Into the Untamed Lands: Book Three of The Last Eternal, page 1
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
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CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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About the Author
Note from the Author
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Into the Untamed Lands: The Last Eternal Book 3
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This one’s for you, Dad
After all, it was your love of L’Amour and Leonard, of Burroughs and McMurtry
That sparked my interest in the western genre.
That, coupled with my own love of fantasy, has brought us here.
And the journey’s only just getting started.
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CHAPTER ONE
The flames danced like madness in his eyes.
The heat of the blaze was searing judgement against his flesh, and each dying ember which fell was the death of hope for what might have been.
All told, forty seven villagers of the mountaintop town of Alhs had lost their lives in the Accursed’s attack.
Forty seven.
The wanderer did not know their names. None save Joan, the woman who had tried to help him and, as reward, had earned a slow, painful death at the hands of men after his life. Those men were dead now, as was the creature masquerading as Soldier, but that was small comfort to those who had lost husbands and wives, mothers and fathers.
It was a small comfort to him.
Forty seven.
Barely a day since he’d arrived in Alhs and a quarter of the village was dead. For years, perhaps centuries, judging by the state of the graves in the cemetery, the people of Alhs and their descendants had lived out their lives in peace, secure behind a magical barrier.
And then, the wanderer had come, and in a single night, he had destroyed that barrier, that peace.
Forty seven.
Including the Accursed he and the others had slain, there were over a hundred dead in all. Too many for the undertaker and his assistant to bury. Too many for the whole town to bury working together unless they had plenty of time, and they did not. Those Accursed who had hunted them were dead, as were the mercenaries, as was Soldier’s impostor. But then that was the thing about the world—no matter how many dangers a man managed to escape, there were always more, waiting around the corner.
Only, these dangers would not wait for long. They would be coming. He might have slain Soldier, might have defeated the Accursed, but that meant little. The others would know where he was, where the cursed blade was, and they would come for it. For him.
Each minute wasted, each second squandered, brought them closer, brought the world’s doom closer. He should be moving, should be running as quick as his feet would carry him, putting as much distance between the doomed village and himself as he could.
And yet, the wanderer only stood, watching the flames. Forty seven. Too many to bury and so they had chosen to burn them instead as they had in the old days. The villagers of Alhs had wrapped their loved ones’ bodies and anointed them with oil, preparing them according to ancient custom. The Accursed they had left without the rites meant to ease their passage to the afterlife.
The wanderer did not think it mattered. The flames burned the wrapped and the unwrapped alike, burned through that cloth and the rope which had tied it closed, devouring it and all that lay beneath it.
Forty seven.
Each a villager who had no doubt had hopes and dreams, people they loved and who loved them in turn. He did not know if the Accursed loved, did not know if they dreamed and, if they did, he suspected they were red dreams. But the flames did not care. Dreamer or monster, they all burned, and in brutal simplicity all of them, each individual with his or her own mind and heart, was reduced to ash.
Ash which floated on the slight breeze, drifting into the night, carried away like so many forgotten dreams. The entire village of Alhs had gathered around the pyre, sharing their grief, their pain, yet the wanderer stood alone. Apart. He was surprised to feel a tear coursing its way down his cheek. He had not known the forty seven, had not known Joan, at least not well, but he wished that he had. Wished that he had been given a chance to.
The world was what it was, though, and wishing did not change that. He was alone, that was all. Dekker and his family might have stood with him, but they had opted to forego the funeral, to spare their daughter, Sarah, from this much, at least. The wanderer was glad for that. After all, Sarah had her entire life to learn what the world was, how much pain it could deliver. It was a lesson she would be taught over and over as all the living were—there was no need to hurry it along.
Still, while he was glad that the girl was not here, he found that he missed them. He felt cast adrift, and standing there, watching those embers float into the night, the lessons of Felden Ruitt and the peace he’d found with the family, felt very, very far away.
Forty seven and all of them dead because of him.
Not so great a number when compared to the world, perhaps, the world that he had endangered multiple times, the world that those forty seven dead had died to save. After all, if he hadn’t broken down the barrier, the Accursed would have caught them, Soldier would have gotten the cursed blade, and that would have been the end of it. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands would have died. Forty seven was not so much against that.
Only…it was.
Someone moved past him—an old woman, huddled against her gray-haired husband, the man’s arms wrapped protectively around his wife’s shoulders. The wanderer barely noticed, though, for he had not come here for the living but for the dead. He only became aware of them when the pair stopped in front of him.
Slowly, he pulled his gaze away from the flames to regard the woman in front of him, her face limned in the orange, ruddy glow of the pyre looked like that of some furious demon. “You,” she hissed. “You did this.”
The wanderer knew that she was right, so he did not try to argue. Instead, he bowed his head low to her. “I am sorry,” he said. “I did…I did not mean…”
“Damn what you meant,” she hissed, jabbing a finger at the flames. “My son is in there, you bastard!” she said, screaming the last. “He’s in there burning because of you. Next week would’ve been his birthday. Thirty one. He’ll never see it now.”
“I’m sorry,” the wanderer said, feeling as if something inside him, some great tower of faith and hope that men and women built over the courses of their lives was threatening to fall. Was perhaps falling already. Certainly that tower had shifted when he had found Joan dead, and it shifted again now. What would happen, he wondered, when it collapsed?
The woman only sneered, opening her mouth to say something else.
“Come on, Eustice,” the old man holding his arms around her said. “Come on, love. Let’s go home.”
The old lady stared at the wanderer for another several seconds, shaking with her fury, her grief, then finally she allowed herself to be led away.
The wanderer watched them go, husband and wife, sonless now and that thanks to him. He wanted to say something, anything, but if there were words that might offer them comfort, which might begin to shovel away that great mound of grief and loss under which they were buried, they were words he did not know. And so he only watched in silence as they left.
He turned back to the flames and saw that, while he’d been focused on the old couple, Dekker had come up and was standing beside him, a frown on his face. “Don’t blame them, Ungr,” the big man said softly. “They’re just hurtin’ is all, and people hurtin’ often look to make others hurt.”
“I don’t blame them,” the wanderer said softly.
“Meanin’ you blame yourself,” Dekker said.
“Who else?”
The big man sighed. “Guess you’d best blame me too, then,” he said. “And Sarah and El in the bargain.”
The wanderer glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. “You are not the ones responsible for destroying the barrier protecting the village.”
“Aren’t we?” Dekker said. He shrugged. “Seems to me, Ungr, that had it not been for us you wouldn’t have had to destroy the barrier. Those Accursed are fast, but I don’t think they could’ve caught you if you were ridin’ on Veikr by your lonesome, am I right?”
The wanderer frowned. “Still—”
“As a matter of fact,” Dekker went on, talking over him, “it seems to me that, were it not for me and my family, you wouldn’t have been forced to come to the Untamed Lands in the first place. After all, this all started because you saved us back in Celes, so if there’s blame to be placed, I reckon we’re just as good a target as you. Better, probably.”
“That makes no more sense than blaming the smith for the lives his weapons take.”
“Sure, and why not?” Dekker said. “Hard to stab a man with air.” The wanderer frowned at that, opening his mouth, but the big man held up a hand forestalling him. “My point, Ungr, is that if a man’s lookin’ for reasons to blame himself for tragedy, he’s never got to look very far. He can just reach down and scoop up a handful of ‘em, the same way a man might scoop up a handful of dirt. But if you’re goin’ to be takin’ on the blame for the bad, I s’pose you ought to acknowledge your part in the good, too. Good like the fact that, were it not for you, me, my wife…my daughter, well…” The big man hesitated, clearly struggling even with the idea that something might have happened to Sarah. “They’re alive because of you, Ungr. So if you’re so damned eager to blame yourself, why don’t you blame yourself for that.”
“Thank you, Dekker,” the wanderer said softly, turning back to the flames of the pyre, seeming to light up the darkness of the night. “For coming. For…for talking to me.”
“Why, sure,” the big man said. “Figured it’s the least I can do, you know, considerin’ you saved my girl from that…that thing,” he finished, his gaze slowly going in the direction of the cemetery where it lay in the distance. “Anyway, I needed to stretch my legs.”
The wanderer nodded. He knew that Dekker’s casual tone was not meant as disrespect to those who had died but was instead meant for him, to make him feel better. Just as he knew that the man had not come to stretch his legs but had come to check on him, to share the burden of his grief.
“Truly,” he said, meeting the big man’s eyes. “Thank you.”
Dekker winced, clearly uncomfortable with his gratitude. “It’s nothin’,” he said.
“No,” the wanderer disagreed. “Not nothing, Dekker.”
The man cleared his throat. “Fine, damnit. You’re welcome.”
The wanderer nodded, turning back to the blaze, and they stood in silence then. The wanderer had no real sense of how long they stood there, studying the flames as they slowly shrank. Neither did he have sense of the world around him. There was only the pyre. Only the flames and the ash carried away on the wind. Only his grief…but no, not just that. There was also the man beside him, who helped make that grief something he might bear.
Eventually, he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Dekker staring at him, a strange look on his face. “Ungr, you alright?”
“Of course,” he said, surprised by how dry his mouth felt. “Why?”
The big man shrugged. “Just thought I’d check is all. It’s gettin’ late. So late, we wait much longer, it’ll be gettin’ early.”
The wanderer blinked, glancing around, and realized for the first time that nearly everyone was gone. There had been over a hundred people gathered around the pyre what felt like only a moment ago. Now, less than a dozen stragglers remained, not quite finished with their grief, not able to leave it behind them, not yet. But then, that was the thing about grief.
He had traveled for thousands and thousands of miles and yet he had not left his own behind. He had lived for more than a hundred years yet still it remained. A man could not leave his grief. It became a part of him, that was all. Etched itself into his heart and his soul, some grief so deeply that, if someone were to look close enough, to gaze into another’s eyes, they could not but help to see the shadow of that pain, the specter of that grief.
But they would move on—it was what people did. All they could do. Move on and leave the dead behind them, for being left, that was all the dead could do. People said that the passage of time made grief easier to bear, but the wanderer had not found that to be true. Instead, he had found only that if that grief did become easier to bear, it was only because a man proved to himself, day after day, that he could bear it, and that simply by existing. Each day that he went on uncrushed by that mountain of grief was another proof that he could go on.
Men suffered, that was all. They suffered and they moved on—there was nothing else they could do. That made him think of something, and he turned back to Dekker. “Clint and the other Perishables—”
“They’re fine,” the big man said. “I checked on ‘em before I came here to you. Clint’s got them lookin’ around the village, seein’ what they can do to defend it in case more of those—what did you call them, Accursed? To see what sort of defense they can make in case more of those bastards show up.”
“And how does it look?” the wanderer asked, knowing the answer even as he asked the question. After all, he had come to the village via the mountain pass, had been from one of the ends of it to the other.
Dekker winced. “Not great, truth be told. Sure, the village is on a mountain, but there are several paths up, paths that’d need be guarded—Clint’s got some of his men posted at each now, but the simple fact is those fellas’ll have to get some rest at some point, and we don’t have the manpower to work in shifts. ‘Course, that ain’t the worst of it. Clint had it in mind to rebuild the barrier—not a magic one, understand, but a wall.”
“A good idea,” the wanderer said, knowing where the man was going with this, for he had had the thought already.
“Sure, it woulda been,” Dekker agreed. “Only, there ain’t no trees to speak of on this mountaintop—the ones there are, well, they’re pitiful little things. Stacked one atop another they couldn’t keep a child out, let alone those damned Accursed.”
“Stones, then?”
Dekker grunted. “There’s a mason come with the Perishables—Calder by name. He’s had a look, said there ain’t much stone and what there is ain’t hardly workable. Said somethin’ about maybe bein’ enough stone to make our cairns but not much else."
The wanderer winced, nodding. He'd been afraid of as much. He had destroyed the magical barrier protecting the village of Alhs and so had left them vulnerable to all the many dangers of the Untamed Lands. Still…there might still be hope. After all, where something was torn down another thing might be built anew. “Dekker, listen,” he said, “I need to—”
“There’s the one responsible for all this tragedy!”
The wanderer cut off, turning to see a man marching toward him. He was a tall man, at least a couple of inches taller than the wanderer’s own six feet two inches, and he was very thin. Not the sort of thin of someone who was malnourished—indeed he had a pooch of a gut which spoke to the fact that he ate well—but instead the rail-thin legs and arms of someone who was simply built that way.
He was shaking a long-fingered fist as he approached. His appearance was made all the sterner by the way his black hair was styled back against his head revealing two bushy eyebrows, like black caterpillars, which were currently drawn down into a frown on his face.
