It was very nearly silent in the wood after that. Dave heard scattered coughing on both sides of the river; a dog barked once, nervously; a man not far away swore softly at the pain of a wound he’d taken. Dave never took his eyes from the High King. Kneeling in the trampled snow, Aileron carefully wiped his blade clean before rising to sheath it. He glanced fleetingly at his brother, then turned, with an expression almost shy, to Arthur Pendragon.

Who said, in a voice of wonder, “Only one man I ever saw could do what you just did.”

Aileron’s voice was low but steady. “I am not him,” he said. “I am not part of it.”

“No,” said Arthur. “You are not part of it.”

After another moment, Aileron turned to the river. “Brightly woven, men of Cathal. A small blow only have we given the Dark this morning, but better that we have given it than otherwise. There are people who will sleep easier tonight for our work in this wood.”

Shalhassan of Cathal was splotched in blood from shoulder to boot and there were bloody smears in the forked plaits of his beard, but, kingly still, he nodded grave agreement. “Shall we sound the maron to end the hunt?” Aileron asked formally.

“Do so,” Shalhassan said. “All five notes, for there are six of us dead on this side of the river.”

“As many here,” said Arthur. “If it please you, High King, Cavall can give tongue for both triumph and loss.”

Aileron nodded. Arthur spoke to the dog.

Grey Cavall walked to an open space by the riverbank where the snow was neither trampled down nor red with wolf or dog or human blood. In a white place among the bare trees he lifted his head.

But the growl he gave was no sound of triumph nor yet of loss.

Dave would never be sure which caused him to turn, the dog’s snarled warning or the trembling of the earth, raster than thought he spun.

There was an instant—less than that, a scintilla of time in the space between seconds—and in it he had a flash of memory. Another wood: Pendaran. Flidais, the gnomelike creature with his eerie chants. And one of them: Beware the boar, beware the swan, the salt sea bore her body on.

Beware the boar.

He had never seen a creature like the one that rumbled now from the trees. It had to be eight hundred pounds, at least, with savage curving tusks and enraged eyes, and it was an albino, white as the snow all around them.

Kevin Laine, directly in its path, with only a sword and a wounded shoulder, wasn’t going to be able to dodge it, and he hadn’t a hope in hell of stopping the rush of that thing.

He had turned to face it. Bravely, but too late, and armed with too little. Even as the bizarre memory of Flidais exploded and he heard Diarmuid’s cry of warning, Dave took two quick steps, let go of his axe, and launched himself in a lunatic, weaponless dive.

He had the angle, sort of. He hit the boar with a flying tackle on the near side shoulder, and he put every ounce of his weight and strength into it.

He was bounced like a Ping-Pong ball from a wall. He felt himself flying, had time to realize it, before he crashed, pinwheeling, into the trees.

“Kevin!” he screamed and tried, unwisely, to stand. The world rocked. He put a hand to his forehead and it came away covered with blood. There was blood in his eyes; he couldn’t see. There was screaming, though, and a snarling dog, and something had happened to his head. There was someone on the ground and people running everywhere, then a person was with him, then another. He tried to rise again. They pushed him back. They were talking to him. He didn’t understand.

“Kevin?” he tried to ask. He couldn’t form the name. Blood got in his mouth. He turned to cough and fainted dead away from the pain.

It hadn’t actually been bravery, or foolish bravado either— there had been no time for such complex things. He’d been at the back and heard a grunt and a trampling sound, so he’d been turning, even before the dog barked and the earth began to shake under the charge of the white boar.

In the half second he’d had, Kevin had thought it was going for Diarmuid and so he yelped to get its attention. Unnecessary, that, for the boar was coming for him all the way.

Strange how much time there seemed to be when there was no time at all. At least somebody wants me, was the first hilarious thought that cut in and out of his mind. But he was quick, he’d always been quick, even if he didn’t know how to use a sword. He had no place to run and no way on earth of killing this monster. So, as the boar thundered up, grunting insanely and already beginning to raise its tusks to disembowel him, Kevin, timing it with coolest precision, jumped up in a forward somersault, to put his hands on the stinking white fur of the boar’s huge back and flip over it like a Minoan bull dancer, to land in the soft snow.

In theory, anyway.

Theory and reality began their radical bifurcation around the axis formed by the flying figure of Dave Martyniuk at precisely the point where his shoulder crashed into that of the boar.

He moved it maybe two inches, all told. Which was just enough to cause Kevin’s injured right arm to slip as he reached for the hold that would let him flip. He never got it. He was lying sprawled on top of the boar, with every molecule of usable air cannonballed out of his lungs, when some last primitive mechanism of his mind screamed roll, and his body obeyed.

Enough so that the tusk of the animal in its vicious, ripping thrust tore through the outer flesh of his groin and not up and through it to kill. He did his somersault in the end and came down, unlike Dave, in snow.

There was a lot of pain, though, in a very bad place and there were droplets of his blood all over the snow like red flowers.

It was Brock who turned the boar away from him and Diarmuid who planted the first sword. Eventually there were a number of swords; he saw it all, but it was impossible to tell who struck the killing blow.

They were very gentle when it came time to move him and it would have been rude, almost, to scream, so he gripped the branches of his makeshift stretcher until he thought his hands had torn through the wood, and he didn’t scream.

Tried one joke as Diarmuid’s face, unnaturally white, loomed up. “If it’s a choice between me and the baby,” he mumbled, “save the baby.” Diar didn’t laugh. Kevin wondered if he’d gotten the joke, wondered where Paul was, who would have. Didn’t scream.

Didn’t pass out until one of the stretcher bearers stumbled over a branch as they left the forest.

When Kevin came to, he saw that Martyniuk was in the next bed, watching him. Had a huge blood-stained bandage around his head. Didn’t look too well, himself.

“You’re okay,” Dave said. “Everything intact.”

He wanted to be funny but the relief was too deep for that. He closed his eyes and took a breath. There was surprisingly little pain. When he opened his eyes he saw that there were a number of others in the room: Diar and Coll and Levon. Tore, too, and Erron. Friends. He and Dave were in the front room of the Prince’s quarters, in beds moved close to the fire.

“I am okay,” he confirmed. Turned to Dave. “You?”

“Fine. Don’t know why, though.”

“The mages were here,” Diarmuid said. “Both of them. They each healed one of you. It took awhile.”

Kevin remembered something. “Wait a minute. How? I thought—”

“—that the sources were drained,” Diarmuid finished. His eyes were sober. “They were, but we had little choice. They’re resting now in the Temple, both Matt and Barak. They’ll be all right, Loren says.” The Prince smiled slowly. “They won’t be around for Maidaladan, though. You’ll have to make it up to them. Somehow.”

Everyone laughed. Kevin saw Dave looking at him. “Tell me,” the big man said slowly, “did I save your life or almost get you killed?”