Page 132 of Circle of Days

Gida stopped to give it some more meadowsweet, then walked on, pulling gently. The cow went along, making no noise.

Bez stood up and walked behind Gida. They had done all this without alerting the herders. Clearly silence was the key. They had got away with it—so far.

Suddenly Bez felt the brush of a wing against his cheek. He gave an involuntary shout of shock and fear. He heard a small animal squeal loudly and desperately. Gida screamed.

At his feet Bez saw a pigeon hawk struggling with a long-necked weasel. The hawk was big, its wingspan as long as a man’s arm, and the weasel no bigger than a man’s hand, but the little creature was fighting back, wriggling and biting. Nevertheless, the hawk rose into the air with the weasel in its talons, and a moment later was lost in the darkness of night. The weasel’s screams faded to nothing.

And the herders’ dog was barking maniacally.

“Go that way,” Bez said to Gida, pointing toward the oak tree. “As fast as you can, but don’t scare the cow. I’ll go in the opposite direction and create a distraction. Meet me in Round Wood.”

Gida calmly set off at a jog-trot with the cow.

Bez ran, bent over, around the outside of the herd toward a point east of where the barking came from. When he had covered a significant distance, he stopped and drew his flint knife from his shoulder bag. He stuck the point into the rump of a bull and quickly stepped behind another beast, putting the knife away and taking into both hands the heavy club.

The bull bellowed loud and deep, a noise that could be heard throughout the herd. Bez knelt down and listened carefully to the barking of the dog. He was able to tell that, as he hoped, the dog was moving toward him and away from Gida. He lifted the club and held it over his right shoulder, ready to strike.

He remained still. The dog came on, barking, and Bez could hear the running steps of the two herders. However, the dog moved faster among the cows, and in moments Bez saw it.

The dog saw him and bared its fangs. Bez knew he had to silence the dog with just one blow. The dog leaped at him. Bez swung the club and hit the dog in midair, striking it on the head just behind its ear. The dog fell to the ground and lay still.

Bez turned and ran.

He got out of the herd. Far to his right he could just about see Gida running with the cow behind her. She was well past the oak tree and would soon cross a rise and drop out of sight. To keep the attention of the herders away from her, Bez angled left. There was a patch of woodland ahead of him, too small to be home to a tribe: if he could reach that, they would never find him.

He was confident he could outrun herders. They were not hunters and rarely had reason to run, except for their quickrunner messengers. Woodlanders hunted deer, so they had to run fast.

The herders may have come to the same conclusion, for the running footsteps behind him ceased. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that they had not given up, but had stopped to aim their bows. He immediately began to run in a zigzag, to make it difficult for them to sight on him. Two arrows went wide and landed ahead of him, but he knew their aim would improve. He quickened his pace with a huge effort, and doubled his zigzags. The arrows came closer, but none hit, and soon they began to fall short. He was out of range. The herders started running again, but it was no good: he was too far away. They stopped, doubtless reasoning that they could not catch him now.

He made it to the copse and slipped into the bushes. Looking back through the leaves, he saw the two herders walking disconsolately back to the herd, carrying their bows.

We did it, he thought. We are now cattle thieves.

He began to think about how to do it better next time.

The elders met at Riverbend to discuss a message brought from the west by a quickrunner, a young woman called Fali. She had said: “Zad asks me to tell you that we are losing one cow every night to thieves. We assume they are woodlanders of Bez’s tribe. They come at night and quietly lead a cow away without making any noise.”

Scagga immediately said: “This cannot go on. We herder folk will be wiped out if we carry on losing cattle at this rate.”

Ani was outraged. “It’s your fault!” she burst out. “They wouldn’t need to steal if you hadn’t destroyed their habitat!”

“I couldn’t help it!” Scagga said.

He would have said more but Keff interrupted. “Ani and Scagga, there’s no point in arguing about whose fault this is. We have to look to the future. What are we going to do to stop this thieving?”

Jara spoke. She was a new elder, the sister of Scagga, but more reasonable. “We can’t stop it,” she said. “They will carry on stealing cows because their alternative is to starve to death.”

She was probably right, Ani thought despairingly.

Scagga backed his sister. “We have to wipe out the entire tribe of Bez,” he said. “Otherwise we will starve instead of them.”

Ani decided to oppose Scagga’s belligerence by raising a practical issue. “Do you know where Bez’s tribe is living?”

“West Wood.”

“What little is left of it.” Ani shook her head. “They’re not stupid; they’ll be hiding out somewhere.”

“Not necessarily. Perhaps they are stupid.”