The Northern Approach Read Online Free

panting as he dropped the sword into the mud, where it steamed angrily. His legs felt soft, making him stumble and nearly fall.
    “Easy there, wildling,” chided the woman who had shouted a moment earlier, stepping close enough to help Raeln stay upright. The elven woman winced as she saw his hand and quickly wrapped some ragged cloth over it. “Get back to camp and get some water before you pass out. Even these infants can handle what’s left.”
    Raeln nodded, dazed, barely aware of where he was anymore. He looked around at the group of soldiers and new trainees charging in to fight the elementals. They had wisely soaked themselves in water before coming, giving them an advantage against the heat. Making it even easier on them, out of the thirty or more elementals that had been there when Raeln arrived, he saw less than fifteen left. With luck, no one would die this time.
    “Raeln?” asked the woman at Raeln’s side. She was practically holding him up. “You okay, big boy?”
    Looking down as his head spun, Raeln thought for a moment that he saw his sister Ilarra. The woman was elven, but in reality, that was the extent of the similarity. When he blinked, his sister’s face disappeared and the face of one of the military officers from Lantonne appeared, staring at him with concern.
    “Fine. Thanks for asking,” Raeln answered, smiling.
    Then he fell face-first into the mud.
     
    *
     
    Coughing instinctively against the burning in his lungs, Raeln woke on his back, staring up at the ceiling of one of the village’s tents. Smoke from a nearby fire rose out through a small hole at the top, keeping the air inside fairly clear.
    “Where am I?” asked Raeln…or he meant to. What came out sounded more like wheezing and mumbles.
    Somewhere off to his left, a man chuckled and patted Raeln’s arm. Even that simple touch stung like knives scraping his skin—the burns there far worse than he would have thought.
    “Don’t try to talk yet,” the man insisted. “You took a beating out there. It’ll take some time to heal. You sucked down a lot of smoke.”
    Raeln looked over and saw the man was Finnias, an elderly human from one of Lantonne’s outlying villages. The man had come with them to the camp and tended to serve as their doctor, despite having little or no training. At best he could splint arms and offer advice for illnesses. More than once, Raeln had seen Finnias hack off a patient’s leg or arm to stop the progress of infection, far more readily than Raeln was comfortable with.
    After seeing the wonders of healing magic in places long gone, Raeln could not help but feel this was the last person he wanted tending to him. Sadly, the village had no one with any appreciable skill in that art, leaving Finnias the closest thing they had to a healer.
    “How long will he need to rest?” asked On’esquin, surprising Raeln. He had not realized the man was seated on his other side and certainly could not smell him over the scent of charred fur and skin. “We wanted to scout the area and look for other hunting grounds.”
    “Two days, maybe three,” the man replied, poking at a particularly painful patch of Raeln’s skin. “The military wanted to have a small ceremony to honor what he did out there, putting himself at risk to save the camp. Nothing major, but they insisted.”
    “When?” On’esquin asked.
    “Three days, to be sure he was looking himself again and not covered in ointments.”
    “Thank you,” said On’esquin, motioning toward the flap of the tent. “Excuse us a moment.”
    Finnias nodded and, using a cane, got up and headed out of the tent. Seconds later, Raeln could hear him talking with others, mostly about the weather.
    “You worried about how they saw you,” whispered On’esquin once the tent flap had settled into place. “We leave in two days, if I have to carry you. Let them remember this and not the beating of simpletons that crossed you.”
    Nodding, Raeln closed his eyes