Shepherd (A Talion Story)

Copyright ©1991 Michael A. Stackpole

I swung down out of the saddle and tied Wolf’s reins to a maple tree. I patted his neck, watched and listened. Wolf was smart for a horse and remained silent while I studied the meadow beyond the woods’ edge. We were almost alone.

Argent sunlight reflected from long, green summer grasses. Gold stalks of wild wheat waved in the breeze while bluebells and pine branches danced at the wind’s urging. Bees darted unerringly between flowers while butterflies, brilliantly lit in shades of yellow or orange, floated from plant to plant. Off to my left, hidden amid the forest of tall cattails, a small stream gurgled through the meadow.

If not for the flies, it would have been perfect. Black specks buzzed without end. They circled and landed, so small yet so demanding of attention. Their bodies were the color of oily bubbles; the vibrant false color that fades to dull black when subjected to harsh scrutiny. For the barest of moments, though I understood their part and purpose in life, I hated the clouds of them hanging over her.

She had been young — barely fourteen or fifteen. Her hair, what little of the curly locks that remained unmatted with blood, was white blond. Her eyes, staring blindly up at the sun, were blue. Her face had none of the elfin beauty they’d described to me. Her body was broken and twisted.

I dropped to one knee beside her. Flies rose, angrily hummed and landed on me until I scattered them with a shake of my head. Then they hovered over or landed on nearby plants, waiting for me to leave. I shook my head again. They would feast on her no more.

I could only study her body for a minute because the villagers from Grifmont were following close behind me. I knew just from looking at her that she’d been beaten to death and mutilated thereafter. Though her throat had been cut, there was little blood, which meant she was dead before her body was slashed. She was not a pretty sight and it was clear the knifeman had enjoyed his work.

I reached over and gently closed her eyes.

I nodded to myself and stood. I knew the identity of her killer. I untied Wolf’s reins and led the bay stallion back from the meadow down the woods’ trail. I met the villagers coming around the first corner I reached.

Her mother and father clung to each other and walked three steps behind the village headman. “Did you find her?” the headman demanded of me.

I nodded. I looked away from him and directly into her mother’s eyes. She and her daughter shared the same color eyes and, staring into those deep blue depths, I faltered. “Kara died painlessly. I would guess she was led away from Grifmont willingly then knocked out. She felt nothing.”

She clenched her jaw to stop it from trembling. Her husband hugged her and whispered in her ear, but she did not hear him. Her fist tightened and twisted more of his tunic. She stared at me, fury burning all weakness from her. “Do you speak the truth?”

The headman whirled on her. “Quiet woman, he tells the truth. He’s a Talion isn’t he? He cannot lie!” The headman turned his white haired head to me and smiled. “No offense meant to you, my lord Talion, but she’s distraught.”

No one there so much as breathed. All the townsfolk stared at me and willed me to forgive her. I was a Talion, worse yet a Justice. I was one of the lonely folk enforcing laws of an empire that collapsed in disorder and civil war a thousand years ago. My word was law, and my sentence was death.

All of them knew that. They believed I would strike her dead for heated words spoken in anger. I knew the words were not directed at me as much as they were directed at the gods or demons that must have conspired to take her daughter away from her. She wanted to believe I was right, that Kara had felt nothing, but any pain her daughter could have suffered was her pain as well.

No Justice, no matter how inhumanly cold-hearted, could take offense at her words.

I breathed out slowly. “Kara felt no pain.”

Macinne, the headman, sighed audibly. “You being a Justice, you’ll be wanting to go after him, eh?”

“That is my intention. His day of judgment is long overdue.” I balled my right hand into a fist. Despite the noon warmth my palm was ice cold. The headman glanced at my fist and shuddered. He’d seen the death’s-head tattoo on it earlier, and spotted me as a Justice immediately.

Some of the other villagers grumbled a bit, but the headman shook his head. “Well, we figgered it would come to this. No one will get in your way. He may have been good to us in the past, but no more. You’ll find him up in the castle’s crypt, or so the legends say.”

I frowned. “What castle? You can’t be talking about the girl’s killer. Hasan ra Kas has never been good to anyone, and, to the best of my knowledge, he’s never even been in Leth before this.”

The headman returned my frown. “I don’t know who this Hasan is. She was cut, eh, like a lamb being slaughtered?” At that, Kara’s mother broke and cried out, but it didn’t stop Macinne for a second. “It was the Duke what did it to her, Talion. He’s been awake again recent. Killed a dog and some sheep in Elmford and a calf in Clayton on the same night a week or so ago. Makes sense he’d take something from Grifmont.”

Neighbors led the girl’s parents back down the mountainside while a group of men climbed further up to retrieve the girl’s body. I snorted and snarled. “That’s impossible, those towns are twenty miles apart — thirty by the road. It couldn’t be done. No man, even with a fast horse, could do it in one night.”

The old man narrowed his brown eyes. “The Duke, Griff ra Leth, can do it.”

The second he said the name I recognized it. Another Talion, an Elite from Leth, used to tell stories of his homeland. His favorite tales, best told around a roaring campfire when the world ceases to exist outside the fire’s dome of light, were of Griff, the Demon Duke of Leth. “Nolan, have you heard this one?” he’d ask, then launch into a grisly tale of murder and necromancy. I remembered the stories all too well; just hearing the Duke’s name sent shivers scurrying down my spine.

The old man seated himself on a fallen log. “Aye, Talion, Duke Griff could do it. You don’t know the tales of the old days like I do. I’ve lived in Grifmont, in the shadow of Castel Griffin, for all my life. My family’s been here for ten generations. My grandfather died at Duke Griff’s hands, and he came back and killed my Grandmother. We ended up burning both of them so they’d be free of the Duke.”

My eyes narrowed. Pieces of Erlan’s stories came back. “I know of the Duke. A friend of mine, a Talion, told me of him.”

The old man snorted. “Sure, and he’d be knowing the Duke better than I? No, Talion, you don’t know the Duke. You and your friend have not lived here and heard the beasts of the forest scream when he takes them. A rogue bear, a human bandit, those he and his legion of wolves take when they can. When he can’t….” He nodded uphill toward the meadow.

I shook my head. “Doesn’t sound like the Duke Griff I was told about. A noble who experimented with demons; a man who killed his vassals to find an elixir of immortality. He died three centuries ago. You’ve nothing to fear from him, he’s a tale to scare children. Besides, Hasan ra Kas killed the girl.”

The old man stabbed a bony finger at me. “You’ve been fooled like all the rest, Talion. They don’t remember the terror from before, like it’s been told from father to son in my family. He’s real, Talion, and it’ll take the like of you to destroy him.” He rubbed his chin and looked far away. “Going to lay a witching line around the village tonight, that’s certain,” he mumbled.

The old man’s superstitious fear infuriated me. “That may well work to keep a vampire at bay, old man, but my mission is to destroy Hasan ra Kas, and a witching line won’t even slow him down. He murdered the girl and he probably had two of his men kill the animals on the same night in Elmford and Clayton just to make you think the Duke was real and haunting these woods. You’d be better off seeing to it that no one strays from Grifmont until I return with Hasan’s head.”

The old man didn’t hear my explanation. I could not tell him that I was certain Hasan lurked nearby because a shipment of gold from Memkar — meant to pay off debts in Imperiana — was to travel through the area in a day or two. It was a caravan Hasan meant to rob. The headman was lost in his belief that a man three centuries dead was responsible for the girl’s death. Compromising the caravan’s security would do nothing to sway him.

The old man hawked and spat to the side. “I’ll not be the man to call a Justice a fool. I hope you’re right, Talion, because a runner from Clayton arrived in Grifmont after you went out hunting. The Duke took a girl, name of Rori, from there last night.” The headman looked beyond me and pointed up at the ruined Castel atop Griffin Mountain. “There’s your answer, Talion. Up there, that’s the key.”

***

I let the headman vanish down the trail, leading the men who carried the blanket upon which they laid the girl’s remains. Another blanket covered her and one of the men picked bluebells and laid them on her chest. I nodded solemnly to the bearers, then crossed in their wake, unhitched Wolf from a tree and mounted up.

I waited for the old man to leave because I was bound for Castel Griffin. The ruins squatted on the mountaintop like an obscenely obese gray toad. The rubble from crumbling walls lay in piles around the castle’s base as if rolls of fatty flesh flowing down to obliterate any outline of the castle’s true structure. It did not look inviting, but I refused to think of it as haunted by Duke Griff or anything else. This, despite the fact the only reason it remained there at all was because no one in the area dared steal stones from it for their own homes.

The old man had been right in one respect, the castle was the key. From Castel Griffin I’d be able to see the whole of the surrounding territory, from Elmford to Clayton and down into the valley where the road ran through Grifmont. I knew Hasan and the men he had with him were very cautious, but there was a chance they might light a small fire visible from the mountain, and that was a chance I had to take to narrow down the my search area.

It took me the better part of the afternoon to reach the mountain’s summit. Higher western peaks nibbled on the sun and shrouded the castle in deep shadows. I tied Wolf to a tree and let him graze on the summer grass while I climbed the last hundred yards to the castle’s shattered front gate and walked into the rubble strewn courtyard.

At the first sound I crouched and held my right hand out to the right in case I had to summon my tsincaat. Other Justices were far better at that trick than I — the ability to call our swords to the death’s-head tattoo in our right palms — but even I knew it was swifter to summon the blade than to draw it manually. But my cautionary reaction was not needed because the creature that made the sound poked its head through a gap in the rocks and bleeted softly at me. It was a sheep.

I stood slowly with a grin on my face. The sheep backed and turned away when I stepped forward. The overgrown courtyard held a flock of thirty or forty sheep. Across the courtyard from me, the shepherd appeared in a doorway leading into the manor’s ruins. He stared at me for a second, then smiled and bowed his head in my direction.

“Welcome. You are a Talion, are you not?” His voice was rich and his words courteous. He spoke haltingly, as if he was not used to speaking with people.

I bowed my head in return and relaxed. “Yes, I am a Talion. I did not expect to find anyone up here. Grifmont’s headman said…”

The shepherd tossed his head back and laughed, cutting me off. “He said his grandfather slew his grandmother under the Duke’s influence. The headmen in Elmford and Clayton would tell you the same thing if you spoke to them. I think they are all cousins. You expected to meet Duke Griff?”

I shook my head and smiled broadly. Perhaps it was my expectation of finding something sinister here and being presented with nothing more harmful than a shepherd, but whatever the reason, I felt quite at ease. The shepherd stood just above average height, which made him somewhat smaller than me, and was rather lean and hard. His hair was brown and touched with gray at the temples. Crow’s-feet lined his face at the corners of his eyes and his hands looked calloused from hard work. His clothing was decently made of brown and gray wool, but had been patched several times.

I chuckled. “Grifmont’s headman would have me believing the Duke was still up here, but I don’t believe it. Actually I was half expecting to find a bandit scout in these ruins.” I looked back out the gateway and toward the wooded hillsides looming over the nearly invisible roadway. “Out there, somewhere, is a motley bunch of land pirates.” I turned back. “They’ve killed one girl already, have abducted another and murdered livestock in a couple of places such that the villagers believe the Duke is back prowling.”

The shepherd nodded grimly. “And you thought you’d wait up here until dark and spot their fire.”

I nodded.

He waved me to a rock and seated himself on another one facing it. “Even though the mountains have swallowed the sun, it’ll be a bit before it’s dark enough to spot a fire. You’re welcome to wait here until then. I don’t often get company….”

I sat. “So, why aren’t you afraid of the Duke?”

My question shocked him. He looked up, frowned for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. He’s really a tragic figure, you know…”

I raised an eyebrow. “How is he tragic? As I understand it he did horrid things to the people around here. I can’t see anything romantic or tragic in his crimes.”

The shepherd shook his head. “Of course you can’t. You’re a Justice. You have a purpose to your life. You have a goal. You’ll go out and destroy these bandits and you’ll be lauded for it. Because you’re a Talion you only look at the result of the crime, you don’t have to look at the root causes of it.”

I frowned and wiped my forehead on my left sleeve. “I’m not willing to fully concede that point to you, but I will agree that by the time I am sent out after someone that person has such a catalog of crimes to his name that he is often considered mad. But how could the Duke’s motive excuse his crimes?”

“I never said he was innocent, I said he was tragic,” the shepherd countered. “The Duke was a man so terrified of dying that he did anything he could, things that horrified him and made him sick, to forestall the inescapable.”

“Yes, but I understand he even slew his newly born son in his mad search for immortality.”

“Certainly, Talion, but can you imagine how that had to have torn him up? Can’t you see that at the end of his quest he would finally beg for an end to the hideous existence he now called life? Could anyone want to live forever when that life means slaying anyone and anything dear to you?” The shepherd fell silent, then continued with some effort. “Some of the minstrels try to deal with that by suggesting the Duke rises to watch over those he used to abuse, but no one ever pays attention to those stories. No one thinks about the depth of pain that must drive someone to try and make amends like that.” The shepherd shook his head slowly and looked down at his feet.

I said nothing. I sensed a need in him to talk and perhaps justify his own existence in the light of his discussion of the Duke. I knew there were no words I could voice that would help him or encourage him.

Finally he looked up with a pain-shot expression on his face. “I know what it is to be an outcast. I know how it feels to have everyone fear and loathe you. Imagine that for eternity, Talion, and then decide if there is any crime worth that punishment.”

I pursed my lips and studied the silhouette of the tumbled castle walls before answering him. His statement told me more about him than he could ever imagine. He was like a thousand other men hiding throughout the Shattered Empire. At some point in his life he made a mistake and fled. He was not truly evil and could never join the outlaw bands that roamed the countryside, like Hasan and his men. He found solace in solitude, and worked on earning his own forgiveness. It would be a long time in coming, but it would make him a better man than any number of years in a prison or slave mine.

I nodded slowly. “No, I think you are correct. There is no crime worthy of an eternity of hatred.” I forced a smile to break the tension. “So I take it that you and the Duke have worked out an arrangement to share his castle?” I waved my hand to take in the ruins about us and to suggest the accommodations were fantastic.

This brought a smile back to his face. “Well, Talion, you must understand that the Duke is supposed to be a vampire lurking in the crypts deep below this castle. If the legends are true it means he wakes once every two or three weeks and comes out to feed.” He smiled and pointed to his sheep. “On those occasions he takes one of my sheep, though he is quite clever about it…”

“Oh,” I asked. “Clever, is he?”

The shepherd nodded confidently. “He always makes it look as if one of his wolf legion took it.”

I laughed aloud. “Crafty these ancient vampires, eh?”

The shepherd joined me. “Very crafty, Talion.”

***

In the complete darkness Hasan’s fire winked like a lighthouse beacon to draw me in. I spotted the fire instantly from the mountaintop and the shepherd pointed me to a trail that would cut my time reaching the fire by at least an hour. I strapped my tsincaat across my back, let my daggerlike ryqril ride in its sheath at the small of my back and hung a pouch with four poisoned throwing darts at my right hip.

I silently approached the bandit camp on foot. I left Wolf back up at the castle under the shepherd’s care. He promised to watch over the horse despite his name, and it pleased Wolf to have a spot out of the wind. By the time I reached the crest of the hill overlooking the bandit camp, the Wolf moon — big and full — rode high in the sky and bathed the forest in silver light.

Hasan posted sentries in positions that gave them a command of the surrounding area in daylight, but were useless at night. The first guard I saw silhouetted himself against the moon. Careless and cold, he stamped his feet loudly enough to enable me to sneak up on him and knock him out before he could shout for help. I tied and gagged him, then moved in closer.

Further along I discovered that the bandit camp was set up on a stretch of dry, sandy river bottom. Around it grew scrubby bushes that made any silent approach a difficult problem. While I had enough cover to conceal myself, it was so dense, and full of thorns, that my original plan — sneak into the camp, free the girl and then take Hasan — was obviously not going to work. Before I could decide on a secondary course of action, though, Hasan took all my choice away from me.

“Talion, you might as well come in. We know you are out there. We have the girl and your friend.” Hasan laughed in his deep bass voice, and Rori screamed.

“Talion, stay out. They don’t know where you are…” The shepherd’s shout ended abruptly, and the sound of flesh striking flesh punctuated it. The girl screamed again.

That was enough for me. “Fine, Hasan, you have won. I’m coming in.” I cut through the brush and reached a narrow path leading through to the camp. I trotted along it and formulated a quick plan which I would decide whether or not to put into action when I reached the clearing.

I broke through the brush, took a quick look around, and made my decision immediately. Rori was bound by her wrists to a deadwood log set upright in the sand on this side of the bonfire. Her tattered clothing hung open and firelight caressed her pale flesh. Her brown hair was matted and tangled, and her dark eyes were rimmed with red from crying. She slumped at the base of the post and her chest heaved with silent sobs.

The shepherd was down on the sand. A man I recognized from Grifmont — which explained how Hasan knew I was out there — stood over him with his fists balled. The shepherd was bleeding from a split lip, but other than that looked uninjured.

Two other men stood with Hasan on the far side of the camp. One was the sentry I’d taken down and the other was someone who probably had been sent out to relieve him or had followed me to Castel Griffin, captured the shepherd and then followed me back to the camp.

Eight bandits stood in the camp. Two were armed with crossbows and they had them pointed at me. The other men had swords, but only two had them drawn. Everyone looked somewhat at ease, or drunk, hence my swift decision.

Instead of slowing to surrender, as anticipated, I increased my speed. I swerved to run at an angle to both crossbowmen. Each man triggered his weapon, but hitting a running figure at night is not an easy task and the bolts whistled wide of their intended mark — for which I was grateful.

I flicked my right hand in one bowman’s direction and threw a dart at him. The six inch long needle tip jabbed into his left shoulder. It opened only a small wound, but the toxin dropped the man to his knees and flat onto his back in a matter of seconds.

I summoned my tsincaat to hand and engaged the first bandit even as the shepherd kicked up and smashed his shin into his assailant’s groin. The shepherd thrust his falling foe aside as if the man was but a child, and rolled to his feet. My foe blocked further sight of the shepherd.

I parried the bandit’s overhand blow and whipped my tsincaat down and across his chest. He caught the first half of my slash on his left forearm, which laid it open to the bone, but the second half of the slash hit home. I cut him just below the ribs on his right side and he reeled away trying to staunch the flow of blood.

A second bandit sailed in at me and slashed the air before him with tremendous scimitar cuts. In an instant I measured his timing and lunged as he drew his sword back for another blow. I ducked below the cut, stabbed him through the chest and he sagged to the sand. The momentum of his fruitless blow twisted his dead body all awry.

I shifted the tsincaat to my left hand and threw another dart. This one hit the bandit rushing at the shepherd’s unprotected back. The bandit spun and arched his back as his hands vainly clawed at the dart quivering dead center. The shepherd backhanded the bandit he was fighting and that man bounced backward and flopped to the ground. I heard the sound of the blow and could tell, just from the way he collapsed, the shepherd had broken the bandit’s neck.

I looked up and time slowed to a nightmare dream-pace where each second took an hour and though I knew exactly what was to happen, I could do nothing but play my part and watch the bloody tragedy blossom before me.

Hasan — dark haired, fully bearded and dressed in studded leather armor — pointed at the girl and commanded the second crossbowman, who had nocked another bolt by then, to shoot her. She screamed and the shepherd dove toward her. The crossbowman shot and I arced a dart at him. My dart hit his neck even as the crossbow bolt struck the shepherd and flipped him over onto his back. My last dart was a second too late and sliced through open air as Hasan ducked and broke into the woods.

I ran to the shepherd and skidded to a stop in the sand on my knees. Rori screamed and stared wide-eyed at the bubbling scarlet ruin of the shepherd’s stomach. The bolt twitched as he breathed and blood welled up around the wound. I shuddered because I knew there was nothing I could do for him.

The girl continued to scream. I whirled and shouted at her. “Be quiet, Rori!” I showed her the death’s-head on my right palm. She looked from me to the shepherd in utter, mindless terror and fainted.

“Talion,” the shepherd whispered with blood rising to his lips, “take the bolt out.”

I shook my head. “It won’t help, shepherd. It’ll be bad for you. It’ll be more pain.”

He grabbed my right hand with incredible strength and dragged it over to the bolt. “Pull it, Talion.” Pain seared his features into an inhuman mask. “I cannot die like this!”

I wrapped my hand around the bolt’s shaft. I pulled but it was stuck. I couldn’t see clearly but I was sure the head was lodged in his spine. “It’s in solid, too solid. It will tear you up. I can’t hurt you like that!” I trembled with rage at my inability to save him.

Again I felt his hand, weaker this time, on my own hand. “Talion, I am beyond hurt. I would not die like this…”

His voice reached inside me and said there was a way to ease his pain. Perhaps there would be more physical pain — for a moment that might feel like a century — but there would be no emotional anguish. I looked down at him and nodded.

I took firm hold of the bolt and ripped it free. He screamed in agonies I hope never to know, then fell silent.

I stood, blood streaming from my hands, and screamed at the Wolf moon. “Now, Hasan, I come for you!”

I summoned my tsincaat and ran into the woods. Around me I heard the howl of wolves echo through the moonlit forest, but I felt none of the fear or dread I would have normally expected. I ran in a effortless lope — a stride that conformed to my mental image of a wolf running for miles and miles — and ate up ground greedily.

Though it was dark, Hasan’s pathway might as well have been lit by torches. Trees held shreds of cloth out for my inspection. Pine needles and dead leaves parted to show me where Hasan had run. Broken sticks fell and pointed out the bandit’s path, and a muddy stretch of ground showed where a root had tripped him and left him sprawled out. It was as though every plant in the forest was outraged at the murders within its demense and wanted to reveal the murderer to me.

Finally I knew I was getting close. Hasan had run around the perimeter of his camp, found, then took flight along one of the trails his sentries blazed through the woods. This strategy made him easier to follow, but it also gave him greater speed through the woods. I assumed he was heading for wherever his group had hobbled their mounts. The second this thought occurred to me I heard more wolves howl and the frightened neighing of horses. I turned toward the sound and cut through the brush.

That was a mistake. While it slashed distance from the chase, it also left me running through the woods without the safety of the trail. Thorn bushes tore at me and tree branches slashed at my face. Still, none of these natural hazards could stop me, and none of them did. I fell prey to Hasan’s planning and a trap his men had set out days ago.

Suddenly a loop closed about my right foot and whipped it up behind me. My body pivoted and my face slammed into the loam. The snare pulled me up and back. I smashed into a tree and stars exploded before my eyes. Pain burst through my head, back and ankle a second before I blacked out completely.

I came back out of it only a moment or two later, but by that time I was lost. My tsincaat was gone. I could not see it, and with the agony shooting through my head I could not concentrate enough to summon it. I felt behind me for my ryqril but it, too, had vanished in the dark carpet of leaves and ferns below me. I hung there limply, spinning slowly. The world swam in and out of focus. I felt blood running from the back of my head and heard it drip on the ferns below me like wine from a loose cask spigot.

A stick snapped to my right. I could do nothing but wait until I turned in that direction. I reached out and touched the tree enough to stop me and upside-down Hasan came into focus.

“So, you came for me, eh, Talion?” He laughed mercilessly. “I’ll kill you with your own sword.” Hasan brandished my tsincaat. “Will that make you happy?”

Before I could even attempt an answer, a chorus of wolf-howls shattered Hasan’s confidence. He looked nervously around the woods and raised the sword when he saw the titanic wolf-shape back lit by the moon crouched on the crest of a small hill facing me. Slowly and horribly hundreds of other wolves flanked that figure. Though I could only see in one direction I knew we were surrounded. The Duke’s Legion had found us.

The first wolf we’d seen trotted forward but by the time he reached the level area where Hasan stood he had changed. Halfway down the hill he took to running on his hind feet alone, and by the time he reached us he was fully human.

Fear gathered like a thunderhead in my stomach. Duke Griff stood there before me! A massive hooded cloak shrouded him and was black enough to have been cut from shadow itself. I could not see his features, but his eyes sparkled with red highlights. He raised one arm and pointed a shadow-sheathed finger at Hasan.

“You have killed in our forest!” His voice rasped like dry dead leaves skittering wind-driven across cobblestones. “You have done abominable things accounted to us. We do not tolerate that.” The Duke took a step forward and the wolves growled as one.

Hasan took a step back, then held my tsincaat forward. “‘Ware, vampire. This blade is enchanted. With it I can kill you.” Confidence crept into Hasan’s voice as the Duke hesitated for a moment. “Be gone and leave this Talion to me.”

Anger flashed through me, and terror crept in as rage evaporated. I was powerless. Hanging there like a carcass in a butcher’s bazaar stall, I could do nothing to either combatant. Who to wish victory upon? If Hasan won — and my tsincaat made that a distinct possibility — he’d cut my throat and might have time to gather more men to take the caravan. If the Duke won, a human monster would be slain, but an inhuman monster would be left to roam free. Just because he didn’t murder Kara, and the shepherd felt he was tragic, there was no reason for me to believe he wasn’t capable of repeating the crimes he’d performed in his lifetime.

Hasan took a half-step forward and brandished the tsincaat more confidently. “Back, vampire, I’ve given you fair warning!”

The Duke laughed. His voice echoed within itself, as if he laughed within a closed hall. “Hasan ra Kas, you do not scare me. Nothing, not even a magic sword, will stop me from slaying you.”

The vampire darted forward in a swirl of cloak and raked Hasan’s chest with his right hand. I heard Hasan’s shirt tear and the gasp driven from him by the stinging pain of the wounds scored across his torso. Still, the bandit rose up on his toes and arched his body so the blow would not disembowel him and brought my tsincaat down on the vampire’s back. Hasan spun away from the blow and the vampire crumpled as he passed his victim.

The wolves howled and started down the hillside, but the vampire raised a hand and they stopped. The vampire staggered as he gathered his feet beneath himself and stood again. He weaved unsteadily and I could see the pain-fired stiffness in his posture.

Hasan probed his wounds with his left hand, and grinned when he realized they were trivial. “Come, vampire, you and all your wolves, too. Tonight there will be a new Duke in these forests!” taunted Hasan. He struck a guard position and waved the Duke forward with his left hand. “Come and die, ancient one. Your time is ended.”

I saw the vampire drop into a crouch and I knew, as much as I feared and loathed him, I had to act. I forced all pain from my head, reached out with my mind, and summoned my tsincaat. But before I felt its hilt safe in my palm, the world swam and pain swallowed me whole.

***

Dawn came and with it my senses returned. I awoke at the base of the tree. A noose still encircled my ankle, and had attached to it about a dozen feet of rope. The end had been gnawed through. Beside me Rori lay sleeping.

I looked up and saw an old, gray wolf rise to his paws. He looked at me and I nodded at him. He raised his head back, let loose with a howl, then turned and trotted off up the hill. All around us other wolves, six or so, also rose and ambled after him. I was awake so their task was done.

I worked the snare-line off my ankle and stood. My ankle was tender so I hopped back away from the tree. A flash of red caught my eye. I looked up, started, and fell down.

I suppose the fact that I’d awakened at all should have told me how the fight turned out, but until that moment I’d not thought about the victor’s identity. When I looked up and stared into Hasan’s dead eyes, the night’s black horror flooded back.

The vampire had ripped Hasan’s head from his body and jammed it on a branch above where I’d hung. The insane look on Hasan’s face was one I am not likely to forget, ever.

I woke Rori up and sent her off to see if the bandits’ horses were still nearby before I knocked Hasan’s head off the tree and tossed it away where she would not see it. She yelled that the horses were still there and when I followed her I was only slightly surprised to see Wolf munching grass right alongside the bandits’ mounts.

I led the horses back to Grifmont and left four of them with the family that lost Kara. I knew the animals could in no way replace a member of the family — nor did I intend them to — but I did know they could replace the money the girl might have earned over the next few years. The other horses I sent to the people who’d lost livestock to Hasan and his men while they roamed the area.

I stayed in Grifmont two days, both to recover and wait for the gold caravan. A witchwife managed to clean my scalp wound and sewed it up so it healed without a scar. While I waited I took one trip out to the bandit camp. I found nothing there but lots of wolf tracks and the four darts I’d used on bandits. There were no bodies.

I left Grifmont with the caravan.

***

A fortnight later a cold mist seeped from a stone coffin deep within the heart of Castel Griffin. It was thinner than the white smoke produced by sacrificial incense, yet it was thicker than a seafog. It hung in the air for a moment, gathering and roiling like a stormcloud, then it drifted into the form of a man. Slowly it became opaque and took on color.

I shifted, let my blanket drop from my shoulders and stood. “I wanted to thank you, my lord, for saving my life, but I don’t know the proper way to thank a vampire.”

The vampire studied me with cold, red eyes, then he smiled. “And I should thank you, Talion, for saving my life. Twice, in fact.” His smile once again brought life to the shepherd’s face. “If you had not pulled the quarrel from my chest I would have died.”

I bowed slightly in his direction. “Why didn’t you tell me who you were and why you wanted the bolt pulled from you. Now it all makes sense — your strength and the fact wood would kill you. Had I known I would have yanked the quarrel free immediately.”

The shepherd regarded me wordlessly. “I think now, perhaps, you would have freed me of it, but at that moment I could not risk it. You were so certain the Duke was an evil worthy of no pity, I could not take the chance you would have let me die right then and there had you known who I was.”

I thought for a moment, bit my lower lip, then nodded. “I cannot honestly say I would have helped you had I known the truth.”

The shepherd smiled again, this time quite warmly. “You helped me when you had the chance, Talion, when you knew what I was. I read the fear in your body as you hung there. You were not scared for yourself at my coming; you feared for the girl, and Grifmont, and the shepherd. Yet you decided to help me. I think it was because you realized what you and the shepherd had talked about was true.”

He seated himself on his bier. “One night I rose from my slumbers here and actually saw the ruins surrounding me. In an instant I realized that everything I had ever wanted faded and died because of my wanting it. In that mote of time the Duke died. Since then there has only been the simple shepherd you first met.”

I shook my head. “You should let the people around here know who and what you have become.”

The shepherd laughed painfully. “Their hatred and fear has been bred into them for centuries. I did that to them. There is no way to change them. Their fear is my eternal punishment.”

***

I stayed and spoke with the shepherd for the rest of that night, then, as the morning sun splashed green and gold over the sides of Griffin Mountain, I rode down into Grifmont. I reined Wolf to a stop in front of the headman’s hovel.

Macinne came out, squinted against the sun, and raised a liver-spotted hand to shade his eyes. “Come to mock me, Talion? Just because you were right this time don’t mean the Duke won’t take someone another time.”

My jaw muscles twitched and I narrowed my eyes. A crowd slowly gathered around us. They waited to see what I would do to this man who had been so insolent. I’d not struck Kara’s mother down for her actions before, but Macinne had no excuse for his words. My right hand tightened into a fist and Macinne’s knees shook.

I waited.

I waited until Macinne’s terror seeped out of him and bled into the others. Sweat formed on his brow and rolled down from his temples. His lips parted and his lower lip trembled. Other villagers glanced nervously at him and moved so they’d be out of the way when I butchered him.

“No, old man, I’ve not come to mock you.” I hunched forward in my saddle and stared into his eyes. “I’ve come to tell you that last night I opened the Duke’s crypt and I drove a wooden stake through his heart.” I sat back and swept my gaze over the others. “He will trouble you no more.”

The story of Duke Griff’s death reached Elmford and the surrounding countryside before I could ride from the county. Within a year I even heard a minstrel sing of the Talion who entered the Duke’s den and slew him. And soon enough even that song of Duke Griff faded from memory.

And the shepherd discovered that eternity is not without end.

~~~~~~~

Shepherd was written back in 1986, before the rewrite of Talion: Revenant. It saw print in 1991 in the pages of Dark Regions 4, a small press magazine edited by Joe Morey. It is the only Talion short story and is rather remarkable in that the character of Nolan, as presented here, is entirely different than he was in the first draft of the novel. Though I had not consciously set out to change him from the person in the novel, clearly the year between rewrites had me thinking about him the way I wanted him to be, not the way he was in the book.

In the chronology of the novels, this tale actually takes place after the events of Talion: Revenant, but before those of the next book in the set (which is not extant, save for some chapters and an outline).