Hugh Cook - The wizards and the warriors

'Get back to work,' shouted the old man, waving his arms as if he was scaring away geese. 'Scram your backsides!'

He chased them away, then took Durnwold aside and spoke earnestly to him. Valarkin ground his knee a little harder into the flank of the sheep. He set to work again, cutting, thrusting, tearing, jabbing.

The last of the wool, complete with is complement of dirt, came free from the sheep. Valarkin slapped the animal to set it on its way. Durnwold broke away from his father and came over.

'What did he want?' asked Valarkin.

'Some money. He got a bit.' Durnwold broke off to yell at the children: 'Get away from that horse, you! He'll eat you!' Then, to Valarkin, quietly: 'There's plenty of money these days. Plenty of everything – we had the spoils of a whole army to divvy up between us.'

'Was it a hard battle?'

'It was easy. Wizards won it for us. Did you know there were wizards in Estar?'

T met them myself,' said Valarkin, 'The day after the temple was burnt. But as for the Collosnon – we knew about raiding parties, but nothing about any army.'

'Oh, there was an army all right,' said Durnwold.

They talked together out of earshot of the others. Durnwold told of the enemy army's arrival, attack and destruction. Valarkin listened intently as Durnwold told of the mad-jewels and the red charms.

'And what now?' said Valarkin.

'Now we go east,' said Durnwold. 'To the land of Trest. Wizard hunting! We'll bring that thug Heenmor to bay then -'

'Chop him to bits with swords and hatchets!' said Valarkin, using a well-remembered phrase from their boyhood games.

Durnwold had always played at being the emperor across the seas, with Valarkin as his master of ceremonies.

Talking together, the brothers found time had not destroyed the empathy they had had before their careers had put leagues of distance and silence between them, as Durnwold strove to satisfy his ambitions through the sword, while Valarkin sought power and prestige in the temple.

'I thought I might find you here,' said Durnwold, 'but I wasn't sure.'

'Where else would I go?'

'It's a wide world.'

'I'm a priest,' said Valarkin. 'Ail Estar hates me, for that reason. After the temple, I visited Lorford – but I was lucky to escape alive. This was the only place left. Everything I hoped for is ashes.'

'So the temple really is gone for good.'

'Yes. All finished. Over. I'm the sole survivor. The temple is in ruins. The Deep Pools, choked with rubble.

The High Priests, dead. The powers of summoning, the farsight secrets – dead with them. The five elder books are ashes. It cost the temple generations to learn our god's desires – to learn how to praise, to sacrifice, to plead. All that knowledge is gone. It can't be replaced except by revelation – which might come to one man once in a century. We can't control the god any more. It's over.'

'Why didn't you come to me?'

'I was ashamed. I failed, so I was ashamed.'

'It was never your fault,' said Durnwold.

The old man started to yell at Valarkin. He wanted Valarkin back at work. Valarkin gave a sigh almost of despair – a short, forced sigh, as if he had been hit in the pit of the stomach.

'Sit down,' said Durnwold.

Valarkin subsided to the ground, and watched as Durnwold shed his cloak, his chain mail and his sword.

Leelesh let Durnwold into the pen – he did not so much as glance at her – and he chose a fat sheep. He grabbed it by the front legs, lifting it so it danced helplessly on its rear hooves. He walked it out of the pen to the shears. The animal, pulled back against his right leg, found all four cloven hooves helpless in the air. He set to work, first clipping away a couple of ragged patches of dirty wool clinging to the belly near the teats.

The rest of the underside was bare of wool, but for a collar of wool round the neck; there was no wool on the face, only a thin layer of short, wiry, white hairs. Durnwold cut away the collar of wool, then began to shear in earnest, slowly peeling the fleece away from the left side of neck and flank, until he reached the backbone.

In places the underside of the fleece was yellow, in places creamy white, however dirty the outside might be. Durnwold rolled the sheep onto his left leg and cut the fleece from the other side. One of the women took it as it came free. Durnwold knelt on the sheep's neck and cut away the ragged bits of wool clinging to its tail, then the dung-stained dags between its hind legs.

Durnwold made it look easy, but he could make any physical skill look easy.

Soon, the shearing was finished; they released the lambs. Set free, the lambs ran wild, sometimes springing straight into the air with four legs stiff, as kittens sometimes do. The lambs thought their mothers lost -the sheep smelt different now they were shorn – so the air filled with the bleating of distressed lambs. It would take a while for them to recognise their mothers, even though the mothers found their offspring without any trouble.

Two were not set free straight away, for, overlooked earlier in the year, they had long tails and undipped ears. Valarkin was made to hold one. The old man clipped through one of its ears. The lamb thrashed and struggled; it was a sturdy beast now three months old. Seizing the tail, the old man twisted it in the middle till it broke.

'A knife cuts more blood,' he said. 'Now turn it loose.'

The lamb stood for a moment, fresh red blood from its mauled ear streaming through its short, tight head-wool. Then it bolted. The old man worked the second lamb the same, mumbling his satisfaction through broken yellow teeth: 'We'll have no long-tails like we did last year. No fights over who owns what, either. Those greedmouths on Tip Hill, they'd suck the spit from our mouths if we didn't stop them. Two years in a row they've snatched lambs we never marked. Now come over here, Durnwold.'

The old man spoke again with Durnwold – Valarkin guessed he was after a promise of more money – then set off after the others, who were carrying the wool sacks back to the small, smoky, dirt-floor huts where Valarkin and Durnwold had been born and raised. The trampled earth around the pen was littered with dirty little scraps of wool. Valarkin shivered.

'Well?' said Durnwold, putting on his chain mail. 'Are you coming with me?' 'Where?'

'To war. Wizard hunting. Swords and hatchets!' 'I'm no warrior. You know that.' 'This is the age of the warrior,' said Durnwold, arming himself with his sword again. 'It's a dark age, then.'

'All ages are dark, for those that won't make the best of them. Are you coming?'

'I need time to think about it.'

'Time is not in my gift, said Durnwold. "All I can give you is a chance.'

He sauntered over to his horse, unhobbled the animal, swung up into the saddle and rode to the pen at a trot.

'Well?' said Durnwold, looking down, reins in hand, reins falling to the bit which the bridle secured in the horse's mouth. Leather and cold metal. A tall man with a sword.

'What should I bring?'

'Everything you've got that's warm and woollen. We sleep rough tonight, and it's cold despite the summer.'

He helped Valarkin up behind him, and the horse carried them toward the huts.

From the door of his house, the old man, Grenberth-ing, watched his two sons ride away. His body ached from the day of herding and shearing; he knew it would still be aching on the morrow. He saw neither of the young men gave a backward glance at the place they were leaving.

– So there they go then, the strong one and the oddling. Nothing for them but a sword in the belly, but how can they know that? Kits don't know they're born blind till their eyes open. What's to open your eyes, my bravos? What's so fine in living with folks who walk on air? They may walk on it, but they don't eat it. Without us and our like, the castle would starve in less than a season.