Chapter Text
He had been told never to go into the forest. Not alone, not with guards, not even to take a shortcut through to the neighboring kingdom. He had been told, by his mother and father, by his friends and subjects, by the servants that whispered in the kitchen when he snuck down there to steal a snack, and yet Prince Hannibal never listened.
Courage, he insisted, was not the lack of fear, but the ability to overcome it.
Oh, if only the silly young prince knew just how often courage and stupidity stood hand in hand, perhaps he would not have walked into the forest that day.
Perhaps if Will had not been riding by on his pony, the stubby little creature freshly broken and gaited, he would not have seen the prince venture into the forest alone. Perhaps if he had not followed, neither of them would have ever been seen again.
He knows the prince from a distance, now as he always has. So far from his life that he could not envision his face or his manner, but now to see him, Will knows him by heart. A rich tapestry of bright colors, striped and squared, makes up his clothes. He needs no crown, for his hair is golden enough without.
And the woods are so very large.
And the woods are so very dark.
Will turns his pony to follow, bouncing hard against its back.
“Prince!” he cries out, but the prince doesn’t stop, taking big hard steps up the path to the woods. It only goes so far within, before the shadows consume it. “Prince!”
Only when he’s so near that he can lay a hand upon the first tree of countless number does Prince Hannibal turn to face him. His eyes are red, like the sky just before the sun burns away on the horizon, like the embers Will stirs at night, sparking bright. Will meets his gaze and holds it, fearless and afraid, all at once.
“Leave me,” Prince Hannibal says. “My business is none of yours.”
“Of course it is,” Will says, brows furrowing. “I saw you go into the forest. If you never come out again, I will be the last to have seen you alive.”
“So?”
“So,” Will continues, leaning forward on his pony. “If I come with you, we will certainly return, together. But if you go alone, now, I will ride my horse over fief and field and tell everyone in the village where you have gone, and they will find you before you can get even a mile into the trees.”
The Prince looks exasperated, eyes hooded in his displeasure and boredom before he finally gestures - with a magnanimous motion - for Will to elaborate on his scheme.
“Let me come with you,” is all the boy says.
“You will be useless to me.”
“I will hardly be useless,” Will exclaims. “I have a pony and a sword, good wits about me and a dog’s sense of direction. I will guide us home if we get lost.”
Prince Hannibal frowns even more, and Will wonders what would move him to raise his voice at all to the boy-who-is-not-a-boy. He is a Prince, noble and regal and proud. What could he want with someone like Will?
All the things he offered.
“You know nothing of my life,” the Prince contends. “You know nothing of my task.”
“Tell me then,” Will says, before he has sense to stop himself, “and I’ll know.”
He can all but hear the wheels turning, the manifold cogs inside the Prince’s thoughts. Will’s pony snorts and paws the ground, but Will lays a hand against his neck to quiet him. Prince Hannibal watches this, too.
“Do you promise to run if I tell you to run?” Hannibal asks. “This business is not your own. It is my duty to uphold. I’ll allow you along if you promise me that - to run, if I tell you to run.”
Will considers the deal, and wonders if he can’t, with his clever mind, wheedle free of such an ask when the time comes for Prince Hannibal to tell him to go. He doesn’t want to go, running is hardly brave or worthy. Perhaps, he thinks, he will find a way to change the young Prince’s mind.
“I will run,” he says, “when you tell me to run. But will you ride with me until we must?”
The Prince’s brow soothes from the frown he had pushed into it, and he allows a sigh of resignation. The boy will come, and he will have a horse for faster travel, and another sword, should swords be needed, and a good sense of direction to get them home - though the Prince would hardly tell this boy that he has no intention of returning home. He will be company, too, on a frightening journey, and that is something money cannot buy.
Hannibal steps away from the woods, but makes sure to take his time as he does, lest the boy think him afraid. He raises his chin and narrows his eyes, just as he was taught. They widen again when Will laughs as his pony lowers to the ground, one foreleg and then the other, one back leg and then the other.
The little birds at the edge of the forest echo the sound of Will’s delight.
Prince Hannibal approaches carefully, and slides to sit behind Will, settling into place.
“Would you prefer me to sit in back, Prince?” It’s hardly becoming for a Prince not be first.
“No,” Hannibal answers, grasping Will as the pony pushes to stand again. “This way I can protect you if anything comes upon us. Follow the path until the sun disappears behind the castle, and then we’ll know we’re there.”
“Where are we going?”
“You need not know.”
For now, Will must not know.
So they go, on Prince Hannibal’s word alone. Will leads his pony true, perhaps he does have as good a sense of direction as a hunting hound. Never once does he trip and never once does he falter, the little steed walks true with his riders upon him.
Before them, the sun hangs high over the castle yet, and Will sighs as he rolls his shoulders in a gentle shrug.
“I heard there lived a boar in these woods,” he says after a while. “Massive and frightening, with bristles of steel and eyes of blood. I heard he ate any man who came near, and took every child to his lair to keep for cold winter months.”
“From whom did you hear this?”
“The boys who left to find it.”
“How could they tell you if it were true?”
“They told me by their absence,” Will says, and this is enough for the Prince to quiet, so Will says more, to distract from the frightful shadows and flaming sun, from the feel of the Prince’s arms snug around his waist. “I saw them one day, brave and strong. Fearless and determined, they said they would end its terrible dominion and then…”
“And then?”
“They were gone. As if they were never born at all.”
Prince Hannibal holds to Will a little tighter, as the woods around them thicken. Their trunks fatten and their limbs stretch, and shadows dance beneath the pony’s hooves, until darkness blankets their path. The birds are like the boys, their voices falling silent, one by one by one, until finally Will asks, as the sun touches the parapets of the castle far away:
“Will you tell me now why you are here?”
“Perhaps I should,” Prince Hannibal agrees. “It is a cruelty to bring you further and not tell you the truth. Your bravery has impressed me, but I won’t see you imperiled. What is your name?”
“Will,” he says.
“Will, I too seek the boar.”
He pulls his pony to a slower pace, but does not dare stop him. Heart racing in his chest, Will’s hands tighten on the reigns. He swallows and the click in his throat is nearly painful.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I say,” Hannibal answers, his face more shadowed than even the woods as Will looks at the Prince over his shoulder. “I have heard, from the castle, the sobbing of scared boys and girls who have wandered into the woods - some fearless of what lies within, but many misguided and lost. He calls to them, and tells them that their parents await. He makes them come to him, and I hear their wails. And then silence,” Hannibal says, “and that is worst of all.”
Will shivers again, he doesn’t turn to look at the young Prince. He knows the fear in the silence, too. He thought he was the only one scared of it and what it meant. Silence makes as many promises as it breaks, and Will has had enough broken promises in his life. He shakes his head.
“He will take you, too.”
“He won’t.”
“You’re just a boy,” Will tells him. “You’re just like me, and you’re scared of him.”
“And I will face that fear and conquer it,” Prince Hannibal says proudly. “And I will stop his evil reign over my kingdom and the next and the next. He cannot take more than one child at a time, and if he takes me, the Prince, surely he will not want for more. We will strike a bargain.”
Will makes a little sound, but it sounds so afraid. He swallows it down and sets his jaw, to seem as firm as Prince Hannibal himself. “What business does a boar have with bargains?”
“I need no help, no friends nor family. I chose to allow you along, but I could have gone alone,” the Prince reasons. “There is strength in solitude and strength in me. I will be enough to sate him, so long as I exhaust him first.”
“Exhaust him?”
“I will not go easily,” Prince Hannibal smiles, and it lifts his voice and eyes alike. Will watches him a moment more before turning back to face the path ahead. The sun is nearly fallen beneath the castle’s crenulations now, and every thump of hooves against the forest floor makes Will’s heart beat faster.
“You’ll fight him.”
“And slay him, if I can. I’ve killed many wild pigs before, and feasted on their flesh. And if I cannot defeat him, I will weaken him at least, and when he satisfies himself on me, he will hunger for others no longer.”
“You seem so sure,” Will whispers, and the Prince straightens his shoulders.
“Keep riding forward,” Prince Hannibal tells him. “A few feet more and then you should wait, I’ll go forward alone.”
“No,” Will insists. “I’m coming with you.”
“You promised me.”
“I promised to run when you said,” Will reminds him. “I will not run from nothing.”
“Where does your bravery come from?” Prince Hannibal asks Will suddenly, and the younger boy tilts his head at the question. “I have never met anyone who would go forth when all others would hide.”
“Where does yours come from?” Will asks him in turn.
The pony slows as the light begins to dim, hooves clopping heavy against the uneven ground. He ducks his head and snorts, ears twitching.
“From doing what’s right,” Hannibal finally says, “even at risk to myself. It would be wrong to sit in the far-away castle and listen to others be silenced. It would be wrong to pretend as if I didn’t know what the boar does in these woods. Others will suffer, more and more. It will never stop unless I stop it.”
Will rubs his pony’s neck as he comes to a stop, easing the flickering muscles beneath warm, soft fur.
“You knew someone who was taken, don’t you? Someone close to you, closer than the boys and girls in the village. Someone you loved.”
The Prince draws a breath and without a word, Will knows he guessed right. Sometimes he does that, he can look at someone and know what hurts them. He can see their wounds as if they were carved in blood, dark and damp across them. He starts to apologize but the Prince rests his cheek against Will’s shoulder, and Will can’t find breath to speak.
“Yes,” Prince Hannibal says, and nothing more.
Will forces the pony onwards, only because he knows he must. He wants to take this young man, this Prince with so much on his shoulders and such weight on his heart, and bring him somewhere safe. His heart has always been too large, his mind too quick.
“Stop,” Prince Hannibal says suddenly, and Will jerks the reigns. The pony snorts his displeasure but doesn’t move further. Within, the forest already feels colder, somehow thicker. There is a smell that lingers, but Will can taste it more than he can sense it. It tastes cloying rot, like mold, like something left in the rain too long.
It tastes like terror.
It tastes cold.
Will breathes it into his lungs and he feels himself wheeze it out again, as though a thousand little voices are screaming for help through his mouth. Only when Prince Hannibal turns his cheek against him and whispers breathe can Will fill his lungs again.
His pony stamps his hoof and snorts, tossing his head and flicking his tail. Will tries to quiet him as Hannibal slides free, long legs bending as he slips low to the ground and stands again. He looks to Will, and again their eyes meet - Will the light beyond the forest, and Hannibal’s eyes as dark as that primordial place itself.
“You promised,” Hannibal reminds him.
“I did,” Will whispers.
“Wait for me,” Hannibal asks.
“I will.”
Will swears, for a moment, that the sun grows brighter. It must have moved backwards through the sky, parted clouds and trees alike, because when Prince Hannibal smiles, he can feel it. Warmth in his cheeks and all across his arms, light flooding through him to chase away the shadows.
“I will,” says Will again, and with that, Hannibal turns towards the woods.
There is a clearing, but like no clearing Will has ever seen. It is not lush with tall grass; there is no babbling brook within. The plants have been smothered, grey and stained. No sun has reached this place in a very long time. The fabric of the land is painted scarlet and white and Will looks away as a strange shame overcomes him.
Prince Hannibal ventures forth, fearless, his hand on his sword.
And when a third voice rises, neither that of Will or that of his Prince, the trees shudder and their leaves turn away.
“Well, well, well. Who has come to see me?”
Prince Hannibal doesn’t answer. Will doesn’t speak. Beyond, there is another voice, small and broken, and it sounds like emptiness itself. It makes Will feel sick. He tries not to breathe but he has to, and his lungs howl with the many mingled voices of the scared and broken children who gave their voice to the darkness.
“Won’t you tell me your name?”
Will wonders how a boar, so brutal and cunning, could sound so strangely human. It is a voice that sounds familiar, it sounds like something and someone Will could know. The creature he imagined did not have a voice. It had nothing but bloodied tusks and spiny back and red eyes. Prince Hannibal stands encircled in shadow, and Will breathes with the voices of the fallen children, as the boar finally steps into view.
The hulking creature's bristles rise and fall like waves stirred with every breath, its hunched back taller than Will astride his horse, who whines high in fear. White as the ice that crusts the lake in winter and just as impenetrable, the beast's hair flashes brightly where the light strikes sparking. A great flat nose, smeared with scarlet, huffs grey clouds of dank breath into the air. Pale eyes rolling wild, the boar drops its head low and drives a tusk against the ground. It wields a pair above and a pair below, each as long as Will's forearm from elbow to fingers, honed sharp as knives on trees and stone and the bodies of little children.
It need not gore them, tear them to pieces and break their bones. It could swallow them whole if it liked. But they have heard the sobs and cries, they have heard the wailing silence. Will swallows hard.
Surely even the most savage beasts of the wild take no pleasure from torment.
But this one, this one does.
"Hannibal," the Prince says, watching the boar as it watches him in turn. "I am the Prince of this land."
"Hannibal," groans the boar, tail flicking in piggish delight. "I do wonder. What could bring a Prince to see a pig?"
The little Prince does not falter, he does not step back from the creature. He lifts his chin and stands proud, and Will wishes with all his might that he was at his side holding his hand, facing down this evil together. But he promised, and so he sits astride his horse and he does not move.
“I came to ask you to leave my forest,” Hannibal calls proudly. “On behalf of my kingdom and the kingdoms surrounding, I want you to leave this place, and take your evil with you.”
There is a silence. No birds to fill it with twittering song, no breeze to push the leaves against each other. Silence. That same horrible lack of sound after the little sobs and little screams end. And then a whine, like a broken door on old hinges, shrieking long and loud enough to hurt, before it breaks into a breathy sound, and Will realizes the hulking beast is laughing.
“You want me to leave?” the boar asks, between the shrieks of malicious amusement. “You want me to leave?”
“Yes,” whispers Hannibal.
"Why should I leave?" the big beast finally asks, as its laughter falls to a snort. Each lumbering step pushes grey grass and cold mud between its cloven hooves, until the boar is so close to Hannibal, its hot breath stirs his golden hair. Will tries not to imagine that in two swallows, if that many, the boar could devour the Prince.
He tries not to imagine the snap of bone like tinder or the wet smack of flesh.
He tries not to imagine the Prince silenced, and in this alone succeeds. Surely the Prince is too brave to be eaten. Surely the Prince is too strong to be hurt.
Hannibal turns his head to the tusked maw grinning so close, his feet planted in the boggy soil. "A trade," the Prince says.
"A trade."
"This for that. Myself, for you to go, and never again hurt the little children of the village."
"You're hardly enough for a snack."
Hannibal's jaw sets. "Would it not please you, pig, to see me gone? You do not eat us because you need it. You eat us for the pleasure you take from our pain. You will leave the kingdom without a leader."
"Your parents -"
"My parents fled, when you ate her," Hannibal says, his voice both very low and very strong.
Another wheeze of piggish laughter and Will’s pony shifts its weight, over and over. Will knows. He can feel it. As though it is his own throat pushing the word through, lingering and hanging until there is air enough to fuel it.
Run.
He does not want to run. He doesn’t. He will not leave this brave young Prince behind. Yet he cannot break his word, it is binding, as all promises are. He frets and he waits, and he watches the white boar lumber around in place, shifting his weight ominously, snorting its cloying and stifling breath around the young Prince who faces him.
“She was lovely,” he purrs at last. “Such a tiny little morsel of a girl, I remember.” He snorts again and Will watches Hannibal’s fingers curl around his sword harder in his anger. “So sweet.”
"Enough," says the Prince, but his voice isn't as strong now. The boar roars maddened laughter, enough to shake the ground beneath their feet. "Take me," Hannibal says, forcing himself to be heard. "Take me and the whole kingdom will weep for what was lost, and you will have your victory as they have their lives."
A curt snort cuts the laughter short.
"What promises are owed to the devoured dead?"
The boar turns on his tiny feet, far faster than any could imagine. But Hannibal too is fast, and practiced, and draws his sword with a shout for Will to flee. There is no time to swing but he upturns his blade just as the boar lunges, and blood spatters hot against brave Prince Hannibal, as a piece of the boar's nose is cut away.
The boar's screams fill the clearing, wild with laughter and pain. With a shrill and nervous whinny, Will's horse skitters sideways and he struggles to hold him still.
Even his horse knows better than Will, and tries to heed the word that Will cannot.
Run.
Run.
"Run!" he shouts to Hannibal instead, and the Prince looks away from the blood that darkens his blade, to mount Will's skittish horse. Mud flies from beneath panicked hooves, and Hannibal loops his arm around Will's middle.
He looks back to the boar, and holding his sword aloft, shouts, "Devour your nose, instead!"