Shadows swooped and swung as someone banged his head on a lantern. In the crazy light, Zarrin shrieked a battle cry and whacked at milling, growling, jumping gnashers until blood speckled the walls and ceiling. Zarrin's four servants crouched in a corner behind stools and benches, and through cracks and over the tops poked dogs to hold them at bay. Escevar and Vox, bloody and sandy and fighting mad, stood back to back slicing and stabbing. As Tamlin watched, Vox feinted high, then drove his huge axe so hard a dog's head split and the blade chonked deep into pine floorboards.
Swiping where he could, Tamlin tried to count, but dogs had overrun the room, a dozen or more. To his left, six monsters breached the makeshift barricade and savaged Zarrin's servants. Two, no, four more dogs skittered into the room, panting for blood.
Howling, Zarrin jumped the table to protect her servants. Tamlin was left alone as seven dogs scuffled to attack him.
'Can't stay here!' the heir muttered. Flicking his blades wide, gritting his teeth, he vaulted the table and almost landed on a dog. Instantly the monsters champed at his boots and clothes. One winged creature hop- skipped to tear off his head. As Tamlin dodged frantically, the dog sailed by and crashed into its companions. Punching heads with his pommel and snapping his smatchet, Tamlin raced toward Escevar and Vox. His only plan was to die with his comrades like a hero in a folktale, yet to be eaten by ugly dogs seemed a foolish and frivolous death.
'Vox!' Panting, Tamlin kicked a dog headlong. He yelled so the warrior wouldn't whack him with a back- swing. 'Escevar! We must get out-'
Vox whipped his axe down but missed a dog. The blade bit the wooden floor, and Vox let go the jutting haft. Whirling, Vox's craggy hands grabbed Tamlin and hoisted him bodily off the floor. 'Vox! What are you-'
Toted like a baby overhead, Tamlin glimpsed the night lights of the stockyard and a starry sky out the open window. Then he squawled as his boots passed the window frame. 'Vox! No-'
Pitched feet-first out the window, Tamlin wailed as he sailed through the air, but not for long. A howl ended with a grunt as his back slammed a forgiving pile, then a cry as he bit his tongue. Winded and agonized, Tamlin sucked air and a gushing aroma of cows. Vox had chucked him in a towering manure pile heaped beside the big doors.
Groaning, limping, shedding filth, Tamlin tottered to his feet. Head spinning, he sheathed his weapons and looked up at the window. A head flickered and disappeared. Tamlin heard yells and shouts and a vicious unending snarling and barking. He needed to rejoin the fray. He was no great talent as a fighter, but his friends and Zarrin needed every hand to fend off the monsters. Gnashers, Zarrin called them. Curious name.
Groggily Tamlin stumbled to the big barn doors, which stood open a shoulder's width. Faint lights glowed inside, or maybe sparkled in his head, since he felt dizzy. A sound arrested him. A whistle.
The whistle came from outside the barn, so the hillman, the dog trainer, was out here with Tamlin. The heir panted, 'Not good news,' and made to duck through the door.
An answering whistle piped inside the judging hall.
Surrounded, Tamlin froze in the doorway — and was almost stampeded by a charging bull.
A big brindled brown-and-white bull bawled and shoved its massive horned head outdoors. Tamlin barely dodged as a horn like a dagger hooked near his breastbone. Bellowing like a war trumpet, the terrified animal banged the doors wide and rumbled past like a war elephant. Cows and sheep gamboled after, bleating and lowing as if fleeing a forest fire.
Unable to get inside, not safe outside, Tamlin spotted an outside staircase and galloped up that. He hoped no animals pursued, but with his luck, he thought glumly, giant apes or mountain goats would climb for high refuge and butt him off the stairs.
A rough door at the top proved locked. Tamlin was debating where to try next when the door was flung open, almost clopping him in the jaw. Escevar and Vox, bloody and disheveled and armed with bare steel, skidded to a halt just before Tamlin was bowled down the stairs.
'Hold hard!'
'Watch it yourself! Are you all right?'
'What's happening in there? '
'Yes! Where's Zarrin?'
'Dunno!'
Tamlin and Escevar gabbled while Vox signaled madly. Below, the livestock still stampeded from the judging hall. Then the full pack of panting gnashers, winged and otherwise, erupted out the door in a brown river. Sharp whistles, three or more, shrilled through the stock market. The pack split and split again and vanished into the shadows.
In the sudden quiet, the men caught their breath. Tamlin asked, 'Vox, why'd you pitch me out the window?'
'Oog!' Escevar sniffed. 'Deuce, you stink!'
'Thank you, dear friend, for so kindly enumerating my faults regarding personal hygiene. Vox?'
The mute veteran's hands sketched in the air. Tamlin interpreted, 'The dog-things, gnashers, were only after me and Zarrin? How do you know that? They broke off the attack once I was gone and Zarrin bolted out the door? Ah. That explains… nothing. I don't get it.'
'None of us get much,' sighed Escevar. He propped one leg on a riser because his punctured thigh throbbed. 'The whistling hillmen must have sent the gnashers into the building after you and Zarrin. Remember she was attacked earlier, just as we were? This was a golden opportunity with both you valuable nobles in one cozy room. Why they want to catch or kill either of you…'
Tamlin flexed his right hand. Mashed earlier by a table, it swelled so his glove constricted like a tourniquet. 'My, my, what a night. We should have gone boozing instead. Oh, well, let's get home and change clothes-again. At least Father will be pleased that I negotiated the gate tariffs before Zarrin disappeared.'
'… mutton-headed, crack-brained, slack-jawed, crosseyed, granite-skulled acts of depraved lunacy and sheer eye-popping idiocy it has ever been my misfortune to witness, let alone partake in!'
Thamalon Uskevren the First was only warming up. Agitated beyond belief, he paced before the fire in his counting room. Tamlin squirmed in a high-backed wooden chair while Vox and Escevar stood equally mute behind.
'Why give away only the gate tariffs?' the elder raged. 'Why not give away all our contracts? Why not rip the key to the family coffers from my aged, palsied hand, and throw open the gates of our miserable shack of a homestead, and use both hands to strew our gold and silver in the streets for every beggar to scoop up? What have I ever done in this lifetime that the gods punish me with a son who carries cobwebs in his empty skull? Why did not the fates send me a drooling, gibbering moron that I might have, in some tiny way by dint of long hours of excruciating labor, trained to do useful work such as fetching wood or slopping hogs? Instead, I suffer the sharpest torments by seeing this melon-headed twit tear down all my work and hurl my fortunes to the winds from the highest towers of Stormweather, our ancestral homestead for the moment, because I have no doubt that come tax time we will be impoverished and huddling in the gutters because of my son's blatant, ham-handed blundering-'
There was much more, but finally the elder ran out of breath. He collapsed in a chair and slugged Usk Fine Old gone cold. Thamalon Uskevren, 'The Old Owl,' looked like his son. He'd grown gray and seamed but never stooped, and his dark green eyes and still-black brows could summon a scowl to cower a prince, let alone someone who'd squandered his money. The room reflected the man: tidy, aesthetic, intellectual, buttoned-down. A table neatly was laid with a late-night snack, a chess game waited, a stack of books lay open. A hushed ease with luxury and old money and secrets emanated from the walls.
When the echoes of the tirade died, Tamlin cleared his throat softly. 'If I don't guess amiss, you seem upset, Father. Is it possible that, though we shouldn't dwell on an unpleasant subject, you could see fit to say why?'
'Why?' The patriarch glared until Tamlin felt like a chipmunk facing a timber wolf. Thamalon bit off every word. 'Because you failed to negotiate a contract to the family's advantage, son. That's why.'
'Ah.' Tamlin digested the news, but concentrating was an unaccustomed activity. 'Uh, might you explain how? I did secure the taxation rights to the, uh, West Gate where the farmers come in. That promises to bring a pretty penny.'
