The defile twisted and turned and narrowed even more until, at its end, Hahfos was urging the pony through the stream itself. At the base of a small knoll, the water plunged into a dark hole, and the scream came yet again, from somewhere on the other side of that knofi. Hahfos put the game little piebald to the slope, leaning forward, his keen eyes searching the trees and underbrush above and his boarspear couched and ready.
Then he was among the trees at the summit and was almost unseated when his mount reared in terror at the edge of a tiny glade. Just across the open space, an Ahrmehnee girl clung ten feet up an ancient oak, splitting the air with her shrieks as a lean, cinnamon bear began to climb toward her.
The pony would go not one step closer, so Hahfos jumped from its back and ran to the base of the tree. Intent on filling his belly, the boar bear ignored the noises behind and below until several inches of sharp steel in his flesh made him aware that he was no longer necessarily the master of the situation.
Roaring his pain and fury, the big bear dropped from the trunk, spuming in midair to land facing his tormentor, who stood half-crouched, his bloody spear point held before him. Baring a mouthful of white teeth, the red bear charged.
Hahfos briefly regretted leaving his darts with the Ahrmehnee, as his dry tongue flickered over drier lips. He would have preferred the bear be at least crippled at rather a longer distance than five bare feet of spearshaft But more than two decades of soldiering had taught him to accept those things impossible to change. Gritting his teeth, he set his feet solidly and braced himself for the coming trial of strength.
His arrival had been most fortuitous for Pehroosz. No sooner had her attacker ceased his stalking of her to do battle than the slender limb which had been supporting most of her weight snapped and her wails broke off abruptly when her soft rump smote the ground with sufficient force to drive the air from her lungs and set stars dancing in her head.
This bear was no cub; he had faced hunters before. He recognized the spear and its danger and dimly recalled the burning agony of suppurating spearwounds. Dropping to four feet, he came in low, presenting as little target as possible.
Hahfos’s clenched jaws ached with strain, but he was unaware of the fact. All that now troubled him was the recollection of how Rehdjee, one of his older brothers, had died of the awesome wounds inflicted by a bear which had come in under his spear, as this one seemed intent upon doing. Taking a fearsome chance, the officer lowered his point, slashing its sharp edges at the animal’s forelegs in the hope of forcing it erect so that he might have a chance at the heart.
The bear’s roar changed timbre and gained volume as the keen steel bit into his off foreleg, just above the splayed, long-clawed paw. Lightning-fast, massive jaws closed upon the spearshaft, jerked so powerfully that Hahfos was certain his arms would be rent apart at the joints, then clamped down, splintering the two-inch hardwood shaft beneath the iron straps and so mangling the straps themselves that the head hung at a useless angle.
“How silly,” thought Hahfos then, “to have survived so many years of war only to die under the claws and teeth of a dumb beast, while trying to protect a girl who, until a few weeks ago, was my enemy!”
For a few moments, the bear mauled the broken spear, attacking it so savagely that the head completely separated from the shaft Hahfos had dropped. In the space of those moments, the hard-pressed officer drew his single-edged hanger—better suited for dispatching and butchering beasts than for defending one’s life—and set his back against the wide bole of a tall old tree.
To the girl, who looked to be just sitting on the ground across the clearing, he shouted, “Run, you witless little baggage! It’ll not be long till he’s done with me. Run to your pony, damn you, and ride like Sacred Wind!”
Then the bear was at him, all gnashing teeth and foul breath and raging fury. In his left hand, Hahfos grasped his cursive, pointless but razor-edged skinning knife. Choosing his moment shrewdly, he jammed the wide blade betwist the gaping jaws, hoping against hope that he might slice through enough muscles to render less effective those jaws and the fangs which were the bear’s principal weapons. But a snapping of the jaws immobilized the knife before it had done more than deeply gash the tongue, and a jerk of the furry monster’s head tore the hilt from Hahfos’s grasp.
Pehroosz had not understood her savior’s words, spoken in another language than her own, though his meaning had been unmistakable. But she was of a race of tough and hardy warriors and, seeing the stranger at bay against a treetrunk, his spear broken, facing a full-grown bear with only a clumsy-looking knife, she could not but try to aid him, even if her own life be forfeit The beast had reared onto his hind legs, which made him nearly Hahfos’s full height. His furry chest was pressed tight against the man’s leather jerkin, and only the hand gripping the throat under the slavering jaws and the straining muscles of the left arm had kept the blood-dripping teeth out of man flesh. The proximity of the antagonists, plus the protection afforded Hahfos by the tree-trunk, made it impossible for the bear to make much use of his curving, needle-tipped claws, but this same proximity rendered the eighteen-inch hanger almost useless… and Hahfos could feel his straining thews weakening. He doubted he could hold back those jaws much longer.
Pehroosz staggeringly ran across the clearing, snatched up the four-foot remnant of spearshaft and began to belabor the beast’s back and head and shoulders with the iron ferrule, but, though the concussions of her buffets increased her own dizziness, the bear took no notice of them. She finally stood back, panting. Her eyes, casting back and forth in search of a more effective weapon, lit upon the spearhead.
The boarspear is a weapon designed to the needs of a specific purpose—that of impaling a large, dangerous animal on a long and wide steel point, while a strong metal crossbar just behind the head prevents the wounded animal from impaling himself so far that he can get teeth or tuskes or claws to the hunter. Unlike the lance, which is used for the much easier task of killing mere men, both edges of the spearhead are carefully honed to a razor keenness, so that slight movements of his shaft by an experienced hunter will slice away at the animal’s internal organs, increasing hemorrhage and hastening death.
Pitting all her wiry strength to the task, Pehroosz drove the foot-long hand’s-breadth of steel into the closest part of the bear’s body. In the berserk rage of combat to the death, it is possible for man or beast to not even feel small injuries, but a leaf-shaped blade in the kidney is difficult to ignore. Tearing out of Hahfos’s grasp, the bear whirled to face this new tormentor, and his heavy-muscled shoulder struck Pehroosz, sending her tumbling head over heels, consciousness leaving her in a great flash of blinding light.
But the respite, slight though it had been, was enough. Hahfos danced a half step to the side and, ere the roaring beast could turn back to him, the hanger had found and burst the mighty heart. When the stricken bear dropped to all fours, the roars suddenly replaced by pitiful, snuffling whimpers, Hahfos raised the heavy hanger high above his head and brought it whistling down to cleanly sever the spine, between shoulders and head, almost decapitating the dying bear.
Once sure that all life had fled the bloody carcass, the officer turned his attentions to the senseless girl, now bruised and bleeding from her violent contacts with mossy rocks and gnarled tree roots. Untying his still-damp neckcloth, he knelt beside her and, cradling her rounded shoulders in the crook of his thick arm, wiped away what he could of the dirt and blood from her scraped and purpling cheeks and forehead. Then be gingerly began to feel and probe her limbs and body, searching for broken bones.