Iorek Byrinson had the patience of a bear. That is to say, more than enough to settle in for the long hunt, and not remotely enough suffer fools.
Being exiled, being the fool, had been a blow he had scarce recovered from, but if it had taught him nothing else, it had taught him how to think like a human. Not in the sense Iofur had undergone; Iorek was a bear and would always be a bear and had no desire to be anything other than a bear. He understood humans as he understood walruses; they were potentially dangerous, potentially prey, and it was better to understand than to fall for the unknown.
Iorek did not spring their trap that was meant to end in his death. It was a near thing, though, nearer than anyone would ever know. You cannot fool a bear. And when he heard Lee Scoresby's voice trying to assure the child that he was fine, Iorek was not fooled. And when he heard Lee Scoresby making every effort to suppress his reactions to pain, Iorek was not fooled.
And when Lee Scoresby stopped reacting or making noise, Iorek knew this was no feint, that his friend had been beaten until he had passed out (but not dead, Iorek would have known that too, he was not dead. Yet.). They continued beating him anyway for another minute after, and Iorek dug his claws into the earth and growled.
Everything in Iorek screamed to attack, to remove those who dared harm someone who was his. If Lee Scoresby had once given a real, unrestrained scream. If he had once shouted 'help me, please!'. If they had continued for one second longer to beat him. Iorek cannot say he would not have answered.
But Lee Scoresby remained strong, and Iorek remained strong, and the trap remained unsprung.
Iorek reminded himself that this was not Lee's first beating (not his first rodeo, as Lee might say). Lee would survive. Iorek had not seen it firsthand, but Lee had lived to tell the tale, and he would this time as well.
The second beating Lee ever received happened when he was nineteen over the matter of a stollen watch.
Lee Scoresby was not a thief; part of the reason his friendship with Iorek had developed so quickly and so completely was because the bear had seen honor in the man. Thieves have no such honor; they take what they had not earned and even the best of rogues, the ones with morals, the rob-from-the-rich-give-to-the-poor sort, were still at the heart of it taking what was not earned. Besides, among bears, stealing was equated with scavenging; intelligent, armored bears are above that. If a bear has not the strength to make its own kill, it is not deserving to eat.
Lee Scoresby was not a thief, but the missing watch was undeniably found among his possessions and Lee, as confounded as any of them, could in no way account for its appearance there.
The ranch was miles from any official authority, but it had its own informal court. His guilt was assumed proven on the spot the moment the watch was discovered, and he was pronounced guilty and, directly this was done, his sentence was carried out: twenty lashes from a bull whip. The fact that he was also not summarily dismissed as a ranch hand on top of this was testament to how well Lee Scoresby was liked by the very ones now carrying out his sentence.
"He's young and troubled, I reckon, just lost his ma, and temptation comes to all, but we'll keep him on the straight and narrow," was the general consensus. The sentence was harsh, of course, because the crime was severe and sometimes life lessons needed a bit of harshness to truly stick.
They had removed his shirt for him and lashed his wrists expertly to a post; being skilled ranch hands there was no threat of cut off circulation but also no chance of escape. Hester was held securely too by two of their daemons, at Lee's side because they weren't so cruel as to separate them just when they would need each other's comfort the most. There were no gags or blindfolds, but also no listening.
In many ways, it was being unheard that was the worst of it.
"I didn't take it, I don't know how it got in my things," was disbelieved. "You don't have to bind me, I en't running," was equally ignored.
He was never given a chance to remove his own shirt, as they seemed under the impression that he was going to fight their sentence to his last breath. He wasn't. He knew he was not guilty, but he also saw why they thought he was, and given the chance he'd have said 'I didn't do it, but I can see why you think I did, and if you can't believe me then I'll take what punishment you think owed' and he'd have removed his own shirt and held the post with unbound hands and let them whip him bloody. At least, he likes to think he'd have been strong enough to not try and run or fight when the pain began.
They took away that choice, stripped away the last of his dignity, and then laid the whip against his back fast and hard.
Hester cursed them with more cuss words than even Lee knew, and he could not imagine where she had picked them up considering they were always together in all things. Lee screamed, because it hurt, and cried, he told himself because he was angry and humiliated, but it was also because it hurt.
Then the woman who was the closest thing the ranch had to a doctor took a look at him (part doctor, part shaman, out in the middle of nowhere with the actual closest doctor being several miles off, people were willing to ignore the scriptures in favor of what worked). She made him spend the night under her care, and said he'd need at least another week off work to recover.
Lee Scoresby went back to work the next day, his back in agony, bandages soaked through with blood within an hour, stonily ignoring how everyone said 'it's alright, you're forgiven, take the time you need', ignoring Hester who kept at him to 'rest Lee, you don't got nothing to prove to them'. Except he did. Because they still thought him a thief.
And worse than that, someone had put that watch among his things. One of those people Lee Scoresby had thought his friend had set him up and his other friends thought Lee capable of being guilty.
A week later he collapsed again. "Infection," was pronounced the cause. It was horrible and an agony, even more so than the original beating, but in some ways it was his saving. Because when the real thief, out of the loop on Lee's current condition and doubtless annoyed that his first attempt hadn't gotten Lee Scoresby laid off or worse, again hid a prized knife among Lee Scoresby's things to be found, Lee Scoresby was declared utterly unable to have committed the deed, being half delirious and under the eye of their doctor.
After that, Lee was given bonus pay by way of compensation and three of Lee's fellow ranch hands came and told Lee they never really believed he could be the thief and they were sorry for what happened to him and it all was such a shame. Lee smiled and felt vindicated while Hester muttered how they couldn't have come forward before, back when he stood accused with no evidence to back him up beyond his own word.
Lee got better, with only a small scar to remember the experience by (the whip was brutal but the doctor knew her business, and if it hadn't been for infection setting in he might not even have had that). Of course, not all scars are visible, and the real thief never tried again but neither were they ever found out. Lee never completely forgot his friends' quick turning against him or that one of them must be a thief who purposefully tried to get Lee in trouble, and he never felt truly at home among them again; it was part of the reason it was so easy to set off in the midst of the gold rush to seek his fortune, an act that would eventually lead to his ownership of his own balloon.
There was one quirk that came of the adventure. Lee Scoresby himself could not say why it took him the way it did, but after being so accused of something so dishonorable, he set out to cultivate the very skill he had been accused of.
He was not a thief, not really. If he managed to slip someone's possessions off them, he then put them back.
"What are you doing, Lee," Hester asked, her voice full of trepidation, the first time she heard of his new ambition.
"He's learning a new skill, is what he's doing," said Lee's partner in the endeavor (because Lee never wanted to be caught trying to take something that wasn't his without an alibi again. He had permission to try and lift Jamie's belongings without Jamie being the wiser). The quick way in which Jamie approved of the new skill made Lee distrust him, but it was useful all the same.
Years later, when Iorek caught Lee at it (you cannot trick a bear), Iorek was not baffled in the slightest after he heard Lee's story.
"You wish to understand thieves, so you cannot be their victim," Iorek said, without any of the condemnation Lee had both expected and feared. It was the first time Lee began to really trust Iorek. Not just to have Lee's back in a fight, but to be a friend.
Iorek hated and despised thieves almost on the same level as murderers (and by murderers he of course meant bear murderers, because what did he care what humans got up to amongst themselves?).
Liars, on the other hand, Iorek looked on with either amusement (those who failed at it) and admiration (those who excelled at it). Of course, why someone lied mattered, but anyone who could convince a bear that the untrue was true deserved respect. Armored bears were intelligent, and lying took wit, and it was seen as a weapon, not as a failing.
Iorek admired Lyra greatly. It was how he knew she could be trusted to do what needed to be done to get all three of them free from the trap.
Lyra was not nearly as sanguine about her place in the plan. She knew she could lie; it was her greatest skill and her sharpest weapon. But her lies hadn't worked, not completely, no matter what she said they kept hurting Lee Scoresby. And she didn't want to see him hurt, but them not letting her see, taking her away like a child to be protected from what Mr. Scoresby had to endure, was wrong.
She shouted and struggled and said anything that came to mind and they wouldn't listen. She promised riches, she told them how her father was great friends with the aeronaut, why else would he have entrusted his daughter to him (they had never met, it was her mother who decided this was for the best after…after she finally admitted maybe she was not good for Lyra and her father would be better…after she finally told Lyra the truth about who her father was). Lyra told such lies, all entirely likely and plausible, painted a picture where it was in their best interest to spare Lee Scoresby and treat him right. And they hadn't listened.
And Lyra hugged Pan and she broke down and sobbed, and she told herself this was part of her scared little girl act, and that it wasn't because she was a scared little girl. Lyra was a master liar.
A young man stayed in the small room with her (it wasn't the shed where they had kept Lee, it was a sort of minimalist barracks with bed frames without mattresses and a pile of blankets and a little stove over which hung a string of drying socks), sat with her while outside they beat Lee Scoresby.
He was young (though to Lyra and Pan he was just as old as any of them, an adult) and his voice had a quaver to it when he spoke but it didn't match his eyes, which widened with some emotion every time the reed hit Lee Scoresby's back (she had seen clearly the implement even if Lee had not; along with the newly forming bruises, the scored lines where blood was drawn, rapidly turning to full on welts). Someone inclined to sympathy towards the handsome young guard might have supposed it was something like remorse, some negative guilty emotion because he knew what was happening was wrong.
Lyra was not inclined to sympathize with any of the people who abducted her Mr. Scoresby and hurt him, who wouldn't listen. And as an accomplished liar, she could see that same skill in someone else. The young guard was not remorseful at all. He was enjoying those sounds, and pretending he didn't.
"You poor child," he said, and he hugged her, and if she weren't playing the role of a stupid, scared little girl she would have bitten him and scratched and done every dirty fighting trick she knew to pull away. Her skin crawled in his embrace. But she had to be brave and canny (for Mr. Scoresby) and she sobbed into his shoulder and did not pull herself free.
"It will be okay," said the man, his own voice trembling, as if he was unhappy and did not know how to soothe her or make things right.
"But they're hurting him, and, and, my father will be so angry when he knows. I really don't know what he will do. If he thought you just…just escorted us through the wild he'd pay most anything but if he knew you were hurting us…hurting his good friend Mr. Scoresby…"
"There, there," said the man. "I never knew they would be so…so violent. They are horrible, aren't they?"
Pan, who was keeping vigilant while Lyra played her role as hysterical child, would tell her later that the man had a weird gleam in his eyes when he said this, a horrible gleam that made Pan want to scratch those eyes right out. The man's wolf lay quiet, staring at Pan, not talking, not consoling, not seeming to be bothered about anything.
"So horrible," Lyra sobbed out. "Oh my father will be angry. If only…if only someone saved us, we could tell my father that and oh, how he would reward that savior even as he destroys the rest of you."
"The things they are capable of," said the young guard, that same uncertain quiver in his voice (those same eyes, alight with excitement and interest). "Johnson …I thought him a good man…a strong man…he's seen two wars, more atrocities than most could bear and when he saw…he ran right out the door and was sick."
"What do you mean?" Lyra demanded.
"I think that's why he was so nasty after, to remind us how he can handle anything."
Lyra did not know what he was talking about. She wanted to ask. And she did not want to ask. And she wanted the man to stop comforting her. It was around that point that Lee Scoresby started to fail at keeping quiet.
"Please," Lyra said then, "Please, just…just make them stop! You will be rewarded with more than you can dream, just…just make them stop!"
She used her pleas as an excuse to pull out of the man's 'comforting' embrace, and she did not need Pan to tell her later about his strange reactions because she saw for himself, his face turned slightly away, towards the door, towards where Lee Scoresby was hanging from his shackles, and there came a muffled shout, a man doing his best to contain the noise and failing. And in that moment, the light in the man's eyes was so horrible to see that Lyra almost wished she still had her face buried in the man's shoulder just to have avoided it.
What she wanted to do was shout 'You! You're as bad as any of them! You're worse!', but that was not the role she had come to play and she had to be cannier than them and braver than them. She could not stop herself from drawing back, though. As a sort of excuse, she ran past him and pounded at the door and screamed for Mr. Scoresby.
The stifled cries grew louder, but also rougher, hoarser. Lyra could not say how long this went on for; it felt like hours, like days, but it surely could not have been; the sun was still up for one, though shadows had grown long. And Lyra could not imagine Iorek allowing days and days of this torture.
The worst was when the sounds stopped.
"He's been beaten utterly senseless," said the young man, and he didn't even seem to be trying to hide his interest now. Likely he felt safe because Lyra was turned away from him, but Pan never did. Pan watched him watch Lyra, before the man said, "Perhaps he's died." And then he looked at Lyra, as though very keen on seeing how she took that.
She took it almost the same as though she weren't in the middle of the biggest lie of her life.
"No, please, let me see him," she sobbed, pounding at the door, struggling when the young man tried to 'comfort' her again, beating against him, half daring him to reveal his own lie and fight back. He didn't though, just shushed her like a mother trying to calm her infant, cooing and making soothing noises and trying to rub her back, all the while she sobbed and beat at him uselessly with her weak child fists.
"I can't do that," soothed the man, "And anyway, they aren't done beating him yet. Can't you hear the cane striking him?"
Lyra hadn't, and was so utterly aghast at that unexpected information that she froze, before starting all over again.
When the door finally opened and the leader came in, Lyra had almost exhausted herself with the entire ordeal.
"She's quite hysterical, poor girl," said the young guard.
"It's all over now, sweetheart," the leader said, his voice saccharine and condescending. "Don't you worry, your friend's done his part. The bear never did come; I guess he really doesn't care. I never thought much of bears but I did think…well, it doesn't matter. Easier for us. We'll move out soon."
"Did…did you kill him?" Lyra asked, her own voice almost as hoarse as Lee's from all the crying she had done. Her heart fluttered hard in her chest and she watched the leader carefully, ready to catch him in a lie, or the truth.
"He's fine," answered the leader (a lie, an obvious lie). "We didn't kill him." (Maybe the truth. Or maybe Lyra was just desperate for that to be the truth.)
"My father will be so angry, when he knows what you done to his good friend," Lyra said tearfully, and then, "Please, Mister, Sir, please let me see him. Let me…let me take care of him and you won't have to."
"We're going to leave him out there a while yet," said the leader, actually daring to look apologetic. "But don't worry sweetheart; if the bear doesn't come by the time we're ready to go then the bear en't coming, and we'll let you nurse him on our way. Here now, we're going to have our evening meal, join us, and on the morrow our ride will be ready."
It was early evening. The plan was to leave early the next morning, at first light.
After 'consoling' his captive, and seeing food brought to her and relieving her current guard for a new one (to Lyra's intense relief, she did not know how much longer she could have stood him), the leader wandered around the stronghold, barely glancing in Lee Scoresby's direction. Lee was no longer hanging by his wrists; they had slackened the chain so he could be laid across the ground. There was no guarantee the man would survive the night like that, but there was no need to make his death certain by leaving him to asphyxiate or lose the use of his hands. His daemon's cage was left at the same distant, the daemon inside utterly still, perhaps also passed out, perhaps just traumatized to the core, or perhaps biding her time in silence. They still hadn't bothered to lock her cage. That's how little concerned they were over her. Lee was going nowhere, so his daemon was going nowhere.
The leader wandered over to the sentry and, as before, climbed partway up so they could talk quietly.
"Any sign?"
"None, not even when the shouting started," was the answer.
"Do you suppose the child was telling the truth?"
"Why would a little girl lie for a beast?"
"Oh, I don't know. Little girls can be strange about animals. I had a niece who was crazy for mice; used to sneak about the kitchen disabling the traps, put crumbs out for them."
"How did you cure her?"
The leader did not answer for a moment, looking up at the sentry with a slightly confused expression on his face. "Cure her? Why should we cure her? She was a stupid little girl but harmless. She got over it in time all on her own."
There was a longer pause, when the sentry and hawk did not comment, before the leader added, "It helped that a mouse chewed up her favorite doll's bonnet to line its nest."
They stood in companionable silence for a while longer, when the sentry spoke again.
"Do you think the Texan will survive the night?"
"Should do. Unless Johnson roughed him up worse than I allowed."
"I did say to keep an eye on him."
"You did. Well. I suppose it doesn't really matter."
"What if it's true, what the girl said. That Lee Scoresby is his great friend."
"…if Lee Scoresby is the great friend of Lord Asriel, escorting his daughter on his command, then why in the world did her father hire us to go and bring her in?"
"Stranger things have happened," answered the sentry. "He asked her to escort the girl. Texan got lost, brought on that beast…Lord Asriel grows anxious over the matter and sends us in."
"And does not tell us?"
"He's a strange man. Who knows what kinds of games he plays."
"As long as he has deep pockets. Hazard pay, and all that. And we do have his daughter; we can hand her over in our own sweet time when the price is right."
There is some more silence, then, "The sun is setting. I'll send Ivanovic and Ava to relieve you."
"Tell them to stay vigilant," said the sentry. "If the bear didn't come yet, it may just be waiting for the cover of darkness."
"Not much cover from an owl's gaze."
Then the leader climbed down, leaving the sentry to wait for the new sentry to take his place.
On the ground, Lee Scoresby lay senseless, his face still contorted by pain, his body shivering. It started to grow cold, and he had no shirt, but he likely would have shivered regardless. Inside the barracks, Lyra cried quietly, and pretended to accept the food she was given and allowed herself to be led to the blankets laid aside for her to sleep on.
"Just let me bring him some food then, a blanket, anything," she kept saying, and when that was denied, she cried into her blanket and pretended that soothed her into sleep until it accidentally became true sleep.
Outside, a bear continued to not be seen.
Author's Note: Feel free to ignore this note; it's in no way relevant to the story, which I tend to prefer to let stand on its own merit anyway. Just felt interested in sharing my journey in exploring Lee Scoresby's character.
I first read the first two books way long ago, before the third book had come out. And by the time the third book came out, I had lost interest and no longer cared how keenly I had awaited it and never got around to reading it. Then the new HBO series came out (and it had Lin-Manuel Miranda in it) and I watched it. And decided to re-read the books I read so long ago and finally read the third one. And in hindsight I'm kind of glad I waited all these years to finish the series because I suspect reading it then, long before I had even heard of asexuality, that ending might actually have been a bit damaging for me (rather than just disappointing, as it is now, and for completely different reasons than most readers might consider it so).
Imagine my confusion that there was no mention of Lee Scoresby being some kind of rogue pick-pocket in the first book whatsoever. Oh well, I think, they never say he isn't, and lovable rogue is a perfectly normal trope that I can appreciate. And then I read the second, and it basically absolutely confirms that Lee Scoresby is not a thief. And the more I think on it, the weirder the change seems. I'm now halfway through 'Once Upon a Time in the North' and the impression I get is an honorable man who wouldn't steal. Unless something big is revealed in the second half, it just seems an odd choice. Oh well. I still don't really care, because Lin-Manuel Miranda, but I felt the need to address it in my story (while ignoring the whole 'really into women' thing going on; it's my story he can be asexual if I say he is and so far nothing contradicts aromantic). And this chapter got away from me a bit. and I guess I felt the need to discuss it via author note. And say I will try to keep up my momentum in writing this (homework I should be doing instead, what homework?) at least until people are out of danger and the comforting part can begin in earnest.