It was Garreth who detected the noise first, and he called, "Uther! Did you hear that?"
Uther pulled his horse to a halt and turned back. "No. What was it?"
Garreth cocked his head, listening intently. Behind him, the men following came to a halt, suddenly tense, aware of Garreth's attitude.
"Bear," Garreth said then, and Uther realized that he had been watching the other man's mouth, waiting to read his lips, because his own hearing was muffled by the protective earflaps of his heavy helmet. He tugged it off as quickly as he could and heard the sound immediately, far off and muffled by distance, yet unmistakably the enraged roaring of the largest animal in the forests and mountains of Britain.
"Sounds like a big one."
"Aye, big and very unhappy. I wonder what has him so stirred up?"
"It's probably a sow with cubs. Something must have threatened her."
Garreth looked sideways at him. "You think so? What kind of something?"
Uther shrugged. "Another bear?"
"Then why can we hear only one? If there were two of them, they'd both be roaring, trying to frighten each other off."
Uther glanced at the men behind Garreth, all of whom sat listening intently, staring off in the direction of the distant noise. "What, then?" he asked. "It's lasting a long time."
"Only one thing other than another bear could cause a bear that much fury, and that's a wound."
"Inflicted by a man, you mean—but there's no one around here, according to our scouts."
"It could be one of them, one of our scouts. Do you want to come and look?"
Come, not go, Uther noted. He nodded, not even pausing to think. "I think we'd better, although whoever wounded it will be dead by the time we get there."
"I think not. The roaring would have died down. He may be up in a tree. I think the thing can see him, but it can't reach him, and that's why it's making so much noise."
Uther nodded and glanced to where the decurion sat watching them. "Nemo, keep the others here. Garreth and I are going to see what that's all about."
Nemo Hard-Nose nodded, raising her right hand to her cuirass in an acknowledging salute, but Uther and Garreth were already moving off the trail. Both men pulled their long Pendragon bow staves from the leather sheaths that kept them close to hand hanging on the left front of their saddles. They paused before entering the trees to string the weapons, and then they moved forward again, and the leafy boughs quickly screened them from view.
They rode several hundred paces into the forest before abandoning their mounts among bushes too dense to penetrate on horseback. Now they were moving forward on foot, covering perhaps the same distance again.
"Can you see anything? The whoreson sounds as though he's right in front of us."
The bellowing of the bear was deafening. The growth here, as it had been all the way downward from the path, was almost solid: rioting thickets of bramble, elder and hawthorn and chest-high grasses among which sapling beech, elm and birch struggled for survival. Uther held up a hand to forestall any more questions as he peered all around. They were in the beast's element. It lived here among this choking growth where they were blind and hampered, their ability to use their weapons critically impaired.
"Can't see a damned thing and I don't like the feeling," he said eventually, turning back to Garreth. As he spoke, his eyes were moving, looking upwards for a tall tree nearby, and he saw one immediately, perhaps forty or fifty paces from where they stood. It was a large oak, the closest of several he could see now. "Over there," Uther said, indicating the direction with a nod of his head. "If we can get up there into one of those, we'll be able to see more than we're going to see from here."
"Aye, and we'll be safer, too. This is madness. Let's go."
They moved as quickly as the undergrowth would permit, leaving the enraged roaring behind them on their right, and even before they reached the first tree, they saw that they would be able to scale it, although Garreth grunted that it looked easy enough for the bear to climb it, too. Uther made for the lowest limb, but Garreth caught at his cloak.
"Wait, let me go up first. I'm not wearing armour. You stay here until I see what's to be seen."
Moments later, he was leaning forward, shouting to Uther below his perch to tell him that there was a clearing ahead of them and that he could see the bear. Uther reached for a low branch and hauled himself upward until he was standing beside Garreth, only slightly out of breath from the effort of climbing in full armour.
"Ancient gods! Will you look at that thing!"
Uther ignored the comment. He had taken in the giant beast in one glance. What he needed to see most was the reason for its rage.
"There, Garreth! There's a man trapped up there on the cliff just above the beast, beyond its reach. Whoever he is, he's finished if we don't help him. It looks like he's hanging on to the sheer cliff face, and he can't move up or sideways. Look! The damn thing's within a handspan of his feet. If it backs up and runs at the cliff, it'll reach him."
At that point the bear did exactly what Uther had predicted, backing away and then hurling itself towards the cliff face, where it launched itself upward in a mighty leap. The man trapped there braced himself somehow on his arms and drew up his knees, and the mighty paw that swept towards his legs rushed on by, seeming to miss him by little more than a finger's width.
"He won't last much longer," Garreth growled. "He's hanging on like a spider, but his weight's almost all on his arms. I'd hate to be up there in his place, wondering whose strength will give out first. At least he's not one of ours, as you said, so it's no loss to— Are you mad, man? You'll never hit that thing from here. You don't have a clear shot!"
Uther had positioned himself carefully on the huge oak branch beneath his feet, leaning into his own weight and pulling his bowstring back almost to his cheekbone. He sighted deliberately, his nostrils flaring, and then released the tension and lowered the bow, drawing a deep breath.
"I don't expect to hit it, although it's within range. You're right, there are too many branches between me and it. But if I can send one close enough to distract the thing, the fellow up on the cliff might be able to escape. It's better than doing nothing. We can't just leave the poor whoreson there to die, no matter who he is." He inhaled deeply again and held his breath, then leaned slightly forward, bracing himself with his left foot as he flowed into the motions of pull and release. The arrow arced high and fell, as far as they could gauge, close by the ravening bear. Neither of the distant antagonists noticed it.
"Damnation! We have to get closer. The growth opens up over there, closer to them. That should give us a clearer shot at it."
"Aye." Garreth was already bending to climb down. "And it'll give that big black whoreson a clearer run at us, too." He leaped nimbly down to the ground, leaving Uther, hampered by his armour, to descend more slowly, but once both were on the ground, they struck out directly towards the sounds of the deafening commotion ahead of them.
The going was difficult, and despite the fact that they knew the bear was directly ahead of them, there were moments when the vagaries of sound made it seem as though the noise had passed them by and lay behind them. They pushed forward, ignoring the apparent evidence of their ears and aware that they had no dire need to be silent; the bear's own bellowing would mask the sounds of their progress. And then, quite suddenly, they were at the edge of the dense vegetation, and a clearing lay in front of them, formed by a spreading mound of scree that had fallen from the cliff that now faced them. The bear's back was to them, at the very top of the scree mound less than thirty paces from where they stood, and it stood upright on its hind legs, vainly, frantically attempting to reach the cringing figure that clung to the cliff face just beyond its reach. Uther tried to see the man's face, but a rough outcropping of rock kept most of the man's head hidden.