Conan of Venarium

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.