Once Upon a Winter's Night by Dennis L. McKiernan Read Free Book Online Page B

sightings were too brief for her to be certain, and the crags and rocks and shadows and snarl alone had fooled her more than once. Even so, “Oh, Bear,” she whispered, “does someone or something run alongside our course?”
    The Bear paused and raised his head on high and sniffed. Long he stood, snuffling, but then without comment continued on. Camille wetted a finger and raised it to measure the flow of air, and yet all she discovered was the forward motion of the Bear. Mayhap the air drifts the wrong way for the Bear to scent th—What’s that? Camille’s heart hammered in her chest. I thought I saw something large and looming in the dark by that tall crag, something staring, leering. But the Bear had moved onward, and whatever it might have been had vanished behind a dead thorny tangle, and though she peered intently, she saw it not again. Slowly her heart calmed. Mayhap it was nought but shadows in the murk, or a standing stone or twisted tree or other such. Still she kept a sharp eye out, and now and again did she think she saw what might be dark forms running among the ice-laden twists and angular wrenchings of the tangled wood and the outlying crags and jumbles of shattered rock, but still she could not be certain.
    Long did they travel as the day wore on, and toward night a wind began to blow down from the mountains above, and the pall o’erhead was riven into ragged, gray, wraithlike tendrils streaming across jagged peaks. In an effort to stay warm at the end of a day become blustery and chill, Camille wrapped her cloak about and huddled down within, abandoning her vow to remain unbowed within the Winterwood.
    Night fell, and once again did the Bear pad onward as if trying to be quit of this terrible place. And once again did weary Camille nod and jerk and nearly fall from her perch. And in the windy cold, once again did the Bear finally stop for Camille to make camp and drink distasteful water and fall asleep while eating.
     
    Wha-what? What was tha—?
    Camille was wrenched from sleep by screams of dying and yawls of terror and howls of combat, and a great snarling and roaring. And just as she jerked awake in fear, a dark being crashed to the frozen ground beside her, his face torn off, his abdomen gutted. Shrieking, she scuttled back and away from this hideous dead thing, and looked up in the slanting light of a low gibbous moon to see a great battle raging, her Bear standing on his hind legs, ringed ’round by creatures with spears stabbing. And then she knew from her papa’s stories— Oh, sweet Mithras, they’re Goblins! And the Bear laid about with massive blows, his great claws ripping and rending, and blood flew wide and bones crunched, and Goblins fell ’round him slain. Yet the Bear was bleeding as well, his white fur stained with a scarlet gone black in the night.
    Scrambling up, Camille looked for something to—
    She was jerked from her feet and hauled into the air and clasped against a huge body, and a large hand slapped down on the top of her head, huge fingers grasping, curved talons clamping against her face. And a voice bellowed out above the Bear’s own roars, “Stop now, or I’ll snap the girl’s neck like a twig!”

6
    Deliverance
    A t the shout from the huge being clasping Camille, the Bear swung his great head ’round, his ashen eyes mad with rage, and for a moment it seemed he would charge. But instead he took one last swipe at the beringing Goblins, scattering them, and then he dropped down to all fours and stood, his fighting done. At another command, the Goblins again surrounded the Bear, their spears ready to stab.
    And when the Bear was encircled, the creature grasping Camille shifted his clutch to her shoulders and turned her about and held her out at arm’s length, and she gasped in dread and clenched her teeth to keep from screaming, for ’twas a huge, ugly Troll had her in his claw-fingered grip.
    Hideous, he was, and massive, some nine foot tall or so. And in