by Helen Lowe
Balisan frowned when Sigismund told him about the door opening into the herb garden and the narrow path between the palace walls. “This place is a warren,” he said, but seemed unconcerned when Sigismund mentioned the presence of the serving girl.
It was Flor who raised the subject again. He and Sigismund were sorting through their weapons for the hunt and Flor had picked up a heavy bladed dagger, turning it this way and that to the light. “About that dumb wench,” he said abruptly, “the one in the garden earlier. The chamberlain says he has spoken to the royal cellarer, but she doesn’t know of any mute girl in the palace kitchens.”
Sigismund felt a frown settle across the bridge of his nose. “Why did you mention it to the chamberlain at all?” he asked.
Flor looked up from his careful scrutiny of the dagger. “You can’t just have servants coming and going as they please in gardens used by the high nobility. The wench needs a lesson to remind her to keep to her place.”
“I think,” Sigismund said, his voice level, “that was for me to decide.”
The dark blue eyes widened. “Surely you’re not angry, Sigismund? Must I overlook it when others slight you, just because you don’t have a proper care for your dignity? And the girl’s only a serving trollop. She’ll be thick-skinned as well as thickheaded.”
Sigismund shook his head. “My dignity hasn’t been slighted because a serving girl was in the herb garden, Flor,” he said.
Flor was frowning too now. “I can’t believe you’re taking this wench’s part against me!” he said.
“I’m not,” said Sigismund. “I’m taking my part against you, because I think you should let me decide when my dignity’s been slighted or one of my servants needs to be punished.”
Flor slammed the dagger back into its sheath. “Alright!” he began, then shrugged, looking at Sigismund again and shaking his head. “Well, I’m not going to fall out with you over a serving drudge, not with our first boar hunt together coming up. We need to focus on what’s important here.”
Sigismund decided not to reiterate that he thought the matter of the serving girl was important. He guessed that he would have to make a similar point with Flor again, and sooner rather than later, but for the moment he was prepared to agree that the boar hunt should be the focus of their attention. Flor was whistling when he departed an hour later and seemed to have completely forgotten their brief dispute. The boar hunt, he said, was exactly the kind of adventure they needed before the King and the full formality of the royal court descended on their lives. Sigismund agreed that it would be good to be active. Privately, he thought that it would help take his mind off the mixture of excitement and uncertainty that he felt at finally seeing his father again.
Some concern for the girl Rue must have remained, however, for that night he dreamed that she was back in the herb garden—but bound to the elder tree by long cables of thorn. There was a band of them, black and barbed, woven tightly around her mouth, and Sigismund could see blood on her lips. She turned her head and met his eyes, or would have, except that there were thorns sprouting out of hers.
Sigismund stepped back and the blind head moved from side to side as though in warning or denial, and a hoarse, protesting sound came out of her gagged mouth. He took another step away and her arms came up as if to hold him there, but in the dream her hands were gone and what she held out to him were severed, bleeding stumps.
The Boar Hunt
Sigismund told Balisan about the dream in the dark predawn, when he was making his final preparations for the hunting trip and eating a breakfast of cold meat wrapped in bread. Balisan was standing with the toe of one booted foot resting on the fender, one arm on the mantelshelf, and the rose and copper light from the fire gave his face an almost demonic cast. His eyes gleamed bronze as he looked at Sigismund.
“And yet you felt no sense of another power, seeking to draw you out?” he asked.
Sigismund shook his head. “I couldn’t detect anything. It was probably just a nightmare, except that it seemed so real. I wondered if it could be a warning of some kind?”
“About the girl?” Balisan asked. “Or the hunt?” He picked up a book from the mantelshelf and handed it to Sigismund. “It is a treatise on boar hunting. Master Griff found it in the palace library and thought it might be useful.”
Sigismund stuffed the book into a saddlebag without looking at it. “It seems unlikely that the girl and the hunt could be connected in any way.” He buckled the bag closed, frowning. “It was probably just a dream…and I was worried about what Flor had done and what might happen to the girl because of it.”
A log in the grate collapsed and Balisan nudged it back into the blaze with his toe. “Flor Langrafon takes the prerogatives of nobility seriously,” he murmured.
Sigismund nodded. “Too seriously, but he’s a good friend and generous to a fault in other matters.” To those of his own order, he added silently, but it seemed disloyal to say so aloud. “He paid all Ban Valensar’s gaming debts recently, which were considerable—but Ban’s grandfather, the old Count, had sworn that he would not bail him out if he incurred such debts again. Apparently he feels that he has plenty of other grandsons and can afford to disinherit one.”
“Uncomfortable for Ban,” observed Balisan. “And now, of course, he is in Flor’s debt.”
“It’s not like that.” Sigismund picked up his second saddlebag. “The money was a gift. Flor was very clear about that; there’s no expectation of repayment.” He cast a quick look at Balisan, who was studying the play of the flames with absorbed interest. “So you don’t think I should give up this hunt? You see no reason why I shouldn’t go?”
Balisan looked up, the flicker of the fire in his eyes. “Because of the dream? No. In any case we agreed in coming here that it was time for you to live in the world, and that includes going on hunts. So go, Prince Sigismund.”
Sigismund went, and the eastern horizon was already a pale slash as he stepped out into a courtyard milling with men, horses, and dogs. There would be huntsmen with a local pack at Thorn, but every hunter present had his own favorite dogs at heel, and grooms with spare horses for the chase. There was a company of guards as well, their horses drawn up in two neat rows. One of them, sitting just behind the captain, carried a pennant with a red and gold dragon on it—the symbol of the royal House.
Sigismund spotted Wat and Wenceslas by the gate with his own spare horses and went over for a quick word before a horn sounded, calling the company to order. Then Flor beckoned him to the head of the column and they clattered out through the palace gates as rose feathered the sky. To avoid the congestion caused by farm carts already heading for the city markets, they took a steep, winding path down the palace bluff to the river and were ferried over to the other side. From there they followed a country lane for some distance, joining the main road east as the sun cleared the hills. The winter rains had not yet come, so the road was dry and would soon be dusty, but for the moment the dew was still heavy in the grass and surrounding hedgerows.
Sigismund’s heart lifted with the sun and he found himself noticing little things: a dew-beaded cobweb hanging from a hedge, the song of a thrush as they clattered past a walled orchard, and the grace of tree branches without their summer veil of leaves. He inhaled deeply, feeling how good it was to be outdoors and part of even such small wonders after being cooped up in the palace for so long. Someone behind him began to whistle a marching song from the northern provinces, and one by one the riders took up the lilting tune.
At first the country on either side of the road was cultivated and closely settled, with many farmsteads and small villages set amongst orchards and ordered fields. The settlements grew sparser as the morning wore on, and they began to ride between low rounded hills dotted with oak and chestnut trees. It was pleasant country and the travelers they met would call out greetings and good luck for the hunt, for the fame of the Thorn boar—and the havoc it caused—had spread far beyond the boundaries of the forest.<
br />
It was not until late afternoon that Sigismund had his first view of the forest. They had just crested a low rise and their company was spread out across the road and the grassy slopes on either side. The hills ahead were higher and thickly wooded, the canopy so dark a green it looked almost black—although that, thought Sigismund, was probably the fading light. Clouds had been building up for some time and gave the forest a forbidding look.
“It wears a more friendly face in sunshine,” said Flor, “but Thorn forest has always been rough, wild country, teeming with game. I hunt here as often as I can.”
“And the hunting lodge belongs to your family?” Sigismund asked as they moved off again, falling into file along the road.
Flor made an airy gesture with one hand. “Langrafon cousins, several times removed, but we’ve always had free run of the place, which is just as well. The village inns around here provide rough fare and rougher accommodation—the fleas are legendary.”
Flor’s description of the forest as rough, wild country proved accurate as the road brought them closer. The hills rose up steeply, shutting out the sky, and the trees in the forest pressed close together, tangled into each other and the undergrowth at their feet. It reminded Sigismund of the Wood that adjoined the West Castle, except that this forest was full of bird noise and he could hear running water in the distance. Sigismund thought it was pleasanter up close than from a distance, and he enjoyed the last league or so of their ride beneath the forest eave, although the one village he saw in the distance looked poor: a narrow straggle of cottages amongst the trees, with only a few stony fields.
Flor nodded when he mentioned this. “The soil’s poor here, so most of the villagers make their living as woodcutters or charcoal burners, and turn hunter as required.”
“Or poacher,” said Adrian Valensar from his other side. Adrian was another of the numerous Valensar grandsons. There were four altogether riding to the hunt, including Flor’s friend Ban.
“They hang if they’re caught at that game,” said Flor, “or lose a hand, if the Master at the lodge is feeling lenient. The game, like the forest, belongs to the Crown, so they might as well steal directly from the King’s purse.”
Adrian shot a quick, sidelong glance at Sigismund. “But honest or dishonest, I’ve heard they’re all keen hunters. We’ll probably have every able-bodied man in the forest out with us tomorrow.”
The sun was sinking by the time they rode into the cobbled yard of the hunting lodge, which was a foursquare wooden building with a squat tower on one side. Stables, kennels, and storerooms were ranged around the walls, and there was already a large gathering present, all eager for the next day’s hunt and to meet their prince. Sigismund suspected that the accommodation would be crowded, but he had no time for further reflection as those waiting pressed around him. For the next half hour he was kept fully occupied, shaking outstretched hands and acknowledging eager greetings.
Flor was in his element, calling out names and greetings in his most open manner and bringing forward those he considered important. These were all, Sigismund gathered, members of the lesser nobility that occupied the small manors in and around the forest fringe, most of them held directly from the King.
“Bluff hearty types, but loyal,” Flor told him later, when they finally reached the relative quiet of the tower, where only Sigismund was to have a room to himself. “A few hail-fellow-and-well-mets, and they’ll be your men for life. The chamberlain knows that,” he added, “and will have made sure that word of your coming was sent ahead.”
Sigismund grinned and shook his head at the same time. “Cynical,” he said, but Flor shrugged. He was standing just inside the door to Sigismund’s room, and although he was dusty from the day’s ride, the spark in his eyes was undiminished.
“Realistic,” he said, without apology. “And why withhold what costs so little yet buys you so much?”
“You see what I mean?” he whispered later, under cover of the noisy feast. There had just been a prolonged series of toasts to Sigismund’s health, then to that of the King, and the drinking and toasting looked set to continue until the night was old. Flor grinned when Sigismund mentioned this. “They’re hardheaded as well as hard living,” he said with a shrug, “but they’ll still be up before dawn for the hunt. Constitutions like iron,” he added, and took a deep swig from his own mug.
They were still drinking and shouting when Sigismund left the hall, and he was not even sure that anyone noticed his departure. It was quieter in the tower, but although he took Master Griff’s treatise out of his saddlebag, he returned it unopened. Instead he lay awake with his hands behind his head, listening to the sigh of the wind in the forest. It was rising, and Sigismund heard rain spatter against the shutters, suggesting that it would be cold, damp work the next day. There was the occasional burst of revelry in the yard or on the stairs outside his door, but gradually the lodge grew quiet and he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. He was awake and dressed, however, before the first fist pounded on his door the next morning.
The lodge and its yard were full of men eating breakfast, or checking their hunting gear and the harness on their horses. All the previous night’s revelers were there, eager for the hunt despite their excesses, and there were others who had come in with the dark hours. Most of these latecomers were on foot, hunters from the surrounding villages who looked lean and shaggy as wolves in the torchlight. They squatted on their heels by the open gate and around the perimeter of the yard, speaking little and keeping their eyes on the ground, or watching the milling hounds. But Sigismund felt their quick, covert stares whenever his own eyes turned away, and he guessed that these men too were keen to see their prince.
Wenceslas was holding Sigismund’s first mount, a tall brown hunter, and had two more on a lead rein. He and the other grooms would follow the hunt, but at a distance to avoid getting caught between the hunters and their quarry. “Where’s Wat?” Sigismund asked, and the groom nodded toward the hound pack.
“Outside the lodge with your dogs. Highness,” he added, with a quick look round at the guards and other grooms. “Most of the hunters here have brought their own hounds to swell the pack. Wat says yours will run with the others once the hunt is up, but he needs to keep them under control in the meantime.”
Sigismund nodded, knowing that dogs were often the first casualty of a boar hunt once they brought the savage quarry to bay. “They say this boar has killed men,” he said abruptly. “Have you heard the same story?”
Wenceslas nodded. “It’s been hunted before and killed two men, crippling a third—all experienced hunters. It’s attacked villagers too as they walked the forest paths.”
Sigismund looked at him, remembering the groom’s stories about mystical beasts. “Unusual behavior,” he said, “even for a wild boar.”
“Perhaps.” Wenceslas was cautious. “But sometimes an arrow or a spear barb left in the flesh can drive a beast mad when it’s been wounded in a previous hunt.” He hesitated as Sigismund put his foot in the stirrup, then spoke again, low-voiced. “But be careful of this beast, Sigismund. It’s not just that it’s savage, it’s huge as well, and very fast. And there are strange tales told about this forest. They say there are places in it where the sun never shines and more than just savage beasts dwell.”
Wenceslas did not say demons, but Sigismund had heard those tales too. He leaned down from the saddle and clasped the groom’s shoulder. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “Tell Wat to take care as well, when you see him.”
He saw Flor by the gate and lifted a hand in greeting, but the golden youth was frowning as Sigismund rode up. “Your servants are remarkably free with you,” he said. “It does not look well.”
Sigismund felt his eyebrows lift in imitation of Balisan’s stare, and Flor broke off, as if realizing he had gone too far. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but one can’t help noticing—and people do talk, you know. You are the King’s son, after all, and need to give more thought to you
r consequence.” He did not add “and that of your friends,” but the words hung in the air and Sigismund knew that Flor was completely serious.
“It’s my consequence,” he said mildly, since he did not feel any need to explain his friendship with Wat and Wenceslas. He looked around at the yard and the milling excited dogs, and then up at the graying sky. “Surely we’ll be on our way soon?”
Flor smiled and returned some light remark, and a moment later the Master of the hunt blew a long blast on his horn and they were away, streaming east through the forest. The wind was blowing strong and cold as the day broke with high, flying clouds, but it was dark and sheltered between the trees and at first there was plenty of talk and laughter as they rode. The local hunters ran in silence, keeping pace with the horses, and everyone fell quiet as they approached the country where the black boar laired. The only sounds then were the panting of the hounds, the thud of hooves, and the chink of metal on saddle and bridle.
The boar, thought Sigismund, would hear them coming from miles off.
They stopped at the village where the boar had last been sighted, and the headman told them it had come into the fields in broad daylight, uprooting crops and goring one of the men who had tried to drive it off. The villagers had tracked it, although at a safe distance, and would show the hunters the boggy country where it had gone to ground.
The country into which they led the hunt was wild and bleak, with low rocky hills and marshy ground between them. It was more open than the rest of the forest but still choked with low-growing brush, and the going looked difficult. “It’ll be ground work at the end,” Flor predicted. “The boar’ll be able to go to earth here, in terrain where no horse can follow.”
“If it goes to earth,” Adrian Valensar muttered. “From what I’ve heard, it’s more likely to come after us.”
It was some time before a hound caught the boar’s scent and bayed, a great belling cry, and then the rest of the pack gave voice and hunting horns wound on every side. The wind stung Sigismund’s eyes to tears and the thunder of his horse’s hooves echoed the blood pounding in his veins. He yelled with the rest as the hunt caught first sight of the boar, but then fell silent, concentrating on keeping his horse on its feet in the difficult terrain.
