6

Cashel or-Kenset came out of the woods listening to Garric's pipes playing a dance tune from the top of the knoll. One of the sheep in the lush growth of the swale blatted at him.

Garric turned and put his pipes down. "Were you right?" he called.

"Aye, Bodger'd been nipping dogwood buds and got her neck caught when her hind foot slipped," Cashel said as he climbed to his friend. "I keep telling Beilin that he may as well butcher that ewe himself as have the crows get her one day when I'm not quick enough, but he says she's a good milker and I've never let her strangle yet."

"Nor have you," Garric said. His back was to a holly oak that was good shade in high summer, though for the moment he was on the tree's sunny side. Garric's quiver and unstrung bow leaned against the tree, and a book lay open on the satchel that held his lunch. Cashel could write his name and sound out a few words thanks to his friend's tutoring, but Garric was a real scholar who read ancient poetry for his own pleasure.

"I haven't died yet either," Cashel grumbled. "But I have no doubt that'll happen one day too."

He'd noticed three sheep trot from the woodline together. It wasn't exactly the way they looked—a sheep's expression is always one of wild-eyed idiocy—but just a feeling Cashel had that they'd been frightened by something.

He'd gone to check while Garric watched the rest of the flock pastured here on the meadows sloping down to the shore south of the hamlet. Sure enough, he'd found one of Beilin's ewes choking in the crotch of a tree and unable to lift herself out.

"If sheep were as smart as people, farmers wouldn't need to pay a shepherd," Garric said with a grin. "Say, listen to this, would you?"

He opened the book to a place he'd marked with a strip of cloth. The volume was one of a set that Garric's father had brought with him from Ornifal. Its binding was dark leather with pages of good-quality parchment. While Cashel couldn't pretend to read the words, he could appreciate the craftsmanship of the scribe who'd kept his line and letter spacing so uniform throughout the long task of copying the text.

" 'Now shepherds play their pipes to the sheep fattening on spring grasses, and the tunes delight the gods who watch over the flocks and the wooded hills of Haft,' " Garric read. "There, what does that sound like to you?"

Cashel shrugged. "I like it, sure," he said. "The words are pretty. I just wish it was that simple, though."

"That's what I mean," Garric said, putting the book down again on his pack. "Sure, the sheep are filling out on the new grass—but you're out there making sure they don't hang themselves or drown in a boggy spot or walk over the side of a cliff because they're too dumb to know they can't fly. I'll bet things were pretty much the same back in the Old Kingdom when Celondre wrote this. Father says he was a rich man who wrote about shepherds, not a shepherd himself."

"Well, you play the pipes," Cashel said with a wistful smile. He didn't have much talent for music, and he'd never had the leisure to become even passable enough for his own amusement. The ox horn with a wooden mouthpiece he carried for signaling was the only instrument he was any use with. "I don't doubt it pleases Duzi."

He patted the knee-high stone set up on the knoll and roughly carved with a face. Duzi wasn't one of the great gods, wasn't the Shepherd; but shepherds had been leaving offerings of garlands and food before the crude figure for as long as there'd been flocks on Haft.

"It pleases me, I know," Cashel added with a wider grin. He squatted, laying his heavy iron-shod staff on the ground to pick up the pipes. They were lengths of hollow cane, chosen to be the same width and cut to decreasing length. The bottom of each tube was plugged with beeswax. Splints and willow bark bound the set of seven into line.

A piper blew across the tops of the canes with a full, carrying tone. When the musician was good enough—and Garric was that good on the right afternoon—Cashel thought the sound of a pipe was more lovely than the song of any bird ever hatched.

"Well, the sheep seem to like it too," Garric admitted. "They don't mistake me for a shepherd who really knows what he's doing, but they don't seem to wander as badly if I play to them."

Cashel surveyed the flock from the top of the knoll, tallying them with the fingers of his right hand marking the ones place and the fingers of his left marking the tens. He knew the sheep—which individuals were in sight and which were likely still in the woods. The black-brown-white mottling of Haft-bred fleece hid sheep at any distance into the trees, even to eyes as trained as Cashel's.

The sea snarled spitefully on the shore just east of the knoll. The water had remained active ever since the great storm, and frequently Cashel saw an unfamiliar hue on the surface in place of the normal pale green off this coast.

Some of the flock were cropping rushes in the marsh where Pattern Creek spilled into the sea's tidal margin. The brackish water gave their mutton a salty flavor that some folk fancied with a sauce of red seaweed. Even from Barca's Hamlet Cashel had seen that it was a big world, and he'd come to believe that everything in it was to the taste of someone.

Crows hopped and cawed over the wrack the storm had flung high up the shore. The waves had scoured dead fish, seaweed festooned with crustaceans, and less identifiable debris from all across the Inner Sea, dumping it here for a scavengers' feast. Cashel reminded himself to double-check the flock for fly bites, since in normal times the crows winkled maggots from the sheep for part of their dinners. They wouldn't need to while this bounty lasted.

He couldn't see anything wrong; but something was wrong nonetheless.

Frowning slightly, Cashel picked up his staff and walked around the holly oak to where he could look over the swale winding northward. He could account for all his charges—by sight or by likelihood—and those he saw calmly cropped grass and chewed it with a side-to-side motion as regular as a sleeping man's breath.

Garric noticed his friend's mood. He didn't say anything, but he braced the lower tip of his bow with his foot and gripped the other with both hands. Using his knee as a fulcrum, Garric curved the thick bowstaff and hooked the string of waxed horsehair to the upper notch, readying the weapon for use.

Garric's bow was a stiff piece of yew with considerable power despite being only four feet long. The all-wood staff would crack if left under tension for too long, so stringing the bow was the last thing a hunter did before he expected to use it.

There was nothing to do with the bow, or with the smooth hickory quarterstaff which Cashel balanced as easily as another man might have held a twig. Nothing in sight...

Garric nocked an arrow, scanning the peaceful landscape but watching Cashel out of the corner of one eye. He trusted his friend's instincts, though obviously nothing was disturbing Garric himself.

The tannin-dark marsh exploded into spray glittering like diamonds. A ewe bleated, dancing with both forelegs in the air. The splashes hid the seawolf whose fangs gripped the ewe's hindquarters, but a second seawolf wriggled through the reeds, fastening its long jaws on the victim's throat to choke the breath and cries together.

"There's two more!" Garric cried. He bent his bow Haft-style—by throwing his weight onto his left arm rather than pulling back on the string with the fingers of his right hand.

Cashel had already seen the second pair of squat forms tobogganing in on the waves. The seawolves were mottled gray-green-black on the upper surfaces, with ridged bellies the color of fresh cream. One of those in the surf was huge, easily ten feet long and as heavy as a heifer.

Cashel raised the twisted horn to his lips and blew a raucous warning in the direction of the hamlet proper. As the long note echoed from the rolling hills, he started toward the shore holding his staff at the balance with both hands.

Four seawolves together. Old Hudden claimed he'd seen four seawolves when he was a lad, and that hadn't been for forty years even if the story was true. The storm must have driven them westward to Haft.... 

Garric's bow whacked, then thrummed as the thick bowcord vibrated to silence. A thirty-inch arrow pinned both shoulders of the seawolf holding the ewe by the throat. The seawolf would surely die, but it might take the rest of the day to do so. The only way to kill the beasts quickly was to sever the spine or pierce the braincase.

To pierce the brain, or to crush it. Cashel jogged toward the killers waddling up from the shoreline.

Seawolves were reptiles, monitor lizards which had gone back to the water. A seawolf's tail was flattened into a broad oar that drove side to side with a snaky, sinuous motion. A swimming seawolf kept its limbs plastered tightly against its body except when its webbed feet banked it into a turn, but the legs could still carry the reptiles for a short distance as fast as a man could run.

Seawolves had teeth like spikes; a big one's were as long as Cashel's middle fingers, good for holding and killing but unable to shear flesh. They dragged the animals they killed on land into the water and twisted violently until they ripped a mouthful loose. In the sea they caught fish; when they came on land, a man or child would do as well as a ewe to fill their bellies.

Sheep clattered along the gravel shore, fleeing in panic from the initial attack. Several were running toward the pair of seawolves which had just come out of the surf. Cashel didn't shout, because that would drive the stupid animals closer to the water and certain destruction.

The bow snapped again; Cashel didn't see where the arrow went. Judging from the sound, Garric had come down from the knoll also. Cashel knew his friend had only a few arrows in his quiver. He needed to get closer than a hundred yards to be sure his shots were effective on creatures so hard to kill.

The nearest ewe saw the six-foot-long seawolf crouching before her and jumped back so violently that she fell down. The reptile lunged, lashing its tail against the ground. Gravel and salt water flew.

Cashel thrust into the seawolf's mouth as if his staff had a point instead of a blunt cap. With his strength behind it, the blow penetrated deeply. Teeth sparked on the iron ferrule. The seawolf continued to worry the hickory in murderous reflex, even though it had been brain-dead from the instant of impact.

Cashel lifted his staff and flailed hard against the beach to clear it of the clinging reptile. Though small compared with some of those in this pack, the seawolf weighed almost two hundred pounds. Cashel, bigger still, twitched the corpse away as though it had been a kitten.

The ten-foot seawolf was almost on him, waddling with its head high and its open mouth stinking like a slaughteryard on a hot summer day. Cashel backed, holding the length of the quarterstaff between him and the monster. Seawolves weren't venomous, but the remnants of flesh rotting between their teeth made a bite from one certain to bring fever and blood poisoning unless it was cleaned almost at once.

There was a whack/toonk, Garric's bow releasing and the arrow instantly striking bone. The arrow had penetrated half its length below the seawolf's left eye before the cane shaft shattered on dense bone.

The reptile's forked black tongue shot from its lipless jaws with a roar like water poured into hot grease. The seawolf's lunge lifted both clawed forefeet off the ground. Cashel brought the staff down as an iron-shod club, jolting the creature's head to the side even as another arrow punched to the goose-quill fletching in the soft skin of its throat.

The seawolf twisted onto itself, its jaws clopping together near its own tail. Cashel lifted his staff overhead, judged his moment, and brought the ferrule down across the creature's back to crack the spine just behind the shoulders.

The reptile's forelegs continued to spew gravel in wild sweeps, but the tail and hindquarters only twitched as individual muscles tensed without volition. Cashel stepped back, gasping for breath. The seawolves' blood had a cold, medicinal smell.

Garric shouted in surprise. Cashel spun, using the quarterstaff's weight and inertia as a fulcrum for his body.

The seawolves who'd caught the ewe in the marsh thrashed alongside the body of their victim, crippled by Garric's arrows and dying with slow certainty. The fifth seawolf, unseen by either youth as they concentrated on the pair coming from the surf, must have been some distance up Pattern Creek when its fellows launched their attack. The beast had rushed to the noise of the fighting with the instinct of its kind to mob prey. The first Garric had known of the attack was when teeth closed on his right calf.

Cashel shouted in horror. Garric stabbed the lower tip of his bow into the creature's mouth, levering the jaws apart with a splash of his own blood. Cashel smashed the creature's skull, once, twice, and again. Teeth broke and sparkled at the hysterical blows.

Garric was free. He staggered two steps away from the flailing seawolf and said, "I'm all right! I'm—"

His torn leg collapsed beneath him, throwing him to the ground. His face was suddenly white with shock.

Cashel dropped the quarterstaff and scooped his friend up in both arms. He began running toward the hamlet with the stumping, powerful motion of an ox headed for the creek after a day of plowing.

"Get the hermit!" Cashel bellowed, knowing no one could hear him yet at this distance. "Get the hermit for Garric!"