Exile to the Stars (The Alarai Chronicles) (19 page)

“That
sucker has to be bigger than a Kodiak!”

Reaching
as high as he could, Jeff was still several feet shy of touching the top of
claw marks gouged deep in the bark. Shaking his head at the implications, Jeff
decided to go over his bow one more time. He checked the bowstring, wasn’t
satisfied and replaced it with a spare, pulled the bow to full draw several
times, and minutely examined the arrows.

“It’s
ready,” he finally decided, “not that it will do one damn bit of good if we run
across something like that.”

Upon
arrival at Valholm, Jeff had been exposed to much rough humor when village
archers saw what he was using for a bow. Taking him in hand they pointed out
trees that provided the best material for bows, and showed him how to cut and
cure carefully selected pieces of wood. When he recurved the ends of the bow
using an improvised steam bath, they argued fiercely against such heresy.

Jeff
shrugged it off and proceeded to laminate the central portion of the bow with
thin strips of wood using a combination of animal glue and tightly wound gut.
At that point his mentors walked off in disgust. Disgust aside, when the
finished product outranged their best efforts by at least fifty yards, Jeff
noticed more than one warrior sneaking off into the woods in search of new bow
material.

Tanned
nut brown from constant exposure to the sun, Jeff’s complexion continued to
darken as days passed. He wore the Northman’s calf-high boots laced over jeans.
A wool shirt and leather vest topped by a floppy hat added the final touch.
Sitting easily in the saddle, bow held ready on his lap, he flipped the compass
open for what seemed the hundredth time and took a bearing. He snapped it shut
with an impatient twitch of his wrist.

“Where
in hell is it that damn lake?”

Cynic
sensed how perturbed Jeff was and ambled into motion rather than put his oar
into troubled waters. He wasn’t particularly concerned about finding a ‘lake’,
but understood it was important to Jeff. Cynic was concerned about dark
passages that might hide a bear. The claw-scored tree had made a big
impression. While he had no idea what a bear looked like, Cynic most certainly
did not want to find out by stumbling into one.

Early
one morning they finally ran into the lake. Stirred up by a recent
thunderstorm, large waves crashed onto a pebble beach as Jeff vainly tried to
pick out the opposite shore. Muttering, “Everything’s too damn big around
here,” he climbed a tree but still couldn’t spot it.

They
located the discharge river and continued southward. Confronted with heavy
growth forest and brush along the river, progress slowed to a crawl. The heat
was stifling, and clouds of biting flies tormented them. Stopping to listen for
the river, Jeff removed his hat to get at the sweat with a shirtsleeve.

Shaking
his head, he laughed mirthlessly. “Ain’t we havin’ fun.”

Cynic
was in a particularly foul mood. He had been complaining all day about the
flies, and swarms of the red insects attacked him the moment they stopped.

“Are
we to remain standing until I am consumed by these creatures?”

“Been
a tough day, old hoss,” Jeff sympathized. “Let’s do it.”

They
had not gone far when Cynic stopped abruptly, ears swiveling and nostrils
puffing in and out.

“What
is it you sense?”

“I
am not certain.”
Cynic continued his search.
“A foul
odor fleetingly passed. It was most offensive.”

“Danger?”

“Perhaps.
Yes. It spoke of great strength and anger. I have never sensed its like.”

Try
as he might, Cynic could not recapture the smell and daylight was running out.

“We
must gain our freedom. A night in these woods will leave us open to attack.
Come, let us move cautiously but quickly.”

Easing
through the brush more like a cat than a horse, Cynic’s nostrils and ears never
ceased their work. Whatever breeze there had been failed with the advent of
dusk, the flies doubled in number, and Jeff was running sweat from the
oppressive heat.

As
light faded, Cynic became so nervous he lathered up and jumped at every
unexpected shadow or sound. Still, he smelled or heard nothing out of the
ordinary. Jeff was seeing goblins in every shadow himself, and cursed under his
breath when they were forced to a halt by an impenetrable barrier of tall thorn
brush.

With
no room to maneuver, Cynic was forced to back out of the trap. He had no more
than started when they heard a crash and the sound of snapping limbs a short
distance away. Cynic tried to move faster but wasn’t built to back up with any
speed. Jeff had the pistol out when two huge birds blundered by, one of them
holding a fish in its talons and the other snapping at his tail feathers.

“Shit!
We’ve got to break out of this crap soon or we’re both going to go nuts. It’s
as bad as logging slash!”

Cynic
extracted himself from the worst of it, and they backtracked looking for a way
around. Jeff was about to give up and make camp when he saw a brighter window
of light.

“About
time!”

Intensely
relieved, Jeff urged Cynic around the last deadfall in their way. Cynic was as
eager as Jeff and broke into a fast trot. Penetrating a screen of trees, they
rushed into a meadow. An odor that sparked abject fear immediately hit Cynic’s
nose. He slid to a halt and reared with a terrified squeal.

“What
the fuck? Cut it out!”

A
coughing roar jerked Jeff’s attention to the opposite side of the meadow.
Something loomed like a mountain.

“Oh,
damn. Look at that bastard! No bear can be that big!” It stood over seven feet
at the shoulder.

Whirling
around with astounding speed, the bear rose to its hind legs. Jeff didn’t think
it would ever stop. In near darkness, the bear seemed a monster. Dropping back
onto all fours, it let out a high-pitched roar and charged.

Narrowly
avoiding the bear’s rush, Cynic spurted to the opposite side of the meadow and
spun around. Impenetrable brush and trees blocked escape.

Jeff
knew he stood no chance of killing such a huge animal. The .357 would be about
as effective as a BB gun unless he could get a head shot from only feet away.
To attempt that would be insane. Either they escaped or they were dead.

Getting
both feet back in the stirrups, Jeff frantically looked around for a clear exit
from the meadow then back at the bear. The beast loomed like a dark colossus as
it roamed the meadow searching for them in the last shadings of dusk. Quite
abruptly, as if someone had thrown a light switch, twin beacons of red blazed
to life.

“My
God. His eyes. They’re glowing red! What is that thing?”

The
bear heard the cry and charged, bawling fury. Jeff picked the most likely spot
and booted Cynic at the same instant. Hooves digging deep, he bolted.
Protecting his face with an arm, Jeff hung on for dear life when Cynic hit the
edge of the forest and launched himself into the air.

They
smashed through a screen of saplings and landed in thick brush, but Cynic never
let up. He dodged large trees, plowed through smaller ones, and sailed over
deadfalls in prodigious leaps that seemed to never end. Scrambling and
sprinting like a running back, the miles flowed under his hoofs. Jeff called a
halt when he figured they were a safe distance from the bear. Dismounting, he
flipped a stirrup up to get at the cinch buckle.

“Nice
job with that bear, buddy.”

Although
unusually subdued, Cynic replied with spirit.
“You would be nothing but a
morsel for such a creature, I would be a feast!”

Breaking
out in laughter, things back in perspective, Jeff poured a generous ration of
grain into Cynic’s nosebag to commemorate their close escape. Building up a
large fire to get some light, Jeff cleaned a number of cuts on Cynic’s chest
and forelegs. There were quite a few, but most were no more than scratches.

From
that night on Cynic was a fanatic where bears were concerned. Jeff came to
implicitly trust his horse’s instinct in such matters, never questioning a
sudden change in course.

The
moot camp was duly encountered at the confluence of the river they had been
following, the Vekka, and another flowing in from the northwest, the Farga.
Caught as they were by the joining, Jeff decided to ford the Vekka.

He
made sure everything was snugly tied to the saddle and urged a muttering Cynic
into the water. The river was about thirty yards wide. It didn’t appear to be
particularly deep, but was swollen by spring runoff and flowing fast.

Midstream,
Cynic stepped into a deep hole, lost his footing and fell sidewise with a
squeal. Jeff was thrown out of the saddle and swept away head over heels. He
managed to find his feet only to be knocked rolling an instant later. Fifty or
sixty feet downstream he snagged a projecting rock and half swam, half crawled
to the opposite bank.

Streaming
water, an obviously alarmed Cynic trotted down the bank to Jeff’s location.
Having assured himself that all was well, he covered his anxiety with a tart
observation.

“How
you two-legs have managed to survive stumbling around in such a fashion is
beyond me!”

Coughing
and retching, Jeff was so relieved to be back on firm ground he didn’t bother
to point out that Cynic had been the first to fall.

The
terrain slowly changed as they covered ground south in a timeless world of
forest and meadow. While evergreens continued to be dominant, they began
encountering large stands of hardwoods and other deciduous trees. Herds of deer
were heading north for the summer, and hunting became an easy chore they both
looked forward to.

One
day while they were chasing down a fatally wounded buck, Cynic pounded over a
good-sized hill and a new world appeared. Spread out below them, an unbroken
canopy of deciduous trees marched off to the south, east and west. It was a
brilliant-clean sort of spring day, the bright green of newly leafed trees
shading to a purple haze at the limits of vision. Jeff searched for evergreens
in the ocean of trees that rolled away to the horizon. There were none.

The
buck had collapsed a short distance beyond the hill’s peak and Jeff dismounted
to butcher it. Things were well in hand near sunset, and he sat down to watch
the play of yellow-green and gold over the canopy below.

“This
is what eastern forests must have been like when Boone moved west,” Jeff mused.
“I’ve never seen anything that comes close to it.”

Next
morning, Jeff pulled Cynic to a halt at the forest edge. He looked with dismay
at the dense mass of trees and heavy undergrowth barring the way.

“No
way are we going to wiggle through that jungle.”

Turning
west they jogged along for some time before Jeff spotted what looked like a
break in the wall of trees. Climbing down from Cynic’s back, he walked into the
cut and scuffed leaf mulch aside to discover a trail. It was several feet wide
and deeply worn.

“Can’t
be a game trail. Hasn’t been used in awhile, but a lot of horses passed this
way. That’s our ticket.”
 

Remounting,
he clucked Cynic into motion. Ducking his head to avoid a limb, they penetrated
the forest perimeter. Once inside the underbrush rapidly thinned out. The
canopy of leaves was so dense that little sunlight found its way to the ground.
A thick layer of rotting leaves muffled Cynic's hoof beats, giving Jeff the
impression they were gliding through the forest. It wasn’t long before he began
to feel closed in.

The
hills they encountered were low, and that along with the thick forestation
never allowed an overview. The tracts of mixed deciduous and evergreen trees
farther north seemed open by comparison. Yet while heavily shadowed and
foreboding, the forest was in no way silent. Warbling music filled the air from
sunrise to sunset, and tree boughs rustled with the passage of many-colored
birds.

Confronted
with a narrow trail and no escape route short of plowing through the forest,
Cynic’s bear paranoia hit a new peak. His ears were in perpetual motion,
reminding Jeff of tactical radar antennas as they continually swiveled back and
forth. When confronted by a particularly dark passage, Cynic invariably stopped
to check it out inch by inch, muttering darkly all the while.

In
the middle of one such passage, a coal-black animal that looked like a gazelle
burst across the trail in an effortless leap. Cynic swapped ends so fast that
Jeff was still going south while Cynic was charging north. Fortunately nothing
came unglued when he hit the ground. Sitting with his back against a tree, Jeff
waited. It was some time before Cynic came creeping along the path radiating
embarrassment.

Gradually,
Jeff came to feel they were moving through a bewitched land. The forest had
such presence that he half expected someone or something to tap him on the
shoulder. Likely it was the trees. On the other hand, he worried it could be
something else entirely. On more than one occasion, Jeff caught himself
searching for large spider webs. He felt foolish but kept doing it. The fact
that he saw none, large or small, was a great relief.