THE YNGLING AND THE CIRCLE OF POWER by John Dalmas

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happened a few days earlier, he recalled, though not nearly so violently, and had stopped after a bit. This would no doubt stop, too.

He did not try to stand, though, until the sense of shaking died. Then gingerly he got up, testing his legs to see if they were broken, until he remembered that the fall had been a dream. He looked around. His horses had fled in panic. Belting on his shortsword and slinging bow and quiver, he found their hoof prints and set out tracking them. They hadn’t gone far, perhaps a hundred and fifty meters. He found them trembling in a coppice of young oaks and old blowdowns, and stroked and pat­ted them for a while before removing their hobbles and swinging into the saddle.

As he rode off, he wondered about the sanity of the world. The shaking had felt so real, yet seemingly it had not been. The fear had been real enough though! Much worse than the first time. If there was a third time that much worse than the second, what might happen to him?

And the hairy thing like a little man! Had that been real? It had tasted real, and his stomach still felt full. He shook his head, and wished Nils were there to ask ques­tions of. Surely the Yngling would know the answers.

Half an hour later he found something new to puzzle and impress him: large bones, fresh enough that there still were fragments of shaggy brown hide which the ra­vens had left. The skeleton was far from intact, but the great broad skull and clawed feet were those of a bear. A large boar-bear, he decided, for surely no sow would have so large a skull.

He tethered his horses and examined the bones more closely. From the teeth marks, it had been killed by some other large animal; at least one had fed on it. Another bear, he told himself—what else could it have been?— but felt uneasy with the appraisal. His mind went to the giant hairy people he’d dreamed of.

He scouted around a bit, but found no useful tracks.

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An hour and a half eastward, in a half-dry seep, he found tracks of an unshod horse, and thought at once of Nils. After they’d left the Mongol lands, more and more of the prints they’d seen along the road had been of horses shod, whereas the Mongol horses weren’t. And the people of this land did not seem to travel the wilder­ness; these were the first horse tracks he’d seen since he’d fled the road.

The trail wasn’t fresh, but he followed it. Nils had had three horses; this was only one. And it meandered somewhat, as if it had no rider guiding it. The young Northman clenched his jaw and continued; he would learn what there was to know from this, good or bad.

For another hour he picked his way along game trails, along and over ridges, skirting thickets, dropping to brooks which gurgled between moss-grown banks and around rocks. Once he paused to drink. Then, as he rode up into a saddle, he smelled carrion. His neck hairs bristled, and he paused. His horses fidgeted, and he spoke quietly to them, patting his mount’s neck. Wetting a finger, he tested the air. The breeze was in his face.

He drew his bow from its saddle boot, nocked an arrow and rode on, staying with the tracks but giving much attention to the woods around him. The stench grew stronger. A little farther on he came to where the horse he tracked had begun to run, headlong, fleeing something. Ahead, ravens squabbled. Cautiously he went on until, near the top of the saddle, he saw the horse half eaten on the ground, forty meters distant. Several ravens were on it, feeding. They glanced at him, then ignored him. His horses almost danced with anxiety, but neither snorted nor nickered. It seemed to Hans that their silence was ominous.

Quietly he rode up to the carcass, the ravens staying till he was almost there, then flying to branches close at hand. Dirt and last year’s moldered leaves had been scratched over it, partly covering it; the sort of thing bears did. He dismounted to examine it, keeping hold on the reins. Flies droned. Bees and hornets gathered