Sunset of Lantonne (100 page)

“My people do not sacrifice themselves for anything. My own mother has fled, while my brother died. A hundred generations of my kin have watched without feeling as their siblings chose to either enter an eternal slumber out of boredom or die like a mortal. Those are the only endings a dragon knows.

“My mother will not shed a tear for my brother, but in the willingness of your people to die for one another, I feel grief for him. If I could weep as I am, I would, but that is not something dragons are given to. Instead, I will give you what you ask for the only way I know how.”

Taking a slow step past Raeln and toward Ilarra, the dragon lowered his head until he nearly touched her. He began whispering something, moving his mouth to speak, unlike how he had spoken with Raeln previously. With each word, those around the clearing seemed to press themselves closer to the ground, though On’esquin and Greth gradually sat up to watch.

“Will this be safe?” Raeln asked without thinking, taking a step toward the dragon’s neck.

Nenophar’s nearer eye darted to Raeln. The anger in that look faded quickly, giving him a sad stare that told him all he needed to know.

Before Raeln could rush at the dragon, knowing full well it would mean near-instant death, Greth leapt to his feet and caught Raeln with a hug that threw Raeln off-balance. “Let him try,” pleaded Greth, easing Raeln a step back. “She’s dead without the dragon’s help. If he fails and she dies right now, it will save her from a lot of suffering.”

“Is that what you would want?” Raeln asked him, shoving Greth off of him. “Would you really want to give up and die to avoid pain?”

Greth lowered his head and his ears drooped as he softly replied, “You know I would fight for years through pain if there was a chance of getting better or getting revenge. Look at the girl, Raeln. We can’t do anything to save her. Try and tell me she would want to live like this. Try and tell me with a straight face.”

Letting out a furious half-bark, half-growl, Raeln backed down and watched what Nenophar was doing. Unfortunately, his lack of training in magic gave him little clue about what was going on as the whispering continued. What he did recognize was Nenophar’s sudden gasp as he took a step back and began blinking hard as he finished talking.

The spell came to an end, and Nenophar eased himself back to the center of the clearing. He looked around with widely dilated pupils and seemed to not really see any of the people his gaze passed over. With a groan, he collapsed, his wings kicking up a cloud of dust and small stones that pelted the bystanders, forcing everyone to cover their faces as the dragon settled.

Raeln pushed past Greth, who stared in confusion at the fallen dragon. He ran past Nenophar, hopping a toe nearly as large as he was to land on the far side and slide on his knees to Ilarra’s side. She was breathing shallowly, but the burns all across her body and the two missing limbs were unchanged.

At his touch, Ilarra’s eyelids twitched, but that was all the reaction he got out of her. “What did you doNenophar?” he demanded, turning on the dragon.

Nenophar looked little better off than Ilarra, with every muscle in his body limp as he struggled for each shuddering breath. His eyes were ajar but unfocused. Every so often, his massive feet twitched spastically. The dragon shook his head, his disembodied voice replying distantly,
I saved her, but it will take time.

As Raeln stood in front of Nenophar’s nose, he struggled to decide what to do. The dragon had done something that might have made Ilarra’s situation worse, though he clearly had tried to help. Raeln wanted to strike at him, to vent some of the anger he felt after fighting all day against an enemy that could not be beaten.

“Raeln!” Greth snapped, grabbing Raeln and spinning him around. “He’s doing everything he can. Count it as a blessing he’s even trying.”

Raeln’s shoulders sagged as he tried to find the energy to argue, but he knew Greth was right and could not be mad at him. As he relaxed, he realized how bad Greth looked, his armor in shambles and exposed patches of fur more often than not stained with blood. He could see near-collapse in Greth’s eyes, but the man clung to his arm and waited for him to relax as well.

An icy drop of water hit Raeln on the bridge of his long nose, and he looked up at the roiling black clouds overhead as rains began to fall all over the area. With a communal groan, the survivors headed back to their tents to hide from the weather.

“We need to rest,” Greth reminded Raeln. “Everyone needs to rest while we can. Let her have time to recover and get some sleep.”

“I can’t,” he admitted, shaking his head. “Not yet. Ilarra might be beyond my help, but these people are starving. Some of them have no idea how to live outside a city. I need to assess our resources and make sure everyone is taken care of before I can rest.”

Greth touched Raeln’s cheek affectionately, frowning despite a reluctant understanding in his expression. “Someday, promise me you’ll learn how to live for yourself,” he said, brushing his claws through Raeln’s fur. “I adore that you care so much for others, but I want to see you have a chance to put all this behind you eventually.”

“There will be time for that someday…not today.”

“You’ll find the more you put off someday, the farther off it’ll be, especially now that you’re a normal, everyday wildling again, stupid,” chided Greth, smirking. “Twenty or thirty years is all you’ve got left. Don’t blow it all doting on the furless. They’ll still be here when both of us are long gone.”

Clasping Greth’s hand to his face, Raeln whispered his thanks for caring, but then took a deep breath and pulled away. He could not let the people suffer any longer if it could be helped. “Go to bed before you fall over,” he told Greth, nodding toward the wooden building. “I promise I’ll join you in a little while. I need to know the camp is safe while I sleep, or I’ll never relax. Once I’m sure, I swear I’ll come back.”

Grinning, Greth punched him in the stomach hard enough Raeln coughed and tried to catch his breath. “If I wake up before you come back, I’ll remind you who’s the alpha around here,” he warned as he backed away toward the building. Turning mid-step, Greth marched with a renewed appearance of energy.

Raeln watched until he could no longer see Greth in the dark, though he could faintly make out his silhouette approaching the lodge building. Finally, he turned back to Ilarra, intending to watch her a little longer before going to check on the survivors from the city.

In the moments Raeln had looked away, Ilarra’s health had improved dramatically. Whereas before charred flesh had been crumbling away from all of her wounds, now a thin stream of the dry soil was rising up and floating around her, slowly settling over the burns and filling them in. Seconds after the area was covered with the dark grey powder, it would smooth and fade in color until it matched the rest of her skin. Already, her arm had regrown to the elbow and her lost leg was entirely restored, her skin looking out of place in the chill rain.

What made Raeln freeze was not so much Ilarra’s recovery, but that Nenophar lay sleeping with his nose at her side. Each time he breathed, Ilarra’s hair flopped about her calm and peaceful face.

Raeln watched the two for several minutes, feeling like he no longer belonged at Ilarra’s side. It was a chilling sensation, though he could not feel any sadness in it. She had a new protector who could do far more than he ever could. With the powers Ilarra had gained from the Turessians, Nenophar was likely the only one who could understand and truly be her equal.

Smiling somberly, Raeln headed for the main encampment to the south where hundreds of tents had been set up on hard-packed dirt unsuitable for farming. In those tents, he passed men, women, and children of all the races—including a single raven wildling, who watched him with ebon eyes as he moved on. All of the people were either settling in by themselves or with people that made them feel safer or more comfortable.

More than once, he found couples huddling from the winds and rain that wore clothing marking them as having come from dramatically different stations in life. In one of the more notable tents, an elven woman in battered and stained finery he recognized as a courtier of the king’s court lay shivering in the arms of a large man in pauper’s rags, who watched her with genuine concern and tried to shield her from the cold.

Raeln continued on past the majority of the tents, smiling despite himself at the way the people came together in crisis, their old rivalries lost for the moment. He knew they would return again in time, but the peace among the survivors helped keep him warm and push him onward when his aching legs and arms pleaded with him to take Greth’s offer and collapse somewhere out of the rain.

Finally, he reached his destination: a large shed he had seen during his first visit nestled among the tents. He had recognized it as a storehouse and wanted to be sure whatever was still in it got distributed to the survivors before they moved out in the morning.

Standing beside the shed with two other soldiers, Phillith leaned heavily on a makeshift cane to keep his weight off of a bloodied and swollen leg. At Raeln’s approach, he looked up, smiling weakly while the other men kept watch over the area, taking in everything.

“You got here before me, I’m surprised,” Raeln told his old mentor. “Wasn’t even sure you lived through that fight.”

Phillith limped over, wincing with each step, then glanced over his shoulder at the other soldiers. “We’re already getting the food out as fast as the volunteers can carry it. Making sure none walks off.” The old man spoke a little louder than necessary, but then dropped his voice to a near-whisper as he added, “Did your friend make it out with you?”

Raeln nodded, and Phillith gave a thankful sigh.

“We lost nearly everyone back there,” Phillith told him, shaking his head. “We’re all that’s left, Raeln. With my boys and girls, maybe a hundred…hundred twenty at most.”

“The rest of the army will come back in a few days—”

“There is no rest of the army,” replied Phillith sharply and checked to be sure the soldiers had not heard him. “They’re all dead. I saw some of the boys and girls I trained out in the undead forces. No one’s coming back, and what we have left here dies the moment the undead regroup.”

Groaning, Raeln lowered his eyes as he thought of what to do next. His attention snapped to the wound on Phillith’s leg. Black festered boils marred the skin all around the bandages that had soaked with blood. “What’s wrong with your leg?”

Frowning, Phillith eyed his leg and then glanced back at the soldiers again. “Wasn’t from the zombies,” the man admitted. “Ghouls came in early and tried to kill me and a few other officers. Got bit pretty bad. We think they were trying to disrupt leadership before the main force reached the gate.”

“Ghouls are diseased,” Raeln thought aloud, remembering his lessons from childhood. “That has to be cut off before it spreads. Ghoul fever can’t be cured once it sets in—”

“I’m not stupid, boy. One of our doctors already looked at it. We fought too long and the disease was already in my blood by the time I got to him. Chopping off the leg would have only kept me out of the fight, not saved me. I’ve got a few days, but not much more than that.”

Raeln opened his mouth to argue, to shout for a healer, but Phillith reached out and yanked a tuft of fur from his shoulder to snap his attention back.

“Keep it quiet,” warned Phillith with the firm sense of command Raeln had always known him for. “There are no healers out here. I’ve checked. Not even someone trained enough to chop it off without making it worse, not that it would help. I’m dead, Raeln. This is why we dispatch healers to every little miserable village in the region. It gets easy to forget how simple it is to die for stupid reasons, but I’m happier with this than having the corpses of my own men tear me apart.”

“We can try…” Raeln began, finding nothing to finish the thought with. “Maybe…”

“Shut it, boy,” the old human countered. “I’ll keep everything moving along until you’ve taken them west. It’s the least I can do. Get some rest and stop looking like the world depends on you. Go spend some time getting your head right for what you’ll have to do once I’m gone to hold all these survivors together.”

“I’ll lead them as best—”

“The officers will take charge of my men, but you’ll have to keep the civilians moving. Leading is not your job, Raeln, and these people are not your responsibility. Fight to help them, but you only owe your life to Ilarra and your friend.”