Prince of Dogs

Sentries riddled the forest on either side of the road. Trees had been chopped down to form barriers in case of a raid, but beyond that Rosvita could see little of the disposition of the camp. She and the other clerics were shown to the king’s pavilion, which lay snug in the center of the sprawling camp, but although Princess Sapientia attended her father, talking excitedly about the coming battle, Father Hugh did not. It took no effort for Rosvita to ease herself away from the group gathered there, to gain directions to that part of the camp where those soldiers under Sapientia’s command had staked out a position. By this time it was dark, but she had a single attendant with a torch and, as well, the moon was almost full, now rising over the treetops. Its light streamed through the trees onto a broad clearing where Sapientia’s servants had set up her traveling tent.

Father Hugh knelt below the awning, unattended except by a few distant guards who chatted around a campfire. Here it was calm and quiet.

Hugh knelt on a carpet, lush grass crushed beneath its edges. He was praying.

Where was the book?

Hidden in the darkness, she remained anonymous. Any lady or captain went attended by servant and torch in such a place as this and, in addition, she took care to stand just outside the flame’s corona so he couldn’t recognize her cleric’s robes. She watched and searched … And found it thrust under his left knee, almost hidden by a fold in his robes.

He finished his prayers, sat back, and slid the book forward into the light cast by twin lanterns. The distant croaking of frogs in an unseen pool scored the night with a chatter no less intense than that of hundreds of soldiers whispering of the battle to come and the fury of the Eika.

He opened it delicately.

Something lay within there, something she was not meant to see. She knew it in her bones. Did Liath steal the book from Hugh, or Hugh from Liath? Should she believe the testimony of the Eagles, or that of a margrave’s son now sworn to the church?

Suddenly he twitched, closed the book, sat back, and looked out into the darkness toward her.

An eddy in the breeze swirled around her as suddenly as a roiling current turns a boat in the water. The sensation that Hugh could see her, that he knew she, Rosvita, was there when by no possible natural means he ought to be able to, struck her so forcibly that without meaning to she brushed her attendant on the arm and retreated.

That fast.

Only when she was back at the king’s tent, when the first sip of ale cooled her throat, did she wonder why she had fled, and if it had been her own choice to do so.

5

IVAR hooked his feet under the bench and yawned. If he slid his feet forward in his sandals, he could rub his toes along the grain of the wood floor. Sweat prickled on his neck where the heat of the sun washed his back. At the front of the room, the schoolmaster droned on about the Homilies of the illustrious skopos, Gregoria, called “The Great.”

The slow haze of summer heat smothered the room. Behind, the new first-year novices sat very quiet indeed; maybe they had fallen asleep. Ivar didn’t dare turn to look because that would attract Master Pursed-Lip’s attention. On the benches in front, Lord Reginar and his pack bent to their task diligently.

Their numbers had been reduced by one this spring when the unfortunate death of one lad’s two elder sisters in a Quman road had left him as his mother’s only remaining heir. Lord Reginar had railed bitterly against the fate that had deposited him in the cloister while leaving his elder brothers free to fight the barbarians, a tirade that had for the first time given Ivar some sympathy for the arrogant young lord. But his complaints had only precipitated a private interview with his aunt, Mother Scholastica, after which he had emerged chastened and so obediently humble that Ivar and his comrades wondered if the Mother Abbess had actually worked magic on him.

Ivar yawned again. Heat sapped all energy from his limbs, and the schoolmaster’s voice grated on him as annoyingly as the ever-present tickling of flies. From outside he heard the barking of dogs and the neigh of a horse. The monastery kept few horses, so perhaps visitors had come to stay in the guest house, either to worship in the church or merely to spend a night before traveling on. But he couldn’t bring himself to fret, as he once would have, at the idea that those unseen people beyond had leave to go out into the world at will.

“What is the world,” Tallia had asked, “compared to the sacrifice made by the blessed Daisan? How little do our small jealousies and selfish desires mean next to his agony, suffered on our behalf!”

A distant if familiar voice—his own self of a year ago— nagged at him sometimes. What about Liath? What about his promise to Liath? But there was nothing he could do about Liath, no court of higher appeal he could make than to his father’s authority; his mother had died years before and any inheritance she might have passed on to him had been confiscated soon after her death by her siblings.