"Yes, Lord," replied Kenneth noncomittally from where he lounged against a tree, his long bow beside him.
Wiz paid no heed to the response. He continued to pace the little clearing as he talked, not really looking at Kenneth at all. The crusted snow crunched under his boots as he circled the open space among the leafless trees yet again.
"The wizards are right," Wiz went on. "Names are critical. You need a name that you can remember, that you can pronounce easily and that you aren’t likely to use in conversation." He smiled. "It wouldn’t do to ask someone to pass the salt and summon up a demon, would it?"
"No, Lord," said Kenneth tonelessly
Wiz never stopped talking, even though Kenneth was behind him now. "And most importantly, Kenneth, most importantly I need names that easily distinguish the named routine, uh, demon. I can’t afford to get mixed up."
"Yes, Lord."
"It’s a common problem in programming. There’s a trick to naming routines meaningfully without violating the conventions for the language or getting things confused." Wiz altered his stride slightly to avoid a spot where a dark rock had melted the snow into a dirty brown puddle. "Here I’m using a mixture of names of Unix utilities for routines that have cognates in Unix and made-up names for the entities that aren’t similar to anything. So I have to pick the names carefully."
"Yes Lord." Kenneth shifted slightly against the tree and squinted at the pale sun, which was almost touching the treetops. Fingers of shadow were reaching into the clearing, throwing a tangled net of blue across the golden snow and dirty slush alike.
"It’s especially important that I keep the difference in the similar routines straight," Wiz said. "I have to remember that "find" doesn’t work like "find" in Unix. In Unix…"
"Lord…" said Kenneth craning his neck toward the lowering sun.
"… the way you search a file is completely different. You . . ."
"Lord, get…"
A harsh metallic screech stopped Wiz in his tracks. He looked over his shoulder and glimpsed something huge and spiky outlined against the sun.
"Down!" Wiz dropped into the dirty slush as the thing barrelled over him. The wind of its passing stirred his hair and one of its great hooked talons slashed the hem of his cloak.
Open-mouthed, he looked up from the freezing mud in time to see a scaly bat-winged form of glittering gold zooming up from the clearing, one wing dipping to turn again even as its momentum carried it upward.
From across the clearing Kenneth’s bowstring sang and a tiny patch of pale blue daylight appeared in the membrane of the thing’s left wing close to the body. The creature craned its snaky golden neck over its shoulder and hissed gape-fanged at its tormentor.
Then it was diving on them again.
Wiz rolled and rolled toward the edge of the clearing, heedless of the snow and mud. Kenneth’s bow thrummed again and Wiz heard the whine of the arrow as it passed close to his right. Then the beast shrieked and there was a heavy thud as it struck earth. Wiz looked up to see the golden dragon-thing on the ground not five yards from him. The wings were still spread and the animal was using a wickedly-taloned hind leg to claw at the arrow protruding from its breast. There was a spreading scarlet stain on the glowing golden scales and the creature roared again in rage and pain.
Suddenly a second arrow sprouted a hand’s span from the first. The animal stopped pawing at the arrow in its chest and brought its head up to look across the clearing. There was a disquieting intelligence in its eyes. Its head snaked around and it caught sight of Wiz. Without hesitating the beast dropped its leg and started toward him.
Kenneth’s great bow sang yet again and another arrow appeared in the thing, in the shoulder this time. But the beast paid it no heed. It advanced on Wiz with a terrible evil hunger in its eyes.
Wiz whimpered and scrambled backward, but his heavy cloak had wrapped itself around his legs and it tripped him as he tried to rise.
The creature craned its neck forward eagerly and the huge fanged mouth gaped shocking red against the golden body. The arrows in the chest wobbled in time with its labored breathing and the dark red blood ran in rivulets down its body to stain the snow carmine.
Again an arrow planted itself in the thing’s body and again it jerked convulsively. But still it came on, neck craning forward and jaws slavering open as it struggled to reach Wiz.
The great eyes were golden, Wiz saw, with slit pupils closed down to mere lines. The fangs were white as fresh bone, so close Wiz could have reached out and touched them could he have freed an arm from the cloak.
Suddenly the beast’s head jerked up and away from its prey and it screamed a high wavering note like a steamwhistle gone berserk.
Wiz looked up and saw Kenneth, legs wide apart and his broadsword clasped in both hands as he raised it high for the second stroke against the long neck. The guardsman brought the blade down again and then again, slicing through the neck scales and into the corded muscle beneath with a meat ax thunk.
The beast twisted its neck almost into a loop, shuddered convulsively, as was suddenly still.
The silence of the clearing was absolute, save for the breathing of the two men, one of them panting in terror and the other breathing hard from exertion.
"Lord, are you all right?"
"Ye… yes," Wiz told him shakily. "I’ll be…" He drew a deep breath of cold air and went into a coughing fit. "What was that thing?"
"One of the League’s creatures," Kenneth said somberly. "Now you see why you must not walk alone, Lord."
Wiz goggled at the golden corpse pouring steaming scarlet blood from the rents in the neck. "That was for me?"
"I doubt it came here by accident," Kenneth said drily.
Wiz tried to stand, but the cloak still tangled him. He settled for rolling over onto his hands and knees and then working the entangling folds of cloth out of the way before rising.
"You saved my life. Thank you."
The guardsman shrugged. "It was Bal-Simba’s command that you be protected," he said simply. "Can you walk, Lord?"
"Yes. I can walk."
"Then we had best get you back to the compound. You’ll catch cold, wet as you are."
Wiz looked down at his soaked and muddy cloak and for the first time felt the icy chill of his wet garments. He shivered reflexively.
"Besides," Kenneth said thoughtfully, "it is beginning to get dark and mayhap there are more of the League’s creatures about."
Wiz shivered again and this time it had nothing to do with the cold.
Back at the compound, Shiara was concerned but not surprised at the attack.
"We could hardly expect to keep ourselves secret forever," she sighed. "Still, it will be inconvenient to have to be much on our guard. I think it would be best if you discontinued your walks in the Woods, Sparrow."
"I was thinking the same thing myself, Lady," Wiz said fervently from the stool in front of the fire where he huddled. Save for a clean cloak he was naked and the fire beat ruddy and hot on his pale skin as he held the garment open to catch as much warmth as possible.
"Uh, Lady… I thought we were supposed to be protected against attacks like that."
Shiara frowned. "Sparrow, in the Wild Wood there is no absolute safety. Even with all the powers of the North arrayed about us we would not be completely safe. With Bal-Simba’s protection we are fairly immune to magic attack and the forest folk will warn of any large non-magical party that approaches. But a single non-magical creature can slip through our watchers and wards all too easily."