The Northern Approach (26 page)

“Estin…” Raeln began, but trailed off, apparently unsure what to say. After a moment, he scooped up the coins and stared at them in his palm, as though they were accusing him as openly as Estin had.

“Don’t argue. Sit there and let me fix your feet before we have to run again.”

“I’m fine,” Raeln told him, starting to stand up, but Estin reached out and caught him by the wrist. When Raeln tried to pull away, Estin dug in his claws until he saw Raeln’s muzzle twitch.

“Sit down,” he said firmly, and to his surprise, Raeln did.

Pointing at Raeln’s feet, Estin waited patiently until the man reluctantly slid both toward him. The pads were torn apart and so badly infected that Estin was amazed Raeln could walk.

“In the future, I’ll let you decide how to protect the group,” Estin told Raeln, putting a hand on Raeln’s lower ankle and letting his mind drift to touch the magic that lingered in the air around him. The whispers of the disembodied spirits that came with it were difficult to hear over. “In return you will tell me when you need healing, regardless of how you think that makes you look weak.”

“Agreed,” said Raeln, letting out a thankful sigh as his pads healed under Estin’s touch.

“Relax and get some rest before something new happens,” Estin said, leaning back into his blankets. A strong scent caught his attention and he winced, realizing it was his own stench after so long in the wilds. On a whim he yanked his shirt off to get the stink away from himself, intending to get it washed or burned at the first opportunity. “If there’s anything I know for certain, it’s that trouble doesn’t stop until you’re dead.”

Raeln nodded froze, staring intently at Estin’s side.

Thinking the man was looking at the fox, Estin looked over, but the animal was far enough away that she was not his focus. The animal was stalking something under one of the chairs, far closer to Yoska than Estin.

“Your arm,” Raeln said, apparently anticipating Estin’s question. “What happened to you? Is that from the slave camp?”

Grinning, Estin realized the man meant the deep scars that ran in crisscrossed lines on his left shoulder and arm. The deep notches in his flesh had never healed properly and no fur would grow there, making them very obvious when he forgot to keep them covered. He had spent long enough wearing long shirts either because of winter weather or Corraith’s blazing sunlight that few had seen the scars to wonder at them.

“Those are from my first meeting with Feanne,” he explained, trying not to look at the bag that contained her remains. The memory was bittersweet. “She was being tortured and would have been executed. We saved each other that day. Dogs tried to rip us apart.”

Raeln’s ears drooped and he nodded, knowingly. “My friend…he showed me how it was in the wilds,” Raeln said a moment later, his eyes going distant. “I thought your kind were monsters…savages, even. Where I was raised was nothing like the wilderness. For a long time, I looked down on people like you and him. He eventually showed me my own ignorance and that those living away from the cities were strong in their own way. He showed me how to survive out there. If he hadn’t…when the undead came…” Raeln trailed off and hung his head, not needing to explain. Estin had seen enough of the war’s effects to know Raeln had seen his own mortality in all the deaths he had witnessed. His friend was dead, like so many others.

Sitting back up, Estin reached out and brushed Raeln’s cheek, making him jump. “We all lost loved ones. You aren’t alone, Raeln. We’re all hurting and alone now. Use that anger and don’t let it consume you the way it almost did to me. All four of us are warriors in our own ways. We need to find strength within ourselves to keep fighting, or we may as well starve in an alley. Your friend would have wanted you to live.”

Sniffling and covering his face, Raeln hurried away from Estin to the far corner, where he pulled his knees to his chin and hid himself from the others. Estin did not need exceptional hearing to pick up the man’s faint sobs. He would harbor some anger toward Estin for a day or two, until he understood Estin meant nothing cruel by his words. Whoever Raeln’s “friend” was, he meant as much to him as a family member.

The door to the room where Thomin and Ira had gone popped open a moment later and the man came through first, then stepped aside to let Ira take the lead. Ignoring her husband completely, Ira went straight to Yoska, though she gave Raeln a concerned look in passing. “You, my cousin, are nothing but trouble,” she told the gypsy, standing over him as he spun his knife one more time and then made it vanish into his sleeve. “Do you even understand why Thomin attacked you?”

“He is jealous of my dashing good looks?”

Ira sighed and closed her eyes, while Estin stifled a snicker. Yoska’s knack for diffusing tension around him was remarkable. “No,” she went on. “I’m betting you didn’t miss the undead on our streets?”

“I may have noticed something odd about a few people. Thought it was new fashion.”

“They’re rounding up wizards,” Ira snapped, kicking Yoska’s chair. “Your orcish friend is in a great deal of danger, as are we. All the entrances to the city are watched. I told my idiot husband to keep his cover, but I would bet that someone has sold us out by now. For some reason that escapes me, he believed you were working with the enemy.”

Thomin finally spoke up. “The orc! He has the same markings as the men that took Loph and Viris. Damn, woman, you’d think you don’t listen to a word that I…”

Ira turned to look Thomin’s way and his voice trailed to a whisper and culminated with a nervous cough.

“Can you get us out of the city?” Ira asked Yoska once Thomin was silent. “We will see to it that you have anything you need if it is within our power to give. Pholithia is not safe for either of us anymore.”

“How bad are things?” asked Raeln, wiping at his nose and averting his eyes, even as he spoke. “What forces do they have here?”

Ira shrugged. “The entire military is dead and under their control…a result of the invasion. They swept through the oracles’ chambers and turned them as well before coming for wizards like Thomin. I would guess four thousand undead at a minimum, but that does not include commoners they have murdered when they assume that no one will miss them. There are two tattooed people among the enemy, though the woman is new to the city. The man controls all of Pholithia and claims to be our ‘lord emperor,’ despite Urishaan having no such nobility.”

From his place by the bookshelf, On’esquin stiffened but said nothing, his eyes still on his book. Estin could easily see his eyes were no longer moving. He was listening, not reading. Mention of the Turessians seemed to be enough to worry even him.

“Can we take two of the strong dead men?” Yoska asked the group, skeptically. He looked pointedly at Estin, as the only person he knew had fought the Turessians. “There were four in the camp—”

“And we lost more than a hundred warriors,” Estin reminded him. “Twice that many elderly and children. That was with a dozen spellcasters and two people who were as strong as small armies. I don’t think any of the Turessians were actually dead when we left.”

Ira’s stern demeanor softened at that, but she continued to watch Yoska expectantly.

“We will do what we can that will not get us dead,” Yoska finally offered.

Nodding, Ira bent over and eyed Yoska’s midsection. “You already tried to get yourself dead, no?” asked Ira, a faint accent coming forward briefly, as though it crept out the longer she talked with Yoska. “I did not expect to see dried blood that was your own. Did you deserve it?”

Yoska grinned impishly, though he put a hand over his side wound as he replied. “What gypsy man ever deserves to be stabbed by a woman? Was misunderstanding, no? If gypsy woman wanted a gypsy man dead, would I be here or would I be with the ancestors?”

“She was sloppy, whoever she was,” Ira noted. “Clean yourself up…all of you. I can’t hide you if you look like you murdered your way into the city. We’ll travel tomorrow morning through the closed districts. Until then, rest. If you need running water, we have a water room through the door over there. Do not mind Geraine. He will bring you what you need and not argue out of fear of this simple woman and my reluctance to pay rude servants.”

The bodyguard, Geraine, appeared at the door to the next room. Despite his muscle, he somehow managed to look the part of a servant. He waited there patiently for any request.

“No gypsy woman is simple,” Yoska insisted, grinning even more broadly.

“And no gypsy man is as innocent as he claims,” the woman countered, looking over the disheveled men in her front room. “Clean them up and look respectable by the morning, or I will blame you and get my own revenge for whatever finds us, even if I die first.”

“You say you left the family,” replied Yoska, leaning back. “Only a gypsy considers revenge a good reason not to stay dead, no?”

Smiling devilishly, Ira excused herself, patted Thomin’s arm gently in the first indication she had any concern for the man whatsoever, and left. That was something Estin understood all too well. Feanne’s pack of wildlings had been largely predatory breeds—like Raeln—more than happy to tear Estin apart if Feanne showed any weakness. It took him a long time to win enough respect among them through his own strengths to allow either himself or Feanne to ever show affection around them, and he guessed Ira viewed her life the same way.

Thomin sat down with Yoska to talk, their former animosity all but vanished. They were old friends who had fought over something stupid again. Estin envied the ease with which they forgot their anger.

Picking at his fur, Estin found clumps of mud and pine sap that had somehow made its way through his clothing, making it nearly impossible to smooth his fur. He quickly gave up, knowing there was little he could do with his claws to clean himself. Instead, he turned to the many pouches he had collected back in Corraith, attached around his worn old belt. Those, he dumped out one at a time, trying to figure out what he still had and what had been lost. It was something he had not taken the time—or had the inclination—to do since arriving back in the mountains.

The first few pouches were the ones where Estin kept most of his belongings. There were bits of dry wood, a set of flint and steel he had taken from Raeln, and the crumbs from old meals he had shoved into those bags in a hurry. The next pouch spilled out a pile of the tiny coins the people of Corraith used—a fortune there, but nearly worthless in these lands. Idly he wondered if Oria had enough coin left with her to take care of the kits, but he pushed that thought aside, as it would only leave him needlessly worrying.

At the soft jingling of coins, Yoska and Thomin both looked up, their conversation cut short. Ira even poked her head into the room briefly, spotted the foreign coin, and went back to what she had been doing. The men took a little longer to return their attentions to their conversation.

Estin slid the pile of worthless coins aside and moved to the next pouch. From that one he extracted the small worn book where he kept his notes about magic, helping him remember the complicated patterns and thoughts required to use the healing spells he had learned. The book was worthless to someone without the talent, but essential to one who was trained. Without it, Estin would have forgotten the more difficult spells in a day or two, though many of the simpler ones he could cast without checking the book very often anymore.

Remembering, Estin pulled Thomin’s similar book from another pouch, where he had shoved it when they were in the alley. He would have to return it to the man, but he intended to check it for anything he had not learned. Unfortunately, as he paged through the dog-eared book, he found the notes were gibberish to him. Thomin used a different style of magic, likely similar to Estin’s son, Atall. The book and its contents were worthless to Estin.

Memories of Atall’s brutal death flashed across Estin’s thoughts, and he clamped his eyes shut as he put the book aside, trying to stifle the image of his son’s ribs being ripped open with Estin and Feanne unable to save him. When he managed to get control over his thoughts again, Estin realized he was panting rapidly and both the fox and Raeln were watching him with concern.

Estin had no intention of talking about what went through his mind with anyone—not even an animal—and so ignored the others as he turned his belt to get to his remaining pouches. These were badly worn, often from being knocked down onto them or disuse in general.