Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [48]
Small tarns glittered like pendants of peridot and aquamarine at the foot of pure white snowpacks, casting reflections that shone like inverse cameos among the bare gray granites. At this altitude trees were stunted, whipped and twisted like taffy by relentless winter winds. Diminutive wildflowers burst forth in knots of blue and lavender, corn red and old butter yellow. None of them attempted to trip, seduce, or otherwise restrain the impassive hikers in their midst. Small rodents and marsupials dove for cover among the rock piles whenever the marchers approached, and Ahlitah amused himself by stalking them, pouncing, and then magnanimously letting the less-than-bite-size snacks scamper free.
They had already begun to descend from the heights when they encountered the sheep. Simna pronounced them to be quite ordinary sheep, but to the man from the far south they were strikingly different from the animals he had grown up with. Their fleece was thick and billowy where that of the Naumkib’s herds tended to be straight and stringy. Their narrowing faces were black or dirty white instead of brown and yellow. And their feet were smaller, to the point of being dainty. These were coddled animals, he decided, not one of which would survive for a week in the wilds of the dry country inland from the village. Yet they remained, indisputably, sheep.
At the strangers’ approach they showed they were not as helpless as they looked. Amid much distraught baaing and bleating, they hastened to form a circle; lambs in the middle, ewes facing determinedly outward, young rams spacing themselves efficiently along the outermost rim.
One old ram, obviously the herd dominant and leader, lowered his head and pawed angrily at the ground. Bleating furiously, he took several challenging pronks in the direction of the newcomers. At this point Ahlitah, who had been dawdling behind his human companions, trotted forward to rejoin them. Espying and taking nonchalant note of the ram’s challenge, he vouchsafed to give forth a midrange snarl, whereupon the suddenly paralyzed ram froze at the end of an advancing pronk, stood tottering on all fours for an instant or two, and proceeded to keel over onto one side in a dead faint, all four legs locked sideways and straight, parallel to the ground.
“Easy meat,” the litah commented idly as they strolled past the trembling herd.
“Mind your manners,” Ehomba chided his four-legged companion. “You cannot be hungry. Not after that half an animal you just devoured.”
“You’re right; I’m not hungry. But I’ve run too many hot mornings in pursuit of prey that eventually escaped ever to ignore something that looks like roast on a stick.” The maned head gestured scornfully in the direction of the herd, and thin, hoofed legs quaked at the casual nod. “These things are domesticated. They are become the vassals of human appetite.”
“You can say that again. I love mutton.” Simna was eyeing several plump members of the herd more covetously than the big cat.
Ehomba sighed. Belying his stocky frame, the swordsman’s appetites were outsized in every way. “If not the shepherd, we may encounter the landholder. Perhaps we can bargain for some chops, if you must have some.”
Walking on, they stumbled not on the landowner but upon his dwelling, a modest and unprepossessing structure of stone walls and thatched roof. There was a well out front, and a small garden fenced to keep out the wild vermin as well as sheep and goats. Smoke rose unhurriedly from the stone chimney, and flowering wisteria vined its way up the walls and around the door and the single window. Several young lambs grazed in a stone paddock back of the main building. At the travelers’ approach, an old dog lifted its head to check them out. Broad bands of white streaked her long black fur. Apparently satisfied, it laid its lower jaw back down on its paws. It did not bark, not even at the sight and smell of the litah.
“Quiet, tidy little place,” Simna declared grudgingly. “Simple lodgings for simple folk.”
“Even simple folk may have useful information