Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

“I don’t mean—I’m sorry—but the hounds—”

Her face was a flash of pale skin and dark eyes in the light of a thin crescent moon. “Of course you must go.” She had remembered the hounds, and what he was. Now she was frightened of him, she who had held all the power moments before.

He hastily tucked his tunic in over his belt so he wouldn’t trip on its length, then ran for the kennels, which lay out behind the great hall in the lee of the stables.

The hounds had gone mad, ravaging a man who lay like a rag doll in their midst. Alain waded in and dragged them off the poor man, who by now bled from a score of bites and ragged tears.

“Back! Back!” Made strong by anger and fear and the still coursing memory of the servingwoman’s caresses, Alain hoisted the man up and hauled him out of the kennel, kicked Terror back, scolded Rage and Sorrow, who slunk together to a corner and hunkered down as if ashamed of themselves. As they should be! One of the handlers slammed the gate shut behind him. He let the man down onto the ground and examined his legs and arms, which had taken the worst of it from the hounds. The man writhed on the ground, moaning and crying and begging for mercy.

It was one of Lord Geoffrey’s men.

“How did this happen?” he demanded, looking up at the others, a ring of Lavastine’s soldiers who were obviously drunk.

“He said such things, my lord,” said one, young enough and drunk enough to be brash. “He said things about you, my lord, but he never saw you in the battle against the Eika. He never saw you kill the guivre and save Count Lavastine’s life. He had no right to say such things and he wouldn’t believe us, what we said, so it came to—”

Those weren’t shadows on the soldiers’ faces, but bruises. “It came to a fight?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“How did he get into the kennel? Ai, by Our Lord! You.” He gestured to one of the handlers. “Run and get the herbwoman who lives here. There is such a one, surely? Ask at the stable.” The handler obeyed, dashing off.

The soldiers did not answer at once. But he could guess how it had all happened. While he allowed himself to be seduced, this other game had unfolded here. Even now, watching the man weeping with pain before him, watching as blood pooled on the ground, running his hands over the man’s skin to find the gaping wounds, he knew this man could die. If he did not succumb to loss of blood or the simple trauma, he might well die later of infection.

“Ai, Lady!” He hated himself at that moment. Slowly the encounter by the tree unwrapped itself from the heat of lust and he saw it more clearly. Perhaps the woman really had thought him handsome. Certainly, he had found her desirable. But she would never have thrown herself against him if he hadn’t been Lavastine’s heir. She had wanted something from him—a position for her brother in his retinue. This coin she had to offer in trade. Had he been simple Alain, foster son of Henri the merchant, he would have had nothing to give her in return. She would not have looked twice at him, just as the girls at Lavas Holding had never looked twice at him before this summer except that one time, on a dare. And this summer, under stern orders given by the count himself to Cook who had delivered those orders to all the servingwomen in Lavas Holding, none had dared approach him for fear of the count’s wrath. The man who had made a bastard intended that illegitimate son to make none of his own.

“My lord, I beg you, forgive us.” The three soldiers knelt before him. The stench of mead on their breath was almost enough to stagger Alain where he crouched beside the ravaged man. “But he made such claims! He said any boy could claim to be a bastard, that any noble lord might tumble a woman or two and think nothing of it—”

As he had been about to do, without thinking at all!

“—and so we said we’d see how well he did, claiming to be Lavastine’s heir.”

Alain let out a breath. “So you threw him into the kennel.”

They didn’t answer, nor did they need to.

Men from the stables came running up, and there was shoving and angry words. The man on the ground ceased his muttering and lapsed into quiet.

“You’ve killed him!”

“Bastard lovers! Our lord Geoffrey is a true nobleman!”

“You wouldn’t know a noble lord if he bit you in the—”

“Quiet!” cried Alain, standing. He set a hand on the gate and shook it, and that shut every one of them up and brought Rage and Sorrow to the gate, panting to be let out. He opened it, chased the others back, and let Rage emerge. Sorrow whined at being left behind and thumped his tail against wood, barking once.

“Take this man and give him care. All who witnessed, come with me. This will be settled.”

They followed like sheep, the handlers—some Lavastine’s, some Geoffrey’s—the three soldiers, and a pair of Geoffrey’s men-at-arms who had been comrades to the injured man and who now admitted to having goaded him on. Except for the handlers, they were all drunk. Rage herded them to the doors which led into the hall. Alain stepped across the threshold and was assaulted at once with a haze of smoke. The annoying buzz of whispering voices made an undertone beneath the ringing tenor of the poet.

Lady and Lord Above! The poet was still going on. It was no wonder the Salian king had thrown him out to make his fortune elsewhere.

”In the woods every manner of wild beast makes its lair. Through these glades the admirable hero, Taillefer, would often go hunting and give chase with hounds and spears and arrows. At the very dawn of day, when the sun first rises to spread its light upon the fields and the great city, a band of nobles waits at the threshold of the emperor’s bedchamber, and with them wait the emperor’s noble daughters. A clamor arises in the city, a roar lifts into the air, horse neighs to horse, and hound strains at its leash. At length all set out. The young men carry the thick hunting spears with sharp iron points, and the women carry linen nets fastened with square mesh. A throng encircles the emperor, and he and his daughters lead their black hounds with leashes round their necks, and in their excitement the hounds snap at any person who comes near them except for their master and his children, for even the dogs in their dumb loyalty bow before such bright nobility …”

*   *   *

The poet was last to see and last—finally—to stop talking.

Lavastine rose from behind the long table at the far end of the hall. “What does this mean, Alain?”