Chapter 2

I was getting bored with berries and roots, I needed to find somewhere that I could live. I had trapped a couple of small mammals, but these didn’t keep me filled; and the berries were giving me the squits. I was not sure which were edible and which not, such information was women’s work usually. Having said that, I’m not complaining. I was still alive; and I hadn’t had my anus opened by large hairy men looking for love in the hills. Win-win, I’d say. I had opted to avoid the high fells, where even the sheep fought back. I was in the lower foothills where the dense forest had been left by wood cutters on the grounds that it kept the wild men away.

The forest I was in had several streams, I had managed to catch a fish and was just carefully toasting it’s skin on a miniscule fire. The forest was wet, the wood was wet, the fire was mostly smoke. I was aware that there was a small pillar of smoke above my camp; I think people avoided each other here; it was always possible that the other camp was bigger or stronger or looking for love. So, smoked fish? I had a second fish beside me which I’d intended to dry, if I could find somewhere out of the damp. It didn’t rain here, but mists rolled down the hills every morning and soaked the trees, leaves, and mosses. I’d figured this was a good place to be away from people.

There was a cry, a scream really. I clearly wasn’t alone. But this was a cry of fear; I sighed, and went in the direction of the sound. I was no fighter, but I did feel I should look to help where I could, and it seemed someone (I was fairly sure it was a ‘one’ rather than an ‘it’) needed help. I was carrying the fish because it was speared on my lance – a short spear useful for impaling fish or small animals if you got close enough, but easier to carry than a longer spear. I probably didn’t look like a scary man, given that my weapons were a 9 inch blade and short spear with a fish on it.

How had I not seen this clearing? Well, the trees were thick, it was easy to miss anything more than a few feet away. In the clearing was a shelter; a larger, more successful fire with a pot hanging from a tripod over it; and a woman lying on the ground with a brown stripe standing over her. A brown stripe is a large dark brown bear with a lighter stripe down its back. They aren’t that common, and they are renowned for having a temper. They are one of the few animals that might take on a dragon if they found one out of fire. So I shouted “Leave her alone!” What? What the fuck was I doing? I was shouting at a mobile castle of teeth and claws. I was attracting its attention. I thought about running. Brown stripes can overtake a deer, so I stood no chance. I could climb a tree? So could brown stripes. And if I reached branches too thin for the bear, it could probably just break the tree down if it wanted. I was on the verge of shitting myself, maybe that would have put it off.

The bear looked round, mouth open. Saliva was dripping from its jaws, actually saliva and blood. Oh, great, I thought. It’s already killed her and I have laid my life on the line for a dead woman. She wriggled away a little, she wasn’t dead. ‘So that’s good, I’m going to die for a living person’. The bear roared. “GRRRR!!!!!”

I roared back, it sounded more of a squeak in comparison: “Yahhh!” That, we both understood, was a challenge. The bear turned and started to move towards me, sniffing. Now one fish is not going to satisfy a bear this size, but it was apparently distracting the brown stripe slightly. They like fish, one of the times to avoid the Angis and the Mata rivers is when the fish are coming up to spawn, there can be a lot of bears who don’t want to share with humans. It sniffed the fish and opened its huge mouth to bite it. So it was not my thrust that stabbed it. It was its gaping grab. It roared and grabbed the fish and the spear and bit down hard, I barely got my hand out of the way in time. The lower jaw came up with unstoppable force, and the point of the lance was rammed up through the roof of the bear’s mouth; up, up, up into its brain.

It wasn’t dead. It was in agony and it couldn’t free itself. Every angry, pained roar ended with the spear a little more deeply embedded. It rolled over and over, it stood high on its hind legs; the humans around it forgotten now. Blood was starting to flow from its mouth. It would take a long time to die of blood loss, but it would. It might even choke on the blood flowing down its neck, but it would all be slow and painful. In the event, that wasn’t what killed it. The spear finally hit part of the brain that controlled its muscles, it fell to the ground, partially paralysed. I picked up a large rock and banged the end of the spear further and further in. I didn’t really like doing it, but the bear would die anyway and it had been him or me. The bear tried to roar at me, but it was weakening, and now unable to move. A swipe of its paw sent me reeling and rolling away. I sat and watched; and then returned. It had no chance to survive. I was killing it slowly, but faster than the spear alone would have done.

My knife was too small to do much damage, but I stabbed its wind pipe anyway, and watched the bubbling blood as it breathed less and less. I was actually stroking it and talking to a bear fully twelve feet tall when it rose on hind legs. These are magnificent beasts, I had seen one, de-clawed and de-fanged, at a fair once and turned away at its sadness. Even that one had been impressive. This was so sad, to see such awesome power leaching into the ground. “There now, soon be over, my friend.” Bash bash. “Not long now.”

Finally the light went out of its eyes. “I’m sorry Master Bear.” I said. “I had no wish to kill you.”

The woman had crawled into the shelter. “Ma’am? Are you injured?” I shouted as I ran after her. Inside, I found four things. One, the woman, lying quietly just inside the door, she wasn’t bleeding. At the entrance was a large dog, or the remains of it. That’s where the blood had come from. In a corner, two others were crouched. “Are you all unhurt?”

“It killed Maxim.” said a voice from the corner. I couldn’t tell which one said it. It was dim inside, I dragged the carcass outside. “Be nice to him.” said the voice again.

“I will. I’m sure he’d prefer it outside.”

“Thank you.” said the first woman. “It came out of nowhere. I think it was sent to find us. There have been no brown stripes in this wood for decades. Without you, it would have destroyed us, as it did poor Maxim. He tried to defend us. He was a loyal dog, but not bright.” She laughed. “He could not beat a brown stripe on his own.”

“A dog doesn’t think like that. They are pack animals. The pack, not the individual, is what matters.” I don’t know why I explained that to her.

“You should take the skin. It will be valuable.” she said. For a horrible moment, I thought she meant the dog, and nearly said that the dog pelt was ripped to shreds, then I realised that she meant the bear. She was right, but that could wait.

“Can we go out too? It is very dark here.” The three walked out, one looked at the dog, she must have been the one who spoke earlier, it was clear that she had special feelings for the dog; “Shall we bury him?” I asked.

“Yes please.”

“My name is Sampan, Sampan Whiplock. Who do I have the honour to have helped?”

“Yew, Anemone, and Celandine. We are the three sisters.”

“I heard you had died away. The priests said The Three no longer existed.”

“They were told to say that. The Queen sees us as a challenge. We aren’t, we never were. We are peaceful. But we see things in the future, she does not like that. We see the inevitable result of her plans, and we advised her to change them. She does not like that. And we told others of our visions. She did not like that. So we fled. But, as you see, fleeing is not enough. She is not a forgiving person. She is the worst kind of autocrat – an intelligent one. A stupid one can be guided, a clever one can see ways of forcing their ideas through opposition.”

“How did she persuade a bear to find you?”

“I do not know. It is concerning. Come, share our meal. You saved us, we owe you much.”

“It would not have killed you all, it would surely have eaten one and left.”

“No, there is some magic here. A brown stripe would not normally approach a fire, even one as poor as ours. No, not magic, training. I think it would have killed us all.”

“You are The Three, can you not divine what is afoot? You are skilled in the -”

“We are not witches! We have been cast out and cursed and accused, but we are no witches as people claim. We know of herbs that cure; we know of rocks that, ground up, will help ailments; but we do not dance naked round fires with the Devil. Are you disappointed?” I confess, the younger one dancing naked round a fire would be of much interest. I would watch the middle one. The older one looked like her dugs might flap in the wind if she was naked. I had the sense that they might be large but long and dangly. Perhaps, if she was a witch, she could read my mind? “I suspect that only young Celandine would really interest you.” She looked meaningfully at me.

“Ladies, I assure you, I have no desire to see you dance naked round a fire.” Then I added. “But if you did, rest assured, I would find you all equally alluring.” It was a cheeky thing to say to The Three, but I sensed that they could take it as a compliment. All three curtsied to me like I had paid them high respect. Later, Celandine, who was perhaps five or ten years older than me and had a womanly shape that, naked or not, still would raise my flagpole, told me I had sensed correctly. Even if the elder two did not believe it, it was good to be flattered so; they were human after all, and humans like flattery even when they know it to be that.

We ate a tasteless gruel. “If you will strip the bear, we can add some bear meat to the stew. You look like you need feeding. What is your story?” I told them my sorry tale, though not so much to feel sorry for me. I knew their story was worse.

The Three had been the old king’s closest Advisors. They had no special knowledge except healing, but they could see the future results of actions. When Duke Lianthos dammed the Longia River, saying it would make a better fishing lake, they said no good would come of it. The lake silted and killed the spawning grounds of the trout. The result was the fishery died out in three years. They could make connections that others could not. Naturally the priests and other Advisors said this must be witchcraft. They were women, and they knew more than the men; not a combination to win them friends. Yet their skill at cures did win them friends, friends amongst the poor. They were clever, kind and not greedy; they were loyal to the king, and therefore made a lot of enemies; including the king’s niece.

The king had no children; well, no surviving ones; well, no legitimate surviving ones; so his next younger brother would have inherited, but Prince Michael had the bad manners to die first, and there were no other male heirs, which meant that Princess Esta became the heir apparent. The Three advised the king that she would not make a good monarch. She, not unnaturally, took umbrage since she was indeed not the ideal monarchical material. Even before being the next ruler, she was not someone to offend, so I’d heard. I had never been in a position to even see her, let alone know anything beyond gossip.

The king could have done something – remarried and had a quick child, perhaps; found some spurious reason to disinherit Esta; but he did not. There was always a fifty-fifty chance that you would die naturally as monarch, so he maybe did. He was old, he was sickly, so maybe he did. Maybe regicide isn’t one of her crimes; but bearing grudges is. The Three made themselves scarce as soon as she announced she wanted their advice. General Abrambit had been asked in to offer advice on the army ... and was never seen again.

The Three sent a supplicatory message begging the queen’s pardon but saying they were exhausted and needed to rest from advice and begged that she would allow them to go into retreat at The Nunnery of the Holy Virgin. Queen Esta had replied that she had entirely understood and wished them every peace in the silent order. Three months later the nunnery suffered a devastating fire. It could be coincidence.

Not too many identifiable bodies were found, most had been burnt too badly. “We had escaped, before the soldiers surrounded the church. Nuns who broke out were thrown back in, alive. We saw this.” Yew explained. We should have tried to help, but they were doomed anyway; The Queen would not want living witnesses. So we fled here in secret, lived quietly and alone so as not to be a risk to any others. She knows though, that is clear.

“Might it be another coincidence?” I asked.

“The facts would suggest that the chance of such a coincidence of events – a brown stripe being out of it’s normal range, a brown stripe willing to attack humans, us being the ones it would attack – is less than one in twenty as a natural event.”

“But if the bear was old, or ill, that might both make it willing to roam looking for easier prey, and less fearful of humans?”

“Does that look like an old bear? It might be sick, but ... maybe one in eighteen then. No, we have to assume Queen Esta sent it. Hoping it was a miraculous conjunction of unfortunate events is an excellent way to die. In fact, given that this is the second attempt on us, then she has a three out of four chance of succeeding within a year.”

I was impressed with their logical analysis, it all made sense when they explained it. How could they not have been valuable to the monarch, whoever it was? I went outside and started to skin the bear; Celandine came and sat nearby. “You apologised to the bear?”

“I did, he didn’t deserve to die. Only humans deserve death, animals act by instinct. Like your dog acting to protect you.”

“Maxim! His name is Maxim!”