The Last Knight by Hilari Bell Page B

and charged.
    I leaned out of the saddle and swung down, aiming close to the skull, where the spine wasn’t so well protected. But the angle was wrong, and my blade sliced its shoulder. Most creatures would have found this a serious injury; it only made the boar mad. It spun in place, slashing at Chant’s hind legs.
    Chant’s kick, better aimed than my sword stroke, sent the boar tumbling. Unfortunately I hadn’t expected it, and since I was still unbalanced it sent me tumbling too.
    I hit the ground rolling and came to my feet in one movement, passionately grateful that nobles’ sons were still expected to learn what my scholarly brother, Benton, called “that ridiculously outdated nonsense.”
    The boar’s blank eyes regarded me. I know animals don’t think this way, but I swear I saw pleasure in them, satisfaction that he had brought me down where he could reach me.
    Before this, events had followed too quickly for fear, but now a chill rose from my heart and spread through my limbs, draining them of speed and strength.
    The boar charged, quick, so quick I hadn’t time to do more than slash at it as I leapt aside. My sword missed clean, and the boar turned in its tracks, swinging its heavy head to catch my leg with one sharp tusk.
    Pain blazed up my leg, but my sword swung in blind, instinctive retaliation, and this time found its mark. I heard the wet crunch of bone as my blade sliced through its spine.
    The boar sank to its belly and I fell back against a rock, gritting my teeth. Warm blood flowed down my ankle. I had to assess the wound and bind it, but I didn’t want to. Not just yet. I shut my eyes.
    “Watch out!” Fisk cried.
    My eyes snapped open as the boar lumbered to its feet and charged again.
    I wish I could say that I leapt to my feet, full ready to fight. The truth is that I fell backward over the rock. Had the boar been whole, it would have finished me.
    As it was, I had time to struggle to my feet and watch in horror as it stumbled around the rock, seeking me. The great muscles in its neck weren’t strong enough to lift its head without the aid of a spine, so its snout dragged in the dirt, but still it came on. The boar should have been dead, long seconds dead, and I realized, with a sinking dread that put my previous fear to shame, that it was magica.
    No wonder the beast had been so fast. But a severed spine crippled even a magica boar. It could barely walk, much less slash with its tusks.
    I set my teeth, stepped forward, and methodically chopped through its neck. The half dozen blows needed to sever the head from the body seemed to take forever. I could feel the magic now, pulsing and raging as the beast, finally, died.
    I watched blood flow from the severed neck and sink into the dark mulch of the forest floor. Everything around us—the leaves, the rock, the boar, and I—was spattered with blood. My whole body shook.
    With a great rustling of branches, Fisk climbed down from a nearby tree. I was pleased to see he’d had the sense to climb out of danger, but ’twas a distant feeling. Nothing seemed quite real to me.
    “It was d-d-dead.” His teeth were chattering. He never took his eyes from the corpse at my feet, as if he expected it to come after us even now. “It was dead, but it went right on attacking you.”
    “It was magica, Fisk,” I explained. “Even a real boar will go on fighting after ’tis sorely wounded, and that property is enhanced by magic. It was magica. And I killed it.”

Fisk
     
    O n Furred God’s Night—the longest night of the year, when the moons rule the world—people shut themselves into their homes and tell stories of how the gods punish those who destroy magica without sacrifice. As I grew older, I’d discounted most of those stories, but now every one of them came rushing back. I wished my memory wasn’t quite so good.
    Sir Michael just stood there, looking as if he’d mislaid a spoon or something. I wanted him on the edge of hysterics, like