In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  An old she-bear with grizzled brown fur came with bloody jaws toward Clovermead, caught up with her a dozen feet from the wagons, and scratched her on the nose. Clovermead scrambled for purchase with her light against Ursus’ shackles, the she-bear clawed woozily at the air beside Clovermead—and Clovermead punched with claws against the bear’s stomach, and left her screaming and dripping blood on the grass. Five, thought Clovermead bleakly. More deaths to my account. Forgive me, Lady. A bear-priest slashed at Clovermead with a scimitar, but Waxmelt was at her side. He caught the bear-priest in the leg with his sword and sent him plummeting over his steed’s saddle. Two bears came growling at them, but Brookwade jumped at the first and bit him on the neck, and Clovermead struck the other one in the left eye. He sliced Clovermead’s right thigh, and then Waxmelt had skewered the bear through the rib cage. Clovermead couldn’t stop moving, though her leg was on fire, and now she and Waxmelt and Brookwade stumbled back into the circle of carts. The townsmen opened up a gap for them for a moment, then shoved the wagons back together and jabbed their spears to repel the oncoming bear-priests.

  “Clovermead!” cried Saraband, and she came running to her cousin. Clovermead turned human, bone-weary, and Saraband grabbed bandages from an attendant following after her. Someone shoved Clovermead down onto an open cart already slick with blood, and Clovermead didn’t have the strength to protest. She glanced at her leg—blood leaked too quickly from her wound, and there was something white beneath her flesh. Muscle or bone. Clovermead gulped and turned away.

  Saraband’s face was pale as she inspected the wound. “It looks clean,” she said. “You’re lucky—no major arteries are broken. You may need stitching, but I don’t have time now. There are others wounded worse.” She wrapped the bandages quickly and firmly around Clovermead’s thigh. “I’ll look at your wound again when the battle’s over. Don’t move from here. You could bleed to death if you get up.”

  “I have to stand,” said Clovermead. “The townsmen need to know I’m still alive. And I heal fast, remember? Our Lady’s gift.” She tried to sit up—and cold sweat poured down her forehead. A wave of nausea swept through her, and she fell back onto the cart.

  “Stay down, Clo,” said Waxmelt, and he was by her side. “Healing is one thing, but Our Lady can’t bring you back from the dead.” He looked at her bleeding leg in horror, then glanced at Saraband with pleading eyes. She nodded reassurance. “I’ll tell any worrywarts to come take a look at you right here.”

  “I suppose that would work,” Clovermead mumbled. The world was swimming, but she blinked to bring Waxmelt back into focus. “Father, are you all right?”

  “Not a scratch,” said Waxmelt. An unbelieving smile crept onto his face. “You know, I haven’t been a bad general so far.”

  “Of course not,” said Clovermead. She tried to move again—and the world spun around her. “All right, I’ll stay still. But I can fight on one leg if I need to.”

  “You won’t,” said Waxmelt, and then he was running to rally the servants. The sounds of bears and bear-priests were louder than ever, just beyond the carts.

  Everything went blurry for a while, and Saraband had gone as well when Clovermead woke up again. She was alone in the cart. Near to her a knot of farmers and townsmen wielding ancient spears and swords manned the nearest wagons. There were no servants or bears in sight. The townsmen jabbed at unseen enemies. Just out of sight, bear-priests howled and bears roared. Weapons clashed constantly. Every minute another refugee fell.

  Lacebark stood among the townsmen. His dagger was drawn, but he stood at the back of the crowd and he shuffled from side to side. He looked around for a second, and Clovermead saw sick fear and shame on his face. He took a step away from the wagons—swallowed hard, and turned back to face the bear-priests. He wavered back and forth, not quite daring to fight the bear-priests, not quite able to run away.

  Geill the banker stood at the front of the refugees. Somewhere he had scrounged up a metal corselet that stretched over his fat stomach, and he wore a round wooden shield over his left arm. He held an eight-foot spear in his right hand, and he jabbed fiercely, if inexpertly, at the bear-priests beyond the wagon. He stood his ground as the bear-priests howled and struck at him.

  Darkness swept over Clovermead, and when she woke again, Geill lay in the wagon by her side. The shattered remnants of his shield still hung by a leather strap from his left arm. In his right hand he clutched the shaft of his spear. A jagged slash six inches long had rent his corselet. Blood bubbled from his stomach.

  “You’re hurt,” mumbled Clovermead. “You need help.”

  “It’s coming,” said Geill. He spoke quietly. His face was white. “That young man. The one your cousin kissed. He picked me up when I fell. Carried me here. Very strong! Not many men can lift someone my size.” He chuckled, and gasped as blood bubbled from his lips. “He’s gone for a doctor.”

  “He’ll be back soon,” said Clovermead. She blinked away her dizziness. “I can’t move, Master Geill. I’d fetch you water otherwise.”

  “Most kind, Demoiselle.” Blood spurted from Geill’s stomach, and he groaned. “I am a fool. I’m a man for the countinghouse, not for war. Grandfather’s corselet. Grandfather’s spear. What was I thinking?”

  “You were brave,” said Clovermead. “I saw you. You held the wagons against the bear-priests.” She lifted her head. “They’re still holding.”

  “I don’t much care. About my bravery. Any longer.” Geill concentrated on breathing for a moment. Then he spoke again. “My poor wife. Poisy. Died in childbirth. The child was dying in her. Our first child. Poisy was dying too. And she said, ‘Cut me open. So the child can live.’ That was real bravery.” Geill paused for breath. “The doctor did. Killed her. And the baby lived only an hour.” His hand fluttered over his bleeding stomach. “Now I know a little. How Poisy felt.” He sighed. His face was turning gray. “I think I’m dying. Demoiselle.”

  “You won’t die,” said Clovermead. “There’s a doctor coming.”

  “Perhaps.” Geill let go his spear shaft. It fell to the cart boards. He stretched out his hand. “I miss her very much. Too much time apart. Demoiselle. Would you hold my hand?”

  “Of course,” said Clovermead. She stretched out her hand, and grasped his fat palm in hers. It was slick with sweat and blood. She squeezed her fingers around his. “As long as you like.”

  “Thank you, Demoiselle,” said Geill, and he fell silent. Clovermead held tight to his hand.

  Clovermead fell into dreams, and when she opened her eyes again, she had been moved a few feet from Geill. Saraband stood over the unconscious banker with a needle and thread and sewed up his wound. Her dress was drenched with blood. Lacebark stood by her side. He held a white sheet in one hand, and a pair of clamps in the other.

  “Staunch the bleeding,” Saraband said to Lacebark. Awkwardly he dabbed downward with the sheet. Saraband sewed another minute. “Again,” she said, and Lacebark did so. “Clamps,” she said. Lacebark gave her the clamps, and took the needle in his hand. Saraband glanced sharply at him. “You won’t faint? I can go fetch a nun.”

  “They’re all busy with other wounded men, Lady,” said Lacebark. “I saw. I can stand the blood.” He glanced at the nearby wagons, where the clash of battle continued. “Better than I can stand fighting,” he muttered.

  “I’m glad you have a tough stomach,” said Saraband. “I need the help.” She reached down with her clamps, squeezed something, and took the needle back from Lacebark. She continued to sew. “Staunch.” Lacebark obeyed. “Staunch.” She smiled. “I think he’ll make it. Dear Lady, thank you. He’s a sweet man.”

  Darkness again, and when daylight pierced Clovermead’s eyes, Saraband sat on the cart and wept with all her heart. Her surgical instruments lay on the bloody sheet, and Geill was cold and gray. “Why couldn’t I save him?” asked Saraband. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Lady, why did you take him from me?” Lacebark sat beside her and stared at h
er weeping face. He reached a hand out to her slack hand—and shrank back, didn’t dare to touch her. “Why do you make them die, Lady?” Saraband cried up at the blue sky. “I thought he would live. Lady, why are you so cruel?”

  The bear-priests’ horns sounded louder than ever. The line of townsmen at the wagons fell back, and now Clovermead could see a bear-priest between the wagons. He laid about him with his scimitar, cried in triumph as he saw the inside of the encampment, and slashed harder still. Another bear-priest appeared behind him. Lacebark stood, drew his dagger from his belt, and stepped in front of Saraband. Clovermead fumbled for her own sword, lifted herself onto her elbow, but she could barely move—

  Trumpets sounded to the west. The battle paused for a moment. The second bear-priest looked back, and his curse carried over the suddenly silent grass. The trumpets sounded again, and the townsmen gave a ragged cheer. Then the bear-priests fell back and the townsmen surged forward. Hoofbeats drummed over the plain. The wagons cracked open as the townsmen advanced, and now Clovermead could see Ursus’ bear-priests and bears retreating southward, while hundreds of nuns’ men swept over the plains toward the refugees. At the head of the Silverfalls soldiers she saw Sorrel, his red fox-fur hat gleaming in the sun.

  “Be careful, Sorrel,” Clovermead whispered. “I don’t want you getting yourself killed.” She fell back flat onto the cart.

  Saraband stood up. She wiped her cheek dry with a bloody sleeve. “Enough tears,” she said flatly. “I have more work to do.” She glanced at Lacebark. “Are you off to fight? If not, I could use your help.”

  Lacebark hesitated, and then sheathed his dagger. “I’d rather nurse than fight any day of the week,” he said with undisguised relief. He strode back to the cart and picked up Saraband’s sheet and instruments. “Where to, Lady?”

  “Someone’s on the grass ahead of us. Let’s start with him.” The two of them hurried off.

  Clovermead reached out with her left hand, and made a shaky sign of the crescent over Geill’s corpse. Then her arm fell back to her side, and she lost consciousness for the last time that day.

  Chapter Nine

  Shattered Glass

  Lucifer Snuff walked slowly in the moonlit ruins of a stone chapel. He looked at the ceiling, whose roof had caved in, at the staved-in windows and the shards of stained glass on the floor, at the burned pews and the fouled Pool of water in the chapel’s center. His face was blank. He sniffed the air and began to move more quickly, prowling through the edifice’s remains.

  “Slow down,” said Clovermead. She was limping. Her leg ached. “I can’t keep up with you.”

  Snuff looked back. “Trespassing in my dreams again, girlie?”

  “Not my choice,” said Clovermead. “You’re just a particularly horrid educational experience that Our Lady keeps making me endure.”

  “Our Lady’s taken me into her service after all! She uses me to scourge you. How delightful.” Snuff guffawed. He glanced at Clovermead’s leg. “I see one of my comrades had good aim.”

  “Were you in the battle? I didn’t see you.”

  “I heard about it from my Lord Ursus. He can whisper in my ear wherever I am. Perhaps I’m asleep in a ditch fifty feet from you. Or perhaps I’m on a ship to the Jaifal Archipelago.” Snuff grinned at her. His bronzed teeth glinted. “Surely you don’t want me to tell! That would spoil the surprise.”

  “I could live with the disappointment.” Clovermead looked around her. “What is this place?”

  “My childhood chapel. On Malachite Street in Viscount Hill. That’s the posh neighborhood in Queensmart, where all the best families live. My parents took me to services here every week, and every week the dry words flowed past me. Our preacher had social graces fit for Viscount Hill, but she bored me to tears. My father, too. He snored quietly through most of her sermons.” Snuff laughed harshly. “I gutted the place myself when we took Queensmart. Took a pike and smashed the windows. Torched the pews and tossed the latest proper dullard of a nun onto the pyre. It seemed a just revenge for all those mornings I wasted in this place.”

  Now Clovermead could smell charred flesh. Her stomach twisted. “What justice do you deserve, butcher?”

  “I’m sure you can come up with some appropriate torture,” said Snuff. He sidled around a smashed iron grill decorated with silver-plate crescents, and grinned at Clovermead again. “I have faith in your imagination. As I recollect, the first time we met, you said I should be drawn, quartered, espaliered, fed to wolves, and killed.”

  “They were just words then,” said Clovermead. “I was a child.” She looked at the ruined chapel, and shuddered. “But if anyone deserves to die that way, it’s you.”

  “That’s what I told myself as I broke down the chapel door,” said Snuff. “‘You should be espaliered for this, you reprobate!’ said my conscience.” He shrugged. “And yet the chapel burned.”

  “I don’t suppose torture would mean much to you anyway,” said Clovermead wearily. She leaned for a moment on the high back of a charred pew. “You bear-priests probably flay one another for fun.”

  “You mean the Night of Knives? Not for fun, girlie. It’s our sacrifice to Lord Ursus.” Snuff smiled with sudden joy. “We give him our body and we give him our blood. We surrender ourselves to him, tortured and torturing. We give him our pain, and he gives us—oh, such ecstasy. Such joy.” His eyes returned from the distance to Clovermead’s horrified face. “Ah, you were joking. But, yes, we flay one another.” He pulled up the sleeve of his shirt for a moment, and Clovermead saw a scar almost as long as the one on her own arm. He let the cloth fall. “Do you see any blue glass?”

  Clovermead looked around on the floor. “Blue glass, red glass, green glass, yellow glass.” She bent down and picked up a sapphire shard. “Like this?”

  Snuff glanced at the shard, nodded, and returned to prowling. “Like that. A whole pile that color.” His eyes swept right and left. “I used to look at the stained glass while the preacher maundered on. It passed the time. There was one window, though—it’s stuck in my memory. But I don’t remember where it was. Help me look, girlie.”

  “I don’t see why I should.” The smell of burned flesh was stronger than ever.

  “Of course not. The old torturer doesn’t deserve your assistance.” Snuff snuffled at the air. “Isn’t it a lovely scent? Savory lean meat and bubbling fat. You sit here and smell it while I look for that window. I suppose the odor will stay here as long as I dream. You’ve got a good long time ahead of you to enjoy it properly—”

  “I’ll help,” said Clovermead. She sprang to her feet, and Snuff guffawed. “You should have looked while you were wrecking the place. ‘Here’s a lovely blue roundel I’m destroying,’ you should have said to yourself. ‘Quite a pretty picture! I’ll just make a note of where it was.’ I’m shocked at your lack of foresight.” She limped down the aisle, looking for blue. “It’s your dream. Just tell yourself it was at the front of the chapel, and there it’ll be.”

  “I tried that,” said Snuff. “It’s not one of those dreams.” He grimaced. “I can do without your little sarcasms. Just look.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Clovermead. She sighed, and she bent herself to the search.

  The chapel looked small, but somehow it grew longer and higher as Snuff and Clovermead cast about the ruins. The pews grew larger, and she heard a deep-voiced lady droning. The rubble disappeared from the floor, and now there were cushions on the unburned pews. She smelled rich perfumes, and heard the whispers of families.

  “There it is!” cried Snuff—but it was a twelve-year-old boy who called to Clovermead. He was lithe and compact, stylishly dressed in green velvet, with sandy hair, a cocky look to his eyes, and a quick smile. His teeth were unfiled, unbronzed. “Help me put it together.”

  “All right,” said Clovermead—and she jumped at the sound of her own childish voice. She was twelve again herself. She felt at her mouth, and her tooth was still there. She touched her arm, and
it was unscarred.

  “Better times,” said Snuff, and for a moment the man’s voice spoke through the boy’s mouth. “It’s a great puzzle,” said the boy. He took Clovermead’s hand in his and pulled at her eagerly. “Come along.”

  They ran to the back of the chapel. A jumble of stained glass lay in a corner. More than half of it was blue, but it had every other color as well. Snuff plopped himself down in front of it. “It’s a glass jigsaw. It should keep us busy through the service.”

  Clovermead sat down next to him, but glanced to the front of the chapel. The droning voice kept on. “Shouldn’t we listen?”

  Snuff shook his head violently. “Lady, no! She can make an hour seem like a day. Listening to her is an agony.” He leaned forward to Clovermead, and whispered, “Father invited her to dinner last week. I sneaked into the kitchen and put pepper in her soup. She turned red in the face when she had her first spoonful, but she couldn’t stop, for fear of being rude to Father. So she drank it all down.” He giggled, and now his face twisted with cruel, hard malice. His teeth were sharp and bronze.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” said Clovermead, as steadily as she could. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Oh, you’re one of the goody-goodies.” But Snuff blushed, and the malice faded from his face. His teeth were pearly white once more. “I suppose I shouldn’t have. But it was awfully fun! Never mind that. Let’s find out what the picture is.”