“Kevin!” he screamed and tried, unwisely, to stand. The world rocked. He put a hand to his forehead and it came away covered with blood. There was blood in his eyes; he couldn’t see. There was screaming, though, and a snarling dog, and something had happened to his head. There was someone on the ground and people running everywhere, then a person was with him, then another. He tried to rise again. They pushed him back. They were talking to him. He didn’t understand.
“Kevin?” he tried to ask. He couldn’t form the name. Blood got in his mouth. He turned to cough and fainted dead away from the pain.
It hadn’t actually been bravery, or foolish bravado either— there had been no time for such complex things. He’d been at the back and heard a grunt and a trampling sound, so he’d been turning, even before the dog barked and the earth began to shake under the charge of the white boar.
In the half second he’d had, Kevin had thought it was going for Diarmuid and so he yelped to get its attention. Unnecessary, that, for the boar was coming for him all the way.
Strange how much time there seemed to be when there was no time at all. At least somebody wants me, was the first hilarious thought that cut in and out of his mind. But he was quick, he’d always been quick, even if he didn’t know how to use a sword. He had no place to run and no way on earth of killing this monster. So, as the boar thundered up, grunting insanely and already beginning to raise its tusks to disembowel him, Kevin, timing it with coolest precision, jumped up in a forward somersault, to put his hands on the stinking white fur of the boar’s huge back and flip over it like a Minoan bull dancer, to land in the soft snow.
In theory, anyway.
Theory and reality began their radical bifurcation around the axis formed by the flying figure of Dave Martyniuk at precisely the point where his shoulder crashed into that of the boar.
He moved it maybe two inches, all told. Which was just enough to cause Kevin’s injured right arm to slip as he reached for the hold that would let him flip. He never got it. He was lying sprawled on top of the boar, with every molecule of usable air cannonballed out of his lungs, when some last primitive mechanism of his mind screamed roll, and his body obeyed.
Enough so that the tusk of the animal in its vicious, ripping thrust tore through the outer flesh of his groin and not up and through it to kill. He did his somersault in the end and came down, unlike Dave, in snow.
There was a lot of pain, though, in a very bad place and there were droplets of his blood all over the snow like red flowers.
It was Brock who turned the boar away from him and Diarmuid who planted the first sword. Eventually there were a number of swords; he saw it all, but it was impossible to tell who struck the killing blow.
They were very gentle when it came time to move him and it would have been rude, almost, to scream, so he gripped the branches of his makeshift stretcher until he thought his hands had torn through the wood, and he didn’t scream.
Tried one joke as Diarmuid’s face, unnaturally white, loomed up. “If it’s a choice between me and the baby,” he mumbled, “save the baby.” Diar didn’t laugh. Kevin wondered if he’d gotten the joke, wondered where Paul was, who would have. Didn’t scream.
Didn’t pass out until one of the stretcher bearers stumbled over a branch as they left the forest.
When Kevin came to, he saw that Martyniuk was in the next bed, watching him. Had a huge blood-stained bandage around his head. Didn’t look too well, himself.
“You’re okay,” Dave said. “Everything intact.”
He wanted to be funny but the relief was too deep for that. He closed his eyes and took a breath. There was surprisingly little pain. When he opened his eyes he saw that there were a number of others in the room: Diar and Coll and Levon. Tore, too, and Erron. Friends. He and Dave were in the front room of the Prince’s quarters, in beds moved close to the fire.
“I am okay,” he confirmed. Turned to Dave. “You?”
“Fine. Don’t know why, though.”
“The mages were here,” Diarmuid said. “Both of them. They each healed one of you. It took awhile.”
Kevin remembered something. “Wait a minute. How? I thought—”
“—that the sources were drained,” Diarmuid finished. His eyes were sober. “They were, but we had little choice. They’re resting now in the Temple, both Matt and Barak. They’ll be all right, Loren says.” The Prince smiled slowly. “They won’t be around for Maidaladan, though. You’ll have to make it up to them. Somehow.”
Everyone laughed. Kevin saw Dave looking at him. “Tell me,” the big man said slowly, “did I save your life or almost get you killed?”
”We’ll go with the first,” Kevin said. "But it's a good thing you don’t like me much, because if you did, you would have hit that pig with a real tackle instead of faking it. In which case—"
"Hey!" Dave exclaimed. "Hey! That's not… That isn't…" He stopped because everyone was laughing. He would remember the line, though, for later. Kevin had a way of doing that to him.
“Speaking of pigs,” Levon said, helping Dave out, "We're roasting that boar for dinner tonight. You should be able to smell it."
After a moment and some trial sniffs, Kevin could. “That,” he said from the heart, "is one big pig."
Diarmuid was grinning. "If you can make it to dinner," he said, "we've already arranged to save the best part for you.
"No!” Kevin moaned, knowing what was coming.
“Yes indeed I thought you might like from the boar what it almost had from you."
There was a great deal of encouragement and loud laughter, fueled as much, Kevin realized belatedly, by inner excitement as much as by anything else. It was Maidaladan, Midummer's Eve, and it showed in every other man in the room. He got up, aware that there was a certain kind of miracle in his doing so. He was bandaged, but he could move and so, it seemed, could Dave. In the big man Kevin read the same scarcely controlled excitement that flared in all the others. Everyone but him. But now there was something nagging at him from somewhere very deep, and it seemed to be important. Not a memory something else…
There was a lot of laughter and a rough, boisterous humor all around. He went with it, enjoying the camaraderie. When they entered the Movran meeting house—a dining hall for the night—spontaneous applause burst forth from the companies of Brennan and Cathal, and he realized they were cheering for him and Dave.
They sat with Diarmuid’s men and the two young Dalrei. Before dinner formally began, Dairmuid, true to his word, rose from his seat at the high table, bearing a platter ceremoniously before him, and came to Kevin's side.
Amid the gathering hilarity and to the rhythm of five hundred hungry men banging their fists on the long wooden tables, Kevin reminded himself that such things were said to be a delicacy. With a full glass of wine to hand, he stood up, bowed to Diarmuid, and ate the testicles of the boar that had almost killed him.
Not bad, actually, all things considered.
“Any more?” he asked loudly and got his laugh for the night. Even from Dave Martyniuk, which took some doing.
Aileron made a short speech and so did Shalhassan, both of them too wise to try to say much, given the mood in the hall. Besides, Kevin thought, the Kings must be feeling it too. The serving girls—daughters of the villagers, he gathered—were giggling and dodging already. They didn’t seem to mind, though. He wondered what Maidaladan did to the women: to Jaelle and Sharra, even to that battleship Audiart, up at the high table. It was going to be wild later, when the priestesses came out.
There were windows high on all four sides. Amid the pandemonium, Kevin watched it growing dark outside. There was too much noise, too much febrile excitement, for anyone to mark his unwonted quiet.