(1 year ago… dawn)

“Come my boy!” Harold smiled and placed a large hand on Nathanial’s shoulder and guided the young man over towards the circle of hunters. There were eight of them, Nathan’s cousins, brothers, uncles and his father naturally, and today was the first he had been allowed to accompany them on a true hunt. They were going out to provide meat to smoke and cure for the coming winter, hides to keep the people warm against the biting cold that was coming. Nathanial couldn’t be prouder for today he became a full man in the eyes of the rest of the village.

He stood, his head slightly bowed as the oldest man in the village, a man called only the Bear-father by the others, led them in a silent prayer of thanks for the bounty, assuring that they took only from great need, and asking for protection for the men about to go to the hunt. He stood in mute silence as the old man tottered over towards the group, a bowl in one hand the other clutching a great staff. One arm was extended out to the staff, a clawed hand gripping it desperately to keep his bowed, gnarled body upright, a soft wheezing from his lungs from the effort of just walking. To be honest the man had always frightened Nathanial, and he still did. He smelled funny and always seemed to great pain. Men were not supposed to live so long… so long that their bodies failed them in this way… yet the Bear-father had, and so he was awarded great respect by the rest of the village.

The man stopped in front of Nathanial first, and dipped a single finger into the bowl, coming up with his thumb dripping with red viscous liquid and pressed it to his forehead smearing a small line. It was sticky, cold, and thick, and he could feel it running slightly down towards his eyebrows but he dared not wipe it away despite the disquiet it caused in the pit of his stomach. He knew what it was. It was blood, blood of the Bear itself. Feeling the eyes of the rest of the hunters, and the other villagers behind him Nathanial forced himself to swallow the bit of bile threatening to push it’s way up his throat and reached out taking the wooden bowl muttering the words of the prayer over it, echoing the priest line for line, and then lifted the bowl to his lips filling his mouth with the blood. He could feel it there, the salty bite of it, the previously unknown taste of it thick as he swallowed it. A single drop rolled its way down his smooth chin and he gasped and opened his eyes.

The Bear-father smiled nodding his approval and gripped Nathanial’s shoulder briefly before making his way over towards the next man in line and repeated the small ritual seven more times before the party was ready to depart. The village had been here as long as anyone remembered. Stories passed down said that the first who had come to Vale found a land of fertile land, where wildlife thrived having been driven from their previous homeland by barbarians from over the mountains. The story went that two bears, Ursa and Sira had left fish for the starving villages that first winter, and as the snow grew taller and higher and it seemed certain that all would perish from the cold, Ursa and Sira had sacrificed their lives, so that their meat and their fur might protect the people and see them threw until spring. They had survived, and now time later beyond remembering, they were strong still, and still they gave thanks to brother Bear who protected the village to this day.

It was time to depart. The hunters walked silently out of the village together into the woods. As the brother bear did not speak, neither would the hunters while they took the strength of the Bear into themselves on the hunt.

(afternoon)

Nathanial flexed his hand against the wooden shaft of his spear. He could feel the sun beating down on the back of his neck, and then the cooling effect of the shade as his crept forward with an almost painful slowness. They were spread out, in a carefully orchestrated pattern as time honored and tested as anything that they did in the village. It would happen in several stages, a group of hunters would wait upwind of the prey, and then a smaller group would rush out from upwind startling the animals towards the first group which would be waiting with nets, traps, or spears. Today Nathanial was in the second group, it would be his job to get as close as possible to the small group of deer feeding in the small clearing now just a few feet away in a patterned fashion. First his brother would leap up yelling driving them… if they bolted the wrong direction Nathanial would come at them screaming from this direction forcing them to run directly towards the rest of the hunters… where hopefully they would capture and fell at least one or two of the beasts.

His brother did his job without a hitch, charging out of the underbrush a split second after the first deer raised its head, obviously sensing something in the air. But that was when everything had gone tragically wrong. There was a bestial roar as the disturbed bear, obviously roused from a sleep, broke out of the brush as the deer scattered taking the hunters by surprise. Nathanial watched in horror as a clawed hand swept across his brother’s head taking off half his face and sending the large man through the air like a broken wooden doll. The other hunters rushed in hurling spears, firing arrows, trying to distract the bear so that they could get to his brother. Nathanial watched as another roar, a sound that seemed to echo down in his very soul, broke out from the beasts maw as the arrows and spears failed to pierce its thick fur and hide and it turned on the other hunters sending them scattering… falling back. He watched as his Father went down underneath the massive creature a snap of its jaws silencing his screams of fear and pain forever.

Something primal, bestial awoke within Nathanial, and the instinctive fear that had rooted him in the spot gave way to something darker. He charged out of the underbrush gripping his spear tightly as he rammed it home in the beast’s side. It let out a roar as hot fresh blood gushed onto him, the feel so different from the earlier smear that had been put on his forehead. Even the taste was different somehow, more real.. vital as it splashed over his mouth. The bear reared up, taking a swipe at Nathanial that broke his grip on the spear and send him sprawling into the grass and knocked the breath from him. The other hunters attacked the bear again, and Nathanial tried to get to his feet as he watched two of his cousins gutted like fish from a stream and his uncle laying crumbled like a toy, trampled to death by the beast. It was massive, the largest bear he’d ever seen or heard of. Surely it must be the very spirit of Ursa or Sira angered in some way by the people.

Nathanial forced himself back to his feet, his chest and side burning with a cold fire that seemed to suck the air right out of him… but he forced himself forward picking up a fallen spear and charged the beast again, his roar answering that of the bear as red dimmed his vision.

(Present Day.)

Nathanial sat before a fire, his spear clutched between his thighs as he attended to the point with his knife, honing it to a fine edge. The flickering light of the flames caught the pale scar tissue around his muscled shoulder, where the bear’s claw had mauled him that day. It was thick, livid even still, a year later, and the Bear-Father announced its pattern, so reminiscent of the bear’s roaring face, was a mark of special favor from the spirit of Ursa and Sira… as was his survival itself. Of the eight hunters four has been brought back to the village alive. Only Nathanial had survived the wounds.

He leaned forward, his lips puckering slightly as he blew the wooden shavings off into the fire watching them wither and crackle as they hit the flames. With the death of his father, and the nature of his survival, his people had hailed him as the leader of the village almost without decent. His first act, still barely able to use that arm, had been to lead another group into the woods to hunt the bear; for three days they had tracked it through the woods to no avail, it had vanished into the mists… protected seemingly by the God’s themselves. Nathanial had often gone hunting for it sense only seeing it again once, when man and beast had stared each other across an uncrossable ravine the scar on Nathanial’s shoulder and the one from his own spear in the beast’s side where no fur would grow on the bear seeming to link them. He had vowed to kill that bear, and one day he would, and bury its fur in the grave of his father.

Now he had sworn his village to follow the Pagi, overruling the Bear-Father’s objection. He did not believe the people of Vale should involve themselves in such affairs, seeming not to realize that events such as these could not be ignored. The Barbarians, always an ever present threat for the people even in their Spirit protected home, were being driven back, a united effort under a High King of sorts. There were still mixed feelings about it through the whole village, but Nathanial had been resolute, taking himself and half a dozen young men to answer the call to battle when it had been called.

Battles had been won and lost, blood spilt and shed. But ultimately the Gaul’s appeared to be finally gaining the upper hand, opening new lands for their growing population to cultivate. The march of civilization appeared unstoppable. It was anything but of course, and that was exactly the reason that Nathanial had brought these men here to fight. He had seen first hand how capricious the brother Bear could be and over and beyond that the people of Vale could either join the Gaul’s, embrace this change, or face the very real possibility of being consumed by it by one side or the other. No, Nathanial would take his chances this way… as he had done his entire life. Fighting.

“If you sharpen that spear any more Nat I’ll suspect you’re taking up needlecraft!”
One of the men, Elrik quipped silently around a bite of oats mixed with blood. It made a kind of gruel, it did not particularly taste good, but it was sustaining, fortifying. Nathanial smiled a bit and lowered his spear as he looked over to the man and nodded.

“Aye, perhaps I am Elrik, I plan to sew your mouth shut so that our enemies will no longer hear you coming!”

The group chuckled softly and went back to their meals as they watched Nathanial rise and walk off alone away from the fire leaving his spear behind, only his knife tucked underneath his belt. They were accustomed to this. He would kneel alone, away from the group and pray to Smertrios the god of War, and to the Brother Bear for protection for them all in the battle to come, and as they knew… for he did it every night since that day a year ago, renewed his vow to kill the Great Bear.

The fire had burned low and the others of the small war band had lapsed into sleep. Nathanial joined them, knowing he would need his rest for the contest to come.