David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

"Mistress?" Franca called. He sounded some distance away, but her head had thumped the ground hard. Her vision alternated between being ordinarily sharp and blurring to the point that she had to close her eyes to avoid vertigo.

"Mistress!" Franca repeated. "Where are you?"

The youth's nagging made her furious for an instant, but the surge of anger steadied her. She suddenly started laughing. The best bet on where I am is halfway down a bear's gullet, she thought. And since she wasn't, the whole business seemed funny.

"I'm out here, Franca," she said. She didn't have either the strength or the inclination to shout, so she doubted he could hear her. "It's all right to come back, now."

Sharina rose to a kneeling position and gripped Beard's helve. "Lady help me!" She muttered and lurched to her feet, dragging on the axe with both hands. The bear's hind legs kicked violently. The blade came loose from the skull. Sharina staggered backward, holding the axe out in front of her.

"Oh, good work, mistress!" Beard said. "Oh, you're the one I've been waiting for all these years since I wakened. Straight to the brain, that's you, sucking his life out quicker than spit!"

A man looked out of a second story window of the mill. He was shaggy and rough looking, but Sharina didn't suppose she was in shape for a palace reception just now herself. "Hello?" the fellow called.

"The bear's dead," said Sharina. She didn't know if the stranger could hear her either, but the ton of bear sprawled at her feet pretty well spoke for itself. "You can come down, now."

She hoped he would. She didn't think she could climb a flight of stairs to reach him. At the moment she wasn't sure she could walk as far as the mill's doorway, though her strength seemed to be coming back.

The breeze shifted just as Sharina drew in a deep breath, filling her lungs with the stench of the bear's wastes. She doubled up, then vomited her most recent meal of half-cooked rabbit. Immediately she felt better, though she went down on one knee until she was sure she'd regained her balance.

"Shall we kill the fellow when he comes close, mistress?" the axe said. "He's probably dangerous, you know. You can't trust anybody you meet in these hard times."

"Beard," said Sharina. "Why didn't you tell me about the bear?"

"You killed the bear, mistress," the axe said with a desperate brightness. "Oh, nobody could've been quicker than you. Zip! and I was sucking out his brains!"

"Beard," Sharina said. She stood upright again, swaying only slightly. The weight of the axe in her hands helped her to balance. "You wanted a chance to kill the bear, but you were afraid I wouldn't risk my own life to save a stranger if I'd known what the danger was."

"Mistress," said the axe in a subdued voice, "you-"

"Shut up!" said Sharina. She took a deep breath. "I'd have gone. Even for a stranger. He's a human being and I'm human. That's enough."

The man now peered from the doorway, ready to run back to his upstairs shelter if there were any hint of danger. Anger touched Sharina again. Did the fool think the bear was shamming, lying here with its skull cleft to the neckbones?

"Yes, mistress," the axe said. "I'll-"

"Shutup!" Sharina said. "The other thing to remember is this: if you ever hide the truth from me again, forany reason, I will destroy you if I can. Anyway, I'll bury you where you'll never be found till the ice comes. Do you understand?"

"Yes, mistress," said the axe.

The man who'd been trapped in the mill approached to within ten feet of Sharina, then stopped. From a distance Sharina'd guessed he was in his forties, but close up he was much younger. He had the worn, grayish look of a plow that's spent decades out in the weather, and his breeches were freshly torn. A swipe of the bear's claw had raised a welt on his thigh without quite drawing blood.

"Mistress," he said, nodding acknowledgment. "My name's Scoggin and I guess I'm in your debt for my life."

Scoggin had an ordinary peasant's knife in his belt and a spear made by binding a similar knifeblade onto a short shaft. His eyes kept flicking to the axe; he carefully stayed beyond its reach.

He grimaced. "Mistress?" he blurted. "Are you human?"

"Of course I'm human!" Sharina said. Franca had returned from the woods and was sidling toward them, keeping Sharina between him and the stranger. "What did you think I was?"

Scoggin gestured toward the dead bear. "Mistress," he said, "I didn't know."

Sharina smiled despite herself. "Well, I am," she said. "I'm Sharina os-Reise. I was lucky and I've got a very sharp axe."

Franca crept close to Sharina's side, silent and shivering. How many people had the youth spoken to in the past nine years? Perhaps only his mother and Sharina herself.

She waggled Beard. The inlaid steel head was as bright as though she'd just polished it, though blood and brains smeared the helve-as they did her own forearms.

" I wouldn't say," she added coldly, remembering how Beard had tricked her into fighting the bear, "that owning this axe was necessarily part of my good luck."

"Mistress, it'll never happen again," the axe chirped. "Beard knows you'll feed him. He trusts you, mistress."

Scoggin stared at the axe in open amazement. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. "It talks?" he said.

"Among other things," Sharina replied crisply. "Now, who else is living in Barca's Hamlet? If you're not sure, I want to search the town before we make further plans."

At the back of her mind she realized she was taking charge. Would she have done that six months ago, before she became 'Princess Sharina of Haft?'

She smiled. There was no way of telling, of course, but if she'd changed it was for the better. Given the shape this world was in, the people who'd been making decisions up till now could use some help.

Instead of answering, Scoggin stared in dawning horror and even backed a step. "Pardon, mistress," he said in a trembling voice, "but you're Sharina os-Reise? That would be the innkeeper's daughter?"

"Yes," Sharina said. Unexpected hope dawned. "You know my father? Is he-"

"Mistress, he'sdead," Scoggin said. "You'redead, everybody's dead who was in Barca's Hamlet the day She came! Mistress, who are you? Do you come from Her?"

Sharina sagged. Franca started to whimper and stroked her arm like a frightened kitten cuddling closer to its mother.

A fragment of memory returned to her. She looked at Scoggin and said, "You have a farm in the north of the borough, don't you? On Eiler's Creek?"

Scoggin frowned, but the homely question seemed to relax him. "Aye, I did," he said. "There's no farms now, just scrape for a meal and hope something bigger doesn't find you first; but that was my farm."

"Well," said Sharina, "I'm not the woman you're thinking of; but in another-place, I suppose, or maybe time. Anyway, I was somebody very like the person you mean. I'm not a ghost or a demon, either one."

She took a deep breath and managed a tremulous smile. "What I particularlyam now," she said, "is hungry. I suppose we could cut chunks off this bear, but if you've got something else, Master Scoggin, I'd prefer to leave the bear until I'm a little more distant from awareness of just whathe ate."

Scoggin smiled also. "I've a line of snares," he said. "I make a circuit of the borough from here to my old farm in the course of a year, so I don't hunt anyplace out. I just shifted here last night, so there should be plenty for three."

He turned and started toward the ruined inn. "I never saw anything like that bear before," he muttered. "If there's more of them, I don't know what I'll do. Unless you…?"

He looked at Sharina in sudden speculation.

"I don't know what my plans will be until I learn more about this world," Sharina said in a mixture of amusement and irritation. "I don't think it will involve creeping about eating rabbits and watching the ice grow thicker, though."