Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars #2)

Prince of Dogs (Crown of Stars #2) Page 226

One shot was all she had.

From behind and below she heard the eruption of shouts and pounding feet, the clang of steel and a man screaming, then the howling of Eika calling to battle.

Lavastine had not waited for her—or perhaps he had heard Sanglant’s shout. It no longer mattered.

One shot. She poised, made ready to release, a perfect target, a perfect kill there at his heart—

The bow tugged leftward.

For that instant in which a breath is drawn and released by a person panting under the threat of danger, she resisted.

And then she gave in to it.

“Seeker of Hearts, guide my hand,” she murmured. She let it pull her aim as it willed, and she sighted again as the point of the arrow slid away from Bloodheart, past the little wooden chest resting on the priest’s knees, and rose slightly to fix on the left center of his wizened, scaly torso.

There.

She loosed the arrow.

The point buried itself in flesh. The priest clapped both hands to his chest and tumbled backward as the wooden chest on his knees spun forward and cracked on the stone floor.

With a great, ear-shattering roar, Bloodheart lurched out of his throne, staggered, and stumbled to his knees. His bone flutes scattered around him. One splintered and broke.

“Priest! Traitor!” He roared again, a cry of pain and fury that echoed and hammered in the nave, resounding and rebounding off the vault. One window cracked and shattered, and shards of glass rained down from on high.

“Nestbrother!” he cried. A greenish fluid trickled from his mouth as he fell forward and crawled, trying to reach the wooden chest—or the old priest, both of which now lay within the limits of the prince’s chains. But Sanglant reached them first only to have the old priest stagger to his feet, snap off the haft of the arrow embedded in his chest, and scramble out of reach of prince and enchanter alike. Sanglant kicked the wooden chest out away from Bloodheart’s groping hands.

“Nestbrother!” The Eika chieftain’s voice was ragged now with a liquid lilt as though blood drowned him in his unmarked chest. Dogs bolted in to nip and bite at him, sensing his weakness, but he slapped them away and jerked up to his feet as bubbles of blood frothed on his chin. “By the bond between us I call on you to avenge me. Let your curse fall on the one—”

He clawed at his throat, staggered forward again while the old priest scuttled backward and made some kind of averting sign with his hand as he spoke words Liath couldn’t hear. Dust swirled on the choir floor, caught up in a sudden whirlwind, and a swarm of unseen creatures like stinging gnats spun around her, then sheared away as though wind had blown them off. Flailing blindly, Bloodheart made one last desperate lunge—

Only to drop, dead, at Sanglant’s feet.

And there on the westward flank of the hill, as the Eika horde took breath to make their final charge and annihilate the last of Lavastine’s infantry, the drums clapped once.

And not again.

XVI

THE UNSEEN CHAIN

1

“CAPTAIN Ulric, to the gate!” shouted Lavastine above the sudden outbreak of howling and keening that shattered the silence made by Bloodheart’s death. At once, the sound of fighting reverberated through the nave as Lavastine and his men bolted out of their hiding place.

She drew another arrow in time to see Lavastine himself cutting frantically, shield raised, as a trio of enraged Eika bore him backward. A soldier fell beside him, struck down. Lavastine was next, battered to his knees by their attack.

Sanglant lunged forward at the sight of the nobleman trapped and struggling. Liath winced, bracing herself for the jerk when he hit the limit of his chains, then gaped.

There were no chains. All but the iron collar rattled to the ground, lay crumbling there as if they were a hundred years old and turning to dust. Dust they became, sagging in heaps around Bloodheart’s corpse.

She nocked the arrow, but Sanglant and a half dozen Eika dogs hit the melee before she could get a shot off. He had nothing, only his hands, to fight with. Without thinking, she swung a leg over the railing, meaning to drop down, to save him—

His attack was as swift and as brutal as that of the Eika dogs. He had laid two Eika out flat and ripped one’s throat out with his own teeth while she gaped in horror. An Eika swung hard at him, but a dog leaped between them and took the cut meant for the prince while the rest of the pack swarmed the would-be killer, bearing him down to the flagstones. The other Eika retreated. The dogs gorged on the corpses—three Eika, one human. Lavastine jumped to his feet and he and Sanglant vanished from her line of sight as they ran toward the great doors. She swung her leg back and stood, panting, half in shock, trying to steady herself.