The dogs hit Henry with the full force of their charge.
Rosvita shrieked. She heard it as from a distance, unaware she could utter such a terrible sound. Someone tugged frantically at her robe. Sanglant beat back the dogs in a frenzy, away from his father, and behind him Liath shouted a warning to Villam—who had dashed forward to the king—while she scrabbled in the dirt for the hammer and grasped the stake, trying to drag back on the chains. Lions charged in. They clubbed down the dogs, braved their fierce jaws to grab their legs and drag them off the king, and hacked at them mercilessly until blood spattered the ground like rain.
Pity stabbed briefly, vanished as Sanglant emerged from the maelstrom with Henry supported in his arms. Ai, God! The king was injured! She hurried to his side, vaguely aware of three attendants pressed close behind her: her clerics, who had not deserted her.
Sanglant thrust Henry into the arms of the princesses and plunged back in the fray.
“Down!” His voice rang out above everything else. “Hold! Withdraw!”
The Lions obeyed. How could they not? The prince knew how to command in battle. They withdrew cautiously, and he knelt beside the dogs.
Rosvita knelt beside the king, who had a weeping tear in his left arm, cloth mangled and stained with saliva and blood, threads shredded into skin. Claws had ripped the tunic along his back, too, but mercifully the thick royal robe had protected him from all but a shallow scratch. He shook off the shock of the impact and pushed himself upright. “Your Majesty!” she protested.
“Nay!” He shook off all who ran to assist him, even his daughters, as he limped forward.
“Your Majesty!” cried Villam, and a dozen others, as he approached Sanglant and the dogs, but he did not heed them.
One of the dogs was dead. As Henry halted beside him, Sanglant took out his knife and cut the throat of the second, so badly hacked that it could not possibly survive. The third whimpered softly and rolled to bare its throat to the prince. He stared into its yellow eyes. Blood dripped from its fangs; dust and the vile greenish blood born of its own foul body smeared its iron-gray coat.
“Kill it,” said Henry in a voice made dull by rage.
Sanglant looked up at him, glanced at Liath, who stood holding the iron stake in a bloodied hand … then sheathed the knife.
The shock of Sanglant’s defiance hit Henry harder than the dogs had. He staggered, caught himself on Villam, who got under his arm just in time to steady him. Rosvita’s mind seemed to be working at a pace so sluggish that not until this moment did she register Father Hugh, who had somehow gotten out of range and now, supported by his mother, spit bits of tooth onto the ground. Blood stained his lips, and his right cheek had the red bloom of a terrible bruise making ready to flower.
“I will retire to my chamber,” said Henry, so far gone in wrath that all the heat had boiled off to make a fearsomely cold rage beneath. “There, he will be brought to meet my judgment.”
Villam helped him away. Servingmen swarmed around them.
Rosvita knew she ought to follow, but she could not make her legs work. She stared at the assembly as they parted to make way for the king, dissolved into their constituent groups to slip away and plot in private over the upheaval sure to follow. Images caught and burned into her mind: Duke Conrad staying Princess Theophanu with a hand lightly touching her elbow, a comment exchanged, the shake of her head in negation, his eyes narrowing as he frowned and stepped back from her to let her by when she walked after her father; Sapientia flushed red with anger and humiliation, taking the arm of her young Eagle and turning deliberately away from Hugh as if to make clear that he had fallen into disfavor; Judith with her lips pressed tight in a foreboding glower; Ivar trying to break through the crowd to get to Liath but being hopelessly caught up in the tide that washed him away from her and then held back bodily by young Baldwin.
“Sister!” whispered Amabilia. Fortunatus had hold of her right arm, whether to support her or himself she could not tell. Constantine wept quietly. “Come, Sister, let us withdraw.”
Everyone, eddying, swirled away to leave at last several dozen soldiers, two dead dogs and an injured one, the bride, and the prince amid a spray of blood. Left alone, abandoned even by those who had championed him before.
This was the price of the king’s displeasure.
V
THE GENTLE BREATH OF GOD
1
IN an odd way, the disaster only made her more stubbornly resolute. She stood beside one of the dead dogs, and as its copperish blood leached away into the dirt, she felt a desperate obstinance swell in her heart as if the creature’s heart’s blood, soaking into the earth, made a transference of substance up through her feet to harden her own.
She was not going to let the king take Sanglant away from her.
Sanglant looked to see if anyone remained. It was worse even than she expected: everyone had abandoned them except for a dozen Lions and the soldiers who had escorted them from Ferse.
Now the captain of these men stepped forward. “My lord prince. We will gladly help you with the dogs. Then we must take you before the king, at his order.”
“Bury them,” said Sanglant. “I doubt if they’ll burn.” He got his arms under the injured dog, hoisted it, and lugged it to the chamber set aside for his use. Lions fanned out to give him room to walk. The courtyard had emptied except for servants, who whispered, staring, and fluttered away. Dust spun around the corners of buildings. She smelled pork roasting over fires. A sheep bleated. Distant thunder growled and faded.
“Eagle!” whispered one of the Lions as they halted before the door while Sanglant carried the limp dog over the threshold. She recognized her old comrade, Thiadbold; his scar stood stark white against tanned skin. “I beg your pardon!”
“Call me Liath, I beg you, friend.” She was desperate for friends. That Sanglant’s own loyal dogs had set upon the king …
“Liath,” Thiadbold glanced toward the door, which still yawned open. From within she heard Sanglant grunt as he got the dog down to the floor. “We Lions have not forgotten. If there is aught we can do to aid you, we will, as long as it does not go against our oath to the king.”