In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  “Ye-es,” Waxmelt reluctantly agreed. “But I hear all sorts of stories about Tansyards. You’re the first one I’ve met. Not many of you come out of your Steppes.”

  “Of course he’s honest!” Clovermead burst in. “And he must be an excellent fighter! I’ve read the whole story in the Heptameron. The Tansyards were gallant warriors who struggled for their freedom, even after the legions of Queensmart had subjugated the Thirty Towns and Selcouth and the Astrantian Sands and made the Cindertallows of Chandlefort do homage to the Queen. The Tansyards refused to submit to the Empire, and against all odds they annihilated four Imperial legions and captured their banners. Then Queen Aurhelia swallowed a bitter pill to her pride and gave up trying to vanquish the Tansyards. Isn’t it true?” she appealed to Sorrel.

  “Most certainly, Miss Clovermead, but it was in my great-great-grandfather’s time that we sent the legions fleeing back to Queensmart. Great-great-grandfather was an esteemed warrior, of whose glory the Horde sang many songs, but I have no such deeds yet to my name. Mr. Wickward, I can transform your daughter from an untrained girl to a rank novice. Will that be an acceptable trade for your hospitality?”

  “It’s a foolish idea, Mr. Wickward,” Goody Weft bellowed from the kitchen. “Don’t encourage that daughter of yours in her mischief. She’ll lose an eye.”

  “You said I’d break my neck if I climbed onto the roof, and I didn’t!” Clovermead yelled back.

  “Ninny’s luck!” Goody Weft retorted. “Mr. Wickward, it’s a scandal how you indulge her. Tell her no for once!”

  Clovermead gazed imploringly at her father. Waxmelt looked into her face, sighed, and glanced apprehensively at the kitchen door. “The answer is yes, Goody,” he called out. He flinched as a pot crashed loudly to the floor. “This isn’t just a treat, Clo,” he continued softly. “You need to learn how to defend yourself. All the pilgrims say the fighting’s terrible in Linstock—isn’t that true, Mr. Sorrel?”

  “It is a devastated land,” said the Tansyard somberly. “The soldiers of Low Branding raid near Chandlefort, the soldiers of Chandlefort raid near Low Branding, and all of Linstock has become fire and blood. The farmers pray to Our Lady for the Empire to come back and keep the peace, but they know that the legions will never again march north from Queensmart. The Empire is dying, dead, and Chandlefort and Low Branding squabble over Linstock like vultures over its carcass. I hear there are more such wars in Selcouth and the Thirty Towns. You are lucky here in Timothy Vale, with the Chaffen Hills between you and the soldiers.”

  “I thank Our Lady night and day for their protection,” Waxmelt said. “Mr. Sorrel, I think Clo should learn how to defend herself, in case our luck runs out and the soldiers ever do come this way. Clo, you understand you’re not playing a game?”

  “Yes, Father,” Clovermead said. She was a little awed at how serious her father had become. Then she grinned. “You’d better not wait a single minute to start your lessons, Mr. Sorrel. You never can tell when a cruel and bloodstained soldier might decide to wander by.”

  Waxmelt laughed. “She won’t give you any rest till you teach her something, Mr. Sorrel. You may as well start now. I’ll come outside and watch.” He took off his apron, folded it neatly, and hung it on the back of a chair.

  Goody Weft came and looked through the doorway of the kitchen. She was a tall, rangy woman in a black dress whose plain, bony features lit up with a look of indignation as she eyed the apologetic Sorrel, the cringing Waxmelt, and the ecstatic Clovermead. “It’s an absolute disgrace,” she announced, then wheeled back into her domain. Loud, despairing commentary followed the three outdoors.

  Sorrel looked around him. Ladyrest Inn, two stories tall and ten times larger than any other building in the Vale, hulked on the crest of Kestrel Hill. Around the inn were a smokehouse, a barn, a yard piled high with firewood, a small apple orchard, a stable, and a midden where hairy, snuffling pigs rooted at the garbage. East of the inn were the mill, the bake-house, and the handful of steep-roofed log cabins that constituted the hamlet of Grindery, the largest settlement in Timothy Vale. West of Ladyrest were the rough granite flagstones of the Crescent Road, which ran from the Imperial city of Queensmart north through Linstock, the Chaffen Hills, and Timothy Vale, and at last over a winding pass threading the Reliquary Mountains to its terminus at Our Lady’s shrine at Snowchapel.

  Just north of Ladyrest the Road descended suddenly along the slope of Kestrel Hill to the ford through the cold, swift Goat River, then rose to meander in the middle distance past vast flocks of sheep, thick grass, and very little else. Besides the cabins of Grindery there were no more than six-score shepherds’ huts scattered through Timothy Vale. The Vale itself was an emerald string bean of verdant, hillocky pastures. On either side of the Vale the land rose precipitously toward firs, bare rocks, and finally the savage white tips of the Reliquaries. Except for a few hours around noon, one set of peaks or the other cast jagged shadows across the Vale’s precarious aisle of habitation. Year-round, sharp winds plunged from the Reliquaries’ heights to chill the Vale.

  Sorrel shivered as he led Clovermead and Waxmelt over to where Ladyrest’s firewood yard abutted on Kestrel Hill. His tatterdemalion jerkin was far too thin to protect him from the Vale’s autumn breezes. Waxmelt blew on his hands and rubbed them briskly together, but Clovermead bounded unheedingly through the cold. Only her red cheeks registered the impact of the chill.

  With Waxmelt’s permission, Sorrel took the inn’s axe and chopped each of two long oak branches roughly into the shape of a sword. He then took out his knife and whittled them till their hilts were easy to grasp and their blade edges thin but not sharp. He gave the lighter sword to Clovermead and walked with her and Waxmelt to the east side of the hill.

  “Try to hit me,” said Sorrel.

  “Yaah!” screamed Clovermead. She rushed at him with all her might—and found herself flat on her back, her sword lying some feet away.

  “Are you hurt, Clo?” Waxmelt asked, not very anxiously.

  Clovermead picked herself up off the grass and patted her arms and legs. “No, Father. My fingers tingle and I’m out of breath, that’s all.”

  “Out of breath and still talking—only you, Clo,” said Waxmelt. He grinned, and Clovermead stuck out her tongue at him. “Mr. Sorrel will think you have no manners. Sir, I don’t know fighting, but that looked nicely done. Would you like cabbage stuffed with lamb sausage for dinner?”

  “I salivate ecstatically, Mr. Wickward,” said Sorrel with a low bow and a lick of his lips. He looked curiously at Waxmelt. “I think your voice reveals that you are not from the Vale. You are from someplace south, yes? I think you are like me, not yet accustomed to this horrid cold?”

  “I’m from Linstock,” Waxmelt said flatly. “I came to the Vale twelve summers ago, when Clo was just a baby.”

  “That is so? From where in Linstock do you hail?”

  “From where Clovermead’s mother lies buried,” Waxmelt said. He was scowling now. “There was fever that year, and she was weak after giving birth to Clo. I left her grave behind me and I’ve never looked back. I don’t like to think about Linstock.”

  “I beg a thousand pardons,” said Sorrel. “I sorrow for your sadness and I will ask you no more questions.”

  “It’s nothing,” said Waxmelt. “Don’t bother yourself further.” He nodded a farewell to Sorrel, ruffled Clovermead’s hair, and headed back to Ladyrest.

  Sorrel turned to more basic lessons once Waxmelt was gone. He had Clovermead hold the sword in her outstretched arm for three minutes, then had her hold tight to the hilt while he slashed furiously at the blade. He made her lunge, duck, jump, and leap backward while holding the sword as a shield in front of her face.

  “Let’s fight,” Clovermead begged. “I can do these exercises later. I want to be in a battle!”

  “As you wish, Miss Clovermead,” said Sorrel. “We shall have a single combat! We will try to tap at each other’s bodies with our blades
. Please do not aim for my head, and please do not try to skewer me well and truly. If I hit you ten times, I will win, and if you hit me once, you will win. Yes? Then, we proceed!”

  Clovermead immediately leapt at Sorrel and rained down furious blows on him. He parried them patiently and waited for her to exhaust herself. When she was panting, he shifted to the offense. He moved slowly and let Clovermead see exactly how his sword swept and thrust. The oak sword hit Clovermead ten different ways and left behind only light bruises.

  Their bout ended as the sun set. Sorrel and Clovermead sat down on the side of Kestrel Hill, near a patch of pine forest that bulged down from the Eastern Reliquaries. Their oak swords lay by their sides in the tall grass. The two of them dripped with sweat.

  “I haven’t been so tired since Gaffer Miller’s ram chased me into Goat River,” said Clovermead. She took off her sweater. Her shirt beneath was stinking and damp. “Phew! Fighting’s just as much fun as I imagined, but I hadn’t realized there was so much hard work to it. It’s easier to carry two buckets of well water or bathe a cat. Still, I think I see how it ought to be done. Tomorrow I’ll be much better—don’t you agree? I think I’m a natural warrior. I’ll be as good as a Tansyard within a week!”

  “Miss Clovermead, you are as skilled with the blade as any Tansyard with one afternoon of training,” said Sorrel. “In five days you will be as good as any Tansyard with five days of training. No, I do not speak the truth entirely. You are a marvelous quick learner. Your parries improve most rapidly. But do not expect to perform miracles, nor to spit ten champions before sunrise.”

  “Hmph,” said Clovermead. “Father always said I should have high expectations for myself, and high expectations are certainly a lot more fun than low expectations.” She sat up, plucked a hayseed, and put it between her teeth. Her eyes widened. “Gracious Lady! What a huge bear. I’ve never seen one come so close.”

  Sorrel lifted his head. “Where do you see this bear, Miss Clovermead?” he asked.

  Clovermead pointed to the near edge of the pine forest. There a white-furred bear squatted on her hind legs. She was enormous—sixteen feet high and six feet thick. Her hoar white claws were three inches long. She yawned and revealed teeth even longer than her claws and sharp as razors. She steadily inspected the two of them and sniffed gently at the wind.

  “She has found me again,” said Sorrel. His teeth began to chatter. He got to his feet. “Miss Clovermead, it is time for you to return to Ladyrest. You will please walk directly to the dining room. I must bid you farewell for a little while.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Clovermead. She spat out the hayseed and stumbled to her feet. “I know she’s large, but she won’t hurt you if you stay out of her way. She’s just a bear.”

  “Times are changing,” said Sorrel. Now his hands were shaking. His eyes darted from the bear to the Ladyrest stable. “Miss Clovermead, you should know that I am a coward. I am always fearful and I run very often. Now it is time for me to run from this creature. I will go to my sweet mare, Brown Barley, and I will gallop away from your fine inn, and if Our Lady smiles, I think I can make the bear lose my scent. Please make my excuses to your excellent father. Ask him my most weeping pardon that I must abandon his scrumptious lamb sausage and cabbage, and inform him that I will return when it is dark. And please do not tell your father about the bear. He will worry about your safety and require me to go away. He does not need to worry—she is only chasing me. Even if she discovers some days from now that I have returned here and she comes back, for now she will only watch.” Sorrel fixed his eyes on Clovermead’s with wistful urgency. “Please say nothing. In a week I will be gone.”

  “I wish I could go with you,” sighed Clovermead. Her eyes blazed. “Danger in Timothy Vale! How wonderful. Of course I won’t say anything, Mr. Sorrel. Father’s a fuddy-duddy who raises a ruckus if I’m out of sight for an hour! He’s just not reasonable. I wouldn’t mind if the bear did come looking for you. I’d fight at your side against her.”

  “I will remember your kind offer,” said Sorrel. He bowed to Clovermead with the utmost dignity. His eyes skittered back to the bear and his Adam’s apple jerked. “But please, miss, now go.”

  “I won’t tell Father,” said Clovermead as she left. Then she ran as if a pack of wolves were yipping at her feet. Partly she ran for the pleasure of running and partly with a prickle of real fear to speed her on her way.

  She slammed the dining-room door shut behind her and scampered to press her nose to the window. She watched Sorrel jog to the stable, and a minute later she saw him on Brown Barley, cantering north on the Road. The bear got to her feet and padded after him. She was an avalanche in fur.

  “This is my first real adventure,” Clovermead told herself solemnly. “I must treasure it. Funny, I always thought bears seemed nice. I wonder what that one’s name was?”

  Something roared in her mind and Clovermead suddenly knew the answer to her question. “Boulderbash?” Clovermead asked herself curiously. “Of course, Boulderbash. It suits her perfectly. How perfectly gargantuan she was!”

  Chapter Two

  The Vision in the Puddle

  Sorrel stole back into Ladyrest after midnight. His clothes had been spattered with mud and Brown Barley panted with weariness. Clovermead met him at the stable. She put the mare in the stall next to Waxmelt’s pony, Nubble, and helped Sorrel rub her down. Then she covered her with a quilted blanket and brought her honeyed oats. Brown Barley whinnied appreciatively and stamped her feet. Clovermead led Sorrel back to the inn and had him sit in the chair nearest the dining-room fire. She gave him a bowl of hot oatmeal.

  “Father said to give you this first. There’s cabbage and sausage waiting on the stove, and I can make you mint tea. Goody Weft and I plucked the mint leaves just last week and they’re almost fresh. It’s the best tea in Timothy Vale. Would you like some?”

  “I cannot refuse so well-omened a brew,” Sorrel said with a tired grin. Clovermead bounced into the kitchen and came back with a hot mug. Sorrel’s teeth began to chatter as he held his face over the rising steam. “Now that I am warming, I realize what an icicle I had become. Eeyah. You have my profound gratitude, Miss Clovermead. Where is Mr. Wickward? I should also thank him for leaving me dinner.”

  “He’s asleep—I told him I’d wait up for you.” Clovermead peeked conspiratorially up the empty stairs and shuffled closer to Sorrel. “He’s entirely in the dark about the strange event,” she whispered into his ear. “So am I. Will you tell me about the bear, please? I think you owe it to me, and I don’t care how long the story is. I don’t mind staying up.”

  Sorrel thoughtfully sipped at his tea—then shook his head. “I think my guest-duty is to disappoint you, Miss Clovermead, and to be mouth-buttoned. You are safer knowing nothing. Alas, I give you poor recompense for your aid, and I am abashed, chagrined, ashamed, and contrite. In Tansyard we have seventy-three words to express these emotions, or maybe seventy—four, and I assure you from the bottom of my heart that I feel all of them.”

  “You rat,” said Clovermead in amazement. “I even made you mint tea.”

  “I abominate myself,” Sorrel said. He slapped himself on the left wrist. “Now, there is a dinner in the kitchen?”

  And for all Clovermead’s entreaties, he told her nothing more.

  “I suppose he should not speak casually of great matters,” Clovermead said to herself when she woke the next morning. “Still, it rankles to know that an adventure is finally happening in Timothy Vale, but not for me. It’s like having your arm in a splint with an itch on your elbow. Ah, poor, deprived me. Clovermead, you must learn to fight well enough to whack that hoity-toity Tansyard once on the ribs before he leaves.”

  With that goal to inspire her, Clovermead kept rigorously to the fierce regimen of exercise Sorrel made her undergo. She ran up and down Kestrel Hill a dozen times, hung by her arms from an apple tree branch, and held her arms extended with a ten-pound piece of firewood in
each hand. She lunged and parried for hours at a time, and after two days Sorrel taught Clovermead how to fight a formal duel. He also threw dirt in her face and kicked her legs out from under her in a desperate skirmish all over Kestrel Hill, and he stood at her side to show her how infantry fight together. The Tansyard mounted Brown Barley, charged Clovermead, and showed her how to sidestep a horse’s hooves and slash at its belly.

  Clovermead threw herself into the bouts with fierce devotion and slapdash style. Her lightning-quick assaults forced Sorrel into a desperate defense, but she was unable to sustain them. She would falter at last and Sorrel would press her back with a slow, methodical counterattack. Clovermead’s parries would become slower, her sword would barely rise, and Sorrel would whack her stomach or her armpit with his blade.

  “That signifies death,” Sorrel said. “I think that this fighting is a game to you, Miss Clovermead—you want to razzle-dazzle, but you will not slow-and-steady. Slow and steady will keep you alive and make your opponent dead. Dead-making is the point of fighting—not to flash metal in air.”

  Clovermead laughed gaily. “I wager my razzle-dazzle will kill you a few times before the week’s out, Mr. Sorrel.”

  It did. On the fourth day Clovermead’s wooden blade rapped Sorrel’s chest for the first time. On the fifth day she tapped him twice, and on the sixth she knocked him off his feet with a sudden whack to the ribs. Clovermead crowed with delight and danced jubilantly around the prone Tansyard.

  Waxmelt and Goody Weft had been watching. Goody Weft barked with laughter at the Tansyard’s sudden fall. “Teaching Clovermead how to fall down, is he? It’s money well spent, Mr. Wickward, I see it now.” She guffawed all the way back to Ladyrest. Sorrel blushed furiously as he picked himself up.

  “Usually this does not happen so,” he said to Waxmelt.

  “I’m glad to see you’ve taught Clovermead well,” said Waxmelt with a smile.