2 – The Beauty and the Beast Deep in the Rainwood beyond Windblown Point, sunlight never reached the forest floor.
Layer upon layer of vast broad leaves sealed the sky.
The air hung thick with the smell of rotting wood and wet earth.
Every step sank into a deep carpet of fallen leaves that oozed cloudy water.
Brienne wiped the moisture from her face.
The half-plate armor her father had paid a fortune for was heavy and stifling.
At fifteen she already stood taller than the two squires behind her.
Broad shoulders and heavy bones made her look less like a highborn lady in that armor and more like a clumsy iron barrel.
“My lady, we’ve already crossed into Mistwood lands.” The squire on the left, Roland, spoke with a trembling voice, gripping his short spear so hard his knuckles were white.
His eyes darted left and right; the fear in them was impossible to hide.
“Call me Brienne.
Or Captain.” She didn’t look back.
Her voice was flat and hard.
“But Lord Selwyn sent us to escort you to Rain House for a change of air, not into the rainforest—” The squire on the right, Pat, sounded close to tears.
Brienne stopped dead.
Her heavy boots snapped a dry branch.
She turned and looked down at the two younger men.
That wide, freckled face was set with a stubbornness few people ever understood.
“A change of air?” She clenched her teeth, hand resting on the hilt of her sword.
“My father found me a fourth suitor.
Humphrey Wagstaff.
The way that man looked at me… like I was some inferior broodmare waiting to be covered.
He only wants Evenfall Hall’s inheritance.
He even mocked the way I wear armor to my face!” Both squires dropped their eyes.
“I will prove him wrong.
I will prove all of them wrong.” Brienne turned and continued through the mud.
“I will never be a proper lady.
The only thing I can be is a knight.
I have to find my worth—maybe here, maybe on a battlefield, maybe protecting common folk—but never at a dressing table, and never between some man’s legs.” Three rainforest hunters in animal skins and carrying bows walked ahead.
Brienne had hired them as guides in Rain House.
The lead hunter, Old Hank, stopped and crouched beside a mud wallow.
His rough fingers measured the edge of the print.
Brienne strode over.
“What is it?” Old Hank looked up.
The deep wrinkles on his face had tightened into something ugly.
“This print, my lady.” He pointed at the absurdly large depression in the mud.
Brienne sucked in a sharp breath.
It was nothing like she had imagined.
The track was the size of a dinner plate, driven deep into the soft earth by terrifying weight.
“This beast… is even bigger than the rumors.” Old Hank rose, voice dropped low as if afraid of being overheard.
“My lady, this job is beyond us.
Looking at that size, this isn’t a boar.
It’s a demon.” “We signed a contract.” Brienne’s grip tightened on her sword.
“A contract won’t buy us our lives!” A younger hunter spat into the dirt.
“These tracks are fresh.
It’s close.
I’m leaving right now.” He turned to go.
In that exact moment the brush ahead exploded.
A massive black shape tore through thick shrubs and hanging vines at a speed that should have been impossible for something so large.
Mud flew.
Brienne’s pupils shrank to pinpricks.
The boar was enormous.
Nearly four meters long.
Its shoulders stood higher than the hunter in front of her.
Coarse dark-brown bristles rose like steel needles.
Old scars criss-crossed its hide.
Worst of all were the tusks—curved upward, still stained with blood and scraps of flesh.
A boar this size truly deserved the title of king.
The young hunter had only begun to turn when one of those tusks punched through his chest.
Thud.
The sound of flesh being run through was dull and sickening.
The Boar King never slowed.
It charged onward with the hunter still impaled.
The tusk had gone clean through the ribcage.
The man never even screamed.
He hung in the air as blood poured down the yellowed ivory and soaked into the forest floor.
“Run!” Old Hank let out a ragged scream, dropped his bow, and scrambled on hands and knees toward a massive ironwood thick enough for three men to link arms around.
The third hunter wet himself.
His legs gave out and he collapsed into the mud.
The Boar King jerked its head.
The corpse flew off the tusk and smashed into a trunk more than ten meters away.
The wet crack of breaking bones was clearly audible.
The body hit the ground like a torn sack.
The monster’s breathing was a bellows.
White jets of foul-smelling breath pulsed from its nostrils.
Its small, cloudy, murderous eyes locked onto Old Hank still clawing his way up the ironwood.
Its hind legs drove into the earth.
The huge body became a living battering ram and slammed into the tree.
Boom.
The ground shook.
The ironwood shuddered violently.
Bark exploded outward in a spray of wood chips.
Old Hank lost his grip halfway up and fell screaming from more than three meters.
He had barely hit the ground when the Boar King raised a forehoof and brought it down.
Crunch.
Old Hank’s chest was flattened.
Blood and organs sprayed from his mouth.
He died instantly.
From the moment the beast appeared to the deaths of two experienced hunters, less than ten breaths had passed.
The third hunter scrambled to his feet and plunged blindly into the undergrowth, fleeing like a madman.
The Boar King slowly turned its massive body.
Its blood-smeared, ugly face fixed on the three people who remained.
Roland and Pat had completely broken.
Roland’s short spear lay forgotten in the mud.
He clutched his head with both hands and knelt, shaking uncontrollably.
Pat kept backing away, whispering the same words over and over: “Gods… save me… gods…” Brienne stood frozen.
Her own legs trembled.
Fear slid up her spine like a cold snake, threatening to freeze the blood in her veins.
This was the first time she had truly faced death.
Not the measured sparring of the training yard.
Not the toothless beasts on her father’s lands.
“Run, my lady!
Run!” Pat finally spun and fled the way they had come, crawling and stumbling.
Brienne knew running was useless.
She had already seen how fast the monster moved.
Turning her back would only get her killed faster.
She drew a deep breath, forced down the acid rising in her throat and the terror clawing at her chest, and gripped her sword with both hands.
The blade rang clear as it left the scabbard—harsh and lonely in the sudden silence of the rainforest.
The Boar King’s small eyes fixed on her.
It felt the challenge.
Brienne settled into a textbook triangular guard.
Her arms shook from fear, but her eyes stayed hard.
“Come on then, monster!” She shouted, trying to drive the fear out with volume.
“I am Brienne of Tarth!
I will not yield!” The Boar King gave a low, grinding roar.
It lowered its head, lining those deadly tusks up with her body.
Its front hooves began to paw the earth—once, twice—tearing up mud and exposing the rotting roots beneath.
Every muscle in its body coiled tight.
The next charge would tear the prey in front of it into pieces.
Brienne locked her gaze on the beast’s movements, controlled her breathing, and prepared for the killing blow.
She told herself over and over: do not meet it head-on.
A creature like this cannot be stopped by force.
Sidestep.
Drive the sword into its eye.
Only that weak point offered any chance.
The Boar King’s hind legs exploded with power.
It charged.
Four meters of living mountain, wrapped in the stench of blood and death, thundered straight at Brienne.