Worlds That Weren't

“Dammit,” he wheezed as he came back up on one knee. Then he shouted “Krishna!”

Something shot out of the yellow-red underscrub at him like a cannonball, and he snapped the weapon up to his shoulder. Instinct and training brought the sights between a pair of furious red-glinting piggy eyes barely ten feet away, and the recoil punished his shoulder.

Crack!

It was a sow; less dangerous than the boars, but only in an academic fashion seeing as it was nearly on top of him. The heavy. 477 slug blasted its way through the thick skull and the brain beneath it; the wild pig nosed into the leaf-mold and dropped at his feet, dead although its little sharp hooves were still kicking. King came back to his feet and broke open the action of the rifle, shaking out the spent brass and pulling two more long fat cartridges from the bandolier across his chest. As he snapped it shut, he saw a flickering montage: another sow dragging herself back into the bushes with her hind legs limp and one of Robre’s arrows through her spine; a boar landing again after a leap that had nearly caught Sonjuh, landing with an agility unbelievable in so gross a beast; the girl’s staring face in the tree; beyond that Slasher and the other boar whirling in a snapping, snarling, stabbing dance that cast up a fog of yellow leaves and acorns from the forest floor; Robre whipping out another arrow from his quiver and nocking it, drawing the shaft to his ear.

Then both men had more than enough to engage their attention, as the rest of the sounder boiled out of the brush and attacked with the reckless omnivore aggression that men and swine shared. It was a big group, in these man-empty woods so rich in their kinds of food, and not much afraid of humankind. King shot twice more before he had to use the empty double rifle to defend himself from a pig that seized it in her mouth, wrenching it away and then running off into the woods in panic flight. The rest of the sounder followed, less the dead.

Except for the boars.

King felt a profound wish for his rifle-loaded and in his hands, not lying uselessly a dozen paces off. Time seemed to slow like honey. Not far off a boar stood alone, the gouge of a bullet wound bleeding freely down one dusty-black flank, and an arrow standing out of a ham, making abortive stabs to either side with its tusks and panting like a steam engine in a Bihari coal mine. The other backed off from where Slasher held a natural fort behind a thick fallen log, turning just in time to take Robre’s arrow in the armor-thick hide and bone around its shoulders rather than the vulnerable flank. It staggered and then charged, and Robre ripped free the spear slung across his back by the simple expedient of snapping the rawhide thongs that bound it by main strength. He brought it around, dropping to one knee and thrusting the blade of the spearhead out to receive the living missile that hurtled toward him, mud and leaves spraying out behind it.

King had his own boar, and nothing but the Khyber knife in his hand. Its charge was slowed a little-a very little-by the arrow wound, and it came silently save for the bellows-panting of near exhaustion. The Imperial tensed himself to leap aside and then in-not much of a chance, because he was weary, too, and the sidewise strike of the boar’s head would be swifter than a hooded cobra.

“Kuch dar nahin hai!” he shouted, the ancient motto of his house. There is no such thing as fear!

A wolf-gray streak came from behind the boar, soaring over the litter of the forest floor, from shadow into light. Slasher’s jaws clamped down like a mechanical grab edged with ripping fangs on the beast’s hock just before it would have cannoned into the human. Snapping-swift it spun and tried to gash the dog, but the same motion flung Slasher around like a spinning top. King leapt as well, onto the boar. It was like landing on top of a living boulder, one that heaved beneath him with terrifying strength and ferocity, battering him about like a pea in a can. He reversed the chora — knife and slammed it into the thrashing mass beneath him, hanging on to the hilt like grim death with one hand and a handful of bristly mane with the other, working the blade back and forth between the boar’s ribs. It was dying, blood spraying out of nose and mouth, but it could still kill him. He twisted his legs about it and put forth all the strength that was in him.

Hands came into his field of vision, long slender hands, well shaped but with dirt beneath the fingernails and ground into the knuckles, holding a crossbow. The string released, and the bolt blossomed from the base of the boar’s skull. It shuddered, hammered the ground with its head, and died. King rose from the limp body.

Sonjuh was watching him, head tilted slightly to one side. “Why’d you jump in, when Slasher had him by the leg?” she said quietly. “You could’ve gone for your gun.”