15

The sheep already in the stone corral made a warm, low sound as Garric approached with the last of the herd, a dozen ewes from Beilin. Bodger, the white-eared milch ewe, angled away from the rest of the herd as soon as she saw that Garric didn't have his full attention on her.

He tightened his lips and reached over the backs of three more docile sheep to rap her sharply with the tip of his unstrung bow. Garric and Cashel didn't carry crooks. Attacks by seawolves were rare, but anybody minding sheep near Barca's Hamlet had to be prepared for them. The bow and Cashel's quarterstaff made adequate prods and levers for the normal duties of a shepherd, and that way the weapons were handy when the unexpected lizard writhed in from the sea.

Cashel waited by the gate into the corral with a pan and a bag in his hands. He clucked meaningfully and called, "Bodger! Get back here."

The ewe who'd ignored Garric's touch immediately closed back with the rest of her fellows. They began passing the narrow gate. As each sheep entered, Cashel dropped a bean from the bag into the pan.

"There's twelve of them, like we expected," Garric said.

"Good," Cashel said. "I'd been afraid he'd hold out Bodger after all. Must be a hundred times I've heard him say, 'Never had a milker like her, lad.' Let some poor fool on Sandrakkan worry about her breaking her neck or drowning herself, I say."

He continued his tally, a bean for a sheep, just as if his friend hadn't spoken. Cashel was like that: finishing each job the way he'd started it, with no shortcuts and no mistakes. Sometimes he made Garric want to scream with frustration, but you never had to worry about the task being done right—eventually.

Garric gently headed off a young ewe who started to wander away when she wasn't able to enter the corral immediately. "No," he said, "Beilin must have finally listened to you; or maybe it was just the price Benlo was offering."

The last of the sheep passed inside. Cashel set the pan down and emptied the sack of counters into his palm as Garric placed the three wooden bars into slotted stones to close the gate. Beilin's sheep were the last of the fifty which the drover had purchased.

"You know," Garric said, "Beilin's farm is right on the Carcosa Road. We could have picked them up when we passed tomorrow and saved a mile and a half either way."

Cashel shook his head. "I want the whole herd to be used to moving together from the start," he said. "Sheep take time to get used to new ideas."

He popped the half-dozen extra beans into his mouth and chewed with quiet contentment. In the morning and at every halt on the drive, Cashel would count the beans out into the pan again.

Garric laughed. "Well, I'm your assistant," he said. "I just do what you tell me, master."

Cashel looked at him, though it wasn't until he'd finished chewing and swallowed that he said, "Garric, I'll be glad of your company, but I still worry about you coming along. I don't trust this Benlo. He's a wizard."

"So you're safe but I'm not?" Garric said. "I don't see that."

Cashel shook his head. "It's you he's after," he explained. "Tenoctris and I watched him raise a glamour to find you. Did she tell you that? Just before the lich attacked."

"I figured something like that," Garric admitted. He felt uncomfortable thinking of himself as somebody important to a wealthy stranger, much less talking to a friend about it. "I asked her to come along because she'll know better than I would if there's something we ought to, you know, be worrying about."

"Anyway..." Cashel said. "I want to get away from here, so I'd take the chance to go with Benlo if he was a seawolf walking on his hind legs. Because of Sharina."

"Well," Garric said, looking out to sea. Neither youth wanted to meet the other's eyes at this moment. "I guess if that's what you want."

Garric's life was being disrupted by outside forces. He fingered his calf where the seawolf had torn him; the twinge in the muscles was little more than he'd have expected from the day's normal labors. And the trireme, and Benlo, and even Tenoctris; though he felt as good about the castaway's arrival as he did about the fine spring weather.

But Cashel's life was coming to pieces as well, and in his case the blows were being delivered by his own mind. How could anyone care so much about a girl? Sure, Garric missed his sister too, but to choose to throw up your whole settled life because of Sharina...Well, Cashel's decision was nobody else's business.

"I wonder," Cashel said, "what Benlo would have done if you'd refused to come."

Garric nodded, glad both of the changed subject and the chance to discuss a question he'd puzzled over. "I don't see there was anything he could have done about it," he said carefully. "I mean, he had his guards, but there's too many men in the borough for that to have made any difference. We wouldn't let one of our own be dragged off like a pig to the butcher."

"He's a wizard, though," Cashel said. "That doesn't mean much to you, I guess, because you were asleep through it. It made me tingle all over to watch. I don't think you ought to count on being able to get free of Benlo once you go off with him. We're strong, you and me; but it isn't his guards I worry about."

Garric nodded, pretending to watch the cloud bank paralleling the coast about five miles off shore. "Well," he said, "shall we head back?"

"I'm spending the night here," Cashel said. "I've got my cloak and supper. The sheep need to get used to me as part of the flock too."

Garric punched his friend's shoulder gently, then looked at him with a wry smile. "It isn't just sheep that have trouble with new ideas," he said. "But I guess I'll learn."

He started down the hill toward the hamlet, whistling a jig that he'd learned from one of the trireme's sailors.