The Bear, Michael E. Shea [best novels to read for beginners TXT] 📗

broke the silence. “What are we facing here, Char?” Char continued his preparations, sticking the large arrow into the ground and pulling out another.

“The barbarians call it a Garthoulan. A twisted creature of half man and half beast. I’ve been tracking this one for seven weeks now. These beasts are strong, fast, and deadly. They hunt like you or I would. They have claws as long as knives and teeth like broken glass.” Char finished his inspections and squatted down by the fire. His eyes shined yellow in the light of the fire.

“Do you have any advice?” asked Longhorn.

Char fixed his steel eyes on the town’s sheriff a barbed arrow in his hand.

“Don’t let it bite you.”

Longhorn looked over at Garity. Char gave them a hard narrow stare and then broke out in deep laughter. The two men watched the old man for a moment and then exploded in laughter themselves. All three of them laughed into the darkness of the night. Garity reached out and slapped Char on the knot of one hard shoulder. Something dark on Char’s bare arm caught Garity’s attention.

“What’s that on your arm, Char? A scar?”

Char didn’t look down at the curving scar on his arm. It didn’t look like single cut or tear, but a series of them.

“It used to be a tattoo before I cut it off. It used to say “Faigon Graywolves”.

“You were one of the Greywolves?” Garity’s eyes went wide. Longhorn looked over to Garity and shrugged.

“They were the King’s regiment who went through the southern lines and killed the Voth King,” Garity explained to the sheriff. “They cut off the head of the Voth armies and sent the rest of them into disarray.”

“I never heard that,” said Longhorn.

“You weren’t meant to,” said Char, his voice low and guttural. Char’s eyes went narrow and hard again, looking through Longhorn and into the shadows of the past. “There were two hundred of us, trained and armed from the best weaponmasters in the King’s army. We didn’t wear shining armor or carry banners. We looked like a bunch of refugees. We spent two years training for a single week.

“We slipped through the Voth lines individually or in pairs. Sometimes we snuck in with families orphaned in the outskirting villages. We met again outside of the Voth King’s camp, about forty miles south of the front lines. He had a thousand men with him. Late at night we entered the camp and murdered the barbarian King as he slept. They killed Fifty of us when the camp awoke, and captured the other one hundred and fifty of us.

“They dragged us into the woods that night, speaking in their short and spitting language. They painted symbols on our chests in the blood of our friends, strange symbols from a lost religion worshiping bestial gods I never wanted to know about. They tied us to trees in fours, each at a compass point of the tree. Then they left. No guards, no fires, just darkness and silence in the forest.

“It rained that night, a lot like it’s raining tonight. Thunder cracked in the woods. We heard screams from those tied to the furthest trees. They sounded like animals, pigs squealing as their bellies are torn open. Things roared in the darkness with lungs larger than any man. It went on all night. One by one they ate us. They took their time and enjoyed their meal.

“I was tied next to a friend of mine, Jenfen Willowwind from Danark. We whispered to each other in the dark trying not to go insane as our friends were ripped to shreds all around us, one by one. It went on all night long; the thunder cracking, the lightning showing us huge shapes moving through the trees, and the screaming and wailing of our friends.

“The next morning I looked over and Jenfen was looking at me with wide eyes. I looked down and something had bitten him in half below the waist.

“A forward regiment of the King’s army broke through that morning and pushed back the Voth further south. They cut us free one by one but all I could think about was Jenfen’s voice whispering to me in the dark.

“When we left Faigon and headed south we had two hundred men. They cut six of us from the trees that day. Faigon’s Graywolves died in the woods. I cut off the tattoo and left my service with my dead friends.” Char took a deep drink from the flask at his belt. “We killed the King, though, and started the end of the war.” 13

It was three hours into the evening when the first of Char’s traps sprung. A crack of metal on wood brought all three of the men to their feet. Longhorn drew his sword and even within the stress of the moment, Garity’s eyes were drawn to the beautiful blade. Another crack broke through the night air. Then silence. All three men stood ready for anything. Char had one of his huge barbed arrows knocked in his massive bow. The three men heard another crack, this time far away.

“It’s moving. Lets go.” Char ran into the woods. Longhorn drew Shadowhewer from his belt and followed the hunter into the woods. He was fifty yards into the woods when he noticed that Garity hadn’t followed. Longhorn heard a thick twang ahead and a curse in a tongue unknown to Longhorn. He came upon Char standing next to a gnarled tree with one of his arrows pierced through it, its tip protruding from the other side. He already had another arrow knocked and ready. He turned and looked at Longhorn.

“Where’s the priest?” In reply both men heard another crack from behind them, near the camp. They ran towards it. Before they arrived they heard a tree crash to the ground. A roar broke open the night. Garity screamed. The two men crashed through the underbrush and into the camp. The fire had been stamped out and buried under a huge paw print. Garity’s robe, torn and covered in blood lay in a heap. Char aimed his bow into the darkness, half drawn. The muscles on his arms and back, muscles of a man one third his age, strained against the resistance of the huge bow.

“He’s gone.” Longhorn’s eyes went to the huge pool of blood. It held little doubt of Garity’s fate. Garity might be running through the woods with his belly torn open and his heart pumping out its last blood by now. A tree creaked and splintered and a huge shadow fell upon them. Char drew and fired. Both men heard the thud of it sinking into meat and chipping off of bone. The beast roared again.

Longhorn once heard the roar of one hundred barbarians storming over a hill. What the barbarians lacked in battle tactics, they made up for in volume. The roar had the younger men of his army shaking like old women. He felt the fear of battle in his heart when he heard that roar but the barbarians’ roar was nothing compared to the roar of the beast.

Longhorn felt nauseous. He wanted to fall to the ground and cover himself in mud. He wanted to run. Using every ounce of strength he had, he held his blade high and held his ground. Char seemed unaffected by the roar. Longhorn knew the old man had heard it before.

The beast was huge but they could see little of it in the darkness of the night. Only the beast’s blazing red eyes shone like pinpoints of hellfire. Char drew and fired another barbed arrow and the arrow struck home. One of the beast’s eyes burst into a shower of blood. The beast reared back and howled in anger and pain. It smashed one massive arm back and crushed a tree that got in the way.

Char had another arrow ready but the beast was too fast. It fell low to the ground its powerful legs curled under it like a spring. With a lunge, the beast swiped its claws past Char. Longhorn caught the glimpse of four shining claws and a trail of blood. Char’s bowstring snapped and the bow fell to the ground. Char spun around and Longhorn saw how severe the wounds were. One cut tore open his belly. Another ripped the man’s chest open exposing the white of his ribs. A third severed his throat. The fourth slashed both of the man’s eyes. Blood sprayed from his moral wounds and the old hunter fell dead to the ground.

The forest was quiet. The cold of shock flowed over Longhorn. The sheriff’s eyes went from the dead hunter to the beast in front of him. It rose on its legs and for the first time Longhorn got a full look at it.

It was nine feet tall and only its head resembled a bear. Its waist was thin and two huge legs held it up on oval paws tipped with gleaming claws. Its chest was wide, corded with muscle and thick hair. It held long arms out to its side each tipped with four claws and what looked like a thumb. Longhorn could feel the rumble of its breathing, deep and powerful. Its remaining eye blazed. Char’s arrow protruded out of the socket of the other. It opened its mouth and bared its long fangs. Longhorn saw blood flowing from another wound along one of the huge creature’s legs. The beast roared again.

It took every ounce of will to keep his sword from falling to the ground. The roar was so loud Longhorn could almost see the air rippling out from its mouth. Longhorn stepped back on his right foot and held his sword back, its shining point aiming towards the beast. The beast raised its left claw in preparation for a swipe that would tear the sheriff into pieces.

The claw whistled through the air as it swiped in at Longhorn. The sheriff ducked and felt the wind of the blow on the back of his neck. Longhorn sprung up and cut hard with Shadowhewer. Longhorn cleaved the blade into the beast’s side, cutting through thick flesh down to the creature’s ribs. The bear howled in pain and slashed again. One of the claws scratched a deep gash across Longhorn’s chest. Longhorn gritted his teeth against the pain and struck again. This time the blade cut hard into the huge creature’s arm. Black blood sprayed into the night air but the creature was far from finished. The strike put Longhorn off balance and a swipe of the back of the beast’s wounded paw sent the Sheriff sliding through the dirt. It stood upright and roared raising its good paw to tear the life from Longhorn with every ounce of its weight.

A black shape fell from the tree behind the beast. Longhorn hardly recognized Garity. The priest had stripped his robes revealing a well muscled body filled with power and flexibility from years of hard training. In his hand he held the pick Longhorn had seen him use at the site two days earlier but now he noticed the gleam of the pick’s edge. It was a sickle of some sort. The wound on the beasts leg and the blood on the robe made sense now. It wasn’t the priest’s blood on the robe, it was the beast’s.

In a dive as agile as an acrobat, Garity dove behind the beast and though he could not see it, Longhorn heard the tearing of the blade along the beast’s back. The beast roared again in rage but before it could turn to face Garity the nimble priest had rolled through its legs and stood in front of it.

The priest stood with his legs apart and his knees bent. The beast slashed down with its deadly claws