The result was almost instantaneous. The creature gave one terrible cry that ended in a rattling cough as it flipped over once more. Blind, buying the farm and now almost completely defenseless, its legs waved wildly as it rolled, leaving the soft, white underbelly open and undefended.
Kanu needed no second chance. His spear flew straight and true, taking the creature in the gut and ripping the remaining life from it. It flipped once more, snapping the balsa shaft of the spear, as it had done with all the others, and leaving the head embedded in its flesh. Gouts of blood gushed from the open wound in time with the fading pulse, spilling onto the ground and darkening the soil and vegetation, steaming in the cool morning air.
The creature thrashed feebly a few times and was then still. It was an enormous size, and needed the four-pronged attack to take it in flight. Jak was still of the opinion that this matter could have been settled much more easily if left to his methods, but said nothing as Jules stepped forward to prod the now-still beast with his foot. “Big bastard. Should feed a lot of people, and the hide’ll come in useful,” he said simply.
Moses eyed the corpse speculatively. “I’m thinking that mebbe this is the shadow that comes in the night, spiriting away other creatures to join him,” he said, referring to a mysterious attacker that had been decimating their livestock supplies over the past couple of weeks. It was a hot topic of conversation among the hunters in the ville, and Jak had heard plenty about it during his few days with them.
“Boar not usually meat eater.” Jak spoke up.
“Mebbe not,” Moses agreed, “but it could be a mutie of some sort. The long-ago wars have long fingers of fear and hate that stretch through the generations.”
Kanu shrugged. “Whatever it is, it’ll keep Markos happy, and he is like the gathering storm if he is not.”
Jules agreed. “That is never a bad thing. Let’s get this back to the ville.”
The four-man team cut two strong branches from the surrounding trees and, using the vines that curled around them, made ropes to secure the front and back legs of the chilled beast. Running a branch between both sets of legs, they each took one branch end and hefted the creature. The branches creaked and they could feel the vine ropes give under the weight of the muscle-bound boar. To have tried one long branch running the length of the body with all four legs secured would have snapped a branch without a doubt.
The hunters shouldered the weight and began to move. The boar was a good catch, and would make the journey back to the ville seem much longer than it was. Jak pondered as they walked that it was a simple way of life, but as everything on the island was so close to the ville, it would be hard for the companions to escape without being hunted down like the boar he was now helping to carry.
He wondered if Mildred had any ideas. He had seen her briefly, but she was showing little sign of hurry.
Jak was curious—as much as he ever allowed himself—as to why.
MILDRED HAD FOUND HERSELF faced with a barrage of questions from Sineta as soon as she had awakened.
The baron’s daughter had been vexed by the information from Markos that the albino had been “freed” by the pale ones, as this contradicted what Mildred had told her about the companions being friends and equals. However, when Mildred had cross questioned her about the attitudes of Markos and Chan, she had explained to Sineta that it was perhaps a ploy to allow Jak to go free, and then she did something that she wouldn’t have believed possible. She told a possible enemy that Jak would be free to plan an escape.
“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” Mildred said, rubbing her eyes and forehead as if to alleviate the raging cross-current of feelings that built up in her head. “For God’s sake, you could tell Markos and have Jak chilled. But I trust you not to.” Her eyes met Sineta’s, and in them Mildred could see that the baron’s daughter was willing her to explain. She continued. “Look, you see my friends as the enemy because of the color of their skin, and they see you as the enemy because you overpowered us and locked them up. So they’ll use any method to work a means of escape. Isn’t that exactly what Markos would do in such circumstances?”