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windows had been locked and shuttered in his face; weapons leveled from arrow loops. He’d found no fish, his efforts at trapping game proved futile, and he’d persuaded no animal to drop dead at his feet—although Tora currently headed the list of beasts upon whom he wished such a fate.
    They had discovered the wild boar scrounging for food in a copse of slender trees and hardy scrub. His bowstring having already snapped in the process of stringing, he had placed his faith in his black powder. Loading calmly and quietly, he had approached the boar on foot, gained a surprisingly advantageous position, and squeezed off a pistol shot that flashed and fizzled ineffectually. Cursing the ignoble contraption as he’d done many times before, he’d watched the startled boar run off at an easy gait, snorting scornfully at his effort.
    Thus had begun the chase.
    Gonji had tracked it on horseback for a day and part of a night, feeling alternately foolish and frustrated, uncertain what he’d do when he caught up with it. He’d lost it once when it went to ground, found its lair in another copse near a fifty-foot cuesta, skimmed its back with his sword when it had surprised him with a sudden erratic charge—and resumed the chase.
    He’d lost it again, then found it hours later, worrying the carcass of a small rodent it had caught as if in mockery of his own pathetic hunting luck.
    Now the hunt had begun for fair. He’d galloped after it endlessly across the snowy plain, twisting and turning, rushing it time and again, discovering that the spear he’d fashioned was a poor substitute for a proper lance in the sport of pigsticking. And, sadly, that Tora’s old wounds and the ravages of time had slowed the staunch warhorse as he’d long suspected.
    But they’d pressed on, driven as much by pride as by hunger. Twice more he’d raked the boar with spear and the katana ’s vicious edge. Then, unexpectedly, as if at last understanding its advantage, the boar had turned and charged. For an instant Gonji had thought of the Dark Company, whether they had been as surprised to see him turn as he was to see the wily animal bear down on him. Then the boar’s lancing tusks had caused Tora to lurch backward, throwing Gonji to the ground. Only the snow had kept the samurai’s tailbone from taking up residence in his empty belly.
    Now he knelt on one knee in the snow before the wild boar’s lair, with the Sagami leaning on his right shoulder. This would end the way it should have started.
    “Stupid beast,” he spat at Tora, fifty yards off. “Doddering old drayhorse! You’re home now. Can’t you show some pride in your native land?” His backside ached with every move.
    A golden sunset shadowed the snowy wasteland, sketching the absurd churned-up ruin his hunt had made of acres of virgin snow. He hoped no enemy had observed any part of it.
    With a snort of challenge, the boar plunged at him from the gathering shadows.
    Roaring at its tormentor, angling its eight-inch tusks for a rending blow, it surged through the sluicing white mist, its breath pluming hotly.
    Gonji feinted, twisted out of its path, and struck it across the shoulder. The deep cut spilled redness onto the snow in the animal’s drunken three-legged progress.
    The boar charged Tora in a wild, bellowing rage. The chestnut stallion whinnied and bolted. Gonji swore and sprinted after the injured prey, watched it circle back almost lazily toward the lair. Then it stopped, fixed him in its black, hate-filled eyes, and roared after him again in raging pain.
    The samurai raised his blade high over his right shoulder, hands spread along the hilt, fingers caressing the sharkskin in a grip that almost looked slack. He struck the wounded boar a blow across the hindquarters, downing it. A rapid double slash—
    Gonji shouted to the twilight sky to join him in his hard-won triumph. His mother’s Nordic ebullience came through in a brief impromptu dance of victory. He quickly