Movement… Movement down in the willows? Baj rose to one knee and began – only began – to draw the string back a little. No gloves; he felt the beginning bite at his draw-fingers. Movement… but no deer, only early evening breezes through willow branches.
He relaxed, and relaxed the bow – having a vision of himself triumphant, striding into camp with a gutted buck across his shoulders. Letting it slide to the grass as simply the casual getting-of-meat by a formidable hunter. – Which imagined playlet made it sadly likely he'd occasionally acted the theatrical jackass at Island.
… More comfortable to consider the poetry of silence, the poetry of speech. A thing was what it was called, after all, and often silently – as he called himself an archer, in carrying a bow and intending to feed those three Persons. Call them his friends, since he had no others in a situation so startling, so bizarre (there was a wonderful WT word) that no poet or romancer could have suggested it.
Baj shifted against the alder's slender trunk – shifted slowly so as not to startle any observant animal. Nothing moved along the boggy run but occasional warblers flighting, and interlaced branches swinging barely budded in the mountain breeze.
Recollection came with that breeze. Of wind at his last archery. When? Not hunting – it hadn't been a hunting occasion… It was a memory of river wind across the north-lawn butts at Island. Prince Bajazet and his friends: Martin Clay, Ernie Parker, Pat DeVane, and Pedro Darry – Commander of Island's Guard and middle-aged Master of the Revels. Wonderful swordsman, too, though desperately bad with a bow. Pat DeVane had been their wizard there, though he hadn't shot well that morning. Too much wind – gusty wind, hard to judge.
That memory came to Baj, but not quite freshly, as if those friends' voices, the strumming bowstrings and hissing arrows, sounded only for Prince Bajazet, who no longer lived at Island, or anywhere…
The evening slowly darkened. Bird-flights less frequent, bird-song softer as shadows became shade everywhere.
A bare shrub shook down the way. Then shook again.
Baj, alert, drew his bow a little just as a beast – no deer – shoved through foliage and out into the patch of bog.
A wild pig, then two more came grunting, bristle-fur dark and thick as bears'. A sow and her shoats – shoats grown at least a year. It was the skunk cabbage they came for, the sow already rooting at one, her trotters sunk deep in wet ground.
Baj rose slowly to his feet for the nicest shooting, slowly drew full, and held his shot to be sure of the nearest shoat, the arrow's fletching touching his cheek.
He was easing his fingers for the release, when berry vines exploded to his left and a razorback boar came at him black as night, squealing, champing yellow tusks so foam ran along its great head.
Baj spun that way, released the arrow – then ran.
He ran, as the boar turned to come after him, in a sort of leaping way, as if he might in a moment learn to fly – sail the air as Boston-talents did – and leave the beast behind. He ran kicking through scrub and splashing past skunk cabbage, the sow and shoats standing still, staring as he went past with squealing death coming after.
While his legs thrashed in desperate running, while he fumbled to set a second arrow to his bow, Baj's mind was oddly calm and clear. If he tears me – if he tears me, I'll die. No physicians, no old Portia-doctor here…
His second arrow, as if helpful, seemed to nock itself to the string – and Baj half-turned as he ran, drew and shot and struck the boar in its shoulder as it came bounding. Then, no more squeals. Only speed and purpose.
Baj angled hard away, knew it was no use, hesitated as the boar came to him, shaking its head, foam flying – then dove up into the air and over the animal, dove high as if into a summer swimming pond as the boar reared and struck at him. Baj hit the ground, rolled to his feet, and ran back the way he'd come, back toward his sword and dagger as the boar spun and was after him, still silent.
Galloping, imagining the figure he made fleeing an angry pig, Baj began to laugh with what breath he could spare. Pursued again… He saw his weapons by the narrow alder, and knew he wouldn't reach them.
Something came down just behind him like a falling tree, very dark and swift. There was a heavy smacking sound. Baj looked back, still in a stumbling run, and saw the boar thrashing in the damp… bright blood spouting, spattering where its head had been.
Richard hulked beside, puffing a little from effort, swinging his double-bitted ax to clear blood running at its edge. "She was right," he said. "No deer."
Baj stood bent over to catch his breath. He felt his heartbeats in his throat. "Thank you… very much."
"Come to call you in – getting dark. Heard him squealing." Richard picked a handful of weeds and wiped his ax-blade clean. "I do have a question. Why were you laughing?"
"…. Why not?" Baj said, and the Person smiled his toothy smile.
There had never been better meat.
Baj had truly never tasted better, though Island's cooks were as near the arts of Warm-time "chefs" as it was possible to be. He supposed it was the sum of circumstances: the fine rich roast itself after hungry days – with danger past, with a snapping fire warming against the night's chill mountain air, and good and interesting company.
To be alive and untorn was pleasure enough; to have searched in near darkness and found his valuable vagrant arrow, and now to chew the hot pork – running fat clear and fine – of what had tried to kill him, made for pleasures additional.
In eating, his companions' odd blood was shown. The boy, Errol, ate alone – had taken his portion, steaming guts and lights mainly, and gone into the dark with it. Big Richard and Small Nancy ate alike, with swift and serious ripping bites – white teeth, dark meat – as if the portion needed further killing. Then followed slightly awkward chewing, as if gulping would be their natural thing.
Baj supposed he ate not much differently, being so hungry, so pleased.
… He woke chilled under his blanket into a damp dawn – stretched, yawned, and rolled out ready for cold pork and mountain climbing. Both hams, already roasted, had been propped over the banked fire through the night, for deeper smoking. Charred dark, they would last for long traveling… The rest of the meat would be gone in two or three days, with only tiny wild spring onions found to cut its thick sweet-saltiness. The head had been buried in the ashes, slow cooking, and as the others roused, Richard – yawning, still sleepy – dug into the fire's gray bed to the last still-red coals, lifted the boar's head free, its curled tusks cracked by heat, then split the heavy skull with a stroke of his ax, and served brains out steaming on widths of bark… Baj let those go by, and took a chop. Brains – and testicles, and the palms of the hands – had been the ceremonial delicacies of cannibal Middle Kingdom, and only two or three generations before.
The three of them – Errol gobbling off to the side, behind a spruce – sat wreathed in the fire's last wisps of smoke, and ate seriously, for strength as much as satisfaction.
… By sun-overhead – the old WT noon – they were up and over the round peak of the next mountain north, and though Richard still led with Nancy, Baj kept close behind them even in the steepest places – where they occasionally went on all fours.
Then they were onto long ridges, misty with low cloud and stretching away north and east, so no end of them could be seen. Only wind-bent spruce grew along these crests, seemed to grow from gray stone weathered bald and broken. Eagles – dark eagles, not the bright-headed fishing ones that tree-nested along Kingdom River – swung just above or just beneath them as they traveled. Errol threw stones to strike the birds, but they paid him no mind… drifted with the wind along the heights, hardly flapping their wings.