Hugh Cook - The wizards and the warriors

'Come on, Valarkin,' said the old man.

Valarkin shivered. His limbs were stiffening as he cooled down after the rigours of herding. One ankle hurt where he had twisted it jumping across a stream. His legs, to the knees, were filthy with bog-mud.

'Come on, Valarkin! If you just stand there eating air, then air is all you'll get to eat.'

It was no joke. They would starve him, given an excuse. He wished he could have them, one and all. strung up in the temple for a sacrifice. Yes!

The girl Leelesh, the voiceless moron his father had made Durnwold marry to get her dowry of a dozen sheep, opened the gate for Valarkin then guarded it while he caught a sheep. He wrestled it out of the gateway, dragging it by the neck. As soon as they were in the open, the sheep struggled convulsively. He lost his hold. It bolted – straight into the wooden fence of the pen. Grabbing it in a throttle, Valarkin pulled it backwards, clawing at the wool. Man and beast rolled over and over each other.

'It's not mating season yet!' yelled his cousin Buffle.

'You'd better tie its legs together,' jeered the old man. 'Like the other women, when they shear sheep.'

'Who's shearing who?' cried Buffle. as Valarkin struggled.

Valarkin, breathless, did not respond. Muddy, panting, he dragged the animal to where his shears lay waiting. One of his cousins had secured a sheep and started to shear while Valarkin had been fighting his animal to a standstill.

They expected him to shear, but did not choose to instruct him. They thought him a fool to have ever left the farm. As his father said, it might be a poor living. but they had never starved yet, and, isolated here in the south-east of Estar, they were safe from most of the world's violence – pirate raids, bandits and Comedo's excesses – even if it was a long way to take wool to market.

They thought him a fool; worse, they hated him for his pride, so it pleased them to make him their resident fool. He knew they had expected the sheep to race him for the horizons. They would have been happy if it had. But it was not Valarkin but cousin Afeld who was first to lose a sheep.

'Whoa!' shouted Afeld, as the delinquent twisted free and ran, trailing half its fleece across the ground.

'It's not a horse,' said Buffle.

But Afeld did not hear, for he was already sprinting downhill after the sheep. Dogs and children followed. The dogs barked, the children screamed, and the old man – red-eyed and furious – bellowed abuse at Afeld. The sheep was cornered where two ditches ran together, and was sheared on the spot.

A little shearing, and Valarkin began to feel the strain in his forearm. Each snip freed only a little wool. Not knowing that wool came more easily off the larger, fatter sheep, he had chosen a small, light animal, thinking it easier to manhandle. It was giving him a hard time. He fought the four kicking limbs, lost control, grabbed the brute by the tail, hauled on its ears, and finally knelt on its neck and subdued it.

'Come on, Valarkin,' said Buffle, with a grin which showed small brown and black teeth which he was destined to lose before the age of twenty. 'I've finished mine already.'

He is only a boy, thought Valarkin. Only a boy, thin as a rabbit, a cast in his eye, a low-grade sacrifice we would have clubbed to a cripple then battered in the dark till the god drew nearer… till the room became cold… till mist formed, and the face: maw of mist, eyes of shadow… time for the high priest to ask for a granting, then time to withdraw… sometimes, a scream… 'Come on Valarkin!'

He bent to his work, his back already aching.

With time, the ache got worse.

Between the shearers' raids the remaining sheep stood bleating in the pen. Their pounding hooves and guttering urine steadily mucked the ground to mud. When men entered the pen, the rearing hooves of panic-stricken sheep marked the fleeces of their sisters with mud. Any sheep not properly controlled whirled around when grabbed, threatening to send its attacker sprawling. A fall would be a disaster.

Once, as Valarkin regarded a sheep from a certain angle, the heavy head momentarily reminded him of equine grace and nobility – but the illusion was transitory. They were stupid, filthy animals. He hated them. He sheared without mercy, shaving the wool close to the pinkness of the skin, not caring if he clipped it to leave a little disc of white into which tiny bubbles of blood would flourish, swell then merge.

Once he knelt on a sheep's neck so hard for so long that, released, it lay still, convinced it was dead; he gave it a shove, and it got on its way. Sheep smells thronged his nostrils; their dung stained his knees. He was revolted by their smell, their stupidity, the way their bowels gave way in the middle of the shearing. He was repulsed by their blood-heat when he shoved a knee to belly-softness to assist with control.

Valarkin worked on, nearing collapse. He did not hear the sheep bleating, the clippers clicking, the women laughing and gossiping as they folded fleeces. His world was limited to his blurring field of vision, the straining muscles in his right arm, the ache of his back. He did not hear the arrival: he did not know who had come until he was called.

'Valarkin!'

He looked up slowly. Tall, the man was tall, tall on a 149 high horse. Valarkin had a confused impression of leather, sword, shield-boss, chain mail… the world swayed as blood ebbed from his head, and he lowered his head to save himself from passing out, lowered his head close to the world of wool and dung-heat. When he looked up again, he saw it was Durnwold smiling down on him.

'Greetings, Valarkin. How are you, my brother?" 'Still breathing."

He was too tired to say anything more.

Durnwold swung down from the saddle and hobbled the horse expertly – there were no trees to tie it to, and the rickety pen could scarcely withstand the assaults of the struggling sheep.

'You look tired," said Durnwold.

'I am,' said Valarkin.

The ewe he was working on, as if sensing he was distracted, struggled suddenly. Valarkin subdued it. He wanted to smash it with his fists. He wanted to rip its guts out. He wanted to vomit.

'I want to talk to you,' said Durnwold.

'What about?'

'The future.'

'The future?'

'The temple's gone for good, isn't it? So what now? Is this what you want for the rest of your life? You hated it when we were children. Has so much changed?'

Valarkin was about to reply, but at that moment his father – who had been away getting a drink from a nearby stream – returned to greet his son: 'Durnwold! What are you doing here?'

'What am I doing? I'm standing on my own two feet, as I said I would.'

'On your own two feet, is it? That's a clever trick. You're a strong, brave lad, Durnwold, to be standing on your own two feet. You still have your head as well, I see. How long do you hope to keep it? The rumour says there's enemy raiding Estar. Collosnon foreigners. Are you going to fight a whole empire with that shiny, bright sword of yours?'

'What do you know of the Collosnon empire?'

'Durnwold. lad. Do you think your da's a know-nothing? I've been to the Lorford markets, haven't I? More years than counting. I've heard the talk. They've got armies the ants themselves would envy, those ones.'

'They sent five thousand men against us,' said Durnwold.

'Now don't try shallying your da, Durnwold lad. You'd be dead if they'd done that.'

'We slaughtered them,' said Durnwold. 'We had wizards to help us.'

'Help from pox doctors?'

'I've met them. They're not like what you'd expect.'

'Pox doctors!' sneered his father, and spat.

It was now that the women and children, who had held back from Durnwold – not recognising him, or knowing him yet fearing him – tentatively began to approach. Soon they were crowding him, shouting and jabbering, clamouring for attention.