THE BEAR HAD only a moment to feel relief at the sight of the hound. Then he saw the danger.
Just beyond the hound were three bears, two smaller and one very large. A mother and cubs? If so, the cubs were nearly grown now, and they were just as dangerous as their mother.
The bears were tense, ready for action. At any moment they would attack the hound.
Yet she did not sense them.
He waved at her.
At last she turned and let out a deep growl in the base of her throat.
One of the bear cubs moved closer to threaten her.
It paid no attention to the hound’s bear, seeing no reason to imagine an alliance between hound and bear.
They were natural enemies. The hound’s bear had once been attacked by a pack of hounds at the end of winter, desperate for a meal and unaware of what it meant that a bear was not in hibernation.
Now it was spring and these bears had become the hunters, hungry for their first meal.
The mother bear was circling to the side.
Then the smaller of the two cubs slashed his claws at the hound’s left hind leg.
She did not even cry out.
The hound’s bear saw the blood streaming down her leg and into the dirt, and for one stunned moment he did not move. Then he flung himself forward, but she was ahead of him, closing in on the mother bear.
Was she trying to get herself killed?
Before he could intervene, the mother bear lunged at the hound and threw her across the stream. After the hound landed, she did not move.
The sight of her lifeless body, half in, half out of the stream, was more painful to the bear than he had imagined it could be.
“No!”
He wanted to shout, but all that came from his mouth was an inarticulate cry.
He charged again.
The other bears bellowed.
He struck the mother bear first, taking them both to the ground. The cubs leaped forward and sank their teeth into his skin, but he felt no pain.
His eyes were on the hound, who was still as death.
It had been a long time since he was so angry.
Not since he was a man and a king.
He threw the two cubs away from him so that they hit the ground hard and did not stand again for quite some time.
The mother bear rose and circled warily.
And then the hound moved. She did not stand, but she dragged herself from the stream.
She was alive!
The rush of violence faded.
After two deep breaths he turned back to the three bears, challenging them with his eyes to come after him.
They did not move.
So he put his back to the hound and retreated with her.
All three bears stood up on their hind legs as one last challenge, then fell and wandered away.
The hound dragged herself, refusing his help, back to the cave.
The bear brought leaves from the edge of the stream that he remembered from when he was a man and ill. The king’s physician had made him eat a tea brewed from those leaves so that his fever would break. The hound would need them, too.
She turned her head away from the taste.
But the bear pushed them at her again, pressing them into her mouth.
She chewed the bitter leaves a few times, then spit them out.
The bear went back to the stream to get more.
At last she managed to swallow a few of them.
She slept, and when she woke the bear had brought her a possum, dripping with blood.
All those years he had not killed another creature, and now he did it without thinking. He told himself it was the way of the forest and watched as she bolted the carcass down.
Then he came closer and licked her wounds.