Prince of Dogs

She must have made a noise in her throat, or a soft grunt.

He looked up with an impatient grimace. “Do you have a question? Speak it!”

“I beg your pardon, my lord.” She glanced around the pavilion, but she, the count, his hounds, and his captain were the only occupants. “Oughtn’t we to wait for Lord Alain to return before we speak of such plans?”

Irritation flared in his expression, but instead of speaking, he took wood chips from the captain’s hand and placed them, “below” the bluffs and within sight of the city, in the shape of an oval rampart, like unto a fort. After all, he did not have to explain his actions to her. With a moment’s thought she knew the answer anyway. Alain shared dreams with an Eika prince. If the one could dream the other’s life, why shouldn’t the opposite be true? Lavastine could not risk betraying his thoughts to Bloodheart, even if it meant deceiving his son in such a way as this. “Eagle!” He handed her a stiff length of thread. “Can you see this in your mind and make a picture of it?”

She took the thread and squatted to consider the landscape before her. “I’ve seen maps at the kalif’s palace in Qurtubah. I know how to read them.”

“Qurtubah!” But the count’s exclamation was voiced so softly that she deemed it better not to respond. She was not sure how much Alain had told his father, and she did not want to risk betraying to the count that, in one matter at least, Alain had concealed her secrets from his father.

After a long pause, she set one end of the thread between the two block towers representing Gent and lay it down stretching westward, its other end coming to rest beyond the sticks that marked the uplands above the river plain. Then she frowned and moved the line of sticks back a bit. “The river plain is broader here. Lord Wichman must know the lay of the ground better than I, since he’s been raiding through this area for months.”

“Lord Wichman is brave but foolish. I will use him as I judge fit.” The count examined the little map, then moved the placement of the fort so that it rested on the plain but up against the uplands, near the place where the tunnel supposedly had its end. “River’s mouth,” he said, touching that place and having evidently forgotten—or dismissed—young Lord Wichman. “Gent. A fortified camp. A secret tunnel. The Eika have ships, foot soldiers, and herds. Wichman’s last scout brought in news that there are forty-seven ships beached near Gent. I know from my own experience that each ship can carry about thirty Eika. With Lord Wichman joining me I have about seven hundred soldiers, a third of whom are cavalry.”

“But that means they have twice as many soldiers as we do! Shouldn’t we wait here at Steleshame for King Henry?”

“Who knows when King Henry will arrive?” asked the captain. “Or if some other conflict distracts him? Nay, lass, we can’t wait on an army that may never come. And certainly not in a place like this holding, where there aren’t supplies enough to keep us fed and with the Eika raiding at their will, should they wish to harass us here. You can be sure they have scouts in these woods, watching us just as our scouts have gone ahead to watch them.”

“We will leave a messenger here to tell Henry where we are, if he arrives,” added the count. An odd light of excitement glinted in Lavastine’s expression, a man who has seen his heart’s desire and at last knows which path will lead him to it. “Bloodheart may have numbers,” he said, “but I have a plan.”

“Did you see how Count Lavastine praised my singing last night!” It was morning, and Master Helvidius could not contain his excitement. “The counts of Lavas are great landholders in Varre, practically dukes given the power they can wield. Of course, they have no blood connection to the royal line. Still, a lord of his consequence will wish to have a poet of my gifts in his retinue.”

Anna stood stunned. “You’d leave us?”

“Mistress Gisela doesn’t appreciate my verse. And she’s lost most of her wealth with this war. I’d be better off attaching myself to a new household.” He hesitated.

The salad leaves picked yesterday lay in a chipped soapstone bowl, itself gleaned from the ruins of the tannery after the Eika attack. Anna had traded the tansy for a cup of barley from last season’s scant harvest, and now Helen chewed happily on a little cake of spring pudding: barley mixed with chopped bistort, dandelion leaves, and nettle tops, boiled in a bag, then fried in lard on a battered tin sheet over the fire.

“Of course, you could come with me,” he finished, but reluctance dragged on his words.