Daren tugged futilely at his spear, but it was stuck fast in the boar, lodged as it was intended to do, and wouldn’t come free. Faram was on his knees, and struggling to get up, but it was obvious he was never going to get out of the way in time.

Suddenly, there was a blur of gray, flying between the King and the charging sow.

The pig screamed, and turned aside; whirled and charged this new target, her eye streaming blood. The gray warsteed pivoted on a single hoof, and lashed out with her hind feet, sending the sow flying through the air. Two flashes of metal followed it, and the sow hit the ground and lay there, thrashing, two of Kero’s lances sticking out of its sides.

The mare whirled again, but on seeing that the “enemy” was no longer a threat, snorted once and tossed her head. Kero dismounted, walked cautiously toward the convulsing beast with her knife in her hand, then dived in and slit the sow’s throat with one perfectly timed stroke.

The beast shuddered and died.

Kero rose from the carcass, and wiped her knife carefully on the sow’s hide. Only then did she look over to where Daren and his brother were sprawled beside the body of the boar.

“Survival, my lord,” she said mildly. “has taught me to always leave a mobile scout to the rear.”

Then she walked over to her mare, and mounted, leaving the huntsmen to deal with the carcass.

Twenty

Twenty

Kero sipped at her watered wine, turned to the woman at her said, and said, “Honestly, it was mostly Hellsbane. I’ve never hunted boar before, and I didn’t know what to expect. That was why I stayed mounted.”

Lady ‘Delia nodded. “A good horse is worth twenty armsmen, or so it seems to me. I’ve never seen a horse quite as well trained as yours, though. She follows and obeys you more like a dog than a horse.”

“So I’ve noticed,” Kero told her, without elaborating. Let her wonder. She seems nice enough, but the less people know about warsteeds, the better off I’ll be. Whether people overestimate or underestimate Hellsbane, I win.

“She’s really the second horse of her line that I’ve had from the cousins,” she continued, which allowed Lady ‘Delia to elaborate on her own horses’ lines, and ask which of the King’s Shin’a‘in-bloods it would be best to breed her hunters to.