Prince of Dogs

“The daimone,” he said. “I should have killed it with the knife. Then it would have been free of the mortal body and able to go home to the heavens. Wouldn’t that have been a better trade?”

Anna shook her head. “I don’t think any human can kill a daimone. They aren’t like us, they don’t have our blood, and maybe they don’t have blood at all the way we do. You would just have made it mad.”

He sighed. “Maybe so. But I pity that poor soul. If it has a soul.”

She hesitated, but then she asked, “Do Eika have souls?”

“Of course not!”

“But that one—it saw us, and it let us go. It wore a Circle, Matthias. If it wore a Circle, isn’t it kin of ours because it also believes in God?”

“It just stole it from a body and wears it as a trophy. I don’t know why it let us go. Maybe St. Kristine watched over us and blinded its eyes.” He turned his back on the city and began to climb back down the hill. “Come, Anna. I don’t know how far we’ll have to walk before we find people.”

But St. Kristine, while surely saving them, had not blinded the Eika’s eyes. Anna knew that. It had seen her touch her Circle, and it had copied her movement. It had let them go, knowingly, deliberately. Just as every human slave in the city had conspired to set them free, which was only what they would have done for their own kin.

It was a beautiful summer’s day and they walked free through bright woods and drank from free-flowing streams and ate, carefully, a few moist berries. At dusk Matthias saw a campfire. The astonished woodsmen—set here in the forest to hunt and to keep an eye out for Eika incursions—gladly traded them food for one of the extra knives, and let them sleep huddled by the coals. In the morning one woodsman escorted the children to the nearest village.

“Let me give you some advice,” said the woodsman, who was small and wiry and cheerful, and who had lost one finger on his left hand. “There’s little room in Steleshame these days, with all the refugees. But you’ve value in the news you bring, so don’t sell it cheap, and you might get to stay there. Ask for an apprenticeship, lad, and something to keep your sister busy with and cared for until she’s old enough to marry. Lady’s Blood! It is a miracle. We never thought to see any other folk walk alive out of the city. How did you survive? How did you get free?”

Matthias told a brief version of the story, but when he got to the end, he didn’t mention the Eika. For the Eika was not part of Matthias’ story. And yet the Eika puzzled Anna most. But she kept silent. All humans hated the Eika. They had every reason to, for the Eika were savages and their dogs the most hideous creatures living.

“Your brother will no doubt find work with a tanner, child,” the woodsman said to Anna. “Have you any skills?”

She did not mean to say it. It popped out unbidden. “When I’m old enough, I’ll travel like the fraters do. I’ll bring the Holy Word and the Circle of Unity to the Eika. They can’t be meant to be savages.”

He laughed, but not unkindly, only shaking his head as adults did when children said something they considered silly. Matthias shushed her and made a face.

But the day was very beautiful, and they were free, and perhaps if they brought news that slaves still lived in the city, someone—some noble lady or lord—might lead an expedition to free the others. If only Papa Otto and the rest could hold on for that long.

She thought for a long while as she walked through the woodland. She and Matthias had lost both father and mother and been given into the callous care of their uncle. Yet it was not their uncle—their only remaining kinsman— who had saved them. He had tried only to save himself and she supposed she would never know if he still walked among the living or rotted among the forgotten dead. It was Papa Otto—no blood father of theirs—and the other slaves who had saved them. If they, who were not her true kin, could act as kin, then was it not possible that even an Eika could become kin? This thought she held like a gift in her heart. Matthias had given the daimone the knife, which it could use to defend itself or free itself if such were possible, and in exchange it had given them freedom.

But in the end, after all that had happened, it was the solitary Eika who had stayed its hand and let them go.

PART ONE

DIVINATION BY THUNDER

I

THE MUSIC OF WAR

1

HE smelled the storm coming before the first rumble of thunder sounded far in the distance. The dogs stirred restlessly and nipped at him, but he slapped them aside until they whined and hunkered down at his feet.