It was good that Meleager had not eaten. Truth be told, he probably wouldn’t have eaten anyways, even if he had had time for it, even if there had been no controversy or disruption; this was another thing he had learned from the woman. To eat before a hunt is to make oneself sluggish. Best, always, to hunt hungry. And so, Meleager had little trouble catching up with the other hunters on their way to the edge of the city— though many of them, too, had gone more slowly than they might have otherwise, just so that he might join them easily. Wavering Peleus was the first that he met, with his short sword by his side and a fine bow strapped across his back. “My Prince!” he cried, and he allowed himself to speed up a little bit now that Meleager was here.

  “Well met, brave and kind Peleus,” Meleager replied— and out of the corner of his eye, he could see a trio of his father’s servants running towards them, carrying his armor— and another two servants close behind, bearing his heavy spear. “I consider myself lucky today, having you for a hunting companion.”

  “It is kind of you to say so,” answered Peleus, with a twitch of his mouth. “It is you who are brave and kind— and it is I who am lucky. It is all of us, who are lucky, to have you as our companion— you, with nothing to fear. If there is nothing for you to fear, then surely there is nothing for us to fear as well, standing beside you.”

  “I pray that you are right.”

  Even as Meleager was walking briskly, the servants were already hard at work dressing him in his armor, scratchless and scuffless. The people of the city watched in awe as their dazzling Prince passed them, growing more and more magnificently adorned by the second. He reached out and with one mighty arm he took his spear from the two servants who had brought it, and then he and Peleus began to walk a little faster. Soon, they had caught up with Eurytion, who acknowledged them with a simple nod of his head— and then Idas, who acknowledged them with a stiff breath. That was his way of being, and it was respectful enough coming from him. Soon after that was Telamon, who gave his younger brother Peleus a stiff clap on the shoulder, and then boisterous Orpheus and eerie Caenus, fully armored and armed themselves, the spoils from their own past adventures.

  “Kepheus and Ankaion are farther ahead,”

  Orpheus said.

  “By them we are led.

  At the point of the charge,

  Your uncles, anointed, loom large

  But then you, just as surely, my Prince,

  Shall not disappoint.”

  “Hail, Ancaeus!” called Meleager— another two heroes from the party, now, who had arrived during the night, who had not yet had a chance to greet the Prince, though of course he knew them— he had studied well of all the heroes of this world; such was his duty. “Hail, Euphemus!”

  “Hail, Prince Meleager!” called Euphemus, whose people wandered without a Kingdom to call their own.

  “Hail, Prince Meleager!” called Ancaeus, whose boldness astonished even the Gods.

  “Hail, Prince Meleager!” called the twins Castor and Polydeuces, in what seemed almost to be a single voice between them.

  A minute or so later, the group had reached Ankaion and Kepheus, at the edge of the city, along with Hippalmus, the last of the party. Meleager’s uncles had already mounted up onto their horses, and other fine steeds were waiting and ready. The hunting-dogs, too, had been gathered here, to track the scent of the boar, though perhaps that would not be necessary.

  It was true, what the messenger from the wall had said in his gasping words. The ground here trembled under stampeding feet, even though the boar itself was still too far to be seen— certainly not from a great height. The Earth shook and shuddered. It was a mighty and terrible thing that was coming, with mighty and terrible force. It would be not at all difficult to track the boar, with dogs or without. But even so. Every advantage was an advantage, and every advantage was welcome. The woman had taught this to Meleager, just like she’d taught him about scents and meals, and as well as that, she’d taught him about noise.

  “We should leave the horses,” he declared. “They cannot move quietly enough. We will give away our position as we approach.”

  Arrogant Idas gave a hearty laugh— “Who is to care if our position is given or kept! This is not a game of hide-and-go-seek, it is a hunt by powerful men against a fearsome beast! Let us face it, then as powerful men, without all of this and that!”

  “A hunt by powerful men indeed,” agreed Kepheus, along with a laugh of his own. “And Peleus, as well!”

  “But I see that you starry maiden has not joined us, despite your father’s ill-advised permission,” said Ankaion— with smug disdain?— with relief?— with indifference?— “Perhaps that is why you would have us forego our horses, oh Prince— so that she might more easily catch up to us and foul things up, as she is sure to do.”

  Meleager scowled. “And here I had thought that you yourself agreed; we powerful men are much too skilled as hunters for any slight maiden to ruin our chances, yes?”

  “Not that she would be able to catch up, anyways,” spat Kepheus. “We will be long gone past these walls by the time she arrives. There is no one who could run nearly fast enough far all the way back in the palace.”

  “It is better that she does not come,” murmured Caenus, to himself as much as to everyone else. “This is not a kind world. She could be badly hurt on a hunt like this. Or killed.”

  He did not climb up onto the horse that had been prepared for him. He lingered down on his feet, shaking his head. Meleager placed a hand upon the man’s bronze shoulder. “I have seen for myself what she can do, indomitable Caenus. She is as fearsome and as brave as any man here, and she has faced down plenty of dangers of her own.”

  “She may be as fearsome and as brave as we are,” said Caenus. “I am sure of it, in fact. But that is not enough. This is not a kind world, I have said already, and it is a true thing: this world tries to harm women in many more ways than it tries to harm men. She may be twice as mighty as the strongest of us here, even, but this Earth will rain down four times the danger upon her.”

  To this, Meleager did not know what to say. All he could do was declare again that it was best not to take the horses. All the men here were more skillful fighters on their own feet anyways. Reluctantly, then, his uncles dismounted.

  “It is in your way that we are going, oh Prince, and so it is you who shall lead us… for better or for worse.”

  And so he led them. They left the dogs as well as the horses— best to remove all distractions, and there was nothing even the best-trained hounds would be able to do against a boar of the size and rage that they’d be facing. It would have been nothing but a waste to bring them. The party hurried out past the gate of the city, past the fields of growing wheat the ran at a jog, as fast as they could move without exhausting themselves— and the further they went towards the coming source of the commotion, the closer the source of the commotion came to them, the greater the turmoil— the greater the trembling of the Earth, and the greater the noise. Thundering, rumbling, and the shrill splintering of the trees as the awful beast approached. All the men began to tense as they entered the forest. Hands tightened around spears or sword-grips. Armor plates were loosened and refastened in a nervous fidget. Eyes darted this way and that— never mind that the danger was so clearly dead ahead and coming fast, there was such a menace in the air that a hundred other deaths might have been racing in silent from any of a hundred other directions, all the men were sure of it. All the men except Meleager.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  His eyes did not waver, this way or that way. Nothing was coming for him. He had nothing to fear.

  But even his own grip on his great spear tightened. It was an earthquake, now, coming towards them— and even as the trees became more thickly grown, closer together, less and less space between them, the men could still see through the gaps towards the chaos bearing down on them. The noise was awful, the shaking and roaring and splintering and the panicked cries of the birds and the other animals as they went rushing out of the path of destruction. The way it was coming, they were sure that it must have been chasing some such creature, some poor thing— or person, who had managed to gather its ire all for themselves. Surely, they expected, some unlucky fox or badger or child would come running out from between the trees just barely ahead of the monster, into the clearing where they’d now decided to pause and take their stand.

  “Steady,” said Meleager. “Steady.”

  He was remembering everything that the woman had taught him, all her lessons about hunting she’d traded him for wrestling and boxing. Her lessons made him want to take his hunters and circle around this way or that way, out of the direct path of the charge, catch the beast from one or both sides. But he could not do that, they could not do that. This monster was coming straight for Caledonia, straight for the city and all its people. They could not risk letting it slip by them, make it to the walls, through the walls, into the city’s softer insides. They had to stop it, right here, right now. They had to face it head on, or whatever the thing was chasing would lead it straight to the ruin of Meleager’s people.

  But it wasn’t chasing anything at all.

  When at last the boar came crashing into the clearing, it was everything that the trembling stories had warned of and more. Skin dark as purple wine. Eyes shining violet with an awful curse. Fur matted and tangled and yet sharp, each and every hair of it a cruel, prickling thorn. And its tusks!— greater than a full-length lance, each of them, curved like the handles of a vase and sharper still than the prickling fur. And its teeth!— not at all sharp, but flat like stones, but gnashing together like a landslide, like grinding wheat into flour, these teeth. And its hooves!— like crushing pillars of marble, like a temple come to life and stampeding with its columns for feet across the world. What hope could any ordinary person have against a creature such as this? It was no wonder that it had managed to cause so much damage already to the world into which it had been brought.

  But it wasn’t chasing anything. No, that was what the hunters had been sure of, and that was the thing they had been wrong about. There was nothing ahead of the creature, running from it. The boar came crashing into the clearing alone. And it did not come in a rage. It was not moving like a thing enraged. Even in rage, a creature like this would have been moving in concert with itself— its legs would have pounded the Earth with a feverish rhythm, like the pounding of desperate oars upon a stormy sea, order even in such chaos. But no, no, the boar was moving clumsily— its feet were coming down here and there, helter-skelter, a little to one side or the other. It wasn’t mowing down the trees in a single-minded rampage, it was crashing into them by accident, careening from one to the next to the next like a child racing through the rooms of a house to escape a drunken father, smacking against all the walls. This was not a stampede, this was a panicked stumble.

  The boar was running from something.

  And when it saw the gathered heroes, clustered against it, the very first thing it did was try veering off to the side, continuing its charge around them, past them— not at all the sort of thing that a beast at the peak of nightmares would have done. The men had all been standing ready to halt it with their spears and swords and shields and fists and breastplates if necessary, grinding its mad rush to a dead halt with the mass of their bodies as it tried, and they hoped, failed, to smash its way through them— and now, instead, they found themselves scampering one way, and then the other, and then back the first way again, trying to block the boar’s path. “Fan out!” called Meleager. “Don’t give it any room to slip through!”

  And so all the men spread out in their formation, began to form a semicircle around the panicking boar. They did it without questions— that was what it meant to be a Prince— but all of them were asking questions to themselves— the same question, all of them were asking themselves. What could a creature such as this possibly be running from?

  And now that they were beginning to surround the boar, the heroes were starting to see what had it so frightened, or at least in part. “Wounds!” cried Idas. “Two terrible wounds, in its two hind legs!”— and indeed, there they were, terrible wounds in each leg. Strange wounds, wide wounds— too wide to have been caused by an arrow, or even a spear or the thrust of a sword. And whatever had left those wounds was still there, or at least part of it, chunks of wood sticking out from the injuries at odd angles— as though some giant somewhere had taken two bundles of sticks to be burned for a fire and jammed them instead into the boar’s thighs. Those back two legs were moving, still, twitching, but nigh-useless. It was on its front legs alone that the boar had been dragging itself this far, through the trees, and now back and forth, still desperate to try and get around the hunters, to get away, away— but still away from what? The men shuddered to imagine it. A giant, indeed. One of the cyclops. Or something worse. They had all heard stories of plenty of worse things. Many had seen worse things for themselves. Many had barely come back from it.

  But even so, their courage was quickly building. Whatever the boar was running from, it was not here now— and the boar, what they had come to kill, the boar was here, now, it was right in front of them and it was wounded, it was weakened. It was going to be an easy trophy, easy glory for whoever managed to make the kill. Oh, and such a trophy!— and oh, such glory, for defeating and claiming a creature like this. All the heroes were eager, and bold.

  Hippalmus was the first to try, leveling his spear at the beast’s face and charging, like a bull— like the boar itself had been charging, they’d thought, Hippalmus came charging, ready to take his prize. But as injured as the boar was, it was not defeated, not yet, not nearly. A simple twist of its head was enough to gore the onrushing Hippalmus on one of its awful tusks, and with another twist it tossed away the shucked husk of his body again, to smack lifeless against a tree trunk and topple to the dirt. The heroes were not cowed, though. These were the things that happened upon a field of battle. Telamon threw a spear without hesitation, but the boar deflected it with its tusks, and it clattered uselessly down onto the dirt. Orpheus took up his harm and began to sing, hoping maybe to lull the boar into a calmer state, more easily beaten, but that was no use; this was a mortal panic the boar was in, not a mad rage, and there was no calming from that.

  Kepheus drew a sword from a scabbard on his hip and moved in to try and pry out one of the boar’s eyes— a blind beast would be a simpler thing to kill— but the sword was knocked from his hand.

  Even meek Peleus took a try, drawing his bow from its sling on his back when he saw that his own short sword wasn’t going to do any good. He nocked an arrow and he fired, but the boar easily deflected it with its tusks, just the same as the spear— and the arrow carried on right into the leg of Eurytion, on the opposite side of the semicircle, who fell to the ground, groaning and clutching his knee until Idas quickly dragged him out of the way of any further danger.

  “No more of that!” cried Kepheus. “The bow is far too meek a weapon to take on a beast such as this! That is a toy for children, Peleus, and this is a nightmare for even the bravest!”

  Peleus could only shout apologies to Eurytion, could only beg forgiveness as he and the others continued to hold back the boar.

  “Keep moving!” commanded Meleager. “We have to get it fully surrounded!”

  It didn’t matter much at all to him who killed the boar or got to claim it. He was less interested in making any lunges of his own and more interested in simply making sure that this fight ended well. Already, Hippalmus had been lost, and such an ugly death. Not at all a nice end to things. The Prince could not allow any more of that to happen. And so the hunters still able to fight began to widen their circle, try and get around to the backside of the boar, where its swinging tusks could no longer protect it, and its legs were too injured to trample or kick them away.

  But try as they might have, the boar was not going to be so easily encircled. It was still agile enough to back itself against a tight clump of trees to protect its vulnerable rear as the heroes spread out to either side— there was no getting around it; there was no getting behind it.

  Bold Ancaeus made a run at it with a great ax, which had already known the blood of over a hundred enemies. He had waited for a moment when the boar’s tusks were turned elsewhere, busy pushing aside the spear of Caenus, to start his attack, and sure enough those tusks were not quick enough to stop him. But the boar’s front hooves were much quicker, and before Ancaeus had gotten near enough to strike with his ax, his legs had already been knocked out from under him, and he had been trampled down to just soup and bits.

  Meleager cursed the air of the day— this was bad. They had come across the boar wounded, and even then this should not have been easy, but it should have been easier. They had the advantage of those wounds, and of numbers, mighty heroes, and of mighty weapons, but they had to make any real progress against the boar. And if this were to continue for too much longer, there was the risk that whatever had dealt those terrible injuries to the boar would come searching, to finish the job, and then—

  Thwack-thwack-thwack!— suddenly, three arrows came thumping down from the treetops into the boar’s right-front leg— though at just a squint, it would have looked like just one arrow in each, they were so tightly grouped together. The same exact spot struck over and over and over and over again, all the arrows nearly sharing the same wound between them, like the Eye of the Fates.

  The heroes recoiled in shock, eyes darting all about to find the source of the mysterious shots— but already, the woman had dropped down from the treetops, bow in hand. “Keep it distracted!” she cried, and as quick as cracking knuckles she fired off another two arrows, nearly straight up into the air, before diving quickly out of the way of the boar’s tusks as it made a desperate lunge towards her. Its eyes had widened, burning bright and deadly; it recognized her. And then it glanced upwards, towards those two arrows she had shot, but— thwip!— thwip!— two more arrows from the woman’s bow forced it to turn back down again, clatter them away with another swing of its tusks. “Eyes on me, beast!” called the woman. “I am your enemy. I am your target.”

  And sure enough, the boar seemed determined to obliterate her, above all else. The woman, though, was quick on her feet, impossibly quick— and more than that, her steps were impossibly sure, she never tripped or stumbled or slipped. She kept herself always just barely within the boar’s reach, and always leaping just barely too far for its strikes to meet. She teased it, she danced with it, until— Thwack-thwack!— a roar of pain! Two arrows, fallen down from the sky, down from where she’d shot them, right into the beast’s leg— the right-front leg again, and in the exact same spot as the first three arrows, widening the wound, worsening it, crippling the leg entirely. Precisely as the woman had intended, luring the boar with her body into this very position, so that her arrows might find it. And now, with the moment of diversion, she scampered like a mountain lion up into a nearby tree, and from above, yet three more arrows, one-two-three, thwack-thwack-thwack!— straight into the front-left leg, all perfectly grouped. The only leg of the boar still working, and only barely.

  The thing was helpless. Now was the time to strike. Without so much as a word, all the heroes charged, who could still charge. No word was needed. The intention was communicated between them by the taut cords of the soul, and so all as one they rushed in with their weapons raised. Most were turned aside, even now, by the tusks, flailing, but Ankaion’s sharp spear managed to carve a deep gash along the boar’s face to match his own cheek. And Meleager, Meleager charged in with twice the determination of any other hero, and none of the fear— absolute fearlessness and certainty, he charged in with his own spear, and simple as that he sank the tip of it deep into the boar’s heart, killing it instantly.

  And so, it was over.