Throwback

'Well leave him to cool his heels for a while.' Jon Qui

Along the thick hawthorn hedge, following a muddy well-trodden track, aware that Gilbert was keeping pace with them on the other side. Occasionally they caught a flash of white where the branches were sparse, but overall the hedge was stockproof and no way would the billy be able to get at them. At least Jon hoped so, preferred not to think about it too much. He remembered the shotgun in the porch, almost suggested that they went back for it but it would only serve to alarm Sylvia still further. They didn't need a gun now, that need was past and they were still alive.

'What's that?' She clutched at his arm suddenly, pulled them both to a halt.

'What's what?' He felt his skin start to prickle.

Then he heard it, some kind of bird noise coming from the overhead branches of a clump of Scots firs which some former owner of this place had planted as a windbreak, dark green spiky foliage, the trees planted close and never thi

Listening, trying to identify the sounds, unable to place them right away. Not the soft cooing of a wood-pigeon digesting its early-morning feed, not harsh enough for the cawing or chattering of a corvine. An alarm call certainly. Beware, Man the enemy approaches. Stay hidden.

Jon stepped forward, Sylvia still clinging to his arm. She wanted to go back, maybe wished that she had taken his advice and stayed behind in the first place. Maybe next time she would listen; she had learned a valuable lesson even if it had almost cost her her life.

Something above him moved, a backward shuffle along a thick bough which took the bird closer to the trunk of the tree, framed it in a shaft of bright sunlight which somehow managed to penetrate the dense foliage, the principal actor in a who du

Jon Qui

'It's the missing hens!'

And again something wasn't quite as it should be. Huge birds which had gained at least a couple of pounds in weight since he had last collected the eggs in the hen-house a few days ago. Birds which normally flew no more than two or three feet up on to their perches now sat five or six yards up in the trees. Alert, wary, no longer clucking a welcome and coming to him in expectation of a handful of corn. Birds which were wild, feral like that damned goat on the other side of the hedge. You found yourself instinctively cowering, throwing up your hands to form a shield in case they suddenly flew at you and tried to peck your eyes out.

'They're . . . not like hens,' Sylvia Atkinson muttered and clung on to Jon's arm. 'They look . . . sort of wild'

It was true. The birds on the branches above regarded them with hostile red-eyed glares. Their plumage was no longer the sleek light-brown feathers belonging to the Warren variety, instead thick and ruffled, matted with dried mud, evidence of scaly-leg on their legs. Bewilderment, edging back into the foliage, clucking softly in alarm.

'They're scared to hell,' Jon said. 'So scared they don't even recognise me. Like those goats.'

But there was more to it than that. The poultry had undergone some kind of drastic physical change, lost their accustomed domestication during the short time since he had last seen them, were virtually game birds of the wilds.

'Well, they're not going to come down while we're here,' he sighed, 'and we can't waste any more time standing here looking at them.' They're repulsive, frightening; they won't ever come back to the buildings and I don't want them to. 'Let's go and take a look at the calves in the other field.'

He didn't want to go and look—Right now he would have seized upon any excuse to retrace their steps back to the house, return to the safety of that claustrophobic cellar. It would have been only too easy. But he would not be able to forgive himself if he did that, not just because he had yielded to sheer cowardice but because some kind of morbid curiosity drove him on. Everything out here had changed, even the fresh growth of grass and foliage had a different look about it, a coarser tough texture, throwing off Man's concerted efforts at cultivation, the use of sophisticated husbandry. A reversion to primitive wildness. He shivered, held Sylvia's hand tightly and wished again that he had brought the shotgun along. Next time he would.

Walking slowly now, eyes sca

Another gate, a loop of binder twine holding it to the rough-hewn post. Jon Qui

Charolais calves, four of them grazing just inside the tract of rough pasture. He knew they would not be normal, steeled himself to run a glance over them. Coffee-coloured beasts but their smooth coats no longer had that silky eye-pleasing look about them. Rough and mangy, plastered with mud where they had chosen to spend the night out rather than return to the shelter in the far corner. Nervous, ears flicking, sensing an enemy, as wary as highland deer even before they saw the two humans by the gate.

Heads tossed, hind legs kicked in the air, and then they were stampeding, a headlong flight in the opposite direction, bellowing their terror as they ran.

'I thought as much,' Jon muttered, clutching the gate with both hands. 'It was too much to hope for ... hey . . .' his eyes narrowed and he felt his pulses begi

'What is it, Jon? For God's sake what's wrong now?'

'Four of them,' he whispered, 'but there should be five.

Calves invariably stay together. We'd better go and look for the fifth.'

'No!' She was pulling at him now, using every ounce of her puny strength to drag him back. 'It isn't safe to go in there. I don't want to. They might attack us, like that goat did'.

'He was a billy, the male of the species.' Jon did his best to smile reassuringly, knew that he made a hash of it because he felt his lower lip trembling. 'The na

'I'm coming with you.' She began to climb after him, her torn overalls snagging on the rusted bars of the gate. No way was she going to be left here alone. That mad billy goat was only in the adjoining field and suppose he found a weak part in the straggling hedge. And those hens in the trees behind, they were wild and fierce like birds of prey. Sylvia Atkinson was determined not to let Jon Qui