It was coming through the trees to her left, and she hesitated. Was it Bjorn? She needed to avoid him, but could she walk away from this? Leave him to fight whatever it was he fought and not help? A snarl, low and rumbling, sent a prickle of fear up her arms. That was Bjorn as she had never heard him. Dangerous . . . deadly. She shivered. What was it he fought? Grateful for the dark brown of her cloak, and the soft soles of her leather boots, Astrid crept forward, staying close to the trees. “Bearman,” she heard a strange, grating voice say, and she crouched down, working her way slowly around a large tree to finally see the arena. Out of the corner of her eye, a branch moved to her right, and her heart stopped with fear. She turned slowly to look, but it was nothing but a strangely shaped trunk, the height of a man. She turned her attention back to the clearing. Bjorn faced off against a strange creature. A hulking thing almost twice Bjorn’s height; its eyes black beads, tiny in the massive head, with a long, misshapen nose below.
