Wild Country

Chapter Forty-Nine

That Sorel would have one "Rose" and Wardrop another might have been odd coincidence anywhere but the American Southwest. In Texas, it was not so much coincidence as tradition. A thing of wonder or of beauty tended to be symbolically borrowed for names, and Texas was full of people named Delight, Sunshine, and Christmas. In part because the Tyler rose festival in the piney woods of East Texas was perhaps the most gorgeous display of color north of the Big Bend, the name "Rose" was one of the commonest in the state.

Mounted on his gentle Rose, Wardrop began his hunt outside the northeast corner of Garner land and, in three patient days of search, worked his way north and west to the edge of the Grange spread. Here he found more sign of the boar, some of it very recent. Until the past few weeks, Sandy had never seriously imagined she would ever have the money to fence her land. So Alec Wardrop had no idea that he was trespassing when, on his fourth day out, he urged Rose over a ridge and onto Sandy's land. This was the only piece of real estate in Texas on which Ba'al had legal rights.

And Ba'al was sticking close to home this week. He was not especially territorial, as half-ton boars go; but if Wardrop imagined that the boar gave a damn whether Rose weighed one ton or twenty, Wardrop was mistaken. The great horse sent delicate seismic tremors through the hardpan that Ba'al felt as he lay sunning himself and digesting a bellyful of rattlers, almost within whistling distance of the soddy. From that moment on, it was hard to say who was the hunter, and who the hunted.

Wardrop and the mare were traversing a shallow, flat depression when she laid her ears back and, of her own accord, wheeled around. She had smelled something exotic and musky on the fitful breeze, and now she was hearing faint swishings through the brush that Wardrop could not hear. Yet when she wheeled to face the disturbance, her rider was not long in doubt.

Wardrop saw his quarry immediately; no wonder, with his eyes a full three meters from the ground as he sat on his own mobile Texas tower. He spoke calmly, soothingly, to the mare as she seemed for the first time to be near panic. Then he snugged the helmet down and unsnapped the lance from its lashings. This time he did not speak the name of Marianne; this quest was no longer for her, but for himself. With a cry that began low in his throat and expanded to echo across the little valley, he shouted, "Wohhhh jataaaa!.. "

Ba'al had heard this challenge before and saw the slender steel tusk lowered in his direction as the mare accelerated toward him. Something in her eyes said that she obeyed Wardrop against her best judgment. Ba'al did not much care; he cared very much that the rider with the huge gleaming head could look down on him from an arrogant height advantage. This was not to be borne with good grace. The mare was not his opponent, but merely a thing to be felled, just as a man might cut down a tree that gave safety to an opponent.

Wardrop heard the tremendous trumpeting squeal; saw the boar leap forward like a quarterhorse, covering ground faster than Rose within a second. Its huge head was down, and it stared forward like a furious Brahma as it charged with its vast twin scythes aimed at the breast of the mare. As Wardrop lodged the lance butt in its socket and leaned forward in the saddle, the boar made a near perfect target. Until the last split second.

Then the boar leaped across in front of Rose, one tusk ripping across her kapton breastplate as he passed to Wardrop's left. A shiny rectangle of nylon flew spinning from the breastplate, but the tusk had wedged between the tough nylon plates long enough to make that tusk a lever. For the first time in his adult life, Ba'al was spun end for end by that leverage as the mare thundered past him. He found the experience — interesting. And a bit insulting; deserving of an insult in return.

Wardrop felt his big platform wrench to the left, stumble, regain her stride. A rider of less ability would have gone flying into the brush, but Wardrop recovered his balance, wheeled the mare in a slow, ponderous maneuver, and tried again. Immediately, Wardrop saw that the beast kept moving to Wardrop's left, deliberately avoiding the lance. He grasped the lance shaft farther ahead, pulled its butt from the socket, then held the shaft under his right arm and swung the lancehead, a honed steel sliver as long as a man's arm, over Rose's head to menace the boar afresh.

Ba'al had tried parrying a steel tusk once before and, while nicking his own ivory scimitars slightly, the maneuver had worked. He had also felt the razor-sharp thing in his mouth, and that had not worked well at all. He had plenty of time for the decision because, with her great mass, the mare simply could not manage the speed of an Arabian. He watched the long steel sliver, gauging it carefully, his own head up and watchful, and they closed with a clash. The lancehead slid up, diverted by his tusks, and then he was inside the danger zone. He slammed directly into the horse's left flank with a resounding head butt, caromed off with a slashing pass against the armoring blanket, actually between Wardrop's shin and the mare's flank.

Rose grunted, nearly fell, and neighed in fear though the armor had prevented those honed tusks from touching her hide. Wardrop felt his left stirrup go, sliced cleanly away just inside his leg, and now only the foremost of the three special cinches held his saddle. Those two loose cinches now flailed about beneath the mare, frightening her. Rose kicked forward with a hind leg and then answered Wardrop's rein and knee pressure.

Wardrop had never known perspiration to burst from him so suddenly. It streamed into his eyes and he raised the visor, blinking, once more facing the boar as Rose danced sideways, dust rising as high as a man's chest beneath her. Now the huge boar moved backward with yellow-red eyes gleaming and watchful, now sidling up the dry, hard ground, provoking Wardrop to urge the mare forward. Perhaps it was the sweat in his eyes, or perhaps the thrill of battle joined; Wardrop did not realize the boar was drawing them onto a rise where occasional rains carved crevices into dirt the color of dried blood, a crumbly composite of granite and poor soil. The boar turned suddenly and half fell on its side, scrambling up from a shallow crevice, then grunted angrily, making a great show of rage as it hobbled away. Wardrop saw his chance, kicked the flanks of Rose, and resettled the lance as she gave chase.

They gained ground for two hundred meters before the boar's lame hindquarter was suddenly sound again as if by magic, Ba'al leaping a narrow crevice into a small plateau of stony rubble, Wardrop following. And now Wardrop saw that they occupied a mound invaded by deep crevices, as though Rose stood on the back of some great hand with its fingers splayed downward. The first and most elementary principle of engagement burst too late in Wardrop's mind: The tactic depends first on terrain. He was not mounted on a jumper that could leap clear of the problem. This demon boar had lured him into a trap.

Wardrop wheeled the mare again, shouting to spook his enemy, but as Rose turned to retrace her steps, the great boar leaped like a deer; first to one of the finger prominences, then to the slope they craved. Wardrop had no time to wonder why the boar was not champing great flecks of foam as angry boars will do. He thrust the lance down and forward, letting it slide a bit for the extra reach, and cursed as the boar dodged with ease.

Then Ba'al reared almost in the face of Rose, his head as high as her own, his sharp split hooves menacing her, and gave voice to his own challenge, a piercing squeal that unnerved the mare completely. She tossed her head, eyes rolling in terror, and backed quickly, almost rearing as she did so. Wardrop fought to keep his balance as the saddle slipped, and Rose tried valiantly to respond to his knee pressure. In an instant the great mare had slid into a crevice broad enough for her girth and easily a meter in depth. The boar chose this moment to bound to a small prominence, then leaped behind Rose before Wardrop could bring the lancehead around. The time had come to return that insult.

For one transfixing moment, Wardrop thought the brute would climb the mare from behind to get to her rider. Rose was snorting like a warhorse, struggling mightily to gain purchase so those great mounded muscles of hers could thrust her out of a crevice that was almost a ravine. Wardrop made a decision then, not from panic but with premeditation; the damned saddle was about to go anyhow.

He jammed the butt of his lance into dirt, kicked away, and hauled hard with both arms, vaulting clear of the mare; that lance shaft, after all. had been modified from a vaulting pole. He landed on both feet, squatting, whirling the lance to impale the savage brute if it charged him. And stared. The boar seemed to have no intention of charging; instead, it was poised like some great Dall ram on the edge of the ravine, well clear of Rose's frantic kicks. While Wardrop watched, it made a parody of mounting her, lurching with false thrusts, staring at Wardrop all the while. Alec Wardrop shouted a wordless battle cry and leaped toward the boar, the lancehead preceding him. It was probably the long moment arm of that lancehead, plus his heavy night-vision helmet, that sent him off-balance. Wardrop sprawled headlong, the lance clattering so that it spanned the crevice next to the one that held the mare entrapped.

Alec Wardrop saw then that he'd never had a chance, and neither had Rose, weighed down with all that extra garbage as they were; and if he was any judge, that goddamned boar knew exactly how to diddle with the chinks in their armor. Before he could scramble forward to grasp the lance, the boar performed a prodigious leap over the linger prominence and into the crevice bridged by the lance. Wardrop ducked and rolled away, seeing the boar come down with the lance shaft crosswise in its mouth, hearing the dry, splintering crack as the shaft failed.

Wardrop saw Rose heaving herself up as the boar almost disappeared; saw her stumble, one foreleg entering the mouth of a small burrow that might have been that of fox or armadillo. He abandoned any hope of remounting as the terror-stricken mare crashed to the ground, screaming. He began to run then and almost immediately fell hard, his helmet bouncing away. With Rose's mortal screams keening in his ears, he did not lose consciousness, but he had taken a monumental wallop in falling on the uneven ground. Wardrop thanked God as he felt for the long-bladed dirk in its boot sheath; it hadn't come loose, and now he had something going for him again.

The boar came up from the depression as though fired from a trench mortar, looking back toward Wardrop but trotting toward Rose. She was trying to rise, still screaming, her right foreleg thrashing, fractured terribly just above the pastern. Wardrop shambled off, running as hard as he could, searching for a scrub oak high enough to climb as the breath whistled in his windpipe. He did not realize exactly when Rose's screaming stopped. But when he risked a look backward, he knew why Rose would never scream again.

The huge boar stood over her, staring in Wardrop's direction, making no attempt to run him down before he found something climbable. The upthrusting tusks ran crimson with blood from a huge rent torn in the mare's throat. Ba'al waited for the mare to die, now respectful of his victim, and Wardrop had the chilling sensation that the boar had acted honorably. Wardrop himself would have had to shoot Rose, had he brought a firearm. Severing the great artery in her throat was the only kindness possible under the circumstances. Without realizing that he did so, Wardrop paused fifty meters away — long enough to find that his eyes were now wet, not with perspiration, but with tears. Briefly, for perhaps five seconds, man and boar stood immobile in requiem for Rose.

When Ba'al began to trot forward, Wardrop took flight again, the dirk flashing in his hand as he ran for the tallest of the scrubby little oaks nearby. He was in error to think Ba'al could not climb after him or cut down the little oak as he had been taught to remove mesquite from around the soddy. Wardrop soon saw that the boar would reach the oaks first, instead of simply running him down in a vicious charge. Well, maybe he could squeeze into one of those little ravines far enough to present only his steel dirk to the boar. Gasping, stumbling as he ran, Wardrop turned back. For some reason, the great boar was giving him time to do it, following at a leisurely trot.

Inexorably, Wardrop found himself herded back toward the dead mare, back to his broken lance. He was nearing the limits of his reserve strength and fell again, tumbling into the crevice and slicing the calf of his leg badly against the razor edge of that lancehead. He rolled onto his back, grasping the fore end of the shattered lance, and whirled it upward. Not in time. The boar was much too close, parrying the lance just behind its steel with a sudden, almost contemptuous toss of the great head, flinging the weapon down the ravine with an empty clatter, the scarlet pennant still tied fluttering on the shaft.

Wardrop wormed his way up the narrow declivity on his back, presenting the dirk, watching the boar, which was now so near that he could count scars through the coarse secondary hair on the shoulders and flanks of Ba'al. He struck the back of his head against an outcrop, shook himself groggily. He knew the old stories of the raj; knew that Maharajah Jai Singh of Alwar had actually taken boar with a dagger, from the back of a polo pony. But he, Wardrop, was not mounted and could not even stand. He tried anyway, sitting up to try a last valiant lunge, and the effort drew too much blood from his head. Feeling the whiteout on its way, he made one desperate sweep of the dirk, which thudded harmlessly into the embankment. His eyes were still open, but the sensations of color, then outline, fled as Alec Wardrop rolled onto his stomach, semiconscious. A moment later he felt the hot breath of Ba'al on his unprotected neck…