Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars 2)

A warning, the touch of a horn to lips, sounded from the outer ranks. Hanna stood in her stirrups to get a look, but what she saw chilled her and she shuddered despite the heat of the sun over the battleground.

Eika did indeed flee the battle now in disorderly groups—but not all of them, not those who were wounded, dead, or dying, not those who had kept their wits about them in the face of disaster. Pressing briskly and with purpose toward the river’s bank marched a host of Eika, several hundred, in good order and with several standards borne before them. With shields raised in a tight wall and the gaps between bristling with spears, they held off the human soldiers who harried them from behind. Were those bones swaying from the standards? Mercifully, from this distance, she could not tell for sure.

“Form up!” cried Sapientia, but it was too late; in her overconfidence she had allowed her troops to scatter.

“Send the Eagle for help!” shouted Hugh. “If they can be struck from behind while we charge from this side—”

“Nay!” cried the princess, glancing back over her shoulder to see how many riders remained with her. Others hastily mounted and galloped back from the shoreline. One man took an arrow from the ships and fell tumbling down from his horse. “I won’t have it said I begged for help at the first sign of trouble. May St. Perpetua be with us this day! Who is with me?” With sword raised she spurred her horse forward straight toward the Eika line. Battle-trained, it did not shy away from the glittering ranks of spears and stone axes.

“Damn!” swore Hugh as her retainers followed her. He caught Hanna by the arm before she could ride after them. “Go to the king!” Then, sword drawn, he raced after the princess into the thick of the fight.

Already the Eika line had swung north along the river, cutting off Hanna’s escape in that direction. Princess Sapientia vanished into a maelstrom of battle as the Eika host swallowed her troops. Some riders fled the skirmish, abandoning her; others bore down after her into the Eika tide, both sides caught in a desperate struggle—one for life, one for honor. In a moment Hanna, too, would be trapped by the flood tide of the battle as it reached the river’s bank.

She kicked her horse to the south, down along the shoreline toward the ruins of Gent, and as she rode, her spear scraping up and down along her thigh, she began to pray.

4

SANGLANT led them through the streets at a steady jog. Fifth Son had withdrawn his troops, but other Eika scurried through Gent, fleeing the battle now that the drums were silent and Bloodheart, and his illusions, dead.

Under the unsparing eye of the sun, the prince appeared perhaps more pathetic than appalling. Yet he was a shocking enough sight with the five monstrous dogs in attendance as if they were all that remained of his proud Dragons. King’s Dragon he had once been. Now, except for his shape and the princely authority of his bearing, he was scarcely different from those dogs.

But he had not forgotten how to kill.

Their skirmishes were brief, and though Lavastine had lost three men in the fight within the cathedral, he lost none now, not with Sanglant at their head. Eika were as like to run from them, seeing the prince in his madness, as join the fray.

The gates lay open and they found Ulric and most of his party on the bridge, staring at the river plain beyond where the battle still raged. Clouds of dust as well as the lay of the land obscured the fighting.

“My lord count!” cried Captain Ulric when he recognized their group.

“Beware!” shouted one of his men. A volley of arrows showered into them. Two soldiers dropped, one with a hand clasped to his thigh, another pierced in the throat.

Sanglant growled and leaped, dogs after him, into a stand of brush that moments later Liath saw contained four skulking Eika. She made ready to shoot….

But there was no need. Sanglant struck down two even as his dogs bowled over and rended the others, although one of the dogs was slashed so badly that its fellows immediately turned on it and bit through its throat.

“There!” shouted Lavastine. Liath wrenched her gaze away from Sanglant to see a troop of horsemen riding out of the dusty murk that was the battleground. At once men shouted and waved, and within moments Lord Geoffrey reined up. He had but twenty men remaining as well as some extra horses following along.

“Cousin!” he cried, and he flung himself off his horse to clap Lavastine vigorously on the shoulder. “Ai, Lord! I thought you dead, surely.”

“Any news of those who remained behind on the hill?”

Lord Geoffrey could only shrug. Then, eyes widening, he stared at the apparition that, silent but all the more frightening because of that silence, now commandeered one of the riderless horses and swung up onto it. “Lady have mercy!” he breathed. “What is it?”

The prince flung away the spear and galloped northwest toward the thickest cloud of dust.

“Eagle! Take a horse and ride after him. The king will have my head if he gets himself killed. I doubt he is in his right mind.” With this cool assessment, Lavastine turned back to his cousin. “Has the king arrived?”

“I know not, cousin. It is madness out there, and most of our people long since lost.”

“You’ve done well to survive this long.” But Lavastine did not seem to mean the words as praise, any more than he meant his earlier comment, calling Sanglant out of his right mind, as censure. “Eagle!” His gaze tripped over her where she still stood, gawping, frozen, unable to act. “Go!”

It was easier to obey than to think. She took the mount offered her and left them just as a party of Eika came running and a new skirmish was joined.

Chaos.

Through the streaming battle she rode on the trail of Sanglant, who was himself all movement. Eika fled in confusion or retreated in disciplined groups, and cavalry charged through and reformed and charged back, scattering them, cutting down those who ran and pounding again and again those who held steady.

Sanglant drove his horse wherever the fight was thickest. Certainly he was brave; perhaps he was also insane. After he rallied a group of horsemen who had gotten cut off from their captain, she heard his name called out above the riot of noise like a talisman. She tried merely to keep away from Eika, for in this tempest she had few clear shots and plenty of chances to get hacked down from behind, though most Eika seemed to be running for their lives. It was all she could do to keep Sanglant in her sight.