She thanked him, and said, “Off.” The box quit speaking. Orick had seen so many wonders over the past few days it only made sense that folks who could walk between worlds could talk to each other while miles apart.
“Well, you heard him,” Panta said. “We need to stay inside today. We could try calling the Jaggets, ask to speak to your friend, but the dronon will be monitoring all the phones. I don’t think we can do anything until your friends get here.”
Orick looked around the house forlornly, wondering what a simple bear could do. “The fool rushes blindly down the rocky trail, while the superior bear makes sure of his path,” Orick said, recalling the only bit of wisdom he could dredge up. “I should never have come here. I’d quit the place if I could. I’m afraid I’ve made a mess of this.”
“You’ve made a mess of nothing,” Panta said. “Why, your friends are all over the news. They’re just as likely to get caught with you as they would have been without.”
“That’s not true. Maggie and I stirred up a hornets’ nest, and now Gallen is going to walk through the gate and get stung. I have to fix this if I can, Panta. Once it gets dark, I have to go warn Gallen.”
Panta watched him for a long time. “Do you really believe that this Everynne is a good person?”
“Och, the woman’s nothing but cream, as we’d say back in Tihrglas,” Orick assured her. “I’d bet my life on it.”
“You’re betting all of our lives on it,” Panta said.
“I’d do that, too.”
“Then I’ll come with you,” Panta offered. “You’ll need a cover story, and two bears out for a ride isn’t uncommon.”
Orick smiled, and they spent the day in the house, eating what they would, frolicking when the mood took them. Panta worked for a textile company, designing prints for cloth. She showed Orick her samples, and Orick found that her art spoke to him like nothing he’d ever seen. She wove cloth in the colors of the forest, greens and grays and the shades of the sky. She wove pebbles under rushing water, sunlight streaming through leaves. Many of her patterns featured bears, cubs running through fields of tan, an old bear staring at the moon. Orick could look at the cloth, and sometimes he would hear sounds, bear voices talking, the grunting of a sow as she dug for tubers. The pictures awoke his racial memories, and when he looked at the pictures, he looked through them into the dimly recalled dreamtime of bears.
Though Panta’s people had left the wilds, the wilds had not left her, and Orick saw that he would miss Wechaus, would miss Panta when he left.
That night, after dark, Orick could not sleep. Gallen and the others would not drive through the gate until near dawn, but he was eager to get to the hills, prepare a message to warn Gallen.
He paced through the house on all fours, his claws raking the hardwood floors. Finally, near midnight, Panta said, “Let’s go,” and they went to her car.
She drove along the highway in the darkness. Once they passed a convoy of magtrucks filled with vanquishers. They appeared to be moving large numbers of soldiers. Another time they passed a roving patrol, and Orick felt nervous. He watched the snow-laden hills until he spotted the beaten path where he and Maggie had driven down from the gate. He told Panta to slow the car and lower the hood. As soon as she did, he smelled vanquishers.
“Drop me here, then off with you,” Orick growled. He could not take a chance that she would linger near this spot-not with the vanquishers patrolling the area.
“I’ll come back for you,” she said.
Orick studied her profile in the darkness, and he longed to stay with her forever. “Do that,” he said. He leapt from the moving car, and Panta sped away. Orick sniffed the ground. The vanquishers had walked up the path. A cool wind drifted down from the hills, carrying their scent. Orick began stalking, his head low to the ground.
He took nearly an hour to reach a small hilltop. The light was faint-the stars were thin here, but a fiery ring ran up the sky at the horizon, giving almost as much light as a moon. Orick looked down into the glade, smelled vanquishers for a long time before he finally spotted them.
Three of them sat as still as stones in the snow, hidden beneath a white sheet, watching up a small draw. Orick was surprised to find so few of them and wondered why they kept so far from the gate. Apparently they had followed the trail a ways, saw that the airbikes had materialized from thin air, but perhaps they just couldn’t believe their luck, or maybe they did not realize that the beaten snow led to a gate opening.
Orick watched them for awhile, studied the hills. He could see the forbidding snow-covered top of the mountain, the slopes along two arms. The problem was that he could not circle up to the gate opening without being spotted. The vanquishers had set their surveillance post here precisely because it did allow them to view the area on all sides.
So Orick waited. Given the circumstances, he had no option but to stay through the night. When Gallen and Everynne came downhill, he could roar, warn them of the ambush, and then wade into battle. But until then, he could do nothing.
After nearly an hour, two of the giant vanquishers stood, then headed uphill, running along a ridge. Apparently they had been redeployed. Orick decided to strike.
He crept downhill, his feet padding through the snow. When Orick closed to within a dozen yards, the lone vanquisher turned and glanced at him for a moment, but Orick had bear-sized boulders behind him. He merely stood still in the shadows until the vanquisher turned away again.
Orick raced over the snow, leapt at the vanquisher’s back, climbing over its shoulder to rip at its throat. The vanquisher tried to stand, raised the butt of his incendiary rifle and smashed it against Orick’s face, but Orick merely wrapped his arms around the ogre, ripping at the green skin.
The vanquisher fired his rifle, then threw himself on the ground, and for a moment Orick rolled free. He twisted and leapt at the vanquisher, grabbing the creature’s Adam’s apple. The vanquisher unsheathed a knife and plunged it into Orick’s shoulder, slicing through tendons.
Orick slapped the vanquisher’s head with a paw, knocking it down, then tore out its throat.
When the vanquisher lay dead in the snow, Orick turned and rushed uphill till he found the end of the trail where he and Maggie had first materialized. Orick and Gallen had long ago worked out a system to warn one another of dangers on the road. Orick left his paw print and scratched twice beneath it. Since Orick was not sure if Gallen would enter this world before or after dawn, Orick rolled in the snow, beating it down so that his message would be more likely to attract attention. Then he rushed downhill, heading back for the road.
Halfway there, he discovered that his right shoulder hurt, and he began to limp. Blood was pouring from the wound, but he had not noticed it in the heat of the battle.
He licked at the blood, made his way down to the highway. Panta was nowhere to be seen. Orick grumbled under his breath and began limping down the road, watching for signs of movement in the hills, hoping he did not meet a patrol.
The cold night air sapped his warmth. His blood was leaking away, and he felt small, helpless out here in the wilds, so far from home. Once, he heard voices and raised his head in fear. He did not think he could outrun trouble, but after a moment, he realized that he had been dreaming voices. Another time, he found himself feeling weak, and he just sat on the roadside for a moment. A passing vehicle roused him from his sleep, and he looked about, headed north again, wondering what had become of Panta.
He felt like a cub, lost in the deep woods. For a time he walked, thinking that he could hear the mesmerizing sound of wind rushing through trees.
He had not gone far when he heard the deep voices of vanquishers shouting up ahead to his right. His head spun. He was so weak he didn’t know if he could leap from the road.