The King

CHAPTER 23

He heard the woman scream.

He hastened forward, through the snow.

The great blade was already unsheathed. He had unsheathed it several minutes ago, when he had first caught the smell of the animal.

He had then followed her recent tracks, rather than paralleling them, from a distance, as was his wont, in case she might look back, or retrace her steps. He had seen, with her tracks, but fresher, those of the beast.

Other than the scream and the sound of his hurried movements through the trees the forest was very quiet.

The moon was out, and its light, and that of the stars, fell through the bare branches of the scattered trees, and thence, amidst the tracery of shadows, to the snow, brilliantly illuminating it, sparkling on its cold, bleak surface, silvery, and crystalline, like frozen fire, soft, cold fire.

He came upon her in a small clearing. She was on her hands and knees in the snow, where she had, he supposed, been scratching for roots, or seeds, under the snow, even under the brittle layers of frozen leaves.

The bear had risen up on its hind legs, its forepaws extended. It was some seven feet in height.

We shall speak of the Tangaran forest wroth as a bear, first, in virtue of our common practice of using familiar expressions for resembling creatures tending to occupy and exploit similar ecological spheres in similar manners, and, second, because of its resemblance to the arn bear, originally indigenous to Kiros, but popular, because of its spirit and aggressiveness, in imperial arenas for generations.

‘’Ho!” called the giant, rushing forward.

He did this not from any misplaced sense of fair play, and a man would unhesitantly have been cut down from the back, but to turn the animal, so that its two hearts, which are paired, and ventrally situated, like those of the arn bear, which he had learned to fight, would be turned toward him.

The blade drove between the paws of the angered beast, driving through the right-side heart.

The beast struck with its paw, to knock the blade away, and the paw, slashed, streamed blood in the moonlit snow.

The woman screamed.

She could not see clearly what was occurring, from the turned beast before her.

She crawled backward in the snow.

The giant withdrew the blade, jerking it free.

The beast stood on its hind legs, regarding him, balefully, and put its paw in its mouth.

The rearing to the hind legs increases the stature of the bear and tends to intimidate in intraspecific combat and to startle, overawe and immobilize many forms of prey in hunting.

Too, of course, it considerably increases, as is common with an upright posture, the scanning range of the optical sensors. In the case of the bear there were two optical sensors, as is common in many species, given the advantages of binocular vision and paired organs.

Such a posture, however, does expose the torso to hazards unlikely to be encountered in its natural habitat, blades of steel, cord-driven or gas-impelled projectiles, and such.

Within its mighty frame valves were closing, and opening, sealing away the ruptured, spilling organ within its breast, rerouting pounding, rushing charges of blood, wreaking changes within its body, like the damming and rechanneling of rivers within some bulky, concealed domain.

The bear went to all fours, protecting its other heart.

It snarled and charged.

The man braced himself, on one knee in the snow. The bear drove itself on the blade, six inches or more, and then, growling, backed off, snarling. It approached again but more cautiously. This time it was fended back. It struck at the blade, pushing its point to one side with the bleeding paw.

The blade reached out, again, and blood sprang from the snout of the bear.

The bear then backed away, a yard or two, in the snow. Then it turned, and began to move away. The arn bear can behave similarly. The woman had disappeared.

But the giant was not now concerned for her, nor for her safety.

It was not she who was now in danger.

The giant, breathing heavily, rose up from one knee, from the snow.

He took a step forward, considering that he might pursue the beast, but slipped. He caught his balance, bracing himself with the blade.

Then the beast had seemed to slip away, amidst the trunks of the trees, the tracery of the wickedly dark shadows, so black against the cold, moonlit snow.

The giant uttered an angry noise.

But surely the bear had withdrawn from the fray, having had enough. Surely it had abandoned this territory, the infringement on which may have motivated its initial behavior. Surely it, surly, its fur matted, and stinking, perhaps aroused from its den, where it might have slept until late winter or early spring, would simply abandon its country.

The giant kicked about in the snow, working his boots down to the frozen leaves, the thick, crackling matting carpeting the forest’s icy floor.

In this fashion he would have solid footing.

But the beast was gone, and the danger past.

It is few men who would pursue such a beast at such a time. One tends to be too grateful, simply that one is still alive. Too, it is difficult to administer a blow with lethal effect to a retreating four-legged animal. It is almost necessary to be at least abreast of it, or nearly so. Too, one does not know, really, what it is doing. Indeed even beasts within the same species differ in such matters.

The beast was surely gone now.

It is hard to know, sometimes, what it is doing.

Indeed, perhaps the animal itself, so natural does its retreat seem, does not know what it is doing. Perhaps it only understands when suddenly, irresistibly, in its given time and order, the second mechanism, instantaneously, savagely, engages.

The forest was extremely quiet.

The beast must now, surely, be gone.

Perhaps it had not abandoned its territory. After all, the man was not of its species. It was not as though another bear, or wroth, had driven it away. Perhaps the animal had, by now, simply returned to its lair, to nurse its wounds, to sleep.

The giant stood for several minutes in the snow.

It was hard to hold the great blade at the ready.

Then he rested the blade on his shoulder.

How much, he wondered, is this thing, the Tangaran forest wroth, like the arn bear.

In the arena, of course, the footing is better, and there is good lighting, as there must be, for the spectators.

The forest was extremely quiet.

It is gone, thought the giant. It is gone.

No, thought the giant. Remember the school of Pulendius, remember the arn bear.

But this is not an arn bear, he told himself. It is something different. It may be like an arn bear, but it is not an arn bear. There must be many differences. Doubtless there must be many differences.

That was doubtless correct, but, of course, the question in point had to do with a particular modality of behavior. Was it like, or unlike, the arn bear in that respect?

The answer to this question, of course, he did not know.

Too, animals, as men, differ among themselves.

It is gone, he told himself. It is gone.

At that moment there was a savage roar from behind him and a scuffling, rushing sound in the snow.

In the school of Pulendius he, and the others, at any sudden, unexpected sound had been trained, even with blows, to react instantly, the same cry which might thus in one person induce startled, momentary immobility becoming the trigger in another, properly conditioned, to movement.

But he could scarcely interpose the blade and he was struck from his feet.

He scrambled up, throwing himself to the side, as the beast turned like a whip, and he flung the sword up between them The beast struck at it and bit at it. Then its jaws were full of blood. The giant leapt to his feet, and turned, and struck at the forelegs of the animal, it growling, air bursting through the bubbles of blood in its mouth, and it went down, legs cut away at the second joint, and the man raised the sword again, and, as the beast turned, head lifted, reaching for him, jaws gaping, he struck it across the skull, over the right eye, cutting away part of the skull, and then, as the beast stopped, as though puzzled, and lowered its head slowly, tissue and brains wet on the side of its face and in the snow, he raised the great blade again, and, slashing down, severed the vertebrae and half the neck. It then lay convulsing in the snow.