Ice Claw

came. Zabala must have fed him when food was scarce on the ground. Max took one of the hares and presented it to the eagle. The curved beak snatched it. Max ducked as the wings unfolded and beat the air. Transferring the hare from beak to talon, the eagle flapped lazily away, glided another thirty meters, then settled on a rocky outcrop to enjoy its meal.

Max rubbed the strain out of his arm and looked around. He wasn’t sure about raptors, but animals were creatures of habit. They would hunt and sleep when their body clock told them to. The eagle wouldn’t be the only creature that was in close proximity. He scanned the snowfields and broken ground that staggered the mountainside. Just wait. See if anything moves. Be patient. Stay still. There. A smudge of movement. Max cupped his hands each side of his eyes, creating tunnel vision, blocking out extraneous light and focusing his attention.

A couple hundred meters away, a huge brown bear, its dark coat smudged with pale, almost blond fur, stood to its full height, which Max reckoned must have been almost three meters. It dropped down onto all fours, scraped away at the snow and nuzzled the ground. The bear had used the boulders as cover, moving closer, making sure that the place it visited was safe. This human scent was different from the usual, staler smell. Now it searched for food.

Max watched the bulk rise up again. That bear could move at a hell of a rate. Odds were it’d be on Max like a swarm of wild bees on honey if it decided to charge. Just how hungry was it? The bears usually stored up fruit and berries for their winter hibernation, but with climate change, nature’s cycle was all over the place. Spring flowers were out on the lower slopes already, so maybe he’d have eaten farther down. The brown bear was a protected species, but that didn’t stop farmers from shooting them if they thought their sheep were threatened. Max watched as the bear sashayed towards him. Its shoulders rolled in a swaggering display of muscle. It stopped every few meters to sniff the air.

Perhaps it was the bear that had smashed up the hut. If Brother Zabala had been feeding animals, then they still expected him to be here. It was more like a nature preserve than a monk’s retreat.

Fifty meters away the bear stopped, stood on its hind legs and roared. Max froze. It didn’t seem like a friendly greeting. OK. Don’t run or do anything stupid. And don’t look it in the eye. Humans often got in the way of wild creatures and failed to understand animals’ aggressive behavior towards them. It was simple. You’re in their way and on their patch. The bear moved closer still, its head swaying like a radar scan picking up Max’s movements and smell.

Time to go. But something held him. A moment of instant recognition that stopped him from backing slowly away. The breeze had shifted. The bear’s warm, musty smell wafted downwind to Max. Damp fur like a wet dog and a rich earthy tang like fallen leaves in a forest. The smell immediately conjured the image he’d experienced in the avalanche. The sense of being. And of feeling a powerful strength he knew he did not have as a boy. As if he had been a bear.

Now, mesmerized by the towering bulk and trapped by his memory, Max broke the golden rule. He locked eyes with one of the most dangerous creatures in the world. He saw the incisors as its snout pulled back, saliva dripping, eyes glaring. If it was a challenge this puny creature wanted, then the bear would oblige with all its fury. Max heard the thud of its weight as it dropped onto all fours-and charged.

Bears can run as fast as a horse, their awesome strength can rip a car apart if they’re searching for food-and they are not inclined to listen to reason.

Max made an instant decision. He knew he couldn’t outrun or fight the bear, but he could offer it an alternative to ripping him apart. Max’s vision blurred as he dived to the ground. The bear grunted and roared as it sped towards him. Five meters, three … another stride and it would have him. Max would be under its paws in seconds. Twisting onto his back, he kicked both legs against the bunker’s wooden doors that held the food store.

Wood splintered. One gate came free of its hinges. Max spun away. The bear’s power was on him. Think hedgehog! a voice in his brain shouted at him. Roll tight, don’t resist.

It took enormous willpower, but Max did as the voice instructed. The bear’s paws rolled him, its slobbering jaws and rancid breath snuffled into his chest, but Max kept his arms tightly locked across his face and body and his knees tucked up. Someone kicked him hard; at least, that was how it felt-the bear had cuffed him, like a plaything- and he was lifted off the ground by the force of the blow.

Max was not going to survive this assault.

Risking a peek through his arms, he saw that the bear had knocked him a couple of meters away, and for some unknown reason hesitated in following through on the attack. Its head lifted; it sniffed the air and then gazed back to Max. The next few seconds were vital for Max’s survival. He couldn’t make the safety of the hut, and the bear hadn’t gone for the alternative offering of food from behind the storage bins’ shattered door, which was now five long strides away.

There was one chance.

Max stood up, faced the monster and yelled as loudly as he could. The yell became a roar, thunder coming from his belly, booming in his chest, which bellowed like a foghorn out of his mouth.

The startled bear stopped dead in its tracks.

Max lunged for the storage bunker. One, two, three paces … four …

The bear hurled itself forward, maddened by its escaping prey.

Five!

Max barreled into the dead carcasses. Sheep, goat and deer torsos, haunches and heads. Some were frozen more than others, and the offal stank. No sooner had he squirmed into the charnel house than the bear plunged after him. The low stone structure restricted its power, allowing only a front paw and its head to get into the shattered doorway. Max kicked back, pushing himself farther out of reach. But then his back thumped into the wall. The bunker was only a meter and a half deep; another big push and the bear could winkle him out, hooking a claw into his head as if it were a ripe plum.

The bear’s head burrowed into the carcasses and yielded to the instinctive temptation. Dragging out a haunch of deer, it gripped the meat in its jaws and sauntered away-its anger expended, the urgent need for food satisfied.

Max waited a few moments, making sure the bear had retreated back to the distant rocks. He crawled out of the storage bunker, stretched the tension from his muscles and checked himself over. The bear had done little more than play with him. A slash of claw marks had caught across the back of his jacket, releasing feathers, which caught the breeze like dandelion seeds. Max felt the back of his head; his hand came away dabbed with blood. His clothes smelled, and the stench seemed to have penetrated his skin and hair.

The bear attack could have left Max totally helpless up here. A shattered leg, a broken back and he’d have lain out on this mountaintop only hours away from death. Eagle, wolf, vulture and storm would have stripped him to the bone. He’d been lucky.

Brother Zabala had been a wild man of the mountains all right; his survival skills kept him alive all the way up here, but he’d also forged a bond with these wild animals. You had to be tough and intelligent to live here and achieve that.

His mountain wilderness must have presented dangers every day, but it had been a more lethal intruder who caused his death. The violence of a human killer was more frightening than the basic instincts of a wild animal.

Now that Max had found the monk’s sanctuary and seen the photograph, the man was even more of a mystery. Perhaps becoming a recluse was not a simple, straightforward choice. A well-educated man, Zabala had chosen to hide away and keep his secret with him.

And he had passed that secret on to Max-Lucifer and the pendant.

Well, Max had come this far. He had discovered who the monk was, where and how he lived, all of which had given him more information about the man. He looked across the peaks. The snow would come in by morning. The long, soft line of precipitation-filled clouds on the horizon would push in from the sea, be squeezed by the cold mountain air and dump snow from here down to the lower slopes. Max could survive on what food was stored here, but he might be snowbound for days. Survival-induced adrenaline seeped away, leaving a deep-seated tiredness. He needed to push himself now, because otherwise it would be easy to light a fire, find a corner of the hut and sleep for a very long time. Max had to get himself together, clean up and make his way to the coast.