The Game

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.

“But memsahib, you must watch for a flare of the eye or the chewing of its tusks, for that tells you that he is about to turn and come for you. This is called ‘jinking,’ and it is very dangerous, you must watch for that at every instant. If by great bad fortune you lose your spear” (I thought all in all this was highly likely) “you must not dismount to retrieve it unless you can be completely and absolutely certain that the pig is gone.” The shikari stood watching me try to find the spear’s balance and to work out a way of carrying the thing so it didn’t slice the gelding’s legs to ribbons; with an almost imperceptible sigh and shrug of his shoulders, he went back to his work.

The maharaja divided us into pairs, which I supposed was to lessen the severity of a collision or a stray spear. I thought he would put me with another inexperienced rider and thus dismiss the incompetents from his mind, but to my surprise he chose me for his partner. After the first flush of pleasure, it occurred to me that he was all but guaranteeing that he have the day to himself. I firmed my grip on the shaft, and determined at least to remain in the saddle.

We made our way down the road towards some hills. As we rode, I began to get a feel for the spear’s movements; I could even see the reason for allowing the pig so close: Were the shaft any longer, it would be impossible to manoeuvre it with any precision at all. In the end, I decided it must be like jousting; given the chance, I’d simply count on the horse to run me over the pig, bracing the spear like an eight-foot-long skewer.

With my eyes closed, praying fervently.

As the road cleared the top of the hill, we left it to set out into an open plain, several miles of rough terai with patches of waist-high sugar cane, dotted by thickets of weedy trees and some rocky outcrops. We distributed ourselves, pair by pair, in a long string of riders, and there we stood, listening to the beaters working their way down, half a mile or more away. They sounded very different from the beaters used to drive game birds in England, but their purpose was the same, raising just enough noise to make their target edgy, representing in their numbers enough of a threat to encourage the animals to move away, not to panic—or in the case of pigs, turn and attack. It was a lovely morning, clear and still cool, and the horse beneath me was promising, needing little attention from its rider to avoid obstacles, responding easily to my suggestions. I relaxed, and decided that, in spite of the vicious weapon in my hand, the true purpose of pig sticking was the same as that of fox- hunting, namely, an excuse for a pleasant day’s vigorous exercise in the open. And, no doubt, for the sumptuous hunt lunch that would await us at the tank. I fingered the silver charm I wore for reassurance, and wondered where Holmes was.

Then without warning, two things happened simultaneously: When the first of the beaters came into sight, I was astonished to see, not simply men on foot, but with them mounted elephants, ears waving and trunks up. And no sooner had I focussed on those amazing and glorious beasts, when the corner of my eye caught a number of fast dark objects shooting out of a patch of thick green cane to rocket across the grassland at an angle from me, aiming for a thick stand of trees a mile or so away. Without pausing to consult me, my horse gathered its hindquarters and lunged after the pigs with the other riders stretched out, right and left, the white Arab in the fore. In three seconds flat we were pounding at a full gallop across dry grassland while the smaller members of the herd, sows and piglets, started peeling away from our path, ducking under bushes and doubling back for safety, leaving three, then two, and finally a solitary black creature that flew along the ground on its stumpy legs, an angular, hairy slab of muscle and bone that showed no sign of lagging. I did not know where the others were, but the white Arab was in front and fifty yards to my left, its rider up in his stirrups, his spear as steady as if it were mounted to a track. My own weapon bounced and wove with each beat of the body beneath me, giving all too vivid illustration to Nesbit’s casual remark about ending up with a spear through his arm.

I wouldn’t have imagined that a pig would be fast, but this one maintained its distance from both horses for half a mile. The trees were fast approaching, but either the pig was tiring or the horses had their stride, because my mount was coming up on the pig’s right side. Afterwards, I decided the experienced bay had done it deliberately, cutting the boar off from the trees while the white Arab fell away on our left. The pig veered reluctantly away from the trees, then farther away, until it was headed into open ground.

And then it jinked.

Such light-hearted and adolescent words the sport used, my mind threw at me in its last instant of clarity for some time. Sticking, jinking, pig—all those short vowels lent it such a jaunty air.

What happened in fact was that, thirty feet ahead of me, the boar turned with the ease of a swallow in flight and aimed itself at the Arab’s white belly. Our quarry had no intention of being driven out into open ground, and anything in its way would be ripped apart, it was as simple as that—except that it was not simple, the jink was a feint. The maharaja’s spear was already down and waiting, but the charge at the white belly stopped as swiftly as it had begun, and the animal whirled on its hooves in the clap of a hand and shot straight at me.

In an instant, my fear of embarrassing myself and letting down the women’s side vanished completely, gulped up by a flood of pure mortal terror. The pig looked the size of a bear, with murderous little eyes over a cluster of curved razors; I half expected the thing to leap into the air and rip out my throat. Thank God the horse at least knew what it was doing. While my arm froze and the spear bobbled up and down like a broom-stick balanced across a clothes-line, the big bay gathered its muscles, paused for a moment—only later did it occur to me that the horse was waiting for me to stick the thing, had I been either so inclined or so able—and then vaulted hugely forward out of the boar’s way. As we rose, the spear-head dipped to bounce ineffectually off the pig’s rock-like shoulder, a tap that jarred my shoulder down to my boots.

I came within a hair of dropping my stick as the horse flew forward, tucking its feet miraculously clear of the searching tusks and coming back to earth at a dead run. It took just half a dozen strides and then, with absolutely no instruction from me, dug in its front hooves. Spear and topee flew over the horse’s ears, nearly followed by rider as I clung hard to mane and saddle, losing one stirrup as the horse hauled itself around to face the boar again.

Which meant that I looked back over my gelding’s neck just in time to see a textbook illustration of how a pig is stuck. With its right side now clear, the animal was sprinting for the trees, the maharaja riding hard to catch it first. Ten feet from safety the spear—so steady it resembled the javelin of a bronze athlete—slid into the tough hide. The beast tumbled and regained its feet, the horse veered and came about, and spear met pig in mid-stride, the point slipping effortlessly into the fold where the thick neck began. The boar hesitated, then collapsed slowly and was still.

“Jesus Christ!” I said, loud in the silence. I was trembling all over, but the maharaja’s breathing was only slightly quickened, and both horses seemed more interested in the grass than in the bloody object on the ground. I half-fell out of the saddle and went in search of my dropped headgear and weapon, clinging to the reins as support, feeling as if I’d narrowly missed a fall from a high rooftop, shaking but gloriously alive. I located the spear by tripping over it, picked my topee from a bush and clapped it onto my head, and walked somewhat drunkenly back to where the maharaja sat, still on horse-back, waiting as some of his men approached at a fast trot.

“You accounted well for yourself, Miss Russell,” he said.

I squinted at him in disbelief. “I didn’t get us killed, if that’s what you mean.”

“Not at all. In fact—” He held out his hand, gesturing for my spear. I thrust it out and he snatched at the wavering shaft before I could disembowel him, then ran his thumb up the steel groove, showing me the thick red ooze he’d pulled from it. “First blood to you, Miss Russell. Congratulations.”

I took back my weapon to examine the evidence, then went to look at the animal itself, expecting a small nick where my spear had bounced off. Instead, there was a rip in his flesh the size of my hand. My shoulder still tingled with the impact.

The servants came up then. They gave the maharaja a cloth to clean his hand, gave me a glass of ice-cold lemon drink to clear my throat, and handed us each a fresh spear.

The day, it seemed, was far from over.

I tucked in my shirt, bathed my face, and settled my hair back under my topee. The syce with the decorated stool held my horse’s reins and tucked the spear under his arm,