Sir Devon's Arc

Chapter 1 of 7

Sir Devon read the names of the dead by torchlight. Three knights gone in two days, all sent to hunt dark magic in the Sollengaard Mountains. He wanted to build an order, the Frostborn, to root out that heresy and open trade with the southern lands. But he could not sell furs and iron to the south if his men kept dying in the snow. And it was not the sorcerers killing them. It was the bears. He found the last body outside his keep of dark stone and heavy timber. A polar bear the size of a plow horse had torn the man open on the path. The beast still crouched over the kill, blood on its muzzle, staring at Devon with black eyes. He drew his sword and stood his ground, but he did not charge. One knight against that was death. Inside, his men had stopped scouting. One sat drinking, a foamy mug lifted below his bear-skin hat, refusing to ride out again. Another roasted meat over a fire and would not look up. Devon slammed his fist on the table. "We ride as one, or we die alone," he said. "No more single riders. No more empty paths." He laid out the plan. The bears hunted lone men on the trails. So the knights would move together, a wall of shields, and bait the beasts into open ground. Devon led them out at dawn. He planted his sword in a drift on the high pass and left a slaughtered deer beside it. Then his men waited behind the rocks, spears braced. The bears came. Four of them, white against the snow, drawn by the meat. Devon gave no order until the beasts were close. Then he roared, and the knights rose as one line. Spears met fur. A bear swung and broke a shield, but three more spears drove home. The animals could not scatter a wall the way they scattered single men. It was over fast and it was ugly. Two knights bled in the snow, alive but torn. The bears lay dead, the biggest of them steaming in the cold. Devon wiped his blade and pulled it from the drift. His men had held. The trails would be safe enough to scout again. He walked to the largest carcass to strip its hide. Beneath the beast, half-buried, he found flat black stone that did not belong on the pass. Someone had cut marks into it. The bears had not gathered here for the deer. They had gathered where something dark was buried, and now Devon knew the heresy he hunted was closer than any southern road.