In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  Sorrel stared at her a long minute. “You are joking,” he said, but he didn’t smile.

  “Either we both give some of our blood, or I have to kill someone else for all of his. I don’t want to kill yet, Sorrel.” Clovermead swayed and claws grew on her fingernails. They lengthened to two inches, three inches, then shrank. She moaned with terrible hunger. “Please, Sorrel,” she whispered. “Don’t make me kill.”

  “Give up the tooth,” said Sorrel. “Then you will not have to kill anyone. Do not keep that evil thing.”

  “I need it,” said Clovermead. “To save Father. I’ve racked my brain and I still can’t think of any other way to keep him alive. Have you, Sorrel?” Her eyes pleaded with him to think of some way to save her.

  Sorrel shook his head.

  “Then, do what I ask you to do,” snapped Clovermead. The Tansyard could not help her, and she almost hated him for his incapacity.

  “All right,” said Sorrel. His teeth chattered and he shivered in his tatterdemalion rags. “I do not care if these butchers live or die, but I will give you what you want. I very much hope that you are in control of your magic, Clovermead. I do not want to be eaten.”

  “I’ll try not to eat you,” said Clovermead.

  “Can you promise?” asked Sorrel. Clovermead shook her head and Sorrel trembled more violently than ever.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Raid on the Prison Carts

  Late that night Sorrel and Clovermead crept through the darkness, frozen drizzle splattering down on their heads. Behind them the soldiers of the army huddled around their campfires, muttering and scratching fleas and snoring fitfully. Ahead bear-priests sat at the front of each prison cart, all silent under their fur capes. More walked sentry around the carts and flicked keen glimpses at the darkness. Their eyes glowed dull red. Clovermead and Sorrel, shadows among shadows, froze whenever a bear-priest looked their way.

  “I think we’ve come far enough,” Clovermead whispered when they reached the commissary wagons nearest the prison carts. “We can feed the tooth now.”

  Sorrel rolled up his shirtsleeve as Clovermead took the tooth off her leather cord. His eyes locked on the brown-smeared enamel and his teeth chattered. “Please do not make a mistake, Clovermead,” he whispered. “Most emphatically I repeat, I do not want to be devoured by you. I want to live and ride on the Steppes, and I wish to be a happy, toothless old man with many wonderful memories before I die.”

  “Yum,” said Clovermead. Sorrel flinched and she grinned. “Just a joke.”

  Sorrel smiled a very, very little. “Ha-ha. I must tell all my friends that drollery. They will fall laughing on the ground.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Clovermead. “You’ll be all right.” She plunged the eager tooth into Sorrel’s forearm.

  The tooth growled a tune of insatiable hunger. It turned pink, then red, then glowed deep and brilliant ruby to match the towers of Chandlefort. Sorrel gasped with pain and clamped his teeth shut against a louder outcry. By distant firelight Clovermead could see the blood drain from his flesh. His face turned pale.

  Clovermead felt power and strength rush into her. Her mind reached out to the bears and she felt a hundred great masses of sinew and teeth stir at her command—ah! The bears twitched but did not move. The bear-priests held the bears tight in their own red net of command. With her eyes closed Clovermead could see the red net’s links glowing in the night—slender, supple, and strong. She would need far more blood to rend that ruby web. She needed more of Sorrel—

  “Stop, Clovermead,” Sorrel gasped. “I am growing weak. I will not be able to walk.”

  Don’t stop, said the tooth. Take all of him. You have no more use for the Tansyard.

  You’re right, tooth, Clovermead thought. I’ll eat him now. I need to stay strong myself. I need his blood. I want his blood.

  “Lady help me,” Sorrel moaned. The plea made Clovermead curl her lips in an angry sneer. . . .

  And the clouds parted. The moon shone through and lit Sorrel’s agonized face. He looked at Clovermead and still he trusted her. Some hero I am, Clovermead thought as a last flicker of shame flared up inside her. Even Lucifer Snuff has more honor. He kept his word when he promised to go back to Low Branding before attacking us again. I’d be a liar like Daddy if I killed him now.

  Regretfully Clovermead pulled the tooth from Sorrel’s arm. The bloody point clung to his flesh and raised it to a red pucker. When tooth and flesh parted, Sorrel’s arm was scarred from palm to shoulder. He sobbed with relief and pain. He tried to clutch his arm to his body, but he was too weak to move.

  The clouds covered the moon again.

  “I’m sorry,” said Clovermead. “Sorrel, you can’t imagine how hard it was not to eat you.” Sorrel moaned, and Clovermead put the tooth to her own forearm. She felt a sting of pain and saw drops of blood well forth. The tooth sank into her as eagerly as it had sunk into Sorrel.

  Her blood was divine. She drank ambrosia and she was ambrosia drunk into the long teeth of a Goddess. She felt the draining pleasure of death. Blood surged through her arteries and veins, and suction crushed their thin walls. Her arm moaned with electric pain, and she longed to feel her teeth rend flesh. Lord Ursus roared welcome and his desire to share in her feast. She should bring him meat, as any cub should bring her father meat. She loved him and she loved eating and the tooth was full of red power and she was getting very weak. . . .

  Clovermead pulled the tooth from her arm. It was thick and wet with blood. Her arm was a drained husk, and she sported a welted scar that ran from fingertip to neck. Sorrel gabbled worried human words at her, but she couldn’t understand him. He was a strange, small monkey, and she was barely human in her coat of fur and long claws and sharp fangs.

  “Now we free Father,” Clovermead said. Or did she growl? She wasn’t sure if Sorrel had understood her.

  She clenched the pulsing tooth, turbulently full of blood, and took hold of its power. It was a claw in her hand, a fang in her jaws. She slashed at the sky and severed the net that bound the bears to the bear-priests’ commands. Astonished roaring abruptly filled the night air around the encampment. The bear-priests yelled, and the ground by the prison carts was loud with the sound of pounding feet and spitting curses. Clovermead smiled and reached out to speak with the bears.

  Hello, Boulderbash, she said. Hello, Troutnibble, Cedarsniff, and Streamloll.

  Greetings, little human, said Boulderbash and the others.

  I have a job for you, said Clovermead.

  I thought you meant to give us our liberty, said Boulderbash. This is only a new servitude?

  Correct, said Clovermead with an ugly laugh. Do you think I would waste my power that way?

  Of course not, mistress, said Boulderbash. What shall we do?

  Attack the bear-priests, said Clovermead. Hunt them down. Kill them.

  That will be a sweet revenge for this imprisonment of our minds, said Boulderbash. I wonder when we will be revenged against you?

  Never, said Clovermead, more confidently than she felt. All of you, come now!

  You are not that strong, said Boulderbash. As many as you can command are at your service. Only that many. The rest of us are free from both you and the bear-priests.

  Clovermead heard distant rumbling that rapidly grew louder. Padding feet struck against the hard ground. The bear-priests whirled to face the onslaught and they blanched with fear. They drew their broadswords—and seven great bears, Boulderbash at their lead, leapt in among the prison carts.

  The bears roared in delight and fury. Their lips curled back and exposed their yellow fangs, so sharp and huge that they could have sliced through a giant’s armor. Their claws bit savage runnels in the ground. Then they were among the bear-priests, as foxes among rabbits, tearing flesh and biting limbs. The bear-priests screamed as they were wounded and died, and Clovermead smiled with grim exultation. The bears ran after more victims and in their pursuit heedlessly knocked over prison carts.
The wooden wheels crumpled and the prisoners screamed as the iron cages fell to the ground. The oxen dragging the carts smelled the bears’ musk, flinched and struggled against their yokes, and bellowed their terror.

  “Can you move?” Clovermead asked Sorrel. The Tansyard tried to get to his feet, stumbled, and fell back to the ground. “Stay here,” she commanded. “I’ll come back with Father. Then all three of us can escape.”

  Clovermead dashed alone into a flickering chaos of drizzling mist, tumbled carts, dead bear-priests, and lumbering bears. Near the Mayor’s tent a line of patricians and bear-priests had closed ranks to combat the growling beasts. Clovermead felt a dozen bear-priests try to reattach the blood-net over the bears. Blood surged powerfully within her and she undid their efforts with a contemptuous flick—and saw her tooth’s glow diminish.

  Don’t waste me, said the tooth. You have time before they capture the bears again.

  As you say, old murderer, said Clovermead, and she came to the nearest of the abandoned prison carts. “Father!” she yelled into the night. Her voice was trembling and harsh. “Are you there, Daddy? Is Waxmelt Wickward there?” She jerked open a black curtain.

  A skeletal stranger sat in filthy straw. Chains stretched from the iron walls to tight manacles that had chafed his wrists and ankles. He wore thin rags that had once been fine silk, and shivered in the cold. Clovermead thought he might have been handsome once, before emaciation wore away his looks. His sandy hair was as rough as the straw he sat on, and his skin was red with cold. His arms had been broken and left to mend badly. As the light came in a rat scurried away from the empty bowl of gruel that lay by the man. A foul-smelling pot sat at the far end of the cage.

  There was too much light for the prisoner to see, even in the cloudy night, and his eyes blinked, teared, and shut tight. He turned a blind mole’s face to Clovermead and groped through the bars with raw worms of fingers. His manacles caught on the bars. “Will you let me die?” he rasped. “Let it end. Let Lord Ursus drink my blood. He’s welcome to it.”

  “I’m not a bear-priest,” Clovermead said reluctantly. I’m thirsty, she thought. I’ll drink for Lord Ursus if you’re so desperate to die. She felt the bear tooth come eagerly to her hand. No, she told herself, I need information. I can’t kill him yet. She growled her frustration and thrust the tooth away. “I’ve come for my father. His name is Waxmelt Wickward. Do you know where he is?”

  The man laughed and cried. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know anything but these stinking walls and the sounds of what bear-priests do to prisoners and . . .” He shuddered. “Save me, too. Don’t leave me here.”

  Clovermead pulled idly at the door, wondering if she could make an easy meal of the fool. “It’s locked,” she said crossly. “I don’t have time to get you out.”

  “Damn you,” the man croaked. His fingers clawed at her. They brushed at her coat with no effect, but Clovermead fell back from him. Would Waxmelt look like this? Act like this? Desperately the prisoner stretched forth his hands till the manacles cut into his forearms. “I had a wife,” he whispered imploringly. “I had a son. I need to see them again.” Clovermead shook her head, though the darkness-blinded prisoner couldn’t see her. “Please,” he begged. “Please.”

  For a moment the moon shone through a crevice in the clouds, and Clovermead could no longer curse the prisoner for a fool, a weakling, a deserving prey. She cried and the tears dissolved fur from her hands, softened claws into fingernails. She cried for her own lost self and she cried for her father and she cried for the stranger who would die. “I’m sorry,” she said, gulping back sobs. “I can’t help you. I wish I could.”

  “They have won, then.” He drew back his arms and he turned to face Clovermead directly, proud despite his rags and chains and sightless, tight-shut eyes. “I am Count Linden Silvermere of Queensmart,” he said with a sudden shadow of vigor. “Tell my friends the bear-priests kidnapped me. Tell my family I loved them to the end.”

  “I will,” said Clovermead. “I swear it. Farewell, Count Linden.” She bowed to him in courtly fashion and he bowed his head in return. Then she ran from him to the neighboring prison carts.

  She yelled for her father again, but there was no answer. She tore down curtains and looked at the broken men and women within each cell, starved and beaten husks, each time more afraid she would find her father, every minute more afraid she would never find him. “Have you seen my father?” Clovermead asked. “Have you seen Waxmelt Wickward? Do you know where he is?” Some had forgotten how to speak. Others were insane. The remnants had seen nothing but bars and torturers. Arrows whistled in the air. She heard a bear roar in pain and she knew that Troutnibble had died. The blood-net reformed above her and sank tendrils into the fleeing bears. Roaring their rage and despair, the bears stalked back toward the army.

  Clovermead found her father at last in the twenty-first cart. “Daddy?” she asked disbelievingly of the small, familiar silhouette in the cage.

  “Clovermead?” He stumbled forward and it was Waxmelt. He had grown thin, but not yet skeletal, and his flesh was still healthy and firm. His matted hair was much whiter and there were bloody bandages over his fingertips, but his body still moved at his direction. He had been left unchained. He could still see, though he narrowed his eyes against the distant torchlight. He was not yet broken.

  “You’re alive,” said Clovermead, and her head fell against the bars. The world spun and she had to close her eyes. “I’ve come to rescue you, Father.”

  Waxmelt reached his bandaged hands through the bars to caress his daughter’s cheeks. “You shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t be here. I hoped you were in Queensmart by now. Clovermead, don’t you know how dangerous this place is?” His voice cracked with fear, but Clovermead felt him smile as his bandages stroked her skin. “Dear Lady. I can’t imagine what you did to get here. My own sweet, brave, disobedient daughter—you are a marvel.”

  “I’m an awfully tired marvel, Daddy,” Clovermead said in a small voice. Her knees tried to buckle under her and she wanted to sleep for a week, but she made herself stand up and shake the locked bars. “We don’t have much time till the bear-priests come back.”

  “Run now,” said Waxmelt. “This is foolish. You don’t need me. I’m nothing to you. . . .” He paused and grinned anxiously. “It’s a little late to tell you that, isn’t it? Don’t listen to me. They haven’t manacled me. Snuff said they didn’t need to bother chaining a weakling like me. Can you get through the bars, Clo?”

  “I know someone who can,” said Clovermead, and she raised the tooth as high as she could reach. It still gleamed red, though nowhere near so brightly as it had. She could replenish it from Waxmelt—she struck down that thought. It was the tooth’s desire, Lord Ursus’, not hers. She had come to save her father, not kill him.

  One and the same, said the tooth, with a chuckle. One and the same.

  Quiet, said Clovermead inwardly, and she called out to Boulderbash. Come help me. I need your strength to free Father. Leave the bear-priests.

  But they are so tasty, said Boulderbash, and they deserve more of the same for how they treated us. We did not enjoy our captivity. The bear ambled out of the darkness, bloody jawed. She was as large as the whole prison cart. So, my slavery is to be used to free your father. Touching. I warn you, girl-ape, we do not love your bonds any better than theirs.

  You can go free when you’re done here, said Clovermead. Boulderbash, I need you to break open the bars. Please, can you make a space wide enough for my father to escape?

  Little cub, said Boulderbash, I do not think the bear-priests will be distracted much longer. They will reassert their dominion over the last of us while I am busy here.

  Then, hurry! Clovermead raged.

  Of course, mistress. Stand aside. Clovermead fell away from the cart and Waxmelt retreated to the cart’s far corner, his eyes wide with awe. Boulderbash inserted her forelegs between two of the bars, tensed her muscles, and strained agai
nst the steel. The rods bowed, creaked, bent, squealed, and snapped. So did the surrounding pair, and Boulderbash fell back from the prison cart. The space where four bars had been was now wide enough for Waxmelt to get through.

  Will that do? Boulderbash inquired.

  Wonderfully, said Clovermead. The tooth was drained of light. It was small and cold, and the blood was dry. She let her arm fall and clenched the tooth tightly in her palm. Thank you, Boulderbash.

  Will you do the same for me one day? Boulderbash asked with a great, booming chortle. I think not, little one. She lumbered off into the darkness.

  Waxmelt came out of the cage. His legs were weak from disuse, but he could walk. Clovermead took a step to join him and tottered. Her arm blazed with pain and she was kitten weak.

  Waxmelt went to her side and put her arm over his shoulder. “Who’s rescuing whom?” he asked lightly.

  “Blood-magic takes a lot out of me,” said Clovermead. “Blood, mainly. We need to find Sorrel. He’s waiting for us.”

  “The Tansyard’s here too?” Waxmelt shook his head in wonder. “Where is he?”

  “By the commissary wagons,” Clovermead whispered.

  “Where are they?”

  “Somewhere there.” Clovermead waved vaguely into the darkness. “Let’s go, Daddy.”

  They stumbled through the night and the rain, both of them too weak to run. Clovermead tried to retrace her steps, but she mistook her way half the time. Waxmelt cursed the clouds that hid the constellations and the moon and left them directionless in the darkness.

  Bugles rang, their piercing music louder than every roar and yell. The walls of Chandlefort cracked open and light blazed out on the dark camp. Neighing white shapes separated themselves from that distant shining and rushed closer. All at once dozens of ivory horses swept past Clovermead and Waxmelt and into the heart of the army. On their backs sat swaggering, laughing men, dressed all in cloth of gold, who slashed about them with huge sabers at bear-priests and soldiers. “A Yellowjacket! A Yellowjacket!” the laughing horsemen cried, and “Chandlefort and Victory!” and “The Moon! The Moon!”