black and green fletching. The beast landed on Bernard, its claws raking, its vicious beak whipping forward and down toward him.

When hot droplets of his uncle's blood struck his face, Tavi began to scream.

The bird-thing's talons lashed out, raking and tearing. One of them ripped through Uncle Bernard's tough leather breeches at the thigh. Blood welled and flowed. Another talon tore through his hair, down toward his throat, but Bernard raised his arm, sliding the lethal claws away on the wood of the bow. The creature's vicious beak darted down at him, but again Bernard parried the attack away.

The great bird's beak darted to one side and snapped the heavy wood of the bow like a dry twig. It gave way with a sharp detonation as the heavy tension of the string was released.

Tavi raised the sword and started toward his uncle, screaming, but it didn't sound like his own voice. It was too high, too thin, and too terrified to be his voice. The bird's head swiveled toward him, golden eyes focusing on him with a terrible, mindless intensity.

"Brutus!" shouted Uncle Bernard, as the bird's attention focused on Tavi. "Take him!"

The earth at the bird's feet shuddered and then ripped itself upward, as Brutus came to Bernard's call.

A thin layer of soil peeled back away from raw stone. Brutus surged up from the earth like a hound emerging from boiling surf, head and shoulders of a great hunting dog made of soil and stone. The fury's eyes glowed green as emeralds and shone with a faintly luminous light. Brutus planted his front paws on the ground, hauling his pony-sized body forward, and stone jaws closed on the thigh of the attacking bird.

The bird let out a whistling teakettle scream, and its beak flashed down at the fury's head. The beak struck sparks from the stone, and one of the earthen hound's ears fell off, but Brutus didn't so much as flinch.

Tavi let out a shout and swung his uncle's sword with both hands. It struck at the base of the bird's neck, and Tavi felt the blow in his hand as the bird struggled and thrashed, a quivering sensation like that of a fish on a line. He drew back the sword and struck again. Dark blood splashed and stained the blade.

Tavi kept on swinging the sword, once dodging aside from the bird's free

talon. Again and again the heavy weapon bit into the bird's body or neck. Again and again, dark blood splashed up from the blade.

Brutus wrenched the bird to one side and threw it to the ground with bone-crushing force. Tavi screamed again, the blood roaring in his ears, and swung the sword at the bird's head like an axe. Tavi heard and felt the crunch of impact, and the bird collapsed, ceasing its thrashing and its teakettle screams.

Tavi trembled violently. There was dark blood on his clothes and on the sword in his hands and scattered over the bird's feathers and on the ground. Brutus still held the bird's thigh in his granite jaws. A stench wafted up from the body, foul and rotten. Tavi swallowed and felt his stomach roil. He turned away from the bird's body and toward his uncle, who lay prone on the ground.

"Uncle," Tavi said. He knelt down beside the man. There was blood on Bernard's clothes and on his hands. "Uncle Bernard."

Bernard turned his pale face up to Tavi, his features twisted in a grimace of pain. He had both hands clamped to his thigh, squeezing until his knuckles had turned white. "My leg," he said. "We've got to tie off my leg, boy, or I'm finished."

Tavi swallowed and nodded. He put down the sword and unfastened his belt. "What about Brutus'?" he asked.

Bernard shook his head, a tight, small motion. "Not yet. Can't get anything through to him like this."

Tavi had to haul with both hands to move his uncle's leg enough to let him slip the belt around it, and doing so drew a grunt of pain from the big man. Tavi wrapped the belt as tightly as he could and then tied it off. Bernard let out another low sound of pain and removed his hands, slowly. Blood soaked his breeches, but no fresh scarlet appeared. The wound looked horrible. Muscles lay open, and Tavi thought he caught a glimpse of white bone beneath. His stomach heaved again, and he looked away.

"Crows," he breathed. He was still shaking, his heart still beating too quickly. "Uncle. Are you all right?"

"Hurting pretty good. Keep talking to me until it passes a little."

Tavi fretted at his lip. "All right. What was that thing?"

"Herdbane. They have them further south. Feverthorn Jungle mostly. Never heard of one this far north before. Or that big."

"They kill for sport?"

"No. Too stupid to know when to stop. Once they scent blood, they tear apart anything that moves.''

Tavi swallowed and nodded. "Are we in danger now?"

"Maybe. Herdbane hunt in pairs. Go look at the bird."

"What?"

"Look at the crow-eaten bird, boy," Bernard growled.

Tavi rose to his feet and went back over to the herdbane. Its free leg twitched, the talons opening and closing spasmodically. The smell of offal surrounded him, and Tavi held his breath, covering his nose and mouth with one hand.

Bernard grunted and sat up, though his head dropped for a moment as he did, and he had to brace his hands on the ground. "You killed it with the first blow, Tavi. You should have stepped back and let the thing die."

"But it was still fighting," Tavi said.

Bernard shook his head. "You'd laid its neck open. It wasn't going to be fighting for long. Takes time to bleed to death, and until they do they can take you with them. Look at its neck. Right behind its head."

Tavi swallowed and walked around the corpse, and around Brutus as well, until he stood behind the bird's beak and looked as his uncle had directed him.

Something disturbed the feathers just behind the bird's head. He knelt down and reached out with tentative fingers to brush some of the feathers away and peer at whatever it was.

A circlet made out of a braid of several types of rough cloth and hide encompassed the bird's throat, denting in the muscle where it pressed. "There's some kind of collar on it," Tavi said.

"What's it made of?" Bernard rumbled.

"I don't know. Cloth and some leather in a braid. It doesn't look familiar."

"That's a Marat collar. We need to get out of the barrens, Tavi."

Tavi looked up, startled. "There aren't any Marat in the Calderon Valley, Uncle. The Legions keep them out. There hasn't been a Marat here since they had the big battle years and years ago."

Bernard nodded. "Before you were born. But two cohorts at Garrison doesn't necessarily keep them out if they aren't coming in numbers. There's a Marat warrior up here, and he isn't going to be happy that we killed his bird. Neither is its mate."

"Mate?"

"Marks on the top of her head. Mating scars. We killed the female."

Tavi swallowed. "Then I guess we should go."

Bernard nodded, the motion weary, unsteady. "Come here boy."

Tavi did, kneeling close to his uncle. One of the sheep let out a bleat, and Tavi frowned, looking up. The small flock milled around, and Dodger began to trot about, shoving them roughly back into a group with his horns.

"Brutus," Bernard said, his voice gruff and unsteady. He drew in a deep breath, expression becoming one of concentration. "Let go of the bird. Take us both back home."

The stone hound dropped the bird and turned toward Bernard. Brutus sank down into the earth again. Tavi felt the patch of ground he stood on begin to quiver and move. Then with a groan of tortured rock, a slab of stone perhaps five feet across rose up beneath them and began sliding southward, like a raft on a slow-moving river. The earth-raft drifted toward the entryway to the little clearing, slowly gathering speed.

Bernard muttered, "Just wake me up when we get back." Then he laid down and closed his eyes, his face and body going immediately slack again.