Asra headed into the woods in the opposite direction of the wolf, and it took Ciaran’s mind a moment to catch up with her words.
“What?” he said.
“You said you could hunt this boar, didn’t you?” Asra said, heading back to the horse. “Let’s go.”
Ciaran rubbed the back of his head as he followed her up the wooded hill. “Why the sudden change in heart?”
“Because I don’t believe a word that wolf said,” she said. “Where there’s one wolf, there’s twenty more. I’m not letting a single one of those limp-tailed fleabags get a hold of an anchor.”
They crested the hill where the mare stood waiting, placid. Ciaran untied the reins from the tree.
“So,” Asra said, watching Ciaran pull himself up into the saddle. “How do you kill a giant magic hog, O wise hunter?”
“There’s only one surefire way to kill a hog,” Ciaran said as he directed the mare toward the shrine. “Stab it in the heart.”
When they reached the shrine, Ciaran bent over in the saddle to swipe one of the spears discarded there. He tested the sharpness of the head with a fingertip. It would be sufficient.
“Boar have a thick layer of fat protecting the shoulders, which is difficult to penetrate with arrows,” Ciaran continued. “I’ll need to slide the spear through the boar’s ribs, from just behind its front leg. Done properly, it’ll puncture the heart, causing it to bleed out and die almost instantly. Quick and relatively painless.”
“So what do you need me to do?” Asra asked.
“Bane will keep the hog at bay. Prevent it from escaping. I need you to be the catch dog. You’ll need to hold onto it so I can stick it. Most catch dogs opt for the ear, just at the base. Helps to keep the head still so it can’t gore anyone with its tusks.”
“All right,” Asra said. “Let me change into my fur and we can get going.”
----------------------------------------
The afternoon passed in what Ciaran could confidently describe as “companionable silence.”
He’d sent Bane ahead to track the boar down, leaving him and Asra in solitude. He stole glances at Asra as they traversed through the forest. If she felt his eyes on her, she never commented on it. He wanted to erase the images in his mind of her sick and dying. The sight of her bleeding out and maddened by pain and infection had haunted him for the days that Asra was unconscious.
He’d been so worried about her—far more worried than he felt he should be. The thought of her dying after she’d saved Bane, and after she’d saved all of them from the dragon, without Ciaran being able to return the favor in any way made his stomach roil. She’d even defended him to a lesser degree with the wolf in the clearing.
“That was considerate of you, by the way,” Ciaran said.
Asra’s nose twitched as she scented the air, her ears swiveling forward and back. Without turning to look at him, she said, “What was?”
“Reminding that wolf of her manners.”
Asra sniffed. “You did a good thing, even if it was wasted on her. The least she could do is thank you.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“Careful,” Ciaran said with a grin. “I might start to think you don’t utterly despise me.”
Asra cocked a toothy smile up at him and opened her mouth to surely spit some prickly jab at him. But before she could say anything, she was cut off by a deep rumble in the earth, followed by a series of sharp, staccato barks.
“He found it,” Asra said, her drop ear fully forward and her torn ear standing straight above her head.
“I know. I hear him, too.”
Another tremor shook the ground, and the horse flicked her tail and pawed the ground anxiously. Asra started after Bane, but stopped and swung back around to glance at Ciaran.
“Go!” Ciaran shouted as he tried to bring the horse back into line. “I’ll catch up!”
Asra rocketed forward and vanished into the trees, leaving a wake of crushed leaves and snapped branches behind her. Ciaran ran his hands up and down the horse’s neck, comforting her until she returned to a neutral position. He then nudged her into a canter as he followed Asra’s trail. Bane’s barks became louder, the tremors more severe. The horse snorted at each one, but did not balk. Ciaran hoped his steed could keep her composure.
They finally broke through to the clearing where the boar stood, dominating the scene. It was taller than Asra, and far more broad. Its coarse gray coat was emblazoned with crimson sigils. Bane barked furiously at it, pressuring the boar into a corner of a rocky outcropping.
Asra circled it, searching for an opening to grab one of its ears without being gored by a tusk. There were three on each side; one giant cuspid jutting above its snout at an upward angle, and two smaller horizontal tusks resting behind the cuspid. The boar swung its head back and forth, clearly knowing how to wield the weapons on its face.
The horse finally lost her nerve. She reared back, and Ciaran gripped the saddle as hard as he could to keep from slipping. As soon as the horse’s hooves touched the ground again, he leapt off of her. She pivoted and galloped back into the forest.
The commotion caught the attention of the boar. It fixed its red eyes on Ciaran, snorted, and stomped its feet. The earth rippled and ruptured in a straight line towards Ciaran. Asra dashed in front, grabbing him by his shirt collar and darting out of the path of the earthquake.
Bane was instantly back on the boar, barking and harassing it back into its corner. Asra raced back to it as Ciaran clambered for his spear and followed her. The boar swung its head towards Asra, who nimbly sprung above the tusks. The swing left the hog’s ear vulnerable, and she grabbed hold of it with her jaws as she landed firmly on her feet. She yanked her head downward, and the momentum knocked the boar off balance. It stumbled for a moment, then toppled over. It flailed its short legs, struggling to get up, but Asra held tight to its ear and pushed down on its side with her paw. Her claws dug into the flesh until blood seeped from its shoulder. The boar squealed and flailed harder.
“Ciaran!” Asra shouted, her voice muffled by the boar’s ear. “I’ve got it!”
Ciaran took a firm grip of the spear and circled the boar until he stood by its stomach, between its front and hind feet. The boar’s chest heaved, and its side glistened with blood nearly the same color as its sigils. Ciaran pushed the upper front leg aside and placed the point of the spear just behind the elbow.
He glanced over the top of the boar to Asra. Her eyes were locked onto him, blazing with an animalistic glee he’d never seen from her. Her whole body wiggled, and Ciaran realized her damn tail was wagging, whipping back and forth against her hindquarters.
He grabbed the spear with both hands, and heaved it into the hog’s chest. It slipped between its huge ribs and landed firmly into its heart. It gave one last screech and fell silent.
Ciaran was in the process of pulling the weapon out of the boar when he felt Asra, now back in her human shape, pull him into a crushing embrace.
“Shit, you really did it!” she shouted, a bit too loudly for how close she was to his ear. Thankfully she pulled away from the embrace, her hands still firmly gripping Ciaran’s shoulders. “That was such a clean kill. You actually do know how to get your hands dirty. This thing is huge. I can’t wait to see the looks on everyone’s faces when we bring it back home.”
Her beaming smile faltered. She seemed to take inventory of her appearance at the same time Ciaran did: blood smeared on her face and hands. And naked.
“Sorry,” she mumbled as she wrung her hands. “For a second I thought I was … ” She took a deep breath. “I should get cleaned up. And … dressed.”
Ciaran didn’t mind the blood stains on his shoulders.