But time was no friend to me with winter coming on. So, with my spear in my hand and my bow ready, I turned towards the forest track,.hoping to pass through in three or four days. The first day and night proved uneventful. I rode along pathways aflame with autumn colour – burning reds and golds, yellows that glowed in the falling light. Only the swish and crack of my pony's hooves in the dry leaves, and the occasional shriek of a bird or natter of a squirrel, marked our passing. Among the great stands of oak and ash, their iron-dark boles hoary and bearded with green moss, spreading elm and rowan, slender pine and massive yew, silence reigned and gave us to know with every step that we were intruders there.
The second day began with a mist that turned to a weepy, sodden rain which soon drenched me to the skin. Wet and cold, I pursued my miserable way until I came to a fern-grown clearing beside a racing stream. As I sat deciding where to cross, the rain stopped and the cloud-cover thinned so that the sun appeared a pale white disk. I slid from the pony's back, led it through the pungent fern to the water's edge and gave it to drink.
I suppose the clearing with its patch of sky above seemed a convivial place, so I started shrugging off my soaking clothing and spreading it on the rocks along the stream-bed in anticipation of the sun. And I was not disappointed.
But, as the clouds parted, I heard a crashing in the wood nearby. I dropped instinctively into my invisible posture. The noise increased, coming directly towards me, and of course I recognized the sound: a boar in full flight with a hunter right behind.
A moment later a gigantic old tusker broke through the underbrush not a dozen paces upstream. The great beast's hide was criss-crossed with scars marked in white tufts against the bristling black. And, like the battlechief that it was, the fearsome creature did not pause in its heedless, headlong flight, but plunged straight into the water, thrashed across in a frothing spray and disappeared into the wood on the other side.
Right behind came the rider. The instant the horse cleared the underbrush and leaped to the bank the sun broke through the swift-scattering cloud and a shaft of light struck like a spear heaved from on high, illuminating a most unusual sight: a mount the colour of grey morning mist – a handsome animal, long-legged and graceful, by appearances more hart than horse, white mane flying, nostrils flared to the scent of the boar. And a rider, slender and fierce, eyes wide with the excitement of the chase, hair like midnight streaming unbound behind, the sun striking the polished facets of a silver breastplate, slender arm hefting a long, silver boarspear so thin it appeared a frozen moonbeam caught in her hand.
In an instant, I knew this hunter to be the raven-haired girl I had seen while fire-gazing.
A heartbeat later, I doubted whether I had seen her at all, for the horse gathered its legs and leaped the stream as lightly as a bird taking flight. Horse and rider landed on the opposite shore and disappeared into the greengrowth on the other side, hot on the trail of the boar.
If not for the sound of the continuing chase, I might have dreamed them. But as the crackling and thumping of the hunt receded into the wood, I snatched up my clothes and threw them on again, led my pony across the stream, and rode after.
The trail was not at all difficult to follow. Still, they moved surprisingly fast, for I did not catch another glimpse of hunter or game until nearly tumbling over them in a grassy hollow in the dim forest.
The huge boar lay on its belly, legs collapsed under it, the slender shaft protruding through the massive hump of its shoulder into its chest where the leaf-shaped blade had cleft its heart; the great tusks were curved and yellow, the cunning little eyes glittered bright with bloodlust. The girl still sat her mount, and the grey horse snorted its triumph and raked the ground with a delicate forehoof.
She did not turn to me at first, although I surely made a fearful din as I burst blindly through the yew hedge; her attention was absorbed in the kill. It was a prize worthy of a champion and no mistake. Mind, I have seen boars of all sizes, and I also have seen experienced spearmen quail at the sight of a charging tusker. But I have never seen a boar so big, nor a maid so coolly composed.
Was it courage or arrogance?
The exultant glimmer in her eye, the set of her jaw, the regal posture… there was power in every comely line of her. I was in the presence of a woman, however young – she could not have been above fifteen summers – who chanced everything, quailed at nothing, admitted no defeat.
Only when she had drunk deep of the sight of her kill did she deign to notice me. 'You intrude, stranger.' Her speech, after the singing Hill Folk tongue, sounded odd in my ears; but I understood, for it was very like the speech of Llyonesse.
I inclined my head, accepting her appraisal. 'Forgive me, I am indeed a stranger.'
'That,' she pointed out, 'is not your transgression.'
She crooked a leg over her mount and slipped to the ground, then walked to the boar and stood gazing at it with pleasure. 'This one fought well.'
'I do not wonder. By the look of him, many have tried to bring him down and failed.'
This pleased her. 'I did not fail.' She loosed a wild war whoop of sheer pleasure. The cry echoed through the wood and faded, whereupon she turned to me. 'What do you here?' Her manner implied that the entire forest belonged to her.
'As you see, I am a traveller.'
'As I see, you are a dirty boy in reeking wolfskins.' She wrinkled her nose imperially. 'You do not look a traveller tome.'
'Accept that I am.'
'I believe you.' She turned suddenly and, placing a booted foot against the boar's shoulder hump, pulled sharply on the spear and drew it out. The silver shaft dripped dark red blood. She observed this for a moment and then began wiping the spear on the beast's hide.
That skin will make a fine trophy,' I remarked, stepping closer.
She levelled the spear at me. 'So would yours, wolf boy.'
'Is everyone hereabouts as ill-mannered as you?'
She laughed, a light fillip in the air. 'I am admonished.' Her tone denied her words entirely. She returned the spear to its holder on her saddle. 'Will you stand there like a stump, or will you help me carry back my kill?'
Truly, I did not see how the monster before us could be carried back without a wagon, nor heaved into a wagon without the help of half-dozen brawny men. Certainly, neither horse could carry the weight. But the girl was not dismayed. She removed a hand axe from behind her saddle and directed me to start felling a few of the slender birches from a stand across the hollow from where we stood.
I did as I was told and together we began hacking the branches from the trees and lashing the clean poles together with rawhide strips to form a crude litter. The work went quickly and pleasantly for me, for I had the opportunity of observing her graceful body in motion.
She had removed her silver breastplate while I was cutting the trees and now worked beside me in a light blue riding tunic and checked kilt of the sort that many of the remote hill tribes wore. Her boots were soft doeskin, and at her wrists and throat were narrow silver bands set with blue stones. Long-limbed and slender, her skin smooth and delicate as milk, she nevertheless gave herself to her work with a passion I suspected she lavished on all things that happened to capture her interest.