“Do you mind if I join you? It sounds great fun.”

“Mary!” objected Sunny.

“Not you,” I hastened to add. “It doesn’t look to me like your horse would be much use on rough ground.” Unlike my mount, whose pricked ears indicated that he knew precisely what was over that hill, and knew what he was supposed to do about it. Just don’t let me fall off with a pig staring me in the face, I prayed, and committed myself. My host seemed pleased, although his male companions looked as if they’d bitten into a bad apple.

The shikaris came up carrying an armload of wicked-looking spears and handed us each one. Mine had a bamboo shaft two feet taller than I was, strong and flexible and packed with lead in the butt, the tip mounted with a slim steel head the length of a child’s hand, sharp as a well-honed razor and with grooves running down both sides. I held the spear in my hand, feeling its heft and balance, trying to visualise how far a person could lean out of the saddle at a gallop without tumbling off, and trying to imagine how much practise it would take to be able to harpoon a pig in full flight. In truth, the shaft did not seem nearly long enough to me: If even half of what Holmes had told me about wild boar was correct, the farther from the pig, the better.

As I held the weapon, a shikari noticed my awkwardness and took pity on me. “You have not done this before, I think, memsahib? Very well. You are left-handed? Then the spear is held thus,” he began, shifting my fingers around the long bamboo shaft. “And you must ride with the point well forward, always. When the boar breaks from cover—and only a boar, no female pigs—you pursue it, fast fast. Hold yourself twenty, thirty feet in back, and when the beast begins to tire, speed up and aim just behind its shoulder blade.” He eyed the uncertain waver of my spear-head and modified his instructions. “Or you can jab where you wish—first blood is considered an honour, and the animal will weaken and die,” he explained.