Devices and Desires

Chapter Sixteen

The Ducas rides to the hunt on a white palfrey. He wears a quilted pourpoint of white or grey silk over a white linen shirt, cord breeches and arming boots with points for his sabatons; the only weapon he carries is a slightly curved, single-edged hanger as long as his arm from shoulder to fingertips. He may wear a hat if rain is actually falling. He is followed by four huntsmen on barbs or jennets, who carry his armour, his great spear, his light spears, his bow and his close sword, which can be either a falchion or a tuck, depending on the likely quarry. A page on an ambler or a mule follows with the wet-weather gear-a hooded mantle, a surcoat, chaps and spats-and the horn.

On arriving at the meet, the Ducas dismounts, and is accomplished for the hunt in the following order, which differs slightly from the proper order for war: first the sabatons, laced tightly at the toes and under the instep; next the greaves, followed by the leg-harness of demi-greaves, poleyns and cuisses (gamboised cuisses are considered excessive except where the quarry is exclusively bear or wolf)-these are secured by points to the hem of the pourpoint, and the usual straps and buckles around the thigh, the calf and the inside of the knee. Since the cuirass and placket are not worn for the hunt, the upper points are secured to the kidney-belt, after which the faulds are added to protect the buttocks, thighs and groin. The arm-harness is fitted next; in the hunting harness, the vambraces close on the outside of the forearm with buckles, and the half-rerebrace is worn, secured at the shoulder with a single point. Spaudlers are preferred to pauldrons for the protection of the shoulder, and a simple one-lame gorget suffices for the neck. Finally, the Ducas puts on his gauntlets (the finger type is preferred to the clamshell or mitten varieties) and his baldric, from which hang his close sword and his horn. He carries his great spear in his right hand. The four huntsmen carry the rest of the gear between them; the page stays behind at the meet to hold the horses.

Miel couldn't stop yawning. He'd gone to bed early and slept well; in spite of which, he'd woken up with a slight headache (in his temples, just behind his eyes). If it hadn't been for the fact that this was Orsea's special treat and Veatriz had asked him to go, he'd have stayed in bed.

The sky was black with a few silver cracks and he could smell rain in the air. The Ducas never takes any notice of the weather, in the same way as a king can decline to recognise a government of which he doesn't approve; accordingly, he was bare-headed, and the damp made his head throb. A day or so before, Jarnac had muttered something about working down the high pastures in the hope of flushing a good boar in the open; that meant a lot of walking, most of it uphill. What joy.

Long practice made it possible for him to greet his fellow hunters with a reasonable show of affability, in spite of the pain behind his eyes. Jarnac hadn't arrived yet, of course; neither had Orsea, who had to make his entrance immediately after his host. Miel looked round for unfamiliar faces: a thin, spotty young man with the unfortunate Poliorcetes nose (two possible candidates, Gacher or Dester; he hadn't seen either of them for five years); a stout, flat-faced man in the Phocas livery (he'd heard someone say that old Eston had retired and his son had taken over as whipper-in for the Phocas pack); everyone else he knew. Including-he frowned-a dark-skinned man, shorter than everyone else, unarmoured and carrying a long cloth bag made of sacking.

'Hello,' Miel said, squeezing out a little more affability from somewhere. 'I'd forgotten, Jarnac mentioned you were coming along today.'

Ziani Vaatzes turned his head and looked at him for a heartbeat before answering. 'I'm afraid I sort of bullied him into inviting me,' he said. 'Only, I've never seen anything like this before.'

Miel smiled. 'Anybody who can bully Jarnac has my sincere admiration,' he said. 'I'd have thought it couldn't be done. So, what do you make of it all?'

'Impressive,' Vaatzes replied; not that it mattered, since Miel wasn't particularly interested in the truth. 'I had no idea it'd be so formal. I expect I look ridiculous.'

'Not at all,' Miel said (it wasn't a good day for truth generally). 'What've you got there, in the bag?'

Vaatzes looked sheepish. 'I didn't know what to bring, so I fetched along my bow. I hope that's all right.'

'Very good,' Miel said. 'Is it one you made yourself?' he added, as a way of filling the silence.

Vaatzes nodded, loosed the knot and pulled something out of the bag. It would have looked quite like a bow if it hadn't been made of metal. He was holding it out for Miel to examine, like a cat that insists on bringing small dead birds into the house.

'Steel?' Miel guessed. Actually, he was impressed. It was very light and thin, but extremely stiff. Hard to guess the draw weight while it was unstrung, but Miel figured something around eighty to eighty-five pounds.

Vaatzes nodded again, as Miel noticed the groove stamped down the middle. Clever; it added strength while conserving mass, like the fuller in a sword-blade. 'I've never seen a bow like this before,' Miel said. Vaatzes shrugged. 'It's the standard pattern back home,' he said. Miel guessed from a slight trace of colour in his voice that he was lying, but he couldn't imagine why.

A clatter of hoofs and the yapping of dogs announced the arrival of Jarnac. He looked tired, tense, if possible even larger than usual. As Master, he was wearing his surcoat over his armour, so that everybody would be able to recognise him even at a distance. Today (only today) he could wear the Ducas arms proper, free from the quarterings of the cadet branch. Somehow they seemed to sit more naturally on Jarnac's massive chest than they'd ever done on Miel. Life is crammed with little ironies, if you know where to look. It was probably Miel's imagination, but he thought he noticed Vaatzes flinch a little when he saw Jarnac on his horse, and maybe he relaxed a bit when he dismounted.

To business straight away. On his own ground, Jarnac could explain a complicated plan of action clearly and quickly. The basic idea was to get up on the high pasture to the west of the big wood, approaching downwind from the east while the dew was still on the grass, in hopes of putting up one of a group of four particularly fine mature boars that had been consistently sighted in the area over the last ten days. Normally they'd stay in the wood during the hours of daylight, but there was a chance of catching them out at this time of year, when dawn came early and the wet, lush grass was particularly tempting. Being realistic, they had precious little chance of bringing a boar to bay in the pasture, even if they put one up there; they'd have to follow it into the wood and drive it out the other side-down into the river, ideally-but at least there would be a clear scent for the dogs to follow, which would save the uncertainty and frustration of crashing about in the underwood hoping they'd be lucky enough to tread on one's tail, which was the only sure way of finding a boar in deep cover. If they drew a blank in the pasture, they'd have to fall back on that anyway; but the result as far as the standing party was concerned would be more or less the same. Wherever they found it, Jarnac and the hounds would be looking to drive the boar through the wood east-west, down the hill, aiming to bring it to bay either in the river or in the furze on the far bank. The standing party, accordingly, should make its way up the old carters' drove until they drew level with the lower edge of the wood; they should then follow the edge round, making as little noise as possible, and line out in a circle on the south-western side, twenty-five yards inside the wood, ten yards apart. No shots to be taken eastwards, of course, for fear of an arrow skipping on a branch and hitting the beaters or the dogs; one horn-call meant the boar was in sight, two if it was on the move, three for at bay, four for the death, five to signal mortal peril requiring immediate assistance, and had everybody brought a horn?

Miel nudged Ziani in the ribs. 'No,' Ziani said (his voice rather squeaky). 'Sorry, I didn't realise…'

Someone handed him one. 'Do you know how to sound it?' Jarnac asked. 'In that case, you'd better have a practice now. Doesn't matter a damn if it sounds like a mule farting, but it's essential everybody knows where everybody else is, otherwise things can go wrong very quickly.'

That was exactly what it sounded like; but after four tries Jarnac nodded and said, 'That'll do,' and Ziani was able to sink back into the obscurity of the circle. The huntsmen were starting to collect the dogs, while the pages led the horses away to wooden mangers filled with oats. Ziani remembered that he'd forgotten to bring the last pieces of armour, but either Jarnac had forgotten too or he had other things on his mind.

The beating party were almost ready to leave. Ziani noticed that Miel Ducas was still standing next to him; odd, because he'd have thought that the Ducas would be circulating, chatting to his fellow nobles. Then he realised: good manners ordained that, since Ziani was a stranger and didn't know anybody else here, Miel had to stay with him and put him at his ease. For a moment he was touched; but the Ducas is considerate of his inferiors in the same way a cat slashes at trailing string, because instinct gives him no choice.

'Where's the Duke?' he asked. 'They aren't going to leave without him, are they?'

Miel grinned. 'Not likely. But it's not polite for the guest of honour to be there for the briefing. Don't ask me why, it's just one of those things. He shows up-well, any minute now, and I fill him in on the plan of campaign.'

Ziani was about to ask, 'Why you?', but he guessed in time. Miel was senior nobleman in the standing party, so passing on the Master's orders was his job. Come to think of it, there'd been something about it in one of the books.

Orsea arrived, at last. His clothes, armour and escort had been set down immutably by King Fashion back when the Mezentines were still living in the old country, but the Duke of Eremia Montis traditionally defied tradition when hunting informally with close friends. Accordingly he was wearing an old, comfortable arming coat under distinctly scruffy leathers, and he had his hat on, even though it wasn't raining. He looked more cheerful than Miel could remember seeing him since before the Mezentine expedition. Veatriz was with him.

But she didn't dismount when he did; she leant forward in the saddle to kiss him, then pulled her horse's head round and rode back down the path. Orsea turned back to watch her go, then strode forward to greet Miel.

'Don't tell me,' he said. 'Jarnac's found us a pig the size of an ox, with tusks like parsnips, and it's sitting waiting for us just over there in the bushes.'

'In a sense,' Miel replied. 'There's supposed to be half a dozen feeding in the fat grass up top, and the idea is to pick them up in the open and drive them through the wood and out the other side.' He shrugged. 'Don't quite see it myself, but Jarnac's the expert, or so he keeps telling me.'

Orsea grinned. 'That's your cousin for you,' he said. 'I remember one time we were out after geese, years ago, and he'd cooked up this incredibly elaborate plan whereby the geese came in here, saw the decoys, turned through sixty-five degrees over one hide, got shot at, turned another thirty-two degrees which took them over another hide, and so on. Absolutely crazy, the whole thing, and everybody was saying, bloody Jarnac, why can't he just keep it simple? Except it worked, and we got twenty-seven geese in one night.' He shrugged. 'Disastrous, of course,' he went on, 'because after that, every time Jarnac said the geese were coming in on the stubbles and he had a clever plan, we all trudged out over the mudflats and sat in flooded ditches half the night expecting another miracle, and of course we'd have seen more geese staying at home and hiding in the clothes-press.'

Miel smiled broadly. He'd heard the story many times before, and it had been much closer to the truth the first time; but it pleased him to see his friend happy, though of course the reason for it was nothing to do with the prospects for the day's hunt, or fresh air, or anything like that. He was happy because Veatriz had come out to the meet with him; because Orsea loved Veatriz more than anyone else in the world, more than being Duke, more than anything (one more thing he had in common with his old friend, his liege lord). How it had come about that he'd managed to persuade himself that she didn't love him, Miel couldn't say, but it was obvious to everyone but Orsea, and possibly Veatriz herself. He wished, for a variety of reasons, that she hadn't gone straight back home just now.

She sat down on the slim, brittle-looking chair and opened her writing-box. As she took out the ink-bottle, she hesitated, scowled; then she stood up, went to the door, and wedged it shut with the handle of a broom some maid had carelessly left behind.

Pen, ink, the little square of scraped parchment; she'd cut it from the inside of the binding of a book, and cleaned it up herself with pumice. Maybe she'd been a bit too enthusiastic about it; there were a few places where she'd scrubbed it too thin and made a small hole, or else worn down into the soft inside, so that any ink applied there would soak away into the fibres and make a ghastly mess. Veatriz Sirupati to Valens Valentinianus, greetings.

Orsea, she thought. She hoped he was having a wonderful day. For a moment or so she'd persuaded herself that she'd go with him, at least for the morning. If they'd have been hunting parforce and she could have ridden instead of walking, probably she would have stayed. But she'd never liked walking much, especially not up hills or through dense, tangled forests. Besides, if she'd gone she'd probably have spoilt the day for him; he'd have had to hang back with her, being thoughtful and considerate, when really he wanted to be up at the front with the harbourers, or crouched in the underbrush waiting to shoot; You never replied to my last letter. I suppose there could be several different reasons. I offended you; I was putting pressure on you, breaking the rules of our friendship; I brought Orsea into it, when this has always been just you and me. Or perhaps you're just tired of me and bored by my letters. If it's any one of those, I'd understand. Going too far: that's always been my biggest failing.

Well; if I've offended you, I'm sorry. I'm not going to plead or anything; if you can forgive me, please do. If not-well, I'm sorry. It's my fault.

This is a very bad day for thinking about you, because Orsea is out hunting, and so of course you've been in my mind all the time he's been fussing around, looking for his old felt hat and the belt for his surcoat, telling me over and over again that he doesn't really want to go but everybody's been to so much trouble. Of course he wants to go really, but he automatically assumes I don't want him to, precisely because he's been looking forward to it so much. I don't know why he does that; it's like secretly, deep down inside, he wants me to come between him and happiness. All I want is for him to be happy; that's all, quite simple. It puzzles me how he can love me as much as he does and still know so little about me. It makes me wonder why he loves me, if it's not for who I really am.

And I'm doing it again, bringing Orsea in, like insisting my mother comes along on my honeymoon. But, if that's the reason you didn't answer my last letter, you won't have read this far; which means I can say what I like, but you won't read it.

Actually, I do quite like hunting; or at least, the only reason I don't like it's because it's usually tiresome and boring and either too hot or too cold and wet, and I'm lazy about walking. Orsea thinks I'm squeamish about animals being killed. A couple of times I've been when we were riding all the time, and I quite enjoyed it. At least it made a change from sewing and arranging flowers and listening to the house minstrels playing the same seven tunes all day. He can't seem to tell the difference between when I'm desperately sad and unhappy, and when I'm just bored and fed up.

Anyway; I'm prattling on, hoping you're reading. Sometimes I wonder if writing to you is just a clever way of talking to myself, because things suddenly get much clearer in my mind when I'm trying to tell you about them. I'm not sure about that. Partly I think it's true, but also I think that knowing you're reading what I'm writing makes me be honest with myself. I can lie to myself, if I've got to or I really want to, but I don't think I could lie to you. No sign of a boar in the high pasture; no tracks, droppings, wallows or trampled grass. Jarnac had sent the dogs through' five times, and all they'd done was stick their heads up and stare at him, as though he was trying to be funny.

It was a strange characteristic of Jarnac Ducas-a strength as often as it was a weakness-that he could be absolutely sure that something was going to happen and simultaneously know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it wasn't. This curious ability of his led him to make a lot of mistakes, but also meant that even while he was making them, he was also hard at work on putting them right. Half of him had known the long grass would be a complete waste of time, so he was fully prepared with a backup plan, which he lost no time in putting into effect. The main thing was that the standing party wouldn't know he'd screwed up till he told them so himself.

The backup plan involved sweeping the whole of the long cover, in one carefully co-ordinated drive. Such an approach was fraught with the most appalling difficulties-keeping the line level, so that one wing didn't get ahead of the other, or start drifting downhill, or overcompensate and go too far uphill and come out on the top, driving the quarry ahead of them and into perfect safety. That sort of thing didn't worry him in the least. He knew his huntsmen were the best trained and led beaters in the world, and of course they'd keep the line; at the same time, he could foresee exactly where the problems were going to be, and dealt with them in advance by posting stops at regular intervals all round, the top and bottom boundaries-he'd sent them to get into position an hour before the main party set off, just in case.

In the event, they found quite easily, by the simple expedient of assuming that the boar would be in the densest, remotest, least accessible part of the cover, the last place they'd want it to be.

The first find was no more than a hundred yards in, but it turned out to be a false alarm; plenty big enough, but its bristles were still brown across the shoulders and back, not the dusty black of a full-grown animal. They let it run back, so it'd be out of the way and wouldn't confuse the hounds.

Twenty minutes later, they found again. A tall, spindly sweet chestnut had blown down, pulling its roots up; the shallow pit thereby formed had grown over with young holly, and the lymers picked up a scent leading straight to it. This time it was a full-grown boar, but for some reason it didn't want to run; instead, it wedged its back against the butt of the fallen tree and stood at bay, as the hounds surged around it. If Jarnac had been out for his own enjoyment he'd have gone straight in, but not today; it'd be shocking manners to kill in the wood while the guests were waiting outside. He called off the dogs and left the boar for another day.

Almost immediately after that, the hounds picked up a scent which seemed promising enough, but it turned out to be a milky old sow instead of a boar, no good to anybody at this time of the year. What it was doing out on its own, lying up in the deep, he had no idea, and no time to stop and find out.

He hadn't been expecting any of these finds to come to anything, of course; he knew that the boar they were looking for would inevitably be found in the dense mass of holly, briars and general impenetrable rubbish just north of the old charcoal-burners' camp, a little south-east of the dead centre of the wood. There, sure enough, it was: a record trophy, without a doubt (tusks at least eight inches, a double abnormal, and the carcass not far short of eight hundredweight undressed), hunkered down in a natural fortress that the whole Eremian army would've had a job to take by assault.

Its lair was, in fact, an overgrown old burn site-the ash from the charcoal fires had sweetened the ground to perfection, hence the astonishingly abundant growth of briars, thorns and the like.

Presumably it had managed to get in there somehow or other, but Jarnac couldn't see how or where, unless it had a secret tunnel or had been lowered in on ropes.

'We could go in with hooks,' one of the huntsmen suggested, 'cut a way in through the brush.'

Jarnac shook his head. 'Too dangerous,' he said. 'I'm not risking men or dogs in that.'

'Smoke it out?' someone else said, and Jarnac didn't even bother to reply. He stood looking at the boar for a while, then shook his head and gave the order to move on.

Not going to plan; that was definitely the boar he'd seen in his mind's eye, but apparently he'd overlooked its context. The chances of finding another one half as good were negligible; there might be a brown yearling or two, but that wouldn't be any' use. Being realistic, the only course open to him would be to push straight on to the next likely cover, on the other side of the river. If they got a move on, they could be there in a couple of hours; then allow an hour for the standing party to get into position, an hour and a half (optimistic) for driving through and finding. By then, it'd be mid-afternoon, too late to try anywhere else. The infuriating thing was, the boar had been there, exactly where he knew it would be. Tiresome bloody creature.

The harbourers weren't keeping up. He stopped and looked back. His own dogs and men were moving along, as he'd told them to do, but the Phocas pack (his heart had sunk when he saw them at the meet; useless, the lot of them, disobedient, reckless, forever getting ahead or chasing off after rabbits) were hanging back, and he could hear a lymer yelping. Stupid creature; it could see the boar and couldn't understand why it couldn't get at it.

'Maritz,' he called out, 'nip back and tell the Phocas lads to move their bloody dogs. We haven't got time for stragglers.'

The huntsman ran off and didn't come back. For a moment, Jarnac wasn't sure what to do, a very rare experience for him. Properly speaking, he should press on and leave the Phocas pack to their own devices-it was what King Fashion would've done-but he couldn't quite bring himself to abandon them, thereby tacitly accusing the Phocas of incompetence. It'd be fair comment, but bad diplomacy. With a sigh, aware he was doing the wrong thing, he turned back and went to see what the problem was.

Easy enough. One of the Phocas lymers had managed to force itself about halfway through the briar tangle before getting completely laid up. It was yelping in panic and frustration, tugging at the brambles tangled in its ears, snarling at the boar; two more of the Phocas dogs were struggling to join it; a third had been intercepted by Maritz and one of the Phocas people, but was putting up a very convincing fight, dragging on its collar, scrabbling for traction with all four paws. The boar, meanwhile, was looking very unhappy. The stuck lymer's muzzle was only about a foot and a half away from its snout; there was a solid fuzz of grown-in bramble in the way, enough to keep three men with staffhooks busy for an hour, but that didn't seem to count for very much as far as the boar was concerned. It could smell enemy, right up close. Its instincts were telling it: attack, run away, but do something instead of just standing there. All in all, Jarnac reflected, I couldn't have designed a worse mess if I'd had a month to think about it and half a dozen clerks to help out with the geometry.

King Fashion would've left the Phocas to sort out their own mess, but never mind. The priority was to get the dog out of the briars without it or anybody else getting ripped up by the boar. There was one obvious answer, but he kept dodging away from it like a nervous fencer. It was a fine boar, a trophy animal; it was beautiful, and he didn't want to have to murder it just to rescue someone else's stupid, badly trained dog. It would be on his conscience. But then, so would the dog, and anyone or anything else that got mangled or killed because of his scruples. He swore, then called over his shoulder for his heavy bow.

In Jarnac's terms, this meant the hundred-and-fifty-pounder, a monstrous deflexed recurve made of laminated buffalo horn, rock maple and boar backstrap sinew. Bending it involved crouching like a frog and springing up into the draw, so as to use every last scrap of back and thigh muscle to supplement the force of the arms and chest. They'd strung it for him before they left the house, using the big press in the tack room (when unstrung, it bent back on itself the wrong way, like a horseshoe). He nocked an arrow, looked the boar in the eyes, wound himself up, drew and loosed.

At five yards, there wasn't much danger that he'd miss. The arrow caught the boar in the fold of skin where the throat met the chest; at a guess, he'd say it went in a good handspan. The boar looked at him, blinked-he noticed the fine, long eyelashes, like a girl's-and folded up like a travelling chair. First it sank to its knees, its backside pointing up in the air. Then the strength in its joints evaporated and it rolled slowly on to its side, its feet lifting off the ground. Two muscle spasms stretched its back, and then it was perfectly still.

He lowered the bow. 'Get that fucking dog out of there,' he said.

They approached with staffhooks, but he yelled at them; no point in killing the boar if they mutilated the dog with a missed slash. He told them to put their gloves on and pull the briars apart. Then he walked away. He felt utterly miserable, and he wanted not to be there.

As soon as they'd rescued the dogs, they cut the boar out, hocked it and slung it on a pole. Maritz tried to tell him the weight, but Jarnac shut him up; he didn't want to know. It had been a trophy boar, and now it was just pork; fine, it'd make good dinners for the farm workers, who didn't see meat very often, and it wouldn't be trampling any more growing crops. He didn't want to think about it, or what he'd just done. He wanted to go home.

'Right,' he said aloud.

Maritz scampered up beside him, anticipating new instructions. Jarnac's mind was a blank, but he said, 'Get the line back together, we'll push through anyhow. You never know, there may be something.' He hoped there wouldn't be. He'd just broken the contract between hunter and quarry, so that nothing could go right for him from now on, all for the sake of the stupid Phocas' useless dog.

He wasn't really taking notice as they drove the rest of the wood. Usually, when beating out a cover, he was aware of everything; he heard every snapped twig, saw every movement, every gradation of colour and texture, every detail of bark, lichen and moss. The slightest thing snagged his attention-the call of a jay, sunlight in a water-drop hanging from a leaf, the smell of leaf mould, the taste of sweat running down his face. When the hunt was on and the next pace forward might bring him to the quarry, he felt so alive he could hardly bear it. All that had gone, though, and there was nothing left in it except a long walk over rough ground.

They dragged themselves through a dense tangle of holly, out on to the third lateral ride. As soon as he was on the path, in the open, he realised that the line had gone to hell. There were dogs in front, dogs behind, men everywhere, chaos. Under normal circumstances he'd have been beside himself with rage. He grinned. Like it mattered.

Behind him, somebody shouted; then someone else shouted back, a dog yelped, high and frightened, other dogs joined in. Something was crashing through thick cover. Immediately, Jarnac snapped out of his self-indulgent sulk. Everything was going wrong at once. Somehow, against all the odds and all the rules, they'd found another boar-a big one, by the sound of it-right on top of the one he'd murdered. That was impossible, of course, because you didn't get two fully grown boars this close together, but apparently it had happened, and his line was all screwed up. Disaster; there were men and dogs in front of a bolted boar, right in the danger zone. It was the worst thing that could happen. Without stopping to think, he hurled himself at the source of the noise, tugging at his sword-hilt (but the stupid thing was binding in the scabbard and wouldn't come out). All he could see in his mind's eye was the boar coming up behind the men who'd strayed ahead. They wouldn't know what was happening, they wouldn't have time to turn round, let alone get out of the way. He couldn't think of anything to do, except get to the boar before it hurt anybody, and kill it.

Pelhaz and Garsio were shouting, dead ahead; dogs were barking all round. He charged straight into trees, branches bashed him across the face, clubbed his shoulders. He couldn't see more than five yards in front, and he suspected he was losing his sense of direction (so easily done in thick cover, no matter how experienced you were). He tried to pull himself together, plot the boar's likely course from the sounds around him, but there didn't seem to be a pattern. One moment he was sure he could hear it crashing about on his left; then it was behind him, then over on the right. For one crazy, horrifying moment he wondered if there were half a dozen of them, not just one. And then he saw it.

Not for long. A black shape slipped past him, glimped between the trunks of two skinny oaks. He saw enough to identify it: a six-year-old, but huge for its age, running flat out (that rather ludicrous straight-backed seesaw run, like a lame man sprinting). He hadn't seen the tusks, but he didn't care about stuff like that right now. Desperately he tried to reassemble the positions of men and dogs in his mind, and adjust for straying. If he was right and not just thinking wishfully, the boar was on a slanting course that led it away from the end of the line that had got ahead of itself; in which case, the men would be safe and probably the dogs too.

It occurred to him to blow a dead stop, which was what he should have done as soon as the wretched animal broke cover. Better late than never; he sounded his horn, caught his breath, and tried to think.

Horn-calls answered him, and at last he was able to plot the positions of his men. The Phocas were well behind (out of harm's way; good); his own men were in front, but over on the right, away from the boar. The dogs could be anywhere, thanks to the panic and the confusion, but he could hear the huntsmen calling them back. With any luck, none of them were so hot on the scent that they'd disobey the calls. Jarnac closed his eyes and thanked whoever was in charge of destiny that day. He didn't deserve it, but he seemed to have got away with it.

More horn-calls, some shouting; the line was pulling itself together. Garsio was calling for him; he shouted back, to give his position. Another shout; he recognised the captain of the Phocas contingent. He made sure the line was re-formed and perfect before he called out instructions for Maritz and Pelhaz to pass on to the under-captains. By now, the boar could be well in front, but from what he'd seen of it he was pretty sure it wouldn't veer off the line it'd been on, not unless it found a new source of danger or an unpassable obstacle. Suddenly he laughed. Everything possible had gone wrong, he'd fucked it all up worse than he'd ever done in his entire life, and even so he'd found a cracking good pig for the Duke, and every prospect of presenting it, on time, exactly where it was supposed to be. It was enough to make you die of despair; if the universe could reward such gross incompetence with success, how could he ever trust it again?

Ziani was feeling cold.

He wouldn't have noticed the chill, or the clamminess of his wet clothes, if he hadn't been so bored; but he had nothing else to occupy his mind except his misfortunes, so inevitably he dwelt on them. This wasn't how he'd imagined it'd be.

For the first few minutes he'd stood completely still in his assigned spot, poised like a fencer waiting for his enemy's initial strike. But those first few minutes had passed and large animals hadn't come streaming at him out of every bush. He'd familiarised himself with the terrain; then he'd looked up at the treetops, then down at the mush of rotting leaves under his feet; then he'd counted all the trees he could see. Nothing had happened. He was bored. If this was hunting, they could shove it.

Mostly, he was unhappy because he was completely out of his depth (he stooped down, picked up a bit of twig, and started breaking it up into little bits). He didn't understand the rules or the procedures, he couldn't see the pattern, and he didn't like being outdoors. None of any of this, he realised, had anything to do with him. That was where he'd made his mistake; believing he could incorporate this mechanism into his own. But it wasn't compatible. It was all about something else (What? Getting food? Controlling dangerous pests? Having fun?) and he couldn't get a handle on it. He should be in the factory, making things.

He took an arrow out of his home-made, sadly unorthodox quiver, and played with it for a while. It was a wretched artefact by any standards: thirty inches of unevenly planed cedarwood dowel, with a crudely forged and excessively heavy spike socketed on one end. He'd underestimated arrow-making; he'd assumed that if the Eremians could do it, it must be easy. Not so. The dowel was rubbish to start with, but his sad blob of iron made it worse. He fitted it to the bowstring anyway, for something to do.

In his imagination, it had been quite different. He'd pictured all of them hurrying along together, shoulder to shoulder down a trail of smashed branches and scuffed earth, following the pig, That was how it was supposed to be in the books-except, he realised, there were two distinct methods of hunting, and he'd assumed they'd be doing parforce and instead they were doing the other one, bow-and-stable. His plan wouldn't work doing it this way. He was wasting his time.

Nothing he could do about it now, though. He made a wish that there wouldn't be any pigs in the wood, and that they could all go home soon. From there, he set to worrying-what if he didn't hear them calling the whole thing off, or they forgot about him, left him standing in the middle of all these ridiculous trees, without the faintest idea where he was? Easily done, he would imagine; he was a stranger, a foreigner, a gatecrasher who'd invited himself along. Why should they remember him, or bother to let him know it was time to move on?

Noise, somewhere sort of close. He'd learned that noises in a forest are deceptive, and you can't accurately judge distance or direction by them. The forest was full of noisy things. Apart from the humans and their horrible savage dogs, there were animals-deer, badgers, God knows what else-and birds, not to mention creaking and groaning trees. He'd heard stories, back home, about the dangers of forests; how the tops of tall, thin trees can snap off in the wind and get laid up in the branches of their neighbours thirty feet or so up in the air, held only by tangles of twig and creeper, so that any damn thing (a breeze, a careless movement, a shout, even) might be enough to dislodge them and bring them crashing down, entirely without warning. Foresters called them widow-makers, he remembered, and sometimes they were so deceptively hidden that even the canniest and most wary lumberjack was caught out and flattened. He peered upward again, just in case. All he could see was branches and an untidy mess of foliage. There could be wagons, ships, even houses up there, masked by the leafy swathes, and he'd never see them till it was too late.

He was concentrating so hard on scanning the treetops for hidden terrors that he nearly missed it all.

First, the noise. It sounded comical, high-pitched, a furious squealing, mingled with the desperate yapping of dogs, and it seemed to be coming from all around him. He'd heard pigs before: pigs in sties in alleys and entries and snickets (pig-rearing in the City fell in that uncomfortable debatable zone between forbidden and disapproved of); pigs snuffling, grunting, complaining and being killed. This noise was similar but somehow wrong-because it was out of place, he realised; pigs lived in cities, not out in the wilderness, among the stupid trees-and the dog noises confused the issue hopelessly. His best guess, however, was that the pig was about seventy yards distant and heading away from him at speed.

The boar burst out at him through the twisted branches of a blown-sideways mountain ash; an enormous blurred monstrosity, a cruel parody of the useful, harmless Mezentine pig. Its way of running was hopelessly inefficient, a seesaw motion (it didn't seem able to bend its back, so it didn't so much run as bounce), but horribly quick. It had the flat, wet, soppy nose of a proper pig, but there was coarse black hair all over its face, and four huge yellow teeth.

It's going to kill me, Ziani told himself-it wasn't an upsetting thought, somehow-but instead the boar jack-knifed past him (bounce-bounce, like a leather ball), crushing bushes and briars as it went by like a ship ploughing through a heavy sea. It passed him no further than six feet away; as it departed, Ziani could see its jaws chomping up and down, the absurdly oversize teeth rubbing furiously together like someone trying to start a fire with dry sticks. It looked lethal and ridiculous, and it sounded like an outraged customer demanding to see the manager.

It was almost out of Ziani's little patch of clearing when the dogs showed up. They were running so fast he could barely make out their shapes, beyond an impression of long, flexible bodies contorted by extraordinary effort; and when they jumped at the boar they seemed to flow, like water poured at a height. His eye and brain weren't sharp enough to register how many of them there were; they were too quick for that. But one of them had sprung on to the boar's table-wide back; another was being dragged along underneath it by its teeth clamped in its venerable dewlap; another was curled round the boar's front legs like ivy, skittering frantically backwards as it tried to bite into a ham much wider than the full gape of its long, pointed jaws. Ziani had seen hate occasionally, and if anyone had asked him, he'd have stated confidently that it was a uniquely human emotion; but he'd never seen anything like the way the dogs hated the boar. There was a diabolical agility to it that almost amounted to grace, but the absolute commitment of their fury was terrifying.

Compared to the dogs, the boar was slow, rigid and oafish; but it was strong. With a short, apparently slight movement of its neck and shoulders, it lifted up one of the dogs and threw it straight up in the air, like a man spinning himself a catch with an apple. The dog's back arched, all four legs scrambled at empty air; it came down in a tangle of holly laced with briars and ground elder, sprang up again and shot itself like an arrow or a scorpion bolt at the boar's head. Another dog was tearing at the boar's ear, and yet another was trying to bite its nose. The boar made another of those short movements, and one of the dogs yelped-it was shriller than any human scream-and fell sprawling on its back, its belly ripped open like a burst seam.

The dogs were losing, but they didn't seem to care. They were too light to slow the boar's momentum, and their weapons were too slight to penetrate its armour. The boar dragged them, four of them with their jaws locked in it, through the middle of a holly-clump, like someone wiping mud off his shoes in long grass. One of them was pulled off, but rolled over, jumped, vaulted over the boar's back and disappeared underneath it again, all in one movement. Such a degree of recklessness was almost beyond Ziani's capacity to believe; until that moment, he'd have said he was the only living thing in the world capable of it.

Which reminded him. It wasn't perfect, but it might do. He only had this moment, which wouldn't come again. He bent the bow, pushing with his left arm and pulling with his right, and stared down the arrow.

Miel Ducas had run into a tree. It was an unspeakably stupid thing to do and until a moment ago he'd have sworn it wasn't physically possible for a grown man with adequate eyesight not to notice a big, broad sweet chestnut dead ahead of him on a reasonably clear path. But he'd managed it, somehow.

After a dazed moment when he couldn't remember anything, he picked himself up off the ground, yelled angrily at the pain in his shins and jaw, and tried to sell himself on the idea that it hadn't happened. At least nobody had seen him.

One consequence of his deplorable lapse was that he'd lost the bloody boar. It had been there right in front of him, a black hairy bum heaving obscenely up and down on the edge of his vision, just slow enough that he could keep pace with it if he ran like a lunatic. Wasted effort that had turned out to be. He leaned against his enemy the tree and listened.

Not too far away, he could hear squealing, and the furious yelping of dogs. If he ran fast, he could probably catch up (except that he couldn't run fast, because his leg hurt); or he could walk, or hobble, following the trail, and hear about the outcome from somebody else.

He decided his leg didn't hurt so much after all, and started to run.

The pitch and intensity of the yelping had changed. Jarnac could've interpreted it without thinking; Miel wasn't nearly as good, but he reckoned the dogs had caught up to the boar, but the boar hadn't yet turned at bay. That was bad. A boar in that mood could easily gut or trample a dog, and God help any human who got in its way. What should've happened, if King Fashion had been running the show, was that the dogs should've chased the boar without catching up with it, until they were outside the forest and in the open. From the edge of the wood the ground fell away in a long, gentle slope all the way to the river. The boar would head for the river-bed, wade deep into the water and there turn at bay-a stupid thing to do, since it could be quickly and safely dispatched, but they all did it, bless them. That was how Jarnac had planned it, no question, but something must've gone wrong.

A very unpleasant picture formed in his mind: Orsea, with sword drawn, diving into the melee to rescue the dogs. It was one of the classic heroic deeds in boar-hunting. Jarnac had done it loads of times (but Jarnac knew what he was doing). If the opportunity presented itself, Orsea wouldn't hesitate for an instant.

(Years ago, when he was a boy nagging to be allowed to go on his first hunt, Miel had been taken to see an old man who worked in the stables. The old man had opened his shirt and showed off a long pink scar that ran from his neck to his navel; to this day, they'd told him afterwards, nobody could explain how the man had survived. He'd been the lucky one, that day.)

Perhaps, Miel told himself as he ran, perhaps someone with a cool head, common sense and a good eye will put an arrow in the stupid pig before Orsea gets there. Disappointing for poor Orsea, but at least he'll still be alive this evening, and I won't have to tell Veatriz.

Another sound: a man's voice, high and very scared, yelling for help. Miel swore and tried to run faster, but this would be a very bad time to collide with another tree. He made himself slow down, just as his spear caught in a low branch and was ripped out of his hand.

Very bad, because he couldn't stop and go back for it. He had his falchion, of course. He'd never killed a boar with a close sword, though he'd seen it done twice. Mostly when he went hunting, they didn't find anything. Hell of a time for his luck to change.

He saw the dog first. It was almost but not quite dead, shivering. He managed to jump over it without slowing down, and that was when he saw the boar.

Now it had turned at bay, and he could see why. Some fool, some criminal incompetent, had contrived to stick an arrow in its hind leg. Worst possible thing you could do. The front leg, fine; a boar goes down like a sack of turnips if you nail its front leg, you can stroll up to it and kill it at your ease. An arrow in the back leg stops it running, so it has to turn at bay, but the motive force for its attack is the forequarters and chest. Whoever had shot that arrow had made the boar as dangerous as it could possibly get.

He might have known. Lying on his side, with nothing between him and the boar but a screen of twisting, snapping dogs, was the stupid bastard foreigner. He didn't seem to be hurt, no blood; Miel had seen total blind panic often enough in circumstances like these to know he'd simply frozen. He'd done it himself, once. A bow, lying just out of arm's reach, completed the evidence for the prosecution.

Just as well I'm here, Miel thought sadly.

'It was extraordinary,' Jarnac was saying. 'Never seen anything like it in my life.'

Miel scowled at him. 'It was bloody stupid,' he said, 'that's all. Half an inch out and you'd have brought me home hanging off a long stick, along with the boar.'

Jarnac shook his head. 'Ignore him,' he said, 'he's being modest. When I say it was the neatest bit of work I've seen in the hunting field for ten years, you know I'm not exaggerating. It was bloody stupid as well, of course, but that's Miel for you. Never could resist showing off.'

Miel tried to shift, but a sharp spike of pain stopped him. 'How could I have been showing off?' he said. 'I didn't know you two were there watching. I thought it was just me and him, or else I'd have left it to you to deal with the stupid animal.'

'Where is he?' Veatriz interrupted. 'The foreigner, I mean.'

Miel sighed. 'Upstairs,' he said, 'in the Oak Room. Well,' he went on unhappily, 'I couldn't very well leave him to fend for himself, when he'd just come that close to being ripped up. From what I gather, he lives on his own in that factory place of his, and he's in no fit state to look after himself.'

'It was his own stupid fault,' Orsea put in, helping himself to another drink. 'Would've served him right, at that. Jarnac, whatever possessed you to invite him in the first place?'

Jarnac shrugged. 'He seemed to want to come,' he replied. 'I mean, he spun this yarn about how he needed to see what hunting's actually like if he was going to be making hunting armour; which is drivel, of course; Cantacusene and his father and his father before him have been fitting our family out every year for a century, and none of them ever came within a mile of a boar or a buck unless it was sausages. But he really did seem fearfully keen, and I couldn't see any harm in it…'

Miel groaned. 'Next time you're inclined to yield to a generous impulse, resist,' he said. 'I'm not made of ankles, you know.'

Veatriz laughed; he wasn't looking at her, deliberately, but he could picture her face. Instead, he saw Orsea grin. Jarnac clicked his tongue and said: 'I don't know what you're complaining about. You know the old saying: pain's temporary, glory is for ever, and the girls dig the scars. You'll be fighting them off with a pitchfork once word gets around. Honestly,' he said to Veatriz, ignoring Miel's miserable protests, 'you should have seen him. He comes charging out of the bushes, sword in hand; he sees the foreigner lying there on the deck wetting himself, frozen stiff with fear; he sees the boar. He knows the dogs are getting tired, they can't hold it back much longer. He's still running flat out; he jumps, lands on the boar's back if you please, launches himself off again, and in passing, damn near chops the boar's head off with a downwards backhand slash-'

'And lands in a clump of fuzz that turns out to be a coppiced stump and twists his stupid ankle,' Miel said. 'Actually, Triz, you should've seen it. Must've been the most comical sight since the farmer chucked his dog down the well and threw a stick for the bucket.'

'You be quiet,' Jarnac said ferociously. 'By your own admission you couldn't see what was going on round you, so clearly you're the last person to comment. Also, the self-deprecating modesty is just fishing for compliments. This isn't the first time, you see,' he added, as Veatriz giggled. 'When he was younger, with some girl in tow-there was always a girl in tow-'

'Look,' Miel protested.

'Used to be a positive menace,' Jarnac went on. 'Very disruptive to the smooth running of the hunt, having someone forever committing acts of gratuitous valour every time the girl happened to be looking in his direction. I had to stop taking him along in the end. I should have known better, but I'd assumed he'd grown out of it.'

'True,' Orsea put in (traitor, Miel thought). 'It got so that you couldn't take a quiet stroll in the park if he'd got a girl along with him. I remember, there was a goat in a paddock. I swear he used to sneak out and kick this goat whenever he had the chance, just so it'd hate him and go for him on sight; and it was quite an elderly goat, not much of a threat to life and limb, but of course the girl wouldn't know that-'

'Complete and utter lies,' Miel growled, though of course Orsea was telling the truth. Miel tried to remember if he'd ever taken Veatriz for a stroll past the goat's paddock.

'I remember,' Jarnac butted in. 'It was on a chain, so it couldn't actually get at him if he judged the distance right; but then one day the goat charged him so ferociously that the chain broke-'

Veatriz burst out laughing; Miel winced, jarred his ankle, and yelped with pain. He wished they'd shut up now. The joke was wearing thin, as far as he was concerned.

'Anyway,' Veatriz said, 'it was very brave of you, Miel, and I'm sure that this time your motives were impeccable.' She was teasing him, he didn't like that. He almost wanted to explain what his true motive had been; to get there, at all costs, before Orsea could do what he was being accused of, because if Orsea had tried a stunt like that he'd have been killed, and then there wouldn't be all this merriment. He managed to keep that sentiment where it belonged, though.

'I think it's time you all pushed off and let me get some rest,' he said. 'It's not fair, picking on me when I can't move.'

Jarnac frowned, and Miel realised there was something bothering him, which he hadn't told them about. Knowing Jarnac, it'd be some aspect of the hunt, some transgression of the rules on his part that he felt bad about, though nobody else would be inclined to make a fuss about it. 'Let's leave him alone with his glory, then,' Jarnac said, and he stood up to leave. 'I suppose I'd better look in on the foreigner before I go.'

'I wouldn't bother,' Miel said, with a touch of bitterness. 'Unless you want to yell at him for managing to prick the boar in the back leg like that. But I don't suppose he'd understand the significance of it, so there wouldn't be much point.'

'Actually,' Orsea said, 'I need to talk to him myself-not about this,' he added, with a slight nod in Miel's direction. 'Business.'

Miel remembered. He'd been thinking of the foreigner as simply an embarrassing fool who'd done a stupid thing; he'd forgotten who the man actually was. He nodded back. 'That's right,' he said. 'Don't worry, he's not really damaged, just a bit shaken. He'll be up and about again in the morning.'

'Good,' Orsea said. 'But I still need to talk to him. Don't worry about that now, Miel. You keep still and let that ankle heal. I'll deal with the other business.'

'What other business?' Jarnac asked, as he and Orsea climbed the stairs. 'I hadn't realised you knew the man.'

Orsea pulled a wry grin. 'Oh yes,' he said. 'He's the Mezentine we picked up on the way back from-well, you remember, I'm sure.'

Jarnac frowned. 'The one who wanted to turn us all into little pseudo-Mezentines, working in factories,' he said. 'I thought you'd said no to all that.'

'I did. But he talked the Calaphates into putting up the money for this factory.'

'Ah, right. They make good armour, I'll say that for them, and sensibly priced, too.'

'It's not just armour,' Orsea said quietly. 'Anyhow, I don't want to be rude or anything, but-is this the room here?'

'The Oak Room.' Jarnac nodded. 'Would you like me to wait outside?'

'I'll find my own way back,' Orsea replied.

Jarnac nodded and went away; Orsea could hear the firm clump of his boots on the stairs. Nobody could call Jarnac clumsy, but his enormous size made the staircase shake all the way up to the landing. He raised his hand to knock, then remembered who he was and lifted the latch.

The foreigner was lying on the bed, arms by his side, staring up at the ceiling; he sat up as Orsea walked in. 'It's all right,' Orsea said, as he started to get to his feet. 'You stay where you are. How are you feeling?'

'Stupid,' Vaatzes replied.

Orsea nodded. 'Quite right,' he said. 'But of course, you didn't know. Or else you're a rotten shot. Neither of them's a criminal offence in this country'

Vaatzes shook his head. 'I shouldn't even have been there,' he said. 'I suppose I hadn't realised what sort of occasion it'd be. Did I ruin everything?'

Orsea thought before answering. 'Depends,' he said. 'You caused a very nasty incident which could've got somebody killed. On the other hand, you gave Miel Ducas an opportunity to be terribly brave and clever, so he's happy; propped up on pillows downstairs pretending he's not loving every bit of the attention, he's like that. So he's happy, and he's my oldest friend, so I'm happy too. Jarnac Ducas is going to have the boar's tusks mounted in a gorget for him, with a little silver plate inscribed, For saving the life of another. In a year's time, everybody'll remember it as the hunt where the Ducas pulled off the most amazing flying cut, and you'll be bored sick of telling people the story when they ask you. Jarnac's the only one who's really upset, because three of his dogs were killed. He wouldn't dream of showing it, but he's heartbroken. Still, all in all, not a complete disaster.'

Vaatzes drew in a deep breath. 'You're all being extremely kind,' he said. 'Which makes me feel terrible. I'm sorry'

'Forget it,' Orsea said. 'And promise me, if anybody invites you to go hunting again, refuse.'

'I promise.'

'Fine. Now,' Orsea went on, 'I need to talk to you about the scorpions.'