Harry Turtledove - Conan of Venarium

"All right, Father. I'll go," said Conan, who was always eager to give the shepherd a hand. Then he hesitated. "Will Mother be all right with just you here to take care of her?"

"I was taking care of your mother before you were born, you know," said Mordec. "I'll go on doing it as long as we both live. Don't you worry about that. I know she snaps at me. Don't you worry about that, either. It's her way; she's short-tempered because of her sickness. But we understand each other well enough."

Reassured, Conan threw a loaf of brown bread and some smoked mutton into a leather sack and hurried out to the meadows to join Nectan. The shepherd seemed not at all surprised to see him. Only later did he wonder if his father had come this way before speaking to him.

"Good to have an extra pair of hands and an extra set of eyes with me," said Nectan. "It's lambing time now, and I don't deny I can use you here."

He did not set Conan to helping him help the ewes who had trouble giving birth. Conan had no idea how much good Nectan's ministrations did the ewes. As always, the blacksmith's son marveled at how quickly the newborn lambs could start gamboling across the grass after their mothers —and how quickly they could go gamboling off straight into trouble.

He pulled them out of a creek that ran through the hilly meadow. He watched some of them tumble down the hillsides and then get up again, apparently unharmed. And he watched one tumble down a hillside and then not get up, for it had broken a hind leg. Nectan stooped beside that one and cut its throat, and he and Conan ate roast lamb that night.

"Happens every year," said the shepherd as he cooked a chunk of meat over the campfire. "Seems a shame, but it can't be helped. Hand me a few of those mint leaves, will you?" Eaten along with the lamb, they made the savory meat taste even sweeter.

Lambing season also brought wolves and eagles down on the flock, for they found newborn lamb every bit as savory as did Nectan and Conan. The shepherd and the blacksmith's son drove them off with showers of stones. Conan knocked down one great hawk on the wing. He thought he had killed it, but it fought its way into the air once more and flew off, screeching in pain and fear.

"Bravely done," said Nectan. "The way you throw, I'd not want to get in the way of a stone from your hand."

"I wanted it dead." Defeating a foe did not satisfy Conan; he craved nothing less than his enemies' utter destruction.

Nectan only shrugged. "I wouldn't want to kill off all the eagles. They're rare bold birds. Wolves, now—if your stones could smash in the skull of even' cursed wolf ever born, I'd not shed a tear. Only reason the wolves go after lambs instead of me is that I put up a tougher fight —and I daresay the lambs are tastier, too." He chuckled.

Despite all they could do, the shepherd and his helper lost some lambs. Without Conan's help, the shepherd would surely have lost many more. Conan did shoot one wolf through the heart as it was about to leap on a lamb. Nectan skinned the beast and presented him with the hide.

"You keep it. I have others," said Conan, remembering his fight for life with the pack of wolves in the snow.

But Nectan would not hear of it. "A wolfskin for me?" He laughed at the very idea. "By Crom, the sheep would love me for that, wouldn't they, if I draped it round my shoulders for a rain cape? They'd flee me fast as they could run. If anyone is to get any use from it, that had best be you."

Seeing the shepherd's stubbornness, Conan could only nod. "I thank you," he said. "If you have a need, come to the smithy. My father or I will do your work for you."

"I don't use much in the way of ironmongery, though I thank you for your kindness," said Nectan. "Arrowheads now and again, for I will lose shafts, same as any other archer. If I'm out here and can't come into Duthil, I'll chip the heads out of flint. I'm not so good as the cursed Picts, who do it all the time, but I manage."

"Picts," muttered Conan, and he scowled ferociously. In Cimmeria, the Aquilonians were enemies because they were neighbors and, at the moment, because they were invaders. Enmity between Picts and Cimmerians, though, was in the blood of both folk, and went back to the days when lost Atlantis still rose above the waves. As long as Cimmerians and Picts both survived, that enmity would also endure.

"I didn't say I loved 'em, boy, for I don't," responded Nee-tan. "But they do know how to chip stone. And they had better, for in working metal they may as well be so many helpless babes."

When Conan thought of Picts, he thought of killing Picts. No Cimmerian could think of Picts any other way. And when he thought of killing Picts, he thought less of the Gunderman he had actually slain. Little by little, as time went by, he grew less likely to brag about what he had done. The unending vigilance a herdsman needed also played its part in that: he was too busy to dwell excessively on what he had done.

His father let him stay with Nectan almost a month. By the time Mordec came out to reclaim him, he had for all practical purposes become a shepherd himself. "Do I have to go back to Duthil?" he asked. The prospect of dealing with people rather than sheep seemed distinctly unattractive.

"I was beginning to hope you would let me keep him, Mordec," added Nectan. "He's as good here as anyone could hope to be."

"Glad to hear it," said Mordec. "But I have need of him, too, and so does the smithy." He nodded to Conan. "Come along, son."

His tone and his looming physical presence brooked no argument. However regretfully, Conan turned away from Nectan. "Aye, Father." He did not look back toward the shepherd until he and Mordec were at the edge of the meadow and about to plunge into the dominant Cimmerian forest.

Then he waved once. Nectan waved back just as Conan and Mordec plunged in amongst the trees.

They walked on for a while, their footfalls almost silent on the pine needles carpeting the forest floor. A red fox ran across the game trail they were using. The fox stared in astonishment; the breeze blew from it toward them, so it had not taken their scent, and not even its keen ears let it know they were near. With a flirt of its brush, it vanished behind a fir. Conan had started to nock an arrow. Without a target, he slid the shaft back into its quiver.

High overhead, a hawk screeched shrilly. Again, Conan reached for an arrow. Again, he left the motion incomplete. Nodding, Mordec said, "If it's after a lamb, it's Nectan's worry now."

"Soon the lambs will be too big for any bird to carry off," said Conan. "But the wolves are a different story. They will steal from the flock at any season of the year." He carried on his back the roughly tanned hide of the wolf he had killed. "Miserable, thieving creatures."

"They might as well be men," remarked his father. After another minute or so, Mordec asked, "You liked it there, then?"

"I did, Father," said Conan, with an enthusiastic nod of his own. "Things are—simpler than they are in Duthil."

"No doubt." Mordec walked on once more before continuing. "Things in the village are less simple than when you left, too."

"Oh?" Conan did not care for the way his father said that. "What's gone on? And how is Mother?"

"Your mother is about the same as she always is," answered Mordec. "She is not well —I do not think she will ever be well —but she is no worse, or not much worse, than she was when you saw her last."

"All right," said Conan. His mother had been sickly for as long as he could remember. He always hoped she would get well, but he would have been amazed —so amazed, he might not have known what to do —if she actually had. He asked, "What about the village, then?"

"Ah. The village." Mordec did not seem eager to talk about it. At last, unwillingly, he said, "Well, Count Stercus has come back again."