The Sorcerer's Vengeance: Book 4 of the Sorcerer's Path by Brock Deskins Read Free Book Online Page A

wore around in neck and tucked under his shirt.
    “I think I see something,” Derran whispered even though such stealth was rather pointless after Farley’s rant.
    “What do you see, lad?” asked Zeb, glad to break the churlish master hunter out of his tantrum.
    “Movement atop the hill near the horizon.”
    Zeb squinted in the direction Derran pointed but could make out nothing other than the expanse of white. The terrain was gently rolling with low hills, little more than broad mounds and low-lying regions that resembled the undulating swells of the open sea. Even though the mound was near the horizon, the ground was sloping upward and was not such a great distance away. In a land where standing atop even a tiny hill would allow a man to see for miles in every direction in the flatter areas, this was far from a bad thing.
    “I’ll take your word for it. You think it’s our bear?”
    “I’m almost certain of it. It was big and four-legged. I didn’t see it until it turned its side to us. I would swear the thing was looking right us, watching us as if it knew we were following it,” Derran said a tad uneasily.
    Farley spit a large brown glob onto the snow. “That’s a load of crap, boy. It’s just an animal. Maybe it saw us but it’ll be more concerned with us stealing its prey than us hunting it. It don’t matter none if it saw us anyhow. He knows he’s a big boy and there ain’t nothin’ out here gonna’ challenge him ‘cept another bear and he knows that humans ain’t prey. Only important thing now is getting’ to him before he runs off. ”
    Derran fell in behind the hunter even though he was not so sure the man was right in his assertions of the bear’s motives or its idea of its and the humans’ place on the food chain.
    They reached the mound where Derran had seen the bear. “Damn thing is circling back the way it came. Probably inspecting the borders of its territory,” Farley growled irritably while examining the yellow snow made by the bear to mark its range.
    The tracks went down the backside of the knoll and continued around and behind another large white mound where they disappeared from sight. The men stayed closer together since they started following the tracks, not concerned with scaring off smaller animals with the larger party and sled. The tracks veered south but seemed to be keeping to the lower side of the low hills, a typical tactic for bears to use when hunting so as not to frighten off any potential prey by skylining themselves against the horizon.
    The bear charged without warning and seemed to appear from nowhere. One second there was no sound or signs of life other than the humans and their own breathing, then the top of a mound seemed to explode and a bellowing roar split the air as the huge bear charged the sled from just a few yards away. Toron and the humans all spun at the sudden burst of movement and angry roar. Most creatures would have frozen in shock at such a sudden and fierce attack and been destroyed by the awesome animal. These were all experienced men who had faced more than one kind of danger in their lives and that experience was the critical difference between predator and prey.
    Experience won out over youthful reflexes as Farley let fly the broad-headed quarrel from his heavy crossbow, striking the bear in its huge, white side just behind the shoulder. It was an amazing shot, or just extremely lucky, given the animal’s incredible speed and the way it bounded through the thick snow in its effort to reach the men near the sled.
    Derran’s shot struck just a foot behind and slightly lower than the hunter’s own. Still a good shot but nowhere near lethal for a creature this big and so outraged at the intrusion of the soft-skinned humans that dared to hunt a hunter.
    Zeb let his own quarrel fly but it sailed harmlessly past, just over the ice bear’s back. The old captain dropped the crossbow with a curse and ran for the sled not more than fifteen