Worlds That Weren't Page 13

  The men-at-arms from the coast obeyed like well-trained hunting dogs, of course, but they didn’t count; although they’d fought hard in recent wars against his people and the Mehk, legend said they were descendants of those who’d been slaves to the Seven Tribes in the olden times.

  No, it was something in the man himself that did it. Thinking back, Robre appreciated how shrewd it had been to let Ranjit Singh be the one who tested the hand-to-hand skills of the men. Singh had beaten them all easily—Robre suspected he would have lost himself, and had been picking up tips on his wrasslin’ style since. That had let King’s follower start out with the prestige of one who was a hard man for certain-sure. Then he’d shown himself to be fair, as well, good-humored, a dab hand at anything to do with horses, as ready to pitch in to help with a difficult job as he was to thump a man who back-talked him.

  Which in turn made his unservile deference to King’s leadership easy to copy.

  Fact of the matter is, King’s unnatural good at getting people to do what he wants, Robre mused.

  Most of all, the Imperial officer simply assumed that he was a lord wherever he went, one of the lords of humankind. Not with blows and curses and arrogance, which would only have aroused furious—murderous—resentment among proud clansmen, but with a quietly unshakable certainty that went right down to the bone. It set Robre’s teeth a little on edge, though he couldn’t put his finger on anything specific.

  King stopped and looked around, his double-barreled hunting rifle in the crook of his left arm; Robre had his bow in hand, and a short broad-bladed spear with a bar across the shaft below the head slung over his back.

  “Pretty country,” the Imperial said. “Not many farms these past two days, though. Not since that…what’s your word for it?”

  “Station,” Robre said; that was the term for several families living close for defense, surrounded by a palisade. “No, not this far east. Too close to the Black River, ’n’ the swamp-devils.”

  “Are there many of them?”

  “Thicker ’n lice, down in the Big Thicket swamps. They hunt each other mostly, every little band against its neighbors, but every now ’n’ then some try crossing the river for man’s-flesh and plunder. More lately, what with more of our folk settling in the woods ’n’ making ax-claims.”

  They’d been on the trail for a week and a half, counting from the morning they took the ferry across the Three Forks at Dannulsford, traveling without any particular hurry. Once past the bottomland swamps, too prone to flooding to have much permanent population, they’d traveled for two days through country where as much as a quarter of the land was cleared. Those new-won farms had petered out to an occasional outpost, then to land visited only for hunting and seasonal grazing, claimed by no clan. It rolled gently, rising now and then to something you might call a low hill, or sinking more and more often into swamp and marsh.

  This particular stretch was dry and sandy, sun-dappled between tall wide-spaced trees, oak and hickory and tall sweet-scented pines; the lower ground was patched with a layer of sassafras—bright scarlet now—dogwood, and hophornbeam. The leaves of the oaks had turned a soft yellow brown where they weren’t flaming red, and the hickories had a mellower golden tint; the leaf-litter was already heavy, rustling about their feet. To the east and south the woods grew denser, with water-loving types like tupelo and persimmon and live oak; that was laced together with wild grapevines and kudzu.

  It was thick with birds now, as well, parakeets eating acorns off the trees, grouse and wild turkey on the ground, and squirrels rustling through the undergrowth after the nuts. And not only birds…

  “Ah!” King exclaimed softly, going down on one knee.

  A wetter patch of ground showed where he parted the spicebush. In it was the mark of a narrow cloven hoof, driven deep. The tips of each mark were too rounded and the impression too square overall for a deer….

  “Wild boar?” the Imperial asked softly.

  “Don’t know what a boar is,” Robre said equally quietly; they often had to hunt for a word like that, though the Imperial had become fluent enough at the tongue of the clans, if thickly and weirdly accented. “Wild pig, right enough.”

  He cast forward, following the trail and gauging the weight and length of stride. “Big un, too. My weight ’n’ half again. Might be a bull-pig with a sounder”—group of females and their young—“if one of the sows is in season.” Wild pigs bred year-round in this mild climate.

  “Let’s go look, then,” King said with a grin, wrapping a loop of his rifle’s sling around his left elbow and pulling it taut; that gave him a firm three-point brace when the weapon was against his shoulder. “We could use some fresh pork.”

  Robre made a note of the trick with the sling; he’d been getting a thorough rundown on Imperial firearms and how to use them. He also noted that King wasn’t the least bit bothered by the thought of going into thick bush after tricky, dangerous game. The clansman put an arrow to the knock of his recurved bow, a hunting broadhead with four razor-sharp blades to the pyramid-shaped iron head.

  Damn, but I can’t help but like this buckaroo, Robre thought. Toplofty or no. Aloud, he said, “You’ve hunted them before?”

  “Boar? Yes. But in India we take them on horseback, with lances,” King said casually, and Robre blinked at the thought.

  “Well, mebbe yours are a might different. Ours here, they’ll mostly run, ’less you get between a sow ’n’ her young uns. Or a boar that’s breeding, he’ll charge you often as not ’cause he feels like killing something. Or sometimes they’ll fight out of pure cussedness.”

  They followed the trail downhill, one to either side, walking at a slow steady pace with as little noise as possible; they kept trees between themselves and their goals as much as possible, and the wind was in their faces, giving no warning to any sensitive noses ahead.

  Sonjuh was panting a little, trotting through an opening in the woods with the twenty-five-pound weight of the wild turkey on her back; she’d cleaned it and cut off the head—and removed her crossbow bolt—before throwing it over one shoulder and holding it by the feet as she headed back to camp, but it was a big cock-bird fat with feeding on fall nuts and acorns. It would make a pleasant change from dried provisions, now that the remaining venison from two days back was gone off, even if it would also be a chore to pluck it. But get the feathers off, rub a little chipotle on it, and roast it over a slow hickory fire with a few handfuls of mesquite pods thrown on the coals now and then—she’d bought a sack in Dannulsford—and stuffed with some corn bread, the pecans and mushrooms she’d gathered…

  No better eating than a fat fall turkey cooked that way—

  Her mouth watered. Then her gorge rose; sometimes just thinking of the word eating was enough to bring back the screams and the blood…. For a long moment she halted and pressed a hand to her eyes, fighting for control. Slasher’s low warning growl brought her back to the light of day; he’d been trotting along, utterly content with the live-for-the-moment happiness of a dog out in the woods with his master, and wouldn’t make that noise for anything but a present threat.

  Now he crouched and bristled, his nose pointing like an arrow to some chest-high underbrush. The girl lowered the gutted bird to the rustling leaves and squatted in cover, bringing her crossbow around. A chill struck at her gut—could it be swamp-devils? This was farther west than her father’s steading had been, but it was possible—

  No. The bushes were moving, but in a random way; swamp-devils would be more cautious. Animals, then, but ones confident enough not to care if they were heard. That ruled out deer. Wild cattle or woods-bison would be visible, so—

  Wind blew toward her, mild and cool. The dog’s nostrils flared, and hers caught a familiar scent, gamy and rank.

  Oh, jeroo, she thought, trying to make out numbers and directions. At least a dozen, counting yearlings; there were glimpses of black bristly hide through the shrubs, and the ground was too begrown for a human to run fast o
r straight. A sounder of wild pig would go through it easy as snakes, and they were nearly as fast as a horse in a rush. She’d walked right into their midst in a brown study. Stupid, stupid. This could be more lively than I’d like. It all depended on which way they ran—it was a toss-up whether they’d flee or attack if they scented a human.

  The ground rose to the south, and the underbrush opened out under tall hardwoods. She came to her feet and began to walk, placing her feet carefully and trying to look in all directions at once. If she was very lucky, none of them would be in her way.

  Luck ran out. A low-slung form burst out of the reddish-yellow sassafras where it had been feeding on the seeds, squealing in panic; from its size, a four-month spring-born piglet. By pure reflex, Slasher spun in place and snapped, taking a nip out of the young pig’s rump and lending a note of agony to its cries.

  “Oh, shee-yit on faahr!”

  Sonjuh was up and running when the piglet’s squeals were joined by others, deeper and full of rage. She risked a look behind her and wished she hadn’t; the young pig’s momma was coming for her with legs churning in a blur of motion, big wicked head down, little eyes glinting and tusks wet and sharp—what woodsmen called a land-pike. It weighed more than she did, a long low-slung shape of bone and gristle tipped with knives, and well used to killing—wild pig ate anything they could catch from acorns and earthworms to deer and stray children, and even a cougar would hesitate to take on a full-grown adult. If this one caught her, they’d all feast this morning and crunch her bones for the marrow.

  Slasher spun and charged the pig, mouth wide open and his growl ratcheting up into a roaring snarl-howl. Sonjuh spun, too, forced herself to steadiness, took stance, whipped the crossbow up to her shoulder. The fighting-dog was dancing around the wild pig, feinting, leaping back and rearing on his hind legs to dodge a slash that would have laid his belly open, then dashing in to snap at the hindquarters. The sow kept those down, pivoting and whipping her short tusks in deadly arcs. The girl brought the business end of the weapon down, sighting over tailfeather and bolt-head, then squeezed the trigger.

  Twunk!

  The hickory thumped her shoulder through the shift. A blur nearly too fast to see, the bolt hit the sow behind her shoulder, sinking almost to the stiff leather fletching. The animal screamed in pain, spinning again as it tried to reach the thing that hurt it, and the sound went out in a fine spray of blood from its muzzle. A lung-shot, fatal in minutes if not instantly.

  Sonjuh didn’t wait to see. She was running again instantly, slinging the weapon as she went, dodging and jinking through the underbrush, shouting: “Slasher! Follow!” over her shoulder.

  More squeals followed her, and some of them—another glance over her shoulder showed what was coming. A boar, full-grown. No, two of them—they must have been getting ready to fight for the females, just when she came along. Coyote had sent her luck, his kind; or maybe Olsatyn: Lord o’ Sky must be asleep, or out hunting, or sporting with his wives, because he certainly wasn’t listening to her prayers.

  Now both the boars were after her, with the instinct of their kind to mob a threat added to the mindless belligerence of rutting season. Both of them were huge, night-black except for the grizzled color of the bristles that thickened to manes on their skulls and the massive shoulders, better than twice a big man’s weight, their short straight tails held up like banners. Long white tusks curled up and back on either side of their glistening snouts, sharp-pointed ivory daggers that could rip open a horse or bear, much less a human. They fanned out as they came, throwing up leaves and bits of bush in their speed, with all the grown females hot on their heels. Wet open mouths showed teeth and red gullets, let out hoarse rending screams of rage.

  Breath burned dry in her throat, and her long legs flashed as she waited for the savage pain of a tusk knocking her down. There was a big oak ahead of her though, ten feet to the lowest branch—

  —and two men coming out from behind hickories to either side.

  “Run, you idjeets!” she screamed and went up the tree’s root-bole at a full-tilt run without breaking stride, the bark blessedly rough under fingers and the soft flexible leather of her moccasin-boots’ soles.

  She leapt off that sideways, hands slapping down on the thick branch, her feet coming up as she hugged it like a lover with arms and legs both. A black missile flew through the air below her, and a bone dagger flashed inches below her back. With a convulsive effort she threw a knee over the limb and swung herself up and stood with an arm around the main trunk, panting and shuddering and on the edge of nausea as blood beat in her ears.

  Eric King saw the red hair flying as Sonjuh Head-on-Fire cleared a bush with a raking stride and hit the ground in a blur of motion, head down and fists pumping as she ran—much like a deer, as she’d claimed, light on her feet and very quick.

  “Run, you idjeets!” she screamed, as she went through the space between him and Hunter Robre, with her dog on her heels.

  The boars were on her heels as well, far too close to shoot as they burst out of the undergrowth. King flung himself to one side with a yell, and heard Robre doing likewise. He landed on his back with a jarring thud, and the right barrel of the double rifle went off with a crack like thunder in his ear.

  “Dammit,” he wheezed as he came back up on one knee. Then he shouted “Krishna!”

  Something shot out of the yellow-red underscrub at him like a cannonball, and he snapped the weapon up to his shoulder. Instinct and training brought the sights between a pair of furious red-glinting piggy eyes barely ten feet away, and the recoil punished his shoulder.

  Crack!

  It was a sow; less dangerous than the boars, but only in an academic fashion seeing as it was nearly on top of him. The heavy .477 slug blasted its way through the thick skull and the brain beneath it; the wild pig nosed into the leaf-mold and dropped at his feet, dead although its little sharp hooves were still kicking. King came back to his feet and broke open the action of the rifle, shaking out the spent brass and pulling two more long fat cartridges from the bandolier across his chest. As he snapped it shut, he saw a flickering montage: another sow dragging herself back into the bushes with her hind legs limp and one of Robre’s arrows through her spine; a boar landing again after a leap that had nearly caught Sonjuh, landing with an agility unbelievable in so gross a beast; the girl’s staring face in the tree; beyond that Slasher and the other boar whirling in a snapping, snarling, stabbing dance that cast up a fog of yellow leaves and acorns from the forest floor; Robre whipping out another arrow from his quiver and nocking it, drawing the shaft to his ear.

  Then both men had more than enough to engage their attention, as the rest of the sounder boiled out of the brush and attacked with the reckless omnivore aggression that men and swine shared. It was a big group, in these man-empty woods so rich in their kinds of food, and not much afraid of humankind. King shot twice more before he had to use the empty double rifle to defend himself from a pig that seized it in her mouth, wrenching it away and then running off into the woods in panic flight. The rest of the sounder followed, less the dead.

  Except for the boars.

  King felt a profound wish for his rifle—loaded and in his hands, not lying uselessly a dozen paces off. Time seemed to slow like honey. Not far off a boar stood alone, the gouge of a bullet wound bleeding freely down one dusty-black flank, and an arrow standing out of a ham, making abortive stabs to either side with its tusks and panting like a steam engine in a Bihari coal mine. The other backed off from where Slasher held a natural fort behind a thick fallen log, turning just in time to take Robre’s arrow in the armor-thick hide and bone around its shoulders rather than the vulnerable flank. It staggered and then charged, and Robre ripped free the spear slung across his back by the simple expedient of snapping the rawhide thongs that bound it by main strength. He brought it around, dropping to one knee and thrusting the blade of the spearhead out to receive the living missile that hurtled toward him, mud and l
eaves spraying out behind it.

  King had his own boar, and nothing but the Khyber knife in his hand. Its charge was slowed a little—a very little—by the arrow wound, and it came silently save for the bellows-panting of near exhaustion. The Imperial tensed himself to leap aside and then in—not much of a chance, because he was weary, too, and the sidewise strike of the boar’s head would be swifter than a hooded cobra.

  “Kuch dar nahin hai!” he shouted, the ancient motto of his house. There is no such thing as fear!

  A wolf-gray streak came from behind the boar, soaring over the litter of the forest floor, from shadow into light. Slasher’s jaws clamped down like a mechanical grab edged with ripping fangs on the beast’s hock just before it would have cannoned into the human. Snapping-swift it spun and tried to gash the dog, but the same motion flung Slasher around like a spinning top. King leapt as well, onto the boar. It was like landing on top of a living boulder, one that heaved beneath him with terrifying strength and ferocity, battering him about like a pea in a can. He reversed the chora-knife and slammed it into the thrashing mass beneath him, hanging on to the hilt like grim death with one hand and a handful of bristly mane with the other, working the blade back and forth between the boar’s ribs. It was dying, blood spraying out of nose and mouth, but it could still kill him. He twisted his legs about it and put forth all the strength that was in him.

  Hands came into his field of vision, long slender hands, well shaped but with dirt beneath the fingernails and ground into the knuckles, holding a crossbow. The string released, and the bolt blossomed from the base of the boar’s skull. It shuddered, hammered the ground with its head, and died. King rose from the limp body.

  Sonjuh was watching him, head tilted slightly to one side. “Why’d you jump in, when Slasher had him by the leg?” she said quietly. “You could’ve gone for your gun.”