'Why, that's easy!' Thatch shot back with abroad, wholesome grin. 'We'll help you get the treasure, Shad and I. Even with just a little share of it, a small part suited to boys like us, we'll be the wealthiest folk in the whole village. We'll tell them all how we used the spears to help kill the evil dragon that guarded the gold, and Clydebo will hang the pair on his wall in honor! We'll pay ten times the — '
'Enough, enough,' Gellor said in exasperation. 'Bring your gear to the fire and bed down with us. We'll settle the matter in the morning. A good sleep will clear the muzziness of your tangled scheme from my head, and I'll be able to solve the problem then.'
Standing proudly as men, but still sheepish about their predicament, the two lads hurried off to bring in their weapons, provisions, and bedrolls.
'How did you net these two slippery little fish?' Chert asked the one-eyed man.
Gellor covered himself with his cloak, getting ready for sleep, as he replied. 'I saw someone outside the firelight — thanks to a peep with my enchanted orb. My music has certain powers, and when I played and sang, I drew them in with a warm feeling of home and good friends. Had they been ogres, I doubt they'd have behaved differently.'
'Well,' Gord opined, 'these lads are not ogres, and we can't leave them to their fate.'
'Would you rather they died with us fighting hardened soldiers and fell spell-binders?' Gellor grumped from his bed of leaves.
'At least with us they'll have a chance,' the barbarian said just before the two boys reappeared bearing armloads of gear. That ended the conversation for the night.
While the others were readying for travel the next morning, Gord took a scrap of paper and wrote out a message.
'To Clydebo the Hunter,' it read. 'Be made aware that we have need of the service of two boys, Thatch and Shad by name. One of these electrum pieces is to cover what was taken from you, with another just like it for good measure. And there are two more luckies here, one for each of the boy's masters. Give them to their rightful owners. We will return soon to learn if you did!' He signed it 'The Three Who Hunt Devils.'
Gord tucked the message and the electrum pieces in a place where it would be evident to a keen-eyed woodsman, and made a small blaze above it just to be sure. Gellor gave a small cough, and Gord looked up, startled. Gellor pretended to be relieving himself on the tree, but the bard's expression showed that he'd seen the whole thing. Gord gave a small shrug, and Gellor returned a disapproving look.
'You are determined to bring these boys into grief,' he said with resignation. 'Then be it on your head — and the curly mop of that hulking friend who supports you in this — not on mine.' With that he mounted and began to ride away. There was a scramble to get the last of the gear onto the horses or slung over youthful backs, and the remaining four hurried off after the bard. Gord and Chert rode, and the two boys trotted happily after the horses.
Neither Thatch nor Shad could ride very well, but the two young adventurers gave them their turns atop their mounts anyway. 'This way you'll learn, for learn you must!' Gord scolded the reluctant boys.
'It'll spare your arses some, too!' said Chert with a laugh as he recalled the pain of becoming accustomed to the saddle.
During a brief pause to get bearings, eat, and rest, the lads were instructed in the proper handling of the broad-bladed, cross-pieced spears they lugged along. Each weapon consisted of a stout shaft, one of hickory, the other of hornwood. The spears were taller than the lads, but not by much, for each was just a little over five and a half feet long. What the weapons lacked in length they made up in girth, for the shafts were as thick as quarterstaves. The steel spearheads were sharp and thick for strength and bloodletting, and their fastening cupped the shafts and extended nearly a foot past the cross-piece.
'You'd suppose,' Chert told the raptly attentive lads, 'that a blade a hand's-span wide and a foot long would do for a boar, wouldn't you?'
The boys nodded certainty as they looked, awestruck, at the wicked spearhead that the giant hillman held as if it were merely a toothpick.
'Well, you're wrong!' Chert continued. 'A maddened tusker will take this bit of steel in his chest without flinching, just to get at you. If this bar wasn't at the base of the blade, that tusker would push himself on, running the whole damned spear through his vitals, just to tear you to bloody ribbons with his tusks! Then he'd trample you into mush before he fell dead on top of your guts and broken bones.' There was a certain relish in Chert's voice at this description of what could happen.
Both Thatch and Shad turned pale and looked sick upon hearing his very graphic words. They were bright and imaginative lads, and they were now beginning to reconsider their desire to be boar-killing hunters. Chert gave each a reassuring swat and spoke again.
'Never mind. There is a cross-piece, so if the shaft doesn't snap the pig'll be held off to bleed himself to death in a squealing, foaming rage. It's their lust to kill that does for boars, you know… Now, see the spike here at the butt?' He moved the weapon so that the lads could get a close look at the metal-shod base. A fingerlike spike protruded from the endcap. 'This is to hold the weapon solidly. You see the boar. It charges! You lower the spear and aim the point, so! See how the butt is grounded? You can use a tree or the like too, depending on where you are.'
'No use when mounted,' Gord pointed out. 'Clydebo goes afoot, but boar-spears for horsed hunting are longer and lack the spike.'
'Now notice the difference when you're fighting with this spear rather than setting up for a charging tusker,' Chert said. And so it went for all that day and the next while they kept a watch for signs of danger and the outlaw's road through the forest.
There were swine around, of that there was no doubt. They heard them and occasionally caught glimpses of the great wild pigs dashing away at their approach. None attacked, though, as if even the tuskers feared to encounter them. This disappointed the boys and Chert too, for the hillman still thought a loin of boar roasted over their evening fire would be most toothsome.
It was the afternoon of the second day that brought their first incident. Chert was riding in the lead, Gellor at the rear, with Gord and the boys going in between. As they rounded a corner where a game trail swerved past a massive yew and entered a small clearing, a piglet dashed across the path. Reflexively, Chert drew his bow and sped an arrow after the creature. The shaft pierced the piglet, which squealed shrilly as the projectile pinned it fast to the ground. There was an answering grunt and deeper squeal as the sow poked her head out from the brush. The barbarian had nocked another arrow, but before he could react, a deeper voice came from almost beside him.
'The boar!' Gord called, and he swung his spear down in the direction of the noise as he said it. There was a flash of reddish brown, a ridged back covered with bristles, and then the impact as the spear-point took the animal high on his shoulder. Although the boar was not large for his kind, no more than a few hundred pounds and a bit over three feet high, he was ferocious enough for the young thief. The impact nearly knocked Gord from his saddle as the blade he had lowered plowed a gory furrow along the animal's back before finally lodging in the beast's hindquarters and forcing the boar to the ground.
The boar voiced his fury in terrible snorts and squeals, kicking himself erect and trying to slash horse and rider with his massive, twisted tusks. Chert dared not spare an arrow on the creature, for at any time the sow, nearly as big as its mate, might charge too.
Thatch and Shad acted before Gellor could come to Gord's assistance. Although neither of the boys knew exactly what to do, they acted instinctively and stabbed at the boar's flank with their own weapons. The great animal threw himself toward these new tormentors, knocking both lads down by the force of his reaction. By then, however, Gord had let loose the shaft of the spear and whipped out his sword. It plunged into the boar's neck at the same instant that Gellor's spear pierced the animal's evil heart, and the boar collapsed with a final, shrill grunt. At that the sow ran off, her line of sounders trailing behind in a rush of squealing and grunting piglets, and was quickly lost in the forest.
'Nice work!' the big barbarian said.
'That was a near thing, Gord,' Gellor commented. 'Be more careful in the future, both of you,' he admonished his friends. Then he eyed Thatch and Shad. They'd picked themselves up, brushed the dirt and leaves from their clothing, picked up their fallen spears, and now leaned upon them with expressions of a comical sort. Studied nonchalance and pride, intermingled with surprise at their own daring and fear — both of what could have
