Elliott, Kate - Crown of Stars 1 (81 page)

Alain had not noticed, but now through the glass he saw the faint glamour of light. He shook his head.

"I had a terrible fright when I woke and you weren't in the room. I thought I'd dreamed it all, the Eika prince, Sabella, the campaign, and you, my son." Lavastine stood and beckoned to the servants. "Go on, then! I see no reason to wait. Henry has pardoned us and I for one do not intend to wait in this dark palace and intrude on his grief. Nor remind him of what I have gained that he has lost." He took hold of Alain, his hand closing over Alain's wrist as if he meant never to let go of him.

"Come,
son,"
he said, relishing the sound of the word on his tongue.

"Where are we going?" asked Alain. Beyond, through the glass windows of the chapel, he saw now the enclosed garden, its flowers and hedges rising from the gloom into the light of a new and fine day. Distantly, he heard a woman's voice intoning the mass for the dead.

Lavastine smiled. "We're riding home."

At first he did not realize he was still alive. Caught in the middle of a waking sleep, his mind awake but his limbs as leaden as a corpse's, he became aware he rested half on cold flagstone and half on another body. His spine was aflame with agonizing pain, but even as it flared through him it began to dull down into a throbbing ache.

He could not quite manage to open his eyes. But he knew he was surrounded by bodies, strewn about him like so much refuse. Some few were still alive. He heard the muffled thunder of their heartbeats, felt their shallow breathing on the air, though he did not touch them. The body he lay on was, certainly, dead, but only recently so. Warmth pooled out from it, turning cold as he fought into full wakefulness.

It was so hard to wake up. And perhaps better not to.

No. Never let it be said that he did not fight until his last breath.

He heard the snuffling of the dogs. He began, then, to be consumed by dread: that the dogs would reach him before he could move and defend himself against them. There were few worse fates than being torn to pieces by dogs, like some dumb passive beast caught outside the stable.

He heard their growls and the way they shoved their muzzles against cloth and skin and metal, smelling for the ones who still lived. He heard the low rumble of voices, farther away, speaking words he did not know but in a guttural language he recognized
—that of the Eika savages. Now and again these unseen speakers laughed. Now and again the dogs barked in triumph, and then he would hear a man's grunt or a scream, cut off, and then he would hear—and now he cursed his keen hearing—the flow of blood and the rending of flesh from bone. Once he recognized, however briefly, the voice of one of his own men.

Still he could not move.

A nose nudged his slack left hand and a hard fang traced up the sleeve of his mail shirt. The dog growled. Its hot breath, rank with fresh blood, touched his cheek.

He struck.

Miraculously, he twitched. His right hand moved. And then, throwing himself on his side, he slammed his mailed glove into the dog's muzzle. It staggered back, and he shoved himself up. He had gotten to his knees when two more dogs hit him, snarling and bitting, from behind. He threw one of them bodily over his head and jabbed his elbow into the ribs of the other, groped at his belt for his knife but found no weapon.

His left hand had lost its glove. One of the dogs caught it and sank teeth into flesh. He hammered the creature's jaw down onto the stone floor. Stabs of pain lanced up his left arm, but he pried the beast's mouth off his hand, heaved up its stunned body, and threw it at the other two.

Now more came and more yet. They closed in, circling. He waited, panting, and licked the blood from his mangled hand.

One jumped in and snapped at his mail shirt. He swung and struck it, and it leaped back, but now behind him another broke in and nipped at his heel. He kicked. It yelped and bolted back.

He spun, staring them down. But they were only waiting, only testing him, to see how quick, how strong, how determined he was.

Beyond the dogs he caught sight of other shapes, but this fight
—with the dogs—was to the death, and he did
not have time to look. He had no helmet, no tabard, no protection on his bleeding and torn left hand, but he still had a mail glove on his right hand and the good mail shirt covering his torso and upper arms. He still had the dogs themselves, and though they were terrible to look upon
—eyes sparking fire and tongues hanging out, saliva dripping from their fangs—they were yet mindless rage-filled beasts and he was smarter than they were.

He backed up, stepping and stumbling over the dead, found a wall at last, and with this at his back he stared them down. A few sat down on their haunches and growled, unsure now. He singled out the biggest and ugliest one and darted out before any of the dogs could leap in upon him, grabbed the beast with a hand on each side of its thick neck, and with every ounce of strength he possessed swung it round and smashed it against the wall. It fell, limp, to the ground.

They erupted into a deafening chorus of howls and swarmed him, all leaping in at once. Their weight carried him down until he was trapped under their bodies, his arms and legs pinned. He was helpless. He was, at last, going to die.

One
—the biggest yet—fought through the pack to stand over his chest. Its head loomed over his face, its great muzzle yawning wide as it howled its triumph before the death strike.

And he saw his chance.

It bit down
—he slammed his head up under its jaw and lunged for the creature's throat. Clamped down.

Ai, Lady.
He could not rip its throat out, but, by the Lord, he could crush its windpipe until it suffocated. The big dog thrashed above him as he bit down. Its iron-gray hide tasted like metal. Blood leaked down his own throat. Its paws scrabbled at him, slowed, and then went lax. He felt the windpipe crack and, finally, jaw aching, he dared let go.

The beast collapsed on top of him.

The other dogs, worrying at his arms and legs, backed away. They snarled at him as he struggled to his feet. He spit out hair from his mouth and wiped his teeth. He ached everywhere. But he had killed it.

Movement coursed through the lofty space, and just before the Eika came, he finally realized that he stood in the great cathedral of Gent. Had they dragged every one of his Dragons in here? He did not even know how much time had passed since the fall of Gent. It could have been an hour or a day, or perhaps the enchanter had other spells surpassing even his illusions by which he could change the course of the stars.

"What have we here?" A huge Eika moved into his line of sight, shoving dogs aside, striking them back with clawed hands.

"Bloodheart," he whispered, because he had long since learned to mark his enemy by name.

The Eika enchanter laughed, a rasping sound like a file sharpening iron. "A prince among the dogs! This is a fine prize to have in my pack. Better even than this
— And Bloodheart tapped his left arm. There, wrapped around his upper arm like an armlet, Bloodheart had fixed the gold torque that signified royal kinship.

Sanglant could not help himself. He growled, low in his throat, to see his father's gift to him made mock of in this way. He sprang forward and flung himself on the Eika chieftain.

Bloodheart was strong, but Sanglant was faster, and he had already marked with his gaze the sheath that held Bloodheart's dagger. He found the hilt, wrenched it free, and with Bloodheart reeling backward, plunged the dagger into that hard skin, through it, up to the gold and jeweled hilt, right into the Eika's heart.

Bloodheart threw back his head and howled in pain. Then he grabbed Sanglant by the neck and shook him free and threw him hard to the floor. The dogs swarmed forward, but Sanglant struck wildly around with his fists and his hopeless fury drove them back. That fury was a companion when all his other companions were dead or dying. The dogs sat again
—except for two more who lay

still
—and with saliva rolling down their tongues they stared at him, ringing him so he could not move without coming within range of their teeth.

With a grunt, Bloodheart yanked the dagger out of his chest. He cursed and spit toward Sanglant, then laughed, that awful rasping sound. He handed the dagger to a small Eika who was naked except for a dirty cloth tied over his loins, a wizened creature made grotesque by the strange patterns painted on his body, by the sight of his body, so like a man's body except for the sheen of scales that was his skin. The small Eika spit on the blade and licked it clean. The blood hissed and bubbled, and then the small Eika pressed the blade against the wound on Bloodheart's chest and with some unseen sorcery burned the gash closed.

Sanglant winced at the acrid scent, but that wince sent a dog nipping forward toward his legs. He cuffed it hard, almost absently, and it whined and slunk back. He stared as the knife was lifted to reveal a thin white scar on the bronze sheen of the enchanter's hide.

"You'll have to do better than that," Bloodheart said, taking in a deep breath and puffing his chest up. The girdle of tiny gold links, interlaced into a skirt of surpassing beauty and delicacy, shifted around his hips and thighs as he moved, a dainty sound quite at odds with his bone-white hair and the blood that spattered his arms and knees and the one last streak of blood that trailed down his bare chest.

He grunted, grabbed the biggest of the dead dogs, and dragged it backward. Then, looking again at Sanglant, he bared his teeth; jewels winked there, tiny emeralds and rubies and sapphires. "You'll not kill me that way, prince of dogs. I do not keep my heart in my body."

Sanglant felt a warm trickle running past his right eye. Only now did he feel the gash, whether opened by Bloodheart's claws or one of the dogs he could not know; he did not remember getting it. He only hoped it would not bleed too profusely and obscure his vision.

Several of the Eika warriors came forward now, grunting and pointing, rasping out words in their harsh language. He could guess what they said: "Shall we kill him now? May I have the honor?"

He braced himself. He would go down hard and take at least one with him, in payment for what the Eika had done to his beloved Dragons. There was nothing else he could do for them now. Under the voices of the muttering Eika he heard no faint breathing, no catch of air in a throat, no gasp of a loved one's name. He risked one look, then, swept his eyes across the vast nave of the cathedral. Light shone in through the huge glass windows, cutting light into a hundred shafts that splintered out across the carnage within.

There was Sturm, his company heaped around him in death as they had been in life. There was Adela, a woman as fierce in her own way as the Eika were in theirs, but she was dead and
—he had to look away— ravaged by the dogs. There, where he had come to his senses, lay the Eagle, poor brave soul, who had stood with them to the bitter end. Dead now, every single one of them. Why did he still live?

With his other senses he remained painfully aware of each least shifting of the pack of dogs as they twitched their shoulders or shifted their flanks or closed their mouths and then opened them again to bare teeth, a threatening smile much like Bloodheart's. Better to go down fighting against men, even if they were Eika, than to be thrown to the dogs. There was no honor among the dogs.

"Shall we kill him?" the Eika warriors demanded, or so he supposed by the way they pointed at him and hefted their axes and spears, eager to swarm him and bring him down, the last, the prize of the battle.

"Nay, nay," said Bloodheart in the tongue of Wendish men. "It is our own way, is it not? See how the dogs obey him. See how they wait, knowing he is stronger and smarter than they are. He is First Brother among the pack, now, our prince. He has earned that right." He leaned down and unfastened from around the neck of the dead dog its iron collar. Rising, he barked out words in his own language.

The Eika soldiers laughed uproariously, their harsh voices echoing in the nave as hymns once had. Then they threw down their weapons and swarmed Sanglant. Because they were smarter than the dogs and stronger then he was, they pinned him finally, though he did some damage to them before he went down.

They fixed the iron collar around his neck, dragged him along the nave, and fettered him by a long chain to the Hearth, so massive and heavy an altar that though he strained he could not move it. The dogs loped over to him. A few worried at his feet but in a curious way, not precisely hostile. One bit at him, and he slapped it hard across the muzzle. It whined and backed away, and it was at once jumped by another; they fought for a moment until one turned its throat up to the victor.

"Stop!" snapped Sanglant, and there was, this time, no killing.

The strange old Eika man was chanting in a soft voice, hunkered down and rocking back and forth on his heels. He had a little leather cup and he shook it and rolled white objects out: dice or bones. Then he passed a hand over these objects, studied them, chanted again, and scooped them up. The cup he tucked away into the pouch he wore at his belt. A small wooden chest sat beside his feet.

More Eika swarmed into the cathedral, and they began dragging corpses down into the crypt. Others carried a great throne carved out of a single piece of
wood.
The huge chair was painted gold and red and black and ornamented with cunning interlock, dogs and dragons biting each other, mouths to tails, in endless circles. They set this chair beside the Hearth, in mockery of the biscop's seat.