The dry voice in his mind advised him that he spent far too much time worrying about things like that. Until he was grown, no one would consider him a man, so why should he go to all the trouble of trying to seem brave when it wouldn’t do any good anyway?
The forest was very quiet now, and the snow muffled all sounds. No bird sang, and there was only the occasional padded thump of snow sliding from overloaded branches to the earth beneath. Garion felt terribly alone. What was he doing here? What business had a good, sensible Sendarian boy here in the endless forests of Cherek, awaiting the charge of a savage wild pig with only a pair of unfamiliar spears for company?
What had the pig ever done to him? He realized that he didn’t even particularly like the taste of pork.
He was some distance from the beaten forest track along which their sleighs had passed, and he set his back to the oak tree, shivered, and waited.
He didn’t realize how long he had been listening to the sound when he became fully aware of it. It was not the stamping, squealing rush of a wild boar he had been expecting but was, rather, the measured pace of several horses moving slowly along the snow-carpeted floor of the forest, and it was coming from behind him. Cautiously he eased his face around the tree.
Three riders, muffled in furs, emerged from the woods on the far side of the sleigh-churned track. They stopped and sat waiting. Two of them were bearded warriors, little different from dozens of others Garion had seen in King Anheg’s palace. The third man, however, had long, flaxencolored hair and wore no beard. His face had the sullen, pampered look of a sPolled child, although he was a man of middle years, and he sat his horse disdainfully as if the company of the other two somehow offended him.
After a time, the sound of another horse came from near the edge of the forest. Almost holding his breath, Garion waited. The other rider slowly approached the three who sat their horses in the snow at the edge of the trees. It was the sandy-bearded man in the green cloak whom Garion had seen creeping through the passageways of King Anheg’s palace two nights before.
“My Lord,” the green-cloaked man said deferentially as he joined the other three.
“Where have you been?” the flaxen-haired man demanded.
“Lord Barak took some of his guests on a boar hunt this morning. His route was the same as mine, and I didn’t want to follow too closely.”
The nobleman grunted sourly.
“We saw them deeper in the wood,” he said. “Well, what have you heard?”
“Very little, my Lord. The kings are meeting with the old man and the woman in a guarded chamber. I can’t get close enough to head what they’re saying.”
“I’m paying you good gold to get close enough. I have to know what they’re saying. Go back to the palace and work out a way to hear what they’re talking about.”
“I’ll try, my Lord,” the green-cloaked man said, bowing somewhat stifliy.
“You’ll do more than try,” the flaxen-haired man snapped.
“As you wish, my Lord,” the other said, starting to turn his horse.
“Wait,” the nobleman commended. “Were you able to meet with our friend?”
“Your friend, my Lord,” the other corrected with distaste. “I met him, and we went to a tavern and talked a little.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing very useful. His kind seldom do.”
“Will he meet us as he said he would?”
“He told me that he would. If you want to believe him, that’s your affair.”
The nobleman ignored that.
“Who arrived with the King of the Sendars?”
“The old man and the woman, another old man-some Sendarian noble, I think, Lord Barak and a weasel-faced Drasnian, and another Sendar – a commoner of some sort.”
“That’s all? Wasn’t there a boy with them as well?”
The spy shrugged.
“I didn’t think the boy was important,” he said.
“He’s there then-in the palace?”
“He is, my Lord-an ordinary Sendarian boy of about fourteen, I’d judge. He seems to be some kind of servant to the woman.”
“Very well. Go back to the palace and get close enough to that chamber to hear what the kings and the old man are saying.”
“That may be very dangerous, my Lord.”
“It’ll be more dangerous if you don’t. Now go, before that ape Barak comes back and finds you loitering here.” He whirled his horse and, followed by his two warriors, plunged back into the forest on the far side of the snowy track that wound among the dark trees.
The man in the green cloak sat grimly watching for a moment, then he too turned his horse and rode back the way he had come.
Garion rose from his crouched position behind the tree. His hands were clenched so tightly around the shaft of his spear that they actually ached. This had gone entirely too far, he decided. The matter must be brought to someone’s attention.
And then, some way ofi in the snowy depths of the wood, he heard the sound of hunting horns and the steely clash of swords ringing rhythmically on shields. The huntsmen were coming, driving all the beasts of the forest before them.
He heard a crackling in the bushes, and a great stag bounded into view, his eyes wild with fright and his antlers flaring above his head. With three huge leaps he was gone. Garion trembled with excitement.
Then there was a squealing rush, and a red-eyed sow plunged down the trail followed by a half dozen scampering piglets. Garion stepped behind his tree and let them pass.
The next squeals were deeper and rang less with fright than with rage. It was the boar-Garion knew that before the beast even broke out of the heavy brush. When the boar appeared, Garion felt his heart quail.
This was no fat, sleepy porker, but rather a savage, infuriated beast. The horrid tusks jutting up past the flaring snout were yellow, and bits of twigs and bark clung to them, mute evidence that the boar would slash at anything in his path-trees, bushes or a Sendarian boy without sense enough to get out of his way.
Then a peculiar thing happened. As in the long-ago fight with Rundorig or in the scuffle with Brill’s hirelings in the dark streets of Muros, Garion felt his blood begin to surge, and there was a wild ringing in his ears. He seemed to hear a defiant, shouted challenge and could scarcely accept the fact that it came from his own throat. He suddenly realized that he was stepping into the middle of the trail and crouching with his spear braced and leveled at the massive beast.
The boar charged. Red-eyed and frothing from the mouth, with a deep-throated squeal of fury, he plunged at the waiting Garion. The powdery snow sprayed up from his churning hooves like foam from the prow of a ship.The snow crystals seemed to hang in the air, sparkling in a single ray of sunlight that chanced just there to reach the forest floor.
The shock as the boar hit the spear was frightful, but Garion’s aim was good. The broad-bladed spearhead penetrated the coarsely haired chest, and the white froth dripping from the boar’s tusks suddenly became bloody foam. Garion felt himself driven back by the impact, his feet slipping out from under him, and then the shaft of his spear snapped like a dry twig and the boar was on him.
The first slashing, upward-ripping blow of the boar’s tusks took Garion full in the stomach, and he felt the wind whoosh out of his lungs. The second slash caught his hip as he tried to roll, gasping, out of the way. His chain-mail shirt deflected the tusks, saving him from being wounded, but the blows were stunning. The boar’s third slash caught him in the back, and he was flung through the air and crashed into a tree. His eyes filled with shimmering light as his head banged against the rough bark.
And then Barak was there, roaring and charging through the snowbut somehow it seemed not to be Barak. Garion’s eyes, glazed from the shock of the blow to his head, looked uncomprehendingly at something that could not be true. It was Barak, there could be no doubt of that, but it was also something else. Oddly, as if somehow occupying the same space as Barak, there was also a huge, hideous bear. The images of the two figures crashing through the snow were superimposed, their movements identical as if in sharing the same space they also shared the same thoughts.
Huge arms grasped up the wriggling, mortally wounded boar and crushed in upon it. Bright blood fountained from the boar’s mouth, and the shaggy, half man thing that seemed to be Barak and something else at the same time raised the dying pig and smashed it brutally to the ground. The man-thing lifted its awful face and roared in earthshaking triumph as the light slid away from Garion’s eyes and he felt himself drifting down into the gray well of unconsciousness.