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The Hunt (Part Two)
Hunters poured from the ridge, rushing past Odessa with raised spears and battle cries on their lips. Arrows flew over her head. The boar god charged down the ridge opposite her, a few arrows sticking from its body but most arrows glanced off its hide. Egende plowed through the underbrush at the bottom of the ravine and turned, swinging its head and slashing the air with wicked, curling tusks as throwing spears took flight and plunged into its side. The spears stopped its headlong charge and it bellowed, the sound deep and furious like the groan of the earth splitting and rending in a quake.
The boar swept its tusks and caught a spearman as he raised his long spear. The spearman flew across the ravine, twirling in the air, a clumsy pirouette before landing and rolling, blood and viscera flung in the air, entrails trailing on the ground. The body rolled a short distance then stopped, cast awkwardly on the ground, broken limbs twisted beneath its gored form.
The spearman’s body landed not far from Odessa. Aapo’s blood-tinged mouth moved slightly, opening and closing as if trying to speak. Odessa had known Aapo all her life. He was a gregarious warrior, her father had joined him on raids in the lowlands. Now he laid gutted before her, his eyes half-lidded and growing dim.
Shock and fear turned her limbs to stone. Half-crouched on the ground, watching the boar rampage. Four spear hunters circled the boar as best they could and jabbed the air with their spears. Egende flicked spearheads away with a tusk and charged. The hunters scattered away from the massive beast.
“Odessa!” Her father’s hands took her underarms and hoisted her onto her feet. “Odessa, you must get out of here! Go!” He ushered her away, pushing her up the hill. She dragged her feet. Unable to pry her eyes from the boar. Two more arrows planted themselves in its shoulder. It recoiled and swung its body as if to face the arrows that buried in her flesh.
The hunters darted in close, daring to plunge their spearheads into the god’s flank.
Something ripped her mask from her head. A flat sting across her cheek. Her father tossed her mask to the ground then gripped her shoulders and shook her. Her eyes watered. Her father had not struck her since she was a little girl. “Listen to me! Go! You should not be here for this!” Peering through the stone-faced skull his eyes were flinty and serious. “Do as I say!” He pushed her up the hill. “Run!”
She ran up the slope, her feet slipping in the leaves. Sometimes stumbling, propelling herself with her hands. Her mind was clouded by a pall of stupor. She had to run. Run from the blood. Run from the guts hanging from a torso in shredded ribbons. Run from the god, that massive, immovable god, blinded in its rage. Her feet slowed. At the top of the ridge, she stopped and turned back. The hunters looked more like flies pestering a bull. Her father had joined the fray. He jabbed at the beast with his spear, dancing back and forth as Egende raged. Spears poked the sow from all sides. Egende turned at each stab of a spear. It knocked away a spear pulled from its side with a tusk. The hunter fell as his spear was ripped from his hands. The boar charged the hunter’s defenseless form as the rest of the spears retreated. The man struggled to get back up. A shrill scream rose as the boar’s hooves crushed his spine and legs. Another stomp and the scream was cut short. The boar stomped and stomped. Its front hooves pounded gore into the soft dirt.
They’re going to die. There’s no way to kill that thing.
The urge to turn and run away darted up her spine like spats of lightning. Yet her deadened legs stayed planted on the ridge. Lightning flashed images of her father’s belly opened by a great tusk. Ubiko crushed into unrecognizable gore. In the ravine below, her father and Ubiko side by side, goading the boar with exaggerated spear thrusts toward its foam-mouthed face. Their taunts were drowned out by another earth-shaking bellow. They scattered as the boar charged forward.
Without thought, her legs moved. Carrying her down the ridge in long, bounding strides. At the bottom of the ravine, she slid and retrieved her bow and nocked the arrow she had dropped in her cowardice.
From her crouch, she drew back and let the arrow fly. It glanced off the boar’s hide. Egende did not even notice as it swung its head away toward the other spearman. Her father and Ubiko had regrouped and darted forward to take advantage of its blind spot. Blood stained the boar’s coarse hair and dulled the streaks of sunshine with gouts of red.
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Her next arrow missed as the boar turned and charged toward one of the hunters before being stopped by a spear jabbed in its throat. Her last arrow she nocked and aimed, waiting for the boar to stay in one place. The beast was panting, its movements sluggish as it bristled with throwing spears and arrows. And yet still it raged.
Hands trembling, she nocked another arrow and drew the bowstring to her cheek. It just won’t die. The tip of the arrow jerked to and fro. Her fingers grew weak. The muscles of her arm ached and twitched. She drew a breath and held it. Steadying herself. The boar turned its head, wheeling around, its eyes wild with frenzied fury. A soft exhale and she let the arrow loose.
The boar turned to meet the arrow. The arrow sunk into the boar’s eye, pinning it so the pupil stared upward, half-lidded. Blood poured down its cheek, dousing the sunlight. The boar thrashed and bucked and roared. Its remaining eye spun, white-rimmed, and furious. Then for a split second, it met her gaze.
It charged past the spear hunters toward her. She leaped to her feet as a great bellow pierced her ears. Tremors shook the earth beneath her. Her legs gave out beneath her and she collapsed to the ground, forced to her knees by an overwhelming pressure crushing her mind. Her ears rang. Booming footsteps shook the very earth beneath her.
She looked up to see the boar’s hulking frame looming before her. Her fumbling hand reached for the knife on her belt. Then a force like a tidal wave struck her.
Her body bounced along the forest floor. Then the boar’s gnashing snout forced her into the dirt. A blur of shadow and sunlight above her. She swung her knife, stabbing and slashing but the blade did not even make a mark. The boar’s mouth clamped down on her arm. Bones crunched and snapped and blood ran in streaks down her arm. The boar lifted her by arm, shook her then rammed her back into the dirt. She gasped beneath the massive weight.
Her father’s voice rose in a guttural snarl. The boar let go of her arm and raised its head enough for her to see, through tear-filled eyes, a glimpse of her father, spear sunk deep in the boar’s throat. Screaming, he put all of his weight, all of his strength behind the spear.
More spears plunged into the boar. It squealed and recoiled above her. She crawled, dragging her broken arm, trying desperately to get out from beneath the boar’s massive shadow. The boar stumbled, its front leg giving way. With one last, lurching effort, she hauled herself away from the great collapsing beast.
A tremendous weight crushed her right side. Coarse hair wet with blood brushed against her face, her skin sizzling where the bloody hairs touched it. She sucked air in deep, ragged breaths. The sweet, pungent scent of a forest god was now thick with an iron-tinged stench of blood. The boar’s neck pinned her broken arm in the dirt. She pulled her arm, gritting her teeth against a pained scream but she could not pull herself free. The pain burned and exploded in bursts of agony.
A shuddering groan vibrated through her arm. Egende writhed on top of her as spears plunged into its flesh again and again. Above her, its eye bulged in agony. Its eyelids twitched with every stab.
Hot, scalding blood pooled around her crushed arm, pouring from the dying god’s throat and running in the open gashes in her arm. Egende’s last breath rattled in its throat. The pained eye glanced at her struggling beneath, its drooping eyelids straining to stay open. It fixed her with its stare as it shifted its body, crushing her arm further. She began to feel faint as her own blood poured along with the gods. With a shudder, Egende groaned and its eye blinked and rolled upward, half-lidded. The boar god’s body slumped. Its lifeblood soaked into the forest floor, the forest it had spent centuries protecting.
Her father came to her side and cupped her face in his hand. “Odessa, Odessa. You’re alive!”
“I can’t move,” she said, tears falling freely from her eyes. “My arm. It’s trapped.”
Her father leaned close, stroking her face. “Don’t cry, my sweet. Don’t cry. We’ll get you out.” He turned and shouted for help. Ubiko came beside her father, a slight limp in his gait. The rest of the hunters approached hesitantly. “Lift the beast, damn you!” he shouted. “And mind the blood!”
The light in the boar’s hair was fading in effervescent sparks as the hunters, with all their combined strength, tilted its head to the side. Her father pulled her arm out and cradled her in his arms.
Her mangled, disjointed arm was slick with dark ichor that steamed in the open air. The blood boiled on her skin like hot oil and she screamed. Golden flames bloomed along the length of her arm. She rolled off her father’s lap and slapped at the flames climbing up her arm. Unyielding, the fire rose to her shoulder, as bright as the sun itself. Holy fire seared deep into the core of her shattered bones. She rolled on her back, writhing on the forest floor. The flames lapped greedily at her skin but not a leaf caught fire. The other hunters backed away. Even her father watched helplessly, his face darkened with terror.
Eventually, the flames burned themselves out, having had their fill. Her entire arm was scorched and bloody, and layers of skin burned away entirely. The air was thick with the stench of burnt flesh. The forest seemed a darker place now. The shadows beneath the trees had grown deeper, the sunlight glinting off the leaves now dimmer. A silence so absolute it hung upon the air itself, an immensely overwhelming pressure upon the entire forest. A palpable silence solidified around the hunters. The only sound in the forest now bereft of its god were the whimpers and screams of Odessa’s agony.