despite what?” he asked, panting as he sat down gracelessly on the ground.

  Estin’s heart was racing and not entirely from the exertion of fighting the ghoul. The magic had been the strongest he had attempted after months of inactivity. All magic was draining, but the powerful spell sapped every muscle in his body, making him feel as though he had been running hard for an hour or better. Healing his remaining wounds would have to wait.

  Sirella knelt beside Estin, roughly grabbing at his face to study his wounds. She said nothing about the injuries, but let him lean away after she had looked them over.

  “You just made a public show of killing one of the unspoken ruler’s creatures,” she told him, nodding at the pile of dust that had begun to drift on the breeze, leaving the ghoul’s twisted bones behind. “Arturis could have ignored you and played games behind the scenes before. Now, he will be just as open as you were. That would be what I would do, at least.”

  Motioning to the edges of the plaza, Sirella made Estin aware that a dozen people had gathered to watch the fight. More were showing up each second, watching Estin—the supposed new member of the council.

  “Thank you for your help,” he told Sirella, pulling himself back upright. His feet felt unsteady as his head spun, but Estin had no desire to stick around. “I’ll get to shelter before he can find out what I did here. Once I have my strength back, we’ll talk more about where to go from here.”

  Estin took several steps, but then realized Sirella was following him.

  “Go home,” Estin told her firmly. “Maybe you can help me again someday soon, but for now, you are better off forgetting you saw me.”

  At that, Sirella laughed almost hysterically.

  “I was a fugitive the moment I helped you,” she countered. “Why do you think I wished to watch and not fight? When they saw me aid you, I stopped being a city guard, at least as far as Arturis is concerned. I’m just another rebel, no different from you. I’ll thank you another day for that.”

  Estin’s tail and ears drooped as he thought of what the elven woman had put on the line to help him. Thieves’ guild member or not, she had put herself in harm’s way for the rest of her life for a complete stranger. Rather than stumble through words that would not truly express how he felt, Estin turned and began walking again.

  By the time Estin reached the abandoned home he had taken as his own, the sun had fallen low, casting long shadows. A glance behind him revealed Sirella sauntering casually after him, as if there were nothing odd about an armored city guard following a long-tailed and injured wildling through empty streets.

  “This is it,” Estin told her, gesturing at the sand-beaten gate. “It’s certainly not much—or mine—but it’s the best I have been able to secure.”

  Smiling at the old home, Sirella turned and let out a long whistle that echoed off the other buildings nearby. Within seconds, a dozen elves and humans appeared, all heavily armed. Every one of them had been hidden among the ruined structures and old homes nearby and had somehow managed to hide even their scents from Estin.

  “What is this?” Estin demanded, drawing his swords.

  With so many people approaching, Estin found himself turning repeatedly, trying to keep them all in this field of vision. Every one of them looked at least mildly dangerous.

  “I never said I left the guild,” noted Sirella, pushing open the gate to the house gently. “These people are mine. They now are at your service, until you no longer amuse me.”

  Estin relaxed somewhat, lowering his weapons as the long line of men and women began filing past him into the abandoned property. Most gave him stern sidelong glances, warning him against any foolish actions without words. On several, he thought he recognized scents from
previous visits to the guild house, though he could not be entirely sure.

  Once the last of the newcomers passed Estin—a burly man carrying a wheeled crate that appeared to be filled with what Estin recognized as the makings of potentially-lethal and explosive traps—he followed the train into the property. He closed the gate behind him, then approached the home itself.

  Inside, the dozen men and women were already hard at work, rearranging the place and setting up items in front of the windows to hide their presence. Two were scouring the kitchen and gathering items to prepare a meal. Still others stood in the main room, debating how best to set up defenses against any unwanted visitors.

  At Estin’s entry, an older elven woman—whom Estin soon recognized as Marra, the innkeeper, who now had a dozen knives fastened all over a jacket of lightweight armor—came rushing up to him, holding a scrap of parchment with writing on it.

  “You have no food here,” she noted, staring at the list, but never so much as looking up at Estin. “The windows are a problem, so we’ll close those off. Also, how do you feel about living in a building with explosives on the doors?”

  “I…don’t think I have ever considered it…”

  “Forget I mentioned it. We’ll use blade traps and poisons instead. Next on the list is bedding. You were last in, so you missed the discussion of who sleeps where. That means you sleep on the floor.”

  “I…”

  “We did an inventory and we should be able to equip you better than…” the woman poked Estin in the chest with her fingertip, “…the clothes you’re wearing. Armor is on the list. Possibly a bath. How do you feel about old women scrubbing you?”

  “I…”

  “Good, because I wasn’t volunteering,” Marra told him, double-checking her list. “Be a good boy and stay out of the way.”

  The woman hurried off, making more notes on the parchment with a piece of charcoal.

  “Sirella?” Estin asked aloud, walking slowly through the room toward the staircase down. “Sirella! Where are you?”

  The woman’s head appeared from one of the side rooms.

  “Make yourself at home, Estin,” she told him, grinning. “We already did. Pretend like we aren’t even here.”

  Numbly, Estin went into the cellar staircase entryway, closing the door behind him. Scents of the newcomers filled the staircase, making Estin wonder when in the minute he had been waiting outside they had even found time to explore the basement.

  Estin took his time descending to the little study down in the cellar, where he found that nearly everything had been ever so slightly rearranged. It was not enough that a casual observer would even notice, but after watching for signs of intruders in the home recently, Estin could spot the changes.

  “No sense in leaving it like this,” he mused, flipping the overturned desk back onto its legs. He slowly began putting all of the furniture into a semblance of a useful arrangement.

  With a groan, Estin sat down in one of the room’s chairs, then closed his eyes and listened to the movement upstairs.

  “What have I gotten myself into this time?” he asked himself, as he heard more people come in the front door. “When I see Feanne again, she’ll box my ears for sure.”

  He leaned back in the chair and contemplated his situation a little longer.

  “If it brings them back, let’s see how much trouble I can get myself into. Master Estin…I think I like it.”

  Chapter Six

  “Living Among the Enemy”

  My choices were always selfish. I would follow what I thought were instincts, charging headlong into what later turned out to be danger. I reveled in that, enjoying the mayhem and chaos that erupted when my plans went badly. I will never claim I was a smart child, just a lucky one for surviving anywhere near adulthood.

  Just because I was wrong or foolish did not mean I would back down. Atall saw that more clearly than most—or at least spoke out about it more. He was the most frequent target of the fights I picked, but with a new audience, I found new people to anger.

  I doubt my mother was blind to my mistakes, but she said nothing. She had always allowed me the leniency to be myself and do stupid things to learn what it was like to grow up. To this day, I wonder if I should thank or curse her for that.

  She gave both my brother and I that luxury, but Atall embraced the freedoms by focusing on trying to be more adult. I grasped at every dumb thing a near-adult could find that made her feel more mature, but to everyone else made her look the idiot.

  It was a long time before I admitted how badly I had drifted from what I needed to be. My parents’ lesson to me was not that I was free, but rather that with freedom came the need to guide oneself to be a better person.

  That was my father’s best lesson to me. Freedom has its own confines, but you need to find them within yourself. I routinely ignored what was inside myself, preferring to obsess about what was going on around me.

  If ever a child—even so close to adulthood as I was—had made a greater mess in order to learn how the world works, I have yet to find any mention of it in any history book. Should you find a better example, please let me know.

  Once, I felt my mother was the freest wildling in all the world, far more so than father. I saw the slaves and I saw the so-called civilized wildlings, but in them I could practically feel the restrictions on their spirit, trapping them as surely as any chains. Phaesys was a symbol to me of all that was wrong with the cities and what they did to a person.

  I believed mother to be the only wilding who was true to herself. Even father—Estin—was so bound to mother, that I saw him as nearly a servant. I had no understanding and likely will never grasp the depth of his affection for her.

  Of anyone, Estin I now know was the most free. He had come to grip with who he was and what meant the most to him. Once a person knows what they care about, freedom is in the choice of how to live their life with that knowledge. Even the greatest restrictions put on oneself are still freedom, as the choice was your own to make.

  For all her talk of freedom and unwillingness to abide by others’ rules, Feanne was as much a slave as any wildling I had seen back in Altis. She dwelled on whether others respected her enough and whether she had done everything she felt she was duty-bound to accomplish. Every moment of her life was wrapped up in securing dominance over others, or placing her children in a position of safety.

  Father had a totally different outlook on life. From his stories, I know he had grown up worrying about nearly everything. He had struggled to survive for many years. Once he found mother, she—and eventually all of us children—were the only things that he cared about. Image, reputation, even his breed’s instincts were secondary. That is to say, his very self was secondary to that which he loved.

  Estin was free to be whatever he wanted. I still had not learned how to escape my own pride. Even as I write this, I pray that one day I can live up to what my father had become and earn the devotion he put into our lives.

  I’m not there yet, but I hope to be eventually.

  Oria scowled as Feanne led them toward the hidden entrance of the tunnels. They had been trudging along all morning, Oria’s mother having woken them hours earlier than they normally would have been up.

  Oria had made a habit of avoiding daylight in the desert, but Feanne had insisted on the early start, making the six of them struggle through the scalding heat. The travel had been roughest on the three kits, who now were hiding under Feanne’s long linen cloak. How their mother managed to wear the cloak in such heat, Oria could not even fathom. Her own fur was hot enough, but the linen shirt and pants she wore trapped that heat. Left to her own, Oria would have shredded the human-style clothing and run around in rags or less.

  “Mom, can’t we wait until dark?” Oria pleaded yet again, barely able to keep her mouth shut as she panted to keep herself cool.

  “As I have told you repeatedly, I wish to arrive and have all of our conversations before the elves and humans bed d
own for the evening. Their sleep schedules are not as well thought-out as ours and I have no desire to tramp around their home while they attempt to sleep.”

  “But it’s hot out during the day! Can’t we at least wait until the sun starts to go down?”

  Feanne came to a stop and turned to stare at Oria as though confused. As she did so, the three kits hiding under her cloak peeked out and made their best scowls at Oria, apparently having decided she had done something wrong and was about to be scolded.

  “I’m sorry,” Feanne answered, glancing over at Atall, who just shrugged. “I forget that my bond with nature shields me from the heat and cold at times. I had not even noticed the heat.”

  They stood there a minute, then Feanne shook her head slightly.

  “No, we will continue on,” she said, setting off again as she spoke. “You keep saying you wish to lead like I did...if you do, it will be here. I taught Es…various people back in the mountains how to survive the weather there, so you must learn to endure this. No pack leader would hide herself—or himself—until dark if they needed to accomplish something sooner.”

  Groaning, Oria pulled a sheet of soft white fabric she had stolen from the inn over her head, trying to shield her ears from the sunlight. The tips were definitely burned and she had no desire for it to get any worse.

  Searching for some support, Oria turned to Atall, hoping that with his added voice, their mother might see the sense in waiting. Instead of support, she found Atall calmly walking with his head uncovered and his mouth closed, as though completely unaffected by the heat, just like their mother.

  “How are you doing that?” whispered Oria.

  Atall smirked at her and tried to walk a little faster, but Oria snagged his arm.

  “How?” she demanded.

  Muttering something, Atall stopped walking and faced Oria. “You know that stupid expression the old healer in Insrin’s village always said about getting burned when you play with fire?” asked Atall, checking over his shoulder in the direction of their mother.