Vandiyathevan realized the grave danger into which Aditya Karikalan had fallen. In the blink of an eye, he spurred his horse forward and thrust the spear in his hand at the boar. The spear struck above the tough hide on the boar’s back. The animal shook its body violently and turned around. In that sudden movement, the grip on the spear slipped from Vandiyathevan’s hand. The spear, which had only lightly pierced the boar’s back, slid off and fell to the ground.

Now, the boar turned and charged toward Vandiyathevan. He understood the perilousness of his situation. His horse could not withstand the beast’s attack. He had no spear in hand. The prince was still struggling to crawl out from beneath his fallen horse. If he were to survive, he would have to leap from his horse onto the branch of a nearby tree. Shame! After escaping so many dangers, was he to be killed at last by nothing more than a wild boar?

Fortunately, there was a low-spreading tree close by. Vandiyathevan leapt from his horse and seized a branch. Using all his strength from foot to shoulder, he pulled himself up onto the branch. At that very moment, the boar butted his horse. The horse staggered, barely managing to keep its footing, and then bolted away. Karikalan still lay beneath his horse. Vandiyathevan was perched on the tree branch. The wild boar stood between them, turning this way and that, watching both.

Vandiyathevan realized that the boar was considering which of its two enemies to attack. The prince had not yet managed to free himself from beneath his horse. Even if he did, could he withstand the beast’s charge at that moment? He had no weapon ready at hand. He would have to bend his bow and shoot an arrow. He might have been injured when he fell and was trapped under his horse. In any case, it was essential to buy the prince a little time. All these thoughts flashed through Vandiyathevan’s mind in a lightning instant, and he came to a decision. Shaking the branch on which he sat with all his might, he shouted loudly, “Aaha! Oo! Koo!”

His ruse had succeeded. The wild boar, in a frenzy of rage, charged straight at the tree on which he had climbed.

“Let it come; let it come and dash itself against the trunk,” Vandiyathevan thought to himself. But even as this thought crossed his mind, the branch he had climbed and was shaking began to crack ominously. God! What danger is this? If he fell to the ground along with the branch, in the very next moment the boar’s terrible tusks would tear him to pieces. He could only survive if he managed to leap and grab hold of another branch.

He tried to leap and catch another branch. But that branch was a little farther away, and he managed to grasp it with only one hand. The branch he caught was slender and bent under his weight. His grip began to slip, his legs dangled in the air! Well, he had to fall now—death was certain! There was no doubt about it. At least, in the end, he had managed to save Aditya Karikalan, hadn’t he? When the young princess heard of this, wouldn’t she be happy? Wouldn’t she shed a tear for his death…?

Suddenly, a terrible sound rang out! At the same moment, his grip slipped completely! Vandiyathevan squeezed his eyes shut. He fell with a thud to the ground; as he fell, he lost consciousness.

When Vandiyathevan regained his senses and opened his eyes, he saw Aditya Karikalan sprinkling water on his face. He sat up with a start and asked, “Prince! Are you safe?”

“Yes; thanks to your kindness, I am still alive,” replied Aditya Karikalan.

“What happened to the wild boar?” he asked.

“There!” said the prince, pointing to where the wild boar lay dead.

Vandiyathevan looked at it closely and said, “Your Highness! What trouble this small creature has caused! What Kandhamaaran said about the wild boar was entirely true. In the end, how did you kill it?”

“I did not kill it. It was your spear and you together that killed it!” said the prince.

Vandiyathevan looked at the prince’s face as if he did not understand.

“You used my spear well! But I did nothing, did I? In the moment of danger, I could not help you at all,” he said.

“You shook the tree branch and made a noise, didn’t you? At that moment, I sprang out from beneath the horse and snatched up your spear. All the anger that had been boiling in my heart, alas, I unleashed upon that poor boar. The moment it was struck by the spear, it let out a terrible cry. I thought I would go deaf from the sound. But even the spear did not kill it. You slipped from the tree branch and fell upon its back; it was that shock that finally killed it!” said Karikalan, and laughed aloud. Vandiyathevan too, recalling the scene, burst into laughter.

Rubbing his body and examining himself, he said, “It seems I escaped without injury only because I landed on the boar. Now I can believe that Maha Vishnu took the Varaha avatar and slew Hiranyaksha. My goodness! What a ferocious creature it was!”

“Don’t judge the Varaha avatar by seeing this little wild boar, brother!” said the prince. “In the forests of the Vindhya mountains to the north, they say there is a kind of boar with a single horn on its head. It is almost as large as an elephant. If it had been such a boar, and it had butted the tree you were perched on, imagine what would have happened to the tree!”

“The tree would have snapped at the root and fallen, your spear would have broken, and our fate would have been sealed. The enemies of the Chola dynasty would have been spared the trouble