Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

Rage and Sorrow barked and whined where they stood tugging at their leashes, which were staked to the ground. Furious, Alain spun and ran, too angry to think, too angry to do anything but jerk the stake out of the ground and pull the leashes free.

“Go!” he shouted, and they leaped forward, growling, toward the man who had made their master so angry.

Lavastine appeared, crossing the threshold of the house. “Alain!” he shouted.

Rage and Sorrow ran flat out and bounded over grass and shavings while Henri stood and stared them down, although Alain saw him shaking, scraper raised as if to protect himself. Nothing would protect him from the hounds. Nothing except the voice of an heir of Lavas.

“Halt!” Alain cried, and the hounds, an arm’s length from Henri, stopped dead. “Heel.” He whistled. They growled once, longingly, at the other man, then, obedient, they slewed their great heads round and trotted back to Alain. Shaking, his hands trembling so hard he could scarcely hold the leashes, he staked them back down.

By that time Lavastine had reached him. “What means this?” The count glanced toward Henri, who had not gone back to his work but stood slackly by the mast and who, as a tree leans under the wind, moved now to rest a hand and then his weight on the log, bent over like an old, old man.

“N-nothing,” whispered Alain. He wanted to weep. He dared not.

“Indeed,” said Lavastine. “If it is nothing, you must come inside. You should not have run out in that way. It is a great honor to this family that we eat at their table and allow them to serve us.” He signed to one of his servingmen. “Get my cup.”

Alain followed him inside. He could not look to his right or left. He could not look at all, not to meet anyone’s eyes. Lavastine took from the hand of his servingman his fine walnut cup which he used when he traveled. Four golden rivers had been carved into the wood, and the fine grain was polished until it gleamed. This cup he graciously gave to Aunt Bel, who had Stancy fill it with wine and returned it to him to drink first. Only after the count had drunk from it did she agree to sit at his right and take food herself, though the rest of her family served.

“This cup I hope you will accept,” said Lavastine, “in memory of your hospitality toward myself and my son this day.”

“You do us honor, my lord,” said Aunt Bel, and she drank.

The meal was not as fancy as that served by Mistress Garia, who had, after all, had several day’s notice of Lavastine’s arrival. But there was veal and good bread and wine and apples, and several chickens had been freshly killed and cooked, spiced with coriander and mustard. Most importantly, the meal was served with dignity and pride, and there was more than enough for all.

Henri did not come inside.

To Alain, silent in the midst of his old family’s newfound plenty, it all tasted like ashes and dust.

2

THEY sail at dawn into the fjord. Cliffs surround them, glittering with ice and snow and cold gray-black stone, the stone of the Mothers. Waves beat on the prow, spraying the rowers with bitter cold water, so cold that a human drenched in it will die. Not his kind, of course. His kind are RockChildren, the children of earth and fire, and the only thing they fear is the venom of the ice-wyrms. All other fates lead merely to death, and against death they are strongest of all. Iron can kill them, if wielded with sufficient strength. They can drown. But heat and cold alike melt off their beautiful skin, for are they not marked with the rich colors of the hidden earth, melded as if in the forge from the very metals with which they adorn themselves?

He hefts his spear in his right hand as the ship slides in past islands of ice and prepares to jump as it grinds up onto the rocky beach. This valley, this tribe, is unprepared for his coming. They will rue that. But they will bare their throats before him.

The hull scrapes on stone. He leaps out of the ship, hitting ground hard, then splashes forward through the surf while his dogs jump out after him, followed by his war band. His feet grip ice, slick on pebbles, while the dogs flounder behind him and regain their footing. He races up the shore and runs on snow. Behind, he hears the ragged panting of the dogs and the intent breathing of his warband. They believe in him, now. This is their fourth tribe this season. Winter is a good time for killing.

Too late the Watchers at water’s edge raise the alarm. Too late the smoke fire rises to alert those living farther up along the paths which lead to the high slopes and the fjall. He hears the sudden bleat of the OldMother waking from her trance to danger. The SwiftDaughters run from the long hall carrying baskets, the nests of unhatched eggs. He sets the dogs on them. SwiftDaughters are not sacred, although the OldMother is. The dogs scatter them and baskets drop and eggs fall to the cold earth, to be lost in snow or splintered by ice, claw, tooth, or wind. Those that are strongest will survive. The others deserve to perish.

Now the warriors of Hakonin fjord gather their weapons and rush like a herd of furious goats down into the fray. He is proud of his people. He has never seen one of them turn and run. And on this day they have his cunning as well as courage to aid them. His second and third boats have beached farther down the strand and his soldiers have raced up from behind, so that the Hakonin RockChildren are already encircled. Death already sweeps down on them, as dragons and eagles take their prey from the skies. Only they do not know it yet. But as the battle is joined and they realize their plight, they fight the harder. They are strong and fearless, and because of that he calls his soldiers off sooner than he would have otherwise, leaving perhaps half of the Hakonin warriors still in the fjall of the living rather than sending them to the cold stone pathways of the dead.

He gives them a choice.

Proud warriors, each one that is left, and properly raised. They do not throw down their weapons but neither do they fight on when all is hopeless. They do not surrender. They pledge their death, or their life, to the will of their OldMother and her knife of decision.

Now, and at last, when all is lost, she emerges from the long hall. She is stout and as gray and strong as rock, which she much resembles. Her movements are as stiff as those of trees unbent in storm. It is the peculiar beauty of the OldMothers that, like the mountains and the cliffs and the jutting ridges of stone that scar the fields and pastures, they are glimpses of the bones of earth that lace all land together and give strength and solidity to the world. The SwiftDaughters left to her hoist baskets and gather up those eggs, fallen among the detritus of their sisters, which remain unbroken. These they collect together to form new nests, but there are few, many fewer than a tribe needs to survive.

In the pens behind the long hall the human slaves wail and moan; their noise is appalling and irritating, but he restrains himself from killing them outright just to silence that awful mewling. He gestures. His own soldiers part, forming a path down which his human slaves can come forward. These slaves he has gathered to himself as the SwiftDaughters gather the unbroken eggs. At Valdarnin fjord he set these slaves to watch over warriors and dogs alike as humiliation, for the Valdarnin warriors fought weakly and some even surrendered before they knew their OldMother’s will. But he will not humiliate the Hakonin; instead, he lets his human soldiers, such as they are and armed only with weapons of wood, stand watch over the penned slaves. They have served him well this season of fighting. He is pleased to have thought of using them, the strong ones, the ones that aren’t afraid to look him in the eye, to wish to defy him, and who are yet intelligent enough to know that defiance is useless.

“Who are you?” asks Hakonin OldMother. She waits at the threshold. It is gesture enough that she has emerged into the ragged winter sunlight, torn by clouds and a few drifting curls of snow.

“I am of Rikin fjord, fifth son of the fifth litter of Rikin OldMother. I am son of Bloodheart, and it is to his teeth you will now bare your throats.”

“To what purpose?” she asks, her voice like the grinding of pebbles on the shore beneath the hull of his ship.

None of the other OldMothers have asked this question, only his own, Rikin’s Mother, before he set off for the winter’s hunt.

“The many can accomplish what the few cannot,” he replies.

“You serve Bloodheart,” she says.