Draka

The bears’ den was a simple thing, formed by digging out all the dirt among the mass of roots of the huge tree. As I circled the tree I saw that much of the excavated dirt had been packed in under the branching trunk, filling gaps here and there, as well as around the opening of the hole, which created a sort of wall. I wondered just how clever this bear was, because while I couldn’t know what the purpose of that was, if there was one, it damn well looked like something intended to keep water from running down into the den during a heavy rain.

I wondered what the hell it was with me and running into clever monsters. Had that first gigantic boar I ran into been some kind of piggy genius, too? The fact that it ran off when I got some venom in its eyes, instead of just going wild like some other creatures I’d fought, certainly suggested that it wasn’t entirely dumb. Although I was pretty sure that I’d heard something about Big Beardy and his party hunting down a monster boar in that area, so I probably didn’t need to worry about it.

Speaking of venom, I didn’t expect it to do much against the bear. But I was damned well going to try. If there was one thing that I could always be sure of, it was that anything that didn’t die from my venom was going to be in a very, very bad mood, and that was exactly what I needed. And if it got the cubs, too, that would only make the mama angrier. Hopefully angry enough to get careless.

Not wanting to take the slightest chance of waking them, I stayed in shadow form until I was just outside the den. The mama lay curled up, effectively blocking the entrance, and looking at her and considering how big the cubs were I marvelled at just how much dirt she must have shifted to make this den. Then again, as big as her paws were and as strong as she undoubtedly was, perhaps it wasn’t such a big deal for her. And it didn’t make a lick of difference as I took a deep breath and gave her the longest, most concentrated spray I could muster. And boy was it effective!

Not that it disabled her. Not even close.

It started with a snuffle, then a sneeze. Then, not even awake yet, she started rubbing her nose with her paws, and then in the dirt. She slowly opened her eyes, and the venom in the fur on her face got in and very obviously started irritating them, which had her blinking and rubbing her whole face on the floor of the den.

She was several times my size, but all my instincts were screaming for me to attack while she was blinded. The rage inside me, aimed at her specifically, was so strong that I nearly did it. The only thing holding me back was the voice, which always got louder and more insistent the angrier I was.

I knew that it was my human side, doing its best to hold me back when the dragon got too strong. I knew that listening to it was a good idea, and I did, even if I didn’t always like it. But did it have to be so annoying?

Not yet. Stay back. You know that it will kill us. Yes, fine, that was true. But I didn’t like that she felt the need to point it out. It was insulting. I didn’t need to be constantly told what I already knew.

I started forward. Stay! Back! the voice scolded me, and I was forced to admit that clearly I did need to be told. It was just so frustrating. My enemy, the one who had invaded my territory, was right there, partially disabled. If I could only get on its back, really get my claws in it…

The bear looked at me, its eyes apparently clear enough to keep open, and even with only the little bit of moonlight that filtered through the trees I could tell that it saw me.

I hissed. It roared, and I felt it in my chest.

I ran.

My plan to drag it back towards Herald was simple. As it scrabbled furiously out of the den while the cubs whined in confusion, I made a wing-assisted leap into a nearby tree. When the bear rushed the tree, I leapt or shifted across to the next tree in the right direction, hissing and screeching at the bear to keep its attention.

As I had hoped the bear was angrier than it was clever. It took a couple of risky steps on the forest floor to keep it thinking that it had a chance of catching me, but I managed to drag it all the way back, the cubs following at a distance, confused and curious about what was going on.

I knew that I was getting close when an arrow zipped in and thunked into a tree right where the bear had been moments before. “Get it closer!” Herald’s voice was hard to hear over the distance and the angry noises of the bear, but I did as she said, taking the massive risk of throwing myself onto the ground for a moment, taking two running strides before launching myself into the air where the trees thinned out enough to fly safely.

The bear came charging after me, and I had a heart-stopping moment as I headed straight towards Herald. She had her bow fully drawn with a look of intense concentration on her face, and I, still between her and the bear, barely managed to shout “Careful!” before she loosed. The arrow passed just below me, close enough that I tried to pull my whole body up when I saw it coming. An angry roar behind me as I turned sharply suggested that she’d hit, and when I came around I saw an arrow wobbling around, stuck in the thick skin around its neck, and a glance at Herald showed her calmly nocking another arrow.

The bear roared at me as I made a low pass to distract it, but while I was coming around I heard Herald shouting, “Shit! Oh, shit! Draka!”

What I saw seemed impossible. All however-many tonnes of bear had thrown itself at the stone face below the ledge and hung ten feet up. It was a seventy degree incline at least, but the thing’s claws dug into the stone, and as I watched it pulled, kicked, and gained another two or three feet! Herald bravely stepped up to the ledge, firing down at the bear at an awkward angle, but even though she hit the thing on the head her arrow just glanced off its thick skull, leaving a cut behind.

“The limbs! Aim for the limbs!” I shouted, stopping in the air near her, and then I was off again. I put some distance between us, turned, and started building speed. This is going to hurt, I thought. I am going to hurt myself.

I expected the voice to argue, to try to talk me out of it. I did not expect it to scream, almost frantic, Get her! Faster! Get her away from Herald!

I came in at the same kind of speed that had turned Kira’s friend into a bag of broken bones. An arrow took the bear in its left forelimb just before I hit, and for a moment it felt as though I could have counted the individual strands of the fletching.

I hit. I did not break, and the bear lost its grip on the rock, sliding back down to the base. Those were the only good things about it. When I hit the bear it only lost its balance, while I bounced off it, continuing forward and to the side, a dazed and confused lump. Luckily I had the presence of mind to pull my wings in before I hit the ground, skidding and rolling for a good long while before I came to a stop.

This was becoming a bad habit, I thought groggily as I forced myself back on my feet. Every time I fought something bigger than myself I ended up one big bruise. I’d have been dead several times over months ago if not for Fortitude.

I heard Herald calling my name. I looked up. Then I was rolling again, my shoulder on fire from being slapped by the bear.

Instinctively I shifted. It took a second, but a second was all I had before the bear was on me, passing through me, which was a horrible feeling, like being beaten on the inside. I had to get away. I had to regroup. I couldn’t go on the ground, or the bear would tear me apart, shadow or not. In a repeat of my fight with Tiny the Troll, I went for the closest tree, flowing up it into its branches.

I couldn’t even guess how, but the damned thing tracked me, slamming into the tree. Herald screamed my name again, and another arrow hit the bear, right in the butt. I looked up and saw something that made me groan. Herald was on her feet, nocking another arrow. She was favouring her left leg as she approached.

Herald was on the ground.

There was no point in berating her for it. It was done.

Another arrow struck the bear before it even reacted and stopped trying to either climb or knock down the tree I was in. Another as it turned, and another as it faced Herald. She was much too close, a few dozen feet at most, close enough that I could see the cuts and scrapes on her arms and her shins from sliding down the rock.

I leapt from the tree, landing on the bear’s back just as she started for Herald.

It said a lot about the monster that she could straight up ignore two-hundred plus pounds of dragon on her back, and I was pretty much reduced to hanging on. I bit and I tore, but it was all skin and fat and did nothing, and I filled with a helpless terror as the monster sprinted at my best and possibly only real friend in the world.

Herald, wide eyed and grimacing, dropped her bow, drew her sword, and threw herself to the side just in time. The bear’s mass carried it past Herald and it tried to swipe at her in passing, but the movement was sluggish, and it stumbled as it put its front paw down again. I didn’t have time to hope, but seeing that drove me forward, and I latched on around the bear’s neck and shoulders and tried to actually do some kind of damage, but her ears were apparently not very sensitive and her eyes were too deep set for my teeth. The bear still ignored me, clearly wanting to deal with the easier target first, and turned to have another go at Herald.

Herald had not done anything so sensible as trying to climb a tree. Although, considering the way the tree I had climbed was leaning, perhaps she was the sensible one. Instead she stood her ground, her stance low and her sword high and ready to strike.

The bear took one lumbering step forward, shaking its whole upper body in an attempt to dislodge me, then another, then it surged forward and swiped one enormous paw towards my friend. Herald, God bless her reflexes, leapt back and to the side as her sword flashed down, and the bear pulled its paw back with a pained bark. Then the damned too-clever thing feinted, making as though it were going to Herald’s left to circle her but aborting its movement and going straight for her as soon as she herself began to move, forcing her to scrabble backwards and putting her in a terrible position.

I saw how this would play out immediately. Herald was moving backwards, her balance off, while the bear was sure footed and going straight for her. She couldn’t get out of the way once it put some force into it, and she’d be smashed, bitten, or simply crushed under its weight before she could change her movement.

I did what I could. I leaned forward over the bear’s head, and bit her right across the snout.

That, finally, got one hell of a reaction. Not only did I get some of my teeth in her nose, but now I was blocking her sight. She roared, aborting her charge to rise on her hind legs and swat at me, but I’d been ready for that. I knew what happened after I bit something in the face. I’d been there before. Instead of letting her grab or claw or smash me, I pushed off her with my wings, letting the force tear my claws out and rising a few feet into the air above her before settling back on her, getting a new grip, and repeating. I was barely doing more than scratching her, but now I had her full attention, which was exactly what I needed. On top of that I could feel the swell of my venom glands again. When I sprayed her it didn’t do much more to her breathing than the first time, but now she had a bunch of cuts and bites for the venom to get into and irritate besides her eyes.

All in all it only served to make her mad, but it kept her attention on me, and I began a series of short swoops, harrying her, nipping at her from the air while Herald assessed the situation, sprinted the short distance to her bow, and started pumping arrows into the maddened creature.

At one point one of the cubs worked up the courage to make a timid charge in Herald’s direction, but a quick swoop and a screech from me sent it running back into the trees while the mama only became more determined to bring me down.

Finally, after what felt like hours but couldn’t be more than two or three minutes since I’d first brought the bear to Herald, she started backing off. She had nine or ten arrows in her at that point, though most of them swayed uselessly from her loose skin, and she was stumbling on limbs that clearly didn’t work the way they were supposed to. Herald’s quiver was empty, and she’d resorted to screaming and menacing the monster with her sword while I roared and screeched, swooping at her from the air. We were all tired and I didn’t see a way of finishing her off without taking some serious risks, but we didn’t have to. She was clearly as done with the fight as we were and only wanted to get her cubs and go. With some careful positioning and coordination we used her cubs against her, threatening them and herding them south, forcing her to follow which she did readily, almost gratefully. A few screeching swoops and a nip at her tail, and they finally broke into a lumbering run into the hills.

I didn’t feel great about letting her go. My gut was telling me to finish her off, to end the fight once and for all, and the human voice was unhappy about making her someone else’s problem. She was terribly dangerous, after all, and the further south she went the more people she was likely to come across. But both sides of me knew that we had to quit while we were ahead, before a mistake born of fatigue or overconfidence led to something terrible.

I returned to where Herald had stopped her pursuit and landed. She was sitting in the dirt, the skirt-plates of her armour splayed out around her, breathing heavily. Her eyes were closed, but when I approached she opened them, then crawled over and put her arms around me.

“We did it,” she said.

“You were amazing,” I told her. “How can you be seventeen and fight like that?”

“I had to,” she said. “I thought that you were going to die.”

“I did not,” I said, wrapping my neck around her tightly. “You saved me.”

“I thought that I was going to die!” she said with a shaky laugh.

“You did not, either,” I said, “You are too damned good to die to a bear.”

“I am too damned good to die to a fucking bear!” she said, half laugh and half sob. “But it took most of my arrows with it! Those were good arrows!”

She needed to cry a little after that, and she kept going on about her arrows. I understood. She wanted to focus on anything except the fact that she really could have died. I feared that she would, but she surprised me, again, and I was almost delirious with relief and happiness. We had won. The bear was gone. She was going to think twice before coming to my territory again, and if she did I would be bigger and stronger, and Herald would be more experienced.

Hell, Herald was still growing. She’d be bigger and stronger, too!

“Alright,” she said after her shakes and sniffles had subsided. “Let us get back.”

“Do you want to tell the story, or should I?” I asked as we got to our feet.

“I, of course. You are too dramatic.”

“I am not!”

“You cannot tell a story without making it sound like life and death, or the fate of the world!”

“This was life or death,” I pointed out.

“So you would make it sound like it was about the fate of the world,” she countered, and I gave in.

“Fine,” I said. She really was better at telling stories than I was. “Do you want to ride back?”

“I would love to,” she said with a grin, “but I want to save that for when we visit your home.”

“That sounds good,” I agreed, and we began the walk back.