Chuggie and the Desecration of Stagwater by Brent Michael Kelley Page B

Shola. She waved back with both hands, apparently disapproving of his decision to pursue. When did women ever want their men to go hunting? He wished for a second he had his boots along for the hunt.
    The fireboar had been easy to track for the first quarter mile or so. It had left Shola's yard in a hurry, leaving behind a trail of hoof-torn soil. As Chuggie followed it deeper into the woods, the tracks became less obvious.
    Chuggie wanted to smoke, but he fought the urge. He needed his senses sharp. Also, smoking would betray his exact position to his quarry. He tried to be stealthy, but his feet kept finding leaves to rustle, hidden puddles to sploosh in, or dry sticks to crack. His chain and anchor made sounds of their own that, oddly, blended with the sounds of the forest.
    This was no drakana, thankfully. Those monstrous, reptilian predators moved like lightning and could kill you twice before your blood sprayed the ground. Their compound, insect-like eyes saw everything. Delicate ears and sensitive noses made them near impossible to evade. As if they knew he could suck them dry in a heartbeat, drakana never got too close to Chuggie. That is, never under ordinary circumstances. If agitated enough, a drakana would attack anything.
    Hunting a fireboar was nothing like hunting a terpeskoa either. Alien monsters, the terpeskoa slipped through the Tetracardi Rift just months ahead of the Steel Jacks. They attacked anything that moved. Some preferred the single life while others lived in packs.Oftentimes, seeing one meant several more lurked nearby, just out of sight.
    The woodwolves of Haver Gesh required bait and ambush, a method of no use against a boar such as this. Scrathes, dordalises, bearfoxes and desert kingsnakes each called for different hunting tactics. None of those tactics was of any use against a fireboar.
    Chuggie had hunted plenty of pigs, but never barefoot and without a bow. A gelfhound would be pretty nice to have right about now. A full hunting party of spearmen, bowmen, and booze bearers would be best of all. When a man hunts a fireboar, the hog hunts him back.
    Fishing in his pockets, Chuggie found a small folding knife. He put it to use whittling branches into spears, and carving his initials into a tree trunk for no good reason.
    The boar probably shared a den with a sow. And they probably had piglets. The boar could actually have more than one sow, as if one wasn't punishment enough. Each of them could have piglets. And them mama pigs would go absolutely berserk in defense of their young.
    A female fireboar, he knew, would not pour flames out of her snout. Not enough to make a fuss about anyway. Her tusks, however, were longer than the male's. The two would work in unison. The male would spray a cloud of fire at the target, and the female would charge from the side. From there, a number of things could happen — mostly painful.
    Chuggie leaned his head back and murmured, "Challenge accepted."
    A drumming of hooves grew suddenly loud, and something heavy smashed into him just as he turned. Chuggie flew in the air and landed ten feet away with his spears strewn about. He fumbled for the anchor as he rolled. The hog, he guessed female since he wasn't on fire, snorted and glowered and lowered its head to charge.
    "You shit-eating piss bag," he growled as he scrambled out of her path. The sow stormed off into the woods carried away by the momentum of her charge. "You won that round, bacon!" Chuggie raised his fist. "You wanna dance, piggies? I'll dance on your stinkin' hide while I eat your damn face-meat!" He spat twice at the pig's trail and kicked a bush. The bush acted disinterested, so he spat on it, too.
    Chuggie gathered up his spears and froze, listening to the sounds of the forest. Off in the distance in the direction of the fleeing sow he heard a flock of birds take startled flight. He hunkered down and crept along the trail of churned up earth that led into the brush below. He could almost smell