In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“I am alone except for one witness, hidden in the trees,” continued Alain, “and farther back two hounds guarding a criminal who consorted with bandits.”

“A likely story,” said the captain. “How do you know my name? Are you one of the biscop’s men?”

“I am not.”

“To what lord or lady do you owe allegiance?”

“I serve God, Captain Tammus. Whom do you serve, God or the Enemy?”

They murmured angrily at that, like bees stirred up by smoke, and one rash fellow actually rode out ahead of the front rank brandishing his sword.

“Fall back!” snapped the captain.

The man obeyed. The rest halted an easy spear’s toss from Alain. A branch snapped in the woods.

“What do you want?” asked the captain. “I’ve no patience. We’re close to our quarry and you’re in our way.”

Alain was close enough to see Tammus’ eye flare as he reacted to a bold stare. The captain had but one hand. The other arm ended in a stump at the wrist, seared by fire.

“To pass, you must kill me, keeper.”

One among the guard sniggered.

“Hush! Why do you call me that? How do you know my name?”

“You kept the guivre for Lady Sabella. I saw you feed a living man to it, once. That’s how you kept it alive. I think you might have called yourself by a different name, then.”

Tammus’ gaze flickered, losing touch with Alain’s as he traced the reaction of his men. Soldiers looked one at the other; hands fluttered as in sign language; a murmuring passed back through the ranks.

“Hush!” said the keeper. “I am Lady Sabella’s servant. I do as she bids me. You are in my way. We’ll ride right over you. You have no weapon.”

Alain caught his gaze again and held it. He challenged him as a hound might, with a stare from which one must back down and the other emerge triumphant.

“With your own hand you must kill me,” he said, “or with your own voice you must command one of your men to slay me because you refuse to spill my blood with your own weapon. Either way, your hands are stained.”

“I am the lady’s servant,” growled Tammus. “I do as she bids me.” He could not now look away without losing face, not with every man among his company watching him.

Alain said nothing, only kept his gaze locked on the captain’s. He remembered the night he had stumbled upon the guivre’s cage, how it had been shrouded in canvas to conceal the monster within. He recalled the slack body of the drugged man who woke up too late to the fate that would consume him. He knew in his heart and in his limbs the touch of the guivre’s gaze, which struck like the sword of God, for he had felt it that night. So did the creatures of God teach humankind what they needed to know.

“I’ve killed lots of men and in worse ways than cutting a man down on the road,” muttered Tammus hoarsely.

“I know,” said Alain, remembering that great eye and its power. “For I am the one who aided Brother Agius in killing that poor beast at Kassel. With a sword I killed it, and Lady Sabella’s army was routed. Do you think you can kill me?”

A breath was the only sign; lips parted. Wind curled in leafless branches.

Tammus lost his nerve. He froze. Every man there felt it, heard it, saw it, knew it with the same instinct hounds have for weakness. It took only that one breath for the advantage to shift, for the battle to be lost.

Alain did not move. It was they who fled back the way they had come.

4

“YOUR Grace.”

Alain knelt in the spot indicated by Captain Ulric.

“I don’t know how he did it!” Erkanwulf was saying off to one side. Because of his mounting exasperation, his voice carried. “He just looked at them. They turned tail and ran. That was before I saw those monstrous black hounds!”

“I know who you are, or who you once were.” Biscop Constance had aged horribly. Lines marked her face as deeply, in their own way, as Tammus’ scars had disfigured him, and she favored her right side over the left as though it was agony to shift her left hip at all. But her gaze was calm and her voice was mild. “Beyond what I witnessed myself, and what I learned when I ruled Arconia, I have heard just these last few moments such tales as make my head spin. You are a count’s bastard son. A count yourself. A cheat and a liar and thief. A whore’s son. A faithful Lion who died in the east in battle. You are, it appears, a man who commands the loyalty of fierce beasts. Who can turn back a war band on a forest lane with his gaze alone.”