The grey wolf's howl echoed shortly around the wall of pine trees, however it was loud enough to slow down the rushing stumping sound coming from the shadow of darkness..

"That should have woken everyone up. I think I also frightened the bears a bit. Their footsteps have slowed down. Yegu light up the bonfire and call everyone."

"Lindvald, do me a favor and warn me next time. My ears are still ringing."

Yegu was fiddling with some branches to light up the large prepared fireplace and as soon the flames started to gradually grow, it was Yegu turn to make Lindvald's ear ringing by blowing on his bone whistle. Yegu and Lindvald gathered with the rest of the villagers in less than ten minutes. Yardai was ordering and directing everyone left and right to their various tasks and positions, before turning to the wolf.

"Wolf Lindvald, could you stay just behind our main archers? If we can't stop the bears long enough from approaching our fences with our arrows, could you hold them back a bit so that our sons can guide the deer to the center of the village. If you hear a short one whistle callout is your sign to back up, so that we can have a clear shot at the bears. Next, in case that you are overrun by both bears, just shout like earlier if you can handle one of them alone."

Lindvald nodded to Yardai, since the villagers had their own ways of protecting themselves and knew each other's abilities the best. Lindvald didn't want to break that bond, so he just went with their plans. Each archer ran to one pillar of the fence and stepped on a snow covered step stool. Lindvald thought at the beginning it was just a support structure for the pillars but he was surprised to find out that it was actually a small elevation ground for aiding their archers. Both Lindvald and  Yegu stood next to each other just outside of the fences, waiting for the white silhouettes to appear out of the darkness. They felt more nervous and the deer behind them started to whine and bellow, signalizing that even the deer now felt the danger in the air.

"Yegu, here they come."

A big roar broke the silence of the night for the second time followed by two giant white balls of fur charging out of the tree shadow and running straight for the deer. As both bears were already half way through the open field, a barrage of arrows fell down from the sky hitting both followed by a second wave. Even with half a dozen arrows sticking out of them, the bears kept on dashing forward. Lindvald growled.

'I knew their bows were the worst, but this bad is new. Their momentum needs to break.'

The grey wolf howled before he launched to the fastest and biggest one of the two bears and took a couple of attempts of biting at their legs or shoulder. The huge bear just sidestepped and dodged Lindvald's bites while swinging some half hearted claws and as soon as the big bear saw an opening to the fences, he just dashed while ignoring the wolf. Lindvald jumped on his back in order to stall his advancement. While the grey wolf held his ground pretty well, the villagers weren't doing so great. The other slightly smaller white bear was already at the fences, clawing and pushing it even though he was still being shot with arrows. However the arrows' power was inconsistent and so weak that most of them just rebounded. The youths' full attention was on holding the herd of deer together and others were opening the gates to let them out of the fences and guiding them into the village. A crackling and crunching sound broke the coordinated callouts of the villagers as the white bear succeeded in breaking through the fences and ran straight to his prey. The young man who was leading and calming the last animals of the herd, had his back turn away from the action. Despite everyone shouting at the young man to run, the well organized strategy just fell apart by the pure chaos that enfolded after the white bear broke through the fences. That resulted in everyone just running in every direction and thus leaving the people uninvolved in the active battle unprotected in the middle of the herd of animals, thus it lead to the youth being absolutely paralyzed when suddenly the white bear appearing behind him, the polar bear stood up like a human on his back leg and slammed his front legs down to crush the out of fear petrified man. The youth closed his eyes as he was expected to be squashed to death before opening them again when he heard a loud roar. As he opened his eyes to see, a grey wolf took a firm bite on the polar bear's front paws. As the white bear was startled by the sudden assault, he stumbled a few steps around, almost losing his balance and being in pain plus he couldn't shake the wolf off, the white bear slammed with his full body weight the wolf to the ground. A shrill whining sound escaped Lindvald as he was crushed underneath the bear's claws, who now free from the grey wolf's bite started to run away while limping, some arrows were flying his way to make sure that he really retreated for that night.

As everyone got to take some deep breaths to calm down and to recollect themselves. Yegu ran towards Temur and wanted to hug the young man while he was sitting on the snow processing what just happened to him.

"Temur, my boy! Thank the heavens!"

"Ah... Yes, f-father. I-if it wasn't for Lind-vald."

Both glanced over to the grey wolf laying on the snow as more villagers surrounded him and examined him, before Yardai jogged towards Yegu.

"He fell unconscious. He must have gotten quite hurt after the bear trampled him. I already sent someone to wake up Grandma and Cotola. I just don't know how we get him back. I guess he will be quite heavy."  

"Let Cotola take a look at him first, while we think of a way to transport him."

"Father, how about..."