She grinned, though a little painfully.?I feel like I?ve been hit by a bear!?
Rudi wiped the blood from his sword, feeling his pulse slow and the sweat that soaked his underclothing turn gelid. Controlling his breathing turned it deep and slow and took the tremor out of his hands. There were knocks that would be painful bruises, but that was no novelty. ?Now, that was more like a matter of excitement, anxiety and dread than I prefer before dinner!? he said lightly.
He bent to touch the bear?s blood to his forehead and murmur the rite of passing; it had been a brave beast, and deserved honor. ?Why did it go for us?? Pierre Walks Quiet said.?They usually don?t, unless they?re real hungry, or you push them into a corner, or it?s a mother with cubs. We hadn?t gone in to its den… and it?s early for a bear to den up for the winter, even with the weather like this.?
Ingolf bent to examine it; snow was collecting on its open eyes and on its mouth and nostrils, which meant it wasn?t going to get up again. He spoke thoughtfully, if you could when you had to shout: ?It wasn?t mean-sick either. Big healthy four-year-old male, I?d say. And see, nice und fat for winter. That makes them more peaceable, most times.?
Mary nodded, shrugged, and then winced a little.?Bears are unpredictable,? she said.?Even black bears.?
Rudi went on:?I don?t know. Perhaps we should have a rite for the Father of Bears. I do know one thing, though.? ?What?? Edain said.
He was looking around for a place to haul the carcass up to drain, and testing the edge of his knife.
Rudi grinned.?I know what we?ll be havin? for dinner!?
Epona whickered at him, raising her head from a heap of feed pellets made of compressed alfalfa and cracked oats and sugar-beet molasses. Rudi whickered back in the horse-tongue; a sound that meant, Yes, I?m here, relax, as near as he could tell. The smell of bear was not calculated to make horses easy, even one as brave as Epona. Nor that of blood. ?Oft evil will will evil mar,? Mary muttered, leaning back against Ingolf?s chest.
She was a little tiddly with the applejack they?d brought from Readstown. They had fires down the length of the potato barn, and it had heated up to the point where you were reasonably comfortable without your parka-provided you kept everything else on. The body heat of the people and that from the horses down near the entrance helped, and the quick patches they?d made on holes in the walls, and the way the snow was piling up outside. It made good insulation.
Bear meat roasted over the coals, sending up little fragrant spurts as drops of fat fell from the richly marbled flesh; a slight blue haze hung under the ceiling, until it drifted out the unblocked ventilators. The air smelled of cooking, and the dryish earth beneath them with its residues of old crops long rotted away to nothing, and less nameable things. They?d found human bones here too, but very old, and much scattered by small scavengers except for the skulls. He?d judged them to be a man, a woman and a young child by the size, and victims of the Change. You still found the like anywhere protected from quick decay, and not near living settlements.
There had been a message in shaky hand scratched on the walclass="underline" Two weeks out of Green Bay. We?re all sick. I think from bad water. Please, God, someone, help us.
I hope they?ve found peace in the Summerlands, Rudi thought. And better luck next time.
They?d buried what remained. Father Ignatius had said the words and planted a cross, it being most likely that they were Christians. ?I said, oft evil will will evil mar,? Mary repeated a little louder.
Her half brother raised a brow, sitting cross-legged with the small of his back against his rolled sleeping bag, gnawing mouthfuls off a rib; it was good if a little strong tasting, and much like pork.
Much like wild boar, he thought. Gamy but not too much so.
The rich taste of the meat and crisp fat filled his mouth pleasantly; the bear had been eating beechnuts and roots and berries that gave its flesh an aromatic tang. Garbh was lying on her back near Edain in an ecstatic daze, her belly rounded out to tautness and her tongue dangling over her fangs. ?And what would you be meanin? by that cryptic remark?? he asked Mary, a teasing light in his eyes.?And yes, I realize it?s from the Histories. You needn?t give chapter and verse.?
Then he took a bite of roast potato-they?d traded for some spuds several days ago at the last farmstead they passed-and a sip of hot spruce-tip tea. ?I mean that loathsome morn-curuni, that black wizard in the red robe,? she said owlishly.?Sending us storms like Saruman did to the Fellowship on Caradhras.?
Ingolf looked over her head-she was leaning back against his chest with his thick arms wrapped around her-and said: ?Yah hey, that?s more sensible than I?d like to admit,? he said reluctantly. ?And maybe the bear,? Ritva said thoughtfully.?That would be canonical, too. Well, nearly. Sending wargs and crebain was.? ?Same thing,? Mary said. ?Is not.? ?Is! Well, yes, it was a clean bear. Anyway, the storms made it easier for us to move by ski and sled earlier, and now this bear has helped with our food supplies; so the evil will is marring evil. Pass me another skewer of the liver, would you?? ?Bad medicine, either way,? Pierre Walks Quiet said.
He took some of the meat between his teeth, sliced it off near his lips with his curved skinning knife, then went on after he?d chewed and swallowed: ?I?m not happy about this place.? Just then the whole metal roof of it, that had survived a quarter-century of winters since the Change, thuttered as if the wind outside would rip it off. The sound had been growing more muffled as the snow built up; now it came louder again, and the south wall creaked a bit as much of the load above fell there with a muffled grumbling like distant thunder. One of the horses threw up its head and tried to pull its tether free. Epona mooched over to the gelding and shoved at it until it subsided, then stood leaning her head on its withers reassuringly.
Virginia Kane shuddered.?You mean, that bear was… was sent to get us? Like some sort of hex??
She made a sign against sorcery that Rudi had seen used among the Lakota. Fred Thurston waited a moment and signed the Hammer with his fist, a bit self-consciously, as if reminding himself. ?Father Ignatius?? Mathilda said from beside Rudi.
His hand rubbed her back companionably; she was sitting with her sleeping bag around her shoulders like a blanket, and her arms wrapped around her knees. ?It?s a matter of dispute how much actual power the Adversary can give those who serve him,? the monk said soberly.?And why God permits it.?
He finished wiping down his sword with an oily rag and sheathed it before winding the belt around the scabbard and setting it aside… where he could draw instantly. Then he gazed into the fire for a moment before signing himself and going on: ?I think the empirical evidence indicates that the answer to the first question is quite a bit, in this case. As for the other, He moves in mysterious ways, to make even evil serve His plan in the end. We can pray for protection, and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints.? ?Please do!? Rudi said, and heaved himself upright.?The expedition,? he added to Matti as she looked a question at him.
That was Portlander dialect for need to piss. He did make use of the area where they?d dug a pit and screened off with sections of board; that privacy was a luxury, of course. They?d put it by the entrance, on the other side of the horses, which meant he had to spend a few minutes with Epona as well, resting his head on her neck while she nibbled at his hair. The strong earthy-grassy smell of her was reassuring; he?d spend a lot of time as a boy with her, just drifting about and thinking in the meadows below Dun Juniper. That had been perfectly safe; for him, at least, if not for anyone or anything that tried to harm him while she was there.