Alain ran to the arch. Out in the field the hounds converged, then Rage split off, cutting sideways, and Sorrow leaped the other way. Their barking came fast and furious. Was that a flash of white along the ground? Sunset bled fire along clouds that had streamed out to cover the western sky. In the east, a few stars winked into view between a patchwork of clouds. From the church, he heard the first high voices raised to God. Vespers had begun.
“Lay down beside me, O Lord, sleep beside me.
Protect me from all harm.
Let my Mother watch over me and sing me to my sweet rest
as You watch over Your children.
Lord, have mercy. Lady, have mercy.”
Bliss bowled over, tumbling, righted himself, and began to dig. Dirt sprayed out behind his forepaws. Steadfast, Fear, Sorrow, and Rage converged on him and soon they dug furiously and with a hellish cacophony of barking.
“What means this?” asked Lavastine, coming up behind Alain, but Terror was already there, biting down on the count’s wrist and trying to tug him back into the garden.
A shuddering thrill ran through Alain. He touched his chest, where hung the tiny pouch that concealed his rose. It seared his fingers with cold through the linen of his summer tunic.
“Let me go,” he said. By then others had come out to investigate. Reluctantly, Lavastine let Terror pull him back into the garden into the circle of his attendants.
Alain ran forward into a blizzard of dirt.
“Peace!” he cried, but they gave him no peace. Dirt stung his eyes and coated his tongue and lips. They were in a frenzy, barking so frenetically that he could no longer hear the nuns’ singing over their deafening noise. A tiny body, white against the earth, darted, spun, and leaped.
Bliss’ jaws snapped shut over it.
The other four hounds stopped barking instantaneously and formed a circle around Bliss, who swallowed. Then he slewed his great black head up to look at Alain. He pressed a dry nose into Alain’s hand, snuffled there for one moment, and as suddenly turned away and broke into a ground-eating lope toward the woodland that lay beyond the fields.
Alain chased him, but the other hounds got in his way, mobbing him. Their weight threw him to the ground, and there he lay with Sorrow draped over on his chest, and Fear and Rage sitting on his legs. Steadfast trotted after Bliss but stopped at the wood’s edge, like a watchman. The geese had clustered at the distant end of the field and, settling now, they waggled off to glean between rows of barley and spelt.
“What is going on, Alain?” Lavastine arrived, sword in hand Four men-at-arms bearing torches and armed with spears at tended him.
But when Alain tried to describe what he had seen, none of it made sense.
“Come,” said Lavastine to the men-at-arms. “I’ve had enough of curses and superstition. Get a dozen more of your fellows and we’ll search for the hound.”
“But, Father—”
“Peace!” snapped Lavastine. Alain knew better than to protest.
He walked with Lavastine into the forest, never leaving his side. The good sisters of St. Genovefa Convent had long since cleared out most of the underbrush and dead wood for kindling and charcoal. The open woodland gave sparse cover. There was enough of a moon to guide their feet, and the torches gave Alain heart, as if he could thrust the flame into any curse that tried to fly at him out of the darkness.
But the five hounds padded quietly along, content to let them search, which they did for half the night at least. They found no sign of Bliss.
When he stumbled at last into the chamber set aside for himself, Tallia, and their servants, he had to pick his way carefully over their sleeping attendants. It was black in the chamber, and he was too tired to undress, so he simply lay down in his clothes With a hand, he searched the bed, careful not to wake her. But like Bliss, she was gone.
Faintly, he heard voices singing Vigils, the night office. She had hidden herself away beyond the cloister walls. If only he could heave himself up off this bed and go in search of her who was everything and the only thing he had ever wanted.
He slept.
He weaves his standard himself. From two spear hafts bound into a cross-shaft he strings up the bones of his dead brothers—those that can be recovered—and when the wind blows, they make a pleasant sound: the music of victory. Certain items—five hand bells, an ivory-hafted knife made of bronze, needles, a gold cup, iron fishhooks, and a thin rod of iron—he laces in among the bones to give variety to their song. He binds the five braids of his dead rivals at the top, ties strips of silk and linen torn from the bodies of Bloodheart’s enemies below them to make streamers, and weights each dangling line of bone and metal with a pierced round of baked clay.
The entire tribe has assembled to watch this ceremony on the dancing ground of the SwiftDaughters. He stands facing the long slope that leads down to the beach where the ships are drawn up. Behind him stand the dwellings of his brothers and uncles, marching up the long valley toward the fjall. On his left lie the storehouses held in common by the tribe, and on his right the longhall that belongs to OldMother, built entirely of stone and thatched with sod. The doorway gapes open, but he sees nothing stirring within its depths. SwiftDaughters stand in a semicircle in front of OldMother’s hall. They have finished the long dance whose measures tell the story of Rikin’s tribe all the way back to the dawning of the world.
That song has been sung, and his victory acknowledged: Fifth Son of the Fifth Litter will become chieftain of Rikin tribe.
He binds off the last strand of his standard and jams its sharpened base into the dirt so that it stands upright. From the ground he picks up a stone scraper and with it scrapes the residue of paint off his chest—the paint that marked his kinship to Bloodheart, who is now dead. With his fingers, dabbing in tiny pots of ocher and woad, he paints a new pattern on this chest, his pattern: a circle with two lines crossed inside so that they touch four points on the circle, one for each of the winds; north, west, east, and south.
“On these winds my ships will sail,” he cries. They all listen. They are his tribe now, his to mold and use as a weapon. “On four winds to the far shores of the world, all the regions of the earth that are known to the WiseMothers.”