Grus found himself smiling again. “Fair enough,” he said. “You can go. And the next time you see Otus, you can tell him from me that I think he’s a lucky fellow.”
The serving girl smiled, too. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll show him.” And, by the way her hips swayed when she left the audience chamber, she would do a good, careful, thorough job of showing him, too.
Leaves blazed gold and maroon and scarlet. When the wind blew through the trees, it swirled them off branches and sent them dancing like bits of flame. Lanius admired the autumn. “This is reason to come out to the woods all by itself,” he said.
Arch-Hallow Anser and Prince Ortalis both laughed at the king. “This is pretty enough,” Anser said, “but the reason to come out here is the hunting.”
“That’s right,” Ortalis said, not that Lanius had expected him to say anything else. Anser came hunting because he enjoyed it. Ortalis came hunting because he enjoyed hunting, too, but in a different way. Lanius was glad to have Ortalis hunt, because he might do something worse if he didn’t.
And you— why do you come hunting? the king wondered. He didn’t take pleasure in it, the way Anser did. He didn’t need it, crave it, the way Ortalis did. But every so often Anser looked as though he would curl up and die of disappointment if he heard “No” one more time, and Anser was too nice a fellow to disappoint.
Smiling, the arch-hallow said, “Maybe you’ll kill something this time.”
“Maybe I will,” Lanius said. “Maybe a stag will die laughing at how badly I shoot.” Anser laughed, whether a stag would or not. Lanius managed a wry smile at his own ineptitude. He wasn’t much of a bowman. He knew that. But he also used his bad archery as an excuse not to have to kill anything. He didn’t think either Anser or Ortalis had ever figured that out. He hoped not, anyway.
“Think of venison,” Ortalis said lovingly. “Think of a roasted haunch, or of chunks of venison stewed for a nice long time in wine and herbs, until all the gamy taste goes away. Doesn’t it make your mouth water?”
Lanius nodded, because it did. He loved eating meat. Killing it himself had always been a different story. He recognized the inconsistency, and had no idea what to do about it.
One of Anser’s beaters nodded to the arch-hallow. “We’re off,” he said. He and his comrades disappeared into the woods.
“They’re better hunters than any of us,” Lanius said.
“I don’t know about that,” Ortalis said. Anser didn’t look convinced, either. They both enjoyed hunting for its own sake, which Lanius didn’t. Ortalis added, “The two of us could come out here without beaters, because we can find game on our own. Some people I could name, though…”
“If that’s what’s bothering you—” Lanius began.
“What? You think you could do your own stalking?” Ortalis broke in. “Don’t make me laugh.” That wasn’t what Lanius had started to say. He’d been about to tell Grus’ legitimate son and his bastard that he couldn’t have cared less about finding game on his own, that he came hunting for the sake of their company (especially Anser’s, though he wouldn’t have said that) and to get out to the forest and away from the palace. Maybe it was just as well Oitalis had interrupted him.
Something up in a tree chirped. Peering through the branches, Lanius got a glimpse of a plump brown bird with a striped belly. “Thrush,” Anser said without even looking toward it. “They fly south for the winter every year about this time.”
“Do they?” Lanius said. The arch-hallow nodded. Lanius still knew less about birds than he wished he did. He knew less than he wished he did about a lot of things. Not enough hours in the day, not enough days in the year to learn as much as he could about all the things he wanted to know.
“They’re tasty baked in a pie,” Ortalis said. Anser nodded again. This time, so did Lanius. Pies and stews full of songbirds were some of his favorite dishes. Again, though, he didn’t care to hunt thrushes himself.
A rabbit bounded by and disappeared into the undergrowth. Anser started to set an arrow to his bowstring, then checked the motion and laughed at himself. “Not much point to shooting at rabbits,” he said. “You only waste your arrows that way. If you want rabbits in your stew instead of songbirds, you go after them with dogs and nets.”
“Then you whack them over the head with a club,” Ortalis said. “That way, you don’t hurt the pelts.”
“I see,” Lanius said. He wondered what he really saw. What Ortalis said made perfect sense. Did the prince really sound as though he enjoyed the idea of whacking rabbits over the head with a club, or was Lanius only hearing what he expected to hear? The king couldn’t be sure, and decided he had to give his brother-in-law the benefit of the doubt.
“Come on,” Anser said. “There’s a clearing not far from here. If we post ourselves at the edge of it, we’ll get good shots.”
He glided down a game track as smoothly and silently as any of the men who served him, the men who looked so much like poachers. Lanius was sure he could find his own game if he had to. Ortalis did his best to move the same way, but wasn’t as good at it. Lanius tried not to trip over his own feet and not to step on too many twigs. Anser winced only once, so he supposed he wasn’t doing too bad a job.
The three high-ranking hunters had their usual low-voiced argument about who would shoot first. Lanius resigned himself to looking foolish in front of Grus’ sons. He’d done it before. You could try to kill a deer, he said to himself, and then shook his head. That wasn’t why he came out here.
A frightened stag bounded into the clearing. “Good luck, Your Majesty,” Anser whispered.
“Try to frighten it, anyhow, Your Majesty,” Ortalis whispered—a reasonable estimate of Lanius’ talents.
Since the shot was fairly long, the king didn’t worry much about taking aim, good, bad, or otherwise. He pointed the bow in the general direction of the stag and let fly. Even as he did so, the stag bounded forward. Anser and Ortalis sighed together. So did Lanius, with something approaching relief. This time, at least, he had a good enough excuse for missing.
If the stag had stood still, the arrow would have flown past in front of h. As things were, the shaft caught the animal just behind the left shoulder. The deer took four or five staggering steps, then fell on its side, kicking feebly. As Lanius stared in dismay, the kicking stopped and the stag lay still.
“Well shot, by Olor’s beard!” Anser cried. “Oh, well shot!” Ortalis whooped and pounded Lanius on the back. The king’s guards whooped, too.
He’d missed again, but he was the only one who knew it. This time, he’d missed at missing. Lanius gulped. He didn’t want to look at the animal he’d just killed.
But his ordeal, evidently, hadn’t ended. “Now you get to learn how to butcher the beast,” Ortalis said. “I wondered if you ever would.”
“Butcher it?” Lanius gulped. “That… isn’t what I had in mind.” He turned toward Anser for support.
The arch-hallow let him down. “It’s part of the job,” Anser said. “You ought to know what to do and how to do it. You don’t need to cut its throat; it’s plainly dead. That was as clean a kill as the one Ortalis had a while ago.”
“Huzzah,” Lanius said in a hollow voice. Anser and Ortalis clucked in disapproval and dismay when they discovered he had no knife on his belt. They would have sounded the same way if he’d gotten up in the morning and forgotten to put on his breeches. Ortalis drew his own knife and handed it to the king hilt first. He moved slowly and carefully as he did it, mindful of Lanius’ bodyguards. The edge of the blade, lovingly honed and polished, glittered in the sunlight.