Bones of the Empire

by Jim Galford

  Leaning close, Somn added a little louder than needed, “The rope joke was the bear’s idea.”

  Small ears perking, the white bear let out a deep-throated, “Mrrr?” and glared at Somn.

  Ignoring the remark, Raeln raised his voice. “We will march tomorrow morning for the temple of Turessi, with all of you riding beside me if you are able to fight. Those who cannot will stay with the clan during battle. No one will fight who does not want to. You are free people and make your own choices. I will welcome those who would be with me, though.”

  A cheer rose through the group, drawing annoyed glances from the Turessians who were within sight.

  Raeln grinned broadly at his newest allies, right up until the bear “patted” him on the back, knocking him flat.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Accept and Embrace”

  I am surrounded by allies of all sorts, the ranks growing more odd by the day.

  Humans from cities hundreds of miles away in every direction. A small group among them even claims to have been “privateers” in a sea somewhere to the south, though Rishad tells me this means they were actually pirates. Never having met one myself, I find them fascinating and no more unscrupulous than any of the gypsies I ever met.

  Elves who inhabited the woods that, more often than not, were burned by the undead or cleared by them. They have been a silent addition to the army and often keep to themselves, but they are more than willing to fight, no matter the odds. I would never consider them to be people I would have wanted to travel the world with, but they are skilled warriors and incredibly determined. Some even have wolf wildlings at their sides, as welcome as kin.

  Dwarves who survived the fall of their cities in the mountains stand beside the elves. These people may be among the most stubborn and hardy creatures to live on Eldvar, but they have seen awful things in their old lands. The youngest among them weep almost every night. I have not had the heart to ask more questions about what they have gone through, as I likely already have a good idea of it myself.

  Halflings who have come from every nook and corner of the known world to stand against someone who would take away freedoms they have only had for a few generations. They may generally hate fighting and bloodshed, but with freedom on the line, even the gentle halflings are more than willing to butcher our enemy. They seem to have a rather disturbing love of setting traps and ambushes for the few patrols we’ve encountered.

  There are dark elves from the same lands as the dwarves, who will not speak of the fall of their cities. They have voiced such a deep hatred for anything Turessian that I’m impressed that they haven’t charged headlong into the wilderness trying to reach the temple first. There are so few of them left that my initial thought was that they were a rare people to begin with. Brief conversations with some of them during the evenings have convinced me there were once hundreds of thousands of them…now only twenty or so remain. If more of their people are out there somewhere, no one in the army is aware of them. Somehow, the survivors are able to appear calm about it all.

  Fae-kin of all sorts have come from all over Eldvar, mostly helping the others survive and endure the north. I saw one who looked much like Dalania, though this woman was from the east. Seeing her has me wondering if there are other groups, other armies, other survivors that might include some of the people we believe are lost.

  Ogres, though few, have come to repay a “debt” they owe Turessi, with a calm determination that frightens many of us. There is no anger in them that we can see, much as one would see no anger in a boulder about to fall on you. I fear the day these kind folks decide it is time to do battle. I am glad to be on the same side.

  Orcs, with their quick tempers, have come out of revenge or a desire to prove themselves against the greatest foe the world has seen. Even their children carry heavy weapons and speak of bloodshed. I have chosen to avoid them for the most part, though Feanne finds their battle stories fascinating. I keep wondering if they are encouraging her or she them.

  The wildlings are a relatively rare thing in the army, but they have been very outspoken. And with Feanne taking leadership by virtue of being a god’s spokesperson, every wildling now considers her the pack-leader. Wildlings have fallen into two distinct groups by their breed’s inclinations, much as they once did in Lihuan’s camp, allowing the prey breeds a degree of comfort without the pure predators watching over them. The scouts are led by Alafa and her mate—a skittish male named Barlen who is more than happy to talk for hours about his antlers—while the warriors are led by Feanne, though Arella assists when Feanne isn’t around. Somehow I have become the go-between for the two groups, as Alafa has become convinced Feanne will cook her with pepper and herbs—the morbid specifics of this make me wonder who has been filling that female’s head with this nonsense.

  We even have acquired a handful of gnomes—strange little people with overly large ears and noses—who I’ve been told do not exist, despite them being very much among our troops. Linn has all but ignored them and keeps telling himself they can’t be gnomes. We’re still not sure where they came from, and they merely grin at us when we ask. They seem not to speak any tongue we’ve attempted. I have no idea what to make of their arrival. Who am I to question strange people who want to help?

  Then there are the monsters. My children, I cannot possibly put into words what we have gathered to fight beside us, but I’ll try.

  Werewolves are the largest single “creature” type we have gathered. We began with about thirty from the temple of Jnodin, but I have watched that number grow. While the priests change back to human form when we camp each evening, the newcomers never change. They appear to be monstrous wildlings, and some of them do not even appear to know how to speak. While I write this, I can count fifty werewolves in the camp and three werebears. Other lycanthropes somehow know when we are coming, and they join us as we pass each wooded area, going straight to Feanne and falling into formation behind her as though they have waited for her arrival for their whole lives. Honestly, your mother’s pride might be large enough to crush Turessi if this keeps up.

  Rock dragons have been brought as beasts of burden, but unlike horses or oxen, these giant lizards gleefully charge into each fight. They are deadly, with armored hides and jaws that can rip a large cow in half, and as stupid as the rocks they are named after. The dwarves who brought them have somehow trained them to carry hundreds of pounds of gear and only attack targets they are given. I question their loyalty if we miss a feeding. Each evening, I require several of the humans to count the halflings, gnomes, and dwarves, lest we lose some to the rock dragons.

  There are other creatures helping us, though I cannot say who or what they are. Should they use their might in war, have no fear that the world will know they were at our side. Someday I hope to be able to admit to their aid.

  What I can tell you is that for the first time since leaving you, both of your parents are whole again. Let our foes quake, knowing what comes. This war will either be the last one for the living, or it will be the thing of legend. If I put these writings in your hands myself, I can only imagine the stories I can tell.

  “They cut us off again,” Feanne said sadly, lying flat on her stomach among the sparse brush near the woods, and closed her eyes. The stress on her each time they lost a route to the temple was growing, and Estin worried whether she would make a mistake soon that would cost many people their lives.

  He remained as still as he could beside Feanne, taking extra care to keep his tail to the ground. The two of them had crept as close as they dared to the descent of the hill, which gave way to a new section of plains that were not only snow-covered, but filled with line after line of undead, standing eerily still in the constant snowfall. Many of the undead were difficult to spot and might have been impossible to see under the snow, had they not been surrounded by hundreds more.

  “That’s three times in a week,” Estin replied, looking up at the moon overhead. It was only about four days from f
ull. If he had his way, they would wait for a new moon, but Mairlee had insisted on arriving before. Feanne had agreed readily without explaining why. He knew part of it had to do with allowing the humans and other people with poor eyesight to be able to fight at night. But he suspected it had nearly as much to do with the lycanthropes that continued to arrive. She had never been willing to fully explain the relationship with the moon, so Estin had to rely on legend.

  Sliding up on Estin’s other side, Alafa and Barlen, her mate, stared down at the enemy forces too. They had scouted the night before and found the area clear, but now they were glaring at the freshly arrived army that stood between them and the temple. Apparently, Dorralt was closing off every route faster than the two deer could run. Given that the deer were able to cover three times as much ground as the army itself, it did not bode well.

  “We can outrun them and lead them in circles while you go by,” Alafa volunteered, getting a panicked look from her mate. “Lihuan liked it when we did that.”

  “My father did not like it…he tolerated it. The Turessians have too many troops for that,” Feanne replied, despite Alafa not really having spoken to her. It was part of the odd relationship they had. Alafa talked to Estin while Feanne replied directly. Barlen spoke to no one who he considered a meat-eater, which included Estin about half the time. It felt like old times to Estin. “They will circle you both, and we will still wind up fighting through them to rescue you two.”

  Wrinkling her nose, Alafa asked, “Estin, can you smush them all? You’re good with magic and your mate is burly.”

  Feanne turned to glare past Estin at that, prompting Barlen to move to Alafa’s far side, putting her between himself and Feanne and Estin. “We cannot fight them all,” Feanne snapped, returning her attention to the undead, though her stiff tail told Estin she was fuming. “There are over ten thousand down there. We have maybe a thousand. And I am not burly.”

  Alafa’s eyes widened, and she began counting the undead out loud, one at a time.

  “Sooner or later, we need to punch through,” Estin said, trying to ignore Alafa as she approached twenty and began faltering, with Barlen occasionally piping up with a number she missed…usually incorrectly. “We’re still days or farther from the temple, even with a clear path.”

  “We will keep looking,” Feanne replied.

  Rolling over and pulling Feanne partway up, he pointed toward the west, where mists could be seen all the way across the horizon. “How long, Feanne? I haven’t seen a break in the mists in days. They’ll get into Turessi sooner or later. You heard Turess yourself. We can’t delay forever. He’s spent every day trying to find a way to slow them, and we both know he isn’t making any progress.”

  Feanne made a point of looking anywhere but at the mists, which left her looking over at Alafa, who had gotten stuck somewhere around fifty, with Barlen no longer providing much help. Sighing, Feanne nodded. “We will search a little longer. If we cannot find a way in within two days, we will attempt to force our way through. I just fear that we might lose too many people to even present a worthwhile challenge to Dorralt.”

  “Does it matter, if the mists kill us all?”

  Shrugging, Feanne rubbed at her face. She had slept only a few hours each day in the last week, and it had to be wearing on her. The few times she had been willing to come to bed with him, she had wound up getting back up almost immediately. “What of your great wizardess or the legendary Turess? Have they come up with any new ideas that they have failed to share with me the last few days?”

  Estin’s ears twitched as Alafa begin counting at one again. “Mairlee is gone. She said she had some plan and hasn’t shown her face in days. Turess…he has a plan, but you won’t like it.”

  “I have put up with your plans in the past, Estin. His cannot be worse. Tell me before I skin those two idiots behind you.”

  Estin glanced back and breathed a sigh of relief that Alafa and Barlen had not heard. If they had, it would have taken him hours to calm them down. “Turess thinks that he can change the magic at the temple so that it protects a smaller area, but for much longer. Possibly for years. If we can take the temple and hold it, we can hide there until the mists starve and dissipate. They’ve come too far from anything else to go back now. We pretty much drew all the world’s mists to this land, and the longer we hold them, the weaker they’ll get. He told me that was why he had us bring his relics this far…to lure the mists, just in case we had no other option.”

  “Is this a guess or a fact that it will work?”

  “An educated guess by the only person who’s managed to really stop the mists in history, with the help of a wizardess who’s also helping us. I’ll take that over my own guess any day.”

  She nodded in unhappy agreement, with a twitch of her whiskers that meant she would argue it again once she had found a better angle to attack the plan. Feanne suddenly went stiff, staring past Estin. Before he could ask, she grabbed the front of his shirt and slammed him face-first into the snow.

  “Four Turessians out there with the undead,” she whispered into his ear, and Estin struggled to turn his face out of the snow so he could breathe. “We’re stuck right here until they leave. Stay down, Estin, and stop making that choking sound.”

  Grumbling, Estin slapped her hand off his shirt and settled more comfortably onto the ground. As he looked out at the thousands of undead, he saw the four Feanne was talking about, moving slowly through the lines, their black robes standing out easily against the snow. They were conspicuous, even half a mile away.

  Apparently having seen them too, Alafa and Barlen were practically buried in the snow to hide themselves, though if the Turessians had been closer, they would have seen Barlen’s antlers sticking up like a trembling, leafless bush.

  “Estin!” Alafa hissed, her large eyes barely above the snow. “The scary furless in black…they tell the stinky furless what to do, right?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, his attention still on the Turessians as they neared the front of their army. “Once they’re gone, we can leave. Stay still and they won’t see you.”

  To Estin’s surprise, a massive contingent of the undead abruptly ran east. The Turessians gestured and shouted at the undead, sending sections to join those already on their way. Soon only a few hundred undead remained with the Turessians. Estin wondered if this was somehow part of Mairlee’s plan, come to life at the right time. Even if it was not, the odds had just shifted in their favor.

  Alafa lifted herself slightly to get a better view before flattening out again. “How long would it take you or the pack-leader to reach our soldiers and get back?”

  Estin looked at Alafa in confusion, doing a quick calculation on how long it had taken them to get to the hill. “Twenty minutes. Why?”

  “I’m gonna count to ten minutes and we’ll start running. The scary furless will make all the stinky ones chase us. We only have to keep them busy for…uh…five minutes, then. One…two…four…” Before Estin could grab for her, Alafa inched over the hill’s top, to where she would be seen if she made any sudden movements. That also put her well out of his reach. A second later, Barlen scooted over the hill after her.

  Estin’s heart skipped a beat. He looked over to Feanne, who was already hurriedly backing away through the snow to make a run for the troops. She appeared to have had the same thought as he did: Alafa could not count and likely did not even know how many seconds were in a minute. They had no idea how much time they had. Tackling Alafa to keep her from trying her plan would draw far too much attention, and if they were very unlucky, any attempt to drag Alafa back would lead to her screaming.

  Scrambling after Feanne, Estin ran as soon as he was sure they were out of sight of the Turessians. Both of them dropped to all fours to maintain their speed in the deep snow, cresting the next hill and picking up pace as they descended toward their army, spread across the plains beyond. As soon as they came into sight, Estin spotted Linn near the front lines with a group of armo
red dark elves, all of whom ran to alert others before Estin and Feanne could arrive.

  By the time they slid to a stop at the bottom of the hill, hundreds of soldiers marched their way, either already armed and armored or still pulling on gear as they walked. Torches were being waved at the edges of the camp, alerting those farther out that they should prepare for battle. Linn was efficient, that was certainly something Estin had to give him. From the look of things, the rest of the camp was quickly packing, and more soldiers were forming a second rank as they got out of their tents. He thought he saw Turess among them, but he had been far too busy planning the last few days for Estin to expect to see him ready for battle.

  “We have a distraction running some Turessians in circles,” Feanne announced as she reached Linn, who had his helm strapped to his belt and his shield already on his back. “Four Turessians and at most four hundred undead. There were thousands more zombies, but they just ran off. We won’t get another chance like this, and we can’t wait, in case they come back.”

  “Alafa,” Linn muttered. He whistled and gave hand signals to a distant group of soldiers, who took off running. “Trust me, not the first time. I’ll have people over the rise within minutes. With luck, we won’t have to drag her back to a healer again.”

  “Again?” Estin asked in shock. “She’s terrified of her own shadow.”

  “And yet she thinks the way to fight our enemies is to run right past them repeatedly. It works, but it’s not safe. She’ll do it no matter what I tell her, Estin. As stupid as it is, she’s saved us a hundred men or more with her and her mate’s tactics. They drive the Turessians crazy. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they had a bounty on her hide by now.”

  Nervously rubbing his neck, Estin watched the troops race up the hill. He would never forgive himself if Alafa or Barlen died. He considered her little better than a child and could not let himself think about what the Turessians would do to her if she was caught. Estin barely knew Barlen, but as Alafa’s mate, he had no desire to see him hurt either. They were the only other survivors of Lihuan’s pack and were as good as family.