Blackdog by K. V. Johansen Read Free Book Online

“what you can see across the channel, Blackdog.”
    Otokas kept silent.
    “Then I will. There are folk there, Attalissa's folk. Your folk, Sisters. And they will die, if I do not have your child goddess in my keeping before the dawn, away from that mad dog and his poisoning lies. Eat her! Do I really look like some fox-eared Baisirbska savage to you? That's a nonsense and you all know it. But I will do what I have to, to win Attalissa. The stars have knotted our fates together and I won't be turned aside. Those folk on the shore, their lives are in your hands, Sisters. Do you have kin in the town? Brothers, sisters, parents? Do you think they might be among those the Blackdog can see? Ask him.”
    “No,” Kayugh said. “Attalissa won't pass to your keeping till every last one of us is dead. And our kin would say likewise.”
    “Well, then. It's as you choose.” The warlord jerked his head to one of his followers, a tall, butter-haired Northron, who spun on his heel and started down for the boat bridge at a run. A fool of a Northron, who carried a torch high over his head. Possibly he meant to signal with it to those guarding the hostages.
    The first arrow took him in his cloth-wrapped calf, sent him stumbling, and of the dozen following, some found a home through his mail; one took him in the throat and he thrashed and choked, the torch smouldering on the ground.
    Tamghat looked back, shrugged, and faced the tower again.
    “So be it,” he said. He dropped the reins to lie slack on the golden mare's neck and drew one of the long cords off his shoulders, wound it over the fingers of both hands, twisting and looping a pattern like a child's game of cat's cradle.
    “What…?” Kayugh started to ask.
    Tamghat turned his hands palms out as if to push, the narrow ribbon dipping slack. Then he snapped his hands apart, the ribbon breaking, flying free…
    “Down!” Otokas screamed, howled, and seized Kayugh's wrist, jerking her for the stairs from the bell-tower roof as the abandoned jade lion swayed, tipped—tumbled. “Run!”
    With the shock of an avalanche mowing trees before it, the gates blew in, timbers and stone cutting a swathe through the sisters in the Outer Court. The archers pelted after Otokas and Kayugh as the stairs twisted, tilted beneath their feet, and the gatehouse collapsed in a choking cloud of plaster, a wounded jangle of the bells. Women tumbled down around them, shaky, ghost-white with dust. Otokas stumbled, sick, the Blackdog's senses overwhelmed with the stench of broken bodies, the cries. In the Old Chapel, the goddess was screaming, high and shrill in his head, and the Blackdog gathered itself into the world.
    “Don't!” Kayugh snapped, shaking him, and he snarled at her, crouched on blood-slick stones. Forced the dog away, trying to understand what she said, hardly able to listen. “Get her away, Oto! If it's true, what you said, what she saw he means to do, get her away!”
    He flung himself up, sword in hand, focused not on her but on Tamghat, urging his horse to pick its way over the precarious rubble of the gatehouse, dainty as a cat. The warriors of his guard followed, blades bare. The warlord held up a hand and, unwillingly, the sisters hesitated, each one caught in a moment's anticipation, spears raised, swords drawn, or broken stones in hand. Even the dying were silent, the space of a breath.
    “Attalissa , Sisters, and you, Blackdog. To save yourselves, and your kinsfolk in the town—send for Attalissa. Bring her to me.”
    Otokas took a step and was jerked back by Kayugh's hand in his hair. His helmet was lost in the tumble down the stairs.
    “Can you kill him?” she whispered angrily.
    “I'll find out,” he muttered.
    “Die here, and you leave her to be defended by a damned raider, since the dog won't take women. Or you die. Both of you, Oto. He's a god!”
    He shook his head. “No.” Not quite.
    “Go!”
    The strong reek of gathered magic was gone, to the dog's nose,