Flight was impossible.
The thing that charged through the trees toward Olvir and Vivian was a bear in basic shape, but it was as tall as Olvir at the shoulder. Even if they climbed a tree before it reached them, which was doubtful, he was reasonably sure it could knock most trees down, just as he suspected it would easily catch them if they ran.
Thus he braced himself, shield guarding neck and vitals, sword up and ready. Olvir also let out a deep, full-throated yell, not really hoping that it’d scare the creature off but figuring he had nothing to lose.
The beast reared up on its hind legs, bringing its ears level with most of the treetops. It waved all four of its claw-tipped arms—two in the expected place, two others sprouting from its back, just below its shoulder blades. Its mouth opened as it roared again, giving Olvir a good view of curving yellow fangs that looked very sharp.
“Geisbar,” he said, the name coming to him out of stories. Then he couldn’t talk. The bear lunged forward, grabbing for Olvir with the lower two of its arms. He dropped and rolled, feeling razor claws pass right above his head, and rose on the geisbar’s side.
Vivian had flashed into place while he was moving. Ulamir slashed down on what looked like empty air, but the geisbar jerked back, snarling. Blood ran from the mottled green fur of one paw.
“Three feet to the right,” she said without looking at Olvir, then leapt backward from foaming jaws that snapped on the air where she’d been.
The bear had dropped to all fours. Olvir took a swing at it, not lacking for a target. He sliced open its shoulder as it turned, but its hair was thick and the fat beneath thicker. The geisbar didn’t so much as flinch. It used two other arms to swipe at Olvir, who ducked one blow. The other hit his shield with arm-numbing force. Worse than that, he felt the steel bend under the bear’s weight.
Holding ground was only going to work a little better than fleeing.
Vivian was pulling Ulamir out of the creature’s body. She was frowning, not unusual in such a fight, but shaking her wrist a little as well; she’d hit a rib rather than any vital organ.
Olvir hoped for a second that the geisbar would see sense.Run, he thought at it as it bellowed with pain.We won’t chase you. We can all come out of this alive.
The bear sprang instead, maddened by its wounds or perhaps sick to begin with. Olvir leapt to the side himself, just in time to avoid four sets of claws landing on top of him. The force of their impact made the ground tremble.
He went to one knee, catching himself hard on it and his shield arm. Later he’d feel the impact—assuming he was alive later.
* * *
Metal hummed in Vivian’s grasp, and the stone that anchored Ulamir’s spirit to the sword flashed in a quick rhythm. She yelled as she rushed the geisbar, a short, sharp sound from the top of her lungs. As it turned from Olvir, the sapphire’s glow struck its eyes. It bellowed again, cringing back.
The god-power took it then. Ulamir called itfault lines. Vivian didn’t have a name for it: it was what she did, what Letar’s and Poram’s power combined to let her do. The past flowed over the geisbar’s body, finding all the old scars, the broken bones that had since healed, the ancient wounds, and making them fresh again. A series of claw marks ran down the bear’s neck, dripping blood through its fur. Near its muzzle, a red hole the size of Vivian’s hand opened up.
It roared again, shaking the trees, and cringed backward. Vivian darted in. The neck wasn’t exposed, but the side was a decent target, if she could avoid the ribs this time. She lunged.
She didn’t see the paw until it struck her. There was only the blow, a disembodied force that sent her flying backward at what felt like a horse’s gallop.
The geisbar charged toward Vivian as she scrambled to get her legs under her. When it opened its mouth to roar again, its breath streamed hot and rancid across her face.
She rolled sideways, away from a paw that nearly struck off her head, and saw a disjointed series of images. The geisbar snarled in frustration, then reared up in pain. Olvir appeared at its back, sword deep in its side. He turned to give momentum to the blow, as graceful a motion as Vivian had ever seen, and pulled his blade out dark and dripping.
A bad wound. A fatal one? She didn’t know. The geisbar didn’t seem to know either, only that the small shining form in front of it had caused it more pain than it had experienced in its whole life. Angered, it went for Olvir, grabbing for him with two of its forelimbs and whipping its head down toward his face.
He ducked and lunged. Vivian came up to her knees, raised Ulamir, then drove herself forward.
No ribs blocked her. Ulamir slid smoothly into the bear’s chest. On the other side of its body, farther up, Olvir’s sword slammed into its neck, which split under the power of the stroke. Skin and muscle parted, the spine split, and the geisbar’s muscles locked, holding it in place in a final moment of shock.
That wouldn’t last long. Vivian whipped Ulamir back, dodging the spray of blood that followed, and sprang clear of the bear. Olvir was dashing out of the way, too, though the path of his retreat was straight down the road. Vivian glimpsed his broken shield on the ground.
When the bear fell over, almost headless, bleeding in a thousand places, the ground shook. The forest was silent in the aftermath.
* * *
“Are you all right?” Olvir asked.
Vivian stood on the other side of the bear’s giant corpse. She was breathing and had no grievous wounds that he could see. With the Sentinels, that generally meant any other problems were temporary.
All the same, it was a relief to hear her respond, “Essentially. You?” and to register that she sounded a little breathless, as Olvir had himself, but not in pain.
Simply hearing her helped in other ways. The silence had initially been companionable, nothing to object to even when Olvir’s own thoughts had started troubling him. In the aftermath of the fight, with the bear’s final pained roar echoing in his ears, he welcomed a quiet, reasonable voice speaking words.
