Wild Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

between trees busy growing roots and nuts and acorns for pigs to eat. It was a fine, fine day to be a wild hog. Standing behind a mighty oak with roots dug bare by pig snouts, Rook scanned the sows and shoats lying in the wallows with their long legs and their pointed headsstretched out, mud crusting their dark bristles, many of them asleep. If Rook wanted to take a treat of meat back to Rowan, all he had to do was sneak up and grab a young pig. Getting covered with mud was a small price to pay for roast suckling pork.
    But it wasn’t hunger for meat that had sent him here. It was a different hunger. An aching hunger the Sheriff’s son had put into him, making him burn and churn with hate and love, vengeance against Nottingham, longing for a … a dead swineherd.
    Year after year Father had come here to capture the young wild pigs for fattening, taking the dog—Rook blinked in surprise at himself, that he had almost forgotten the brindle dog. It had been a companion, a playmate of sorts, and it had helped to keep the wild boars at bay in the spring and herd the shoats in the fall. But the king’s foresters had come and cut off some of its toes, laming it so that it couldn’t chase deer. One day the dog had not come home. Maybe they had killed it outright.
    Maybe it had been caught in a man trap.
    Like Father.
    Remembering Father was thorny hard and hurtful, but looking at the sleeping pigs eased Rook’s tangled feelings somewhat. Just standing in this place gave him some small peace. He began to notice birdsong, felt liquid notes cleansing him, a rainbow shower amid sunshine. Breathing deeply of the moist mud-scented air, he seemed to take in something of his father’s spirit, something quiet, brown, accepting …
    No. He would never accept.
    Confound the Sheriff’s son. Hand of justice put him in the trap for me; why did I let him live? What is wrong with me? Am I a coward? Am I
—
    “
Mes yeux
, Rook,” said a voice behind him, “why you run away?”
    He jerked around. There stood Beau, her grin flashing white, her hair hanging like a black-and-yellow flag. He had been forgetting to listen for danger, he had not heard her approaching, and now—
    Pigs screeched and scrambled up, startled by Beau’s voice. Mud flew as sows and shoats darted in all directions like a sudden ambush, all the king’s men shooting all the king’s arrows—but these were arrows bigger than Rook and Beau put together. And with a scream more like a roar, something massive and dark thundered toward Beau.
    There was no time to think. Rook reacted, leaping to shield Beau, spear pointed toward the danger, even before he fully comprehended the charging boar, before he really saw the black bristles standing on the razor neck and back, the frothy flash of tusks that could tear him wide open, the crescent red raging eyes. The wild boar hit his spear tip at full speed, its hurtling weight staggering him back, back—but as Rook fell, somehow heremembered to plant the butt of the spear in the earth, and he threw himself on it to keep it there, to keep a few feet of spear between him and death. Only the crossbar stopped the boar from charging right up the length of the spear to slash and trample him.
    The boar roared, swerved, sidestepped, still trying to get at Rook even though there was a foot of sharpened wood inside him. The spear must not have pierced his heart, and its green wood couldn’t stand up to the boar’s strength for long; it would break. Rook’s pulse roared in his ears, the boar screamed like an evil spirit, everything was screaming, echoes between the trees, piglets, Rook’s muscles, his panting throat—and Beau, screaming as she leapt at the raging boar, dagger in hand. The boar swung its head to slash at her. She sprang aside just in time and leapt like a squirrel onto the boar’s back, where its tusks could not reach her. Gripping with her knees, she rode its bruising backbone as it plunged worse than a bucking pony. The