“I’ve killed lots of men and in worse ways than cutting a man down on the road,” muttered Tammus hoarsely.

“I know,” said Alain, remembering that great eye and its power. “For I am the one who aided Brother Agius in killing that poor beast at Kassel. With a sword I killed it, and Lady Sabella’s army was routed. Do you think you can kill me?”

A breath was the only sign; lips parted. Wind curled in leafless branches.

Tammus lost his nerve. He froze. Every man there felt it, heard it, saw it, knew it with the same instinct hounds have for weakness. It took only that one breath for the advantage to shift, for the battle to be lost.

Alain did not move. It was they who fled back the way they had come.

4

“YOUR Grace.”

Alain knelt in the spot indicated by Captain Ulric.

“I don’t know how he did it!” Erkanwulf was saying off to one side. Because of his mounting exasperation, his voice carried. “He just looked at them. They turned tail and ran. That was before I saw those monstrous black hounds!”

“I know who you are, or who you once were.” Biscop Constance had aged horribly. Lines marked her face as deeply, in their own way, as Tammus’ scars had disfigured him, and she favored her right side over the left as though it was agony to shift her left hip at all. But her gaze was calm and her voice was mild. “Beyond what

I witnessed myself, and what I learned when I ruled Arconia, I have heard just these last few moments such tales as make my head spin. You are a count’s bastard son. A count yourself. A cheat and a liar and thief. A whore’s son. A faithful Lion who died in the east in battle. You are, it appears, a man who commands the loyalty of fierce beasts. Who can turn back a war band on a forest lane with his gaze alone.”

“I am the son of a Salian refugee, Your Grace. I was raised in an honest household of merchants out of Osna Sound. That is all that matters.”

“Perhaps. Why are you come, Alain of Osna? What do you want from me?”

“I ask you to bring justice to the folk murdered at Ravnholt Manor, including four young women who were raped and murdered. Find their bodies, and bury them. Bring to trial the bandits who killed them.”

As many as could crowd in around her shelter had come to see; everyone surely had heard the tale of the encounter on the road by now. They were silent, but their stares had an unexpected force, as powerful as that of the guivre.

“Is that all? I think there is more.”

“I am looking for a woman.”

She smiled, misunderstanding him. Hathumod touched the back of a hand to her mouth, repressing a sound. She stared at Alain with a remorseful gaze. There were others behind her whom Alain recognized from court, and from his sojourn at Hersford Monastery: among them the handsome young man who had once been Margrave Judith’s husband. How long ago it seemed that he had walked up on that porch to interrupt a fight between Prior Ratbold and a ragtag collection of five clerics and two Lions! How these heretics had fetched up in Biscop Constance’s train he did not yet know.