Yet… not quite so. Something was different. Some-thing seemed to have changed.

He shook his head. You’re hungry, he thought.

Swinging his pack off his shoulder he turned to-wards his favourite seat: a small rocky outcrop which hid him from the ominous region to the north and on which he could sit and lean back and look down the valley.

He settled down with relish and fumbled with the straps on his pack without looking at them. Ahead of him, green fields, white-dotted with sheep and outcrop-ping rocks, lay vivid in the spring sunshine. The shadows of the few small clouds passing overhead marched slowly but resolutely across all obstacles, and the air was filled with the susurrant whispering of distant rustling trees, tumbling streams and the soft shifting of countless wind-stirred grasses and shrubs. Occasionally an isolated sound rose above this har-mony: a sheep, a hoarse croak from one of the great black birds that circled high above, the buzz of some passing insect.

Don’t go to sleep again, Farnor cautioned himself, as he felt the valley’s peace seeping into him.

He sat up and began to concentrate on his food.

After a mere mouthful, however, another matter forced itself upon him, setting aside both appetite and any chance of slipping into sleep. Only a few paces ahead of him the grass was streaked with blood.

What had a little earlier been an exciting daydream was a more sober, not to say frightening, reality. With almost incongruous care he laid the piece of bread he had been eating back in his pack, stood up and walked hesitantly over to the stained grass.

As he neared it he saw more blood. And the grass was crushed. Something had been dragged across it recently. A faint sense of excitement began to return, but it was mingled unevenly with alarm. Then duty and his native common sense took command. He had been sent out to check on the sheep. It was one of the responsibilities that his father had entrusted to him. This was probably no more than a rabbit killed by a fox, but he must have a look around just to be sure, and then he could return to his father and tell him what he had seen and what he had done about it.