Bump.
When the mask of humanity falls off capitalism, you realize that the bourgeois are not human. - Disco Elysium.
The boar is not dead, though to all the other hunters’ senses it is. It lays motionless on its side within the sled, tied down by rope with two arrows sticking discordantly out of its hide like seams of broken bone. Frozen blood pools in the cracked stomach of the sled, collecting rather than leaking now that red ice has sealed the wood. Poison leaching out of the arrowheads keeps the boar docile, and its breathing so light that only Trapper can see. An ovate in too-thin robes shivers as she ties a garland of rosemary around the beast’s neck, murmuring prayers to the ancestors that they might find the kill worthy.
Winter has seized the land in its vise, its unending waves of cold and snow having transformed the Barony of Marlas into a crueler scape, one Trapper doesn’t quite recognize. Tranquility abounds along the driven snow, all through the clearing, hiding the buried world and the woes of man but unable to snuff them out. Trapper knows well what a mirage it is, the oppressive winters of his homeland no less savage than the bloodletting summers. The numbing cold does not soothe his aches, for he knows they’ll be worse come morning, come the thaw. Too soon this clearing will melt, its river gone from white to red, the whole Septima Line thrust back to war.
Baron Orys refuses to yield to midnight season, to accept its peace, and so from his great warhorse’s saddle he brazenly belts out a mixture of drunken lyrics and commands, determined to master this hunt even if he does not partake. An entourage on horseback spreads out in his orbit, ranging from eager young footmen to grizzled junkers, all in varying states of inebriation at his command. Their braying is nearly louder than the hounds’, who hungrily stalk between the sled and the hole they pulled the boar out from. Teased by the hunt but yet unrewarded, they’re too unruly to be kept in check by the kennel master.
On foot slog the unfortunates who actually have to take part in the hunt, Trapper among them. They huddle into their hemp canvas cloaks, glancing up at the moody afternoon sky threatening to crack open with another snowstorm. Dark clouds sweep in low from the south like a riptide, a single vast current swept in from the mountains already menacing the Oldwoods. Its furthest gales reach them as tongues of vengeful cold, flecks of whipped-up snow biting into Trapper’s exposed skin.
By the boar’s nest leans a typical Mallean, one of Trapper’s two erstwhile comrades. Sigorn is tall, pale, broad, with the close-set, wide-boned features of a commoner, and a shock of red hair grown out to protect against the elements. Beneath his cloak he proudly bears his blood-flecked armor, each dent a Darkman put into it a point of dear pride. He’s not the only one, either, the clearing filled with dozens of youths whose first blooding ended in victory amid a blizzard. Baron Orys, deep into his cups after six days of nonstop celebration, saw a break in the storms and gladly called a hunt. When informed he could not go on account of his shattered knee - he simply grinned, and ordered himself tied to his saddle.
Trapper remembers the moment his lord fell from the saddle, burned into his nerves. The screaming of horses, skidding hooves catching on the frozen ground. On the edges of his vision a rider smashes into a branch in the din, others don’t move at all for fear of the blizzard. His spurs dig, his borrowed steed whines, and he races for his lord - only for another to reach him first.
“What a woman.” Sigorn sighs beside Trapper, craning his neck to look at one of their lord’s companions of honor. Susannah Oye junker unlike the others, a pretty, willowy noblewoman well into motherhood, with the lean, ruthless look of a ranger. Her two poisoned arrows are what struck the boar down, and her pride curls off her body like steam. Sigorn’s face cracks into exaggerated appreciation, and then he turns to their lord’s other honored companion. Another woman, this one as young as they are, haughtily-built and leering with none of Susannah’s refinement. Many of those looks are reserved for Trapper, forced to slog on foot as just another hunter. “Anya too. I think she fancies you, eh?”