Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

He smelled smoke on the wind, fires burning in the city, and then the acrid stench of charred wood. He heard the Eika play their game, day in and day out, in the square that fronted the cathedral. Always the winning team howled and laughed as they threw their trophy, the sack containing its gruesome burden, down in front of Bloodheart. Perhaps they moved more sluggishly in the cold, but neither heat nor cold, not the bitter hard wind or the silence of a dense snow, not the lash of freezing rain or the dull ache of a cold that chills down to the bones affected them adversely, no more than it did a rock.

As winter eked its way toward spring and the days grew longer, he noticed a change in their appearance. More of them now wore leather armor cut from the tanneries of Gent or carried spears and axes and iron-pointed arrows forged in Gent’s smithies. The cries of the slaves came to his ears day and night, but there was nothing he could do to help them.

There was nothing he could do but watch, and think. Spring was coming. The river would soon flow at floodtide. Few ships would sail upstream until late spring. But Bloodheart was mustering an army. Any fool, even a mad fool, could see that. Daily, Eika came and went. Some—for Sanglant could now tell certain ones apart from the rest—did not return, as if they had died on their errand or, perhaps, gone a much longer way away. Surely not even Eika dared to cross the northern seas in winter, but who could know? They were savages, and savages might try anything.

Chained here as he was, he could only watch. If he could keep the madness at bay, like the dogs, he could think. He could try to plan.

o;They are doomed to wander the earth,” said a village elder, “because they cannot ascend to the Chamber of Light.”

“My wise aunt told me the Lost Ones ruled here once,” added the householder. “Their shades can’t bear to leave the scene of their great glory. So they haunt us and try to drive us away so that their kin can come back and rule again.”

One tale led to another, and of course they wanted to know what message she took to Count Lavastine, whom they had heard tell of; his southernmost holdings lay not ten days’ ride from here. A few of the villagers had even seen the count and his army when they had returned this way last summer after the battle at Kassel.

“He had his heir with him,” said the householder. “A good-looking boy, tall and noble. What does the king want with Count Lavastine? Him being Varrish, and all, and the king Wendish. Maybe the king don’t like Varrish counts.”

So she told them about Gent.

“Ai, the Dragons!” said one old woman. “I saw the Dragons years ago! Very glorious, they was.”

That night, lying rolled in her cloak before the hearth fire, she dreamed of the Eika dogs.

XII

READING THE BONES

1

AS winter dragged on and the Eika left in Gent grew bored, Sanglant began to lose his dogs. Like his Dragons, they fought for him when he was attacked. Like his Dragons, they died. He did what he could to save them, but it was never enough.

Eika needed to fight and the combats they arranged against slaves were terrible to watch. The few combats they arranged against him, they lost. It was beneath their dignity to fight him many against one or with a weapon while he stood unarmed, and he had honed his skills so well over the months that none of them, however stout or bold, could best him.

That some Eika still raided he knew when one of the restless princeling sons brought in a few pathetic slaves or a handful of baubles to parade in front of Bloodheart, but the pickings in the region around Gent were pitifully thin by now after three seasons of raiding. Others hosted gatherings during which one or another of the savages would tell a tale of butchery in their harsh language that sometimes included horrible reenactments with living slaves, poor doomed souls.

Such shows impressed Bloodheart not at all. He, too, was restless. He played his bone flutes. He played with his powers, such as they were—Sanglant had little experience with sorcery and did not know how to measure what he saw: webs of light caging the cathedral with brightness; keening dragons that filled the vast nave with slashing tails and searing fire before they dissolved into mist; glowing swarms of mitelike bees that tormented Sanglant, stinging him until his hands and face swelled—only, all at once, to vanish together with the swelling when Bloodheart grew tired of the game and put down his flutes.

When the madness threatened to descend, he took refuge in his manor house, built as painstakingly over the winter as if he had sawed the logs and raised the roof with his own hands. The vision of the manor house saved him from the black cloud more times than he could count.

But it was never enough.

He smelled smoke on the wind, fires burning in the city, and then the acrid stench of charred wood. He heard the Eika play their game, day in and day out, in the square that fronted the cathedral. Always the winning team howled and laughed as they threw their trophy, the sack containing its gruesome burden, down in front of Bloodheart. Perhaps they moved more sluggishly in the cold, but neither heat nor cold, not the bitter hard wind or the silence of a dense snow, not the lash of freezing rain or the dull ache of a cold that chills down to the bones affected them adversely, no more than it did a rock.

As winter eked its way toward spring and the days grew longer, he noticed a change in their appearance. More of them now wore leather armor cut from the tanneries of Gent or carried spears and axes and iron-pointed arrows forged in Gent’s smithies. The cries of the slaves came to his ears day and night, but there was nothing he could do to help them.

There was nothing he could do but watch, and think. Spring was coming. The river would soon flow at floodtide. Few ships would sail upstream until late spring. But Bloodheart was mustering an army. Any fool, even a mad fool, could see that. Daily, Eika came and went. Some—for Sanglant could now tell certain ones apart from the rest—did not return, as if they had died on their errand or, perhaps, gone a much longer way away. Surely not even Eika dared to cross the northern seas in winter, but who could know? They were savages, and savages might try anything.

Chained here as he was, he could only watch. If he could keep the madness at bay, like the dogs, he could think. He could try to plan.

Bloodheart must not muster an army out of Gent. The Veser River ran deep into Wendish lands and with enough ships and a clear road past Gent, Bloodheart and his Eika army could wreak havoc on Henry’s lands.

Even Bloodheart must have a weakness. He needed only to be clear-sighted, like Liath, to find it out.

Certain things he observed.

A small gallery—the choir—ran above the nave along one side of the cathedral, but no Eika ever walked here or crowded above to stare down at their brothers.

The dogs never had puppies, nor did they ever seem to mate.

Just as he was tethered to the altar stone by his chains, so the Eika priest seemed tethered to Bloodheart. If Bloodheart sat on his throne, the priest did not venture out of doors. If Bloodheart left the cathedral as he did four times a day, then the priest left as well, dogging the chieftain’s heels.