The Bear by Michael E. Shea (free books to read .TXT) 📖

voice of the stranger was gruff and scratchy, the sound of falling gravel. The stranger threw back his hood revealing the face of an old man, leathery from the sun with deep lines crossing his cheeks and brow. His thin hair hung down over his shoulders and he carried four days of beard on his wrinkled cheeks. He scanned the room with vacant gray eyes but when they locked onto Frendal, the barkeep turned away.

“You’re in luck, friend. I have one room left.” Frendal stepped around the bar, picked up old Jacke, a regular patron of the tavern, by the scruff of his jacket, and shoved him towards the door. The drunk stumbled out of the bar. “You must excuse me. We hardly see one visitor a week and now we have two in two days. I’m not used to travelers coming in the middle of the night.”

“How much for the room?” The old man continued to look around the room paying no attention to the bartender’s words.

“Five silver a night. My name’s Frendal. What might your name be?” Frendal stuck his hand out towards the old man. The gray eyes locked on his again and it was all Frendal could do not to put his hand down and step away. The old man took it and shook it once so hard that the bartender felt his arm almost come out of its socket.

“Char.”

The word hung heavy in the silent tavern.

“The room is down that hall and on the left. You can pay me in the morning.” Frendal rubbed his shoulder and went back around the bar to finish up for the night. “It’s lucky you got here when you did. It’s not safe to travel tonight. People speak of a beast in the woods.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here.” 10

“I was thirteen when my father and I went out in the woods to hunt down a wolf that had killed some of our cattle. My father loved the chance to go out in the woods, he was a hunter before he met my mother and he always missed it when he settled down.” Garity sipped at his tea at one of the tables in the Leaning Oak. Longhorn picked at his afternoon meal with little appitite.

“We lost three cattle the night before and he wasn’t about to lose any more. He had a musket. I don’t know where he got it, this was right after the King had outlawed any firearms to anyone but the King’s armies. We spent hours in the woods until the sun went down over the western mountains. The trees were like dead people staring down at us. The tracks got fresher and I could see how big they were but my father told me it was the way the wolf ran that made them look so big.

“And then there it is. It came out around a tree like hell itself. It wasn’t a wolf, it was a dire wolf. It must have weighed as much as one of the cows it ate but it was lean. It looked at my father with those blazing red eyes and blood and spit coming out over its teeth. The teeth were as long as that steak knife you’re holding.

“My father held up the musket. I don’t think I could have been prouder of him. I was scared to death but there was my father facing this huge beast and holding up the musket. He pulled the trigger. Nothing. Not even a spark. I remember silence. The dire wolf looking at us. My father not believing that the musket didn’t fire.

Garity started to laugh. “He threw it at him. He threw the whole musket at the wolf and it caught it in its mouth. The wolf twisted it like a pretzel and ate it.

“My father grabbed my hand and we ran. We ran for an hour and into the farm house. My mother jumped up in a panic, seeing the looks on our faces. ‘what happend?’ she said.

“‘nothing. Let’s go to bed’ my father said back.” Garitky kept laughing and Longhorn started laughing himself.

“What happened?”

“We didn’t hear a thing for weeks. Our remaining cows were fine. We went out a few weeks later early in the morning and we found it.” Garity started laughing again. “It died. It died eating the musket. Some part of the barrel or something didn’t agree with it. My father wouldn’t take any part of it back. He said it was the work of demons and best left for the Gods to bury. I remember looking down at the wolf’s jaws. They were huge. I was hooked. I enrolled in the church and began the study of the beasts of legend.”

Longhorn wiped away the tears in his eyes. He turned and saw Frendal scowling at him. He remembered the sight from the day before and any laughter fell. Frendal gave him a nod and gestured over to the old man in the corner eating a steak nearly as big as the man.

“That’s Char, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him, but the description fits. Let’s go find out.” Garity stood up and Longhorn followed. The two of them approached the table.

“Good morn, my friend. You wouldn’t happen to be Char, would you?”

“I am.” The old man didn’t bother swallowing the piece of meat he had in his mouth.

“I am sheriff Longhorn.”

“I know who ye are and I know what you want. There’s a beast in your wood here; a beast that needs killing and I’m the one to do it.” The old man turned his gray eyes on Longhorn.

“We’ll go with you.” The words burst out of Garity and Longhorn turned shocked. “You can’t expect to hold a camp and hunt the beast with just yourself. It takes three good people to hunt down something like this. It doesn’t run straight, it weaves.”

“You know your beasts, don’t you.” A smile crept up one side of Char’s deep and lined face. String this bow. With a smooth motion, Char slipped his huge bow from his pack and tossed it at Garity. The monk caught it in flight. He turned to Longhorn and shook his head with a sigh. The monk planted one foot on the ground, held the bow behind him, and bent forward while simultaneously drawing the loose bowstring up the shaft. The huge bow creaked and arched as the Monk’s body moved. The string snapped into the groove at the top and held taught. He held the bow out to Char horizontally. Char took the bow without looking at it and grabbed Garity’s hands.

“These callouses are thick and your knuckles raw. How can a book wielding priest get hands like this?”

“I’m full of surprises.”

Char looked hard and gave a single burst of laughter that caused Frendal to drop a glass on the bar with a thud.

“Alright. We leave at dusk. Go get ready.” 11

Longhorn sat in his office with his soft leather boots up on his desk but stress tied his muscles together like a tight cord. His mind raced around the events of the last few days. Six days ago he worried about dying of boredom and now he would give anything to be back there.

This was his town. He accepted the order to protect it and protect it he would. Longhorn swung his feet around and stood up. He opened a cabinet on the room’s wall and took out a cloth bundle. He placed the bundle on the desk with a heavy thud and unwrapped it.

When he returned from the southern battles, the King rewarded him personally. The Kingdom’s best smith forged him the finest blade Longhorn had ever seen. Most of the royal court wore ceremonial swords, swords that looked nice but would most likely shatter if they hit anything hard. This blade was made for war. Carved grooves on the hardwood hilt kept its wielder’s hand from slipping. A roaring lion of gold with ruby eyes decorated the base of the hilt. The King’s sigil and four sapphires adorned the cross-guard. A pair of curved silver lines ran up the double-edge of the folded steel. Priests of the King had carved runes along the blade’s center during a ceremony that lasted two days. The sword was priceless and deadly. The priests called it Shadowhewer. Longhorn hadn’t taken it out since he arrived at the small town. There was little use for a blade like this in Relis, but every day it sat in the locked cabinet was a day it could not do what it had been made for.

Longhorn pulled the blade from its darkwood scabbard and held it to the light. The fire of the lantern reflected in the two tones of steel and silver along the blade. The ruby eyes of the lion burned with a desire to do battle or perhaps the desire for battle was Longhorn’s. When he went out in those woods tonight, he could think of no finer weapon to carry with him. He took off his sheriff’s blade and hung Shadowhewer low on his left hip. He buckled and tied his wide leather belt in the style he used for war.

Nervous energy filled Longhorn’s heart but he knew this was what he must do. This was his town. He accepted its charge and he would protect it. He had expected to spend his days listening to arguments about oxen and his nights kicking drunks out of the local bar. He never expected to battle an unknown beast in the middle of the night, but it was his job and he would do it.

Longhorn placed his hands on his desk, his head dipping down. He closed his eyes and visions of previous battles flowed through him. Memories long buried crawled out of the gray fog of his past. He remembered leading a charge of forty men over a hill into nearly two hundred Voth barbarians. He remembered pinning a Voth axe-wielder under his steel boot and hammering a spear through the huge man’s leather chestguard. He remembered the smell of sweat and gunpowder and blood soaking into the earth. Longhorn opened his eyes. He could no longer afford to be the retired military man now serving as sheriff of a small town. He had to be the hand of the King again, the sword of the Fiagon Empire.

Longhorn opened the door and stepped out into the town. 12

The three men walked in silence in the dusk of the coming night. Wind howled through the trees and dark clouds marked the coming of another storm. Char wore his large pack and thick bow on his back. The old man seemed to know where he was going and the two other men followed his lead. By nightfall they reached their campsite, a place Char prepared earlier in the day. He went about setting up the small camp and then pulled a variety of strange metal devices out of his pack.

“Traps,” he said, not looking up from his work. “They won’t stop the beast but they’ll let us know it’s around.” Garity and Longhorn exchanged looks.

“We’re not going to hunt out its lair?” said Longhorn.

“This whole forest is its lair. On a fine soft night like this, it will come to us.” With no further word, Char got up and went into the woods.

The old man returned to the camp a short time later. He continued his silence as he bent and strung his huge bow in the same technique Garity showed at the inn. He dug into the large pack and took out a quiver of long arrows. He drew one of these arrows out and inspected the barbed head. The head shined in the light of the small camp fire.

Garity