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Chapter 14

Earth and damp and…was that wet dog he smelled? Wet fur, anyway, musky and earthy, like he'd been hunting too long in the forest.

Hunting?

Boris opened his eyes to darkness. No, dimness, for he could faintly see the outlines of walls that no sane builder would ever knowingly construct. Things stuck out of the wall and ceiling and sometimes even the floor, jagged like teeth that intended to devour him when the monster whose mouth he'd stumbled into developed an appetite.

Was he in hell, then?

No, hell would be hotter, instead of just a pleasant temperature.

He lay in a cave, then, upon a pile of half-rotted leaves, with a stream trickling in the darkness, real darkness, deeper inside. Now, if he could only find the dog…

Boris scanned the cave.

There, in the corner. Something that might be an emaciated dog, curled up in exhaustion, a bag of bones clinging to life.

Boris approached cautiously, not wanting to scare the beast so that it would bite.

Yet the closer he got, the less it looked like a dog, or any animal at all. A bag of bones, perhaps, but their owner had departed life a long time ago.

Boris picked up the sack and emptied it onto the ground. Metal clunked and clanged into a pile at his feet, catching what little light there was like no bones he'd ever seen.

Atop the pile was a crown he'd only ever seen on his father's head, on special events. His mother's crown lay in the tangle of items, too, along with what looked like a collection of the crown jewels.

Sviatopolk might sit on the throne, but he would never wear his father's crown, Boris thought with satisfaction.

The rightness of this thought, combined with the memory of his own hands stuffing the crowns into the sack, told him he'd been the one to steal these things, and he'd planned it to spite his brother.

Everything else was hazy, though, until he'd woken up here. His last clear memory was of drinking Igor's potion, which hadn't poisoned him after all.

Ah, but he'd said someone had ordered him to give Boris the potion, hadn't he? That mean Igor hadn't prepared the draught himself, and likely had no idea what it would do when Boris drank it.

A dog whined.

Boris shifted to a crouch, reaching for a sword that wasn't at his side, where it should be. He cursed his own stupidity for stealing the crown jewels, yet forgetting to procure a sword.

Another whine, as shadows crowded at the cave's entrance.

Not one wet dog, but a pack of them.

The thought had barely coalesced in his mind before Boris realised his mistake.

They weren't dogs at all, but a pack of wolves.

He scrabbled at his belt, only to realise that not only had he forgotten his sword, he'd neglected to don a belt, too. It was a blessing he'd remembered to put on clothing at all, for without the thick fur garments he wore, he'd surely freeze to death in the chilly autumn evening.

One wolf stepped forward, the leader of this war band, and it gave a snarl.

Boris stared at it, reaching down for the jewelled sceptre his father had once told him had been a gift from the Emperor of Byzas.

He prayed that his father, and the long-dead emperor who had given this gift, would grant his arm and the sceptre the strength to defeat these enemies, so that he might survive to take the crown jewels somewhere safe.

The wolf leaped.

Boris swung the sceptre.

The wolf flew over its packmates and straight out of the cave.