Jonathan Rogers: The Secret of the Swamp King

He’s making for the canebrake!” Aidan shouted over the thunder of horses’ hooves. Both he and Prince Steren heaved their spears, but the quarry was too far away. The great boar hog slashed his way between wrist-thick stalks of river cane, and his black, bristling mass vanished into the blackness of the canebrake.

Aidan and Steren reined up at the verge of the thicket and pulled their spears out of the spongy ground. “I’ll drive him through the cane on the Bear Trail,” said Aidan. He knew he had no chance of spearing the boar amid the close-set cane stalks, especially without the boar dogs. But if he could drive the big hog through the brake to the trail along the river’s edge, they might get him yet. Aidan gestured toward the south with his spearpoint. “You circle around the canebrake,” he ordered, “and come back up the River Trail. I’ll try to steer him right into you.”

Steren clucked once to his hunting horse and bolted down the edge of the canebrake. Steren was crown prince of Corenwald, the only son of King Darrow. But there was no question about it: When he and Aidan were in the forest, Aidan was in charge.

Aidan nudged his own horse, and they plunged into the narrow gap where the boar had entered the canebrake. Horse and rider crashed down the twisting trail that bears and wildcats used to cut through the vast canebrake to the River Tam. It seemed more tunnel than trail. On either side, cane stalks stood just inches apart, and a foot or so above Aidan’s head, their leafy tops closed together in a thick canopy that filtered most of the morning sunlight.

Leaves and wiry branches slapped at Aidan’s face on either side as he followed the sound of the boar hog’s grunts and the pounding of his sharp hooves. A ropy spider web, stretching across the trail like a birder’s net, enfolded Aidan’s head and neck in a sticky gauze. He plucked the meaty spider from his hair, wiped his eyes and mouth free of spider web, and kept charging, driving the hog to the other side of the thicket.

Aidan wasn’t far behind his quarry. He was close enough to hear the hog but not close enough to see him. Hard though he pressed the chase, he didn’t actually want to catch the hog-at least not in the depths of the canebrake. He hardly had room to turn around, much less maneuver a long hunting spear. The hog, on the other hand, was cut out for that kind of close work. He would have more than enough room to use his curving, finger-length tusks to vicious effect.

If the boar had realized he was being pursued by a single fifteen-year-old boy, surely he would have turned and showed tusk rather than tail. But Aidan used a trick he learned from old Lord Cuthbert to make sure he sounded like more than a single hunter. He dragged the butt of his spear along the bamboo stalks as he galloped down the trail, setting up a clatter that sounded like a hundred hunters storming through the brake.

Aidan added to the confusion with a series of feechie battle yells: “Haaa-wwwweeeeee! Haaa-wwwweeeeee! Haaa-wwwweeeeee!”

The boar never slowed and never looked back at his pursuer. Terrified by the sounds of the pursuit, he was running harder than ever when he burst out of the canebrake and into the clearing of the River Trail. Aidan’s horse emerged twenty strides behind, just in time to see the boar’s black rump disappear around the first bend to the north. Prince Steren was nowhere to be seen; he hadn’t had nearly enough time to make the wide circuit around the canebrake. And he would be coming from the south. Aidan had not succeeded in driving the hog in Steren’s direction the way he had hoped. He clucked to his hard-breathing horse and directed it northward, upstream, in the slim hope that he might be able to overtake the hog before he disappeared into the swamp.

But just as the horse began to lunge forward, a shadow dropped from the limbs of the water oak above Aidan’s head. Aidan felt his horse shudder as something lit on its haunches, just behind the saddle skirt. Aidan felt a clammy hand on the nape of his neck, another on his shoulder. The hairs on Aidan’s neck prickled at the hot, swampy breath of his attacker. Shocked and frightened, Aidan instinctively swung his elbows behind him, first one then the other, in an effort to knock the shadowy figure to the ground. But the attacker was as agile as a squirrel and easily jumped clear of Aidan’s swinging elbows.

Meanwhile, the terrified horse wheeled and bucked to shake free of this second rider. Aidan flew from the saddle and into the sparkleberry bushes that lined the trail. He scrambled for his spear, ducking away from the flying hooves of the horse, which still cavorted and kicked in panic. Aidan backed away to safety and crouched defensively with his hunting spear outthrust.

His attacker, Aidan could now see, was a bare-chested he-feechie, more or less full-grown, in a snakeskin kilt and tortoiseshell helmet. He was doing a ridiculous loose-limbed jig on the horse’s back, while it reared, bucked, and whirled. Even when the horse threw the gray-skinned feechie into the air, he somehow managed to regain his footing on the horse’s back. The poor horse had a better chance of bucking off a tick.

Then the feechie leaped from the saddle horn, turned a perfect flip, and landed flat-footed in the sand just a stride or two from Aidan’s spearpoint.

“Is that how a civilizer howdies an old friend?” asked the feechie, pushing back his helmet and breaking into a greenish, gap-toothed grin. “Poking a cold-shiny jobber stick right in his face?”

Overjoyed, Aidan dropped his spear and opened his arms wide to receive his long-lost friend. “Dobro Turtlebane!” he shouted. “I’d know that smell anywhere!”

Dobro stepped forward as if to embrace Aidan, but he head-butted him instead, then flipped him over his shoulder onto the sandy trail. Dobro pounced on Aidan, meaning to pin him. But the cooks at Tambluff Castle had fed Aidan well in the three years since Dobro had last seen him, and the civilizer had grown strong and big. He easily threw the wiry feechie clear into the bushes.

Rubbing his forehead but grinning nevertheless, Aidan got up to hoist Dobro out of the bushes. But Dobro was nowhere to be found. He had done his old feechie trick. He disappeared, just as he had disappeared three years earlier after they killed the panther in the bottom pasture.

“Dobro!” shouted Aidan. “Dobro! Where have you gotten off to?” But there was no answer. Aidan poked in the bushes with his foot but with no success. Perplexed, he wandered back into the trail to get a wider view.

That’s when Dobro dropped from an overhanging tree limb onto Aidan’s back. He gripped Aidan in a bear-like headlock. “This here’s how feechiefolks says howdy,” Dobro laughed.

Aidan’s head felt as if it would burst, but he couldn’t help laughing, too, from joy and surprise at this unexpected reunion with Dobro. He soon realized he would never pry Dobro’s sinewy arms loose, so he dropped onto his back, flattening the scrappy feechie under him. That loosened Dobro’s grip just enough for Aidan to escape, and the two friendly combatants rolled on the sandy trail, each trying to pin the other.

Aidan and Dobro were so focused on their rough reunion that they didn’t pay attention when Prince Steren reined up beside them and leaped from his horse, spear flashing. Steren was fiercely loyal to Aidan, his best friend in the world. He would never stand idly by and watch Aidan fight off an attack by this… this… gray-skinned monster or whatever it was.

Steren pointed his spear at the twisting, struggling mass. “Cease!” he shouted, trying to sound as royal and commanding as he could. Startled and still locked in a clench, Aidan and Dobro looked up. Steren brought the spearpoint closer to Dobro. He trembled a little at the fierce glint in the feechie’s eye, but he spoke bravely. “I don’t know who you are-or what you are. But if you don’t unhand my friend, I’ll stick this spearpoint right between your ribs.”