Michelle Wan - The Orchid Shroud

APRIL 2004

The man in the greasy beret dropped his burden to the ground. He glanced over his shoulder. As usual, he, Andr Piquet, was up to no good. Nothing serious, mind. Just the kind of routine skulduggery that the Piquets, a noted clan of tricheurs, generally practiced.

With a quick slash of his hunting knife, Andr severed the cord that secured the mouth of the sack. It sagged, spewing some of its contents over the damp litter of pine needles and last years fallen leaves. Sheathing the knife, he upended the sack. Smelly kitchen peelings mixed with dried maize tumbled to the ground.

Baiting sangliers, the tough wild pigs that hunters in the Dordogne prized above all game, was frowned on as unsportsmanlike, not to say damned sneaky. The idea was that the sangliers, which roamed freely through the deep valleys and dense forests of this region of southwestern France, became accustomed to feeding at the baiting stations, with the result that, when the hunting season opened, voil, you had a ready population of pigs in place for the kill. If you were quick off the mark, you could bring down an animal or two before anyone got wind of what youd been up to. It was the Piquets guiding principle. Do it the easy way, secretly and fast, and your neighbor would never be the wiser. Also, it meant not having to share out your kill, taken on the quiet like that, with other hunters and local residents.

As he rolled up the sack and stuffed it under his jacket, Andr heard a sound. He looked about him. The woods in early evening were chill and gloomy. It occurred to him that everything was uncommonly still. Normally starlings and crows made a racket around this time. Suddenly he felt a little nervous. Was someone spying on him? Or maybe it was the speed with which the darkness was moving in.

Again, his ears caught the noise, a kind of scraping that was not the drilling of a woodpecker, or the creaking of branches in the wind. It seemed to be coming from somewhere to his right. Now curiosity vied with caution. Treading softly, he pushed through the thick undergrowth in the direction of the noise. He parted a curtain of pine branches and stepped into a small clearing. What he saw outraged him: a juvenile boar, freshly killed by the look of it. It lay head-on to him, one of its underdeveloped tusks driven into the dark, rough earth.

Putain! Andr, thrust suddenly onto the unaccustomed moral high ground, gave vent to his disgust. Baiting pigs was one thing, but hunting out of season, especially if someone beat you to it, really went against the grain. Funny, though, he hadnt heard a shot. And there did seem to be an awful lot of blood about. The ground all around was churned up and soaked with it.

Then he realized that the wild pig had not been shot. Drawing closer, he saw that it had been brought down by something that had slashed its haunches, severing the hindquarter tendons to disable it before going in for the kill. Feeding had already begun, for the belly had been partly torn open, the slippery guts spilling out. Andr whistled through a gap in his stained front teeth. Whatever it was had to be big. A boar, even young, was a tough adversary for most dogs. Maybe a pack of dogs? he wondered. He hunkered down for a closer look, balancing on the balls of his feet.

It was then that the long gray form came on him, hitting him from behind with tremendous force. He sprawled forward, driven face-down into the blood-wet earth. He felt a visceral shock as something ripped deep into the flesh of his shoulder.