knew less than he wished he did about a lot of things. Not enough hours in the day, not enough days in the year to learn as much as he could about all the things he wanted to know.
“They’re tasty baked in a pie,” Ortalis said. Anser nodded again. This time, so did Lanius. Pies and stews full of songbirds were some of his favorite dishes. Again, though, he didn’t care to hunt thrushes himself.
A rabbit bounded by and disappeared into the undergrowth. Anser started to set an arrow to his bowstring, then checked the motion and laughed at himself. “Not much point to shooting at rabbits,” he said. “You only waste your arrows that way. If you want rabbits in your stew instead of songbirds, you go after them with dogs and nets.”
“Then you whack them over the head with a club,” Ortalis said. “That way, you don’t hurt the pelts.”
“I see,” Lanius said. He wondered what he really saw. What Ortalis said made perfect sense. Did the prince really sound as though he enjoyed the idea of whacking rabbits over the head with a club, or was Lanius only hearing what he expected to hear? The king couldn’t be sure, and decided he had to give his brother-in-law the benefit of the doubt.
“Come on,” Anser said. “There’s a clearing not far from here. If we post ourselves at the edge of it, we’ll get good shots.”
He glided down a game track as smoothly and silently as any of the men who served him, the men who looked so much like poachers. Lanius was sure he could find his own game if he had to. Ortalis did his best to move the same way, but wasn’t as good at it. Lanius tried not to trip over his own feet and not to step on too many twigs. Anser winced only once, so he supposed he wasn’t doing too bad a job.
The three high-ranking hunters had their usual low-voiced argument about who would shoot first. Lanius resigned himself to looking foolish in front of Grus’ sons. He’d done it before.
A frightened stag bounded into the clearing. “Good luck, Your Majesty,” Anser whispered.
“Try to frighten it, anyhow, Your Majesty,” Ortalis whispered—a reasonable estimate of Lanius’ talents.
Since the shot was fairly long, the king didn’t worry much about taking aim, good, bad, or otherwise. He pointed the bow in the general direction of the stag and let fly. Even as he did so, the stag bounded forward. Anser and Ortalis sighed together. So did Lanius, with something approaching relief. This time, at least, he had a good enough excuse for missing.
If the stag had stood still, the arrow would have flown past in front of h. As things were, the shaft caught the animal just behind the left shoulder. The deer took four or five staggering steps, then fell on its side, kicking feebly. As Lanius stared in dismay, the kicking stopped and the stag lay still.
“Well shot, by Olor’s beard!” Anser cried. “Oh, well shot!” Ortalis whooped and pounded Lanius on the back. The king’s guards whooped, too.
He’d missed again, but he was the only one who knew it. This time, he’d missed at missing. Lanius gulped. He didn’t want to look at the animal he’d just killed.
But his ordeal, evidently, hadn’t ended. “Now you get to learn how to butcher the beast,” Ortalis said. “I wondered if you ever would.”
“Butcher it?” Lanius gulped. “That… isn’t what I had in mind.” He turned toward Anser for support.
The arch-hallow let him down. “It’s part of the job,” Anser said. “You ought to know what to do and how to do it. You don’t need to cut its throat; it’s plainly dead. That was as clean a kill as the one Ortalis had a while ago.”
“Huzzah,” Lanius said in a hollow voice. Anser and Ortalis clucked in disapproval and dismay when they discovered he had no knife on his belt. They would have sounded the same way if he’d gotten up in the morning and forgotten to put on his breeches. Ortalis drew his own knife and handed it to the king hilt first. He moved slowly and carefully as he did it, mindful of Lanius’ bodyguards. The edge of the blade, lovingly honed and polished, glittered in the sunlight.
“Here’s what you do,” Anser said. Following his instructions, Lanius did it. He kept his breakfast down, but had no idea how.
“If you want to start a little fire and roast the mountain oysters, they’re mighty good eating,” a guard said helpfully. “Same with a chunk of liver when it’s all nice and fresh, though it won’t keep more than a few hours.”
Lanius knew no more about starting a fire than about butchery. Anser took care of that. The guard skewered the mountain oysters on a stick and roasted them over the flames. When they were done, he handed Lanius the stick. The king wanted to throw it away. But the guardsman waited expectantly, and both Anser and Ortalis seemed to think he’d done Lanius a favor. With a silent sigh, Lanius ate.
“Well?” the guard said. “You won’t get anything like that back at the palace.”
That was true. “Not bad,” Lanius said. The men around him laughed, so he must have sounded surprised.
Ortalis stooped and cut a bloody slice from the stag’s liver. He skewered it and toasted it over the fire. “Here,” he said as he thrust the stick at Lanius. “Best eating in the world.”
It wasn’t—not to the king, anyhow. “Needs salt,” Lanius declared. To his amazement, not only Anser but also two of the guards carried little vials of salt in their belt pouches. They all offered it to him. “Thank you,” he said, and flavored the meat. It still wouldn’t have been his first choice, but it was tasty. He nodded to the other men. “Anyone who wants a slice can help himself.”
Several of them did. The speed with which the liver disappeared told him what a delicacy they thought it. One of them poked at the deer’s heart with his knife and looked a question at Lanius. He nodded again. The guards sliced up the heart and roasted it, too.
“Mighty kind of you to share like this, Your Majesty,” one of them said, his mouth full.
“My pleasure,” Lanius answered. The kidneys also went. He said, “Venison in the palace tonight.”
“Your turn next,” Anser said to his half brother. “Think you can match the king’s shot?”
“I don’t know.” Ortalis sent Lanius a sidelong glance. “But then, seeing the way he usually shoots, I don’t know if he can match it, either.”
Lanius was sure he couldn’t. “Show some respect for your sovereign, there,” he said haughtily. In a slightly different tone, the retort would have frozen Ortalis. As it was, Grus’ legitimate son laughed out loud. So did Anser and the guards. Lanius found himself laughing, too. He still cared nothing for the hunt as a chance to stalk and kill animals. For the hunt as a chance to enjoy himself… that was another story.
Ortalis not only didn’t make a clean kill when he got a shot at a deer, he missed as badly as Lanius usually did. The deer sprang away. “What happened there?” Anser asked.
“A black fly bit me in the back of the neck just as I loosed,” Ortalis answered. “You try holding steady when somebody sticks a red-hot pin in you.” He rubbed at the wounded area.
“Well, it’s an excuse, anyhow,” Anser drawled. Ortalis made a rude noise and an even ruder gesture. The Arch-Hallow of Avornis returned the gesture. It wasn’t one Lanius would have looked for from a holy man, but Anser hardly even pretended to be any such thing.
And he shot a bow better than well enough. He hit a stag when his turn came to shoot first. The deer fled, but not too far; the trail of blood it left made it easy to track. It was down by the time the hunters caught up with it. Anser had a knife on
“Your turn for the, uh, oysters,” Lanius said.
“Good.” Anser beamed. “I like ’em. You won’t see me turn green, the way you did before you tasted them.”
“Oh.” Lanius hadn’t known it had shown.
Anser, meanwhile, was grubbing in the dirt by the dead stag. He proudly displayed some mushrooms. “I’ll toast these with a piece of liver. Not with the mountain oysters—those are so good, I’ll eat them by themselves.” And, not much later, he did.
Lanius took better care to miss the next time he got a shot. He did, and the stag ran off into the woods. Anser and Ortalis teased him harder than they would have before he’d made a kill.
He teased back. That was the biggest part of the reason he came hunting at all. And yet, after he’d shot the stag, his conscience troubled him much less than he’d expected. One of these days, he might even try to hit something when he shot.
