The Game - Laurie R. King [92]
What happened in fact was that, thirty feet ahead of me, the boar turned with the ease of a swallow in flight and aimed itself at the Arab’s white belly. Our quarry had no intention of being driven out into open ground, and anything in its way would be ripped apart, it was as simple as that—except that it was not simple, the jink was a feint. The maharaja’s spear was already down and waiting, but the charge at the white belly stopped as swiftly as it had begun, and the animal whirled on its hooves in the clap of a hand and shot straight at me.
In an instant, my fear of embarrassing myself and letting down the women’s side vanished completely, gulped up by a flood of pure mortal terror. The pig looked the size of a bear, with murderous little eyes over a cluster of curved razors; I half expected the thing to leap into the air and rip out my throat. Thank God the horse at least knew what it was doing. While my arm froze and the spear bobbled up and down like a broom-stick balanced across a clothes-line, the big bay gathered its muscles, paused for a moment—only later did it occur to me that the horse was waiting for me to stick the thing, had I been either so inclined or so able—and then vaulted hugely forward out of the boar’s way. As we rose, the spear-head dipped to bounce ineffectually off the pig’s rock-like shoulder, a tap that jarred my shoulder down to my boots.
I came within a hair of dropping my stick as the horse flew forward, tucking its feet miraculously clear of the searching tusks and coming back to earth at a dead run. It took just half a dozen strides and then, with absolutely no instruction from me, dug in its front hooves. Spear and topee flew over the horse’s ears, nearly followed by rider as I clung hard to mane and saddle, losing one stirrup as the horse hauled itself around to face the boar again.
Which meant that I looked back over my gelding’s neck just in time to see a textbook illustration of how a pig is stuck. With its right side now clear, the animal was sprinting for the trees, the maharaja riding hard to catch it first. Ten feet from safety the spear—so steady it resembled the javelin of a bronze athlete—slid into the tough hide. The beast tumbled and regained its feet, the horse veered and came about, and spear met pig in mid-stride, the point slipping effortlessly into the fold where the thick neck began. The boar hesitated, then collapsed slowly and was still.
“Jesus Christ!” I said, loud in the silence. I was trembling all over, but the maharaja’s breathing was only slightly quickened, and both horses seemed more interested in the grass than in the bloody object on the ground. I half-fell out of the saddle and went in search of my dropped headgear and weapon, clinging to the reins as support, feeling as if I’d narrowly missed a fall from a high rooftop, shaking but gloriously alive. I located the spear by tripping over it, picked my topee from a bush and clapped it onto my head, and walked somewhat drunkenly back to where the maharaja sat, still on horse-back, waiting as some of his men approached at a fast trot.
“You accounted well for yourself, Miss Russell,” he said.
I squinted at him in disbelief. “I didn’t get us killed, if that’s what you mean.”
“Not at all. In fact—” He held out his hand, gesturing for my spear. I thrust it out and he snatched at the wavering shaft before I could disembowel him, then ran his thumb up the steel groove, showing me the thick red ooze he’d pulled from it. “First blood to you, Miss Russell. Congratulations.”
I took back my weapon to examine the evidence, then went to look at the animal itself, expecting a small nick where my spear had bounced off. Instead, there was a rip in his flesh the size of my hand. My shoulder still tingled with the impact.
The servants came up then. They gave the maharaja a cloth to clean his hand, gave me a glass of ice-cold lemon drink to clear my throat, and handed us each a fresh spear.
The day, it seemed, was far from over.
I tucked in my shirt, bathed my face,