Hair of Gold: Just Right (Urban Fairytales Book 6) (5 page)

That was my life after that. I sometimes forgot they were not my big brothers by blood. They taught me about woodland survival and all the basics a person must know to survive in the harsh realities of the world. But most of all they taught me how to laugh... and to curse like a woodsman.

They were always doing things to accommodate me that made me feel proud to have them as my brothers. Early on, they came home with a chair, exhausted from felling dozens of oaks. I know it is stupid of me, but having four chairs at the table, instead of three, made me feel as if I truly belonged there and I cried over it. My three bears getting distressed thinking they had done something wrong.

Soon there were four beds in the cabin, though more often than not I would wake up on the floor, kept warm and safe enveloped in the fur of my brothers. Then one day when I returned from getting supplies in the market in Chernivtsi with Pavel, Vladimir and Andrei surprised me with a proper outhouse back behind the cottage.

They were always doing little things like that for me. The biggest of which was the root cellar we put in when I was fifteen so that I could raise chickens and goats to have fresh eggs and milk and have a place to hide them on Wolf Moons as my brothers patrolled the area. I think they believed I would feel safer knowing it was there for myself. The silly boys actually thought a cellar was safer than having three ungodly huge bears protecting me from the wolves.

Over the years, the fatalities on Wolf Moons were rising in the area because my bears didn’t stray far from the cottage or my side, and the village below was suffering because of it. I insisted my brothers teach me to fight and defend myself. I was not a small girl at fifteen, I was taller and stronger than most girls my age. Probably because I had to wrestle three oafs, especially trying to get them to do the chores around the property. It got more difficult when they were in bear form, but I knew their ticklish spots so wound up triumphant in most arguments.

Little Bear got reprimanded by me a lot, and I had to slap his muzzle from time to time to make him behave. To an outsider, seeing a young woman chastising three unnaturally large Kodiak's would have seemed insane, but to me, they were just my misbehaving brothers who couldn't quite understand that their dirty clothes went in the wicker basket by the door so I could wash them, not on the floor.

The boys in the village were starting to notice me, I didn't know when it had happened, but it seems that I had grown up and was becoming the woman I am now. I was what the Englishmen in the town called a tomboy. Always roughhousing with the boys like I did my brothers. And it was becoming abundantly clear that I also had the eye for the fairer sex like my brothers.

Unfortunately, as I developed the boys in town started looking at me differently, and some found out that a girl who was raised by bears was more than adequately up to the task of protecting herself and her honor. My brothers would never interfere as I gave the boys bloody noses. I heard the baker ask them, “Aren't you going to step in and defend her honor?”

Little Bear would laugh heartily as he responded, “What, and get a bloody nose of my own from our little Kat for interfering?”

I became good with the blade which the boys had traded for my sixteenth birthday. A silver plated blade said to have belonged to the first female Wolf Hunter, Nicole of Arad. When they taught me all they could, I traded fresh eggs and goat cheese to the smithy, Orrick, who had been a knight for the courts in France, for lessons with my blade.

On my eighteenth birthday, a Wolf Moon, I stepped out of the cottage to right a wrong that my being there had caused to the village below. I patrolled with my bears, much to their complaints, but I was my own woman, not a little girl to be coddled by my brothers when they put themselves at risk on every full moon. They knew that arguing with me was pointless so they resigned themselves to the fact that us Inanov's were the protectors of Chernivtsi.

I smiled to myself over the fact that they knew who ran our household.

Through fear and elation of battle and the strength I had gained sparring with my huge kin, I excelled against the wolves. My bears brought down most but they always let one or two through to me, and I readily dispatched them with my silvered blade. The townsfolk had started to calling me the Wolf Hunter of Chernivtsi. The deaths by Wolf Moon had ceased as we held the line month after month.

I had started noting that while I had been growing up and grew older, my brothers hadn't seemed to age at all. I almost looked to be their age on my twenty-first birthday... when everything changed.

I ducked to the right as a sweeping strike of a battleaxe whooshed past. I could hear the massive blade splitting the air just inches from my ear, some of my golden hair drifting to the ground, just punctuating the lethality and razor sharpness of the blade. I felt the air pressure from the speed of the vicious strike on my cheek.

I roared out a challenge which my brothers would be proud of as I spun back on a heel, intercepting a sword strike from behind. The man had not been prepared for the strength of my strike as his blade swung wide leaving his torso exposed. I growled and thrust my blade in a sweeping upward arc, opening his belly and chest in a long diagonal slice. I huffed. That is what the fool gets for underestimating me, thinking me a meek woman.

I was spinning away, ducking as I anticipated the raider with the battleaxe to use the opportunity to strike from behind as his comrade fell. The blade of his great axe catching the billowing shoulder of my cloak and slicing cleanly through it, missing my flesh by a hair's breadth.

He was nearly twice my size, but I fight bigger every day at the breakfast table for the last of the biscuits. I brought my blade smoothly up, cocked behind my ear, parallel with the ground as I sighted down it at my opponent who was hesitating now. They hadn't once given any consideration to the fact that I may be a trained swordswoman.

A bellowing roar of a Kodiak, Vladimir, shook the ground as I took in the battle around me. I pointed with my other hand and barked out orders, “Pavel, right flank, incoming.” Then more stridently as the biggest bear shredded a net that two men had tried to sling over him, “Andrei, stop playing around, Vlad needs your assistance with the pikemen.”

With a deafening roar which would have chilled me to my bones if it were not my brother's, Andrei dispatched the two raiders trying to net him, with one mighty disemboweling swipe of his dinner platter sized claw. He huffed and roared again as he charged at the pikemen.

There were five more men coming in from the right to join the two that Little Bear had just engaged. I didn't have time to play around anymore, they had sent more men than ever this time. I raised the tip of my blade slightly, distracting my opponent and keeping his eye on my blade as I thrust my other hand forward, whipping the throwing knife I kept on my left hip at him.

Most people think that it is easy to kill with a throwing knife, but in reality, it is quite difficult, if you hit any bone then the blade is easily deflected or stopped, so you need a soft target or your throw is nothing but a distraction. I don't have the strength it would take with my throws to get the blade between his ribs, and his axe blade was obscuring his belly, so I took the only other soft target that my blade could penetrate easily.

He dropped his axe to the cobblestones of the village square. Fell to his knees, and grasped uselessly at the knife embedded into the side of his neck, eyes wide in surprise and confusion. I strode right past him, yanking my knife out of his neck as he fell, blood spraying across the ground. I sheathed my knife as I raised my sword and roared as my brothers did and dove into the fray with an animalistic rage.

I bellowed, “How dare you threaten the villagers we protect!” I spun and parried and wove my way between them, blade flashing in the moonlight as my bears rallied, forming a barrier of claws and fangs around me. Isolating me and the two inside the ring my brothers gave me to do my work in.

I spun low, taking out the legs of one of the pikemen. “How dare you try to take my brothers to that old hag!” I ended the man with my blade through his throat, separating his spine.

My blade was stuck so I just released it and caught a sweeping blow of a pike the other man had used as a staff in close combat. I trapped it under my arm and grunted at the impact, I've suffered worse blows sparring with Little Bear.

I don't think the man was expecting the backhand, nor the sheer force I can bring to bear. Many of my opponents expect a woman to be weak, that is their folly and something I take full advantage of. His head snapped back, and before he could turn to focus on me again, I buried my fist into his gut, twisting my body and putting my full force and weight behind the strike.

He dropped his pike and doubled over. I leapt into the air and landed on top of him, driving my elbow with all of my weight and momentum behind me into the back of his neck. I heard a crunching sound over the ruckus my brothers were making as they dispatched the others.

The man fell limply to the bloodied cobblestones, gurgling, his neck snapped, but he yet lived. I gave him a mercy and picked up his pike. I turned to view the battle as I absently drove the pike through the man's chest, silencing him.

I ripped my blade from the other man's body with both hands then yelled out to Andrei who had the last raider pinned to the ground with one massive paw, and had his other raised to take the man's head off with a swipe, “Nyet!” Andrei paused and looked back at me in confusion.

I grinned at my big brother and shook my head as I stepped up to him and laid my hand on his massive shoulder, grabbing a fistful of fur and shaking it lovingly. “Let him go. He can tell Narcisa and Baird the folly of sending raiders to threaten our people and of trying to capture you.”

He smiled, the man below him winced at the massive and sharp teeth which he displayed. I just saw it as a smile from my goofy big brother, but I could see how it might look menacing to someone believing that he might eat them. He stuck his face down in the pinned man's face and roared, the man cringed as his hair flew back with the force of the roar. I placed a hand over my mouth to hide my smile at the smell that wafted up after that. The man had lost control of his bladder and bowels.

Andrei lifted his paw from the man's chest and moved back behind me. I grabbed a handful of Little Bears fur and absently pulled myself up onto his shoulders as the raider scrambled backward on the ground, away from us as Vladimir stepped to the other side of Andrei.

I ordered the man, “Now go! Tell your masters about tonight and warn them that we will not be so lenient next time. And if I ever see you even close to our village again...”

My brothers all stood on their hind legs, lifting me skyward as I finished, “My bears will have you.”

I snapped my head back and bellowed like a bear as my brothers joined in, shaking the ground as the man scrambled off into the dark. We stared into the dark as the echoes of the roar rolled down the valley.

Little Bear turned his head back to look at me as he chuffed. I rolled my eyes and slapped his nose and defended myself, “Nyet, that wasn't over dramatic you big oaf. I was simply making my point.”

The others chuffed, and I squinted and looked around at them, pointing my finger. They all looked away, looking far too innocent for one-ton killing machines. I said cheerily, “That's what I thought.”

They all lowered back down to all fours, and we surveyed the carnage around us. Shutters began opening in the buildings around us, candle and lantern light streaming out as the villagers came out to thank us for stopping yet another wave of raiders that the vrajitoare Narcisa and her son had been sending to terrorize our village the past few weeks.

We helped move the dead as I wondered what was going on. Was this the price Narcisa was exacting for Iosif's pledge? Was his death not enough for the vrajitoare? Now she would have men come terrorize, and plunder the village of his progeny?

The last couple of raids, they have tried to capture my brothers. What could the woman possibly want from them? To torture them for their father's morality? Whatever game she and her son were playing, had cost our village three lives so far and most of the grain they needed to survive the upcoming winter.

With the blacksmith I helped carry off one of the raider's bodies, I decided that it was time. We needed to hunt the vrajitoare down in her own lair and put an end to all of this senseless violence. I would talk with my brothers about it on the morrow.

Little Bear nudged my side and looked up at me expectantly, I blinked innocently, and he bellowed at me. I chuckled at him and said, “Fine you blubbering baby, here.” I picked up my discarded pack near the well in the village center and pulled out a tunic and trousers and threw them in his face. They fell to the ground, and he huffed, smiled, then took them in his jaws and went behind the livery to change. My other brothers were comfortable staying bears. I knew it was because of their over protective nature, even though they knew I could take care of myself.

The villagers congratulated Pavel, shaking his hand and giving thanks when he returned to my side. He loomed over me, his eyes scanning the dark. Even he was always protecting me. He knew what I was thinking, and he scrunched his fingers together squinting one eye as he said, “Tiny kotenok.”

I snorted. I was easily a hand taller than the tallest maiden in Chernivtsi, yet to my overly large brothers, I was still that tiny kitten they had rescued from a tree all those years ago, in another life. I went to backhand his gut, which he easily avoided, knowing it was coming.

We saw to the village and checked on the people before we headed back up the road toward our cottage on the rise. I was exhausted, and Andrei lumbered up next to me. I smiled my thanks at him. “Thank you, brother.”

I snarled my hand in the fur on his shoulder and pulled myself up to ride him the rest of the way home. I smiled at the thought. Home. It was my home wasn't it?

I thumped Andrei's shoulder in appreciation then looked between my brothers and said with a voice cold as ice, “This has to stop. Between the raiders and the Wolf Moons, we are always battling. Let us speak on the morrow about ending the threat of Narcisa and her son, one way or another.”

This got guttural grunts of agreement and Little Bear nodded and said with equal frost in his voice, “Da.”