The Princess and the Bear - Mette Ivie Harrison [72]
So, he sat on one side, and the royal steward on the other.
Were they truly on opposite sides or were they working together to make Elolira fall?
It did not matter.
One way or the other, his people were being sacrificed.
Richon could not allow it to continue.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The Hound
THE HOUND HAD never been the sort to stand by and watch a battle in progress, even if it had been no business of hers to begin with.
She remembered a time when she had come across a battle between a bear and a hound from another pack. She had had no obligation to the hound. It was simply that she knew that she might do something in the battle, and she itched to do it.
She had thrown herself at the bear’s back, and sunk her teeth into its shoulder. The other hound had fled, but Chala had gone on for hours, fighting the bear until they were both senseless and exhausted. She had enjoyed it for the sheer beauty of the battle.
Richon was staring at the battle, twitching with each death, but not yet ready to throw himself in.
She did not wait. With a bark of regret, she leaped over the rocks above the battle and down into the midst of it.
If it had ever been organized, it was so no longer. There were no lines of men standing together to hold back the enemy. Pockets of the enemy had penetrated nearly to the place where the hound landed. It was one man against another.
The hound snarled a warning—the kind of fair notice that animals and humans have in common. And then she opened her mouth, bared her teeth, and let them sink into the side of one of the Nolirans who held a sword in his hand.
He groaned, swatted at her, and then fell like a stone.
He must have been already weakened by battle and loss of blood. His face was very pale—for a moment.
Then the man he had been about to run through with his sword stood over him and took a battle-ax to his face.
The pale skin was spattered with blood.
The smell of it made the hound feel as though she were home again. But the human in her kept her from licking at it.
She turned away from the dead Noliran and saw three men directly ahead of her, two against one—and the one was Richon’s man.
She was about to launch herself at one of the enemy’s chest when she heard a sound like rushing wind overhead. And a sound like a battle cry, but guttural, like an animal’s.
It was Richon—in his bear form.
Like her, he must have decided that he could fight more fiercely as an animal.
She felt an intense pride—like what she had felt at the first sight of her daughter’s birth—when she saw Richon’s claws slash open first one man’s chest and then another’s face.
In two blows he had killed both men.
Or as good as killed them.
The man who had fought against them took a spear to the two chests to make sure they were dead, then moved on.
He seemed to see nothing amiss in the aid of a bear in his battle, nor did he show any fear that he might become the bear’s next victim.
He had magic, thought the hound.
The bear turned to the hound, raising a paw as if in salute. They were together as animals now. She watched as the bear moved to the east, to try to shore up the defenses of the men there, who were letting far too many of the enemy through, deep into the soft underbelly of the Eloliran army. The hound noticed the enemy were still nowhere near the man who shouted orders from this side, the man whose voice had seemed to jolt Richon at the first screeching sound of it.
The hound leaped into the space between two men fighting and pressed hard into the legs of an enemy soldier so that he lost his balance. His arms flew up as he tried to catch himself.
It was enough.
He was dead.
She tried the same tactic a second time, but this time the enemy had seen her from a distance away and was not surprised. Instead he kicked at her, then stabbed Richon’s man dead and turned his sword to her.
The hound stood her ground, daring him to try it.
He moved the sword quickly in a circle around her head.
As if that would make her afraid of him.
The hound wanted to laugh. She had