"Ancient blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Earl Robert)

CHAPTER ONE

“Only a fool calls a wind good or ill. The greatest fortune can be brought by the most terrible storm, and the most lethal thunderbolt can fall from the clearest of skies.”

– Strigany aphorism At the crest of the hill the Elector Count of Stirland reined in his mount. After the gallop, his horse was breathing heavily, its sides bellowing in and out, its breath steaming in the morning air. As it recovered, the elector count, also breathless, smiled the smile of a truly content man.

Apart from a ready supply of women and drink, he didn’t demand much from life, and that which he did demand awaited him below.

The patchwork of pastures and forests that lay beneath his vantage point contained all that a hunting man could desire. Savage boar, fleet deer, wild goats to tempt a man up onto the most windswept of crags-the barely tamed lands of his estate held them all.

Stirland, fit after a lifetime spent in the saddle, was already catching his breath. He turned, with a squeak of leather, and peered down the path behind him. When he saw how far back his companions had fallen, his smile disappeared, replaced with a scowl of impatience.

He didn’t blame the hunt master or his lads for their slow pace. After all, as commoners, their horses wouldn’t have looked out of place in the yoke of a plough. He didn’t blame his dogs, either. Bull hounds were a strong-winded breed, but no match for Stir-land’s galloping steed.

No, the elector count was a fair man. The only person whose slowness tried his temper was the one who should have been able to keep up: the skinny, pallid man who was riding his second-best horse, the man who he was trying to befriend.

“Averland!” Stirland roared, his voice sending a flock of ravens squawking from the trees. “Don’t bother waiting for them, old man. Stick by me.”

The Elector Count of Averland started at the sound of his host’s voice. Then a look of fresh misery crossed his gaunt face, and he spurred his horse unenthusiastically forward. The animal broke into a canter for a dozen hoof beats. Then, content that it had gained the measure of its rider, it slowed back down to a walk.

Stirland’s moustache tips twitched with exasperation. Averland had been his guest for the past week, and although they were not friends they both knew that a friendship was worth cultivating. In these troubled times, an elector needed all the political allies he could get. Things had been bad enough when there had just been one Emperor. Now there were supposedly three.

Yet, as hard as Stirland tried, he was finding Averland damned difficult to like.

“Don’t be afraid to use the spurs,” he bellowed to his guest. “She’s a fine horse, but you have to let her know who’s the master, like all women, hey?”

Averland smiled weakly and twitched his heels. His mare, who certainly knew who the master was, obliged by shuffling into something approaching a trot for a while.

The problem with his fellow nobleman, Stirland decided, was that he thought too much. He spent too much time indoors, whole days, sometimes. He didn’t like getting drunk, or singing, and, as far as Stirland’s spies were aware, Averland was so weak-blooded that he didn’t have even a single mistress.

Yesterday, Averland had even claimed to dislike hunting, at which point Stirland’s patience had almost snapped. The gods had built all of Sigmar’s sons to be hunters, and as far as Stirland was concerned, claiming otherwise was tantamount to heresy.

Hence, he had insisted that Averland accompany him into the glorious carnage of today’s sport. After all, what could be more likely to spark a friendship with the bandy-legged fool than to show him the pleasures of the field?

If they ever got there, of course.

“Come along, men,” Stirland snarled, venting his impatience on the party as a whole. Men and dogs obediently raced to join him at the top of the hill, and even Averland’s horse quickened its pace to keep up with them.

When they arrived, Stirland gave Averland a moment to appreciate the way that the rising sun lit up the hunting grounds beyond. Then he leaned over and slapped him on one shoulder.

“Damned fine view, isn’t it? Look at the way those hills close in onto that forested valley, just like the cross of a virgin’s thighs.” Stirland, lost in the poetry of the image, didn’t see Averland wince. “Just imagine what beasts we’ll find down there,” he continued, his eyes shining. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a hankering for boar. Can’t beat the taste of meat reared on blood and acorns.”

“Boar, yes,” said Averland vaguely, and shivered. His eyes were watering in the early morning sunlight, and he turned to look longingly back down the path to the hall. “How long will the hunt last for?”

“Until we’ve tasted the quarry’s blood, or until they’ve tasted ours,” Stirland said, grinning. His men grinned too. They might be servants, but on the hunt they and their lord adopted the easy familiarity of a pack of wolves.

Averland looked at them, his mouth tightening into a ring of petulant disapproval. Then he frowned.

“Don’t worry,” Stirland said, winking at him. “It’s almost always us that tastes the quarry’s blood first.”

“Unless we do find boar, your lordship,” the hunt master added. “Remember what happened when we found that herd last summer? What happened to your cousin Rudolph? The carpenter had to take his leg clean off, and even then it was a close-run thing.”

Stirland nodded as if at some happy memory.

“That was a good day’s hunting,” he said. “Got an even dozen of the beasts before Rudolph got caught. He’s just lucky that leg was all he lost. The beast almost got his acorns too.”

The party roared with laughter. Even the dogs joined in, yelping with excitement. Averland shuddered, and looked miserably at the wilderness below. The trees looked as dark and treacherous as… well, as dark and treacherous as them, the people who haunted every shadowed corner of his troubled mind.

“Perhaps it will rain,” he suggested as the laughter died away, “and we won’t find the scent.”

“Don’t worry about that, your lordship,” the hunt master assured him with a malicious confidence. “If we start now, it shouldn’t take us long to pick up a scent.”

“Well said,” Stirland agreed, stirring himself from his cheerful reverie. “Let’s not waste any more of the day. Take the dogs out front, Heinz. The rest of you, fall in behind me and Averland. And don’t worry,” he told his fellow nobleman as the hounds loped off down towards the nearest patch of trees, “if we do find a boar you can take the first stab at it.”

“Oh,” Averland said, “good.”

He wished, not for the first time, that he’d tried to ally himself with somebody else. By the time they had descended into the forest, Stir-land’s earlier irritation was quite forgotten. He loved it here. The spreading boughs of the trees above turned the sunlight into a thousand shades of green and gold, and the dark labyrinth of the tree trunks always promised a good hunt.

As the party moved silently forwards, the elector count fought back the temptation to whistle an accompaniment to the songbirds hidden in the branches. Instead, grinning at the thought of what lay in store, he slipped his boar spear from its holster and tested its weight.

“Why are you doing that?” Averland asked, his voice shrill enough to draw several disapproving stares.

“Just testing the heft of it,” Stirland replied, his voice a hunter’s soft murmur.

“You haven’t seen anything?” Averland whined, loudly enough to silence the nearest songbirds.

Stirland took a deep breath, and bit his lip. “No, just getting ready,” he whispered.

“What’s that you said?” Averland cried.

“I said, no,” Stirland snapped. “Can you do me a favour, Averland old man, and keep your voice down? The animals don’t like it.”

“Oh,” Averland said, “all right.”

Damned fool, Stirland thought. He was still struggling to contain his disgust when, at a signal from the hunt master, the party drifted to a halt.

Stirland, who realised that he was going to have to treat Averland like the idiot he was, glanced over to tell him to stop, too. When he saw that he had already done so, he felt a moment’s surprise. Then he realised that the only reason Averland had halted was that his mare had the sense that he lacked.

For a moment, he considered telling Averland to stop digging his heels into the animal’s flanks. Then he decided against it. As long as the idiot kept his mouth shut, he didn’t care what he did.

Instead of wasting any more time on his guest, Stir-land nudged his horse slowly forward. Its hoofs fell with a practiced stealth that made the gelding worth its weight in silver. Soon Stirland was beside Heinz, and he leaned over so that the hunt master could whisper into his ear.

“Look at the hounds, my lord,” he said.

Stirland, ignoring the garlic that laced the man’s breath, did so. They were pacing back and forth warily, their hackles raised in bristling manes, and their tails as straight as pokers. Usually, they showed more enthusiasm, more joy. As it was, every stiff-legged movement betrayed the hounds’ anxiety about the prey they had found.

“Look at them,” Stirland gloated, “it must be boar, mustn’t it?”

“Possibly, my lord,” Heinz agreed, “or something else.”

“Yes, it’s boar all right,” Stirland mused. “Tell you what, why don’t Averland and I follow behind the dogs from now on? They’ve obviously got a strong enough scent to follow. You can ride behind us.”

At another time, Heinz might have argued with his master. The hunt master loved his dogs, and he hated the idea of being even momentarily separated from them. On the other hand, the thought of what Aver-land might do when faced with a boar was an intriguing one. The shrill, nervous aristocrat had been the butt of the household’s contempt from almost the moment he had arrived, and the hunt master had a feeling that he was not about to acquit himself well.

“As you say, my lord,” he conceded. “Just be careful that Nellie there doesn’t get to the boar before you. She’s a brave old girl, despite her age.”

“Don’t worry,” Stirland reassured him, “I’ll look after them. I’ll-”

He was cut off by a sudden, terrible howl from Nellie herself. As Stirland and the gamekeeper exchanged a surprised glance, the rest of the pack joined in. As one, they had turned towards a slope that led down towards a tangled ravine, their teeth bared, and their ears lying back flat along their skulls.

“What’s wrong with them?” Stirland asked, appalled by the din the hounds were making.

Then the wind shifted, and even he could smell the scent that had so affected the hounds. At first, he thought that it was a goat, and then a boar. Then, with a rush of exhilaration that sent his heart galloping, he realised that it was neither. No natural animal stank so badly, which meant that the things the hounds had found were…

“Beastmen,” the gamekeeper hissed, his voice as low as the hiss of his drawn hunting sabre.

Stirland’s pulse quickened, as his steed shifted nervously beneath him. For the first time, he heard the movement that was crushing through the undergrowth that covered the ravine. He also heard the sound of snapping twigs from the dark hollows to either side of them, and the silence that had replaced the birdsong.

The elector count snarled, or maybe it was a grin. Either way, in the gloom of the forest, his bared teeth were as sharp and as yellow as his hounds’.

“Men,” he called back, his voice as level as a crossbow bolt, “we are ambushed. Form up on me.”

“What do you mean ‘Ambushed’?” Averland asked, terror in his voice. “How can we be ambushed? This is ridiculous.” His terror quickly turned to outrage. “I’m returning to the castle. There’s obviously no game here. Honestly, Stirland, this is no pastime for a gentleman.”

Luckily, Stirland was no longer paying the slightest bit of notice to him.

“Karl,” Stirland said to the man beside him, “you and your boys look out to our rear. Gьnter, you keep an eye on my Lord Averland.”

“Now look here-” Averland began.

Before he could finish, however, the jaws of the ambush closed around them with a terrible hunger. It wasn’t the first time Stirland had seen this enemy. He had once passed a pile of their horned heads, left to rot, beside the mile post outside Nuln. When he was a boy, he had seen some of the trophies his father’s men had brought back from war, too: snuff boxes made from horns, dice made from bones, and purses made from other parts.

Once, when he’d been a student, he’d even seen one of the things torn to pieces in a pit full of dogs. He had lost a packet on that particular sporting event, but it had been worth it to see such a fight.

However, none of that had prepared him for meeting them head-on, or for the shock of their onslaught.

Although they moved with a weasel’s stealth, and although they burst from the brambles as easily as partridge, many of the misshapen pack were massive beasts. The largest stood taller than any man Stirland had ever seen, and the muscles that rolled beneath the stinking mat of their hides looked as strong as the hawsers that towed the barges down the Reik.

Stirland’s grin faded, and he let his steed jitter backwards.

The nearest of the things tore free of the last of the brambles, and shook off a shower of thorns and blood. Its head was almost ox-like, Stirland thought, apart from the viciously sharpened horns, and the glitter of insane intelligence in the reddened eyes… and the fangs.

His horse whinnied in fear, its voice joining the hounds’ chorus of terror, and for a single, shameful moment, Stirland thought about retreat.

It was Nellie who saved him from the disgraceful thought. One-eared and grey-muzzled though she was, the hound’s instinctive hatred for these abominations flared and she lengthened her whine into a terrible snarl. The sudden fire that burned within her animal heart stopped her edging back. It stopped her cowering, and, even as her master’s courage was tested, she rushed forward, silent as death as she hurtled towards the nearest of the horrors.

The beastman’s piggy eyes blinked eagerly as it caught sight of its assailant, and even as the hound closed in, it chopped the rusted crescent of its axe blade down onto her.

Another hound would have died, split in two as neatly as a rabbit on a butcher’s block, but not Nellie. Although a great grandmother, she had been dodging blows ever since she had been a pup, and when the axe bit deep, it was into earth. She was already twisting beneath the three-kneed arc of the monster’s legs, her yellowed teeth slicing into the tendons above one of its cloven hooves.

The thing screamed, as she tore out its hamstring. It was a shuddering, soulless sound, and it was enough to slap Stirland from his shock.

“Follow me!” he cried and, the boar spear tucked under his arm like a Bretonnian’s lance, he spurred his horse into a charge. “Follow me! Follow me!”

He ignored the first of the beastmen. It had already been crippled by Nellie, and her pack was closing in to finish the thing off. The elector count dodged to one side, and, roaring with the sudden exhilaration of battle, thrust the point of his spear into the hollow above the following beastman’s collar bone.

The steel tip punched through its throat as neatly as a needle through cloth. It sliced through the arteries and muscles of its neck, and only stopped when it became trapped in the vertebra of the thing’s spine.

Stirland should have released the haft of the weapon, but, in the wild thrill of the moment, his grip remained stubborn. By the time he remembered to loosen his fingers, it was already too late. The counterweight of his enemy’s collapsing body dragged the spear down swiftly enough to hoist him out of his saddle and throw him through the air.

Stirland’s horse whinnied in fright and reared back onto its hind legs. The count saw a blur of stirrups and milling hooves before the jarring impact of his fall splintered his vision into a thousand dancing stars.

He wasn’t stunned for long. The spasming corpse of the beastman filled the count’s senses with the stink of ammonia and rotten meat. The first thing he saw when his vision cleared were the parasites that had already started to swarm from the thing’s filth-matted fur.

Stirland’s gorge rose as he staggered clear. He spat out a mouthful of blood and bile even as he drew his sword. Then, blinking blood from his eyes, he squared his shoulders and prepared to take charge of the battle.

“My lord!” somebody screamed at him.

Stirland turned to see one of the hunt master’s lads waving a spear towards him. The man’s face was pale and blood spattered, and his eyes were wide with fear.

It took Stirland a split second to realise that the man wasn’t pointing the spear at him. He was pointing it at something behind him.

The count turned, just in time to see the nightmare vision of horns, fangs and rotten fur that loomed over him. It had already swung its axe back, ready to deliver a killing blow.

Too stunned to think properly, the count reacted purely by reflex. He was moving before he knew it, rolling beneath the scything blow of the beastman’s arms, and springing back to his feet behind it.

Caught off-balance by the murderous momentum of its attack, the beastman staggered as it turned, and Stirland pounced. His sabre blurred in a backhanded stroke that sent the entire length of its razor edge sawing through hair, hide, muscle and bone.

The blade finished its work in a spray of black blood and Stirland leapt clear. His enemy tried to follow him. Its cloven hoofs managed two faltering steps. Then, with a sticky inevitability, the misshapen lump of its severed head slid from its shoulders and toppled to the ground.

By the time the rest of the corpse had thudded down beside it, Stirland was already peering around him, evaluating, planning, ready to take control.

He flicked the blood from his blade with the unconscious gesture of a cat flicking water from its tail, and chewed his bottom lip as he watched the battle that was raging through the forest around him. It was like a scene from some hellish ballroom. Half-seen figures lunged and staggered through the blackness of the shadows and the stabbing columns of sunlight. Knots of combat tangled man and monster together, tighter than the participants of any quadrille. Meanwhile, the shrieking of the wounded and the cymbal rhythms of steel against steel provided a perfect, maddening music to the carnage.

Many of Stirland’s men had lost their mounts, and, even as he watched, another of them fell. He was dragged from his saddle as his horse reared up, her hooves windmilling at her tormentors, and her eyes white moons of terror in the darkness. Stirland saw the rider crash to the ground in an explosion of leaf litter. The rider’s sword flew from his nerveless fingers, and the two beasts who had felled him closed in with shrieks of glee.

By the time Stirland realised that he was charging, he was almost upon them; almost, but not quite. He saw an axe rise above the dazed rider. A beam of sunlight, catching the rusted metal, seemed to set the killing edge on fire. Before the blade could fall, Stirland roared, his challenge as wordless and animalistic as any made that day.

The two beastmen turned from their victim in time to see the lightning strike of Stirland’s sword. It crunched through the gristle of the nearest monster’s snout, and sliced deep across both of its eye sockets. The beastman leapt back too late, already blinded by blood and pain, and collided with its fellow, who snarled and pushed it away.

As it did so, Stirland struck again, a straight stab that sent the blade punching into the second beast-man’s stomach. The blow was so hard that Stirland bruised his hand against the cross guard of his sword. It was also strong enough to skewer the beast-man as neatly as a butterfly on a pin.

Stirland grinned with a terrible satisfaction as he stepped back, twisting the blade free from his victim’s falling body. Then he reached down, grabbed the fallen rider by his shoulder, and pulled him to his feet.

“No time to be laying about lad,” he said, grinning with a savage good humour, “there’s still work to be done.”

In a couple of moments, Stirland realised that their work was over. The beastmen had vanished as suddenly as they had appeared, slipping back into the vastness of the forest that had birthed them.

“Thank Sigmar,” Stirland muttered. Then, for the first time, he noticed his casualties, the men who lay bloodied among the corpses of their foes. One of them was propped up against a tree trunk, sobbing with pain, as his mate pressed a wad of moss into his wound. Another sat dazed on the ground, staring silently at the corpse of his horse, and the gutted remains of the horror that had killed it. Yet, although many were bleeding, it seemed that none had been killed. It was a miracle.

“Thank Sigmar,” Stirland muttered again, and touched the hammer-headed amulet that he wore around his neck. Then he looked up, and scowled.

“Thorvald,” he called to one of his men, who had regained his mount, and was turning the horse to pursue the retreating foe. “Thorvald!”

The rider looked back over his shoulder.

“Stay in formation,” the elector count snapped.

“Yes, my lord,” the man called reluctantly, and, reining his horse in, he turned back from his pursuit.

“Wait until I’ve found my horse. By Sigmar’s right fist we’ll run these vermin down before the day is through. Ah, there he is.” Stirland broke off as his gelding came trotting up to him. Its movements were still skittish, and its eyes rolled back and forth nervously. Stirland soothed it, holding its chin, and stroking it behind the ears, before swinging back into the saddle, “Had a fright, did you? Well, never mind. Nothing to worry about. Everybody seems to be here… Oh no.”

For the first time, he realised that, although most of his men seemed to have come through intact, Aver-land, that gods cursed, weak-kneed imbecile Averland, was nowhere to be seen.

“Averland!” he roared, making no attempt to hide the rage in his voice. “Where are you? Averland!”

“He’s up there, my lord,” one of his men said, waving his arm towards the forest. Stirland followed the man’s gesture, squinting as he peered into the darkness between the trees.

“Look up, my lord,” the huntsman said, and this time the contempt in his voice was unmistakeable.

Stirland looked up. Then he saw what his man was pointing at, and froze.

Of all the creatures Stirland had seen nesting in trees, his fellow elector count was the strangest. Aver-land’s legs dangled down on either side of a branch, his hose torn and his skinny knees bloodied by the scramble up into the tree. His fine cloak had gone, torn off by another branch, and his tunic was begrimed with dirt.

However, it was Averland’s face that broke Stirland’s self control.

Even as he started to laugh, he knew that he shouldn’t be doing it. He tried to stop, tried to bite back the mirth that was bursting out of him. He might even have managed it if it hadn’t been for Averland’s pale expression of comical terror.

“It isn’t funny,” Averland squeaked, and then fluttered his arms as he started to slip.

Stirland howled with laughter. Nor was he alone. The men all around were rocking in their saddles, the terror and the exhilaration of battle finding expression in their gale of hysterical laughter.

Stop it, Stirland told himself, his ribs aching. You have to stop laughing. It’s not funny.

Averland drew himself up into what was supposed to be an expression of dignity. He brushed his clothes down, and lifted himself up from his perch, so that he could stand and look down at the men. He put his hands on his hips and, with a haughty look on his face, slid one foot forward to complete the pose.

It was a mistake. His riding boots were as smooth as silk, even on the sole, and they whipped across the damp bark as easily as skates across a frozen pond. He squawked, as one of his legs shot up into a hip-jarring high kick that pirouetted him around on the branch.

For a moment, Stirland thought that he was going to regain his balance, but it wasn’t to be. With a cry, the Elector Count of Averland tumbled from the tree and hit the floor with a bone-jarring thump. His dislodged cape came fluttering down after him.

The noise of his fall was quite inaudible over the roaring laughter of his host and the men.

Oh Sigmar, please help me to stop laughing, Stirland thought, tears streaming down his face. Think about the alliance.

His sides still shaking, he dismounted, and walked over to help Averland to his feet. The man looked up at him, his face white with rage, apart from the red patches that burned on his cheeks. Their heat was nothing compared to the furnace of hatred that burned in Averland’s eyes. It looked hot enough to melt iron, hot enough to melt sanity.

It turned the last of Stirland’s humour to ashes, and he bent to offer Averland his hand. For a moment, he thought that his fellow nobleman was going to refuse to take it. Then Averland blinked, the hatred in his eyes dulled, and he allowed Stirland to help him up.

“Glad to see you’re all right,” Stirland said, brushing leaves from Averland’s shoulders. “We were damned worried about you, Averland old man, damned worried. That’s why we were all so pleased to find you.”

“Thank you for your concern,” Averland said, his voice as cold as a razor blade. He looked around at the ring of men surrounding him, and, for a moment, that hatred was back in his eyes, like Morrslieb revealed by a sudden gap in the clouds.

It was enough to still the last of the laughter. The men shifted uncomfortably in their saddles. Stirland cleared his throat, and tried to think of something to say.

“Where’s the hunt master?” he finally asked, noticing that the old man was not among the onlookers.

Their silence grew even more uncomfortable.

“He’s with his hounds, my lord, down in the gulley.”

“Well, I’d better go and talk to him,” Stirland said. “Coming with me, Averland?”

The other elector grunted, and followed in Stir-land’s wake. They found the hunt master and his pack of hounds in the ravine from where the beastmen had sprung their ambush. Nellie, the hound that had drawn the first blood of the fight, was in the midst of them.

She lay panting, her broken body cushioned on a mat of thorns. The grey fur of her muzzle was dark with the blood of her enemies, and her torn and splintered body was wet with her own blood. One eye was gone, the socket closed with bloody tears. The eye that remained rolled in mute agony.

Her pack gathered around her. She had been mother to some, grandmother to others. At first, they had licked her wounds, whining as they had cleaned the filth from the gouge marks that had broken her. Now, as her agony drew to an end, they sat and howled, their voices mingling into a chorus of loss that echoed through the dark labyrinth of the forest.

The hunt master sat among them, his gnarled hand stroking the patch of unbroken fur beneath Nellie’s chin. Although his voice was warm and soothing, his face was sodden with tears. They made rivers of the furrowed lines of his face, before dripping down to mix with Nellie’s blood.

Stirland swallowed, blinked and looked away. For the first time in his life, he felt old. The joy of the hunt, which usually sang through his whole being after the slaughter, was missing. He felt tired and sick, and his blood felt as though it was running as slowly as sap in the winter.

He sighed, and turned back to watch Nellie breathe out her last, long breath. Then she lay still.

The hunt master stroked her for a moment more, and then thumbed her eyelid closed, and stood up, his face shining in the forest gloom.

“We’ll take her back with us,” Stirland told him, grasping the man by the shoulder. “Have the lads make a bier, and we’ll give her a proper send-off. If ever a hound deserved to be praised into Sigmar’s halls, it’s that one.”

“Thank you, my lord,” the hunt master said, pride straightening his back, even though tears still dripped into the tangle of his beard.

“Make a bier?” Averland asked, looking at Stirland as if he’d gone mad. “We don’t have time for that. You saw those things, those horrible, horrible things.” He paused and wiped a shaking hand across his brow. “They’re no better than filthy Strigany.”

“Yes, we saw them,” Stirland told him, “saw them, killed them and drove them off. We’ll hunt them down though, don’t you worry.”

Averland’s mouth fell open, and he edged backwards. Now, it wasn’t rage in his eyes, it was panic.

“I mean,” Stirland said, embarrassed by his fellow nobleman’s cowardice, “we’ll return to the castle tonight. It’s too late, and we have injured men and hounds.”

“We should go now,” Averland insisted.

“It won’t take a minute to make a bier.”

“For Sigmar’s sake, Stirland, it’s only a damned dog.”

“Yes,” Stirland said, “for Sigmar’s sake.”

“I mean look… look at it.” Averland strode past the gamekeeper, brushed past the hounds and pointed. “The damned thing’s dead.”

To make his point, Averland drew back his leg, and, before Stirland realised what he was going to do, he kicked the dog’s body.

Had he not been so shocked, Stirland might have intervened in time. As it was, Averland, nineteenth elector count of his line, turned from kicking the dog to face the full force of the fist that the hunt master had swung at him.

The crunch of his breaking nose and his squeal of pain were amongst the most satisfying things Stirland had ever heard.

So much for diplomacy, he thought, and gave the orders to return home.