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ence here, and Nils was not ready yet to meet him or the soldiers he might send.
He rode northward through the morning and into the afternoon, keeping mostly to heavy forest, putting distance between himself and the place where he’d been seen. For a while he waded his animals in a creek, leaving it when a blowdown blocked the way.
Finally he stopped in a stand of aspens, and hobbled his horses to graze the grass and wild pea vines that grew in their light shade. Then he trotted to a nearby group of young maples, in whose cover he lay down and quickly slept.
He awoke to the scream of a horse, and grabbing his sword, scrambled to his feet. There were other sounds, sounds he recognized at once: a bear roared hoarsely, and there was brief thrashing, as if a horse was down, struggling. Nils ran toward it. His packhorse passed him, hopping faster than one might think possible, given its hobbles. Its pack saddle was broken and hanging. A moment later he saw the bear, standing on a fallen saddle horse. He could not see the other.
The bear’s weak eyes spotted the moving man, and it reared to see better. Nils stopped. It was a large animal, a big boar-bear, and it made no sense to dispute a dead” horse with it. Nils drew back and turned aside, circling. The bear never took its eyes off him. Twice it made short rushes, and each time Nils backed off. Then he saw the other saddle horse. It was down too; a fallen tree had hidden it before. Its neck and head lay loosely.
Nils turned away, leaving the bear to its kills, picked up his bow and quiver where he’d slept, and trotted off on the trail of his packhorse.
He caught up with it some three hundred meters off. It had stopped, but its eyes were wide and wild, its head tossing. Touching its mind with his, he stood calming it, then approached it slowly, talking to it.
The bear had smashed the pack saddle, and the horse,
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snorting, flinched with pain when Nils touched its barrel. Ribs seemed broken. He soothed it further, stroking its mind and nose. Then he cut the packs off, cut the straps and removed the pack saddle, took off bridle and hobbles, and left the animal. It couldn’t be ridden as it was, and with luck it might survive. Meanwhile a Northman afoot was not greatly hampered.
He’d jogged and walked for perhaps three hours when he came to an oblong opening in the forest, a clearing of perhaps a dozen hectares. It held grain stubble, a hay meadow, and a sizeable patch of what appeared from a distance to be potatoes; the upper end was blue with flax in bloom. Two children stood bent among the potato plants, perhaps picking off beetles. On the far side stood a hut, sheds, and a small barn, all made of poles fitted at the corners and roofed with thatch. A woman was working in the yard, at what he couldn’t tell. He slipped back out of sight among the trees, and circled the little field to the side with the buildings, at one point splashing through a brook. There was a dog he hadn t noticed—it had been sleeping—and spotting Nils, it began to bark. Abandoning stealth, Nils strode openly toward the hut, though staying beneath the trees. He left his sword sheathed despite the dog, which charged raging at him, to pull up two meters off, barking with fangs bared.
The woman peered around the corner of the hut, saw Nils coming, and disappeared. Nils touched the dog’s mind, and while it continued barking, it no longer sounded savage.
A well-grown boy ran from the barn and disappeared into the nut. Nils watched telepathically through the boy’s eyes, saw hands reach and take a bow from the wall, string it, and grasp three arrows. Then the boy raced outside again.
He appeared to be about sixteen, lean and wiry, work-toughened. Nocking an arrow, he drew it partly back, and shouted something in a language Nils had never
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heard. The thought behind it was clear though—stop or I’ll kill you! Followed by shock and fear when the youth saw the blank, pupil-less eyes.