Beloved Shepherd's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Beloved Shepherd had killed the same wolf four times, and tonight something worse was circling his father's flock. He crouched at the edge of the fire with the cyan sword across his knees and the staff planted in the dirt beside him. The woolly cattle-headed animals slept in a loose ring behind him, their horned heads tucked into thick fleece. One lamb twitched in its sleep. He watched the treeline instead of the lamb, because the lamb was alive and the thing in the trees wanted it not to be. He had seen the tracks at dusk. Bigger than the wolf's. The prints had scorched the grass black at the edges. That was new. He gripped the staff and felt like a boy holding a tool he had not earned. His father had put it in his hand two winters ago and told him he was ready. Beloved Shepherd was not sure his father had been right. He was sure only that the flock was his to keep alive tonight. A small winged shape dropped out of the dark and landed on his shoulder. The drakeling was no bigger than a cat, all sleek scales and quick eyes. It had been trailing him since spring. He never fed it. It stayed anyway. Now it stared at the treeline and made a low click in its throat. "Where," he whispered. The drakeling snapped its head left. He turned with it. Orange light bloomed between two trunks. Not fire. A face. Cracks of molten rock ran along a heavy jaw and down a shoulder built like an anvil. The hound stepped into the open and the grass under its paws curled and smoked. It was not the wolf. The wolf he understood. He stood. He set the staff down. The staff was for herding, and there was nothing to herd here except the thing in front of him. He took the cyan sword in both hands. The hound charged. Beloved Shepherd stepped inside the lunge the way his father had shown him with the wolf and drove the sword up under the jaw. The blade went in. The hound's weight carried them both to the ground. Heat came off it in waves. He held the hilt until the glow in the seams dimmed to the color of a cooling forge. He rolled the body off and sat up. His forearms were burned. The sword's edge had darkened where the magma had run down it. Behind him the flock had woken and was pressed together, silent, watching him the way they watched his father. The drakeling glided down and landed on the dead hound's flank. It looked past the fire, into the trees, and clicked again. Twice this time. Beloved Shepherd got to his feet. He picked up the staff. There was another one out there.