Jainan came away from the trees, weighing the branch in his hands. “Is that ice going to hold us?”
“We don’t have to cross it,” Kiem said. “Just follow its banks so it can’t come up behind us. Let’s go.” He waved Jainan in front of him and followed him, checking back over his shoulder every couple of steps. “If you see it, yell and look threatening. It’s not that dangerous if we can scare it off.”
“Not that dangerous,” Jainan repeated. He grounded the end of the stick beside him as he walked, while Kiem kept his—still with the leaves on—raised by his side, in the hope that looked threatening. “But that one attacked us. Do these things kill people?”
“Sometimes,” Kiem said. “Occasionally.”
“So, yes,” Jainan said. His hand moved over the branch restlessly. “You could have mentioned these before.”
“I didn’t think we’d meet any!” Kiem said. “They’re pretty rare this far north. Don’t you have bears in the mountains on Thea?” He paused to turn back and stare at a patch of shadow by a bush that caught his eye, reassured himself it was just a shadow, and turned back.
Jainan waited for him to catch up. “Bears where I grew up are shy and retiring unless they have cubs,” he said. “Also they have fur and four legs. That thing is an oversize reptile.”
“What kind of bear has fur?” Kiem thought he heard something and turned back to scan the trees again.
“Kiem,” Jainan said sharply.
Kiem spun around. Jainan pointed to the side, far from where Kiem had been looking. A black shape was frozen just shy of the tree line, low to the ground, its blunt, scaled snout pointed toward them.
“Shit,” Kiem said. “Let’s, uh, let’s move back slowly.” It only took a few steps to put himself between Jainan and the bear. He held up the branch in front of him. The leaves swayed on the twigs; he had a bad feeling the bear wouldn’t find it that threatening. “If it comes nearer, get ready to yell.”
“There’s not much room,” Jainan said from behind him, tense. “If we move back much we’ll hit the river. The ice looks thin.”
“Then … sideways,” Kiem said, trying to keep his eyes on the bear, which was raising and lowering one of its hind legs as if testing the ground. “We heroically retreat … sideways.”
“Yes,” Jainan said. “We should separate.” His voice was farther away than it should be, and Kiem realized he was striding away at a tangent, widening the gap between them, on a trajectory that took him diagonally away from the river.
“Wait, not closer to it!”
“We can confuse it if we’re in different places!” Jainan called back.
“Wait! Jainan!” Kiem moved his head, and at that moment, the bear charged.
Kiem stumbled, caught off-balance as he ordered his body to sprint. He saw, as if in slow motion, Jainan stop, turn toward the bear, put up his tree branch in front of him. Kiem pushed forward as if moving through treacle. Only then did he turn his head to see the bear trundle and curve in its charge.
It wasn’t going for Jainan. It was going for him.
He didn’t have time to shout. The bear was on him: a shattering impact of scales and teeth, a blast of foul breath. Kiem thrust the branch desperately between them as the impact threw him back. He tried to catch his footing, but he was already falling.
He hit the ground. There was a jarring, splintering crash that he thought for one horrible moment was his bones, but he couldn’t feel pain. Then he registered ice at the same moment the cold water hit him like a weapon.
He gasped and flung himself forward at the river bank, dropping the stick. The cold was viscerally shocking, nearly stopping his heart, and for a moment he forgot about—
—the bear. The bear should have been on him. But there was no ripping pain, not yet. Instead it was several feet away, by Jainan, in a blur of movement. Kiem heard a grunt of rage as his brain caught up with his ears. Jainan stepped back out of reach of the armored claw, spun for momentum, and brought his makeshift quarterstaff around for another blow.
The bear reeled back. One of its paws came up to its snout while it scrabbled itself back with the other five. It and Jainan regarded each other warily.
Kiem tried to hold still in the water as he got his footing on the rocks below, panting in shallow gasps from the cold. The bear moved, but Jainan was quicker: he lunged forward and cracked the stick with surgical precision across one of the bear’s eyes.
A screech of animal pain filled the space between the trees. The bear stumbled back on its six legs, ducking its head away from Jainan. Jainan was in a defensive stance, as if he expected it to spin and attack, but it was already skittering away across the snow.
Kiem pulled himself up the bank. His teeth chattered and he still couldn’t breathe properly, but he managed to get one sodden leg out of the water. And then hands were under his arms, dragging him out until he lay on the bank in the snow.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Jainan fell to his knees beside him. “Kiem, I’m so sorry, I thought it would go for me if it saw me moving.”
The note in Jainan’s voice galvanized Kiem into moving. He sat up, shivering, and resisted the urge to curl up. “Y-you meant it to go for you?”
“No,” Jainan said. “Yes. I don’t know. I thought I could draw it off. I didn’t mean it to be anywhere near you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Take my gloves.”
Kiem tried to wrap his arms over his chest, but it wasn’t helping. “Jainan,” he said, “that w-was incredible. You just fought off a bear. Shit, it’s cold. I d-don’t want your gloves,” he added, as Jainan tugged Kiem’s soaked gloves off his hands and replaced them with his own.
“Mm.” Jainan’s talkativeness had apparently run out. He gripped Kiem’s wrists and pulled him to his feet. Kiem followed the direction clumsily, too cold and soaked to do much thinking, and wasn’t expecting a full-on embrace.
He was too surprised to move. Jainan wrapped his arms around him, heedless of the fact that Kiem’s dripping coat was probably soaking river water into his own clothes. Kiem was too cold to feel much. It wasn’t even noticeably warmer, except on his face, where Jainan’s presence created a shelter against the breeze. Kiem just shut his eyes and drank in the feeling of Jainan close to him.
It lasted only short seconds. Jainan let go and said, “We’ll need to set up the tent. At least we saved the heating canisters.”
“R-right,” Kiem said. He resisted the urge to wrap his arms around himself again and forced himself to think. “Right. Okay. Maybe not here. Let’s get a bit farther.”
“Will it come back?” Jainan said. He picked up the backpack—Kiem hadn’t noticed him shed it to fight—and hovered by Kiem’s side.
He was obviously waiting for Kiem to get his shit together and actually start walking, however much Kiem’s whole body ached. Jainan had just fought off a bear. Kiem was only cold. “Shouldn’t,” Kiem said, finally clearing the lowest bar for effort and putting one foot in front of another. “You scared it off. They only go for prey that doesn’t f-fight back.” He clamped his jaw shut to stop his teeth chattering.