The last things they loaded were a pair of scorpios. Scorpios were nothing more than a very heavy crossbow mounted on a base and were too large and too heavy to be wielded by anyone with the possible exception of Toron, although even he would find the things far too cumbersome to be efficiently wielded by hand. Each scorpio was manned by a team of three who were trained to set it up and have it ready to fire in less than a minute.
The scorpios were a weapon of dire emergencies. The heavy crossbows and pikes could take down an ice bear, even the big ones that stood over twelve feet tall and could reach a weight near fifteen hundred pounds. However, even the powerful crossbows and large spears wielded by the oarsmen would do little to deter a dire ice bear.
Dire ice bears were essentially a dire bear that had made its home in the far north, its fur growing in white to help conceal itself from prey in the largely colorless landscape. These fearsome beasts often exceeded three thousand pounds and could shake off all but the most powerful weapons. The scorpios were the human’s only real defense against such a creature and not an impressive one at that.
Crossbows at the ready and spears close at hand, Zeb let their professional hunter and Derran lead them out with most of the men pulling and pushing the sleds that would only get heavier as their hunting became successful. Whoever had been out here last night was gone now and had left no trace of ever being present. Zeb started to wonder if perhaps they had not seen a willowisp. Maybe they were just all delusional.
“Whoever or whatever was out here seems to be gone now,” Derran said, seemingly reading the captain’s current thoughts.
“Yeah, but for how long I wonder?”
The hunting party followed the ice-inundated river that was more ice than liquid water at the surface. In another month, possibly less, it would be frozen solid along with most of the bay. Winter set in this far north later than in the south. For some unknown reason, it seemed to lag behind by an entire season. Just as spring started in the south, winter set in up here with an unforgiving fierceness.
Derran, Zeb, and another man who was an experienced hunter and tracker walked a hundred yards ahead of Toron and the rest of the group who had the important but thankless job of hauling the sleds. By the time they made camp that evening they boasted a brace of hares, two foxes, and four snow-white ptarmigans. The rabbits and birds would be eaten that very night, the skins scraped and prepared, and the feathers bagged.
Zeb stepped out of the tent and approached Derran who was scouring the flat countryside with his eyes. “Any sign of our friends?”
“No, sir, but with this damnable fog that’s no real surprise. There could be a hundred men surrounding us no more than fifty yards away, and unless one of them suddenly sneezed or broke wind we’d never even know,” the young sailor tersely replied.
“I’ve ordered the men to build a berm around the camp before they turn in. A wall of snow is no great defense but it’s better’n nothing at all. Here they come now. Go on and give em a hand. It’ll take your mind off it for a bit.”
Derran gave his captain a nod, grabbed a shovel from one of the sleds, and lent his muscles to the task. Zeb stared out at the thick fog that had rolled in once more as they were making camp. He had seen a lot of fog in his time, it was a regular part of a sailor’s life, but never had he been in mists this thick, cold, and dry. A fog like this should soak a man to his skin as quickly as a light rain, but this stuff acted more like a scentless smoke than any kind of precipitation.
It was so thick now that a man could lose his way trying to return to camp from using the privy they dug just a few yards from the tents. He would have to order another privy dug, one inside the growing berm. It would not do to lose a man answering a call of nature. That was no way for a man to die. With a sigh of helplessness, Zeb grabbed a shovel and decided he would dig the privy hole himself while his men packed snow into a six-foot-tall ring surrounding their small camp.
Several hard-eyed, blond-haired warriors lay face down in the snow not twenty yards from where the southerners piled snow around their tents in a futile attempt at making their camp more defensible. The scouts wore no metal save for the swords strapped tight to their backs beneath the white fur cloaks. They even covered their faces with a white wool wrap to hide their features as well as protect them from the freezing temperatures.
The spies lay there, ignoring the bone-numbing cold, until the southern men finished their preparations and returned to the warmth of their tents. True dark had fallen and not until then did the scouts move away to inform their battle jarl of the men’s activities. As silent and invisible as ghosts, the large northerners stood up from their prone positions, giving their blood a moment to warm the parts of them that had gone numb before slowly moving away.
Zeb walked up to Toron as the big minotaur stood just outside one of the tents, huge billowing puffs of steam erupting from his large bovine-like nostrils in apparent agitation. “What’s up, Toron? You look fit to charge off and sink your axe into somebody.”
“We were being watched—closely,” the minotaur replied without turning his head. “I got a scent of them when they got up and moved. I never did see them through this blasted fog.”
“What do you make of em?”
“Eislanders, I am almost certain of it. At least two were spying on us, which means there is likely at least ten men in their party,” Toron informed Zeb.
A strong look of concern flashed across Zeb’s weathered features. “You have some knowledge of Eislanders then?”
The minotaur nodded his large head, his horns swinging forward and back. “Aye, our two peoples often ply the same waters and run across each other as we raid our way along the northern isles. Eislanders often engage us to test their strength and battle prowess, as we are one of the few people that they respect as warriors. To take a minotaur’s horns in battle is one of their highest honors.”
“Don’t sound like very good neighbors to me,” Zeb gruffly commented.
“They are worthy adversaries,” Toron answered, bestowing the Eislanders one the highest praises a minotaur could give.
“What do you think they will do?”
Toron shook his head. “They will confront us but I cannot say when, only that it will likely be soon. Eislanders have less patience than even my people do. Whether they will open with words or axes is anyone’s guess. We are lucky not to be on their land or the answer would almost be certain and not to our good fortune. As it stands, I would give us an even chance of either supping with them or being buried by them within the next day or two.”
The sailors-turned-hunters struck camp and loaded the sleds before the fog burned fully away. By the time they were prepared to depart, the mists had dissipated enough to travel, its obscuring properties all but gone. They found signs of the Eislanders not far from their camp but their prints had been deliberately scoured away, probably by dragging heavy furs or canvas behind them. That by itself did nothing to prevent someone from following the track but it effectively made it impossible to judge their numbers. To complicate their ability to track them, several drag marks spilt out into differing directions a hundred yards away and Zeb had no desire to split up even if he were willing to follow the dangerous northerners.
Zeb’s crew continued following the river as it veered sharply south. Evergreen trees began populating its banks and the animal life became more prosperous. Despite the increase of life and color, it would still take at least two days of hard traveling to reach anything that could be called a forest. The small trees that grew this far north were weak and twisted things, widely spread out or growing in small clusters of three and four.
Fox, ptarmigans, and snowshoe hare became more abundant and as the morning moved on into afternoon, the number of furs and wrapped meat piled on the sleds was quickly becoming a legitimate load. It was perhaps two hours before dusk when Derran sprinted ahead and off to the party’s left, his snowshoes kicking up clumps of snow. The young sailor stopped a hundred feet
or so away then waved furiously to the others.
Zeb and the leading party veered to their left to see what had attracted his attention. When Zeb and the other three men approached, Derran was squatting down next to a series of prints nearly as large as those left by his snowshoes. The biggest difference was the pointed marks extending from the front of the impressions, proof of the four to five-inch long claws of the ice bear.
“What do ya make of those tracks, Farley?” Zeb asked their least competent sailor but undisputed master huntsman.
The burley, wiry-haired, black-bearded man spit a gob of tobacco juice and saliva onto the ground as he crouched next to the track, making the only dirty brown spot in the vast sheet of white for miles in any direction.
“Ice bear to be sure, but even you seadogs could tell that,” Farley remarked in his usual belligerent manner. “It’s a big one to be sure. He’s ten, twelve feet standing on his hind legs and well over a thousand pounds given the size and depth of the track. Hard to say how long ago he passed. These dry, freezing climes don’t like to tell their secrets much. I once followed the tracks of a huge stag north of End’s Run for three days. When I finally found it, it had been torn apart by wolves—more’n two days past.”
The hunter touched the sharp edge of the print and watched the tiny bits of dry snow crumble into the deep impression. “I’m pretty sure this’n is fresh though, real fresh. Can’t be more’n about an hour or two old.”
Zeb considered his options for a moment. “Me, Farley, Toron, Derran, and Ruben will take a sled and one of the scorpios just in case the bear’s got a big brother with him and follow the tracks. If we don’t find it by the time the sun sets we’ll turn around and come back. The rest of you pitch the tents, build a palisade, and put some warm food on. We should be back shortly after dark with or without the bear hide.
“I don’t need to remind you boys to keep a sharp lookout. We have company out here and we don’t know what their intentions are, so you all keep alert and your weapons close at hand. Keep those crossbows loaded and the strings dry.”
The men quickly unloaded one of the sleds and strapped down the bare essentials that Zeb and his hunting party needed for the hunt plus a little extra in case they could not make it back to camp that night. It was meager provisioning but it would allow them to survive a night in the frigid region.
The sailors erected the tents first then began shoveling up piles of snow for the berm, packing it just inside the area they dug up to make the wall, creating a trench around the outside. Two men went out and cut down dozens of the spindly pines, sharpened the ends, and stuck them into the wall of packed snow around the camp. It was minimal defense against a determined enemy, but it was far better than nothing at all.
Toron pulled while Ruben pushed the sled along, Farley kept his eyes pointed at the ground, and Derran scanned the land between them and the horizon. Zeb kept pace in the middle, the cold angering the rheumatism that had started to trouble him the last couple of years. He was thinking that if this was not his last hunting trip to the far north it was very near to it.
It was probably not the best command decision for him to insist on leading the hunting party. It was a task far better suited to the younger and stronger men, but he loved the hunt and was loath to give it up. It was also the most dangerous part of their journey not counting the ship-crushing ice packs and high seas, and he was not the type of captain to send others where he would not dare to go himself. Maybe next year he would put Balor in charge of the hunting party and keep himself to the ship. The ship was a captain’s rightful place after all.
Derran dropped two hares and the fox that was hunting one of the rabbits. His keen eye and masterful use of the crossbow brought them down without a missed shot. They skinned and scraped the hides, hastily flayed the rabbit meat off the bone, and packed it all away in minutes. Even Farley was having trouble determining if they were getting any closer to their quarry and the snow’s refusal to help the hunter in any way was quickly making him surlier than usual.
“Damn all this snow! If it were snowing now I could tell you if we were getting closer, if there were some wind I could tell you, if the damn thing would even so much as take a crap it would give me something to go off to at least make a guess! For all I know, these tracks were made before the elves packed up and moved out of Valaria,” the hunter complained bitterly, taking a swig of powerful spirits from a small flask he wore around his neck and tucked under his shirt.
“I think I see something,” Derran whispered even though such stealth was rather pointless after Farley’s rant.
“What do you see, lad?” asked Zeb, glad to break the churlish master hunter out of his tantrum.
“Movement atop the hill near the horizon.”
Zeb squinted in the direction Derran pointed, but he could make out nothing other than the expanse of white. The terrain was gently rolling with low hills, little more than broad mounds, and low-lying regions that resembled the undulating swells of the open sea. Even though the mound was near the horizon, the ground was sloping upward and was not such a great distance away. In a land where standing atop even a tiny hill would allow a man to see for miles in every direction in the flatter areas, this was far from a bad thing.
“I’ll take your word for it. You think it’s our bear?”
“I’m almost certain of it. It was big and four-legged. I didn’t see it until it turned its side to us. I would swear the thing was looking right us, watching us as if it knew we were following it,” Derran said a tad uneasily.
Farley spit a large brown glob onto the snow. “That’s a load of crap, boy. It’s just an animal. Maybe it saw us but it’ll be more concerned with us stealing its prey than us hunting it. It don’t matter none if it saw us anyhow. He knows he’s a big boy and there ain’t nothin’ out here gonna’ challenge him ‘cept another bear and he knows that humans ain’t prey. Only important thing now is gettin’ to him before he runs off. ”
Derran fell in behind the hunter even though he was not so sure the man was right in his assertions of the bear’s motives or its idea of its and the humans’ place on the food chain.
They reached the mound where Derran had seen the bear. “Damn thing is circling back the way it came. Probably inspecting the borders of its territory,” Farley growled irritably while examining the yellow snow made by the bear to mark its range.
The tracks went down the backside of the knoll and continued around and behind another large white mound where they disappeared from sight. The men stayed closer together since they started following the tracks, not concerned with scaring off smaller animals with the larger party and sled. The tracks veered south but seemed to be keeping to the lower side of the low hills, a typical tactic for bears to use when hunting so as not to frighten off any potential prey by skylining themselves against the horizon.
The bear charged without warning and seemed to appear from nowhere. One second there was no sound or signs of life other than the humans and their own breathing, then the top of a mound seemed to explode and a bellowing roar split the air as the huge bear charged the sled from just a few yards away. Toron and the humans all spun at the sudden burst of movement and angry roar. Most creatures would have frozen in shock at such a sudden and fierce attack and been destroyed by the awesome animal. These were all experienced men who had faced more than one kind of danger in their lives and that experience was the critical difference between predator and prey.
Experience won out over youthful reflexes as Farley let fly the broad-headed quarrel from his heavy crossbow, striking the bear in its huge, white side just behind the shoulder. It was an amazing shot, or just extremely lucky, given the animal’s incredible speed and the way it bounded through the thick snow in its effort to reach the men near the sled.
Derran’s shot struck just a foot behind and slightly lower than the hunter’s own. Still a good shot but nowhere near lethal for a creature this big and so outraged at the intrusion of the soft-skinn
ed humans that dared to hunt a hunter.
Zeb let his own quarrel fly but it sailed harmlessly past, just over the ice bear’s back. The old captain dropped the crossbow with a curse and ran for the sled not more than fifteen yards behind him. Farley and Derran were also slogging toward the sled, knowing that they had nowhere near enough time to crank the windlass on the heavy crossbow before the bear ripped Toron and Ruben to shreds. It took less than a second for the three men to realize that they would not reach the sled and the spears it carried until after the bear had gotten to their comrades.
Toron had been pulling the sled by a ten-foot length of rope attached to its front end when the massive white creature burst over the top of the rise to their left. Knowing he had no time to grab one of the pikes from the sled, get in front of the bear, and set himself before it was on top of Ruben, he swung his trusty battle axe off his broad back and charged at the ice bear’s flank with a mighty roar of his own. The minotaur and the bear’s charge intersected at a point less than ten feet from where Ruben was fumbling at one of pikes that lay atop the sledge.
The gleaming head of the double-bladed axe hissed as it cut through the air and raised a spray of bright red blood, made even more pronounced by the infinite whiteness of the bear’s hide and the surrounding countryside, as Toron’s axe cut deeply into the bear’s muscled chest and shoulder.
Despite the grievous wound and the powerful intensity of the minotaur’s strike, the mighty ice bear managed to swing a paw bigger than a man’s head at the creature that interfered with its kill. The huge mitt with its five dagger-like claws raked Toron across his shoulder, gouging deep furrows through the thick jacket and his own tough hide without breaking its stride toward the human that was desperately trying to bring his own weapon to the ready.
The Sorcerer's Vengeance (The Sorcerer's Path) Page 4
