In this whirlpool Bloodheart grabbed Sanglant by the iron collar at his neck and hoisted him into the air. With his other hand, he took Sanglant’s wrist, where he still held the knife, and twisted it hard.
The snap of bone and the wash of hot pain almost made him pass out. But he did not let go of the knife, not until Bloodheart ripped it out of his own shoulder and shook it free of Sanglant’s grip. He tossed Sanglant back, flipped the knife to hold it, jeweled hilt in his huge scaled hand, and struck furiously to either side at the ravening dogs, then leaped in among them.
Sanglant groped, found the brass Eagle’s badge, and hauled himself to his feet. This tiny shield he held before him, like a talisman, but it was useless. Bloodheart’s fury had passed the point of thought. The Eika stabbed the knife again and again into Sanglant’s chest.
Sometimes the remains of his chain mail turned the point, but at the ragged ends it could not protect him. The knife pierced him repeatedly, tearing him inside, shattering him, until his dogs leaped howling and biting and Bloodheart was forced to defend himself against them. He let go of Sanglant, who could not stand, could not even kneel, could only fall to the floor as his dogs drove back the mob that had come howling to watch him die. He could only watch as spears and axes fell on his dogs and the other dogs indiscriminately, splitting them open, spattering viscera and green-tinted blood and the wet matter of brain over him, over the floor, over everything. He could only feel the press of bodies and the sting of their whipcord tails as the last of his dogs pressed in around him, defending him even until the bitter end—as had his Dragons.
He would have wept at their loyalty, but he had no tears.
Bloodheart was still howling in rage, shouting at his priest, calling the Eika to silence, to stillness, so that they could hunt for the hideous creature that had escaped from the shattered chest. The mob stilled, broke, and parted.
In this way, abandoned for more important prey, Sanglant was left alone. Pain washed like water over him, the flood tide swelling to its height as black hazed his vision and he struggled to remain conscious, then ebbing to reveal every point of scalding pain in his body.
He heard the breath of the dogs, those panting out their last breaths and those few which still remained upright. The last six stood around him in a protective circle to face their common enemy. Surrounded by this fortification of dogs, he lay there breathing shallowly and waited for the blinding pain to end.
5
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 of the dogs were still alive, and they growled when any movement sifted near him. It was so hard to wake up and perhaps better not to. Perhaps it was better to slide unresisting into oblivion.
Ai, Lady. Would he be admitted to the Chamber of Light? Or was he, because of his mother’s blood, condemned to wander the world forever as a bodiless shade?
In the distance or in a dream, he heard the flutelike voices of the Eika speaking in Wendish, two voices accompanied by the mocking, harsh counterpoint of Eika calling and crying out in their own rough tongue. Some few of the words he now knew. In his dream he recognized more than he ever had before, but that was the nature of dreams, was it not?
“I have seen this army in my dreams.” This in fluent Wendish.
“No better than dog, why dare you speak so before the great one?” This in the Eika speech.
“My dreams are more honest than your boasting, brother! Do not toss aside the gifts the WiseMothers give you just because they are not made of iron or gold.”
“How can I believe your dreams are true dreams, weak one?” This from Bloodheart.
“I am stronger than I look, and my dreams are not just true dreams, they are the waking life of one of the humankind. He marches with this army, and as he marches, I march with him, seeing through his eyes.”
One of the dogs nudged him, testing for life, and he gasped so loud the echo of it split his skull with pain, but no sound came out of his mouth. Blackness fell. For an endless time he drowned in a black haze of unrelenting pain that spun and sparkled like the knife which had been driven countless times into his body. Finally the darkness lightened to an early morning gray. Glints of light burst here and there in the limitless mist.
The veil parted.
The woman appears young and is certainly beautiful. She wears a fringed skirt sewn of leather so thin and supple that it moves around her with her movements like a second skin. A double stripe of red paint runs from the back of her left hand up around the curve of her elbow, all the way to her shoulder. Her hair has a pale cast, though her complexion is as bronze-dark as his own; drawn back from her face, it is bound behind her head with painted leather strips nested with beads, trailing a long elegant green plume. A wreath of gold and turquoise and jade bead necklaces drapes down her chest almost to her waist. She wears no shirt or cloak, only the necklaces, concealing and revealing her breasts as she shifts.