They ground on through the mountains.

  And it was a grind.

  Half of their wagons had been destroyed or abandoned after the ambush. They salvaged what they could from the wagons trapped on the wrong side of the landslide, stripping them for axles and wheels. The remaining wagons carried their dwindling supplies and equipment, including the skeletal remains of the Fists of Fury, though they could afford to salvage only a portion of the spherical ammunition.

  With the wagons overloaded, all but the most grievously injured marched now. The red elves were too tired to sing, but they trudged doggedly onward, hope still burning in their fiery eyes.

  Zamora recovered but explained that she would not be able to summon another elemental for at least a week or two.

  Holly had been right about the sylph. Zamora came and went without warning, and her moods were like the winds themselves, ever-shifting and ranging wildly. One moment, she would be laughing and playing tag with gnomish children. The next, she would be sitting atop the war wagon, pouting.

  If Dan asked her what was wrong, the sylph would burst into tears or growl with frustration and zoom away into the clouds.

  Despite her maddening moodiness, Zamora remained predictable in one way: her constant craving for Dan’s seed. She propositioned Dan morning, noon, and night, regardless of what he was doing, and did her best to keep him in a constant state of arousal.

  She cavorted constantly and flashed him by making her mist-woven clothes disappear. She turned invisible and breathed depraved promises in his ear. She wove passing breezes, using them to expose other women, lifting skirts and shirts, teasing Dan.

  One night, Zamora joined Dan and his wives in a frenzied orgy and worked her sexual sorcery, amplifying the women’s pleasure as she had Dan’s. Now all of his wives were horny all of the time, which was a great problem to have, but he wouldn’t be able to fully enjoy their lust until he had delivered them safely to Flame Valley.

  And then one glorious day with the sun beating down with uncharacteristic brightness and warmth, Freckles came jogging downhill with a beautiful smile lighting her face. “Master!” she cried breathlessly. “It’s Flame Valley!”

  Dan sat atop Granite and stared with amazement from the peak of the final mountain down into the unbelievable beauty of Flame Valley.

  Thank Crom.

  They had finally made it, had finally escaped suffering and fighting and worry.

  At last, they were safe.

  His people surrounded him now, cheering and weeping.

  Before them, the road dropped sharply away and the world opened wide. The magnificent sweep of Flame Valley sprawled before them, green and glorious in the midday sun, which sparkled magically off the many lakes and streams visible amid the lush fields and forests of the epic valley.

  As far as the eye could see, Flame Valley spread away in fertile perfection, disappearing not into steep mountain ranges but merely the mist of distance miles and miles away.

  Dan saw roads and villages, herds of livestock, and tiny people working in fields, harvesting crops. Mostly, however, he saw long tracts of high grass and stands of straight timber, an unspoiled frontier upon which a great nation could rise.

  It was breathtaking. Overwhelming, even.

  In the distance, towering above all else, stood the great fortress of Flame Valley. Soaring walls of dark stone enclosed an area the size of a city block. Dominating this space was the main castle, boxy as a fist save for the central keep, a rectangular, four-turret tower which rose up and up and up, stretching hundreds of feet into the air like a skyscraper made of black stone. From its apex, a coil of bright flame shone brightly, licking the sky.

  All around Dan, red elves collapsed, weeping with joy. Elves and gnomes embraced, cheering triumphantly.

  Dan felt a tugging at his leg and looked down to see Thelia smiling up at him. “Thank you, husband, for delivering us to Flame Valley.”

  “You didn’t lie,” Dan said. “It’s magnificent.”

  “It is magnificent,” Thelia said. “And it is ours. Our empire.”

  Dan eased Granite to the brink of the stony ledge and turned the warhorse to face his people. “You did it,” he told them. “You persevered through hardship and tragedy. You made it.”

  His people smiled up at him, nodding and weeping. There was no cheering, no wild chant of “Flame Valley!” But he could feel emotion coming off of them, could feel their relief and pride and rekindled hope as surely as he could feel the sun beating down, warm upon his face.

  But Holly called from where she had been staring down into the valley, looking disturbed. “Something is wrong,” she said, pointing. “That shouldn’t be there.”

  21

  Into the Valley

  “What,” Dan said, “the road?”

  Holly was pointing toward a wide, straight road that stretched east to west across the valley.

  “We shouldn’t be able to see it,” Holly said.

  “It that the secret road?”

  Holly nodded slowly, staring down at the road her ancestors had built and hidden, which was now, somehow, visible to the world. “Something’s going on. What are those silver lines?”

  For a second, Dan didn’t know what Holly was talking about. His eyes weren’t as sharp as hers. But then the clouds shifted overhead, and sunlight gleamed along parallel lines running at the center of the road across its entire length.

  What he was seeing was hard to believe. He’d been in the wilderness for so long, the old world and even the civilization he’d known in this world’s version of State College seemed like half-remembered dreams.

  But he knew what he was seeing. “Those are train tracks.”

  “What are those people doing down there?” a gnome squeaked, pointing to a long line of people moving along the road.

  “Those are red elves!” Parus shouted triumphantly. “Our long-lost cousins!”

  Cheers rippled across the ridge.

  “But what are they doing?”

  “Walking.”

  “Not walking. Working.”

  Dan squinted but couldn’t tell what the people were doing. He did, however, notice horsemen here and there among the people. Sunlight gleamed off the riders’ armor.

  “Knights,” a red elf said.

  “Overseers,” a gnome countered.

  Dan frowned at the scene, dread rising in him. He wished he could send Zamora down to take a look, but the moody sylph had disappeared earlier that morning.

  “I’m going down there to investigate,” he said.

  He rode into the valley with a small crew of dependable riders: Ula, Nadia, Parus, and three of Parus’s most trusted red elf soldiers.

  Reaching the valley floor, the road ran alongside a sparkling stream across a broad grassy plain.

  They stopped to give the horses a drink and to fill their canteens. The shallow stream was full of large fish. Salmon, Dan thought. Hundreds of them.

  His stomach growled.

  But they could spear fish later. Investigation came first.

  He let Granite wade into the belly-high grass and eat for a few minutes. All across the vividly green field, butterflies dipped and fluttered like colorful dust motes.

  They mounted up and rode on across the valley and turned at the intersection of east-west road.

  He’d been right.

  The shining lines at the center of the raised road were indeed gleaming train rails. They sat atop new-looking crushed stone and dark railroad ties that smelled strongly of creosote, a smell that took Dan back to his old life, when he and Willis used to walk the tracks at night between T&T sessions.

  Good times—but long gone.

  Railroad tracks made little sense in this world and no sense at all here in the Wildervast.

  He wanted answers.

  They rode through the field alongside the railroad until they saw a group of red elves atop the rails sweeping and raking.

  “Hello,” Dan called out, leading Granite up the embankment and onto the railway.

  The elves dropped their tools and ran screaming into the fields. They dove into the tall grass, disappearing from view.

  Dan reined Granite to a stop among the abandoned tools. “Parus,” he said, calling the young red elf forward. “You do the talking.”

  Parus called out to the elves hiding in the grass, speaking in the red elf tongue.

  For a long time, nothing happened.

  Then the grass shivered with movement, and a red elf woman rose partway into view. Her huge eyes blinked at Parus, then shifted to Dan and went wider still. She disappeared into the grass.

  “Not quite the homecoming you were expecting, huh, Parus?” Dan asked.

  “No, Master Dan. They’re frightened.”

  “I gathered that much,” Dan said. “What’s our next move?”

  “Keep talking to them,” Parus said with a shrug and launched again into Elvish.

  It took a while, but he managed to coax them out. One, then two, then several, the red elves popping into view like a bunch of frightened yet curious prairie dogs.

  Most of the rail workers were curvy, soft-looking females who reminded Dan of the red elves of Fire Ridge before their transformation.

  They spoke with Parus and the other red elves.

  After a while, Parus told Dan, “We frightened them. They thought we were the Spleen Eaters.”

  “Who are the Spleen Eaters?”

  Parus shrugged. “Barbarian raiders, I think.”

  “Yes, barbarian raiders,” one of the worker women said in perfect Common.

  “They are the scourge of Bannon’s Valley,” another added with a shudder.

  “They sweep down on work parties and carry people off to eat their spleens,” yet another added.

  Dan was relieved to learn that the red elves spoke Common—they might not have, considering their people had lived in the Wildervast for thousands of years—but something one of the women had said gave him pause.

  “Hey,” he said, keeping his voice soft, and paused to smile when the elves’ eyes bulged again. “You there,” he said nodding as non-threateningly as possible to the pretty girl who’d shuddered. “You said that the Spleen Eaters are the scourge of Bannon’s Valley. Is this Bannon’s Valley?”

  The girl nodded, biting her lip.

  “It’s not Flame Valley, then?” he asked. “We’re looking for Flame Valley.”

  The girl blinked up at him, looking confused, but an androgynous young man that Dan had initially mistaken as a female spoke up, saying, “Flame Valley is the old name from years ago.”

  Parus and his soldiers murmured around Dan, who said, “Why the name change? Who’s Bannon?”

  The elves laughed incredulously. “You don’t know who Robert Bannon is?”

  Dan shook his head. “We hail from far away.”

  “Big Bob owns this valley,” one of the women said and turned to point across the grassy field to where the fortress rose blackly up to its crowning point of flame.

  “And he’s one of us?” Parus asked, a kind of desperation in his voice. “A red elf?”

  The rail workers shook their heads and started talking excitedly, all at the same time.

  “He’s a big man.”

  “A human.”

  “Like him,” the androgyne said, pointing at Dan. “Only bigger.”

  “Much bigger,” a girl said.

  A kind of excitement had seized the elves. Whoever Big Bob Bannon was, he had made one Hades of an impression on the red elves whose land he had apparently bought or conquered.

  “So who’s Bannon to you?” Dan asked.

  “He owns us,” one of them said. And smiled, Dan noticed.

  “Owns you?” he said. He was liking this less and less.

  Again the elves spoke all at once.

  “Big Bob is our lord and master.”

  “He protects us.”

  “Feeds us.”

  “Lets us work for him.”

  “We’re part of something here.”

  “History.”

  “The great rail.”

  “He’s the Warlord of the Wildervast!” the androgyne cried, his voice lilting with reverence.

  Warlord, Dan thought. Well, that’s an unfortunate wrinkle. “Just how warlike is your warlord?”

  But before the elves could respond, one of Dan’s soldiers called out, “Riders approaching.”

  Dan looked up to see a column of mounted soldiers riding this way along the rail. Several riders, too large to be red elves, breastplates flashing in the sun. Maybe three hundred yards off but closing fast.

  22

  The Green Messenger

  “Uh oh,” one of the workers said, stooping to pick up a rake. “We’d better get back to work.”

  Dan hesitated briefly, his barbarian nature struggling with what was best for his people, especially those who had ridden down here with him.

  “My name is Dan,” he told the workers. “Tell Big Bob we mean no harm.”

  Then he wheeled Granite.

  Parus and the others looked at him with no fear in their eyes, ready for his command.

  “Come on,” he told them. “We’re heading back. I don’t want to bang heads with these guys just yet.”

  They road back to the caravan and discovered that Nadia and the scouts had found a large cave in the mountainside conveniently near the road. Thankfully, the cave was free of purple worms, save for Holly’s babies, which thrashed hungrily from within the tarped wagon.

  They had managed to draw the horses and wagons off the road and underneath the rock overhang. Their timing was perfect because a short time later, a storm blew in, bringing heavy rain that turned the mountain road into a rushing creek.

  Bannon’s Valley was much warmer than the mountains had been, the temperature more akin to autumn than winter. But as daylight faded and rain pounded down, temperatures plummeted.

  “Build campfires,” Dan told his dejected people. He didn’t care if Big Bob saw their fires burning along the ridge. Part of him still smarted from turning tail. After grinding across the Wildervast for nothing but disappointment, a fight sounded nice.

  That was foolishness, he knew, dangerous foolishness. But he wasn’t going to hide, either. “Warm yourselves and cook your food.”

  When no army had ridden out to confront them, Dan had dispatched teams to gather food. The hunters had returned a short time later with apples, berries, a fat doe, and fish. Lots of fish. A whole cartload of huge salmon.

  But even this amazing feast couldn’t lift the spirits of his red elves. All the vigor seemed to go out of them. They muttered around their campfires, drooping like clay figures awaiting the kiln.

  Thelia had been so devastated by the news that she had nearly fainted and had spent the evening in the war wagon with her handmaids.

  “Fuck it,” Nadia said, talking through a mouthful of venison. “This valley’s huge and full of food. And I heard a wolf howling in the distance. What better omen could you want? I say we head down the line a few miles and camp out for a while.”

  “Not safe,” Ula said. The hobgoblin warrior woman rarely spoke during meals—talking delayed weapon-sharpening, after all—but she spoke now with authority. “Camp on field?” she said, sweeping her arm across the open valley. “Horse army come. We foondek.”

  “Ula has a point,” Dan said, remembering the glinting armor of the overseers. “Heavy cavalry would be devastating on the plain.”

  Exactly how many soldiers did Bannon have inside that fortress? Dan wished that he could get a scouting report from Zamora, but the horny sylph remained missing in action.

  “All of this talk is terribly distressing,” Tatiana said, and her golden eyes blinked wistfully out into the darkening valley. “I am a princess. I don’t belong outdoors in this atrocious weather with savages like him,” she said, indicating Dan. “I belong in a warm, dry castle, with servants and a comfortable bed and good things to eat and nice things to wear. That is where I belong.”

  Dan followed her gesture and raised one eyebrow.

  He and Tatiana were both looking at the fortress but were clearly seeing vastly different things.

  She saw it as a cozy paradise dangling just out of reach.

  The castle Dan was seeing rose huge, dark, and indistinct in the gloom, the flame at its peak burning like they eye of a great monster crouched beside the road, awaiting prey.

  Tatiana sighed dramatically, stretching so elegantly in the firelight that Dan had to wonder how many vertebrae she had. She really was something to look at.

  “If we can’t have the palace,” Tatiana said, “and we really must travel, let us at least travel to the Jungle Kingdom.” She closed her eyes and smiled dreamily. “Oh, to be warm again! Back among my people, pampered as a princess should be!”

  Nadia laughed. “Are you purring?”

  Tatiana drew back with an offended look on her pretty face. “You smell like a wet dog.”

  Nadia leaned forward with a snarling grin, her green eyes twinkling dangerously. “Wet wolf, actually.”

  “What would happen to us in your kingdom?” Holly asked.

  Tatiana smiled at Holly. “You, Holly Thorn of Rothrock, would be welcomed most warmly, as befits the daughter of the Iron Druid.”

  Tatiana glanced around the campfire. “These others?” She shrugged. “Tossed into the arena, most likely. My people are great lovers of blood sport.” She turned toward Dan with tinkling laughter. “It would be so entertaining to watch this brute fight one of our warriors!”

  Dan was just getting ready to fire back when Jorbin Ateel spoke. “We should stock up and head back the way we came,” the gnomish leader said. “Ditch the Fists, fill the wagons with food, and head home. We know the way, and we have enough wealth to start over. The Wildervast has been pure Hades.”

  “True,” Dan said, “but the idea of turning around now, after all we’ve been through, makes me feel like I’m crawling with rot grubs.”

 

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