The lower branches of a pine stood startling green against the void, marking where the hart had passed. Dawson turned, feeling Feldin Maas and the others crowding close behind him. Someone was shouting. The howls and yaps of the hounds grew louder. He set his teeth, willing himself forward.
Something surged on his right. Not the grey. A white horse without barding. Its rider had no helmet or cap, and the long red-gold hair announced Curtin Issandrian as clearly as a pennant. Dawson dug his heels again, and his horse leapt forward. Too fast. He felt the drumming, pounding rhythm of the gallop roughen and the horse struggled to keep its feet. The white surged forward, passing him, and a moment later the grey with Feldin Maas was at his shoulder.
If the hart had gone another thousand yards, Dawson might have retaken the position of honor, but the doomed beast stood at bay in a clearing too near. Two dogs lay dead at its feet, and the huntsmen held back the rest of the pack with their voices and short whips. A point had broken off the hart’s rack, and blood marked its side. Its left hind leg was blood-soaked where an overeager hound had ripped off its dewclaw, and its patchy winter coat gave it the aspect of a traveler at the end of a journey. It turned toward them, breath white and exhausted, as Curtin Issandrian pulled to a stop, Dawson and Feldin Maas just behind him.
“Well played, Issandrian,” Dawson said bitterly.
“It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?” the victor said, ignoring him. Dawson had to admit the hart had an air of real nobility to it. Exhausted, beaten, and facing death, there was no sense of fear from it. Resignation, perhaps. Hatred, certainly. Issandrian drew his sword and saluted the beast, and it lowered its head as if in acknowledgment. The second group of riders pelted into the clearing, six together each with the sigils of their houses. The hounds leaped and barked, the huntsmen shouted and cursed.
And then the king.
King Simeon rode into the clearing on a huge black charger, the black leather reins braided with scarlet and gold. Prince Aster rode a pony at his father’s side, the child’s spine straight with pride and his armor still a little too large for his frame. His personal master of the hunt rode behind and behind him: a huge Jasuru in green-gold armor that matched his scales. King Simeon himself wore dark leathers studded with silver and a black helm that hid the beginnings of jowls and his skewed nose.
Dawson had been on hunts with him since they had both been boys younger than Maas and Issandrian, and he could see the weariness in the king’s spine, even if no one else could. The rest of the hunting party rode behind him, the casual hunters more interested in gossip and a clean day’s ride than the sport of it. The banners of all the great houses were present, the court of Camnipol come to a clearing in Osterling Fells.
The Jasuru huntsman lifted a spear from his back and held it out to King Simeon. In the king’s hands, it seemed longer. The Jasuru huntsman called, and the dogs surged forward, leaping at the hart. Distracting it. King Simeon set the spear, spurred his mount, and charged. At the impact, the hart staggered back, the spear’s point deep in its neck. As it fell, Dawson had the visceral sense that the beast was surprised more than pained. Death, however clearly foretold, still came unexpectedly. King Simeon’s arm was as strong as ever, his eyes as keen. The hart died fast and without the need for an arrow’s grace. When the huntsmen called back the hounds and lifted fists to confirm that the beast was dead, a cheer rose from the noblemen, Dawson’s voice among them.
“So who took honors?” King Simeon asked as his huntsman went about unmaking the hart. “Issandrian? Or was it you, Kalliam?”
“It was so near at the end,” Issandrian said, “I would say the baron and I arrived together.”
Feldin Maas dropped down from his horse with a smirk and went to examine the killed dogs.
“Not true,” Dawson said. “Issandrian arrived a good length ahead of me. The honors go to him.”
And I will not carry a debt to you, even something as small as that, he thought but did not say.
“Issandrian will have the horns, then,” King Simeon said, and then, shouting, “Issandrian!”
The others raised fists and swords, grinning in the snowfall, and called out the victor’s name. The feast would come the next day, the venison cooked at Dawson’s own hearth, and Issandrian given the place of honor. The thought was like a knot in his throat.
“Are you all right?” the king said, softly enough that the words would not carry.
“Fine, Highness,” Dawson said. “I’m fine.”
An hour later, as they rode back to the house, Feldin Maas trotted alongside him. Since Vanai’s fall and the defeat of the Maccian reinforcements, Dawson had pretended that the news from the Free Cities meant nothing particular to him, but the charade chafed.
“Lord Kalliam,” Maas said. “Something for you.”
He tossed a twig to Dawson. No, not a twig. A bit of broken horn, red with the dog’s blood.
“Small honor’s better than none, eh?” Maas said with a grin, then chucked to his mount and moved forward.
“Small honor,” Dawson said bitterly and under his breath, the words white as fog.
As they rode back to the holding, the snowfall turned from deep, feathery flakes to mere specks, and the mountains to the east reappeared as the low clouds thinned and broke. The scent of smoke touched the air, and the spiraling towers of Osterling Fells stood in the south. The stone—granite and dragon’s jade—glowed with sunlight, and the garlands that hung from the battlements left the impression that the buildings themselves had come to welcome the moment’s brightness.
As host, Dawson was to oversee the preparation of the hart. It meant little more than standing in the kitchens for half an hour looking jolly, and still his soul rebelled. He couldn’t bring himself to descend into the chaos of servants and dogs. He stalked to the wide stone stairs beside the ovens and stood on the landing that overlooked the preparation tables. Along the wall, pies and loaves of bread cooled, and an ancient woman pressed peacock feathers into a pork loaf that had been sculpted to resemble the bird and candied until it shone like glass. The smell of baked raisins and chicken filled the hot air. The huntsmen arrived with the carcass, and four young men fell to preparing the meat, rubbing salt, mint leaves, and butter into the flesh, carving out the glands and veins that the unmaking had left in. Dawson scowled and watched. The beast had been noble once, and watching it now—
“Husband?”
Clara, behind him, wore the pleasant expression she adopted in the early stages of exhaustion. Her eyes glittered, and the dimples that framed her mouth dug just a fraction deeper than usual. No one would know who hadn’t spent a lifetime looking at her. He resented the court for putting that look in her eyes.
“Wife,” he said.
“If we might?” she said, taking half a step toward the back hall. Annoyance tightened his mouth. Not with her, but with whatever domestic catastrophe required him now. He nodded curtly and followed her back toward the shadows and relative privacy. Before he left the landing a new voice stopped him.
“Sir! You’ve dropped this, my lord.”
One of the huntsmen stood at the stair. A young man, wide-chinned and open-faced, wearing Kalliam livery. He held out the bit of broken, blood-darkened horn. A servant, calling Baron Kalliam back like a child for a lost bauble.
Dawson felt his face darken, his hands clench.
“What is your name,” he said, and the huntsman went pale at the sound of his voice
“Vincen, sir. Vincen Coe.”
“You are no man of mine, Vincen Coe. Get your things and leave my house by nightfall.”
“M-my lord?”
“Do you want to be whipped in the bargain, boy?” Dawson shouted. The kitchen below them went silent, all eyes turning to them, and then quickly away.