The King's Peace (61 page)

Even though he would not reach me for days I was relieved to know that not every king in the island was lost out hunting. I was very aware how unprepared we were for a civil war. In the afternoon Father Geneth had the nerve to ask me for ap Selevan's pennon back to escort them home to Thansethan. He caught the sharp end of my fraying patience and retreated angrily back to his brothers.

The day Urdo arrived dawned with a thick and persistent mist off the river. The sun could just be made out as a glow in the whiteness. Urdo arrived out of the fogs late in the afternoon, escorted by the scouts who had been out along the road. He had the other half of my ala with him.

"We almost turned back to Thansethan," Gormant told me while Urdo was greeting Father Gerthmol with careful politeness. "We could barely make out the highroad. It's lighter here than it was a way down the road. We're not going to find anything today.

What's going on anyway?"

Then Urdo came up to me, and I tried to get my explanations in order. "Where's—" he began, but before he could say any more a huge silvery white dog ran between us. I blinked at it with a strange feeling of recognition. It had come so close I had felt the wind of its
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passage, but I had no idea where it had come from. It was the biggest dog I had ever seen, bigger even than Elenn's Isarnagan hound. It was almost the size of a small pony. I drew breath to speak, but then the air was full of wild yapping and howling, and people shouting.

There was a tremendous disturbance in the middle of the camp. The ground was shaking. There was a huge shape, black, thrice the breadth of a horse. There was a great rank smell with it that made my stomach turn over. There were white dogs circling it and there were other dogs, too, ordinary hunting dogs. There were people charging in through the tents and lines, mounted, with boar spears. My eyes suddenly made sense of what I was seeing, and I understood that this monster was a boar the size of the boar in the song that Kilok hunted to make the bristles into a comb for his giant father-in-law. Urdo and Gormant and I ran frantically towards the horse lines; nobody on foot has much chance against even an ordinary boar. Other armigers were doing the same thing, and people were yelling and getting in each other's way. I saw Father Gerthmol running away as fast as he could with his robe hitched up around his waist, looking very undignified.

All the horses were very nervous, and many people around me were having trouble getting control. Once I was mounted I could see better, despite the fog. Ap Padarn threw me a spear and I snatched it out of the air. We were behind the boar. The great creature was too tall for me to see over, even mounted, but I could see around him. He had his head lowered and was ignoring the dogs that were running in to nip at him. There was a picket rope tangled around one of his back feet. Even from behind I could see that his tusks were longer than spears and wickedly curved. Several of the hounds had already perished on their points. One of them lay crushed like an old barrel.

To the left of the boar was Ayl, riding a piebald half horse. His brother Sidrok was next to him bearing Ayl's hideous standard, the pink streamers flying back all around it. There was a party of other Jarnsmen from Aylsfa with them: all had their boar spears ready.

Ayl looked much as he always did hunting.

In the center, directly ahead of the boar, was Cinon of Nene, on foot. He had only an ordinary spear and a sword. He looked confused and hurt as if someone had just said something that might have been an insult and he wasn't sure how to take it. There were a dozen or so armsmen of his household with him, all men. Right next to him stood my son Darien. His hands were tied together behind him. I was vastly relieved to see him, weaponless and on foot but alive. He had his teeth bared at the boar and seemed poised to spring at it, as if daring it to come on.

To the right of the boar was Luth, on a dappled mare, in his famous blue breastplate, holding a boar spear. He had his pennon with him, similarly armed. He looked as if he couldn't quite believe the size of the boar, but he was signaling to his armigers and clearly selecting his best angle and lowering his spear to go in before the boar decided to move.

They looked almost capable of dealing with it.

The boar, strangely, was acting as if it had been cornered in a thicket, despite being in the open in the center of the camp.

This takes time to describe, which it did not take to see. I was already moving in from behind. It seemed to me that if I set my spear straight and moved in from the side with all Glimmer's weight and mine I might just make a heart hit, or at worst turn it from Darien towards me, or towards Luth and his people, who were ready for it. Glimmer wanted to shy away when the breeze brought us a clear scent of it, and I had to urge him on with my knees.

Boars are often fast, though usually the smaller ones are faster than the big ones. Still I was surprised when it charged. It went straight forward towards Cinon and Darien. I
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could not stop, so I held my spear tightly and rode on, fast. We hit, but the tip of the spear just skittered off the skin. I don't know what happened next. Glimmer tripped, I think, in one of the creature's deep footprints, and threw me off up over his head. I let go of the spear, it would have broken my arm. I pulled my feet from the stirrups and leapt, almost by reflex.

For an instant as I was in the air I saw it clearly. The world was a black boar below me with white dogs circling around it and beyond that people on horses circling and beyond them distant trees.

Glimmer had gone on straight after I had left him and was making for the river. It was only then when I saw it whole from above that I knew this was no monstrous beast but a creature of the gods. It was mighty and beautiful and terrible. It had a dignity that was like the dignity of an animal who lives wild and has nothing to do with people, but stronger than that any individual animal can have, even one that had lived to be old. I don't know why I didn't see this when I was down on the ground, but I

had not. In that moment in the air I knew other things, too, my own place in the pattern of the world, and Darien's, and Urdo's. It slipped away from me almost as soon as I had seen it; that is not a sight any mortal mind can hold on to and stay sane.

Then I landed on top of the boar. It was not a good landing. It was like hitting the side of a moving mountain or being thumped by an enormous fist. All the breath was knocked out of me, and I felt bruised all over. Even breathing was effortful, and the powerful stink of the boar did not help. It was a moment before I could see, and even then it was hard to raise rny head. Darien was there, somehow, beside me, lying completely winded across the harsh thick bristles of the boar's shoulder. I drew another difficult and deliberate breath and then I grabbed him. I heard Urdo shout and saw that he was cantering beside the boar. He looked a long way down. I took hold of Darien and heaved him off, half-sliding and half-throwing him to Urdo.

Then I jumped backwards and was amazed to be caught halfway through the sickening plunge towards the ground. Once again all the breath was driven out of my body. I heard Luth laughing close to me, and after a moment I realized I was lying facedown across his mare's withers. We kept speed with the boar and the three great white dogs that chased it for just an instant, then Luth let his horse fall back and turned her so that we faced back to Urdo and Darien. I noticed to my surprise as they came into sight that Ayl was with them.

Every gasp of breath felt like a victory. Even though the whole fight only seemed to have taken a moment or two we had come so far outside the camp and up onto the hillside that the uproar there seemed quite distant. Luth was still laughing as we drew to a halt. I didn't have breath to move, and I couldn't have sat up from that position, draped in front of him like a sack of turnips. I slid down to the ground, and promptly fell over. My legs wouldn't hold me. I felt ridiculous and terribly undignified, partly because Ayl joined Luth in laughing. Then Urdo dismounted and set Darien down gently on the ground. He was better able to stand than I was; he'd had a gentler landing the second time. From the look of it Urdo had caught him in his arms rather than across his horse.

"Well done!" Luth said to Ayl, slapping him on the back. "We both took it the same moment from different sides. You were right there. If it had been even a little smaller I think we'd have brought it down."

"We would," Ayl said, beaming. "I'd like to hunt with you again, something more our size."

Urdo cut the cord around Darien wrists with his knife. Darien rubbed one and then the other.

"Where are you hurt?" Urdo asked me.

"I'm fine," I said, then lost what breath I had to coughing. Luth started laughing again.

"One of these days you'll die from wounds you never noticed you'd taken," Urdo said, looking down at me. He was smiling. But I wasn't wounded, only bruised all over from
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landing so hard both times. The only blood was where my face was scraped from the boar's bristles.

"What was it?" Darien asked, gazing off into the fog where the boar had vanished. His robe was torn in several places, and his face and arms were scratched, but his voice sounded stronger than mine did.

"A huge boar," Luth said. "I've been tracking it for days and I've got quite lost. I've no idea where we are."

"I've been trying to get hold of you for days," I panted. "What if there'd been an invasion?"

"There hasn't, has there?" Luth asked, looking so startled that I laughed, almost choking with it.

"I've been tracking it for days, too," Ayl said, frowning a little. "I never saw prints that size before. But where were you coming from, Luth, that I didn't see you on the trail? And where are we anyway?"

"I came from Caer Rangor," Luth said, carelessly. It must be wonderful to have a head solid bone all through like that with no room for ideas.

Urdo looked at Darien. "It was not just a huge boar that folk can track from the southeast and the northwest at the same time. It was the Black Boar, Turth," he said.

"He's one of the protectors of Tir Tanagiri."

When I heard the name it was as if I'd had confirmed something I knew already. I looked off up the hill after him, but there was already nothing to be seen but the huge prints leading away. Turth was done with us and gone on his own affairs. I wondered why he had come to us out of the mists. To save Darien? To punish Cinon? I took another painful breath.

"A demon?" Darien asked, his voice rising. Ayl looked shocked.

"A spirit, certainly," Urdo said, evenly.

"He didn't hurt me," Darien said, shakily.

"You're as bad as your mother," Urdo said, smiling and shaking his head.

"If I'd known, I should have tried to tell him about the White God and then he—"

Darien stopped, and laughed. "Well it's hard to imagine something like that eternally praising," he explained. Ayl and Luth laughed, too. Ayl sat down beside me on the heather the better to have his laugh out.

I did not laugh. Facing that wild dignity to try to make Turth change direction with words would be as futile as doing it with spears. "Father Gerthmol was there, and he didn't try and convert him either," I said. "In fact, he ran away pretty rapidly. So I don't think you need to blame yourself for not trying."

Darien looked at Urdo. "I didn't know there were things like that?"

"All part of the world," Urdo said, gently.

"Chaneng fought things like that?"

Darien asked. I hated the thought of that even more than when Thurrig had first told me.

"I broke a good boar spear trying it," Luth said.

Ayl gazed thoughtfully down at the tracks the creature had left. "I suppose we just goaded him with our spears?"

"Mine went in a little way, I think," I said.

"He didn't hurt me," Darien repeated. "He didn't hurt—" He looked at me, and floundered for a moment, clearly unsure what to call me. "Er, you, either."

"Neither of you had done anything to anger him," Urdo said. "Unless you count spearing him and flinging yourselves on top of him. Did you jump onto Turth's shoulder, Darien?"

Darien squirmed. "I—yes. I went between the tusks. It seemed like there wasn't anywhere else to go right then, the others were all flinging themselves flat but I couldn't see what good it would do."

"It was the best of a bad set of choices," I agreed.

"The tusks slice from beneath," Ayl explained. "If you're flat on the ground the pig has to stop and root you over, or bite you, to get his tusks under you, and they don't want to stop. Didn't help them this time, though—some of them got trodden on. I caught that out of the corner of my eye when I was looking at ap Gwien vaulting onto the top of the thing."

"He gored Cinon through the thigh and trampled about half of his men," Urdo said.

"Whatever had Cinon done to make Turth so angry?" Luth asked, not laughing at all now.

"I suppose it was probably killing Sister Arvlid," Darien said. We all turned to look at him. "Or maybe stealing King Ayl's boat and setting it on fire? They ambushed us as we were going along the road. We thought they were friends to start with. They were going to kill me, too, I think, when they got to the right place, except I was going to run away as soon as I got a chance. They'd untied my legs so I could walk, and I was going to run fast as soon as I had sight of somewhere to run to. Only then it got foggy when we were in the wood and then everyone was there."

Luth opened and shut his mouth a few times, before managing to say "Cinon?" in an astonished squeak.

It took Ayl a little longer to absorb what Darien had said, and say, "My boat? What boat?"

"When was this?" I asked Darien, ignoring them. "How long ago did they ambush you?"