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Alain leaned against the low fence that hemmed in the open side of the shed and listened as Heric delivered his message in a vivid, penetrating voice to Chatelaine Dhuoda and her shadow cleric, the frater. People gathered to hear the news.
“The campaign is done for the season. The winds are changing. The Eika have sailed north back to their own ports for the winter. All along the coast they attacked. But here at the end three Eika ships bottled themselves up the Vennu after the tide had gone out. They built themselves a stockade, but the count begged for the Grace of Our Lord and Lady and led the attack. We stormed it!” He slapped a fist onto his other, open hand, grinning for the first time where he had been grim before. “Even their dogs gave way before us, and they more ferocious than their masters, for they would gladly eat any person who fell within reach of their teeth.” His audience murmured appreciatively at this gruesome detail. He went on. “But this time we slaughtered them Eika like sheep. Though it’s true they have tough hides. Hard as leather and gleaming like they was forged in a blacksmith’s furnace, not born from a decent mam like the rest of us. Those that ran out onto the flats got caught as the tide come in, and their ugly dogs with them!”
“I heard they was shapechangers,” said Cook, who had status enough that she might press to the front. “Half fish.”
Heric shrugged. The brief note of triumph died in his eyes; now he only looked weary. “They drown as well as we do. If any swam away, well then, I never saw them go. We took a captive, a prince of their kind. Lord Geoffrey wanted to kill him, but the count in his wisdom said we’d do better to give his kin someone to ransom than someone to avenge. They’re bringing the barbarian back, in a cage, with the count’s hounds tied to the bars, so no one can get in nor the barbarian out.” He shuddered and drew the Circle of Unity at his breast.
Chatelaine Dhuoda glanced about the fortress yard, marking each listener who loitered to hear the messenger’s tale. “How soon will his lordship arrive?”
“Within a fiveday. They were marching hard behind me. It was a long summer, and too much fighting. We’re all anxious to be home.”
“Go with Cook, then, and she’ll feed you.” Dhuoda nodded briskly at Cook, who took the hint and hurried back into the kitchens. “Then you’ll come back to me—what is your name again? You will give me a more detailed report.” Her gaze raked the loiterers again. Alain, half hidden, watched as the others moved quickly away. He stayed where he was.
When the yard was clear, Dhuoda signaled to the messenger to wait for a moment. “Did the count give any direction as to where he wants this Eika prince confined? Below? Or in one of the tower chambers?”
“I can’t be certain, Mistress,” said Heric with a bowed head. Alain marveled at how much the young man-at-arms had changed since midsummer. “I believe he means to kennel him with those black hounds. I heard him say with my own ears that he can’t be sure by any other means that the Eika will not find some unnatural way to escape.”
The chatelaine’s expression remained placid, although the frater drew the circle as against a bad omen. “That is all,” said Dhuoda. “You may go.”
Heric inclined his head obediently and limped off to the kitchens.
Dhuoda and the frater walked back toward the gate. Alain, shifting back against a shadowed wall, heard their voices as they passed.
“Is it true,” the frater asked, “that it was those black hounds that killed Count Lavastine’s own wife and daughter? That the count only keeps them because of a pact made by his grandfather with unholy devils, of which those black hounds are the living representatives?”
“I will only tell you once,” said Dhuoda. Alain had to strain to hear her voice. “To talk of such things here, Frater Agius, will give you as good a reception as if you were to argue your heretical views in front of the skopos.”
“But do you believe it to be true?” asked Agius.
“It is true that the original hounds, and the descendants born ever after of those first black hounds, obey only the trueborn counts of Lavas. Where they came from, no one knows, only that they were a gift from a Salian biscop—”
They walked on, and Alain could no longer hear them. Everyone said the black hounds traveled only and everywhere with Count Lavastine. No man otherwise could handle them, and they were known to have ravaged more than one servingman in the holding. Not even Master Rodlin, master over the stables and kennels, could control them.
“Horses,” said Lackling.
Or at least, he made a noise which Alain knew he meant to signify horses because the boy then threw his head back and scraped the ground with one foot, remarkably like a horse. He sniffed the air, as if he could smell their approach. And perhaps he could. Cook sometimes called him a changeling, and it was true he had an affinity for animals, just as a child born of a goblin mother would have, though he looked human enough. The others, of course, said that animals—God’s innocents—were said to recognize the halfwitted as innocents like themselves. Impatient, Lackling dashed outside.
Alain finished oiling the harness he had in his hands. Eight days had passed since Heric had come to the holding and warned them to expect the count’s return. Alain could wait a bit longer to look. It was an oddly auspicious day for the count and his forces to arrive back home: At the morning service the deacon had reminded them all that this was the saint’s day of St. Lavrentius, the very saint venerated with relics and a chapel in Lavas Church, which stood just outside town. Lavas Holding rested under the protection of St. Lavrentius’ hand. There was an ivory reliquary in the church that contained some of the holy martyr’s bones and a scrap of the leather belt that had bound him to the wheel on which he had died his martyr’s death in the last years of the Dariyan Empire. But thinking of the wheel made Alain think of the stars that wheeled in the heavens on their ceaseless round. It made him think of Midsummer’s Eve and the vision he had seen, and of Withi’s rejection of him after.
He sighed. Well, Aunt Bel would tell him that a serving maid like Withi wasn’t worth pining over in any case. And she would bluntly remind him that he was sworn to the church and, thus, to celibacy. But he couldn’t help thinking of Withi, even if he knew Aunt Bel was right.
By the time he hung the harness back on a peg and went to the stable door, he saw the guard waving one arm at a distant sight and then, in a loud voice, calling out to those below.
“They have come! The count arrives!”
The yard dissolved into a wild frenzy of activity.
Alain and Lackling found shelter at the corner of the stables, out of the way. From there they watched as the militia marched in through the gates, a lord who was obviously Count Lavastine at their head. The count rode a chestnut gelding. His kinsman Lord Geoffrey rode beside him on a roan, his fine armor betraying his status as a lord, and with them at the fore rode a young man wrapped in a cloak bearing the badge of the King’s Eagles. With them also rode the count’s captain, two clerics, and a dozen mounted soldiers Alain did not recognize. Behind these riders marched the militia, led by Sergeant Fell, and after them rolled the wagons and pack mules, kicking up dust.
The count pulled up his gelding in front of the steps that led into the hall. There waited Chatelaine Dhuoda, together with her retinue and Lord Geoffrey’s young bride, Aldegund, now hugely pregnant. As soon as the count dismounted, Lackling ran recklessly forward and stood shifting from one foot to the next while the count handed his reins over to his captain and then walked forward to greet his kinswomen. The captain glanced at Lackling and, with the barest nod, allowed the boy to walk beside him as he led the chestnut toward the stables.
Suddenly all the horses in the yard flung their heads back and shied. One of the clerics was thrown from his mount, and Lord Geoffrey cursed and fought his mare to a standstill. Only the chestnut, under Lackling’s hands, remained calm. Howling pierced the air, accompanied by a chorus of barks and ugly growls. Count Lavastine broke away from the women and hurried down the steps.
A wagon trundled through the gate, pulled by four oxen. A stocky man walked at the head of the lead ox, a good long way away from the bed of the wagon. Six black hounds lunged, snapping, toward the soldiers and onlookers, who shouted in alarm, or cried out, or scuttled back. But with yips and angry barks the hounds were, again and again, brought up short by thick chains fastened to the undercarriage. From the bed rose a cross built of heavy wood spars. To this cross was chained …
Not a man.
Like everyone else, Alain drew back, but more from the sight of the prisoner than from the savage hounds.
