Chapter 1
Crashing and thrashing a boar of white shall emerge.
Threaten it will until The Hero makes the throw.
The Best takes the quests, but not The Hero of wills.
With heavy heart our Hero trembles, but hearten!
The Hero battles through.
“How many did you get?” His daydreaming expression fell to a blithe one as he called out to me from his perch on the wall after I cleared the treeline.
The old stone wall from an age ago stretched between the road, through the browned field, and into the forest, until it met a bubbling stream. Its once-white river stones were grayed and overgrown with weeds and moss. It crumbled in places while standing strong in others. Joni, his finger-length blonde hair shimmered in the noon light of the sun, sat on the end of it, at the road that would lead us home, or into Owlimount.
“Three.” I held up my catches. The fur and feathers were smooth and soft, unbloodied by my expert traps. The forest behind me was a second home, but today something had been off. The birds, while few lived through the winter there, were silent. None winged through the branches of the naked canopy, nor chirped in those laden with green needles or jagged leaves. Even the trees stood quiet, not a hint of a breeze to clack their branches together.
“That’s good.” He said with a grin that always made the girls of the village scramble to catch his eye.
The string of two rabbits he pulled up from his side drew me from my thoughts on the quiet. “Same trap.” He added as he let them fall back to his thigh.
I tried to smile. I wanted to go home. To shake off the oddness of the forest today.
Joni picked up his long spear as he stood. He was practicing with it before our yearly hunting trip in a few weeks. Unlike me, he didn’t have to hunt every day to keep his family fed. “Town or home?”
“Ho-” I noticed a group of village children climbing up over the steep riverbank from the roaring Gala river. Something pricked the hairs on the back of my neck. “What are they doing out here?”
“See the older ones?” Joni pointed with his spear. He placed his free hand on my belt, his palm and digits easily spanning my hip, and pulled me close to his side, “They were teaching the little ones to fish.”
I finally spotted the handfuls of fishing rods two of the older children had in their hands. Joni pressed into my back. All broad and hard, warming me against the chill of the lingering winter and the quiet. He wrapped his bulky arm around me as I watched the kids pause by a large naked tree. My still healing shoulder protested the added weight of him, but I ignored it. I scanned the area, the prickling sensation growing worse. Bumps rose on my arms.
“How many?”
“What?”
“I want four, at least.” His breath was like a hot feather on my neck seconds before he nuzzled there.
“Four what?” I gritted my teeth, wondering what this dread curling in my stomach and making my fingers itch for my daggers meant. Couldn’t he feel it?
“Kids.” His arm squeezed, hard.
“Oh.” I wriggled away. The trees were making noise now. Creaking and swaying as if in a storm, but there wasn’t any wind. A pebble tumbled off the wall beside me and into the brittle grasses below.
“Chi…”
His voice grated on my ears like a knife tip dragging along a rock.
The racket in the forest grew louder. The trees swayed as if the ground under them erupted. Was that a snort? I dropped my catch to the wall, “Joni-” I started to warn just as something burst through the treeline in a spew of dirt, torn branches, and dead leaves.
The kids’ screams broke through the second of silence.
The giant white pig- white pig? - turned its fat head toward the screams. The tusks covered in roots and dirt were as long as my forearms and sprouted from each side of a wrinkled muddied snout. This thing could probably wrestle a bear and win.
My feet pounded toward the kids before I knew what I was doing. Those tree trunks of pig legs started moving too. I felt Joni’s fingers graze my arm. Then the thundering of those hooves shook the earth underneath my footfalls.
“Run!” I screamed, waving my arms high in the air as I did. My shoulder burned as I waved my arms higher and higher; part to distract the boar and part to try to get the kids to snap out of their huddle. I yelled again, my lungs burning with the effort of running and screaming at the same time.
A few moved, scrambling toward town. Away from the pig’s trajectory. Fishing rods forgotten. Their friends forgotten, too. There were three that stood, their mouths as wide as their eyes, rooted to the spot by the old tree.
“Run! Move!” I screamed at them again. Panic ran up and clawed at my throat. I tugged at a dagger, fumbling the hold until it fit into my hand. I tugged another one free. I let the black blades fly, missing the pig’s snout by a hair. Blood trickled down the white cheek.
The other thunked deep into the tree by the oldest boy’s head.
That pig kept barreling toward the children.
I tugged out another dagger and let it fly. This one hit its mark sinking deep into a dark, white-rimmed eye. The pig gave a shrill squeal as it skidded to a stop on four stiff legs. Dust and dirt flew up in front and around it as it tossed its wide head. The dagger stayed in it. The one in the eye hadn’t done what I hoped it would though. Any other animal and that dagger would have damaged the brain.
I had just made it angry.
My dagger, or the dust, made the eldest boy wake out of his stupor. He shoved the younger kids up into the large tree. The tree’s trunk, as thick as the pig was wide, leaned over, long trailing branches tickled the deep Gala waters.
It wouldn’t hold if that pig decided to ram it, no matter how deep the coils of roots dug into the earth.
The boar pawed the ground with another squeal, this one deeper, thunderous, and less a scream of pain. I threw another pair of daggers deep into the wide, low-slung belly. It screamed that high-pitched scream again, that large head turning to me.
“Gods.” I skidded. I threw down my hand to grapple with the road sand as my old slick boots slid. It helped the change in trajectory to the river bank. If I could jump it, I could get in the deep part and swim away. Unless pigs could swim. Could they swim? Thundering sounded in my ears and reverberated through me.
At least my family would have enough pig meat to last a year or two once someone got it down.
“Nadachia!” Joni yelled to my left.
I dared a glance, his spear held high. I shifted toward him, arms and legs pumping, my lungs burning, trying to get the boar to do the same so Joni could have a decent shot. I still headed to the river bank, but it would take me longer.
I realized my mistake. The short rapids, shallow, were beyond the lip of the bank instead of the deep part with the slight whirlpool. I would either be killed by the boar or I would break myself on rocks that refused to bend to the river’s will.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him take the running stance. I watched that familiar fluid motion in a blur as his spear began its flight. The pig had gotten too close. That spear would land right behind me.
I readied to jump in the next couple of steps. Only to have my foot slip into the soft sand of the pushed-up bank. Instead of leaping, I slid and half lobbed myself down the embankment. Sand sifted up over my boots as I tried to dig in for secure footing. I pushed at the bank behind me with my hands, trying to push further away and down.
Sand, dirt and a few clumps of grass showered down on my head as I slowed at the mud and small rocks beside the fast waters of the Gala. I whirled, looking up to see the pig skidding down the path I made. Joni’s spear sticking up out of its neck. Blood and foam flung out of its mouth as it struggled to get back up, to stop from sliding. A small squeal sounded this time as it flung its front legs out and dug its hooves in the sand.
A cloud of dust and sand wafted over me as the pig emptied its lungs before splatter hit my face. I threw another dagger, the hilt nearly disappearing with the blade into the eye, right beside the other one. That last breath warmed me as we stared at each other. What could have been my death was the pig’s last effort.
The world whirled slowly around me, the river switching places with the embankment. My backside ached with the landing on rocks and mud. I dug my fingers into the cold land, water eddying around them and into my palms. The White Boar.
“Nadachia! Chi!” Joni half slid, half jumped down to me. He grabbed my arms in long-fingered hands, “You hurt?” He swiped at the wet dribbling down my face, “Is this yours?”
His hand, covered in red and white foam, lifted from my face. I shook my head, the sky and land shaking with it. He puffed a breath, “Good.” There was a pause before his hands were on my shoulders and he shook me, “You stupid girl, what were you thinking?! Of all the-”
“Helloooo!” A boy’s broken voice called from behind the pig.
“We’re alright! Get help!” Joni interrupted his own tirade.
“They’re already coming!” The boy’s head popped up over the edge of the bank. As far away from the pig as he could manage and still be within earshot.
Ignoring the now not-so-dull ache in my shoulder, I reminded myself to breathe normally. I didn’t need the thundering heart in my chest to try to jump out or my brain to explode. With Joni’s help, I pulled myself up out of the mud and sand. His newer brown pants now wet and caked in mud on his knees. The gurgling of the Gala was soft against the roar in my ears. Joni took a rag out of his back pocket and began drying off my back and butt. Each swipe near my shoulders drew a whimper up my throat until I bit down on my lips.
I pulled away, “Stop, it’s fine.”
As the world kept turning on me slightly, I moved toward my closest daggers in the pig. I reached for them, Joni beat me to it. He pulled them from the eye with a liquid pop. Blood splattered on his arm and shoulder. A pig leg thrashed, knocking me in the shoulder and I fell back into the rocks at the river’s edge. My good shoulder plowed into the muddy soils before stopping at a rounded rock. I heard the crack before the lance of pain.
I had just gotten that shoulder to work properly from the fall I took last week too. Well, with a little leftover pain. The other one would always be a pain as it was my throwing arm.
Joni was on top of me, pulling me up before I got a mouthful of muddy water. I coughed, groaned, and coughed again. “Must’ve got a nerve or part of its mind.”
I glared at my daggers he handed me, then at the boar. The White Boar. We wouldn’t be hoping to find it on our hunting trip anymore.
He half-carried me back to the bank. I crawled up it, taking out my daggers from the cheek, then the two from the stomach of the pig as I went. I cleaned the red flesh and blood off the black metals as best as I could before slipping them back into my belt. Thanking the gods again that these were a family heirloom I hadn’t sold yet. Sitting in the grass, I tried to get the world to stop spinning, my eyesight to stop tunneling, my heart to stop running away, and my stomach to stop clenching. I sat on my knees, watching the dust cloud rise from the eastern gate and head toward us.
The cold water of the Gala sunk into my clothes. They stuck to my back and sides, leeching what warmth my body had soaked up during the morning out. My teeth began chattering as my heartbeat quieted in my ears and eased its thunder in my chest.
I pulled myself to stand, then considered how terrible of an idea that had been as I stumbled drunkenly toward the kids who were climbing down off the tree. I leaned against the thick shaggy trunk once I made it there. I looked at each of their upturned faces. Their eyes were so wide I thought they might pop out of their little heads. “Are any of you hurt?”
One little girl showed me her hands, scuffed from the red papery tree bark. I went back down to my knees. It was safer being closer to the ground when it kept moving on me. The contents of my stomach, if there were any, wouldn’t have that far to go either. I gently brushed her hands clean, “Just a little cut here and there, little one. You will be alright.”
She nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. Gods, would she ever want to go fishing again?
Horses skidded to a stop beside us, spraying road dirt with their hooves. One snorted and tossed its head as if impatient to move along. I looked up at the shining armor of the two guards.
“Chi?” Edi dismounted, rushing over to me.
Ria right behind him asked, “What happened? The kids were saying something about a pig monster?” Ria’s voice always amused me. As one of the physically strongest women I knew, stronger than many of the men and oxen in town even, her voice was like a songbird.
Edi, the youngest and best looking guard in Owlimount, scoured my face with sharp gray eyes, wiping away some blood and foam. His thick leather gloves were rough but warm. Once he grew satisfied, he stopped, his hands falling back to his sides. I must have shivered because in the next moment he had his blanket off his saddle and over my shoulders.
Pig monster. White boar. THE white boar.
A chill washed down my spine. I pointed to the bank. He had killed it. We all knew he would kill it. “Joni’s with it.”
Ria patted my shoulder, I tried not to scream. She shoved Edi toward his horse with her free hand, “Get her some water before the whole village arrives.”
He obeyed, quickly giving me his canteen, “Drink slow, you went pale there for a second.” He motioned to my face, “Since that’s not yours, are you hurt anywhere?”
I shook my head as I swished around a mouthful of stale water. I swallowed and took another gulp, before answering, “Just my shoulders again.”
“Again?”
“Gods! It’s The White Boar!” Ria found her voice. Edi started over, then hung back, casting a furtive glance at me. Not that he couldn’t see the rear end of the thing from the tree. Still, seeing it closer had an appeal now that it wasn’t trying to run me over.
“Go.” I waved the canteen at him. Another mistake as the bones creaked and cracked below my ear with the motion.
Edi reached Ria’s side when the first of the villagers stopped around me, clogging the road and my view of the riverbank. Doc was first in his swift cart. A traveling merchant and a few villagers hanging on to the sides of the merchant’s wagon stopping behind him. Doc hopped out as I gave the canteen to one of the kids to take and pass among them.
The mayor in his polished chase pulled to a stop next to the magistrate in his less glamorous and much older wagon. The magistrate had a woman with him. The girl beamed and sniffled at the same time when the woman dropped to the ground off the wagon and gathered her skirts in thick fists as her head swiveled between the tree and the riverbank. The girl started toward her, but Doc knelt in front of her.
“Ye hurt?”
The girl shook her head, her brown wad of hair on top of her head wiggling like a lid on a boiling pot as she hid her hands behind her back.
“Just scratches from the bark,” I told him as he started reaching for her hands.
He nodded, “Go on then.” He checked the other two kids over, talking with them gently in his lilting baritone. He waited until their parents arrived before allowing them to stray from his side. He then moved to me, going down on one knee with a grunt, “Look like a mess, Chi.”
“You should see the pig.”
He grunted, looking down at my legs and running his hands along them, but I caught the half-smile as he asked, “It’s white, ain’t it?”
I nodded, finding my mouth working dry again, but the children had put the canteen back on Edi’s saddle when they left.
I cringed when he touched my shoulders and he grunted, “Got both of ‘em this time? I ain’t gonna tell ya to rest and expect it to happen. But I’m gonna tell ya and hope it happens. You need to rest. A good whole day, a week is better, a month or two would be best, of doin’ nothin’ but eatin’, sleepin’, and talkin’ with your family. Yer not gonna have much time with ’em soon ’nuff.”
“I’ll try. It’s just the one. Hurts worse this time.”
He leaned over me, “I’m gonna have to set it again.”
Grabbing a stick from the still winter brown grass beside me; I bit down on it and worked to keep my breathing even. Doc counted under his breath, but he pushed it in place at the wrong count.
I should be used to that by now.
Pain shot through my arm all the way to my fingers and tingled there. I moved them, making sure everything was set correctly, even if the pain worsened momentarily. He rubbed the area, easing the muscles and their attachments as best he could with his thick fingers. “I’ll make sure Rossi gets the majority of that pork, but I’ll have to cut ham off it for the celebration that’s sure to come.”
I nodded, knowing what would happen. Ever since Joni had grown into his large hands and feet, everyone knew he had to be the one. No Hero in our past had ever been scrawny according to the statues and paintings. Most had been pretty, like Joni, too. All had been from Owlimount, or the surrounding areas. The feast would be to honor him. To start his journey to the capital to claim his Hero status and start the quests with a cheer, gifts, and a belly full of food and drink.
###
They still weren’t through butchering the boar and having a pre-emptive party at sunset. I nodded off against the tree every now and then. The vial Doc had given me for the pain worked its magic and made me drowsy too. Joni nudged me often enough that I got tired of it and told him to either move or he was going to lose his hands. He sauntered off with the crowd with a roll of his pretty green eyes.
I was having a nice dream about voices buzzing like white bees nearby when something started shaking me. I gasped in a lung full and struck out with a hand. Doc’s hard chest stopped me, cracking my fingers and making my wrist hurt. “Sorry,” I yawned, patting his chest where I hit him.
“Edi!” Doc called, “Take ’er home.” He hauled me up to my feet, gentle with his hands on my sides rather than pulling me up by the arms.
“I can go on my own.” I folded the blanket someone had given me at some point. No, I tried to fold it. I could barely lift the thing off the ground.
I dropped the waded mess with a gasp as Doc picked me up by a thigh and hip to deposit me on Edi’s saddle. I glared down at him as he said, “Yer too light, lass. Gotta put some meat on ya.”
Edi mounted behind me, his armor cool against the thin fabric of my mud-caked shirt and hunting gear. He chuckled, his breath warm against the shell of my ear and cheek, “A bit bony, but she’s still got some curves.”
Doc’s look soured as it traveled from me to Edi, “Any funny business Edi of Tamanim and I’ll make ya sing like a bird fer life! Understand?”
“Aye.” His swallow was nearly as loud as his answer.
We were well down the road on Edi’s sturdy dun steed before he took a big enough breath for his arms to loosen at my sides, “Doc’s scary, ain’t he?”
I giggled, “Only to those with bad intentions.”
“Aw, come on Chi, you know me. I wouldn’t do nothin’.” He paused, “Unless a girl were willin’ and we were in love and…ya know.”
I leaned my head back on his shoulder. The moons above, although not full, were bright enough to see the road and surrounding bare trees well. I could tell it wasn’t the shadows darkening his complexion, “Thinking about Seaghla?”
Edi shrugged, making my head bounce.
I sighed, closing my eyes, “I dunno if she’s coming back, Edi.”
“I know.” His voice was soft, “Momma always told me that first loves are hardly the lasting, lifetime ones.”
We rode in silence for a while. The clip-clop of his horse a slow plod against the gurgling and slapping waters of the Gala the road butted up against still. I was about to fall back asleep when he spoke up again.
“That don’t mean you and Joni won’t last though. Even when he goes off to be the Hero, he’ll take you with him. He always said he would. Said he can’t take down the big ones without you.”
I snorted, “If he can take the big ones out at all.”
Edi chuckled, “You both did a number on that boar. But Joni did give the killin’ blow.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, right in the eye.”
“Is that what he said?”
“Didn’t have to. Part of the eye was still on him.”
My face heated. That had been my daggers in that eye, not his. He didn’t even have daggers. I took a deep breath. The boar had still moved after the dagger in its eye though. Joni had downed it with the spear. Blood loss. That was that.
Joni was the New Hero of the New Prophecy. He would have to go to the Capital and choose his team carefully. There, we would be given quests. Quests that would save people. He would be popular.
At least I’d have the Welkans and Taspe to help me keep my family fed.
“Looks like you have company.”
Edi’s voice drew me from my thoughts. Leaning against the gate, just outside the pool of lantern light hanging from our tree, as if my thoughts had summoned him, stood Taspe. He opened the gate for us, but Edi stopped just outside.
“You won’t come in? At least water your horse and get some for yourself before heading back.” I pulled my leg over the horse’s neck. Taspe’s long-fingered hands came to my waist and half let me slide down, half lifted me toward him.
“We’ll be fine,” Edi said as he patted his horse’s neck, “’Sides, you got a story to tell. Taspe.” Edi nodded at him.
“Edi.” Taspe nodded back, “Should I lock her up or something?” His ebony hair hid his face from me, but I could hear the smirk in his bluejay raspy voice.
Edi chuckled, “Good luck trying that, and let me know how it goes if you live.” He turned his horse and gave a wave over his shoulder before nudging the long-legged beast into a canter.
I slipped from Taspe’s hands, leaning on the gate to shut it behind us. I turned, then I was captive. His hands cupped my face and tilted it to the lantern light.
“How did you get all this on you?”
His voice was quiet. The kind of quiet it took on before he got to the good part of the story. I swallowed, my mouth still dry as I avoided his gaze. Something in my hand pulsed hard, like my heart was there instead of in my chest. “We killed The White Boar.”
“We?”
“Joni-”
His broad, cool hands fled from my face and he took two steps back, “I see.”
“What? Why?” I lifted a hand, the pain shooting up my shoulder, I let it back down and tried with the other one, reaching for him. It didn’t hurt as badly.
“I suppose he will choose you to be part of his Hero band to fulfill what the quests have unleashed? We’ve been hearing some rumors of odd things.”
I watched him run a hand through his hair, the waves shifting with the pull halfway down his back before settling. It was all puffed like a beast bristling. “Maybe.” I stepped toward him. Toward the path home. “We’ve talked about it since we were kids.”
“Yes, I know. Another grand adventure for the two of you.”
Was he growling?
Taspe turned and walked down the path before I could reach him again. His long legs made me have to run to catch up to him. My muscles screamed in protest as I jogged after him. I tripped over something, caught myself, and decided it wasn’t worth another fall to catch up. “Taspe?”
“You’re hurt.” Had he left my side at all? I could feel the coolness of his skin as his hands came to rest on mine. So light, like feathers resting there instead of fingertips. Something as large as he shouldn’t be able to touch feather-light like that.
The way he had said it was like he knew better than I did what I felt.
“Just some sore muscles.” I looked up at him, peering into the moonlit face of my best friend, into his midnight blue eyes, “What’s wrong?”
“You’re hurt.” He stated again.
I waited for him to bite the air. Something was in those words, in that tone, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The marks of his tribe and status glowed softly along his forehead, cheekbones and down his chin, like he held the blue moon, Sakon, under his tanned flesh.
He loomed over me. The darkness cloaked him as a cloud skudded over one moon and then the other. His eyes flashed once the cloud was gone, as did his teeth, “Will you go with him like this?”
I wanted to take a step back. I needed to make myself smaller, not a threat like I had been taught all my life when up against a bear or other carnivorous beast. At the same time, a flame flicked to life, daring me to go on my toes and square up with him. I wasn’t scared of Taspe.
I felt my spine straighten. I tilted my head back and met that burning gaze with my own. I doubted mine was as intense as his. My eyes burned. Of course I wanted to cry now.
“Yes. Yes, I will go with him. He needs me. He can’t do all that alone.” I pressed my hands up onto that larger-than-life chest, feeling both sets of lungs working under my palms. He wasn’t racing me, so why were both inflating? “I will go. You don’t have to leave this time to get away from me.”
His hands covered mine, warmer than moments before. He didn’t back down, “You really think that’s what I want?” He hissed, “I went to my uncle’s to…to figure out what I need to do.”
“You couldn’t figure it out here? I couldn’t help you?”
“No. You were-are part of the problem.”
“Then I would’ve been the best to help you out!” I tried yanking my hands free, but my shoulders trembled and screamed lightning pain from the effort. So much for the medicine.
“You only make things worse,” Taspe groaned. Each word he uttered made him diminish from the growling, fiery thing he had been a moment before to the boy he kept hidden inside. The part of him that always second-guessed himself.
There they were, trailing down my cheeks now. Those words he threw at me filled me and made me spill over. I slid my hands from a grasp that fell loose with the appearance of my tears. “Then you will be rid of me at last.”
I sidestepped around him. My legs felt like they had boulders tied to them. The path to the house blurred before me, but I knew it by heart. I was going to crawl into bed and hopefully never rise out of it again.
