A Scoundrel's Song

17

In one of Niico's more humane moments, he unhitched the horse before scrambling up the tree to escape from certain death from the bear that had caught him almost unawares. He didn't even know there were any bears in Larissa. From his vantage point, not near high enough out of the bear's reach, he noticed tell-tale signs that the bear had escaped captivity. Scars upon its fur from the use of whips and sticks.

Also, and this probably was the most damning proof, it wore a collar. A broken chain dangling from the collar tapped the bear's paws as it paid great attention to Niico's bag, where it upturned everything, huge claws ripping at the material, and sniffed at the mushrooms Niico had brought with him to eat. It didn't appear to find them appealing. Then it sat on its haunches and stared up toward Niico, curious.

Niico felt certain the bear would grow bored, eventually, and, from up here, Niico had a good view of events unfolding down the slope. Maldani had taken to training Akafa and Antioni in the use of the spears that he oh-so conveniently had beside the, also convenient, pair of boats at the water's edge. Everything felt a little too convenient. Soon, very soon, Maldani would send his companions out upon that lake, throwing away their lives so the old man could get his prize. The fabled treasure of a Sirencci.

The bear appeared to have grown bored sitting there looking up at Niico, as expected. However, instead of wandering away to find food that it wouldn't turn its nose up at, it had decided to stand upon its hind legs and lean upon Niico's tree, sniffing the air. Niico didn't need this interruption. If Maldani started his plan, Niico needed to have the ability to move and loot the Sirencci's lair before the old man.

"Shoo! Go away!" Niico flapped his hand at the bear, then pointed in a random direction. "Look! Over there! Rabbits! Yum. Go. Fetch."

At first, the bear appeared to fall for Niico's genius act of misdirection. It turned its great head but then turned back. It pushed powerful front legs against the tree, bouncing away from the trunk, before dropping back against the tree, sending shudders through the branches, leaves rustling, and Niico thinking that now may turn out as a good time as any to panic.

Niico's problem lay in the fact that he felt fairly certain that bears could, in actual fact, climb trees. He couldn't say for sure, but this bear had a look in its eyes that spoke of great intelligence and cunning. For a bear. Either that, or he saw hunger within those expressive eyes. Had Niico not left his throwing knives in the bag, or, indeed, had not scrambled up the tree without the bag itself, he could have used them to dissuade the creature. Or angered it. More likely the latter option.

He couldn't allow his impending death through consumption by bear to stop him from his biggest priority, however. He doubted he could stop the bear killing him if he tried and bears were notorious for not falling for well-reasoned arguments from gilded tongues of far more intelligent creatures, but, if he was lucky, he may yet survive. And, if he did survive, there was plunder down there, somewhere, upon the lake.

The distances between this tree and the others around him were too great to leap, heroically, from tree to tree and he wasn't the most agile of people anyway. As the tree shuddered once again, a portentous creak drifting up to him from the roots, Niico calculated his chances of dropping down and running. He could do it. If he had someone else that he could trip up, by complete accident, and leave for the bear to have its fun with. Alone, he doubted he could reach the next tree to climb.

"Look, I'm sure we can come to some accommodation." He looked down into the eyes of the bear. "Would you, perhaps, suffer from a thorn in a paw that I can remove and gain your everlasting gratitude? Perhaps I could find and kill those who caused your suffering and imprisonment? Are you, by any chance, a bear that only eats vegetation? I'm told it's almost as filling and nutritious as meat and it's far less likely to upset the people you're attempting to eat."