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dagger flashed in air—a bright steel knife with a filigree hand guard, a weapon worthy of the high king’s page boy. The dagger plunged, lifted, plunged again.
    The boar did not seem to mind being stabbed at all, but the sudden weight on his back maddened him. He writhed, squalled, bent double trying to slash Beau, reared so that Rook caught a glimpse of his heaving hairy belly. But Rook leapt up with him, hanging on to the butt of the spear. His only chance was to keep hold of it. He saw Beau still on the boar with her knees clamped behind its shoulders and one hand clinging to an ear as she stretched forward with the other, trying to slash the beast’s throat.
    “Eye!” Rook yelled, panting so that he could barely get the word out. “Stab—eye!” Beau’s dagger was not long enough to kill the boar unless she struck through its eye straight into its brain.
    She heard him, and she tried. But it was like trying to stab a sixpence hung by a string in a high wind. Her dagger struck cheekbone, then air, then—
    Then the spear snapped, and Rook fell, knowing it was over. A huge weight struck him. And then there was only blackness.
    He awoke sputtering amid a wet, cold stream landing on his forehead. Blurrily he could see Beau’s narrow, elegant face looking down as she poured the contents of her water flask on him.
    “Stop it,” he said.
    “
Sacre bleu
, but someone must wash you once in the blue moon,” she said, turning the flask upright but scrubbing at his cheek with her other hand. “It was the luck most fortunate,
non
, that I came when I did?”
    The idiot. If she hadn’t alarmed the swine with her noise, the boar wouldn’t have charged in the first place—but then Rook saw the black glint in her eyes. The rascal, she was teasing him. He scowled and tried to sit up, but felt a great weight lying on his belly and legs. Glancing down, he saw the wild boar, stone dead, lying atop him with Beau’s dagger jutting from its eye. Feeling sick, he quickly looked away.
    “The
bete gross odieux
, it would have killed you were it not for
moi
,” Beau declared.
    Equally true, the boar would have killed her if it were not for him. But Rook only growled, “What are you doing here?”
    “
Mon foi
, looking for you! Rowan could not do it. She must nurse Tod—”
    Tod, it was now. Not “the Sheriff’s son.” Tod, as if the snot brat were another member of the band.
    “—and Lionel must hunt the meat, so it is for me to see where you so long go. Are your legs broken?” Beau added hopefully.
    Rook didn’t think so. He heard a pained and panicky squealing noise, but although it matched his mood, it wasn’t coming from him. Also, he would have noticed by now if any part of him hurt enough to be broken. Giving Beau only a glare for reply, he said, “Get the brute off me.”
    “
Mais certainement
. With my bare hands I will lift it instantly.” But already she had turned her pale Grecian profile and was jabbing the shaft of his broken spear under the hog, levering it up. Then she kicked a stone under it, found another stick to prop with, and levered it again. It took quite a bit of this before Rook was able to squirm out from under the wild boar’s heavy carcass. Beau offered him a hand to help him up, but he turned his back, scrambled to his feet and looked around. Something was still squealing like a frantic baby.
    “Your head’s bleeding,” Beau said.
    Rook could feel it. The back of his head seemed to be the only part of him that seriously hurt. It must have hit a rock as the boar slammed him to the ground. Unsteady on his feet, he trudged toward the wallows, now empty of all swine but one. A runty piglet still struggled in the mud. Not big and strong enough to get out by itself, left behind, it squalled for its mother, cried almost as if it knew Rook had just killed its father. Squealing, it thrashed its short legs in the mud, trying to flee, but Rook slogged over to it and picked it up, slippery little