Mother Bears (2 page)

Jendara shook her head. This was bad news. With the benefit of surprise, a crew of goblins could wreck an entire village. Those people needed help. But she didn’t have time to go on a rescue mission. She had a son to find. She began to turn away from the speakers, but paused as her eye caught movement at the front of the room. A towheaded boy hurried toward the man in the red cloak. She would have recognized him anywhere.

She tugged Yul’s fur vest. “That’s the one who stole my boy’s tassel.”

He frowned. “My nephew, Oric. We’ll have to wait for the meeting to finish before we approach my brother.”

Jendara shifted on impatient feet, listening as the warriors around her suggested and discarded course after course of action. Several of the women spoke quietly to the wise woman and then hurried off to their duties: preparing the warriors’ fighting gear, gathering medicine, darting over to the wise woman’s cottage to tend the injured children. Even if this was her home village, Jendara knew she wouldn’t be joining them. She had taken on a warrior’s life when she joined the pirate crew, closing the door on such domestic fellowship.

Yul caught her attention and they pushed forward through the crowd. His brother had neatly divided the group into parties, and now he clasped wrists with each of the men he’d commanded to lead. For a moment, Jendara pitied the goblins. These men knew battle, with their seamed faces and silvered scars. Most islanders practiced trade as the seasons turned, but in a land of quick tempers and fierce pride, everyone brought their shields and belt axes to the trading table.

“Yul.” The leader clapped his brother on the shoulder. “I thought you’d stay with your wife. Her belly is fit to burst.”

“Ayuh, her time is near.” Yul leaned closer to his brother’s ear. “I didn’t come to volunteer, Morul. I came to ask you about your boy. I fear he brought harm to a visitor, the son of my new friend Jendara.”

“Islanders give little credit to a mainlander like Vorrin.”

The light-haired boy crept back into the shadows behind his father. Jendara narrowed her eyes at him.

Morul grunted. “There’s a boatload of injured here to tend, and a second to follow. There are goblins on Black Bay Island and no idea how they got there. I’ve got a war party to lead and defenses ready. I’ve no time to talk about children.”

“I’ll help with your goblins if you help with my boy,” Jendara interjected. “Just need a word with your son, that’s all. Get my boy back safe.”

Morul looked Jendara from head to toe. He could be Yul’s twin, he looked so much like the craggy farmer, and a sharp intelligence flared behind his blue eyes. The islanders followed him not just for his brawn, but his brain. “Why are you so worried about your boy, woman?”

She set her jaw. “He’s a mute. Plenty of folks reckon that’s reason enough to give him trouble.”

Morul nodded. “Ayuh, that’s reason to worry.” He glanced at her belt axe. “You any good with that thing?”

Vorrin spoke first. “I served beside her in many battles. She’s faster and meaner than any man I’ve ever sailed with.” Beside him, Tam nodded.

The leader of the islanders looked unimpressed.

Jendara tried not to shift impatiently. Her father would have never taken Vorrin’s word, either. “My father led the men of his island in twenty-five battles and never lost a one. He trained me like I was his son, and kept me at his right hand for six trading parlays.”

“And his name?”

“Erik Eriksson the White.”

Both Yul and Morul looked pleased. It was not a great or famous name, but well traveled. Like her abilities with axe and sword, trade was in Jendara’s blood naturally. Everyone knew Erik Eriksson the White.

“A fine man and long missed. I will accept your offer of help against the goblins.” Morul turned to the boy. “Oric is a boy for pranks. Come here, lad.”

The towheaded boy slunk toward them, his hands twisted behind his back.

“Show me the tassel,” Jendara snapped. Kran would have been familiar with the steely tone.

Oric put out his hand, the yellow tassel sitting on his palm. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Morul cuffed the side of the boy’s head. “An islander speaks with pride even if he fears his punishment.”

“I’m sorry!” Oric barked, stiffening his spine.

Jendara took the tassel. “Do you know where the mute boy—my son—went?”

Oric nodded. He cleared his throat. “Some visitor men on the pier told us you were a pirate. So we told Kran he ought to visit the pirate caves at the end of the island. That’s all.”

Jendara glanced at the tassel and raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, we took his hat and we messed around with it. And we told him he was nothing but a chicken liver if he didn’t go down to the caves and come back with gold to prove he’d been there. But that’s it! He even took his hat back.” He looked up at her, then added in a mumble, “He gave my cousin a black eye.”

Jendara felt a moment’s pride for her boy, quickly overrun by anxiety. “Caves?”

Morul’s lips thinned. “I doubt he went too far in, but it’s an extensive network. Oric, take the visitors to our home. Get lights and rope.”

Jendara nodded. “We’ll join you as soon as we can. Thank you for your help.”

She followed Oric out of the meetinghouse, the others following behind. Yul tapped her shoulder, his face troubled.

“I must go home to my wife now, but I wish you luck in your mission.”

She thanked him for his help, and clapped him on the arm before hurrying after the others. Oric moved swiftly, gathering supplies from the family storehouse and then leading the rescue party down the beach. The sun’s rays cast long, pale fingers of light across the sea, their touch failing to ease the chill in Jendara’s heart. Goblins to fight, her son exploring in the darkness—it all felt like bad omens.

They rounded the headland of the beach, and she could see the caves cut into the cliffs at its end. There were multiple openings at different points in the rock face, and for the first time, her own fear touched her, freezing her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She was a child of open farmland and open sea. She had never been in a cave before.

“Kran!”

Tam shook his head. “Spare your voice, lady. The way the waves echo in there, ain’t no point shouting.” He turned to Vorrin. “You mind if I lead? I grew up playing in caves like these.”

Vorrin happily agreed.

Tam stopped a moment to light the lanterns Oric had brought for them. He smiled at the boy, who looked anxious. “Why don’t you be our lookout, lad? If we need help, we’ll shout for you, and you can run back to the village.”

“I can do that, sir.”

“Great. Then let’s go into the first cave. It looks like it’s right at the water line and the easiest to get into.”

Jendara eyeballed the rocks flanking the cave’s entrance. They looked rough and slick, the waves spitting up foam that clung to their dark flanks. One misstep, and a boy would tumble into the water. A boy or his mother, she reminded herself. She was glad she had a good sense of balance after working on ships all these years.

The yellow glow of Tam’s lantern lit up the dark hollow of the cave, and as Jendara followed behind him, her own light redoubled the glow. It wasn’t much of a cave, just ten or twelve feet gnawed into the cliff wall. A battered rowboat bobbed on the waves, as if sheltering peacefully while waiting for its owner.

“What’s this?” Tam murmured, peering inside. He jumped back, nearly toppling off the rock he’d been balancing on.

“What is it?” Vorrin asked.

But Jendara could see for herself the still figure at the bottom of the boat, the long white hair and singed black cloak. The wise woman from Black Bay Island.

Tam leaned over again, his nose wrinkling as he pointed out a smear of dung on the gunwale. “I’m not sure, but this looks like goblin dog to me.”

Jendara balled her hands into fists. The sliver of ice burning down the back of her neck had been a true warning, not the trite discomfort of an overprotective mother. There were goblins on this island, and given goblins’ love for dark holes in the ground, the little bastards were probably exploring the same damn cave her son was.

“Well, whatever it is, one thing’s for sure,” Tam said slowly.

“What?” Jendara growled.

“No one’s in this cave.”

They picked their way out of the lowest sea cave and stared up at the other entrances. The cave mouths looked far above the beach, dark and unwelcoming. The sun sank another degree lower in the sky.

“Time to climb.” Jendara slung her length of rope over her shoulder and reached for the first handhold in the cliff face.

Somewhere above, something wailed, its voice hollow and unbearably sad.

Jendara followed Tam’s light, feeling the cave’s blackness like velvet pressing against her skin, her nostrils. She wanted to run outside before the cave smothered her. But she couldn’t stop thinking of that horrible wail. It wasn’t Kran—he could make a few sounds, but none so loud or carrying. She reminded herself of that fact again and again.

It still made her skin crawl.

“Remember,” Tam called over his shoulder. “Keep an eye on the person ahead of you. The floor of these places isn’t always—”

His voice cut off in a scream and his light disappeared.

Jendara darted forward. “Tam!”

“Jendara, stop!” Vorrin shouted.

She froze. By the glow of her lantern, she could see the sudden drop Tam hadn’t. The tunnel opened into great mouthing darkness that her lantern barely began to light. “Are you all right?”

“My arm’s caught.” Tam grunted. “Caught bad.”

Vorrin knelt beside her. “I can wrap a rope around this bit of stalagmite, lower you down. Be some work getting the two of you up again, but I can manage it.”

Jendara held her lantern over the cliff’s edge, getting a glimpse of Tam’s red hair about seven feet below her, just above the floor of what must be a vast cavern. The cliff broke up into long fingers of rock at the bottom, and he hung from the crotch of the two tallest. Jendara shook her head. “Damn, that’s ugly. Let’s do this fast before he loses an arm.”

Somewhere in the darkness, the wail sounded again. Jendara felt gooseflesh prickle as she passed her length of rope to Vorrin.

“Make a good knot when you join those.”

He brushed his fingers down her cheek. “The best.”

She didn’t watch him tie the two ropes together or wrap the rope around the rock, just moved her lantern out of the way and rubbed dirt into the palms of her hands. She didn’t need any sweat to make climbing harder.

Vorrin wrapped the rope around her waist and tied it tight. She clambered over the cliff edge, and after only a moment’s climbing could hear Tam’s pained breathing below her. He was too much the islander to groan or whimper—the raw rasp of his inhalations was as bad as a scream. But there was no way to climb faster. No light, no ladder, just her fingers and toes searching out purchase on the cracked rocks.

Suddenly Jendara’s palms went sweat-slick. Her fingers slipped off the narrow handhold, and for a sickening second she swung from the end of the rope, her face scraping the cavern wall.

“Jendara!” Vorrin yelled.

Then her foot found a hold, a rock spur of some kind. “I’m okay!”

And wished she’d been quiet as a frenzied barking sounded out in the darkness.

“Gods,” Tam groaned. Jendara could see what he saw, a brightening in the distance like flickering torchlight. She thought of the goblin dog scat on the boat and climbed faster.

The bottom of the cliff came as a surprise. Now that she was down, Vorrin’s hands were free to hoist the lantern, lighting up Tam and the rocky ground.

The goblin dog’s snarl echoed off the walls of the great cavern. Jendara loosened the rope from her waist and stretched on tiptoe to work it around Tam’s. His breathing was just tiny gasps now. Every ounce of his body hung from the pinned arm.

Jendara locked her arms around his thighs, grunting as she lifted him up out of the vise. A horrible squeak choked in his throat, and the big man went limp. “Damn it,” she whispered. She could only hope he’d regain consciousness soon. She couldn’t get him back up that cliff on her own.

Pressing herself against the rock that had gripped him, she pushed off again, getting a little higher. Tam coughed and wriggled. Suddenly all his weight was on Jendara and she staggered.

“Vorrin, he’s free!”

“Islander, pirate—but most of all, mother.”

The light disappeared, and after a second some of the weight came off Jendara.

Behind the rocks, the goblin dog shrieked. Jendara stiffened as she heard a sound she knew only too well, the dry scrape of air moving in a throat that had never spoken. Kran’s strange laugh.

“Kran!”

She pushed Tam back against the cliff face, propping him against the wall. She could smell the blood seeping from his scraped and mangled shoulder. “Be right back, friend.”

Then she was off. She wished for her own lantern, but guttering torchlight guided her forward, as did a cacophony of sounds: the hollow wailing, a clatter of stones, the hideous sounds of goblin speech.

A goblin dog lay twitching on the cave floor, the end of a very familiar pocketknife jutting out of its eye socket. Its rider had rolled free, and swung a torch around its swollen gray head to block the volley of rocks Kran lobbed at its face. One goblin, alone. Jendara grinned to herself and felt for her belt axe. She could handle one goblin scout and a dead dog.

The belt axe soared through the air. The wet thud of it sinking into the goblin’s skull was like music.

Kran dropped his rocks and ran to the dead dog. He jerked his knife free and began to cut at the black pack on the dog’s back, which wailed and wriggled. Jendara reclaimed her axe and jogged to his side.

It was no pack, she realized. The glossy black hide belonged to a bear cub, a cut seeping blood along its side. She held its paws as Kran struggled to cut the last of its ties. The white blaze on its nose triggered prickles on the back of her neck.

A grizzly rampaging last night. An island under attack this afternoon.

A goblin scout here right now.