Paladin's Strength

by T. Kingfisher

  “Right,” he said. He took a deep breath and seemed to steady himself. “You doing all right? Shoulder not bothering you?”

  She shrugged. Shrugging was easier for the beast, although it did set a twinge off again. The wound was mostly in the shield fat, which had few nerves to speak of. Humans didn’t have shield fat. This was clearly a gross oversight on the part of the gods and someone should rectify it immediately.

  “Ah…okay. Let me know if there’s anything…right.” He stuffed her robes into the top of his pack and shouldered it again. “Lead the way.”

  They traveled uphill at a brisk pace. Clara tried to steer the bear toward the routes that a horse could not take easily. They would not come at her on horseback again, but she suspected they would ride a little way, dismount and fan out to search, then mount up again. It’s what she would have done, under the circumstances. No sense making it easy for them.

  Mostly, though, she reveled in the sudden peace inside her skin. Bears understood fear and anger and lust, but those were short-lived emotions and once they were gone, they were gone. They did not angst. The bear did not worry that she would not find her sisters, or fret about what Istvhan thought of her true nature, or fear for the rest of the mercenaries left behind. The bear simply walked forward and existed and Clara sank into the peace of that existence and thought of nothing.

  They traveled for an hour, then two. Clara tried to remember to stop occasionally for Istvhan to rest. Perhaps three hours later, Istvhan cleared his throat. To the bear, it sounded like just a noise, but there was enough of Clara to recognize that he needed to say something. She rose from the half-submerged parts of the bear’s mind and turned back toward him.

  “It’s starting to snow,” he said.

  “Hrrwuff,” she said. The air tasted sharp and cold, and even if only a few flakes were drifting down, the scent of snow overlaid the scent of pines like a sheet of translucent paper.

  Eventually, they emerged from the treeline. Wind spat snow in their face. Istvhan cursed, pulling his hood down tight, arms wrapped around his body. The bear, protected by fur and fat, felt nothing but the prickle of the cold on her nose. She dropped her head and went forward.

  Above the treeline, the slope was all loose scree. Terrible leg-breaking surface for horses. She approved of that. If they circled the top of the mountain above the treeline, it would be difficult to follow, and they could head downslope again on the north side.

  The small, submerged part of her mind that was still entirely human brooded, even as the beast part picked her way up the slope. Scree moved under her paws and the air smelled sharp and clear and clean. What was Istvhan thinking right now?

  She looked back and thought that probably what he was thinking was that he was cold.

  The snow was not accumulating, but the wind was brutal. Istvhan moved well enough, for a human, his breath frosting the air, but it was only a matter of time before he began to flag. Heat was easy to lose and hard to replace.

  She aimed toward the lowest part of the slope but it didn’t do much good. The wind was whipping along the treeline, flinging snowflakes with malicious glee. Istvhan had his head down between his shoulders and he was beginning to stumble. She kept having to stop and wait for him to catch up and it took longer and longer each time.

  Well, there was no help for it. They could go back into the trees or…

  “Hrrwufff!” Clara stopped and turned sideways to Istvhan, crouching down as best she could.

  “What?” Istvhan’s teeth chattered and he clenched his jaw to stop it. “What is it?”

  “Hrrwuff!” Her joints weren’t set up to gesture to her back. She tried to sink down farther.

  Fortunately Istvhan was quick on the uptake. “Um. You…uh…want me to ride you?”

  “Wufff!” She nodded.

  He looked at her. Blessed St. Ursa, what was he waiting for?

  “It’s just…uh…”

  “Wuff.”

  “This feels like some kind of weird sex thing,” muttered Istvhan.

  Clara growled.

  “I’m not saying it is! I’m just saying that you don’t usually ride other people unless they have very specialized interests.” Clara rolled her eyes. She could feel him tugging at her fur, trying awkwardly to mount. “Sorry. I’m trying not to pull your hair.”

  “Hwuf.”

  Even if they had not been massive killing machines, it was unlikely that bears would ever be domesticated as riding animals. The bones and muscles were all in the wrong places. No more comfortable for him than for me, I suspect. His weight was significant, but her bear-self was capable of dragging a full-grown elk for a mile without breaking a sweat. The important thing was that she was a roaring furnace of heat. Istvhan threaded his hands in her fur and gradually his shivering eased.

  Despite his weight, she made better time, and she stopped worrying about staying out of the wind. He kept trying to shift his weight as if he were riding a horse, which didn’t do any good and was rather annoying. Human-Clara was aware that he meant well and therefore prevented Bear-Clara from sitting down and scratching vigorously to dislodge the weird bur that had fastened onto her back.

  She reached the far side of the mountain they were circling—mountain was probably an exaggeration, but the hills in this land had ambitions—and plunged back into the trees. Istvhan sat up and back, like you would on a horse going downhill. She wished bears could sigh. The man actually had a backside. Clara had checked surreptitiously several times on the road. It wasn’t a bad looking one either. So why the hell did it feel like his pelvic bones were resting directly on her spine?

  Well, there go my plans for making extra money by renting myself out as a riding animal for children’s parties, she thought, and hrwuffed with laughter.

  This hillside rubbed shoulders with the next one, and they did not need to go down as far to begin going back up. A tree leapt out at her, where another bear, presumably a real one, had set their claws. The smell was a magenta smear of dominance. A smaller male, by the height. The bear wanted to stand on hind legs and leave her mark as well, prove she was taller and not to be trifled with. Clara squelched this urge. The bear grumbled but obeyed.

  It began to grow dark as they reached the treeline again. The air smelled like more snow coming. The bear had excellent vision in the dark, but Istvhan’s weight was beginning to tire her. More than that, the effort of keeping human thoughts inside a skull that wanted to think other thoughts was exhausting. She could feel them welling up around her, wordless and primal, so rich they were almost bitter, leaving a gamey taste on her tongue.

  No. Keep thinking. Keep going.

  More, whispered the bear without words. More.

  Not now. Keep going. And then, quietly, Please.

  The cave wasn’t much, more of a depression in the rock with a large boulder blocking half the entrance. It was at the top of the ridgeline and had a good view of the approach, and more importantly, it was out of the wind. Istvhan rolled off the bear’s back and entered the cave on his knees. It immediately seemed a great deal warmer than the surrounding air.

  The bear—he didn’t know whether to think of her as Clara or as just the bear—shoved her way in after him. The small cave got even smaller. She curled herself up, head toward the entrance, and collapsed like a dog on a hearthrug.

  “Staying a bear?” he said.

  “Hwuf.”

  “Right. Okay.” Istvhan was exhausted. He pulled a piece of journey bread out of his pack and tore it in half. “Food?”

  The bear took the bread politely from his fingers. Neither the bread nor his hand would have made more than a mouthful. Istvhan took two bites of his and found that even chewing made him tired. But hey, you have a woman eating out of your hand. That’s something, right?

  He spread out his cloak. There was not a great deal of room. He ended up with his back against the bear, which was certainly warmer than the stone wall. “Just don’t roll over in your sleep.”
r />   “Hrruf-ruf.” Was that a laugh? It might have been. He hadn’t known that bears could laugh, but presumably if bears turned into women, they might learn. His thoughts began to drift, to bears and women and men chasing them across the hills, and then he slept.

  Seventeen

  Istvhan woke with his head pillowed in someone’s cleavage.

  He was lying on a cold, hard surface and his shoulder was sore and he had a crick in his neck and he couldn’t quite remember how he’d gotten there, but none of this seemed particularly important. What was important was that his face was buried in soft, warm female flesh. A great deal of female flesh. Whoever’s breasts these were, they were spectacular.

  I’m dead and in heaven. I always knew I’d die, but I thought my sins would catch up with me. This is wonderful.

  Admittedly, he couldn’t remember the name of his partner, but she seemed to be naked so that presumably meant they had been introduced and had gotten through all of the preliminary stages. He slid one hand over her hip and confirmed that yes, she was definitely naked and also that the rest of her was as generously made as her breasts. I was clearly far more virtuous while I was alive than I realized.

  “Ahem,” said the owner of the breasts.

  “…wub…” said Istvhan, who was wondering how much he could fit in his mouth before it got weird.

  The woman inhaled, which did amazing things. Istvhan gave himself up to bliss.

  “Ahem.”

  Something clicked in the back of his brain. Clara. Sister Clara. Domina Clara. Werebear.

  Nun.

  “I’ve never seen a man in armor move that fast,” said Clara dryly. “Are you all right?”

  “You turned human in your sleep,” squeaked Istvhan. He had flung himself across the floor of the cave so quickly that he’d scraped his ear on the stone, but this was a minor consideration. He was stiff with horror, except for the part of his anatomy that had been stiff with something else.

  “It happens sometimes.” Clara folded her arms across her chest in an attempt at modesty. Breasts like hers had not been designed to be contained by mere forearms. Istvhan stared at the ceiling of the cave. Nice cave. Good cave. None of the sticky up or hangy down bits, but of course that’s limestone, you don’t get that in this area. Right. Okay. You face-planted in a nun’s breasts and made wub noises. A nun who you stabbed with a sword about twelve hours ago. Is there any coming back from this? No? Okay, that’s what I thought.

  “We are trained not to change into the beast in our sleep,” said Clara, who was fortunately not privy to his thoughts. “But changing into human...it rarely matters and it’s hard to train out.”

  “How do you train not to turn into one?” asked Istvhan, still staring fixedly at the ceiling.

  “Same way you’d teach a child not to wet the bed, if a bit more dramatic. The novices sleep in a dormitory and the minute someone starts to show signs of changing, the keeper of novices dumps a glass of water on their head. Not harmful, but you wake up instantly and it breaks you out of the dream.”

  Istvhan raised his eyebrows and looked down in spite of himself. “I’d think if you were already upset, having water dumped on your head wouldn’t help.”

  She shrugged, which did tectonic things to her anatomy. Istvhan returned hastily to perusing the ceiling. “I can’t say it’s enjoyable, but it works. And bears dislike water a great deal less than humans do.”

  Istvhan pictured water running down Clara’s shoulders, over her skin, tracing the path down from her collarbone and dripping off...other bits…

  The ceiling was definitely not cutting it. He gazed out over the ledge at the gritty gray light of early dawn. Trees. Snowy trees. Yes. Excellent. Evergreens, by the look of them. Yes. There was nothing particularly erotic about evergreens. In fact, if Istvhan had to pick the least erotic tree he knew, it would definitely be an evergreen. Something with pointy needles and a bad attitude. One of those trees. You couldn’t cut boughs and lay them down and spread your cloak over them and make passionate love to anyone with trees like that. You’d get jabbed in places. Lots of places. You’d be better off with the stone floor, no matter what it did to your knees when you were kneeling over her and…goddamn sexy evergreens, leading innocent paladins into temptation.

  “Perhaps you might hand me my clothes?” asked Clara.

  “Ah. Yes. That is a thing I can do.” He hastily dug her clothing out of his pack and held it out to her. “Are you going to go as a…ah…not as a…hmm.”

  “Bear,” said Clara. “You can say the word, it’s all right. I’m not sensitive about it.”

  The hell you’re not, thought Istvhan, but wasn’t about to say it aloud.

  “At the moment, neither of us are going anywhere.” She gestured out the cave mouth, at the evergreens that he’d been looking at. He followed her gaze, puzzled, then looked down.

  The shale slope that they had come up the evening before was covered in a fresh blanket of snow. It was utterly pristine, blindingly white, and if they walked on it, they were going to leave a trail of footprints as clear as signposts. Istvhan grunted in dismay. “Damnation. Can we climb up, do you think?”

  “I won’t swear that we can’t,” said Clara. “That boulder there, if we could get onto it, we could maybe go over the top of the ridge. But we’ll still leave some kind of track.”

  Istvhan rubbed his chin. His beard itched. “Well, it’s covered our trail so that’s useful, I suppose.” He watched as the wind blew across the snow, sending white flakes skittering along the surface. “The wind should scour it clear soon enough, but I don’t know if we’re far enough ahead of pursuit to trust it to clear our footprints that quickly.”

  “That’s my thinking,” Clara agreed. “If we stay here for a few hours, we may be able to go on without leaving as much of a trail.”

  Istvhan contemplated a few hours alone in an isolated cave with a…a nun, dammit, she’s a nun…a nun with really fantastic breasts, absolutely top quality, you just didn’t see breasts like that every day…will you shut up, you lecherous doorknob? You already had your face mashed against her not twenty minutes ago and she can’t get out of this cave without you, so act like a damn gentleman already.

  Also, you stabbed her. Stabbed. Pointy metal jammed into flesh. Women do not forgive you for that in a hurry. Men either, generally. He drew his knees up and rested his wrists across them. It was cold inside the cave, but the blanket of snow had warmed the landscape a little. Now he just had to figure out how to spend a few hours in Clara’s company without acting like a complete ass.

  He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the stone wall. Easier said than done…

  Bears sigh for ursine reasons of their own, not from frustration or sorrow. Clara had human reasons to sigh, but squelched the urge.

  When Istvhan realized who—or what—he was cuddling up to, he moved like he was touching something unclean. He tried to hide it, but that just shows he’s polite, not that he wasn’t disgusted.

  The snow had laid a blanket of quiet across the world. She strained her ears but could hear nothing but birdsong. She wondered which one of them was going to be first to break the silence.

  “So what’s it like being a werebear?”

  Apparently it was going to be Istvhan.

  “Dunno,” said Clara. “What’s it like not being a werebear? I’ve never not been one.”

  Istvhan grunted. After a minute he said “Well, there’s less turning into a bear, for one thing.”

  Clara laughed in spite of herself. “Yes, I imagine. Ah…hmm. It’s a bit like having another set of thoughts in your head, I suppose. Like when you talk to yourself, there’s the you doing the talking and the you getting talked to, although they’re all the same you. Does that make any sense?”

  “It does, actually. Like when I think ‘Istvhan, you’re a fool,’ I’m both the fool and the person thinking I’m a fool.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “Cons
tantly. Particularly around beautiful women.”

  Clara didn’t quite know what to do with that. Does he mean…no, it’s probably just reflex. You’re a bear. “Right. Except the bear doesn’t think in words the same way, and it doesn’t feel the need to keep a running commentary on my life. Half the time I don’t know it’s there unless something happens to wake it up.”

  “Like what?”

  “Strong smells. Hunger. Danger.” She scratched the back of her neck. “Whenever I get in a fight, the beast wakes up and starts wanting to know if it needs to take over.” Istvhan made an odd sound, almost like recognition. “But I’m not in fights very often. It’s mostly smells. Smoke, blood, sickness—those will wake it up every time.”

  “And truffles?”

  “Definitely truffles.”

  “And once it’s woken up?”

  “Most of the time I tell it to go back to sleep. There are really not very many circumstances where turning into a large bear is helpful. Mostly it listens. Sometimes it doesn’t, and I’m pushing it down while I try to do something else.”

  “I understand that more than you know.”

  Clara glanced at him, surprised. He couldn’t possibly, and yet the way he said it...

  They sat in silence for a little while, gazing down the valley. Birds chirped in the trees and from the ground. Clara heard an alarm call and looked around in case it was signaling the presence of men on horses. A very harassed-looking copper jay broke from cover, mobbed by the smaller birds, and a few minutes later, everything settled back into peaceful melody.

  “Do you feel the presence of the goddess when you change?” asked Istvhan abruptly.

  Clara blinked at him. What an odd question. No, what a paladin question. “You mean Ursa? She’s a saint, not a goddess. She was a real person, about three hundred years ago, or that’s what the records say.”