In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  I rode ahead of my Horde as midsummer approached, for we were near Bryony Hill, and I knew that Cyan Cross would be there at the sacred hill to celebrate the solstice. I did not intend the sacrilege of attacking them while they worshiped Our Lady—but I thought perhaps that I would surprise them a day or two after the solstice had passed. Usually there were no raids then, either, but the Shaman-Mothers did not explicitly forbid fighting save on the solstice itself. I knew in my heart that Our Lady would not be pleased by such an action, but I did not care. My daughter’s empty face pressed against my soul, and I wanted my revenge against Cyan Cross Horde. I would use any gambit against them that I could.

  I came over a hill and there was Cyan Cross spread out before me. I halted my horse in a patch of tall grass and I looked down at the Horde. They walked northward in a straggling line that spread a mile in length. At the center were the packhorses, who carried the tents and what few possessions Cyan Cross carried from place to place. Before them and behind them the old nags bore the Elders of the Horde and the women with babes in arms. The women and children walked by the sides of the Elders and the packhorses, bringing them water and food. The horse-herds grazed a little farther off, and the warriors rode in a great circle around them all, to keep any horse from wandering away and to keep any enemy from wandering in. The younger warriors sometimes strayed into the heart of the Horde, performing handstands on horseback, jumping streams, and showing off as young men will. I almost smiled to see them so innocently happy—but then I remembered how Stringhalt had done the same in front of Arman, and my smile faded from my face. Stringhalt was dead, and the young men of Cyan Cross did not deserve their joy.

  I watched, and as I watched, I became aware that there were other watchers near me. A hundred yards down along the ridge I saw rustling in the grass. Then I saw a bear-priest on a white Phoenixian horse dart away from the ridge and ride to the west, toward the Harrow Moors. My mind was in a whirl: There should not have been any bear-priests in the central Steppes, and certainly none this close to Our Lady’s temple on Bryony Hill. I almost shouted at once, to raise an alarm—but then I remembered how far I had wandered ahead of the White Star Horde, and how unlikely the Cyan Cross Horde was to ask questions before they shot a bevy of arrows at me. And it occurred to me that perhaps the bear-priests meant some mischief to the Cyan Cross Horde, and that prospect strangely warmed my heart. I stayed silent.

  There was another rustling in the grass and a second bear-priest came trotting toward me. He rode on the other side of the crest from the Cyan Cross Horde, where they could not see him, but through clear, short grass where I could see him perfectly. He kept his empty hands up so I would know that he intended no attack. I stayed where I was. I did not much want to talk to a bear-priest, but I was curious to know what he had to say.

  He was a short, balding man with a goatee. He had bronzed and filed his teeth, as bear-priests do, but he wore wool and leather in addition to the normal bear-priest wolf-skins. He smiled as he rode up, but his eyes were cold. “Greetings, Warrior of the White Star Horde,” he said as he drew up to me. He spoke in passable Tansyard, though it was thickly accented. “My name is Lucifer Snuff.”

  “I am Fetterlock,” I said. “What do you want with me?”

  He laughed. It was unpleasant to listen to him: Small boys who tear the wings off of butterflies laugh the same way. “I am curious to know what you are doing here, Warrior. I hadn’t thought White Star Horde was a friend of Cyan Cross. Have you come for a social visit?”

  “No,” I said stiffly. “And you? What is a bear-priest doing on the Steppes? This is Tansyard land.”

  “Only passing through, Warrior,” said Snuff. He grinned so the sun blazed on his teeth. “I mean no disrespect to the Hordes.” He paused a moment. “Save, perhaps, the Cyan Cross Horde. They are an arrogant nation. They don’t respect Lord Ursus as they should.”

  “That little is to their favor,” I said. “I do not care for your butchering master either, bear-priest.” Snuff shrugged and smiled. “But I allow that they are arrogant. You speak the truth there.” I turned from Snuff to glance at the Cyan Cross Horde passing down below. Now the four flags of the legions of Queensmart came fluttering in the hands of Cyan Cross’ standard-bearers in the valley below. All the Tansyards had combined to defeat the legions, a century ago and longer, but Cyan Cross had claimed the flags as their own spoil. What should have been the pride of all Tansyards they had kept as their particular boast, and that stuck in the craw of every Horde upon the Steppes. “They should be taken down a notch,” I muttered.

  “They can be, Warrior,” said Snuff. I turned back to him, startled: I had not realized he could hear me. “They will be.”

  I looked to the west. The first bear-priest was still barely visible as he raced away. I jerked my thumb after him. “Will he be bringing back more bear-priests?”

  “Indeed,” said Snuff. “Soldiers of Low Branding, too, and bears. They will come secretly, they will surprise the Cyan Cross Horde, and then”—he grinned—”Cyan Cross will not be so cock-a-hoop.” He glanced at me slyly. “White Star Horde shouldn’t object to that. With Cyan Cross weakened, you’ll be the most powerful Horde upon the Steppes. I should think that would be a feather in your cap.”

  “I am not fond of Cyan Cross Horde,” I said slowly, “but they are our kindred. We worship Our Lady together, and their lives are precious to her. I do not want to see them butchered by you bear-worshipers. Perhaps you should gallop after that other bear-priest and tell him to call off your attack. Tell him that both Cyan Cross and White Star will be waiting for you, ready for a fight.”

  Snuff stared at me for a long moment. “You wear loops of black cloth around your braids, Warrior,” he said at last, most amiably. “Would you be so kind as to tell me for whom you mourn?”

  “For Stringhalt,” I said. “He was my daughter’s husband.” I heard a joyful whoop from below, as four young warriors of Cyan Cross began to race one another. “He was slain in battle with the Cyan Cross Horde,” I said, and I could not help letting go a few tears. Stringhalt should have been as alive as those young racers below.

  “I do not believe your fine words, Warrior,” Snuff said. “I think you do not care that Cyan Cross is kindred, or that they worship the sky-crone, or that their lives are precious to her. I think you want revenge for your own dead, that you would be glad to see Cyan Cross’ warriors dead in great numbers, and that you do not care who butchers them.” He spoke sweetly and his words wormed their way into my heart. I struggled to deny them, but I could not. I was silent, and my silence was the most eloquent assent.

  Snuff smiled. “Well, Warrior, I believe we bear-worshipers can be of service to you. We will fulfill for you all your dreams of revenge. You need do nothing—just ride away and say nothing. Wait a week and you will hear word of what has happened to Cyan Cross. Your daughter’s husband will be revenged.” Laughter bubbled from his bronzed teeth. “I promise you that where Cyan Cross spreads its tents there will be blood high as a horse’s head.”

  I was twice Snuff’s size, and I could have broken him in two—yet there was something in him that terrified me. All at once I wanted to be riding away from him, to somewhere leagues away from his terrible eyes and his laughter that sounded of dying men.

  I controlled myself. I thought of praying to Our Lady for guidance, but I did not want to. I knew what she would tell me and I did not want to listen to her. I wanted revenge for the grief Cyan Cross had given my daughter, and nothing else mattered.

  “Do what you like, Bear-Priest,” I said. “I shall not warn Cyan Cross.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” said Snuff. “Lord Ursus has planned this attack for a long while. It would be a shame to have it spoiled.” He turned to go—then checked his horse with a vicious pull of the reins. “If Cyan Cross is warned, Lord Ursus’ wrath will fall on the White Star Horde,” he said. “If I were you, Warrior, I would not provoke him.” Then he was riding away to the west
, without so much as a farewell.

  His last threat was a grave insult to me and to the Horde. Proper courage demanded that I defy him and go at once to warn Cyan Cross Horde. But he had also terrified me: I did not want to expose the White Star Horde to the anger of Lord Ursus. And, too, there was my daughter’s constant grief. That decided me. I looked once more at the Cyan Cross Horde below me, so undeservedly happy, and I turned from them. “They can take their chances,” I said to myself as I galloped away.

  A week passed. The solstice was three days gone when a scout came galloping into our camp with unimaginable news. The bear-priests had razed Our Lady’s temple from the crown of Bryony Hill and had begun to build a temple and a fort of their own there. Cyan Cross Horde was gone. The warriors had been wiped out to a man. Only a few of the women and children had survived, and they were being taken as slaves to Barleymill.

  “All dead?” I asked him. “Surely you are exaggerating?”

  “Go and look for yourself,” he said. “The grass is littered with corpses.”

  I went at once. I rode my horse at a gallop night and day, and I was at Bryony Hill within twenty-four hours. All around—oh, Lady, I do not want to remember what I saw. There had been near two thousand in Cyan Cross Horde when I saw them a week before; now their bodies lay before me, rotting in the summer sun. The whole nation had been wiped out. I thought to myself, Stringhalt has been revenged, but I got no pleasure from the thought. Then I thought, They are dead because of me. I wanted to ask Our Lady for forgiveness, but I could not imagine how to begin.

  I got down from my horse and wandered among the remains of Cyan Cross. I tried to memorize their faces, for I did not think anyone else would ever remember them. Their clothes had been looted from them, bears had eaten from their flesh, and I wandered among the naked dead. They stared at me with terrified, accusing eyes.

  After a while Lucifer Snuff rode up to me. He came from the bear-priest encampment on Bryony Hill. “Is this sufficient revenge for you, Warrior?” he asked me amiably.

  “It is too much,” I whispered. I knelt by an old man and closed his eyes. “How could you kill them all? Warriors should only fight warriors.” I looked around the valley, and tears sprang to my eyes. “I did not mean for this to happen.”

  “I promised you revenge,” said Snuff. “I promised you blood high as a horse’s head. I am true to my word. And you, Warrior—you said ‘Do what you like.’ This is what I like.” He looked at the nightmare around him, and he smiled. “I follow Lord Ursus so that one day I will make all the world like this.”

  “I will—” resist you, fight you, keep this from ever happening again, I thought, but I could not speak the words. In that greensward of dead men I was terribly afraid. Perhaps Our Lady would have given me strength, but I had no right to call on her assistance. I dropped my eyes to the ground.

  “You have been wise so far, Warrior,” said Snuff. “If you had spoken, this would have happened to the White Star Horde as well. Continue to be wise, and Lord Ursus will not consider you his enemy.” He paused for a moment, but I could not speak, could not look at him, could not do anything at all for fear and shame. “Take a string of horses with you,” said Snuff at last. “Cyan Cross doesn’t need them anymore.” He laughed derisively then, and walked away from me.

  I did not accept his offer. I had enough honor in me not to be a jackal. But I went home to my wife and my daughter, and my infant granddaughter, and I was glad that they were alive. I remembered the dead of Cyan Cross Horde, and I had no trouble imagining my family slaughtered in the same way. I have felt shame ever since then for my silence, but my relief that my family is alive has been even greater.

  “I wish I were a nun,” said Clovermead slowly. “They know what to say when pilgrims come to them with a story like this—what to say in solace, what penance to impose. I—I won’t say there’s nothing wrong with what you did, because there is, but you know that already. I still wish I could comfort you.” She put her hand on Fetterlock’s forearm, and patted it clumsily for a moment. For a moment the Tansyard smiled, and his thick fingers fumbled against Clovermead’s. Then her forehead wrinkled. “Why did you come to Chandlefort to ask us to ally with you against Ursus? Weren’t you afraid to do that, when you’ve seen how powerful Ursus is?”

  “The Horde Chief’s wife sent me,” said Fetterlock. “I could not refuse the commission. But, yes, I am afraid for my family still. I am afraid for my Horde, and for all the Hordes on the Steppes. I do not want to go to war with Lord Ursus.” He shrugged wearily. “I wish I were a braver person, Demoiselle. But I am not.”

  “I killed with Lord Ursus,” said Clovermead. So many soldiers had lain dead upon the snow. It was difficult saying the words out loud, but she wanted to share them with Fetterlock. “I didn’t just stand aside. I ordered our bears, my bears, to kill Chandlefort’s Yellowjackets and Low Branding’s mercenaries, and, oh, Lady, I was filled with joy every time the bears butchered a man. Butchered at my command. I thought I was lost in darkness, Fetterlock, but I wasn’t. Our Lady was there waiting for me, and she offered me a way out. There always is one.”

  Fetterlock smiled, and looked down at the sleeping figure of Mullein. “I almost believe that now, Demoiselle. A son of Cyan Cross survived the slaughter, here is a daughter of the Horde, and it seems that others still survive in the mines of Barleymill. They live!—a ragged scrap of Cyan Cross, to be sure, but they live. Ah, Demoiselle, I have been in night for years, and to see them is a scrap of light. It almost makes me hope that Our Lady will offer me a way to redeem myself.”

  “She will,” said Clovermead. “She gives that chance to everyone.”

  “I pray you are right,” said Fetterlock. And then his smile faded. “I am still afraid, Demoiselle. That terror has been graven in my soul. I do not think that I can ever drive it from me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Hidden Beasts

  They rode deep into the Tansy Steppes the next three days, curving northeast in a wide circle around Bryony Hill, and the Moors gradually disappeared from sight behind Clovermead. It was early spring still, but the young meadow on the Steppes was already six inches deep. Clovermead was totally lost the moment the Moors slipped beyond the western horizon. The sun traversing the sky told her the directions, small trees provided local signposts, but there were no other landmarks by which to orient herself. Pale green shimmered in her eyes, and every now and then she had to look up at the sky to keep from getting dizzy.

  Mullein stared anxiously southward when they first ventured onto the open Steppes, but her fearfulness slowly diminished. She learned enough of common tongue that she could string together a few words at a time into short sentences. In the evening Mullein ran her hands along wildflower petals, and sometimes she cried from joy as she stretched out on the soft grass. But she never wandered too far from the campfires, never ceased to look out into the empty plains around them with a shadow of wariness in her young eyes.

  On the third day, Clovermead saw riders in the far distance. They rode parallel to the Yellowjackets for a ways, then galloped away to the south.

  “Friends of yours?” Sergeant Algere asked Fetterlock.

  Fetterlock squinted after them. “Gray Bar warriors,” he said. “They are the first Horde to head north in the spring, and the last to head south in the fall. They spend their summers in the far north of the Steppes, in the foothills of the Reliquary Mountains.”

  “Should we go talk with them?” asked Clovermead.

  Fetterlock shrugged. “It will not hurt, but it will not help. They will follow the lead of the White Star Horde. We are best off hurrying to the White Star’s encampment.”

  They stopped for the evening by a stream bubbling through the Steppes. Clovermead stalked out to the middle of the stream, her legs protected from the chill by luxuriant fur, caught half a dozen fish with quick flicks of her paws, and brought them back for the party. Fetterlock gathered twigs and made a pair of fires for the party, and the
n Bergander and Habick roasted the fish. Mullein ate as much as Fetterlock, though she was a quarter his size, and she licked the bones clean.

  Clovermead looked down at Mullein in the torchlight, and she saw that the little girl’s hands were callused from labor, and the creases on her palms inlaid with grime. Flecks of silver streaked her hands. Clovermead reached down, gently took hold of Mullein’s hands, and held up her palms. Now she could see that the grime was also silver, filling every line in Mullein’s palms. Clovermead ran her fingers over the ingrained silver, and her own skin began to itch. Clovermead tried to rub the silver away—and gasped, as it burned into her flesh. Mullein stared at her curiously, but didn’t flinch.

  “They mine quicksilver, mercury, in Barleymill,” said Fetterlock. “Down in the Thirty Towns it is used to extract shining silver from dull silver ore. It poisons, it kills, and no one mines it unless they are shackled in chains and driven forward with whips. In Tansyard we call quicksilver Poison Silver, hwanka-velika.”

  Mullein cried out softly as he spoke the last word. “No!” she said. “Never again. Mother said.” She trembled.

  “Don’t worry,” said Clovermead. “Never hwanka-velika again, I promise.”