Verena's Whistle: Varangian Descendants Book I by K. Panikian (essential reading txt) 📗

headed west. I stared for a long moment, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

I waved Julian over. “I see one set of bear-looking prints, maybe a bauk, here. But here and here, look, are those boots?”

Julian started for a moment and then nodded. “Boots with no treads, I think. Definitely not machine-made.”

“I think a bauk, or maybe more than one, split off from the bes group. Maybe it was hungry? The Varangian unit split too. Two of them continued following the bes cohort, and two of them went after the bauk.”

Dmitri beamed at me from his side of the trail. “You are a very smart girl.”

I guess that meant he agreed with me. “Julian and Theo, you two keep following the besy. If you start to catch up to them too closely, fall back and wait for us. Owen and I will follow the bauk and kill it, then rejoin you. Remember, the besy are the prize, not the Varangians. Do not engage.”

I turned to Dmitri and he spoke before me, “I will go with you and Owen,” he said. I started to shake my head and he added, “You cannot stop me.”

Well, that was true enough. I pointed my finger at the snow and said, “If you go with us, you have to follow orders. If I say hide, you hide. If I say run, you—”

“Yes, yes, I will run. I will obey you.”

Theo passed over a handful of MREs and an extra water canteen and I put them in my backpack.

“I have a tent,” Dmitri said, patting his own backpack.

I sighed and Theo smirked at me.

THE bauk trail meandered through the trees, steadily heading west, and we followed it for what felt like hours. The human prints followed it too, until suddenly, they veered back to the north and I lost sight of them over the ridge.

I pointed out the diversion to Owen and Dmitri and then we continued on. Finally, we reached a rocky overhang and the tracks skirted around, heading down the slope to the ravine below. I crawled out onto the ledge and peered down the mountainside. Dmitri and Owen inched up next to me and we scanned the trees below for movement.

Owen saw it first, crouched by the edge of a frozen creek. It was digging through the ice and pulling things out of the dark water. Long grass? A vegetarian ogre? No, I decided, seeing the grass wriggle in the snow. Eels.

The bauk sucked down a few handfuls of the long, skinny fish and then sat back in the snow, resting on its haunches.

I turned to Owen and said, “What do you think? Want to try out your wolf form in an actual fight?”

He nodded, looking eager.

I turned to Dmitri on my other side and said, “You need to stay here.”

“Sure,” he answered. “No problem. Enjoy yourselves!”

I gave him a funny look and Owen and I crawled backward off the rock. He stripped and I put his clothes in my backpack once again. He seized the wolf pommel of his sword and transformed.

Berserker Owen led the way around the rock and we were soon under the cliff, following the bauk footprints down the slope to the creek. We moved as silently as we could, but the crunching snow soon gave us away. Owen’s form was huge, but he moved more gracefully than I did.

Beside the creek, the bauk looked up and its snout quivered. It lumbered to its feet and let go a sort of coughing bark. It focused its rage-filled eyes solely on Owen and started forward aggressively in the snow. Its long arms brushed the snow aside.

Owen started swinging his sword, back and forth, like a pendulum in front of his body. The bauk lowered its horns and charged. Owen waited until the bauk was almost on him and then stepped away. He spun and thrust his longsword in a sudden movement to the right and raked it along the bauk’s left flank.

The bauk let out a bellowing roar and stopped its charge. Blood dripped down the fur of its leg. It was now several steps past Owen and it turned its head to look at me. I drew my saber and bared my teeth at it. It took another step in my direction and then a frenzied whirlwind of gray energy tackled it.

His sword forgotten in one hand, Owen tore into the bauk with his teeth. The bauk bit back and clawed at Owen’s body, but it was no match for Owen’s rage. In a powerful move, he crushed its throat between his jaws and shook the bauk once, hard, audibly snapping its neck.

He dropped the bauk body into the bloody snow and started stabbing it, over and over again, with his sword. His growls were deep and aggressive.

“Owen,” I called out.

He stopped hacking at the body and looked up at me with unseeing eyes. His yellow gaze was menacing; he snarled at me and stook a step forward.

I whistled. I called to the gold spark of his spirit with a soft, soothing melody. “Peace,” I whistled, “Safe.” I took a couple of steps in his direction and kept my tune weaving through the air. I opened my hands in front of me so he could see I held no weapon. His gold spark throbbed for me and he whimpered, and then dropped his sword. He crumpled into the snow.

I let go of my whistle and ran to his side, running my eyes quickly up and down his body to make sure the bauk hadn’t hurt him. His skin was unmarked.

I turned my head up to the rocky outcrop above and waved my arms at Dmitri. He stood and disappeared from sight, heading around the outcropping.

The two of us got Owen dressed again and I laid him on the emergency blanket beside the stream so he was out of the snow. I thought hard; I wasn’t sure how long he would sleep. His total time as the