The flames had almost reached the top.
I saw Jason then, standing beside the cart, Bortan seated by his side. I backed away further. Bortan came to me and sat down at my right. He licked my hand, once.
"Mighty hunter, we have lost us another," I said.
He nodded his great head.
The flames reached the top and began to nibble at the night. The air was filled with sweet aromas and the sound of fire.
Jason approached.
"Father," he said, "he bore me to the place of burning rocks, but you were already escaped."
I nodded.
"A no-man friend freed us from that place. Before that, this man Hasan destroyed the Dead Man. So your dreams have thus far proved both right and wrong."
"He is the yellow-eyed warrior of my vision," he said.
"I know, but that part too is past."
"What of the Black Beast?"
"Not a snort nor a snuffle."
"Good."
We watched for a long, long time, as the night retreated into itself. At several points, Bortan's ears pricked forward and his nostrils dilated. George and Ellen had not moved. Hasan was a strange-eyed watcher, without expression.
"What will you do now, Hasan?" I asked.
"Go again to Mount Sindjar," he said, "for awhile."
"And then?"
He shrugged. "Howsoever it is written," he replied.
And a fearsome noise came upon us then, like the groans of an idiot giant, and the sound of splintering trees accompanied it.
Bortan leapt to his feet and howled. The donkeys who had drawn the cart shifted uneasily. One of them made a brief, braying noise.
Jason clutched the sharpened staff which he had picked from the heap of kindling, and he stiffened.
It burst in upon us then, there in the clearing. Big, and ugly, and everything it had ever been called.
The Eater of Men…
The Shaker of the Earth…
The Mighty, Foul One…
The Black Beast of Thessaly.
Finally, someone could say what it really was. If they got away to say it, that is.
It must have been drawn to us by the odor of burning flesh.
And it was big. The size of an elephant, at least.
What was Herakles' fourth labor?
The wild boar of Arcadia, that's what.
I suddenly wished Herk was still around, to help.
A big pig… A razorback, with tusks the length of a man's arm… Little pig eyes, black, and rolling in the firelight, wildly…
It knocked down trees as it came…
It squealed, though, as Hasan drew a burning brand from the blaze and drove it, fire-end forward, into its snout, and then spun away.
It swerved, too, which gave me time to snatch Jason's staff.
I ran forward and caught it in the left eye with it.
It swerved again then, and squealed like a leaky boiler.
… And Bortan was upon it, tearing at its shoulder.
Neither of my two thrusts at its throat did more than superficial damage. It wrestled, shoulder against fang, and finally shook itself free of Bortan's grip.
Hasan was at my side by then, waving another firebrand.
It charged us.
From somewhere off to the side George emptied a machine-pistol into it. Hasan hurled the torch. Bortan leapt again, this time from its blind side.
…And these things caused it to swerve once more in its charge, crashing into the now empty cart and killing both donkeys.
I ran against it then, thrusting the staff up under its left front leg.
The staff broke in two.
Bortan kept biting, and his snarl was a steady thunder. Whenever it slashed at him with its tusks he relinquished his grip, danced away, and moved in again to worry it.
I am sure that my needle-point deathlance of steel would not have broken. It had been aboard the Vanitie, though…
Hasan and I circled it with the sharpest and most stakelike of the kindling we could find. We kept jabbing, to keep it turning in a circle. Bortan kept trying for its throat, but the great snouted head stayed low, and the one eye rolled and the other bled, and the tusks slashed back and forth and up and down like swords. Cloven hooves the size of bread-loaves tore great holes in the ground as it turned, counterclockwise, trying to kill us all, there in the orange and dancing flamelight.
Finally, it stopped and turned-suddenly, for something that big-and its shoulder struck Bortan in the side and hurled him ten or twelve feet past me. Hasan hit it across the back with his stick and I drove in toward the other eye, but missed.
Then it moved toward Bortan, who was still regaining his feet-its head held low, tusks gleaming.
I threw my staff and leapt as it moved in on my dog. It had already dropped its head for the death blow.
I caught both tusks as the head descended almost to the ground. Nothing could hold back that scooping slash, I realized, as I bore down upon it with all my strength.
But I tried, and maybe I succeeded, somehow, for a second…
At least, as I was thrown through the air, my hands torn and bleeding, I saw that Bortan had managed to get back out of the way.
I was dazed by the fall, for I had been thrown far and high; and I heard a great pig-mad squealing. Hasan screamed and Bortan roared out his great-throated battle-challenge once more.
…And the hot red lightning of Zeus descended twice from the heavens.
… And all was still.
I climbed back, slowly, to my feet.
Hasan was standing by the blazing pyre, a flaming stake still upraised in spear-throwing position.
Bortan was sniffing at the quivering mountain of flesh.
Cassandra was standing beneath the cypress beside a dead donkey, her back against the trunk of the tree, wearing leather trousers, a blue woolen shirt, a faint smile, and my still-smoking elephant gun.
"Cassandra!"
She dropped the gun and looked very pale. But I had her in my arms almost before it hit the ground.
"I'll ask you a lot of things later," I said. "Not now. Nothing now. Let's just sit here beneath this tree and watch the fire burn."
And we did.
A month later, Dos Santos was ousted from the Radpol. He and Diane have not been heard of since. Rumor has it that they gave up on Returnism, moved to Taler, and are living there now. I hope it's not true, what with the affairs of these past five days. I never did know the full story on Red Wig, and I guess I never will. If you trust a person, really trust him I mean, and you care for him, as she might have cared for me, it would seem you'd stick around to see whether he was right or wrong on your final big disagreement. She didn't, though, and I wonder if she regrets it now.
I don't really think I'll ever see her again.
Slightly after the Radpol shakeup, Hasan returned from Mount Sindjar, stayed awhile at the Port, then purchased a small ship and put out to sea early one morning, without even saying goodbye or giving any indication as to his destination. It was assumed he'd found new employment somewhere. There was a hurricane, though, several days later, and I heard rumors in Trinidad to the effect that he had been washed up on the coast of Brazil and met with his death at the hands of the fierce tribesmen who dwell there. I tried but was unable to verify this story.
However, two months later, Ricardo Bonaventura, Chairman of the Alliance Against Progress, a Radpol splinter group which had fallen into disfavor with Athens, died of apoplexy during a Party function. There were some murmurings of Divban rabbit-venom in the anchovies (an exceedingly lethal combination, George assures me), and the following day the new Captain of the Palace Guard vanished mysteriously, along with a Skimmer and the minutes of the last three secret sessions of the AAP (not to mention the contents of a small wallsafe). He was said to have been a big, yellow-eyed man, with a slightly Eastern cast to his features.