The crowd didn’t panic, not at first. Each townsperson had their own priority. The palace advisors and executives gathered up the confused Vizier to take him back to the palace and tend the fire. Those who lived in the south, ran there, the fisherman left for their boats and the storekeepers edged through the crowd towards their storehouses. The town had practiced putting out fires many times, it was a hazard they had prepared for. The remaining crowd waited to see if the show would go on.

Tamza looked for Yaseena and the children, but they had disappeared.

Screams from the distance infiltrated the square. Then shouts of men, many men, and the clopping of hooves. Heavy thuds, the shattering of mudbrick, and cracking of wood. The crowd looked around at those they stood next to, baffled. But still, they waited.

“Outsiders on horses are in the town,” a man on one of the higher roofs shouted. “They are coming straight for the square!”

Then, panic. No one knew where to go, so everyone ran in different directions, bumping into each other, stumbling over children.

Tamza grabbed her father’s arm. “The bears, we need to get them back to the enclosure!” She flung open the woollen door of the hut. “Back home, now!”

Rae-bear muscled forward on all fours, the dominant male, and Ursah followed.

“Please, my beloved bear, will you let me ride you?” Sumear asked of the smaller female bear, his head bowed.

Ursah-bear kneeled, affectionately, and allowed him to climb onto her back. Rae-bear grunted at Tamza and, although he wouldn’t kneel, he permitted Tamza to climb up onto his back.

The bears with their riders pushed their way into the street and back towards the palace. People parted for the bears, whose ungainly gait whilst running startled them. Soon they had overtaken the crowd hastening from the square and the bears lumbered through the alleyways unhindered. It wasn’t far to the palace, and the bears kept up their short burst of speed until they rounded a corner and into the palace grounds.

The bears both stopped dead in their tracks, and Tamza shot over Rae-bear’s head, sprawling on the ground. She hauled herself up and saw what he had.

Fire loomed large to her right. It was eating away at the grand dome of the main palace building, where the Vizier lived and home to his Five Great Houses, the five divisions of the town’s administration. She saw the Chief-Scribbler and several of her Flock-Of-Scribbling-Scribes attempting to haul water from the Gharak river that passed through the palace grounds on its way to the sea, first cutting across the square they had just run from.

“To the enclosure,” Sumear clicked, still on top of Ursah-bear.

She turned left, panting, and trudged to her grounds. Rae-bear took off after them, not permitting Tamza to remount, so she ran behind.

The palace was surrounded by tended gardens, next came the Great Fields, open grassy areas for exercise and leisure. After, a small, fenced, wooded area, that was inhabited by fourteen bears of varying ages, and Sumear and Tamza, who lived in a large mudbrick house. The house was too big for just the two of them, having been originally built for Tamza’s parents and four children, but her and her father were permitted to stay by the Warden-Of-Town-Wonderfulness as the bears would often come in to see them, occasionally sleep in the house and regularly eat there with them.

Sumear leaned over Ursah’s back and pulled open the enclosure’s small wooden gate and they trundled in. The gate swung shut. It was a pathetic wooden thing, like the ramshackle fence that surrounded the enclosure. It was just for show, the bears could easily jump the fence and leave if they so wished, and anyone from Vaasar could climb over the fence, or simply open the unlocked gate, if they wanted to get in. Since Tamza’s grandfather had gone hunting in the dark forests deep in the mountains and brought back the first bears, a mutual respect between beast and townspeople had developed and both stuck to their sides of the fence.

Rae-bear disappeared into the woods. Ursah-bear paused to allow Sumear to dismount, and plodded after the dominant male towards her den and her cub.

Tamza looked at her father, a look of relief on his face. “The bears should be safe in their dens, Papa.”

“Yes. We need to go back and help at the palace, to put the fire out.”

“But what about the outsiders on horses?” Tamza shook her head. “We stay here until we know what is happening. Let’s go into the house.”

They looked at each other, and Sumear jogged to the gate. He was much braver than she. Tamza would always prefer to shy away from any challenge, wait for it to pass over her whenever possible.

He’s right, we need to help. She sighed and ran after him.