Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

She thought for a long while as she walked through the woodland. She and Matthias had lost both father and mother and been given into the callous care of their uncle. Yet it was not their uncle—their only remaining kinsman— who had saved them. He had tried only to save himself and she supposed she would never know if he still walked among the living or rotted among the forgotten dead. It was Papa Otto—no blood father of theirs—and the other slaves who had saved them. If they, who were not her true kin, could act as kin, then was it not possible that even an Eika could become kin? This thought she held like a gift in her heart. Matthias had given the daimone the knife, which it could use to defend itself or free itself if such were possible, and in exchange it had given them freedom.

But in the end, after all that had happened, it was the solitary Eika who had stayed its hand and let them go.

PART ONE

DIVINATION BY THUNDER

I

THE MUSIC OF WAR

1

HE smelled the storm coming before the first rumble of thunder sounded far in the distance. The dogs stirred restlessly and nipped at him, but he slapped them aside until they whined and hunkered down at his feet.

Bloodheart appeared not to have heard the distant thunder. The Eika chieftain sat on his throne, just out of reach of his captive’s chains, and measured leg and arm bones that had been scraped clean of flesh. Tossing aside those he did not want, he sawed off the knobby joint ends of the bones until he had half a dozen smooth white lengths of various sizes collected in his lap. With a sharp stick he hollowed out the bones, cleaning out the marrow. Then, using a stone burin mounted on a stick, he drilled holes down the length of the hollow bones. All this he worked in silence, except for the hasp of the obsidian saw, the rasp of wood scraping, and his muted grunting breaths as he twirled stick between palms to drive the drill through.

Beyond, other sounds made a counterpoint to Bloodheart’s task. The old priest crouched on the marble floor as he tossed out finger bones into a random pattern read and swept aside; outside, Eika soldiers played a game on the cathedral steps which involved a head in a sack; thunder muttered far away, and the Veser River, a low roar too faint here for human ears to hear, sang its constant familiar chant.

The dogs, slinking away, gnawed at the discarded bones, cracking them open for the marrow inside. The most faithful brought a few bones back to drop at his feet, his portion as their lord. God knew he was hungry all the time now, but never let it be said he had stooped to this: eating human remains.

He fought back the shattering despair. It came on him in waves as out of nowhere, out of the shadows or out of Bloodheart’s enchantment that shackled him here, bound by more than iron. Caught in a sudden fit of uncontrollable shaking, he clutched chains in his hands and scraped them violently against the marble floor until his skin was rubbed raw and the chains polished to a shining gleam but with no least weakening of their heavy links.

Only then, when the dogs began to growl around him sensing his weakness, when his blood dripped on the pale marble to form little rosettes of agony against cold stone, did he remember himself, cuff them into submission, and look up.

Teeth bared, Bloodheart grinned down from his chair. “Prince of dogs,” he said, his voice as whispery as the flutter of birds in the eaves. “Shall I make a flute out of your bones when you are dead?”

“You will never kill me,” he replied in his hoarse voice. Some days, these were the only words he remembered how to say.

But Bloodheart was not even listening. Instead, the Eika chieftain lifted the smooth white tubes one by one to his lips, testing their tone. Some breathed high, some low, and on them, switching from one to the next, he played a ragged melody while at last lightning flashed, seen through the great cathedral windows, and thunder broke overhead, and the Eika soldiers outside laughed uproariously in the sudden drenching rain and continued their game.

2

“TWO months!” King Henry paced under the awning while rain drizzled beyond the overhang, dripping down the sides of his tent, curling down tent poles in slow streams. “I have wasted two months on these dammed stubborn Varren lords when we could have been marching on Gent!”

Liath had taken shelter under a wagon; with night watch ahead, she had been permitted an afternoon’s nap. Thank the Lady the rain had not drenched the ground. She was still dry, and now she listened as Henry’s advisers rallied around him, soothing his temper.

“You could not have left Varre behind that quickly,” said his favored cleric, Sister Rosvita, in her usual calm voice. “You have done the right thing, Your Majesty, the only thing you could do. Your anger toward the Eika is justified, and when the time is right, they will suffer your wrath.”

“The time will never be right!” Henry was in one of his rare sour moods. Liath could see only legs and torsos from this angle, and while any soul would have known Henry by the belt he wore embossed and painted with the badges of each of the six duchies whose princes owed allegiance to him as king regnant, on this day he was also recognizable by the sheer irritable energy he projected as he paced from one corner of the carpet to the other. “Five sieges we have laid in, in the last two months.”

“None of them lasted more than five days,” said Margrave Judith with disdain. “None of these Varren nobles had any stomach for a fight, knowing Lady Sabella was defeated.”

“Your Majesty.” Now Helmut Villam weighed in, and the others paused to listen respectfully to the words of a man whose age and experience of hard campaigns eclipsed even that of the king. “Once Lady Svanhilde surrenders to your authority, we can turn east. You have sent what Eagles you can to the Wendish dukes and nobles, to raise the alarm. But do not forget that after the battle we fought near Kassel, your forces are too weak in any case to attack the Eika at Gent. It will take time to assemble a new army.”

heart appeared not to have heard the distant thunder. The Eika chieftain sat on his throne, just out of reach of his captive’s chains, and measured leg and arm bones that had been scraped clean of flesh. Tossing aside those he did not want, he sawed off the knobby joint ends of the bones until he had half a dozen smooth white lengths of various sizes collected in his lap. With a sharp stick he hollowed out the bones, cleaning out the marrow. Then, using a stone burin mounted on a stick, he drilled holes down the length of the hollow bones. All this he worked in silence, except for the hasp of the obsidian saw, the rasp of wood scraping, and his muted grunting breaths as he twirled stick between palms to drive the drill through.

Beyond, other sounds made a counterpoint to Bloodheart’s task. The old priest crouched on the marble floor as he tossed out finger bones into a random pattern read and swept aside; outside, Eika soldiers played a game on the cathedral steps which involved a head in a sack; thunder muttered far away, and the Veser River, a low roar too faint here for human ears to hear, sang its constant familiar chant.

The dogs, slinking away, gnawed at the discarded bones, cracking them open for the marrow inside. The most faithful brought a few bones back to drop at his feet, his portion as their lord. God knew he was hungry all the time now, but never let it be said he had stooped to this: eating human remains.

He fought back the shattering despair. It came on him in waves as out of nowhere, out of the shadows or out of Bloodheart’s enchantment that shackled him here, bound by more than iron. Caught in a sudden fit of uncontrollable shaking, he clutched chains in his hands and scraped them violently against the marble floor until his skin was rubbed raw and the chains polished to a shining gleam but with no least weakening of their heavy links.

Only then, when the dogs began to growl around him sensing his weakness, when his blood dripped on the pale marble to form little rosettes of agony against cold stone, did he remember himself, cuff them into submission, and look up.

Teeth bared, Bloodheart grinned down from his chair. “Prince of dogs,” he said, his voice as whispery as the flutter of birds in the eaves. “Shall I make a flute out of your bones when you are dead?”

“You will never kill me,” he replied in his hoarse voice. Some days, these were the only words he remembered how to say.