Therin tracked the wolf with his eyes as it limped back to the edge of the clearing. It had been a bold move to attack his flock in the middle of the day, and Therin had repaid the wolf in kind by injuring its leg. His sling was reloaded with a small stone and swung lazily at his side, like a pendulum. Therin judged the distance between himself and the wolf, and realized that it was still in range of his sling, although his accuracy at this distance was minimal. When the wolf stopped and looked back at the flock, Therin took the opportunity of a stationary target and circled his sling once, releasing the stone towards the wolf. The stone missed its target and hit a nearby rock, but it was enough to cause the beast to turn and retreat further into the forest. A soft growl on Therin's left side made him turn as he was reloading the sling with another stone.
"Dax, stay!" Therin commanded to his wolfhound. He had lost his previous dog to a particularly wily pack of wolves, who had sent out a lone member to act as bait. When Therin's last dog had chased the wolf into the forest, and away from Therin's aid, the pack had pounced on the poor dog and ripped it to shreds. He wasn't going to let that happen again.
Therin continued to watch the treeline for any movement. After he was reasonably sure the wolf wasn't going to attack again, he switched his attention to the injured sheep. It had wandered too close to the forest's edge, and Therin had been too slow with his sling. The wolf had managed to bite the sheep's leg, but upon closer inspection, it hadn't done too much damage. Therin took a small piece of cloth from his haversack and wrapped it around the sheep's wound as it bleated piteously.
"Perhaps this will teach you to stay closer to the flock," Therin admonished to the wayward sheep. With that task complete, Therin picked up his haversack and crook and began walking south, whistling a familiar melody that the sheep knew meant for them to follow.
He still had a few weeks before he needed to venture to Rorikstead and shear the sheep, but he was running out of supplies. Luckily, he had a standing agreement with a local farmer, who offered to resupply Therin with provisions, so he didn't have to go into town. Therin's father had set up the herding route years ago, and the farmers--or they're children--on that route still honored the deals. Judging by Magnus' position in the sky, the farmer's son should already be at the meeting place.
* * *
When Therin finally approached the rendez-vous area--a small, rocky outcrop on the side of a slope--he saw no sign of the boy that was to meet him. A cache of supplies were sitting out in the sun, a small distance away from the outcropping. Therin assumed the boy had waited for him, but was eager to be back to the farm, and so left the packages there. As Therin approached the site, Dax froze and softly growled out a warning while staring at the outcrop. Therin followed the dog's gaze to a shadowy area beneath the overhanging rock. He couldn't see anything in the darkness, but his eyes weren't as good as the dog's. Nor his sense of smell and hearing, for that matter. He shrugged his pack off his back and laid it next to the other packages. Keeping his crook held defensively across his body , Therin tentatively approached the shadow.
"Bronn?" he called out. "Are you in there? Its Therin."
He heard a suppressed cough and a boy's voice call out weakly from the dimness. "Please, don't come near me. I'm sick."
Therin disregarded the warning and continued to advance, wanting to offer whatever succor he could to the kid. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the ten-year old boy curled up against the rock, as far away from the sunlight as possible. Therin got on his hands and knees and crawled under the rock to where Bronn sat.
The kid looked horrible. His skin was pale, almost translucent and his breathing was pained and labored. A small puddle of vomitus lay nearby, its stench overbearing in such a confined place. Bronn looked too weak to be able to move, and Therin realized the boy was about to die.
"Why did they send you if you were so sick," Therin asked, feeling guilty that the boy had to come all this way, in this condition, just for him.
"I was fine this morning," the boy croaked, barely moving anything but his lips. "My brothers came back from Rorikstead two days ago. They said the whole village was sick with something. They woke up yesterday and they were both sick, too. My parents woke up this morning with the sickness. I felt fine, so they told me to bring the supplies to you and hoped that you would look after me for a time. I started feeling it on my way here. I crawled under this rock so you wouldn't find me; I was hoping you wouldn't catch it, too. You should go...it may not be too late."
It seemed like the boy's speech took the last of his energy away from him. His head sagged down and his eyes, the color leeched from the irises to become a filmy, grey color became unfocused, and his chest stopped moving. Before Therin could think to do anything, Bronn was dead. He didn't know the boy well, but sadness welled up in his heart, nonetheless. Risking infection, Therin reached out and gently closed the boy's eyes. Taking his crook in hand, Therin began to back out of the small crawlspace to begin searching for rocks to build the boy a proper cairn.
As he backed out of the mouth of the tunnel, Therin took one last look at Bronn, wishing deep down that the boy was still alive. Unfortunately, he was in exactly the same motionless position he was in before, his grey, colorless eyes staring ahead of him. Therin moved his arm once to back-crawl out of the outcrop when he suddenly froze. His mind shouted at him, but at first he couldn't understand what it was trying to say, only that it was saying it emphatically. Only a moment had passed, but it seemed like Therin's brain took years to comprehend what it saw. He looked again to make sure and, sure enough, the boy's eyes were open, lifelessly looking ahead of him. Nothing else moved, but Therin was positive that he had closed Bronn's eyes before backing up. The kid's eyes moved suddenly, immediately focusing on Therin. A hunger quickly developed in them that Therin had never seen in a human before. The hunger spread from the eyes, as if the body was remembering how to move. The boy's head cocked to the side, as it leaned forward and began crawling towards Therin.
The shepherd wasted no time in retreating out into the sunlight and standing, backing away as quick as he could while keeping his eyes on the outcrop. After being in the darkness, the sun's light made Therin squint and he was unable to focus on anything until his eyes adjusted. He heard, more than saw, the monster erupt from the rock's shadow, its bestial scream made more unnerving in the child's voice. The blurry shape lunged at Therin; he swung his shepherd's crook and, with more luck than skill, hit the boy-monster square in the head. It fell motionless to the side of Therin, whose eyes finally readjusted to the brightness. Within a matter of seconds, he saw the boy's pallid skin turn pink in the sun's rays. The pink quickly turned to red as the monster regained its consciousness and roared, whether in pain or anger or hunger, Therin couldn't say. It came towards him again, but this time Therin could see and time his strike. The head of the oaken crook hit the boy squarely in the temple and the thing again collapsed to the ground. Before it had a chance to do anything, the reddened skin started welting. It burst into flames before it regained full consciousness and started screaming in pain. Therin backed away slowly, but it seemed that the monster had lost interest in him. It stumbled back towards the shadow beneath the rock, but didn't make it before it collapsed and stopped moving. The smell coming from the charred remains of the boy was more than Therin could handle, as he stooped over and emptied his stomach onto the ground.