Erebus, Bo, and their "murder of crows" perched in the surrounding trees, watching the approaching Wildlings.
Because I shared Erebus's sight, I could see them too. I had used the Find Animal spell to search for humans, so I only realized they also had a polar bear with them when they came into view.
I knew there was at least one warg among them, and it had to be the man riding the bear. Once they came closer, the Wildling warg spotted Erebus and pointed at him.
"Found you. Hello, beautiful. We finally found you."
-Aermir, why is this weirdo calling me beautiful? I'm not beautiful. I'm a handsome raven. I'm a handsome raven.-
"Have you found the owner of these birds?"
"No."
"How can there be no tracks?"
"Really, there are no tracks here, as if no one ever came through. No footprints. How can someone move without leaving any footprints? We don't know where he went."
"Something's wrong here. Wargs never act alone. Every warg has someone protecting him."
"Maybe he isn't as strong as we thought. He might only have one skin, only be strong enough to bond with a bird. Then the only thing he'd be good for is scouting."
"You think someone that weak could tame a bird that big? What even is it? It's not an eagle, anyway, and I've never seen anything like it. It looks like a raven, but it's at least three or four times bigger than an ordinary raven."
Gonard rode his bear closer to the tree where Erebus perched and spoke.
"I think it's a raven. I don't know how it grew so big, but I really want it. But I really want it, and I can't control it until I kill the warg."
As I listened to them, I couldn't find out how they had tracked me, so my only option was to leave one of them alive, preferably the warg.
I prepared two Earth Spike (tegonspi) spells, touched the wall of the burial mound, and cast them at the men closest to me. Two earth spikes as thick as an adult's arm rose from the ground and skewered them.
"Ah!!!"
"Ah!!!"
Both spells struck them squarely in the abdomen, punching large holes in their bellies. They didn't die immediately, but passed out from shock or blood loss, writhing and screaming in pain as they tried to free themselves from the spikes impaling them.
I prepared another two earth spikes and sent them out. This time, one spike pierced two Wildlings at once. Five down, fifteen left.
-Bo, start attacking them. Target the bear first.-
(Gornard's POV)
When I realized the warg had no warband, I was delighted, thinking it would be easy to kill him and steal his tamed beast. This had to be a nightmare, because nothing I saw made any sense. Everything happening before my eyes could only be a nightmare.
First, huge stone spikes began erupting from the ground, impaling half our men, each dying amid screams of agony. Then a raven smaller than the black bird we had tracked, but two or three times larger than an ordinary raven, dove toward me. Something translucent began covering the raven. It rose when it was only three or four meters from me, but it threw something transparent that whistled toward me.
Before I could react, the transparent thing slammed straight into my little bear's head. I flipped off my little bear and fell to the ground from the force of the impact. Like a giant hand, the transparent thing pinned my little bear flat against the ground. I saw it turn and press down hard on my little bear.
My little bear couldn't move until the transparent thing disappeared. Once it vanished, the white fur on the bear's neck was stained dark red with blood, and its thick fur looked as though it had been worn away. My little bear was still alive, but it no longer had the strength to fight.
That damned bird did the same to four of my men, but it was much worse for them. They were all reduced to pulp. While it attacked us, everyone with a bow fought back, but none of our arrows could hit the bird. Every arrow that came close veered off course at the last second.
My other men began scattering in every direction. Fifteen men would die in about a minute, and we still didn't know who was attacking us.
Suddenly, the ground split open, and a boy emerged from underground, his arms, upper body, and head covered in something resembling bark. Behind the boy was a large black dog.
The person responsible for this massacre was a boy of ten or eleven Name Days. This couldn't be real. It had to be a nightmare. He approached my stunned little bear with slow steps and spoke.
"Sorry, big fellow. I'll end your suffering."
"Zagon jelmāz (Summon Lightning)."
Suddenly, despite the cloudless sky, a bolt of lightning struck my bear, and it stopped breathing. Then he turned to me, raised his hand, and spoke.
"Inretio (Entangle)."
Roots began breaking through the ground, then winding around me until I couldn't move at all. This had to be a nightmare. This couldn't be real. How had he done all this? How could he control earth, lightning, and plants? Then he spoke in an emotionless voice.
"How did you track me? I shouldn't have left any traces behind. If you tell me how you tracked me, I'll send you on your way painlessly. Or you can choose not to answer my question, and after a long time spent being tortured, you'll still tell me what I want to know."
"It's your choice. A painless death or a painful one. Which do you choose?"
"I wasn't tracking you. I was tracking him." I pointed at the black bird.
"How? He flew close to the trees, and you don't have any other flying beasts."
"Aren't you a warg? How do you not know? If a warg is strong enough and touches on that beast's traits, we can track the beast as long as it isn't too far away."
"So that's one of the differences between me and a warg."
He sighed deeply and spoke.
"I didn't want to kill you at all. I really am a peace-loving person. Of course, as long as it suits me, I'll even change my route, but you kept coming after me with a determination to die, so I had to oblige and give you your reward."
"One last question. If you can give me a satisfactory answer, I might even consider sparing your life."
Hearing that, a spark of hope immediately flared in my heart, but once I heard his question, that hope was utterly crushed. Now I understood what this monster had come here for.
"Where can I find Direwolves?"
"They don't have a fixed location. They're roaming beasts, and they're very rare."
"They aren't territorial animals, because they're always moving. They don't roam in packs like ordinary wolves, either. They usually travel in pairs. Their packs only number more than two when they have offspring. Usually, when they come to an area, they mingle with the ordinary wolf packs there, then keep wandering. So whether you encounter a Direwolf depends entirely on whether heaven favors you."
I had already accepted my fate.
"Sorry, I can't help."
"Don't worry, my friend. Your answer confirmed many of my guesses. Goodbye..."
He began to smile. Would he let me go?
"Zagon jelmāz (Summon Lightning)."