Chapter 1 (Fragment)

Without pausing even a moment to give the hunters time to reflect on their next move, the bear lunged towards the one who stood in the center of his beaten path. A javelin gleamed in the trembling hand of one of the boyars as he made ready to throw it.

“Don’t!” warned Maxim commandingly, running towards them, followed by Tuhar Wolf and another boyar. “Don’t throw it, but get ready to defend yourself with a spear at closer range.”

However, his warning went unheeded. The boyar threw the javelin at the beast. The distance was not great enough to make a forceful blow, his hand had trembled weakly therefore it was not surprising that the weapon, striking the beast’s right shoulder, did not inflict a mortal wound.

The bear seized a log, broke it in half and with a harsh roar threw himself to the attack upon his adversary. The hunter already held a sharp, double-edged sword called a “bear stiletto”, prepared to meet the assault by plunging it into the beast’s heart. But the sword point slipped upward along the bony ribs, finding its mark near the shoulder while the beast embraced the boyar in a fateful hug. A horrible cry escaped the lips of the unfortunate victim, his bones crunched between the teeth of the bear, The whole shocking scene had been enacted so quickly, so unexpectedly, that before Maxim and the two men with him could reach him to lend their assistance, the boyar already lay on the ground drawing his last torturous breaths, while the bear stood over him, fangs bared, howling ferociously with rage and pain from the wounds he had sustained in the battle. A chill shiver crept up the spines of the boyars at the dreadful horror of the scene holding them all rivetted to the spot except Maxim who quietly placed an arrow within his bow fashioned of flexible bone, took a couple of paces in the direction of the bear, aimed an instant and let the arrow find its mark in the grizzly’s heart. With a last piercing howl, suddenly cut off as if by a knife, the beast toppled over on the ground and lay still.

The hills did not echo and reverberate with the joyous sound of victory over this kill. The boyars, forsaking their original positions, gathered around the scene of the misfortune. Toughened warriors though they were, accustomed to see men die before their eyes, they could not restrain a horrified gasp of consternation at the sight of the bloody, clawed and mangled body of their comrade. Peace-Renown put her hand to her heart and averted her eyes.

The Tukholian youths improvised a stretcher out of broken branches and twigs, placed the body upon it and also dragged the beastly carcass after them. An onerous silence gripped the company of huntsmen. A great puddle of blood glistened moistly in the sunlight reminding all that only a few minutes before there had stood a living human being hale with the vigor of life and filled with ambitious hopes for the future, who now was but a formless mass of bloody flesh.

The greater part of their desire to continue the hunt had left the boyars. “To blazes with those cursed bears,” said some. “Let them live and die here, for all we care! Why should we risk our lives for them?”