The Last Knight by Hilari Bell Page A

touched it I felt the familiar tingling, faint with the death of the beast, but unmistakable. My hand jerked back and I jumped away.
    “’Tis magica! Where did you find it?”
    The dusk drained everything of color, but Fisk’s face was paler than usual.
    “In Tipple’s pack. But surely…I mean, we didn’t kill it! If whoever did made the appropriate sacrifice, then—”
    “Then why place it with us? Unless the proper sacrifice was made, no one who owns this hide will be forgiven. Get Tipple’s pack back on her—we’ve got to get out of here.” Chant’s pack was still on his saddle—all I had to do was yank the girth taut.
    “But we don’t own it.” Fisk was gathering Tipple’s pack as he spoke. “We didn’t kill it, we didn’t buy it, we had nothing to do with it!” He shouted the final words into the empty forest, as if the Furred God might hear and forgive us. But the gods aren’t human, and they don’t reason as we do.
    “We have to find a Savant.” I swung into Chant’s saddle. “Fast. There’s a village about half an hour west of here. We might make it.”
    Fisk didn’t reply.
    “Fisk?”
    He stood, frozen, with Tipple’s pack slung over his shoulder, his gaze on a patch of shadow at the edge of the clearing.
    Staring into the shadow, I could just make out the high-peaked shoulders and tiny, pricked ears of the wild boar. Its eyes were fixed on my squire.
    It has been several centuries since anyone was insane enough to hunt boar for sport, and when they did they used a spear. A long spear, with a heavy cross guard to keep the boar from running up the spear and savaging the hunter. I decided to remain mounted.
    “Don’t move,” I murmured, my throat so tight ’twas a wonder my voice didn’t squeak. The warning was unnecessary—Fisk didn’t seem to be breathing. I hoped my squire would know enough to climb a tree, as boars are not equipped for climbing. Meanwhile, I moved my right hand, as slowly as I could, over the pack on Chant’s rump in search of my sword hilt.
    Heroes in ballads are always wearing their swords when trouble arises, but frankly, wearing a sword is cursed inconvenient. ’Tis always in the way when you try to sit down, or whacking into things when you turn around. So I kept my sword in Chant’s pack, but I made one concession to knight errantry and the slim possibility of encountering bandits: I’d left the hilt free, so I could draw it from the pack with a single pull. In a full year’s adventuring, I’d never before had cause to use it. Now, unable to take my eyes off the boar, I groped over leather, canvas, and buckle and wished I’d had the sense to practice this a time or two. I couldn’t find the cursed hilt!
    Without so much as a twitch to warn us, the boar charged. Fisk tried to flee, but it ran right under him and knocked him flat as a ball-struck skaddle pin.
    The boar turned, snorting, stamping the ground.
    Fisk thrashed back through the drifted leaves, his face twisted with terror. He grabbed Tipple’s pack and threw it at the beast.
    The unwieldy bundle lurched toward the boar, which, thinking itself attacked, charged the pack.
    Fisk scrambled away, as the gleaming tusks slashed through canvas as if ’twas paper.
    I tore my gaze from the beast and looked for my sword hilt. How could it have worked its way under there? No matter. The sword rang softly as I pulled it free, and I made a hissing click with my teeth that reminded my half-lame riding horse that he had once been a tourney-trained destrier. He quivered and his ears whipped forward. Tourneys were supposed to be training for war, although generally against taller opponents.
    Chant didn’t care. His muscles bunched beneath my legs; he planted his back feet, spun, and cantered toward the boar, who was still savaging Tipple’s pack. I hoped his weakened leg was up to this.
    Mayhap the drumming hooves alerted it, or it may have decided the pack was finally dead. The boar lifted its head