Bard I by Keith Taylor Read Free Book Online Page B

With no inkling that the man he hunted might have lobbed a snowball at the back of his neck and hit him. he went noisily to join his lord.
    Felimid drew cautiously near. The Jutes gathered in a close throng about Oisc. Quietly, the bard climbed a tree. From his perch, he beheld the crag he and Regan had climbed the day before. Twice nine men’s height it towered, outlined overwhelmingly against the winter sky. He hadn’t thought it quite so close.
    He peered downward, through the glittering branches. Oisc’s Jutes were gathered below the mouth of the cave, making noise enough to awaken the dead, let alone the living. King and king’s men had ranged themselves in a half-circle behind their belling hounds. Sword, spear and axe gleamed frostily in ready hands. Kisumola was there. Felimid espied him suddenly, well back from the rest. sitting on his pony with all the grace of a grain sack.
    With a shout of anticipation, King Oisc himself beat aside his hounds to lead a rush up the rocky incline. Four of his hearth-companions followed. They plunged into the cave.
    Felimid counted slowly to nine. A thunderous roar echoed from the cave-mouth. Yells of consternation followed the appalling sound. Jutes hurtled forth as if impelled. Two flung themselves from the broad rock ledge into the brush below; the others, including the king, fled down the path much, much faster than they had ascended.
    A second mighty roar with a strange double resonance echoed after them. The beast that had made the sounds now shambled out on the ledge. It reared up, three yards high. The Jutes bellowed in shock.
    Felimid nearly fell out of his tree. Unlike the king. he’d been expecting to sec a bear. but no such monster as this. Immense in shaggy height and breadth, it lumbered down the crag. Two fearsome heads snarled and slavered on its shoulders.
    Two . . .
    Kisumola gave one appalled, high shriek and tumbled from his horse. The bear was a sacred beast to his people. When hunger drove them to hunt it, as often happened in the far north of the world, they did so with solemn ritual and prayer. When they feasted on the bear’s body, they took care not to break one bone of its skeleton, which they placed intact in a cairn. Then they besought its spirit to bear them no ill-will and do them no harm, but instead to speak well of them to the gods. To the wizard. that shaggy embodiment of rage must have seemed like an angry god itself.
    Oisc’s hounds met the monster with bared teeth. Oisc and his men did the same. Felimid, watching, relaxed in the crotch of his high tree-limb and dangled a leg. This was justice, if such a thing existed.
    You roused him, King Oisc! Now deal with him!
    A dog darted forward, to clench its fangs in the monster bear’s right paw. The rest ripped at its flanks. A Jutish warrior dashed in with spear lifted, to drive through the creature’s kidney. It entered a shaggy hip instead as the bear wheeled, ponderous but swift, swinging the dog on its paw through the frosty air. One set of grisly jaws closed on the dog’s spine, biting it in half. The bear shook off the fragment that still clung, and dealt the spearman a cuff that hurled him yards with a crushed head. Two more blows left and right destroyed two more of the hounds.
    The Jutes surrounded the monster, slashing and thrusting. One aimed a decapitating stroke at the nearer head: he missed, and gashed open a hairy shoulder. Someone else cleft a murderous paw to the wrist. The monster bellowed in agony and rage, surged forward, caught the Jute in a savage clasp, rent him hideously with talons and teeth, then dropped the mangled corpse into the snow. At once it seized another Jute and served him the same way.
    The hunters and their hounds drew back. One darted in from the rear to set hamstringing jaws in a mighty hind leg. The bear promptly sat on the hound, squashing him flat, a sight so comical that Felimid hooted with laughter. The monster knew something of tactics!
    Now its