by K. J. Parker
Long practice made it possible for him to greet his fellow hunters with a reasonable show of affability, in spite of the pain behind his eyes. Jarnac hadn’t arrived yet, of course; neither had Orsea, who had to make his entrance immediately after his host. Miel looked round for unfamiliar faces: a thin, spotty young man with the unfortunate Poliorcetes nose (two possible candidates, Gacher or Dester; he hadn’t seen either of them for five years); a stout, flat-faced man in the Phocas livery (he’d heard someone say that old Eston had retired and his son had taken over as whipper-in for the Phocas pack); everyone else he knew. Including — he frowned — a dark-skinned man, shorter than everyone else, unarmored and carrying a long cloth bag made of sacking.
“Hello,” Miel said, squeezing out a little more affability from somewhere. “I’d forgotten, Jarnac mentioned you were coming along today.”
Ziani Vaatzes turned his head and looked at him for a heartbeat before answering. “I’m afraid I sort of bullied him into inviting me,” he said. “Only, I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
Miel smiled. “Anybody who can bully Jarnac has my sincere admiration,” he said. “I’d have thought it couldn’t be done. So, what do you make of it all?”
“Impressive,” Vaatzes replied; not that it mattered, since Miel wasn’t particularly interested in the truth. “I had no idea it’d be so formal. I expect I look ridiculous.”
“Not at all,” Miel said (it wasn’t a good day for truth generally). “What’ve you got there, in the bag?”
Vaatzes looked sheepish. “I didn’t know what to bring, so I fetched along my bow. I hope that’s all right.”
“Very good,” Miel said. “Is it one you made yourself?” he added, as a way of filling the silence.
Vaatzes nodded, loosed the knot and pulled something out of the bag. It would have looked quite like a bow if it hadn’t been made of metal. He was holding it out for Miel to examine, like a cat that insists on bringing small dead birds into the house.
“Steel?” Miel guessed. Actually, he was impressed. It was very light and thin, but extremely stiff. Hard to guess the draw weight while it was unstrung, but Miel figured something around eighty to eighty-five pounds.
Vaatzes nodded again, as Miel noticed the groove stamped down the middle. Clever; it added strength while conserving mass, like the fuller in a sword-blade. “I’ve never seen a bow like this before,” Miel said. Vaatzes shrugged. “It’s the standard pattern back home,” he said. Miel guessed from a slight trace of color in his voice that he was lying, but he couldn’t imagine why.
A clatter of hoofs and the yapping of dogs announced the arrival of Jarnac. He looked tired, tense, if possible even larger than usual. As Master, he was wearing his surcoat over his armor, so that everybody would be able to recognize him even at a distance. Today (only today) he could wear the Ducas arms proper, free from the quarterings of the cadet branch. Somehow they seemed to sit more naturally on Jarnac’s massive chest than they’d ever done on Miel. Life is crammed with little ironies, if you know where to look. It was probably Miel’s imagination, but he thought he noticed Vaatzes flinch a little when he saw Jarnac on his horse, and maybe he relaxed a bit when he dismounted.
To business straight away. On his own ground, Jarnac could explain a complicated plan of action clearly and quickly. The basic idea was to get up on the high pasture to the west of the big wood, approaching downwind from the east while the dew was still on the grass, in hopes of putting up one of a group of four particularly fine mature boars that had been consistently sighted in the area over the last ten days. Normally they’d stay in the wood during the hours of daylight, but there was a chance of catching them out at this time of year, when dawn came early and the wet, lush grass was particularly tempting. Being realistic, they had precious little chance of bringing a boar to bay in the pasture, even if they put one up there; they’d have to follow it into the wood and drive it out the other side — down into the river, ideally — but at least there would be a clear scent for the dogs to follow, which would save the uncertainty and frustration of crashing about in the underwood hoping they’d be lucky enough to tread on one’s tail, which was the only sure way of finding a boar in deep cover. If they drew a blank in the pasture, they’d have to fall back on that anyway; but the result as far as the standing party was concerned would be more or less the same. Wherever they found it, Jarnac and the hounds would be looking to drive the boar through the wood east-west, down the hill, aiming to bring it to bay either in the river or in the furze on the far bank. The standing party, accordingly, should make its way up the old carters’ drove until they drew level with the lower edge of the wood; they should then follow the edge round, making as little noise as possible, and line out in a circle on the southwestern side, twenty-five yards inside the wood, ten yards apart. No shots to be taken eastward, of course, for fear of an arrow skipping on a branch and hitting the beaters or the dogs; one horn-call meant the boar was in sight, two if it was on the move, three for at bay, four for the death, five to signal mortal peril requiring immediate assistance, and had everybody brought a horn?
Miel nudged Ziani in the ribs. “No,” Ziani said (his voice rather squeaky). “Sorry, I didn’t realize…”
Someone handed him one. “Do you know how to sound it?” Jarnac asked. “In that case, you’d better have a practice now. Doesn’t matter a damn if it sounds like a mule farting, but it’s essential everybody knows where everybody else is, otherwise things can go wrong very quickly.”
That was exactly what it sounded like; but after four tries Jarnac nodded and said, “That’ll do,” and Ziani was able to sink back into the obscurity of the circle. The huntsmen were starting to collect the dogs, while the pages led the horses away to wooden mangers filled with oats. Ziani remembered that he’d forgotten to bring the last pieces of armor, but either Jarnac had forgotten too or he had other things on his mind.
The beating party were almost ready to leave. Ziani noticed that Miel Ducas was still standing next to him; odd, because he’d have thought that the Ducas would be circulating, chatting to his fellow nobles. Then he realized: good manners ordained that, since Ziani was a stranger and didn’t know anybody else here, Miel had to stay with him and put him at his ease. For a moment he was touched; but the Ducas is considerate of his inferiors in the same way a cat slashes at trailing string, because instinct gives him no choice.
“Where’s the Duke?” he asked. “They aren’t going to leave without him, are they?”
Miel grinned. “Not likely. But it’s not polite for the guest of honor to be there for the briefing. Don’t ask me why, it’s just one of those things. He shows up — well, any minute now, and I fill him in on the plan of campaign.”
Ziani was about to ask, “Why you?,” but he guessed in time. Miel was senior nobleman in the standing party, so passing on the Master’s orders was his job. Come to think of it, there’d been something about it in one of the books.
Orsea arrived, at last. His clothes, armor and escort had been set down immutably by King Fashion back when the Mezentines were still living in the old country, but the Duke of Eremia Montis traditionally defied tradition when hunting informally with close friends. Accordingly he was wearing an old, comfortable arming coat under distinctly scruffy leathers, and he had his hat on, even though it wasn’t raining. He looked more cheerful than Miel could remember seeing him since before the Mezentine expedition. Veatriz was with him.
But she didn’t dismount when he did; she leaned forward in the saddle to kiss him, then pulled her horse’s head round and rode back down the path. Orsea turned back to watch her go, then strode forward to greet Miel.
“Don’t tell me,” he said. “Jarnac’s found us a pig the size of an ox, with tusks like parsnips, and it’s sitting waiting for us just over there in the bushes.”
“In a sense,” Miel replied. “There’s supposed to be half a dozen feeding in the fat grass up top, and the idea is to pick them up in the open a
nd drive them through the wood and out the other side.” He shrugged. “Don’t quite see it myself, but Jarnac’s the expert, or so he keeps telling me.”
Orsea grinned. “That’s your cousin for you,” he said. “I remember one time we were out after geese, years ago, and he’d cooked up this incredibly elaborate plan whereby the geese came in here, saw the decoys, turned through sixty-five degrees over one hide, got shot at, turned another thirty-two degrees which took them over another hide, and so on. Absolutely crazy, the whole thing, and everybody was saying, bloody Jarnac, why can’t he just keep it simple? Except it worked, and we got twenty-seven geese in one night.” He shrugged. “Disastrous, of course,” he went on, “because after that, every time Jarnac said the geese were coming in on the stubbles and he had a clever plan, we all trudged out over the mudflats and sat in flooded ditches half the night expecting another miracle, and of course we’d have seen more geese staying at home and hiding in the clothes-press.”
Miel smiled broadly. He’d heard the story many times before, and it had been much closer to the truth the first time; but it pleased him to see his friend happy, though of course the reason for it was nothing to do with the prospects for the day’s hunt, or fresh air, or anything like that. He was happy because Veatriz had come out to the meet with him; because Orsea loved Veatriz more than anyone else in the world, more than being Duke, more than anything (one more thing he had in common with his old friend, his liege lord). How it had come about that he’d managed to persuade himself that she didn’t love him, Miel couldn’t say, but it was obvious to everyone but Orsea, and possibly Veatriz herself. He wished, for a variety of reasons, that she hadn’t gone straight back home just now.
She sat down on the slim, brittle-looking chair and opened her writing-box. As she took out the ink-bottle, she hesitated, scowled; then she stood up, went to the door, and wedged it shut with the handle of a broom some maid had carelessly left behind.
Pen, ink, the little square of scraped parchment; she’d cut it from the inside of the binding of a book, and cleaned it up herself with pumice. Maybe she’d been a bit too enthusiastic about it; there were a few places where she’d scrubbed it too thin and made a small hole, or else worn down into the soft inside, so that any ink applied there would soak away into the fibers and make a ghastly mess.
Veatriz Sirupati to Valens Valentinianus, greetings.
Orsea, she thought. She hoped he was having a wonderful day. For a moment or so she’d persuaded herself that she’d go with him, at least for the morning. If they’d have been hunting parforce and she could have ridden instead of walking, probably she would have stayed. But she’d never liked walking much, especially not up hills or through dense, tangled forests. Besides, if she’d gone she’d probably have spoiled the day for him; he’d have had to hang back with her, being thoughtful and considerate, when really he wanted to be up at the front with the harborers, or crouched in the underbrush waiting to shoot.
You never replied to my last letter. I suppose there could be several different reasons. I offended you; I was putting pressure on you, breaking the rules of our friendship; I brought Orsea into it, when this has always been just you and me. Or perhaps you’re just tired of me and bored by my letters. If it’s any one of those, I’d understand. Going too far: that’s always been my biggest failing.
Well; if I’ve offended you, I’m sorry. I’m not going to plead or anything; if you can forgive me, please do. If not — well, I’m sorry. It’s my fault.
This is a very bad day for thinking about you, because Orsea is out hunting, and so of course you’ve been in my mind all the time he’s been fussing around, looking for his old felt hat and the belt for his surcoat, telling me over and over again that he doesn’t really want to go but everybody’s been to so much trouble. Of course he wants to go really, but he automatically assumes I don’t want him to, precisely because he’s been looking forward to it so much. I don’t know why he does that; it’s like secretly, deep down inside, he wants me to come between him and happiness. All I want is for him to be happy; that’s all, quite simple. It puzzles me how he can love me as much as he does and still know so little about me. It makes me wonder why he loves me, if it’s not for who I really am.
And I’m doing it again, bringing Orsea in, like insisting my mother comes along on my honeymoon. But, if that’s the reason you didn’t answer my last letter, you won’t have read this far; which means I can say what I like, but you won’t read it.
Actually, I do quite like hunting; or at least, the only reason I don’t like it’s because it’s usually tiresome and boring and either too hot or too cold and wet, and I’m lazy about walking. Orsea thinks I’m squeamish about animals being killed. A couple of times I’ve been when we were riding all the time, and I quite enjoyed it. At least it made a change from sewing and arranging flowers and listening to the house minstrels playing the same seven tunes all day. He can’t seem to tell the difference between when I’m desperately sad and unhappy, and when I’m just bored and fed up.
Anyway; I’m prattling on, hoping you’re reading. Sometimes I wonder if writing to you is just a clever way of talking to myself, because things suddenly get much clearer in my mind when I’m trying to tell you about them. I’m not sure about that. Partly I think it’s true, but also I think that knowing you’re reading what I’m writing makes me be honest with myself. I can lie to myself, if I’ve got to or I really want to, but I don’t think I could lie to you.
No sign of a boar in the high pasture; no tracks, droppings, wallows or trampled grass. Jarnac had sent the dogs through five times, and all they’d done was stick their heads up and stare at him, as though he was trying to be funny.
It was a strange characteristic of Jarnac Ducas — a strength as often as it was a weakness — that he could be absolutely sure that something was going to happen and simultaneously know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t. This curious ability of his led him to make a lot of mistakes, but also meant that even while he was making them, he was also hard at work on putting them right. Half of him had known the long grass would be a complete waste of time, so he was fully prepared with a backup plan, which he lost no time in putting into effect. The main thing was that the standing party wouldn’t know he’d screwed up till he told them so himself.
The backup plan involved sweeping the whole of the long cover, in one carefully coordinated drive. Such an approach was fraught with the most appalling difficulties — keeping the line level, so that one wing didn’t get ahead of the other, or start drifting downhill, or overcompensate and go too far uphill and come out on the top, driving the quarry ahead of them and into perfect safety. That sort of thing didn’t worry him in the least. He knew his huntsmen were the best trained and led beaters in the world, and of course they’d keep the line; at the same time, he could foresee exactly where the problems were going to be, and dealt with them in advance by posting stops at regular intervals all round the top and bottom boundaries — he’d sent them to get into position an hour before the main party set off, just in case.
In the event, they found quite easily, by the simple expedient of assuming that the boar would be in the densest, remotest, least accessible part of the cover, the last place they’d want it to be.
The first find was no more than a hundred yards in, but it turned out to be a false alarm; plenty big enough, but its bristles were still brown across the shoulders and back, not the dusty black of a full-grown animal. They let it run back, so it’d be out of the way and wouldn’t confuse the hounds.
Twenty minutes later, they found again. A tall, spindly sweet chestnut had blown down, pulling its roots up; the shallow pit thereby formed had grown over with young holly, and the lymers picked up a scent leading straight to it. This time it was a full-grown boar, but for some reason it didn’t want to run; instead, it wedged its back against the butt of the fallen tree and stood at bay, as the hounds surged around it. If Jarnac had been out for his own enjoyment he’d
have gone straight in, but not today; it’d be shocking manners to kill in the wood while the guests were waiting outside. He called off the dogs and left the boar for another day.
Almost immediately after that, the hounds picked up a scent which seemed promising enough, but it turned out to be a milky old sow instead of a boar, no good to anybody at this time of the year. What it was doing out on its own, lying up in the deep, he had no idea, and no time to stop and find out.
He hadn’t been expecting any of these finds to come to anything, of course; he knew that the boar they were looking for would inevitably be found in the dense mass of holly, briars and general impenetrable rubbish just north of the old charcoal-burners’ camp, a little southeast of the dead center of the wood. There, sure enough, it was: a record trophy, without a doubt (tusks at least eight inches, a double abnormal, and the carcass not far short of eight hundredweight undressed), hunkered down in a natural fortress that the whole Eremian army would’ve had a job to take by assault.
Its lair was, in fact, an overgrown old burn site — the ash from the charcoal fires had sweetened the ground to perfection, hence the astonishingly abundant growth of briars, thorns and the like.
Presumably it had managed to get in there somehow or other, but Jarnac couldn’t see how or where, unless it had a secret tunnel or had been lowered in on ropes.
“We could go in with hooks,” one of the huntsmen suggested, “cut a way in through the brush.”
Jarnac shook his head. “Too dangerous,” he said. “I’m not risking men or dogs in that.”
“Smoke it out?” someone else said, and Jarnac didn’t even bother to reply. He stood looking at the boar for a while, then shook his head and gave the order to move on.
Not going to plan; that was definitely the boar he’d seen in his mind’s eye, but apparently he’d overlooked its context. The chances of finding another one half as good were negligible; there might be a brown yearling or two, but that wouldn’t be any use. Being realistic, the only course open to him would be to push straight on to the next likely cover, on the other side of the river. If they got a move on, they could be there in a couple of hours; then allow an hour for the standing party to get into position, an hour and a half (optimistic) for driving through and finding. By then, it’d be mid-afternoon, too late to try anywhere else. The infuriating thing was, the boar had been there, exactly where he knew it would be. Tiresome bloody creature.
