to have exaggerated.
They were huge, red-eyed sinuous lengths of scale and muscle, their jaws flat-muzzled and rowed with teeth. Drem counted at least four sets of eyes and teeth, though it was hard to understand where one wyrm ended and another began, not helped by the way the white bear was lurching around the glade, trying to break free of the coiled loops that were binding and constricting his movement.
The white bear was huge, at least a head taller and wider than Hammer, but it was obvious that it was losing this fight. Blood stained its white fur, oozing from dozens of puncture wounds, and the coils of the wyrms were wrapping ever-tighter about its torso, as well as seeking to tether the bear’s legs. Its jaws were wide, clamping onto scales. The bear’s teeth sank deep and it shook its head savagely, blood and scales spraying, but the wyrm just hissed and bared its fangs, twisting and bucking in muscular spasms to break free.
The white bear slashed with a paw, scouring red lines across the wyrm’s body, and Drem saw for a clear moment that one claw was missing from the bear’s paw.
It is my bear, then.
His instinct was to go and help this bear, though a voice whispered in his head that he was mad to think of such a thing.
It is the wild, nature’s way, the voice said. The strong kill and eat the weak. You have done it a thousand times yourself.
And yet…
It was his white bear, and he felt a sympathy for it, some kind of bond. The first time he’d encountered it, the bear had tried to kill him and his da. Not the best beginning, he acknowledged. They had only just escaped, Drem cutting a claw from its paw, which he had worn around his neck ever since. It had not been long after that corpses had started turning up in the forests north of Kergard, torn and mauled with tooth and claw. Old Bodil, Calder the smith, Hask, Fritha’s grandfather. Even the death of Olin, Drem’s da, had been attributed to the white bear. But Drem had discovered the truth of it, that the true murderers were Fritha and her giant’s bear.
The white bear had been hunted by the people of Kergard, trapped and caught, dragged back to the town and caged as a trophy. It had been close to a bear-baiting from the town’s huntsmen and their hounds.
Drem had set the bear free.
Even now he didn’t quite understand why he had done so, only that he had felt a huge sympathy for it, this magnificent creature of the wild, blamed and about to be murdered for acts it had not committed.
The white bear roared, rage, pain, terror, all rolled into one, and Drem took a step towards it.
Don’t be a fool. Walk on—you must reach Dun Seren, a voice in his head said. Those wyrms will kill you all. And besides, why try and save a bear that would be as likely to eat you as to thank you?
Despite the voice in his head, he took another step forwards, felt Keld’s grip on his wrist, looked at the huntsman, saw Cullen staring at him as well.
And then Hammer was moving, roaring, throwing herself at the wyrms wrapped around the white bear.
Cullen shrugged, grinned and charged.
So did Drem.
He heard Keld swear behind him, then the sound of the huntsman and Fen following in his wake.
Snow on the ground had been churned to pink sludge. Drem’s boots slipped as he chopped with his hand-axe at a twist of wyrm-coil that was looped around the white bear’s foreleg. The axe pierced scales, but it was tough, and the blade did not sink deep. He stabbed with his seax, this time piercing flesh, his blade sinking to the hilt, dark, glutinous blood thick as porridge leaking from the wound, but Drem wasn’t sure what real damage he had inflicted. The wyrm was not responding, as if it hadn’t even felt his blows.
To his right he glimpsed Hammer sink her teeth into wyrm flesh, puncturing deep, and in a heartbeat a wyrm head was rearing, loosening a coil about the white bear, hissing, its malevolent red eyes fixing on Hammer.
It felt that, Drem thought.
The wyrm’s jaws opened unnaturally wide, full of too many teeth, as its head drew back and struck at Hammer. She jerked away, but the wyrm was so swift, its teeth clamping onto her neck. Hammer shook violently, but the wyrm’s bite held