Prince of Dogs

by Kate Elliott

  “What am I to think? I promised the deacon at Lavas Holding to put you in the monastery when you came to your majority at sixteen, and she did not say me ‘nay.’ Had she known who you were, do you think she would have offered you up so easily?”

  “She didn’t know Count Lavastine wouldn’t marry again! She couldn’t have known that seventeen years ago. You think I somehow cozened him, cheated him, made up a story—! Just to get out of the church!”

  “What am I to think?” asked Henri. He had not once raised his voice. “You made it clear enough you didn’t want to enter the church, though the promise was made at the same time you were given into the Circle as a newborn babe.”

  “Made by others,” retorted Alain furiously. “I couldn’t even speak. I was a baby.”

  “And then,” Henri went on as quietly, “after the monastery burned, you went to serve a year at Lavas Holding and we hear nothing more of you until this payment comes, and you are suddenly named heir to the count. I counseled Bel to send it back.”

  “To send the payment back!” Henri might as well slap him in the face as say such words. “You would have sent it back?” His voice broke like a stripling’s.

  “‘Accursed thirst for gold, to what fell crimes dost thou not force men’s hearts?’ The cleric, a fine educated woman I can tell you and a very Godly one as well, has been reciting to us the lay of Helen, which they call the Heleniad. Those words I took to my heart and I said them to Bel.”

  “You don’t think Aunt Bel is greedy!”

  “Nay,” admitted Henri. “Nor has she acted in any way except for the family. Indeed, we will be the better for her stewardship. But we should never have accepted that which came to us through false pretenses. The Lord and Lady do not smile on those who lie to advance themselves.”

  Now he had said it baldly. Alain was stunned. When he spoke, all his hard loud words had vanished and he could only whisper. “You don’t think I’m Lavastine’s son.”

  “Nay,” said Henri as calmly as if he had been asked to predict the next day’s weather. But for the first time he stopped from his work and straightened, scraper dangling from one hand, to inspect Alain. His quiet gaze was devastating. “And why should I?”

  Rage and Sorrow barked and whined where they stood tugging at their leashes, which were staked to the ground. Furious, Alain spun and ran, too angry to think, too angry to do anything but jerk the stake out of the ground and pull the leashes free.

  “Go!” he shouted, and they leaped forward, growling, toward the man who had made their master so angry.

  Lavastine appeared, crossing the threshold of the house. “Alain!” he shouted.

  Rage and Sorrow ran flat out and bounded over grass and shavings while Henri stood and stared them down, although Alain saw him shaking, scraper raised as if to protect himself. Nothing would protect him from the hounds. Nothing except the voice of an heir of Lavas.

  “Halt!” Alain cried, and the hounds, an arm’s length from Henri, stopped dead. “Heel.” He whistled. They growled once, longingly, at the other man, then, obedient, they slewed their great heads round and trotted back to Alain. Shaking, his hands trembling so hard he could scarcely hold the leashes, he staked them back down.

  By that time Lavastine had reached him. “What means this?” The count glanced toward Henri, who had not gone back to his work but stood slackly by the mast and who, as a tree leans under the wind, moved now to rest a hand and then his weight on the log, bent over like an old, old man.

  “N-nothing,” whispered Alain. He wanted to weep. He dared not.

  “Indeed,” said Lavastine. “If it is nothing, you must come inside. You should not have run out in that way. It is a great honor to this family that we eat at their table and allow them to serve us.” He signed to one of his servingmen. “Get my cup.”

  Alain followed him inside. He could not look to his right or left. He could not look at all, not to meet anyone’s eyes. Lavastine took from the hand of his servingman his fine walnut cup which he used when he traveled. Four golden rivers had been carved into the wood, and the fine grain was polished until it gleamed. This cup he graciously gave to Aunt Bel, who had Stancy fill it with wine and returned it to him to drink first. Only after the count had drunk from it did she agree to sit at his right and take food herself, though the rest of her family served.

  “This cup I hope you will accept,” said Lavastine, “in memory of your hospitality toward myself and my son this day.”

  “You do us honor, my lord,” said Aunt Bel, and she drank.

  The meal was not as fancy as that served by Mistress Garia, who had, after all, had several day’s notice of Lavastine’s arrival. But there was veal and good bread and wine and apples, and several chickens had been freshly killed and cooked, spiced with coriander and mustard. Most importantly, the meal was served with dignity and pride, and there was more than enough for all.

  Henri did not come inside.

  To Alain, silent in the midst of his old family’s newfound plenty, it all tasted like ashes and dust.

  2

  THEY sail at dawn into the fjord. Cliffs surround them, glittering with ice and snow and cold gray-black stone, the stone of the Mothers. Waves beat on the prow, spraying the rowers with bitter cold water, so cold that a human drenched in it will die. Not his kind, of course. His kind are RockChildren, the children of earth and fire, and the only thing they fear is the venom of the ice-wyrms. All other fates lead merely to death, and against death they are strongest of all. Iron can kill them, if wielded with sufficient strength. They can drown. But heat and cold alike melt off their beautiful skin, for are they not marked with the rich colors of the hidden earth, melded as if in the forge from the very metals with which they adorn themselves?

  He hefts his spear in his right hand as the ship slides in past islands of ice and prepares to jump as it grinds up onto the rocky beach. This valley, this tribe, is unprepared for his coming. They will rue that. But they will bare their throats before him.

  The hull scrapes on stone. He leaps out of the ship, hitting ground hard, then splashes forward through the surf while his dogs jump out after him, followed by his war band. His feet grip ice, slick on pebbles, while the dogs flounder behind him and regain their footing. He races up the shore and runs on snow. Behind, he hears the ragged panting of the dogs and the intent breathing of his warband. They believe in him, now. This is their fourth tribe this season. Winter is a good time for killing.

  Too late the Watchers at water’s edge raise the alarm. Too late the smoke fire rises to alert those living farther up along the paths which lead to the high slopes and the fjall. He hears the sudden bleat of the OldMother waking from her trance to danger. The SwiftDaughters run from the long hall carrying baskets, the nests of unhatched eggs. He sets the dogs on them. SwiftDaughters are not sacred, although the OldMother is. The dogs scatter them and baskets drop and eggs fall to the cold earth, to be lost in snow or splintered by ice, claw, tooth, or wind. Those that are strongest will survive. The others deserve to perish.

  Now the warriors of Hakonin fjord gather their weapons and rush like a herd of furious goats down into the fray. He is proud of his people. He has never seen one of them turn and run. And on this day they have his cunning as well as courage to aid them. His second and third boats have beached farther down the strand and his soldiers have raced up from behind, so that the Hakonin RockChildren are already encircled. Death already sweeps down on them, as dragons and eagles take their prey from the skies. Only they do not know it yet. But as the battle is joined and they realize their plight, they fight the harder. They are strong and fearless, and because of that he calls his soldiers off sooner than he would have otherwise, leaving perhaps half of the Hakonin warriors still in the fjall of the living rather than sending them to the cold stone pathways of the dead.

  He gives them a choice.

  Proud warriors, each one that is left, and properly raised. They do not throw down their weapons but neither
do they fight on when all is hopeless. They do not surrender. They pledge their death, or their life, to the will of their OldMother and her knife of decision.

  Now, and at last, when all is lost, she emerges from the long hall. She is stout and as gray and strong as rock, which she much resembles. Her movements are as stiff as those of trees unbent in storm. It is the peculiar beauty of the OldMothers that, like the mountains and the cliffs and the jutting ridges of stone that scar the fields and pastures, they are glimpses of the bones of earth that lace all land together and give strength and solidity to the world. The SwiftDaughters left to her hoist baskets and gather up those eggs, fallen among the detritus of their sisters, which remain unbroken. These they collect together to form new nests, but there are few, many fewer than a tribe needs to survive.

  In the pens behind the long hall the human slaves wail and moan; their noise is appalling and irritating, but he restrains himself from killing them outright just to silence that awful mewling. He gestures. His own soldiers part, forming a path down which his human slaves can come forward. These slaves he has gathered to himself as the SwiftDaughters gather the unbroken eggs. At Valdarnin fjord he set these slaves to watch over warriors and dogs alike as humiliation, for the Valdarnin warriors fought weakly and some even surrendered before they knew their OldMother’s will. But he will not humiliate the Hakonin; instead, he lets his human soldiers, such as they are and armed only with weapons of wood, stand watch over the penned slaves. They have served him well this season of fighting. He is pleased to have thought of using them, the strong ones, the ones that aren’t afraid to look him in the eye, to wish to defy him, and who are yet intelligent enough to know that defiance is useless.

  “Who are you?” asks Hakonin OldMother. She waits at the threshold. It is gesture enough that she has emerged into the ragged winter sunlight, torn by clouds and a few drifting curls of snow.

  “I am of Rikin fjord, fifth son of the fifth litter of Rikin OldMother. I am son of Bloodheart, and it is to his teeth you will now bare your throats.”

  “To what purpose?” she asks, her voice like the grinding of pebbles on the shore beneath the hull of his ship.

  None of the other OldMothers have asked this question, only his own, Rikin’s Mother, before he set off for the winter’s hunt.

  “The many can accomplish what the few cannot,” he replies.

  “You serve Bloodheart,” she says.

  “I do,” he replies.

  “Someday, as does all that is mixed with air and water, he will die,” she says.

  “He will,” he replies, “for only the Mothers who are unmixed with any element save that of fire and earth may remain untouched by time for as long as the embers burn and smolder beneath their skin.”

  “You arm the Soft Ones.” She does not look toward the human slaves. They are beneath her notice, and like the icy waters her touch is dangerous to them.

  “I use what weapons I can gather,” he replies.

  “You wear their sigil at your heart,” she says, and now her sons and brothers murmur, seeing that it is true, noting the wooden circle that hangs by a new-forged iron chain around his neck.

  “It signifies my understanding of their ways,” he replies. “I can walk through their dreams.”

  “You are one who has spoken with the WiseMothers,” she says. “I hear it in your voice and I see with their vision for they have shared this vision all along the fjalls. They have shared this vision with the bones of the earth. That you have the patience to find wisdom, and that you think strong thoughts. But you have no name. Bloodheart is a powerful enchanter. He has taken a name, as only enchanters may.”

  He bows his head respectfully. He knows better than to contest the old laws that govern RockChildren. He is nameless, as is fitting, and yet did Alain Henrisson not give him a name? Did the human not call him “Fifth Son,” thinking this was a name? He will remain patient. Patience is the strength of the WiseMothers, as it is the strength of the earth.

  From the pouch of skin at her thigh, Hakonin OldMother draws the knife of decision. “If my sons and brothers fight with you,” she says, “if we let our dogs run with your army and our slaves labor for Bloodheart’s purposes, what will you give me in return?”

  “I have defeated you,” he replies.

  “With this knife I crack the eggs.” OldMother lifts the knife so that sun glints off its black blade, a sliver of obsidian so smooth it is depthless and so sharp it can cut both bone and the stone-sheathing of eggs. “With this knife I winnow the weak from the strong, as do all my sisters to the north and to the south. This knife is the choosing of death or life, and you cannot defeat death, for you are mortal. What will you give me in return?”

  “What do you want?” he asks, curious now.

  “I have birthed my daughters,” she says, “and one begins to harden now. Her ribs are stiffening and soon her time will come. These nests that are my laying you have scattered, and she will have few brothers to tend her fields and her pastures and to fight for Hakonin hall. I will lay no more eggs, but she has not yet begun. Promise me that when she has birthed her daughters and it comes time for her to breed her nests, of which she must have many in order to harvest a strong clan, I can send for you and you will perform the ritual with her. The Hakonin nests will be of your making.”

  “Only a male who is named may perform the ritual with a YoungMother,” he replies carefully. But he feels the course of excitement in his blood. These words, this pledge, once spoken, cannot be taken away. It is dangerous to take for himself what is the prerogative of Bloodheart and the other, the very few, named males. But this OldMother knows as he knows that he intends to be one of them, in time. He must only be patient and ruthless.

  “Many seasons will pass,” says Hakonin WiseMother, “before I must begin my walk to the fjall and before she will take the knife from me and seat herself in my chair. Promise me this, and we will seal our bargain: your breeding for our nests, our sons and brothers for your army.”

  “I make this promise,” he replies. “I seal it with the blood of my brother.” He whistles one of the dogs to him, curses it as it snaps at his arm, and grabs its collar to wrestle it close. Its breath, weeping with the broken eggs it has feasted on, hits his face like the breath of fetid summer wind. He cuts its throat and its blood pours out onto the earth in offering. When it sags, dead, he drops it to the ground, into its own blood, some of which has spattered him, mottling his chest and the delicate faience and gold and silver links of his long metal girdle, a thousand tiny linked rings flowing like water around his hips and thighs.

  The OldMother bids one of her SwiftDaughters kneel before her. Then she takes in her hand the wealth of the daughter’s deep gold hair and cuts it off with a single efficient motion. “With this token I seal our bargain. Spin this and smith this and wear it when I summon you.”

  He nods, accepting her bargain. Her sons and brothers lift their throats and the chill winter sun glints on smooth metal skin, copper, bronze, gold, and silver, and iron-gray. In response, he grins, baring his teeth and the jewels studded there. Tonight he will add another. For as it is said among his people, jewels are like boasts, hard to keep once they are displayed.

  The SwiftDaughter carries her shorn hair across the forecourt to him, stepping carefully over her dead sisters and the broken shells of eggs, her never-to-be-born brothers. She lays the hair in his waiting arms, and he is careful not to stagger under its weight. No gold as pure exists anywhere, not even in the mines dug deep into the earth by the goblinkin. With this gold, spun and beaten, he will fashion a new girdle, one of his own making, not one granted him by his father’s strength.

  “Alain!” his father said, and he woke from the web of dream and struggled to free himself of its coils.

  He sat up to see light pouring in through the open shutters of the sleeping chamber he shared with his father and the hounds. Another lord might sleep with many servants in his chamber; the counts of Lavas could not
.

  “You were dreaming,” said Lavastine, standing now and crossing back to close the shutters. It was bitter cold outside; three braziers, a sinful luxury, burned in the room. As soon as the shutters closed, darkening the chamber, Alain rubbed his arms and shook off sleep. He rose and began to dress. Rage scratched at the door, whining.

  “You were dreaming,” repeated Lavastine.

  “I was.” Alain bound his calves with linen bands and then pulled on an undertunic of wool over his shirt, and his thick winter tunic, lined with marten fur, over all.

  “The Eika again.” Lavastine always wanted news of the Eika.

  Alain laughed suddenly, a short, sharp laugh, much like his father’s. Much like Lavastine’s.

  The memory of his last glimpse of Henri still hurt, but not as much, not after two months. He was too busy here at Lavas Holding. Life went on at the fortress at a more sluggish pace in wintertime, but it went on nonetheless. He trained at arms, though he knew himself a coward. Next time it will be different. Next time I won’t fail in battle. He sat with his father as Lavastine spoke with his chatelaine, with his stewards, with his clerics, and with those few winter travelers who lingered a day or two in the warm hall of Lavas fortress before continuing their journey. Alain learned what it meant to be a great lord, what gestures to make, what polite phrases to utter, how to judge a visitor and greet him according to his station.

  “The Eika,” said Alain. “Fifth Son. I think he’s going to get married. But not in any way we understand.”

  Lavastine regarded him without answering until Alain grew uncomfortable, as if he had said something wrong or made a comment more fitting to a farmer than a count’s heir.

  “Father?” he asked, not liking the count’s silence. Henri had been silent in that way.

  But Lavastine quirked his lips finally, upward, signifying approval. “It is a portent. We have spoken of this before, but it has come time to act on it. We will send my cousin Geoffrey to the court of King Henry.”