The Game

by Laurie R. King

  “The beaters have found pig, they’re driving the sounder—the herd—towards us up the next hill. I would suggest that you ladies rest here, or if you’d like to continue on to the tank—the lake—you’ll find tea set up there.”

  “You’re going pig sticking?” I asked.

  “We are.” Was that a challenge in his eyes, or did I imagine it? I had no real desire to murder pigs with a sharpened stick; on the other hand, what was I here for if not to work myself close to the maharaja? If that weedy Flapper cousin of his could stick pigs, so could I.

  “Do you mind if I join you? It sounds great fun.”

  “Mary!” objected Sunny.

  “Not you,” I hastened to add. “It doesn’t look to me like your horse would be much use on rough ground.” Unlike my mount, whose pricked ears indicated that he knew precisely what was over that hill, and knew what he was supposed to do about it. Just don’t let me fall off with a pig staring me in the face, I prayed, and committed myself. My host seemed pleased, although his male companions looked as if they’d bitten into a bad apple.

  The shikaris came up carrying an armload of wicked-looking spears and handed us each one. Mine had a bamboo shaft two feet taller than I was, strong and flexible and packed with lead in the butt, the tip mounted with a slim steel head the length of a child’s hand, sharp as a well-honed razor and with grooves running down both sides. I held the spear in my hand, feeling its heft and balance, trying to visualise how far a person could lean out of the saddle at a gallop without tumbling off, and trying to imagine how much practise it would take to be able to harpoon a pig in full flight. In truth, the shaft did not seem nearly long enough to me: If even half of what Holmes had told me about wild boar was correct, the farther from the pig, the better.

  As I held the weapon, a shikari noticed my awkwardness and took pity on me. “You have not done this before, I think, memsahib? Very well. You are left-handed? Then the spear is held thus,” he began, shifting my fingers around the long bamboo shaft. “And you must ride with the point well forward, always. When the boar breaks from cover—and only a boar, no female pigs—you pursue it, fast fast. Hold yourself twenty, thirty feet in back, and when the beast begins to tire, speed up and aim just behind its shoulder blade.” He eyed the uncertain waver of my spear-head and modified his instructions. “Or you can jab where you wish—first blood is considered an honour, and the animal will weaken and die,” he explained.

  “But memsahib, you must watch for a flare of the eye or the chewing of its tusks, for that tells you that he is about to turn and come for you. This is called ‘jinking,’ and it is very dangerous, you must watch for that at every instant. If by great bad fortune you lose your spear” (I thought all in all this was highly likely) “you must not dismount to retrieve it unless you can be completely and absolutely certain that the pig is gone.” The shikari stood watching me try to find the spear’s balance and to work out a way of carrying the thing so it didn’t slice the gelding’s legs to ribbons; with an almost imperceptible sigh and shrug of his shoulders, he went back to his work.

  The maharaja divided us into pairs, which I supposed was to lessen the severity of a collision or a stray spear. I thought he would put me with another inexperienced rider and thus dismiss the incompetents from his mind, but to my surprise he chose me for his partner. After the first flush of pleasure, it occurred to me that he was all but guaranteeing that he have the day to himself. I firmed my grip on the shaft, and determined at least to remain in the saddle.

  We made our way down the road towards some hills. As we rode, I began to get a feel for the spear’s movements; I could even see the reason for allowing the pig so close: Were the shaft any longer, it would be impossible to manoeuvre it with any precision at all. In the end, I decided it must be like jousting; given the chance, I’d simply count on the horse to run me over the pig, bracing the spear like an eight-foot-long skewer.

  With my eyes closed, praying fervently.

  As the road cleared the top of the hill, we left it to set out into an open plain, several miles of rough terai with patches of waist-high sugar cane, dotted by thickets of weedy trees and some rocky outcrops. We distributed ourselves, pair by pair, in a long string of riders, and there we stood, listening to the beaters working their way down, half a mile or more away. They sounded very different from the beaters used to drive game birds in England, but their purpose was the same, raising just enough noise to make their target edgy, representing in their numbers enough of a threat to encourage the animals to move away, not to panic—or in the case of pigs, turn and attack. It was a lovely morning, clear and still cool, and the horse beneath me was promising, needing little attention from its rider to avoid obstacles, responding easily to my suggestions. I relaxed, and decided that, in spite of the vicious weapon in my hand, the true purpose of pig sticking was the same as that of fox-hunting, namely, an excuse for a pleasant day’s vigorous exercise in the open. And, no doubt, for the sumptuous hunt lunch that would await us at the tank. I fingered the silver charm I wore for reassurance, and wondered where Holmes was.

  Then without warning, two things happened simultaneously: When the first of the beaters came into sight, I was astonished to see, not simply men on foot, but with them mounted elephants, ears waving and trunks up. And no sooner had I focussed on those amazing and glorious beasts, when the corner of my eye caught a number of fast dark objects shooting out of a patch of thick green cane to rocket across the grassland at an angle from me, aiming for a thick stand of trees a mile or so away. Without pausing to consult me, my horse gathered its hindquarters and lunged after the pigs with the other riders stretched out, right and left, the white Arab in the fore. In three seconds flat we were pounding at a full gallop across dry grassland while the smaller members of the herd, sows and piglets, started peeling away from our path, ducking under bushes and doubling back for safety, leaving three, then two, and finally a solitary black creature that flew along the ground on its stumpy legs, an angular, hairy slab of muscle and bone that showed no sign of lagging. I did not know where the others were, but the white Arab was in front and fifty yards to my left, its rider up in his stirrups, his spear as steady as if it were mounted to a track. My own weapon bounced and wove with each beat of the body beneath me, giving all too vivid illustration to Nesbit’s casual remark about ending up with a spear through his arm.

  I wouldn’t have imagined that a pig would be fast, but this one maintained its distance from both horses for half a mile. The trees were fast approaching, but either the pig was tiring or the horses had their stride, because my mount was coming up on the pig’s right side. Afterwards, I decided the experienced bay had done it deliberately, cutting the boar off from the trees while the white Arab fell away on our left. The pig veered reluctantly away from the trees, then farther away, until it was headed into open ground.

  And then it jinked.

  Such light-hearted and adolescent words the sport used, my mind threw at me in its last instant of clarity for some time. Sticking, jinking, pig—all those short vowels lent it such a jaunty air.

  What happened in fact was that, thirty feet ahead of me, the boar turned with the ease of a swallow in flight and aimed itself at the Arab’s white belly. Our quarry had no intention of being driven out into open ground, and anything in its way would be ripped apart, it was as simple as that—except that it was not simple, the jink was a feint. The maharaja’s spear was already down and waiting, but the charge at the white belly stopped as swiftly as it had begun, and the animal whirled on its hooves in the clap of a hand and shot straight at me.

  In an instant, my fear of embarrassing myself and letting down the women’s side vanished completely, gulped up by a flood of pure mortal terror. The pig looked the size of a bear, with murderous little eyes over a cluster of curved razors; I half expected the thing to leap into the air and rip out my throat. Thank God the horse at least knew what it was doing. While my arm froze and the spear bobbled up and down lik
e a broom-stick balanced across a clothes-line, the big bay gathered its muscles, paused for a moment—only later did it occur to me that the horse was waiting for me to stick the thing, had I been either so inclined or so able—and then vaulted hugely forward out of the boar’s way. As we rose, the spear-head dipped to bounce ineffectually off the pig’s rocklike shoulder, a tap that jarred my shoulder down to my boots.

  I came within a hair of dropping my stick as the horse flew forward, tucking its feet miraculously clear of the searching tusks and coming back to earth at a dead run. It took just half a dozen strides and then, with absolutely no instruction from me, dug in its front hooves. Spear and topee flew over the horse’s ears, nearly followed by rider as I clung hard to mane and saddle, losing one stirrup as the horse hauled itself around to face the boar again.

  Which meant that I looked back over my gelding’s neck just in time to see a textbook illustration of how a pig is stuck. With its right side now clear, the animal was sprinting for the trees, the maharaja riding hard to catch it first. Ten feet from safety the spear—so steady it resembled the javelin of a bronze athlete—slid into the tough hide. The beast tumbled and regained its feet, the horse veered and came about, and spear met pig in mid-stride, the point slipping effortlessly into the fold where the thick neck began. The boar hesitated, then collapsed slowly and was still.

  “Jesus Christ!” I said, loud in the silence. I was trembling all over, but the maharaja’s breathing was only slightly quickened, and both horses seemed more interested in the grass than in the bloody object on the ground. I half-fell out of the saddle and went in search of my dropped headgear and weapon, clinging to the reins as support, feeling as if I’d narrowly missed a fall from a high rooftop, shaking but gloriously alive. I located the spear by tripping over it, picked my topee from a bush and clapped it onto my head, and walked somewhat drunkenly back to where the maharaja sat, still on horse-back, waiting as some of his men approached at a fast trot.

  “You accounted well for yourself, Miss Russell,” he said.

  I squinted at him in disbelief. “I didn’t get us killed, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Not at all. In fact—” He held out his hand, gesturing for my spear. I thrust it out and he snatched at the wavering shaft before I could disembowel him, then ran his thumb up the steel groove, showing me the thick red ooze he’d pulled from it. “First blood to you, Miss Russell. Congratulations.”

  I took back my weapon to examine the evidence, then went to look at the animal itself, expecting a small nick where my spear had bounced off. Instead, there was a rip in his flesh the size of my hand. My shoulder still tingled with the impact.

  The servants came up then. They gave the maharaja a cloth to clean his hand, gave me a glass of ice-cold lemon drink to clear my throat, and handed us each a fresh spear.

  The day, it seemed, was far from over.

  I tucked in my shirt, bathed my face, and settled my hair back under my topee. The syce with the decorated stool held my horse’s reins and tucked the spear under his arm, positioning the stool near the stirrup for me. I looked from dead pig to complacent horse to clean spear and back again, then pushed my spectacles up onto my nose and climbed into the saddle.

  My first-timer’s luck did not give me a second pig that morning, although by morning’s end I had to admit that it was indeed a sport rather than a means of disposing of pests, with its own demands, skill, and even artistry. Rather like a high-speed variety of bull-fighting, with the horse and rider themselves taking the place of the cape.

  With the sun directly overhead, the riders began to gather, handing the servants their spears and talking with varying degrees of excitement. Captain Greaves, his polo-playing cousin, and our host were old hands with the spear, and had taken five pigs between them, but only one of the others, the partner of Thomas Goodheart, had landed a blow. In his case the pig had run off with the spear trailing behind him; the beaters were tracking the wounded animal through the scrub.

  The morning’s exercise had put paid to the evening’s excesses—I was famished, and hoped that our gathering together marked an impending meal. And so it proved. We rode a mile back to the lakeside that we had passed earlier, to find that in the hours since we had last seen the grassy field that stretched down to the water, a transformation had occurred. Half a hundred guests, attended by an equal number of servants, lounged about on cushions and brocaded divans that had been arranged around a silken tent the size of a minor dormitory, from whose open sides came tantalising odours and a glimpse of linen-draped tables. The two cheetahs, still wearing their ruby collars, crouched with their attendants; golden cages filled with songbirds had been hung from the trees. More usefully, a cart carrying a tank of warm water and scented soap had been set up at the back of the tent, along with mirror, face flannels, and all the comforts of a bath short of the actual tub. I scrubbed my hands, wound my hair back into place, and was claimed instantly by a servant as I stepped out of the enclosure.

  Inside the tent, I accepted a glass of champagne and my attendant conjured up a silver tray with flatware and an empty plate, and moved along the tables at my elbow, arranging my choices on the luminous bone china. To my relief, the meal was considerably less oppressive than that of the night before, a buffet composed of English sandwiches, soups hot and cold, and several kinds of curry. My plate and tray filled to excess, I shook my head at the offer of more and walked over to where the Goodhearts sat, their padded stools and divans shaded by the wide branches of a tree and protected from the ground by layers of priceless Oriental carpets. My attendant arranged cushions and fiddled with the silver tray, unfolding a pair of supports that raised it a few inches from the ground. He draped my table napkin over my lap, positioned the table-tray in front of me, and retreated, lingering nearby to fill my glass and fetch additional temptations.

  The tank—what I would call a lake—covered several acres, and had been in existence long enough that large trees lined its borders. Reeds stretched out into the water, sheltering a wide variety of birds, from tiny green things no larger than a butterfly to slow-moving storks. A princely barge shaped like a swan lay moored to one side, simply begging to be taken seriously, although it looked like a rich man’s jest.

  To be a prince in British India must, I reflected, be an uneasy thing. The knowledge that, but for this foreign power, one would be fully a king had to cause some degree of frustration, some sense that despite the riches and the honours, despite being (as Nesbit had put it) “above British law,” one’s life was essentially composed of empty ritual. A proud man like the maharaja of Khanpur surely had to chafe at his enforced impotence, and a certain resentment against the Crown could be understood. I could also begin to see the importance of a thing like pig sticking: Where war is forbidden, sport becomes the substitute, wherein a man’s conduct determines his worth, and a silver trophy represents a battle won.

  It was, I decided as I speared the last delicate asparagus, a small miracle that more of India’s princes did not assuage their boredom and frustration by descending into feudal ruthlessness.

  I permitted the servant to clear my plate and take the tray, turning down his offer of more wine, a third ice, a sliver of chocolate …, and stretched out my legs into the sun, deliberately putting dark thoughts from my mind. From where I sat I could see elephants on the other side of the water, languidly reaching for leaves. Closer to, half a dozen peahens pecked their way along the base of some shrubs, oblivious to the full display of their ever-hopeful male. After a couple of minutes, they were startled by the cry of a parrot, and the colourful feathers folded away as the flock slipped into the bushes.

  The noisy parrot was not a wild creature, but harbinger of our luncheon amusement. I personally would have been happy to sit and watch Nature’s entertainments, but the great enemy, Boredom, was to be given no chance of a toehold in this place. Three young men trotted up with brilliant green parrots on their shoulders, and proceeded to put on a show. The birds r
ode miniature bicycles across diminutive tight-ropes, loaded and shot Lilliputian cannon, counted out the answers to elementary mathematical problems by dipping their heads, and in conclusion lay flat on their feathered bellies in salute to the maharaja. The parrot-trainers were followed by a troupe of gymnasts and contortionists, children who tied themselves into knots and threw one another into the air. The third act, a voluptuous young woman who played tunes on a sea of water-filled crystal goblets, lacked the ability to sustain interest, and the warm afternoon combined with the wine made us an inattentive audience. She left after a third tune, and a gramophone was brought out and wound. Sunny gave a little sigh of happiness, and her brother stirred and sat up.

  “So, Jimmy,” Goodheart called. “Who took the morning’s first blood?”

  “Miss Russell did, although she permitted me to finish the beast off.”

  A startled silence fell, before Sunny squealed and clapped her hands. “Oh, Mary, how super! Have you ever done this before?”

  “We don’t have all that many wild boar in southern England,” I pointed out. “I shouldn’t think the domesticated variety make for quite the same challenge.”

  “You ought to introduce them,” Goodheart suggested. “Get into training for a world cup of pig sticking.”

  The man had been making a joke, but the maharaja’s voice cut in, an edge to his words that overrode all conversation. “The British do not need to train for sticking pig. They simply arrange the rules to their satisfaction.”

  The green field and its tent and rugs froze into an awkward silence, until our host shrugged to indicate that he had only been making a joke, and then rose to consult with the shikaris gathered on the far side of the tent. Mrs Goodheart made some kind of enquiring sound at her son.