Indignation oiled Vaylo's knee joints and he worked the hill hard, stabbing its thin rocky soil as he climbed. This was Copper Hill country and the slopes were pitted with old mine shafts and vent holes. As far as Vaylo knew there was only one copper mine still open—and that was far to the east, sunk deep beneath Stinking Hill. Copper hadn't been seriously mined on the Dhoonehold for five hundred years, and only cragsmen and raiders walked these hills now. You could still see the copper though; a certain greenish tint to the soil made everything that grew here look healthier than it really was. Many of the little rills and creeks that drained the hills sparkled with red ore. Copper had made Dhoone rich at one time, and paid for the construction of the finest roundhouse in the north. Dhoone copper had once been carted overland all the way to the Far South, and strange kings and warlords had forged mighty weapons from it and sent back all manner of treasure in payment. Copper's glory days had long passed though, and it had been fifteen hundred years since a copper weapon had bettered a steel one on the field. Still, copper had its uses even now. Vaylo had heard that in the Mountain Cities people liked to eat off it, and he knew clan maids like to wear it in their ears and around their wrists. Copper was stretched into wire and hammered into pipes, fired with tin to make bronze and zinc to make brass. At the time Vaylo had taken possession of the Dhoonehouse, the mine at Stinking Hill was still producing a hundred tons of raw ore a year. He had shut it down of course, then thought better of it and ordered it reopened. Gods only knew what was happening there now. One thing was certain: After all the looting and cattle raiding carried out by Bluddsmen over the past six months, Robbie Dun Dhoone would need all the hard cash he could get.

That was a thought that never failed to make Vaylo smile. Robbie Dun Dhoone might have won back his roundhouse, but Bluddsmen had stripped it down to the bare walls. Vaylo had no idea where the loot had gone—he hadn't taken anything for himself except a half-dozen kegs of fine Dhoonish malt—and he found he didn't care. Gone was enough. Gone would slow the Thorn King down.

"Hammie;" Vaylo said, turning about to address his armsman Haimish Faa. "When did you last see the wolf dog?"

Hamrnie was huffing and puffing his way up the hill. He was thirty years younger than the Dog Lord but about four stone heavier and Faa men, like Bludd chiefs, had never been walkers. Hammie wiped his red and wet nose with his coat sleeve, wincing as raw flesh met coarse wool. "He left as soon as the bairns awoke. 'Bout dawn."

The Dog Lord nodded, his mind eased. He'd seen the other three dogs throughout the day as they ranged hack and forth, patrolling, guarding, hunting. The big black bitch had brought down two jack-rabbits and carried them straight to his hand. The young male had brought back a sick-looking woodrat and Vaylo had taken it from the dogs jaw and flung it as if as he could. Unhappily it hadn't been the last he'd seen of the rat as the dog kept finding it and bringing it back. Every time this happened the worm-infested vermin looked a little worse for wear, and Vaylo thought to himself, Do I really have to touch this? Touch it he did though. The young male's eagerness and joy were two things he didn't want thwarted. You couldn't have a dog love you unconditionally and not give anything back.

The wolf dog had been with him for seven years and of all the dogs Vaylo had loved and owned it was the wolf dog who was closest to his heart. The Dog Lord did not show it, he did not need to, for the two of them knew what lay between them. The Dog Lord's worries were the wolf dog's worries. His kin was the wolf dog's kin. That the dog had stayed up all night guarding Aaron and Pasha was as it should be. The wolf dog had been present that terrible day when Vaylo had found seventeen of his grandchildren dead and buried in the snow above the Bluddroad. The dog knew how precious the two remaining grandchildren were. Still it wasn't like the wolf dog not to home every few hours. All the dogs ranged wide and then returned at various times to insure their human pack was safe. Vaylo hadn't seen the wolf dog since last night when he'd scolded the beast for snatching a rabbit from the fire. It was good to know that after the wolf dog skulked away in shame and anger he returned later to guard the bairns.

Truth was they were all hungry and short-tempered. Rabbits alone did not make a meal. If you ate too much they gave you the runs and if you didn't eat enough you starved. It was, as Ockish Bull would have said, a choice between the ugly and the just plain bad. Nan and the bairns got the best of it. The organ meat could stay with you for half a day, but the muscle meat, which Vaylo and Hammie enjoyed, only hung around long enough to bid a fond farewell to your gut The dogs didnt mind it, but then what did dogs know about decent food? Vaylo was grateful for what they caught, but after fifteen days of jackrabbit, woodrat and opossum his gratitude was wearing thin.

It was turning out to be a hard journey, harder than he had imagined when he'd first decided its course the night they escaped from the Tomb of the Dhoone Princes, The distances invoked were longer than he'd anticipated and the hardships more wearing than he could have foreseen. Nothing to eat except lean meat, no clothes except what lay on their hacks, no weapons except a kitchen knife, a longknife and a maidens helper. Until yesterday when they finally entered hill country, they hadn't even been able to cook the meat brought down by the dogs, so wary was Vaylo of lighting a fire. Man hunters were out in the Dhoonehold, searching for the Dog Lord and his party, and all it would take for them to spy their prey was a lone line of smoke on the horizon or a flickering orange glow amidst the trees. Twice now Vaylo had spied mounted men in the distance and each time he'd known they had Dog meat on their minds. Man hunters had a look to them: lightly armored, finely horsed, hungry. Vaylo feared them, for he very much doubted whether Robbie Dun Dhoone cared if his enemy was taken dead or alive. The man hunters carried crossbows and would shoot at distance, and there were nights when Vaylo could not sleep for the thought of Pasha and Aaron being shot in the back.

Yesterday had brought an easing of his fears. The Copper Hills were a no-man's-land of bleak moors, wind-stunted pine forests, heather fields and rocky peaks. They had seen no sign of habitation in over two days and last night Vaylo had finally judged it safe to build a cookfire. They had been weary, but merry enough, and for a wonder Hammie had produced a small wedge of red cheese. "The laddie from Dhoone gave it to me," he said by way of explanation, "and I was saving it for the right moment." They had all taken a bite, though Aaron had spit his out, declaring it tasted like chicken wattles, and that had caused a huge scrap amongst the dogs. While three of them fought over Aaron's chewed-up leftovers, the wolf dog had sneaked in and stolen the rabbit from the fire.

Vaylo had roared at all of them then, the bairns included, and ordered everyone except Hammie to go to sleep. His nerves were not what they had been, he realized later as he lay atop his cloak and looked out at the dim, starless night The loss of forty good men at the Dhoonehouse followed by the rigors of a fifteen-day journey had worn him thin. How old was he now? Fifty-three, fifty-four? Too old to be starting from scratch, yet what choice did he have? Last night, before beginning his watch, Hammie had said to him, "Chief, we're living through bad times."

Vaylo had not replied, though he knew well enough what his response should have been: "Hammie, I created them."

Gullit Bludd had not taught: his bastard son much, but by default Vaylo had learned certain things at his father's hearth. The first amongst them was that no one would look out for him save himself. The second was that if he made a botch-up of things—be it letting the dogs out when one of the bitches was in heat, forgetting to haul the warriors' leathers in from the rain, or failing to skin a deer carcass before it froze—it was no one's responsibility but his own. Break it, you fix it or get a bearing. That was the way Gullit's hearth had worked.