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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 112: Slade 288
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 109
Slade did not take his eyes off the larger bear, which he concluded was the mother. She seemed equally wary of him, although she also had to be attentive to the pair of unruly cubs. At some point she stumbled into the other comfort bubble, the one that was cast partly over the stream, and moved the family into that space, crowded on the part that was over the land and still taking advantage of its position to do more fishing, while keeping a close eye on him, maybe a dozen yards distant. He had concluded that neither of them intended harm to the other, and thought that the bear must have in its own way reached the same conclusion, but that there was a difference between belief and certainty, at least in this instance. Of course, eventually the bubble would pop--no way to know how many hours it would last, but it had already lasted a few and Shella had renewed the one in which they were settled during that time, so he expected the bear would eventually realize that the warm spot had reverted to being cold and would probably leave. Meanwhile, they kept their eyes on each other.
Slade would later conclude that this was why neither of them saw the trouble coming. It was, of course, white on white, but out of the corner of his eye he realized that something was moving toward them fast. At first he thought avalanche, but then he managed to focus on the leading edge. He tried not to shout, but simply said, “Shella? Insignificancy.” Then he cast his own, hoping he was not too late.
A pack of arctic wolves descended on the bears. The mother reared up and roared, but the pack seemed to find courage in their number. Fortunately they raced past the Slades--the spell must be working--and went directly for the cubs.
The mother was going to have her paws full. Slade wondered something he had wondered before. He knew that the insignificancy spell caused enemies to regard him as unimportant; it was a guess that the wolves wouldn’t attack him, but it seemed to be working. On the other hand, he knew that if he attacked someone affected by the spell, he ceased to be insignificant. What he didn’t know is whether if he fired his blaster at someone they would necessarily recognize him as the threat, or indeed whether entering the combat against one of the wolves would so break the spell that they could all see him.
He drew the blaster, but hesitated. If the spell failed, he was going to want it. Meanwhile, he had been feeling a growing kinship with this mother bear, trying to survive and keep her young alive in this harsh world, and so had a very strong urge to help. She was outnumbered, but more significantly than that the wolves had divided their attack between her two offspring, and she could not easily defend both.
He took aim and pulled the trigger. A wolf that had attached itself to the throat of the nearer of the cubs was suddenly knocked loose and rolled in the snow.
Twenty shots per clip, better in some ways than Joe’s, and he had six clips. Still, his recharger had to be plugged into something, even if it was only a cigarette lighter socket on a car, so he needed to be conservative.
The wolf picked itself up and shook the snow loose. It was clearly injured, and confused, but not smart enough either to seek the source of its attacker or break off the attack. It lunged again at the cub.
Role playing games had taught him that there were two strategies when facing hordes of combatants. You could try to injure them all and hope they would realize they were overmatched and so retreat. That was not usually effective; wounded enemies were usually nearly as dangerous as uninjured ones, and continued to deal damage against you. The better strategy was to kill them, one at a time, because each one that fell was one less attacker to face. He put the next shot directly in the face of the springing beast, and it was enough, as it went down.
There was a streak of red on the white fur of the bear cub; it had been injured. There was nothing he could do about that but prevent it from being injured more severely. He shot another of the wolves. This one took three hits before it lay unmoving in the snow; it had turned its face toward him after the second shot, but whether it had become aware of his location or simply recognized that the attack had come from his direction he could not guess. He reminded himself that this was not invisibility, and that insignificancy had a number of advantages on that score. This was apparently one he had not previously considered--the wolves knew exactly where he was, and could see him and smell him and hear him, but all that sensory information was being ignored because the spell caused their small brains to class him as irrelevant, unimportant. If he waded into the battle with his sword, they would undoubtedly recognize the danger quickly, but as he threw invisible balls of kinetic energy at them he remained a nothing, perhaps a tree.
He remembered a short story he had read in high school in which a bum was trying to get himself arrested so he could spend the few winter months in a warm jail cell, so he threw a brick through a shop window and waited for the police. When an officer arrived, he tried to surrender, but the cop ignored him and instead pursued a man somewhere down the street who was running to catch a bus. Insignificancy was a powerful thing.
Counting down his shots, he took the wolves out usually with two or three hits at a time. Whether the mother bear understood what was happening he doubted, but she seemed to recognize that the other cub was the one who most needed her assistance, and so she fought the wolves attacking it. He didn’t have time to watch, but he did glance over a couple times and perceived that she was a formidable fighter, and although he believed he could defeat her he hoped he would not have to prove it.
Eventually five injured wolves raced away into the snow. Slade estimated between fifteen and twenty on the ground. He thought that a lot for a pack of wolves, but then as far as he could tell their primary prey must be polar bears and mammoths, and a half dozen wolves would be hard-pressed to defeat either of those. The mother wolf came over and licked the wounds of the nearer cub; Slade felt sorry that he had not prevented it from being injured at all, but then, it was not only alive, it was on its feet.
The bear dragged one of the larger lupine bodies up the slope on the far side of the stream, and settled down with her cubs to eat.
We might be here a while, he thought.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #533: Characters Traveling. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
