Spirit Walker by Michelle Paver Page A

The arrow stuck deep. The boar squealed--and crashed onto its side.
Silence.
All Torak could hear was his own gasping breath, and the rain pattering in the bracken.
The boar lay still.
Torak waited as long as he could bear. When it didn't move, he lowered himself down to the ground.
Standing on the torn earth with the willow dying behind him, he felt exposed. He had no arrows and no axe; only his knife.
It
must
be dead. Its foam-flecked sides weren't moving.
But he would take no chances. The carcass was three paces away. He wouldn't go near it till he was better armed.
Stealthily, he made his way behind the wreck of the willow, searching the bracken for his axe.
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Behind him the boar staggered to its feet.
Desperately Torak scanned the bracken. It had to be somewhere. . . .
The boar threw itself into a charge.
Torak saw his axe--lunged for it--whirled around, and sank it into the massive neck.
The boar fell dead.
Torak stood, his legs braced, his chest heaving; both hands clutching his axe.
Rain streamed down his cheeks like tears, and fell sadly on the leaves. He felt sick. Never in his life had he killed prey when he didn't need meat. Never had he killed a friend.
    Letting go of the axe, he knelt and put a shaky hand on the hot, bristly pelt. "I'm sorry, my friend," he told the boar. "But I had to do it. May your souls ... be at peace." The glazed eye met his sightlessly. The boar's souls had already left. Torak could feel them. Close. Angry.
"I will treat you with respect," he said, caressing the sweat-soaked flank. "I promise."
In the matted fur, his hand touched something hard.
He parted the hairs--and gasped. It was a dart of some kind, buried deep in the boar's ribs.
With his knife he dug it out, and washed it in the stream. He'd never seen anything like it. It was shaped
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like a leaf, but viciously barbed, and made of fire-hardened wood.
Behind him among the trees, he heard laughter. He spun around. The laughter faded into the Forest.
    The meaning of what he'd found sank in. This was why the boar had attacked. It had not been sick. It had been wounded. Terribly wounded by someone so cruel, so evil, that they had not gone after it and finished it off, as they were bound to do by all the sacred laws of the hunt, but had left it mad with pain, to savage anyone it found.
    And since Torak seemed to be the only one in this part of the Forest, whoever had shot the boar must have intended its first victim to be him. 81
Chapter TEN
Torak wrapped the slab of boar's liver in burdock leaves and tucked it into the fork of an oak tree.
"My thanks to the clan guardian for this meat," he muttered, as he'd done countless times before. For the first time in his life, he didn't feel thankful. All he could think about was the wise old boar snuffling in the leaf mold, and keeping him company for the night. The fat, fluffy piglets who had lost a father.
    He limped back to the carcass. It was enormous. After a struggle, he'd managed to roll it over and slit the belly to get at the innards, but that was as far as he'd got. 82
Until now, the biggest prey he'd ever killed had been a roe buck, and that had taken two exhausting days to deal with. The boar was many times bigger. It would take him a whole half-moon.
     
He didn't have a whole half-moon. He had to reach the Deep Forest and find the cure.
     
But he had no choice. It was the oldest law of all that when you made a kill, you had to treat the prey with respect, and use every part of it. That was the Pact that had been made long ago between the clans and the World Spirit. Torak had to honor it or risk untold bad luck.
     
He also had to tend to the wound in his calf. It was burning. Not even the rain cooled it down.
     
By the stream he found a clump of soapwort. Mashing some of the wet leaves to make a slippery froth, he washed his leg. The pain was so bad that it made his eyes water.
    Now to sew up the wound. He found some bone needles in his pack--which hung unharmed on the holly