It had only taken Orathone a mere few days to reunite with the rest of the refugees from the East. Sleepless nights had kept him on the move all but when Sha-Sha had to bed down, and even then, she was kept clawing the earth thanks to the buck. There were berries, native to the West but capable enough of growth in the East, that could pluck up a myter without fail. With a clutch of these brilliant orange gems, sleck was what stablehands would call them, Orathone kept going. The only shame in the act, aside from knowing he was pushing the bird too hard, was that the slecks were toxic to most other creatures. Still, to bring news of their foe, or foes, was too vital to allow any extra time to elapse.
Orathone found what remained of his free countrymen just beyond a grand rushing river, no doubt flush and high from the spring melt still working its way over the mountains far upstream. There was a bridge just an arm’s reach above the water a few spans south from where the deer ended up. However, after having come so far, Orathone wasn’t willing to expend another moment than need be. He forged the river utilizing a knit path of roots that Sha-Sha could easily cross if she only could keep her talons firm. In the end, Orathone dismounted, took her reins, and led her across, careful with every step as the gaps were still wide enough to admit his hooves.
On the far side of the river, Orathone realized his method of crossing had not gone unnoticed. On an angle of earth where a tributary connected to the greater stream, a wolf sat staring with more hate than apprehension in his bruised eyes. He was filthy, so much so that his brilliant coat of copper was instead a ruddy bronze. Beside him, a lynx, diminutive and demure in all but dress, which was an elaborate, almost ornate affair, searched Orathone with her eyes, questioning silently. Though he couldn’t be sure what the savages of the East may make of his gesture, he offered them a two-fingered salute as he made his way back onto solid land.
Neither of the eastern residents made the slightest move save for a turn of their heads, keeping the buck in their sights. Orathone thought these two may find his people unwelcomed; perhaps he had come to the wrong corner of the world. In the distance, he could see what looked to be a hastily constructed camp, and among the bustle of early morning errands, he saw plenty of antlers. It would be easy enough to mount again and carry on to the heart of the makeshift village, but he held off. Rather than approaching outright, Orathone felt it best to weigh these forced allies in solitude. Without more of his own countrymen, he thought he could get the most honest view of these people before they were forced to stand side by side against the Legion.
“Greetings. Would either of you know where I might find Yerra Imfay? Older elk, a bit gray in the face, but brilliant antlers.”
“Yes,” the lynx turned to direct Orathone to the tree line, “I’m not sure which cabin he would be in, but most of those from the East are up ahead. If he is of your military, he might be in the camp down in the valley.”
“Thank you, I hope we haven’t been an intrusion on you, but I can’t imagine it being anything but a burden to shelter us. Then again, faced with annihilation, what can anyone do but run?”
“Stand, fight, and die,” the wolf cut in, “You do the same thing we’re going to have to do, and you’ll be right there next to us. That is if any single one of yours has the nerve for it. I wouldn’t be surprised to find you running north while we run headlong into your mess.”
“Raz!”
Orathone raised his paw to quiet the lynx, “Not so fast. He isn’t wrong. My people and I, we certainly did run. We fought a losing fight for cycles and eventually had to quit our cities and fall into the Divide. This is not an attempt to evade our responsibility to stop these marauders; it is our last hope to turn the tides of war with help from all of you. Once you see our enemy, you’ll understand why it has come to this.”
Despite his better nature, Orathone left the two immediately, not wanting to pursue further arguments. He did not want to portray the haughty nobility of the West, not only because he was not but because it was what they likely expected. If they had responded to him as their equal, he might have negotiated the meeting with ease, but they had come at him as an enemy. There was no mistaking that inclination, at least not from the wolf.
There was something in that man, something his gaze could describe that his words were unwilling to. Perhaps he had been about the world before and seen more than his years betrayed. Orathone second-guessed that he was a boy just entering manhood or if he were a man that had retained some boyish intensity in spirit as well as appearance. Yet, the wonders of the world, even that of the East, or the tumult of war had never seared such an intensity into another’s eyes before, not to Orathone’s recollection. He would have to ask Imfay for his measure of the man. The elk had a particular ability to read people. And certainly, he was reading the people of this land.
The graying elder statesmen looked more than at home in the camp of peoples he would have once named enemy and fiend. As though it were his right, he sat at ease as a group of young foxes attended him. He drank without concern as cup after cup of jalabeer was bestowed upon him, was fed directly apples that themselves looked manicured to the slice, and rested his hooves on a trunk where they were being polished like fine brass. The scene would have been expected had Imfay ever been more than a modest ruler. Despite the furtive nature of their time together, Orathone was overcome with disgust at the uncharacteristic leisure the man took. Upon seeing the deer poke his way around training grounds wherein the easterners were running drills, the elk called out, “Or, friend, here!”
As he reached this man, like a surrogate father in so many ways, Orathone found himself almost feeling ill. The elk had hardly a score of days to reach this point before him and had, in such little time, made himself the picturesque portrait of the gluttonous and decadent West. Each step closer revealed another detail that could not have been fleshed out from afar. His raiment had appeared reworked and repaired initially but was, in fact, brand new, not a single scrap of cloth made from his still well-maintained noble robes. The once lean man looked to have put on weight enough for a gut to begin swelling beneath his jerkin. And what had appeared to be a glare of sunlight against polished horns was without question a dripping of silver on his antlers as only the most boastful noble would permit on the eve of a successful campaign. Orathone had been disgusted with Imfay from afar, but now he saw the man as a revolting temple of excess and not one single part of the revolutionary leader he had pretended to for cycles.
“How are we settling in, Or? The locals are a bit crude, but I must say, pliable, if nothing else. Only a few are too hard-headed for reasonable sorts to reach.”
“I’ve just come in, the trip was not one any would wish to recount, but we must turn our attention to another threat. One that has sought for me and nearly taken me,” the deer culled intensity from his voice; emotional appeals had never worked on the Yerra.
Raising his pewter mug as though in offering only to slake his own nonexistent thirst, Imfay continued, “Terlynn might help you find a cabin then. They’ve been so gracious to put us up in their best accommodations. Hardly do I think they expected to, or for so many of us to come at once, but it’s an effort worthwhile, I’d say.”
“Don’t you care to hear about my travels? Or how far the Legion has extended itself into these lands? Burn my tail, but don’t you have a thought about what is coming?”
“You’re right,” Imfay faced down one of the attendants sternly, “My friend here is clearly famished from his journey. We’ll take our meal as soon as it’s ready.”
“Do you know where Litheiuss is?”
“Somewhere, I’m sure. That one’s too enthralled but these simple folk. You’ll find him wandering around their commanders. Bring him back if you find him. I’m sure we’ll have a place to spare for him at the table.”
Without another word, Orathone lurched away, Sha-Sha still in tow. One of the attendants held a paw to take the bird, but Orathone wasn’t willing to surrender her. It wasn’t as though he didn’t trust the young woman; he simply didn’t need a servant for what he was well capable of handling. With his myter, Orathone carried on into the heart of the camp. Tents had been hastily erected and strewn together with a hodgepodge of materials so as to make mass lodgings for the military might held within. It was as Orathone came upon one of the canvas tents marked with a black obelisk within a dotted gray circle that he stopped.
From outside, he could hear a conversation taking place. The subject had little to do with his piqued interest. It was one of the voices that caught him. Without consideration for formality, Orathone split the entrance of the tent with a finger and gazed in. Between two wolves, neither with a breath of calm to their name, stood the veteran buck who Orathone had grown so close to. His expression faded from frustration to a touch of jubilation, only to twist once more into concern. Holding out a paw, Litheiuss tried his best to excuse his protege, “This man, he is the one I’ve told you about. He is going to be our most valued asset.”
Before he could make a single word, the sooty-furred wolf, regal and aged, gestured him in, “Let’s hope he is all you say he is, Marshall Litheiuss.”
“Show us.”
“Now, hold on, he’d wreck your tent if he showed you just now.”
The white wolf, scarred from head to tail became more gruff with Litheiuss, “You said he could do all he could, from big to small, just like Lady Greshalin with her abilities. If he can only swing the bluntest of blades, he is as much a liability as anything else.”
It didn’t take another moment for Orathone to realize what had been said about him confidently, as it was precisely what they debated now. There was no need for prodding from his mentor or demands made on high by the wolves; Orathone knew what he had to do. Litheiuss was correct; he might topple the tent, and several around it were he to use less control over his gift, but that was hardly an issue for him any longer. Expending a trickle of energy, Orathone forced a cluster of clovers sprouting within the tent to multiply itself in all directions and grow pedals larger than any that would appear in nature.
Though the white wolf approved, his darker superior only nodded, “Then it would appear your people are not all braggarts with a mind only for drink and taking their ease.”
“Again, I haven’t a clue what’s come over Yerra Imfay. He was once as respectable a man as yourself, Wyse Atlai. Perhaps, with Orathone back among us, he will return to his old manners.”
“See that he does. Should this force prove half so dreadful as you’ve insisted-” the pale wolf meant to finish, but Orathone erupted.
Calm was far from him as he began, “It is worse than anything Lith could have told you. I have seen with my own eyes how massive their numbers have become. I fear they’ve conscripted some of our own where they did not put them to the blade. From my vantage, I could see them coming, and my estimate is in days, not seasons. Their spies and scouts will be only a day or so behind me if we’re lucky, but they aren’t the half of it. On my journey here, following up the charge that brought Lith here, I was assailed by an unaccounted force. It was a living shadow. Not a thing of blood or a spirit or an agent of the Legion, but the dark itself taking shape. If this thing is aligned with the Legion, we might find ourselves at a greater disadvantage than previously thought.”
They were all four silent for a time before Litheiuss penetrated the silence. Still somewhat dampened by the news, he affected regality, “You must forgive my young associate. I don’t believe he understands to whom he speaks. Let us adjourn for now and better assess the imminent threat on the morrow. If you’ll excuse me, Wyse, Jaium.”
“Lad, we need to work on your manners around these folk,” Litheiuss began as they exited the tent. He steered Orathone north towards the cabins, “We are in luck that these eastern savages are only half so savage as I might have once claimed. They aren’t all about rites and decorum in meeting with their Wyse, but neither are they amenable to the negligence of proper behavior. I think we caught lucky that you had news of the front. You do have more news of the front, don’t you?”
“Lith, I will tell everything right this second if you’d like, but there’s much more to be done,” Orathone pawed his head with a wince, “When I have a moment to rest, I can-“
“You’ll take that moment now, lad, else I don’t think I’ll get a word from you, cold and stiff as you’ll be, if you’re going to run yourself down to nothing.”
Trazor 