Timber Nineteenth, 1055
Well, that was exciting.
I have spent a fair amount of time building onto the second floor of the house, and I was in the process of collecting wood for the wall of what is to become my study, should I ever require one.
I had put a few logs in place, and then gone out for more lumber. When I came back, there was a black bear sitting in the hallway! It seems the beast must have smelled some of my food, and had come through the open door when I was out getting more lumber.
As soon as I saw the thing I immediately dropped the logs I had been carrying and went back outside, closing the door behind me. I could still hear it rooting around in there, and I couldn't afford to let it get at my hard-earned food stocks. I don't care how much that tallow stew has congealed, it's still mine. Having only my axe at hand, I tried pick up a small shield I had worked on for just such an occasion, but my hand would have no part in it.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to calm my thoughts, and went back inside.
I found the beast in the corridor leading to my food stores, and readied myself for the fight to come. Pax and Pandora had followed me in, their hackles raised and teeth bared in that primal show of defence. I, too, felt my lips pulling back as my teeth gritted and my hand tightened its grip on my axe. This was not going to be easy.
The bear saw us, and began lumbering slowly down the corridor towards us. As soon as it was close enough, I decided that letting anything that big take initiative was probably going to be a bad thing, and so I hefted my axe into a ready position and charged with all my might into the beast, swinging my axe with as much force as I could muster. As I came, the bear rose up on its haunches in preparation for a swift and powerful swipe with its claws, but I was too fast. As I threw myself into the warm fur of the bear, my axe came down and buried itself deep, oh so deep, into the creature's chest.
Utterly taken aback, the bear simply stopped moving for a few moments, before its eyes finally rolled backwards into its head and its legs gave way as the massive hulking body of the bear went crashing to the floor. Blood bubbled up from the bear's mouth, the very dark and very red blood that comes from the lungs, and it finally gurgled something which may have been an attempt at a growl, a roar, or merely a whimper of pain.
Pax and Pandora rushed forward to rip at the bulky felsh of the beast, but it was already dead. No amount of tough skin or willpower could keep the inevitable from happening, as more blood frothed out of both the creature's mouth and the new mouth I had carved for it in its chest. Not wanting the creature to suffer any more than it had to, I pulled my axe free in a spray of blood from the now unplugged chest wound and brought it down on the bear's neck, cutting the head of cleanly.
I stood there for a moment, mulling over what had just happened. A bear had come straight into my home, and I had fought with it instead of letting it have its way with my food stores, possibly leading to hard times come winter. I had split its very chest open, as the spreading pool of blood could easily attest. I had completed nature's second test, and I didn't even get scratched.
My hand throbbed in the cold autumn draft that flew freely into the house as I stood over the corpse of the mighty animal, the flow of blood already slowing as the shredded lump of flesh that was once its heart stopped its futile attempts at bleeding. I let my breath out in a long, slow exhalation that turned into a small cloud of steam before my face. Hard times had come, harder times were coming.
I think I'll manage.
Author
Topic: The Woodsman (Read 13701 times)