In Wilder Lands Read online

  In Wilder Lands

  The Fall of Eldvar

  by

  Jim Galford

  Edited by Chris Galford

  Cover art by Darryl Taylor

  Second edition 2012

  Copyright ©2011-2012 by Jim Galford. All Rights Reserved.

  www.jgalford.com

  No reproduction of this work may be used in any fashion without permission of the author. For information on usage permissions, please contact the author at [email protected]

  World, setting, and characters used with permission by CoreLARP, LLC

  “Galford’s writing is beautiful. His descriptions of the characters, the surroundings, the internal struggles, and the world itself are magical, transporting the reader into the story to walk beside these characters.”

  - Tricia Kristufek

  (www.triciakristufek.com)

  “There is a lot of stuff going on in this book and it revolves around some very well done characters and a unique story...This is a very well done book.”

  - Scott of Indie Book Blogger

  (indiebookblogger.blogspot.com)

  “The huge sense of foreboding coupled with intense character-building and some light-hearted joviality made this a very interesting read!”

  - Koen of Fantasy Book Review

  (www.fantasybookreview.co.uk)

  “I enjoyed every second of the story and I’ll be looking forward to any sequels!”

  - Midu of Passionate Book Divas

  (www.passionatebookdivas.com)

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – “Altis”

  Chapter Two – “What is Wild”

  Chapter Three – “The Wilds”

  Chapter Four – “The Pack”

  Chapter Five – “Wildlife Divisions”

  Chapter Six – “Pacts”

  Chapter Seven – “The Long Road”

  Chapter Eight – “New Life”

  Chapter Nine – “Martyrdom”

  Chapter Ten – “The Other Side”

  Chapter Eleven – “Truths”

  Chapter Twelve – “Cold, Then Hot”

  Chapter Thirteen – “A Rift Between”

  Chapter Fourteen – “Breathe”

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  “Altis”

  Whenever I dreamt, time seemed to lose its meaning, but the story remained the same. It would always start with that peaceful warm feeling that just seems to belong in any state of near-sleep. I could feel people close—my parents—while my mind was adrift, even if I was still close enough to consciousness to know they were not there. My mother would whisper to me as I lay there, telling me that she loved me. These are the things every mother tells her child, I’ve been told.

  What made my dreams unique was where things went from there and how vividly I could remember them every time I woke. Dreams based on your own memories can be brutal like that. I could choose to ignore my own history while awake, but my dreams would never fail to remind me of every painful detail.

  After a time—how long was debatable, as it felt like hours, but could have been mere minutes of sleep—I would feel my mother leave my side. I was aware of her departure, though I did not fully wake either in the dream or real life. She was gone for a while…too long in my childhood’s mind.

  Each time I reached this point in the dream, I could feel a chill creep down my spine, knowing what was coming but unable to change it.

  It was then that the screams would begin. Distant at first, but still clear. Voices I should have known, mixed with so many I do not remember anymore. They were probably my neighbors, maybe even the other youths I played with, though the dream blurs so much and my own memory could not identify them. They have become nameless and faceless, which only makes their deaths that much more difficult for me to accept.

  If I was lucky, this was all I would remember when I woke.

  Estin woke, his heart pounding as it did nearly every morning. He shook as his limbs tried to run for a moment, the dream continuing into wakefulness. When he did finally free himself of its hold, he groaned and relaxed as best he could.

  As he pried his mind from the horrible memories, Estin collapsed back onto the cobblestone street and covered his eyes against the bright noon sun. The cloth sheet he had draped over his corner of the alley must have blown away during the night, he realized, something he was not particularly happy about.

  He started to drift off again. Estin had never been one for daytime. He was a creature of the night and the sunlight would give him headaches after too long. He much preferred to sleep through at least until early evening.

  A sound nearby—a little scratching on the stones—made Estin’s ears twitch as he bolted upright, fearing that he had been found by the town guard. They were decidedly disapproving of any of the homeless, driving them off with kicks or even swatting them with sticks. Given their dislike for Estin’s people, he would be lucky to get just a sound beating. He had heard of others like him who had been thrown into the city dungeon or even just dragged off by the guards to the slave auctions and never seen again.

  He rolled onto his feet, partially crouched as he sniffed and looked around for the danger. Instead of a group of armed soldiers, he realized that he had been startled by nothing more than a small rat, which was snatching pieces of rotten food he had stolen from a cart two days prior. The little rodent stared unblinking up at him, twitching its whiskers as it slowly grabbed another piece of bread with its teeth and backed cautiously away, dragging the food.

  “We aren’t much different, little guy. Take it and run,” Estin said softly, watching as the rat escaped to a tiny hole in the brick wall of the north side of the alley, taking the bit of bread with it.

  Estin was hardly being symbolic with his statement and he knew it. He looked down at his hands on the cobblestones and knew that he was viewed in the same light as the rat that had escaped. While the town may have been run by an amalgam of races, his kind were simply not welcome.

  He dragged his claws across the stones, feeling the scraping of the clawed nails against the ground all the way up into his shoulders. What angered him at times was having to live among the other races as an outcast. Frustrated, he held his hands in front of his face and scowled at the animal-like paws he had been born with. Thick pads covered the inner-side of his hands and his feet, giving him an incredible grip and the ability to climb out of harm’s way with ease.

  His father had once told him that his people had lived in trees at one time, but he had long since learned that his hands and feet would scale buildings as easily as any tree. In his life he had spent more time in the slums than near any trees, as he was far less likely to be found and hunted under the noses of those who would trap his kind.

  Sitting back against the wall, he stared broodingly at the people passing by the end of the alley. They were all legally-allowed here. There were the elves with their pointed ears—Estin noted dryly that his own ears were no less pointed, but that was no excuse to be in the city. Humans were everywhere with their stocky builds that made them far larger than himself. Every so often, one of the dwarves would pass by, far shorter than even Estin, but every one of them likely outweighed him.

  Estin had even heard of other people from other lands being welcomed in the city. Even barbarians had been cautiously given entry for a time during attacks by another city’s army—a place called Lantonne. That had been a rough time for Estin and the few others of his kind hiding in the city.

  Many of the barbaric people believed it a proof of adulthood to kill the largest animals they could find—which would be Estin and kin. By the time the tribesmen had moved on, he had seen no less than four of their members wearing pelts that were nearly man-size
d.

  When he had first come to the city looking for food and shelter, he had feared being seen all the time. Now, he knew that there were certain places that the others did not care to look. Alleys were a wonderful place for him, despite the stink, occasional mugger, and various vermin. The rightful residents would never look down the alley, no matter how obvious he was, for fear of seeing something they did not want to know about. This made hiding almost too easy at times.

  As he thought on this, a human youth came racing through the alley, nearly stomping on Estin’s tail as she ran past. In passing Estin, the young girl threw a bag in his lap and kept going, breaking out into the crowds at the far end.

  “What was that all about?” Estin started to ask, glancing back the way the girl had come. There, he saw five human guardsmen, clad in chain armor and bearing long pikes.

  The guards stepped into the alley, looked at Estin, then down at the bag in his lap that he had just opened to sniff at.

  “Thief!” one shouted and they charged into the alley.

  Cursing under his breath, Estin quickly knotted the bag onto his belt and looked at the walls on either side of the alley. The south was useless, the smooth stone properly fitted and impossible to climb. East was a mass of humans in the main street. West were the guards. He shifted and scanned the north wall’s bricks, finding many misplaced and uneven ones that he was sure would bear his weight.

  Estin grinned back at the guards, then leapt to the wall, scrambling swiftly straight up, his long claws clicking into the spaces between the bricks or locking onto the edges of others. This was what he had learned to use his half-inch claws for in the city. It was something he had gotten quite good at. He hopped vertically, catching another uneven brick, but realized that he was running out of handholds. Just as he thought he was making good headway, rough hands grabbed his tail.

  Estin struggled against the bricks, trying not to lose his grip and still move upwards. The next tug on his tail nearly ripped him from the wall and sent stabbing pains through his back. He looked down and saw that one of the guards must have leapt and was hanging precariously from Estin’s seven-foot long black-and-white striped tail.

  Though the guard weighed far more than Estin, he dragged himself upwards, his fingers numbing with the effort. The pain in his lower back and hips would force him to let go soon if the guard did not release him. Luckily, as he moved steadily hand over hand, the guard let go and fell to the ground, apparently convinced Estin could keep it up.

  Not one to question good fortune, Estin practically ran up the rest of the wall and up over the edge to the roof. Once he knew they could no longer see him, he collapsed, pulling his tail tight to his body and clutching it in agony. He had a strong tail, capable of lifting himself off the ground after years of practice, but it was not built for picking up armored humans.

  Tears stung Estin’s eyes as he lay there, trying to catch his breath. Slowly, feeling was returning to his tail and he flexed it to make sure nothing was truly injured. As he did, his ears twitched and he became aware of grunts and clanks of armor as the guards climbed one of the ladders that allowed access to the roofs from certain spots in the streets. He likely did not have much time before they found where he was hiding.

  He rolled to his feet and surveyed the nearby buildings. The one he was on was shorter than most of its neighbors, which gave him no clear avenue of escape. As he searched for anywhere else he could go, the first of the city guards hopped off a ladder and out onto the roof, followed by several more.

  “Nowhere to go, vermin!”

  Estin scurried to the edge of the roof and studied the distance to the nearest rooftop. Fifteen, maybe twenty feet of open air, then a difficult grab on the stone trim of the clay-shingled building. It would be pushing both his luck and ability to jump, but at least it did not have pikemen waiting for him there.

  He checked behind him and found that the guards were close now. Any of them could easily strike him with their pikes at this range. As he watched, one was setting down his weapon and pulling a length of cord from his belt.

  “That’s a good…,” the man stopped and looked at the others, “what the hells is it, anyway?”

  “A housepet or a good field worker, that’s all that matters,” replied another, making a very fake lunge in Estin’s direction, probably to keep his attention off the man with the rope. “Get him leashed and let’s get out of here.”

  Estin’s eyes narrowed and he felt his heart begin beating harder as he saw the man tie the rope into a noose-like lasso. He had seen ropes put around others’ and had no intention of letting someone drag him by his throat. Nothing made him more determined to flee than seeing someone with a leash.

  Snarling at them and baring his fangs, Estin grabbed the edge of the rooftop and threw himself as far out as he could. Without a running start, his leap was less than perfect and he barely caught the lip of the far roof. Even so, his claws scraped and slid, letting him dangle off the edge from just the tips.

  “Did you see that thing jump?” asked one of the guardsmen.

  Another snorted loudly and replied, “Don’t care. It’s still dangerous to kids and other pets running around the streets like this. Someone could get hurt.”

  Grunting as he rocked side-to-side, Estin tried to get his foot up on the roof’s edge. On the third try, the claws on his feet caught the lip and he managed to roll fully onto the steep roof. Then he allowed himself to look back at the sulking city guardsmen. He gave them a small wave, then checked the roof for a good way down, but there was none.

  He was not about to waste any more time and so dashed up and over the roof, coming down the far side and leaping for the next building. Estin kept moving from one roof to the next, until he could no longer see the guards and knew that they would be hard-pressed to track him down. With that bit of confidence, he continued two more roofs and then stopped to catch his breath.

  They would be after him again soon enough. Once the guards became aware of one of his kind, they would hunt them tirelessly until they had lost the trail or the poor unwanted creature was dragged off by its throat. Estin had no intention of being one of the latter. Not this day. Not any day if he had any say in it.

  He took a moment to get his bearings. The building he was standing on was one of the abandoned structures in the poor section of town. Still, he reminded himself, the residents of the poorest part of the Grinder—the nickname of the slums—were wealthier than he was, and far more welcome in the city. At least an empty building would be a good place to hide out for a few hours, while the guards searched for him.

  Estin checked both sides of the peaked roof, leaning over the edge of the loose and shifting shingles to see if there was a nearby window. At last, he found one window within range of the roof’s edge, though it was boarded up. He studied the boards a moment, then decided that they looked to be rotten enough to open.

  Taking a deep breath, Estin flipped on the edge of the roof, hanging down by the lip. He could feel the old and cracked clay shingles begin to break under his weight and so quickly swung himself toward the wall of the building. He let go as he got as close as he could, digging his claws into the wooden walls to keep from tumbling to the ground far below. Once he had a good grip on the wall, he knew he could take the time he needed to get inside.

  Working slowly, he picked at the soft wood of the boards over the window with his claws. It did not take long before he was able to pull the boards away and slip into the dark interior. As he did, he checked outside along the street below for anyone who might have seen him, but there was no one who appeared to be interested or aware.

  Estin collapsed inside the room, sighing happily as his eyes adjusted to the deep darkness. He sniffed at the air, squinting at large bundles throughout the room.

  “Trash. Lovely,” he muttered, his nose twitching. “Why is every abandoned building filled with trash?”

  Not quite ready to abandon the safety of the room, he untied the mysterious
bag from his belt and set it on the floor in front of him. As he unfastened the top, he caught a sharp whiff of fruit. His mouth watered immediately—he was fairly starved, but any form of fruit was also his greatest weakness in life. The various city fruit vendors were likely the ones most willing to pay a bounty for his hide.

  Within minutes, Estin had his face covered in sticky juice from the first two oranges he yanked out of the bag. By the time he was stuffing the last bite of the third into his long mouth and realized just how much juice was matted into his fur, Estin realized he heard voices from the floor below. He froze for a while, listening to be sure they were not guardsmen looking for him. Instead, it sounded like calm conversation.

  He got to his feet—tucking the bag of fruit under an arm—and cautiously moved between the bags of trash, taking care each time his paws came down to be sure that he did not squeak a board and give away his presence. Moving out into the hallway, he found a staircase nearby and though it looked to be badly rotted, a few pokes with his foot convinced him that it would hold for one more day.

  With nervous curiosity, Estin reached the bottom of the staircase, finding himself in another nearly-identical hallway as the one above. The difference here was that a single door was closed and candlelight flickered from beneath it.

  Estin snuck up to the door and put an ear to it.

  “But daddy, I’m hungry!” whined one voice. Female, he noted, and probably very young. The voice was certainly human—all the races had their particular accents.

  “I already told you, dear, I couldn’t get any more food today. That loaf of bread is all the baker could spare.”

  Estin frowned and looked down at the bag that he held in his left hand. There was still a lot of fruit in there and his own stomach had stopped growling, at least for the moment.