Feeling rather foolish, because at least three seconds had passed since the arrow had hit the tree, Poldarn threw himself to the ground and crawled on his knees and elbows for the cover of a holly bush. Silly, he thought, holly not arrow-proof; but he curled up tight in a ball and waited, and no more arrows came. Even so.
Then he heard something, quite close. Grunting, snuffling; a fat man with a bad cold running uphill with a heavy weight on his back. The absurdity of it made him want to burst out laughing, because unless this neck of the woods was swarming with people and he'd just been walking blithely past them for the last five hours, it stood to reason that the grunting, snuffling fat man had to be the secret archer. Well, fine; if Gain and Copis and the most powerful man in the world were to be believed (which was by no means certain), Poldarn was a graduate of the Deymeson academy of killing people, and more than a match for a runny-nosed pork chop, even one with a bow and arrows. The noise was getting closer, so all he needed to do was stay perfectly still, and then, when Fatso came waddling past him any second now, just stick out a leg, trip him up and bang his head against a tree until he came up with directions to the nearest inn. Piece of It must already have seen him, some time before he saw it; that was what cowering in the bushes would get you, if you were so dumb that you couldn't tell the difference between a human being and a fully grown wild boar. When he lifted his gaze-purely chance that he happened to be looking in that direction at precisely that moment (rather than half a second later, when it'd have been a quarter of a second too late)-he saw a massive grey wedge with two tiny red lights halfway up the taper, growing huger and huger. His legs figured out what the thing was before his brain did, because by the time the words wild boar had congealed in his mind, he was already on his feet and trying to push through a thick screen of holly leaves.
The pig squealed, a silly, high-pitched angry noise like a little girl whose brother was pulling her hair. There was a little blood, black and shiny, on its shoulder. The boar flattened the holly bush about a heartbeat after Poldarn got clear of it.
Then Poldarn hit a tree.
Bloody stupid thing to do, run flat out into a stupid great big oak tree. He scrambled back onto his feet just as the boar thrust its ridiculously thick neck out; one handspan-long tusk gashed the bark an inch below his outspread fingers as he ducked round the tree, hide-and-seek fashion. The pig blundered on, skidded to a halt in a spray of leaf mould, and swung round. (But aren't they supposed to carry on charging? Apparently not.) Superior intelligence, Poldarn thought, and superior biped mobility: I'll just dance round and round this handy tree until the bugger gets bored and goes away. Annoyingly, though, he discovered that when he'd run into the tree he'd bashed his kneecap, and it didn't seem to be working properly. So much for superior mobility; that just left intelligence. In which case (the pig lowered its head and shot itself towards him like a huge squat arrow), forget it He stumbled, tripped over backwards, and sat down, jarring his back painfully against the tree trunk. Good as dead, in that case, and the pig was very close. But right next to him was a fallen branch, and just by way of going through the motions he picked it up, jammed the butt end against the tree and pointed the other end at the pig's chest.
Superior intelligence after all; because the pig charged straight, just like an arrow, and by the time its chest met the branch it had picked up an extraordinary amount of speed. The branch was the nail, the boar's body the hammer and also the wood; the first eighteen inches of the branch crumpled up like dried ferns scrunched in a first, but the next foot burst through first skin, then muscle, until it jarred against bone, broke that, went in a bit further, found more, bone, and stopped. The branch bent like a bow, but the boar kept on coming, its broad wet nose no more than two feet from Poldarn's left hand where it gripped the branch: the bastard thing was coming up the branch at him, like someone climbing a rope, and the hell with the mess it was making of its own guts in the process-And then the pig must've impaled its own heart, because it stopped and squealed in utter frustration at the injustice of the world, and the light in its vicious little eyes went out, and time stopped.
Not dead yet, Poldarn thought; I'm still alive, that's so totally fucking wonderful-Also, he was forced to admit, bitterly unfair on the pig, who had every right to be pissed as hell, because it'd been a wild and unforgivable fluke, sheer luck. He breathed out what he'd been absolutely sure at the time was his last-ever breath, and savoured the taste of its replacement, the sweetest thing he'd had in his mouth at any time.
'Shit,' said a voice from the sky; not from the sky, from the tree above his head. A tree-god, swearing at him. He looked up. 'Shit,' the voice repeated, and he could identify astonishment, admiration and extreme annoyance, all balled up into one repeated word. Then something scrambled down the tree-trunk and landed flump! next to him.
'Bastard,' it said.
Poldarn took a moment to notice that the ground he was sitting on was swamped in pig's blood. Then he looked up. Staring down at him was a round face, a long way off the ground; bright grey eyes, a little snub nose, grey hair and a huge shaggy grey moustache.
'What?' Poldarn said. In his right hand the man was holding a spear, blade as broad as the head of a shovel. But I haven't got a sword right now, and besides, I can't be bothered any more 'Bloody amazing,' the man said. 'Never seen the like in all my born days.' He seemed to remember something, and his huge eyes narrowed into a scowl. 'Who the hell are you, anyhow? Have you got any idea how long I've been after that fucking pig?'
Poldarn looked at him. 'No,' he said.
'All my bloody life,' the man yelled suddenly. 'That's how long, ever since I was a kid. Thirty years it took me, to find a trophy boar good as this one. And you just jump up out of nowhere and down the fucking thing with a bit of old stick-' Quite suddenly, the man seemed to notice the burn scars that covered Poldarn's face. He opened his eyes wide, took a step back, then (with a visible effort; even so, Poldarn was impressed) dismissed them as irrelevant.
Poldarn couldn't help grinning, because it was so delightfully funny. 'You're a hunter,' he said, as if he was accusing the grey-haired man of being a unicorn.
'Well, of course I am,' the man said. 'You think I sit up trees in the middle of the woods in rainy season to cure my piles? What did you think I was, a flower fairy?'
Poldarn burst out laughing. 'So it was you,' he said. 'You shot that arrow.'
'Me? No, definitely not.' Now the hunter was offended, on top of everything else. 'You take me for some kind of bloody hooligan? Besides, I haven't got a bow. I was sitting up waiting-and then you come along, from the southeast…' He made it sound like some particularly pernicious heresy. 'What're you grinning at, anyhow?' he added angrily.
'Sorry,' Poldarn said. 'It's just that I haven't got a clue what you're talking about.'
The man scowled horribly at him, then began to laugh too. 'I do apologise,' he said, sticking out a hand-it took Poldarn a second or so to realise that the hunter was offering to help him up off the ground. He noticed that the man was left-handed. 'It's just, I was all keyed up waiting for the pig, and then you happened. Weirder than a barrelful of ferrets,' he added. 'Never seen anything like it. That was amazing, felling a pig that size practically with your bare hands.'