Isana put Old Bitte in charge of the kitchens and returned to her room. She sat down on her bed, her hands folded on her lap. Her stomach fluttered nervously, but she forced herself to take deep breaths to stay calm. She had headed off the most immediate trouble, and Fade, despite his lack of skilled speech and his simple manner, was reliable. He would warn her if something else came up in the meantime.
She worried about Tavi-now more than any time she could remember. He was safe enough with Bernard to look after him, but her instincts would not relent. The pine hollows were the most dangerous stretch of land in the valley, but to her weary senses, the danger seemed deeper than that, and more threatening. There was something heavy and foreboding in the air of the valley, a gathering of forces that made the storm brewing over Garados look weak and tiny by comparison.
Isana laid down on her bed. "Please," she whispered, exhausted. "Great furies please keep him safe."
Chapter 5
Tavi picked up Dodger's trail within an hour, but from there it wasn't so easy. Tavi tailed the flock throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, stopping only to drink from an icy brook and to eat some cheese and salt mutton his uncle had brought with him. By then, Tavi knew that Dodger was living up to his name and leading them on a merry chase, looping back and forth through the barrens.
Though gloomy Garados grew ever taller and darker with storm clouds, Tavi ignored the glowering presence of the mountain and kept his focus on his work. Noon was well past when he finally caught up to the wily ram and his flock.
He heard the sheep before he saw them; one of the ewes let out plaintive bleats. He looked back over his shoulder, to where his uncle followed several dozen strides behind him, and waved a hand to let Bernard know he'd found them. He couldn't keep the grin off his face, and his uncle answered Tavi's smile with his own.
Dodger had led the flock into a dense thicket of brambles and thorns nearly as tall as Tavi himself and a hundred feet deep. Tavi spotted Dodger's curling horns and approached the old ram carefully, talking as he always did. Dodger snorted and pawed at the earth with his front hooves, shaking his curling horns threateningly. Tavi frowned at the ram and approached him more slowly. Dodger himself weighed better than a quarter ton, and the tough breed of mountain sheep the frontier folk of Alera favored, sheep big enough and strong enough to defend themselves against thanadents and worse, could become aggressive when threatened. Careless shepherds had been killed by their overexcited charges.
A sharp, sweet smell made Tavi stop in his tracks. He recognized the scent of slaughtered sheep, of offal and blood.
Something was very wrong.
Tavi approached more slowly, eyes carefully sweeping around. He found the first dead sheep, one of the lambs, several yards short of the brambles. He knelt down and studied the remains, searching for clues as to what had killed the animal.
It hadn't been slives. Slives could kill young sheep, even adults if they had numbers enough, but the poisonous lizards swarmed over corpses and ravaged them into strips of flesh and bared bones. The lamb was dead, but it only showed a single wound-a massive, clean cut that had nearly severed the lamb's head from its neck. A thanadent's talons might have been capable of inflicting such a wound, but when one of the great mountain beasts took a kill, it either devoured it on the spot or else dragged it off to a secluded lair to feed. Wolves-even the great wolves of the savage, barbarian infested wilds east of the Calderon Valley-could not have struck and killed so cleanly. And besides, any predator would have begun to devour the lamb. Beasts did not kill for sport.
The ground around the lamb was grossly disturbed. Tavi checked around quickly for tracks, but he found only the hoof-marks of the sheep and then some marks he was not familiar with, and could not even be sure were tracks. One partially disturbed track may have been the outline of a human heel, but it could as easily have been the result of a round stone being rolled out of its place.
Tavi rose, puzzled, and found two more corpses laying on the ground between the first lamb and Dodger's refuge in the thicket-another lamb and a ewe, both dead of similar massive, clean wounds. A powerful fury might have been capable of causing those wounds, but furies rarely attacked animals without being compelled to do so by their crafter. If an animal had not done the killings, only a man could have. He would need a viciously sharp blade-a long hunting knife or a sword, and might need fury-enhanced strength to help as well.
But the frontier valley rarely had visitors, and none of the holdfolk wandered through the pine barrens. Garados's looming presence made the land for miles about it seem heavy with apprehension, and it was nearly impossible to get a good night's sleep so near the old mountain.
Tavi looked up and frowned at Dodger, who remained in the entrance to the thicket, horns presented in warning, and Tavi suddenly felt afraid. What could have struck down those sheep that way? "Uncle?" Tavi called. His voice cracked a little. "Something is wrong."
Bernard approached, frowning, his eyes taking in Dodger and the flock,
then the dead sheep upon the ground. Tavi watched his uncle take it in, and then Bernard's eyes widened. He rose and drew the short, heavy sword of the legionare from his belt. "Tavi. Come over to me."
"What?"
Bernard's voice took on a sharp edge of anger and command that Tavi had never heard in uncle before. "Now."
Tavi's heart began to pound in his chest, and he obeyed. "What about the flock?"
"Forget them," Bernard said, his voice crisp and cold. "We're leaving."
"But we'll lose the sheep. We can't just leave them here."
Bernard passed the sword to Tavi, scanning slowly around them, and fitted an arrow to the string of his bow. "Keep the point low. Put your other hand on the small of my back and leave it there."
Tavi's fear rose sharply, but he forced it away and obeyed his uncle. "What's wrong? Why are we leaving?"
"Because we want to get out of the barrens alive." Bernard started pacing silently away from the thicket, his face set in concentration.
"Alive? Uncle, what could-"
Bernard tensed abruptly and spun to one side, lifting his bow.
Tavi turned with him and saw a flash of motion beyond a small stand of young trees before them. "What is th-"
There was a hissing wail from their opposite side. Tavi whipped his head around, but his uncle was slower, spinning his entire body with his bow at arm's length, an arrow drawn back to his cheek. Tavi could do little but watch their attacker come.
It looked like a bird-if a bird could be eight feet tall and mounted on a pair of long, powerful legs, thicker and stronger-looking than a racing horse's, and tipped with wicked claws. Its head sat on the end of a long, powerful, flexible neck, and sported a hawk's beak, enlarged many times, sharp-looking and viciously hooked. Its feathers were colored in all dark browns and blacks, though its eyes were a brilliant shade of gold.
The bird bounded forward, taking a pair of steps and leaping into the air, both claws coming forward to rake while it beat at the air with ridiculously undersized wings. Tavi felt his uncle shove at him with his hip as he turned, and fell away and to one side, Bernard between him and the oncoming horror.
Bernard loosed his arrow without sighting. The arrow flew, struck at a poor angle, and glanced off the thing's feathers, skittering away in a blur of
black and green fletching. The beast landed on Bernard, its claws raking, its vicious beak whipping forward and down toward him.
When hot droplets of his uncle's blood struck his face, Tavi began to scream.