In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  “We Tansyards have a high opinion of ourselves,” said Sorrel. “If we are to ally ourselves with foreigners, we wish to talk with their leaders, not with servants. Ideally, Milady, you should go to the Steppes yourself. We are told in our stories that your greatgrandmother’s great-grandmother rode to every corner of the Steppes herself to gain our alliance. If you cannot come yourself, no one of lower rank than the Demoiselle will do.”

  “I must stay here to ready the Yellowjackets to ride to the Steppes,” said Lady Cindertallow. “I’ll also have to twist the Mayor of Low Branding’s arm to send some of his mercenaries to join us. Sending an army into the Steppes isn’t covered under our defensive alliance, but I think I can convince him to help us. After all, Bryony Hill is nearer to Low Branding than it is to Chandlefort.”

  “Let Ursus do to the Low Brandingmen what he wills,” Sorrel whispered, but only Clovermead heard him. His eyes snapped with uncontrollable hatred. He had never forgiven Low Branding for its role in helping Lord Ursus destroy Cyan Cross Horde, even now that the Mayor had allied himself with Chandlefort.

  “I don’t like the thought of you gallivanting off into the wilderness, Clovermead,” Lady Cindertallow continued, “but it seems necessary.”

  “I don’t quite understand,” said Clovermead. “I thought Mr. Fetterlock came here to ask for your help, but now I’m supposed to go ask the White Star Horde to help us?”

  “And all the other Hordes as well,” said Fetterlock. “White Star has influence with the other Hordes, but it does not speak for them. It would be well for you to make your request to every Horde on the Steppes.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It is all very roundabout, Demoiselle, but it is the best way to proceed. The Horde Chief’s wife asks you for help, you ask the Horde for help, and everybody feels flattered and needed. And those Elders who waver between fighting Lord Ursus and submitting to him perhaps will fight to aid Chandlefort, from pride, when they would not fight to save themselves.”

  “You are a very puzzling people,” said Clovermead. Fetterlock smiled and shrugged. “What happens if the Hordes turn me down?”

  “Then we march our armies back home,” said Lady Cindertallow. “We pray to Our Lady that the bear-priests don’t ambush us while we are on the Steppes. We settle down inside our walls and wait for the bear-priests to come after us.” She frowned. “Don’t let the Hordes turn you down, Clovermead.”

  “I’ll do everything I can,” said Clovermead seriously. “I swear by Our Lady.”

  Lady Cindertallow nodded. “Ask the Hordes where we should meet them, and send me word in Low Branding. I’ll be there with my Yellowjackets within three weeks. From there we can get quickly to any spot in the western Steppes.”

  Clovermead’s eyes lit up. “Sorrel’s coming with me, isn’t he? That’s why you told him to come here too?”

  Lady Cindertallow nodded again. “Trooper? I want you to accompany Clovermead—you’re the only Yellowjacket who knows the Steppes. But I won’t order you to go. I recollect that you told me once that you would have trouble returning to your homeland.”

  “I fled from the bear-priests and I lived,” Sorrel said slowly. “The other warriors were brave and they died.” He touched the tattoos on his cheeks. “Anyone who sees these tattoos will guess the truth, that I was a coward, and therefore know that I am an outlaw. On the Steppes, any Tansyard warrior will be able to kill me with impunity.”

  “That is so,” said Fetterlock. “But you wear a yellow jacket, and the Hordes will respect the Cindertallow livery. At least while you ride with the Demoiselle.”

  “Then I will go,” said Sorrel. He smiled at Clovermead. “How can I miss this opportunity to show you the Steppes? You will not appreciate them properly without me to educate you as to their beauties.” Then he looked thoughtful, and turned back to Lady Cindertallow. “The Hordes do not like to have foreigners wandering on the Steppes, Milady. No more than two handfuls of soldiers should accompany the Demoiselle.”

  Fetterlock said the same.” Lady Cindertallow glanced with anxious love at Clovermead, then sighed. “I’ll send ten Yellowjackets to accompany you, including Sorrel, and I’ll write a letter requesting the Mayor and his men to give you a safe-conduct through Low Branding. Can you leave the day after tomorrow, Clovermead? Once I’ve given you some lessons in diplomacy, you’ll need to leave immediately.” Clovermead nodded. “And, Clo? I know you mean well, but you have a tendency to be impetuous and hare off on your own. We can’t afford any impulsiveness on this mission. Your first priority is to get the Hordes to agree to an alliance. Remember, no one but you can do this.”

  “You can count on me, Mother,” said Clovermead. “I don’t flibbertigibbet when it’s important.” Her eyes were large. “But I’ve never done diplomacy before.”

  “I’ll start teaching you now,” said her mother. “We can start with the basics.”

  “Always be polite, never promise anything, have an army on hand to get people in the mood to do what you want them to do, and when all else fails, lie,” Clovermead rattled off. She smiled. “I’m a fast learner.”

  Fetterlock laughed, a booming rumble. “I do not think she needs any lessons, Milady,” he said. He stood, his head nearly scraped the ceiling, and he bowed low to Lady Cindertallow. “Please excuse me, Milady. You will want to give your instructions in private.” Sorrel stood and bowed too, and then he and Fetterlock left the room.

  Lady Cindertallow waited until she heard their footsteps recede. “The first thing I want you to keep in mind,” she said, “is that I’m sure Fetterlock isn’t telling the entire truth. Be wary of him until you find out what he’s keeping back from us.”

  Chapter Two

  The Promise

  “Bother the White Star Horde,” Clovermead said around a mouthful of lamb stew the next evening. With her free hand she patted down a wrinkle on her sky-blue sweater. “Bother the Green Spike Horde and the Red Bar Horde and the Paisley Curlicues Horde and the rest of them. I am bored by Hordes. Oh, Saraband, did you ever have to memorize which Horde is which?”

  Lady Saraband Sconce took a dainty bite from her own bowl. “Yes,” she said, when she had finished swallowing. “When I was Demoiselle, I could tell you the name of every single Horde, where their grazing grounds were in summer and winter, and how each of them felt about the other Hordes. Tansy politics was one of the first things I forgot when I renounced being Demoiselle, and I am happy to say that I have known nothing at all about the Steppes for a good seven years.” She took another delicate nibble of stew, and smiled wickedly. “Don’t despair, Clovermead. There aren’t more than two dozen Hordes to keep straight.” Clovermead groaned.

  Saraband, tall, dark, and pale, was dressed in a lilac dress that complemented her complexion perfectly. She looked as lovely as ever. Clovermead had never stopped being envious of her cousin’s beauty, but she remained best friends with the nineteen-year-old. Saraband was a dancer and a healer, a quiet lady who loathed fighting, but she and Clovermead got on well despite their differences. Sometimes Clovermead wanted to put away her sword and talk about how to style her hair, or go into town to buy a new dress, or do anything that didn’t have to do with fighting and politics, and Saraband was the perfect companion then.

  “I know how you feel, Clo,” said Waxmelt Wickward. He sat across the table from her and spooned down his own stew with a hearty appetite. The three of them were eating dinner in Clovermead’s room. “My first day working in the Castle, I was told to memorize ten patterns of porcelain stored in three different pantries, and then I was told I had a week to learn the shortest route from each pantry to every room in the Castle. All I could think to myself was ‘Help!’” He smiled at Clovermead—then clucked his tongue as he saw that his eyes were above hers. “Don’t slouch. I know you’re taller than me.”

  Clovermead straightened up, and now she could look down at her father’s head, half-bald and half-full of graying hair, his lined face lit by a wry smile, his goatee gone fully w
hite, and his eyes that always looked at her with love. Waxmelt was now a good three inches shorter than Clovermead. He wore a soldier’s attire of scuffed brown leather and chain mail this evening, as he did habitually now that Lady Cindertallow had appointed him General of the Regiment of Servants.

  “Mother also tells me I should have better posture. It’s difficult to remember. Anyway, I’m tired.” Clovermead slumped down again, so her elbows supported her on the table. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Saraband sitting marvelously upright, and she sighed. “Cousin, stop setting a good example!”

  “Yes, Clovermead,” said Saraband dutifully—and for a moment her arms were sprawled and her back bent, and she looked like a particularly ungainly monkey spread out around her bowl of stew. Then she straightened up again, with only a twinkle in her eyes and the ghost of a giggle to hint that she had ever moved. “Do you also want me to stop eating my vegetables and to stop cleaning my room?” Her eyes took in the clothes strewn across Clovermead’s floor, and she winced. “I will forgo vegetables, but I cannot make my room look like this. I . . . do not have your talents in this direction.”

  Clovermead glared at Waxmelt as he tried to stifle a laugh. “Did you have anything to say, Father?”

  “Me? It’s your mother’s Castle, not mine. Do what you will to it. All I want from you is good posture.” He turned to Saraband. “I blame that Tansyard. He’s always hunched over that horse of his, Brown Barley, and he makes a bad example. Do you think that’s it?”

  “Doubtless so,” said Saraband, and no one but Clovermead would have caught the slight coolness in her voice as she spoke of Sorrel. Only Clovermead knew how close Sorrel and Saraband had been to each other three years ago in the Reliquary Mountains. Their romance had ended badly: She and Sorrel were civil to each other now, but they weren’t friends. Saraband smiled stiffly. “The young man can have quite an influence on impressionable minds,” she continued. She glanced self-consciously at Clovermead—and then her eyes widened as she saw Clovermead blush.

  Clovermead yawned, so that her hand could cover her mouth and obscure her cheeks. “I am dead tired,” she said, and suddenly she realized how true it was. “I’ve been up since dawn, and I’ll have to be up at dawn tomorrow. We’re riding off to the Steppes early. I know it’s awfully rude, but do you mind if I go to bed now?”

  “Of course not,” said Waxmelt. He pushed his chair back and rose slowly and carefully. He leaned heavily on the table and favored his right foot. “Blast my ankle! It’s stiffened up again.”

  “Poor thing,” said Clovermead. Tired though she was, she ran around the table and put Waxmelt’s hand on her shoulder. “Here, Saraband, support his other side.”

  “Gladly,” said Saraband. She wiped her mouth with a napkin, then glided around to join them. “You will be well soon, Lord Wickward, I assure you.”

  “I’ve become a soldier too late in life,” said Waxmelt, as they began to limp to the door. “I bruise, I sprain, and I will break all my bones soon enough. Blast sword-practice! Blast all those hulking stable-boys who are twice as fast and strong as me. And blast my pride that made me try to run and parry at the same time. Ouch! Not so fast, Clo!”

  “Sorry, Father,” said Clovermead, and she slowed down her pace.

  “The stable-boys sprain their ankles too, Lord Wickward,” said Saraband. “They come limping to my sickroom, and they don’t stop howling while I bandage them up. You’re no more foolish than they are, and you’re a sight more pleasant to have as a patient. Don’t worry—you’ll be well in a fortnight.”

  “Thank you for the encouraging words, Lady.” Waxmelt smiled at Saraband. “If my ankle is cured by midsummer, remember I’ve claimed a dance at the Ball with you. A general is allowed such privileges.”

  “Then I’ll be sure to doctor your sprain away as quickly as I can,” said Saraband. “We shan’t miss the pleasure of a dance together.” She batted her eyelashes at him.

  “Your friend is a coquette,” Waxmelt informed Clovermead. “But a silver-tongued coquette who is quite a lovely dancer. I will call on you for ointments, Lady Doctor, to be sure my sprain is gone.”

  Saraband laughed. “Did you know your father has danced with me at each of the last three Balls, Clovermead? He dashes out onto the dance floor ahead of all the young men to ask me to be his partner. La, sir, you will make a spectacle of yourself.”

  Waxmelt turned a little pink. “I’d be more conspicuous if I didn’t try to dance with you, Lady. I’d have to fight against a tide of men rushing toward you.” They were at the door now, and Clovermead swung it open. “Back to bed with you now, Clo. You need your sleep, and I’m sure Lady Saraband can act as my crutch without you.”

  Clovermead stopped to hug her father tightly and kiss him on the cheek. “It’ll be a rush tomorrow morning, so let’s say good-bye now. I hope I’ll be back before summer’s over, but I don’t know for sure.”

  Waxmelt hugged her just as tightly, then reluctantly let her go. “I won’t be going to the Steppes to join you,” said Waxmelt unhappily. “Milady has told me she plans to take the Yellowjackets with her and leave the servants to garrison Chandlefort. I’m honored that she trusts us enough to leave us to guard the town by ourselves, but I wish I could come. I hate the thought of staying here while you’re risking your life out on the Steppes.” Lines of anxiety wrinkled his face. “You will take care of yourself? You won’t do anything foolish?”

  “Why does everyone seem to think I might?” asked Clovermead in an injured tone of voice. “Don’t answer that. I will be so good and cautious and mouselike, you will think I’ve had a spell cast on me. I will come back to Chandlefort healthy and whole, and I’ll bring you back a recipe for horse soup, Father. Satisfied?”

  “Not in the slightest,” said Waxmelt, laughing. “But I guess I have to trust you.”

  “I’ll say good-bye to you in a little while, Clovermead,” said Saraband. “First I’ll escort your poor, decrepit father to his room”—Waxmelt yelped protestingly—”and apologize for calling him decrepit. Lord Wickward, don’t you know that impudence is the prerogative of young ladies?”

  “So I have learned.” He gripped Clovermead’s hand in his, then turned away. Clovermead watched him hobble down the hallway, leaning on Saraband. They waved to each other a last time as he turned the corner, and then Clovermead shut the door.

  She staggered back to the armchair by her bed, and collapsed into it. “Don’t be too long, Saraband,” she said. “I’m falling asleep already.” She yawned and curled up around a cushion. “In a good world, pillow-grass would grow wild on the Tansy Steppes, right by the bed-trees and the blanket-bushes. But it’s not a good world, and I just know that this will be my last comfortable sleep for months.” Her eyelids drooped shut. “I’ll just nap for a second,” she mumbled. Then she was asleep—

  Clovermead was a white bear. She was twenty feet long, broad in proportion, with claws like kitchen knives and teeth like pike-heads. She ran through northern woods on a summer night, and her enormous paws trampled bushes to the ground, sent birds and weasels and even wolverines running from her path. Snowcapped mountains loomed in the distance, blurry through her tears. “Ursus,” she roared. “Son, where are you?”

  She was Boulderbash, Ursus’ mother. Save in dreams, Clovermead hadn’t seen her for three and a half years, but she recognized her instantly. It was a much younger Boulderbash who called out to her son. This was a dream from a long time ago.

  Boulderbash came to a cave in the mountainside, a rotten hole in the rock, and she stopped on the ledge of black rock outside. “Ursus!”

  “Hello, Mother,” Boulderbash heard from inside the cave. The roar was loud as thunder, and hot and fetid breath came out of the hollow in the rock. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Come outside,” said Boulderbash. “Oh, Son, what have you done?”

  “Not enough,” said Ursus, and then he emerged from the cave mouth. He was scarcely recognizable.
He had been larger than Boulderbash for years, but now he bulged with a glowing darkness. His claws were rakes dripping poison into the earth, and his fur was matted with filth. His teeth dripped with blood. Boulderbash weeped to see him, and Clovermead was screaming—

  “Wake up, Clovermead!” said Saraband. She was shaking Clovermead’s arm. “You’re having a nightmare.” Clovermead blinked and she was in her armchair again. “You were roaring,” said Saraband, and she looked down at Clovermead’s hands. Long bear claws sprouted out of them, and Clovermead had slashed her cushion to ribbons. Clovermead pulled her claws back into her fingers, and Saraband sat down gingerly on the hassock by the armchair. “What on earth were you dreaming about?”

  “Bears,” said Clovermead muzzily. She tried to clear her head. “I dreamed I saw Lord Ursus.” She shuddered, and Saraband shivered too. “Never mind. It’s over now. Thank you for taking Father back to his room.”

  “I’m always glad to. He’s a sweet man.” She looked curiously at Clovermead. “Now, speaking of men we like . . . I think I saw a suspicious blush at dinner.” Saraband had a hint of mischief in her voice. “I suppose I should be polite, and pretend I didn’t see anything, but I can’t resist the opportunity to embarrass you thoroughly. Clovermead, have you finally noticed how attractive Sorrel is?”

  “We’re just friends,” said Clovermead. “That’s all we’ve ever been.” Saraband raised an elegant eyebrow, and Clovermead’s cheeks suddenly flamed quite red again. “Sometimes I do wish we were more than friends,” she confessed. The words clattered out of her mouth, and even to say that much out loud made her heart race. “I daydream about him, you know, kissing me—oh, Lady, now I must be scarlet down to my toes! But I do think about that an awful lot, when I should be doing homework, or when I’m reading in the library, or just when I’m eating dinner. Other times, though, the thought scares me stiff. I mean, I like him an awful lot, but how do I know if it’s, it’s—”