Prince of Dogs

by Kate Elliott

  Now that Lavastine’s wounds had been tended to, Alain and Lavastine and the hounds were alone in the tent. From outside he heard the low rumble of activity as wounded were carried in, scouts came and went, men looted and burned the Eika dead under the moon’s light, and sentries called out challenges.

  “He must have suffered terribly,” said Alain, scratching Fear under his jaw.

  “But he is alive. They say he came attended by Eika dogs, as faithful to him as his Dragons once were. What do you think of that?”

  Alain laughed. “Ought I to think something of it when I sit here with these faithful beasts?”

  Lavastine grunted. “True enough.” He stretched, wincing. “When I was your age, I would have felt no ache in my bones, even after a day such as this. What a strange creature the Eika princeling was, to let us go like that in the cathedral when he could have killed us all. How foresighted of you to free him, Alain.”

  “Even if meant sacrificing Lackling in his place?” The old shame still burned.

  “Who is Lackling?” Lavastine yawned, stretched again, and tied up the hounds, then called for a servingman to take off his boots. “What happened to the Eagle, do you know?”

  Alain saw there was no point in reminding his father about Lackling. “She went back to her duties.”

  “You were wise to gain her loyalty, son. It seems to me that when you marry, Lady Tallia’s consequence will allow you to count Eagles in your retinue. You must ask for that one. There is some power at work within her. It would be well to have it for our use, if we can.”

  Marry Tallia. All else that Lavastine said swirled round him like the night’s breeze and faded into nothing. Marry Tallia.

  Lavastine went on to discuss Henry’s plans to send for Tallia and have her brought to his progress, but the words passed in a haze. When the hounds were settled and a rough pallet was set in place, Alain lay down beside his father and closed his eyes to see the terrible images of battle bursting like fire against his eyes. The rose burned at his chest like a hot coal. But slowly the pain faded. With the snoring of the hounds beside him and his father’s even breath on his ear, the awful images faded into a vision of Tallia, her wheatpale hair unbound and her solemn face turned toward him. His wife. Bound to him by their mutual oaths sworn before witnesses and blessed by a biscop.

  He slept, and he dreamed.

  Both current and wind aid him this night. He can smell the sea and the estuary before he gets too close. He beaches his eight ships on the western shore and sends scouts westward to guard against an incursion of the Soft Ones’ soldiers, should they have sent any in this direction to seek out the fleeing RockChildren. No doubt they are too busy killing those who fled in disorder. No doubt they are too busy burying their own kind, for they are distractible in their grief.

  The disaster brought on by Bloodheart’s death will hurt the RockChildren, certainly, but only a fool would not find advantage in it. No one of Bloodheart’s ambitious sons could have killed the enchanter without bringing down on himself Bloodheart’s vengeance. Now that fate is reserved for another.

  Now, after the rout, how many of Bloodheart’s sons survive? How many had taken their followers to raid eastward and did not fight at Gent at all? All this he must consider before he knows how and when to act.

  The old priest sits in the belly of the boat and sings nonsense as he wipes blood from the oozing wound in his chest and licks it off his fingers.

  “How did you do it?” he asks the old wizened creature. “Why did you do it?”

  “Why are you curious?” asks the old priest, who talks mostly in questions.

  “Bloodheart found your heart hidden in Rikin fjall. He forced the bargain on you, to hide his heart in place of your own.”

  “Will anyone ever find my heart now?” cackles the priest.

  No doubt he is half mad. His kind usually are; it is the price they pay for their power. “What happened to your heart?” he asks again. “How did you manage to hide Bloodheart’s heart in your own chest when it was meant to be hidden in the fjall?”

  “Did he think he was cleverer than I?” The old priest snorts, and for an instant cunning sparks in his rheumy eyes. The creature is very old, the oldest male he has ever seen. “Did he think I would take my old heart to where there might be battle? I could have been killed!”

  “Do you fear death, then? The curse of the nestbrother—”

  “The curse! The curse! Do I look like a hatchling? I turned the curse. I stole Bloodheart’s voice and finished the speaking for him. Hai! Hai!” He begins to sing, but the song has an unsettling flow, like a river running uphill. “‘Let this curse fall on the one whose hand commands the blade that pierced his heart.’ Ailailai!”

  There is no more sense to be gotten from the old creature, so he only tests the chains with which he had bound the old priest before giving orders to his soldiers. Of those cousins remaining to him, he leaves half to guard the ships. The other half he takes with him as he trots north just above the bluffs to the very mouth of the river.

  Fifth son of the fifth litter, he knows how to make use of a lesson: He was captured once by this male named Count Lavastine when his ship got bottled up at the mouth of the Vennu River. It will not happen again. If a trap lies in wait at the mouth of this river, he will be ready for it.

  He smells human soldiers long before he sees the telltale lines of a small fort set upon a bluff and somewhat hidden by a cunning layer of branches and scrub. Some of the plants woven into the log ramparts still live, though he can taste the brittle decay of the others on his tongue when he licks the air.

  His cousins stir and growl restlessly behind him, for they were granted no leave to fight when they fled Gent. He can taste their dissatisfaction, but they have not learned patience. They will learn it from him tonight, or they will die.

  He lifts a hand and gestures to them to fan out. The ground slips beneath his feet, sand and coarse grass and such plants as can stand the ever-present blast of the wind. He bangs spear on shield and from the depths of the fort he hears the frantic rustling of men struggling to ready themselves for battle.

  “Hear me!” he calls. “Send your leader to talk, for my force outnumbers yours.” He tastes the air, scenting for their essences. “You have but some thirty of your kind, and I have over one hundred of mine. I give you this choice: Fight us and die, this night, or retreat from your fort south and west to the camp of your kin, and live.”

  “How can we trust you?” shouts one of them, appearing only as a dark shadow of helm against the sky and a certain tang of stubborn resiliance in the air.

  “I am the one whom Lord Alain freed at Lavas Holding. By the honor of that lord, I swear I will do you no harm … as long as you retreat at once and leave this place to me.”

  The man spits, though the spray cannot travel so far. “You, an Eika, swearing by our good Lord Alain’s honor!”

  Stubborn creature! He has no time to waste. Soon the other ships will come.

  “Then if you have a brave man among you, send him out and I will stand hostage under his knife while the rest leave. When they are well away, he may follow unmolested. But you must act now, or we will attack.”

  They confer. He can’t hear them, but their fear is a bracing scent on the breeze, pungent on his tongue. By now they must know they are surrounded and outnumbered.

  In the end, of course, they agree. They have no other choice except to die, and Soft Ones always struggle to live even when they must live like dogs to do so. Like the old priest, they fear death and the passage to the fjall of the heavens, and that fear can be used against them.

  One of them emerges. He goes forward and lets the man stand with knife poised at his throat while the others march in a swift but orderly fashion into a night made gray by the lowering moon. His own soldiers storm the fort after them and circle down to the strand. They bark to him. There are machines within the fort, and with some impatience he stares at the man before him, who at last
withdraws the knife and retreats slowly.

  “I remember you,” says the man, and then turns and runs as if expecting an arrow in the back. At once, one of his cousins raises his bow and nocks an arrow for the easy shot. He springs forward and bats bow and arrow down.

  The rash cousin swears. “You are weak to let them run!”

  It takes only a moment to kill him for his disrespect. Then he turns on the others. “Question me if you must, but do not disobey me. I intend to accomplish what Bloodheart could not accomplish because he was not willing to use the lessons of the WiseMothers to guide him.”

  He waits as blood leaks onto his feet and the fire that animated the cousin spills onto the earth and soaks into the ground. No one speaks.

  “Then, go,” he orders, for he has already seen what the count set in place here. A cunning man, the count, a worthy foe.

  Soon the other ships begin to come, fleeing the death of Bloodheart and the collapse of his army and his authority. He watches dispassionately as they founder on the black tide.

  Soon the mouth of the Veser is awash in wreckage as some swim free of the chain and the piles to cast up on the western shore. Those who will not bare their throats before him his soldiers kill.

  Soon he will have to dismantle the chain so he can sail through safely himself and return to Rikin fjord with his prize, but for this night, at least, he will destroy as many of his rivals as he can.

  There will not be many survivors from those who gathered at Gent—and those who survive will belong to him.

  His followers do their work well, and efficiently. He climbs to the little fort and from this vantage point he watches as the heart of Old-Man, the moon, sinks into the west and the stars, the eyes of the most ancient Mothers, stare with their luminous indifference upon the streaming waters and the silent earth. In the fjall of the heavens, the vale of black ice, only the cold holds sway and their whispering conversations take lifetimes to complete. But they are nonetheless beautiful.

  6

  IT was night, but Liath could not sleep.

  She had sent Hathui to sleep and offered to stand middle night watch, as one Eagle always did, over the king’s pavilion together with the guards.

  With the moon one day past full, only the brightest stars were visible. But she could not even concentrate enough to watch those stars and read their secret turnings in the language Da taught her, the language of the mathematici.

  Sanglant was alive.

  Alive.

  Yet so changed.

  Yet not changed at all.

  “Eagle.”

  The whisper came out of the shadows, twisted from the steady breath of the night breeze on the many pavilions staked out around her. She stiffened and turned to seek out the voice.

  Two guards with torches appeared out of the gloom. A third man led a mule, and there, on the mule’s back, sat a woman in the robes of a cleric. But she did not venture in far enough that the guards beside the king’s tent could see her face.

  Cautiously, Liath walked out to meet her.

  It was Sister Rosvita, looking drawn and anxious.

  “Aren’t you with the train?”

  Rosvita allowed her servant to help her dismount and then waved him and her guards away. They retreated and stood a few paces off. “I was, but I had to leave and come here, and the moon gave enough light for the journey.”

  “But some Eika may still haunt the woods!”

  “It was not as far as I feared it would be. We saw no Eika. I must speak to you, Eagle. It is by the Lady’s grace that my path brought me directly to you.”

  To Liath’s amazement, the cleric took a bundle wrapped in linen from a bag tied to the mule’s saddle and held it up before her. Liath knew immediately what it was.

  “How did you?” she whispered, scarcely able to force the words out.

  “Do you know what is in here? Nay, do not trouble yourself to answer. I see that you do. I know you can read Dariyan …” The cleric spoke in a rush, clearly agitated though Liath had never seen her anything but calm before. “Why should I give this back to you?”

  She was half the cleric’s age. She could easily snatch the book from her and run. But she did not, though neither could she compose an eloquent or compelling reply. “It’s all I have left of my da!”

  “Was your da a mathematicus?”

  There was no use in lying. Rosvita had obviously read in the book. “Yes.”

  “And what are you, Eagle?” the cleric demanded.

  “Kinless,” she said flatly. “All I have are the Eagles. I pray you, Sister, I am no threat to anyone.”

  Rosvita glanced up at the stars as though to ask them if this was truth, or a cunning dissemblance. But the stars only spoke to those who knew their language, so she did not. “I dare not keep this,” she said in a low voice.

  “How did you get it?”

  “That does not matter.”

  “Can you—how much did you—?” But she was afraid to ask. She shifted. Beyond, the three servants who had escorted the cleric huddled close, sharing something from a leather bottle. She thought she smelled mead, but there were so many smells mingling and unraveling in the air around them that she could not be sure if it was honey’s fermented sweetness or the aftertaste of drying blood.

  “I cannot read Jinna, although you can.” It was not a question. “And the fourth language is unknown to me. I had only a moment to look at the Arethousan and the Dariyan, but I needed no more than that to recognize what I was seeing. Lady protect you, child! Why are you riding as a common Eagle?”

  “It is what was offered me.”

  “By Wolfhere.”

  “He saved me from Hugh.”

  The moonlight bleached Rosvita’s face of expression, but she shook her head and then simply offered the book to Liath.

  Liath grabbed it and clutched it against her chest.

  “I think it properly belongs to you,” said Rosvita softly, hesitantly. “Pray God I am right in this. But you must come speak to me, Eagle, of this matter. Your immortal soul is at risk. Who are the Seven Sleepers?”

  “The Seven Sleepers,” Liath murmured, memory stirring. “Beware the Seven Sleepers.” Or so Da had written. “I only know what he wrote in the book.”

  “You’ve never heard the story as related in Eusebē’s Ecclesiastical History?”

  “Nay, I’ve not read Eusebē.”

  “In the time of the persecution of Daisanites by the Emperor Tianothano, seven young people in the holy city of Saïs took refuge in a cave to gain strength before they presented themselves for martyrdom. But the cave miraculously sealed over, and there they were left to sleep.”

  “Until when?”

  “Eusebē doesn’t say. But that is not the only place I have heard that name. Do you know of a Brother Fidelis, at Hersford Monastery?”

  “I do not.”

  “‘Devils visit me in the guise of scholars and magi,’” quoted Rosvita, recalling the conversation vividly, “‘tempting me with knowledge if only I would tell them what I knew of the secrets of the Seven Sleepers.’”

  “Were they the ones—?” Liath broke off. Wind rustled the canvas of tents, and she was suddenly reminded of the daimone who had stalked her on the empty road. She shuddered. “I don’t know what to do,” she murmured, afraid again. Da always said: “The worst foe is the one you can’t see.”

  Rosvita extended a hand in the fashion of her kind, a deacon about to offer a blessing. “There are others better able to advise you than I. You must think seriously about making your way to the convent of St. Valeria.”

  “How can I?” Liath whispered, remembering her vision of stern Mother Rothgard. “The arts of the mathematici are forbidden.”

  “Forbidden and condemned. But it would be foolish of the church not to understand such sorcery nevertheless. Mother Rothgard at St. Valeria is not a preceptor I would wish to study under. She has little patience and less of a kind heart. But I have never heard it whispered that she
is tempted by her knowledge. If you cannot bring yourself to trust me, then go there, I beg you.” She glanced behind toward her servants. “I must return to the train, or they will wonder why I am missing. Morning comes soon.”

  She paused only to stare at Liath, as if hoping to read into her soul. Then she left.

  Liath was too stunned to move. Her arms ached where they clasped the book, and one corner of the book pinched her stomach, digging into her ribs. She stood there breathing in and out with the breath of the night. A flash of white startled her and she spun to see a huge owl come noiselessly to rest on the torn-up ground just beyond the nimbus of lantern light that illuminated the awning of King Henry’s pavilion. It stared at her with great golden eyes, then, as suddenly, launched itself skyward and vanished into the night.

  “Liath.”

  Of course he knew.

  She didn’t turn to face him. She couldn’t bear to.

  “You’ve stolen the book,” he said, astonishment more than accusation in his voice. “I left the field as soon as it was clear we’d won the battle and rode all the way back to the train, only to find it missing. How did you manage it? What magic did you employ?”

  She would not turn to face him, nor would she answer him, so he grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her round to slap her so hard that guards looked up from their station by the awning.

  But they knew the silhouette of a noble lord by his bearing and his clothes, and they knew she was only a common Eagle. With a few coughs, they looked away again. It was none of their business.

  Furious, he took her by the elbow to drag her away, but her feet were rooted to the earth. She could not struggle, she could not fight, she could not flee. Her cheek stung.