Page 37 of Into the West

“What do we do?” she hissed at Sai.

“That’s not a natural beast,” Sai replied obliquely, still not moving as much as a hair. “I don’t know about those things Kordas saw, but I’ll bet ten cakes that thing came out of a Change-Circle. We can’t assume magic will work on it.”

Once again, she had to fight down the urge to run. Running would be the worst thing she could do. Even normal bears could easily outrun a human, and could sometimes, over short distances, outrun a horse. This thing would probably have her before she’d gone twenty paces.

But Sai continued, as if he was thinking out loud. “We don’t want to get it angry, and I don’t think your crossbow bolts would do anything more than make it angry. We don’t want to chuck fire at it, or put an actual fire curtain between us and it—the brush is tinder-dry, and finding ourselves trapped between the river and a forest fire would be as bad as having that thing charge us. We need to chase it away somehow—”

“Would it believe an illusion of fire?” Endars asked.

“Let’s try,” Sai agreed.

In the next moment, a curtain of fire stretched between the forest and the bank between them and the bear.

The bear made a grumbling growl, but did not drop down to all fours.

The illusory flames leapt higher, as tall as the bear.

Now the bear dropped down to the ground, but it did not move away. Instead, it stood swaying in place, moaning. Clearly it didn’t care for the fire—but it wanted to investigate what it thought it had seen.

This time of year bears are fattening up for sleep. I know they kill deer. Does it think the horses are some kind of deer?

It wasn’t interested enough yet to charge them through the flames. But it still wasn’t going away either. She felt cold and hot all at the same time. But somehow the terror made her mind sharper. She felt a dozen ideas pass through her mind, and rejected them, since they didn’t fit what Sai had asked for.

What can I do that won’t make it angry—that will drive it away because it’s something it doesn’t understand, rather than something it thinks is attacking it? What is quick, what is nearby?

The water!

The river water was just about freezing cold. Armored skin or not, the bear wasn’t going to like getting a face full of it. But it wouldn’t associate getting dowsed with a cascade of freezing water with them.

She’d played around with water and her Gift back at Crescent Lake, in no small part because she didn’t much like using the water right at the edge for cooking or washing. Water from the middle of the lake just seemed cleaner. But this was going to take a lot more than a bucketful. She didn’t want merely to startle it. She wanted to make it decide to flee. Gods, gods, what to do—

“I’m going to give him something else to think about,” she said, and before she could lose her nerve, she steeled herself—

—because water was heavy, and this was going to be hard. And she knew from previous experience of trying to lift too much of it that this was going to hurt. I think I was on to something yesterday, though, when I grabbed the shape around the target, not the target itself. So, a sphere of water then, I’ll Fetch a sphere with water in it.

She gritted her teeth, stared at the bear through the leaping “flames,” and pulled.

Shit shit shit shit shit. Her whine of pain as her gut spasmed and every muscle in her body locked up was drowned out by the sound of four or five barrels-worth of icy water hitting the bear right on his head.

The bear let out a startled bellow and hopped up and down on its front feet, head swiveling in every direction to see what had just happened to it.

“Oh gods,” she whispered, because she didn’t want to have to do this again. But she did it again anyway. A second splash struck it hard on the skull.

That was all the bear could take.

It was all she could take, too. As she bent over double in pain, falling over onto her side, the bear bellowed again and fled.

She curled up involuntarily, as Alberdina came clambering out of the barge bearing cleavers, and Sai bent over her. “It’s . . . all right,” she said through clenched teeth, even though all her muscles were knotting up in terrible cramps. Is this normal? “But I don’t think . . . I’m going . . . to be moving grass . . . for a while.”

“Don’t worry, child,” Alberdina said gruffly. “This warrants something stronger than tea or liniment. And before you ask, I’ve never treated anyone with Fetching Gift before, but I think this is normal.” She placed her hands on Delia’s head and shoulder, and suddenly Delia felt a wave of warmth flooding through her from those hands, driving the pain in front of it, until it was gone. So this was what it felt like for a Healer to actually use their powers on you!

Oh, that was good. I admit it, that may be better than Fetching.

She had just that single moment to enjoy the feeling, and then she dropped unceremoniously into absolute unconsciousness.

She woke up in the bottom bunk—the “patient” bunk—in her barge, feeling as if she could have eaten that entire bear if they’d caught it, and she didn’t think she’d even need to wait for it to be cooked.

She was still in her clothing, so she got up—dizzy for a moment as she stood—and made her way back out to the fire. It was dark, and even colder, and she huddled inside her sheepskin coat as she headed for her friends. The sound of her footsteps made everyone at the fire look up.