So for the kickoff of Noblegarden, my friend and fellow Knight Initiate with the Argents, Denarys Deneres Denarus Senechal (swear to Light, humans have hard names) invited me to join his family for their traditional wild boar and egg hunt.
I’ve never hunted a wild boar before, and there’s an art to it. An art I don’t really understand. It consists of some very fast, very strong horses that take their job very seriously, dogs in armor, and a very pissed off boar. To be fair, from past experience, ‘pissed off’ is the default for wild boars, and the moment you’re in their territory, one of you is going to become dinner. We just decided to make them dinner first.
It was intense. It completely rattled my initial image of these prim, proper nobles who stand with their backs so straight and their head angled in such a way that they seem to be peering down the bridge of their nose. His mother’s hands were so soft as she kept insisting on clasping mine. I thought the rest of them was soft too.
But oh no. Oh man. No. The moment there is danger, that softness gives way to an intensity that is beyond my ability to put them into words. They are graceful, powerful. Lethal. And I am very glad that they’re on my side.
Afterwards, while the meat was curing, we enjoyed a lot of his family’s mead and hunted for eggs. Those at least, didn’t fight back.
Good times all around. I don’t always do well with big groups, so it was refreshing to get to slip into the kitchen with their personal chefs to help them prepare this ham. Trust me, the hardest part was killing the thing.
H A M !
Feed the Horde 