The levriers were capable of running down and tackling a young, velvet-horned hart or a doe, the alaunts could tackle a good stag if it had been brought to bay, but only the deer-hounds could run a prime stag into the ground and still have the wind left to drag it down.
Douglas had no deerhounds, so it came as a shock to see this pair arriving with Sir Hal of Herdmanston and his riders. It had seemed to Dog Boy that there were a lot of riders for a simple hunting party, but he had been put right on that by Jamie and others Sir Hal had come in the guise of a hunting party, sent by his father to hold to the promise theyd made to the Douglas fortalice to defend it in time of threat. There was no larger a threat, it had seemed, than the Lord Bruce of Carrick and his men, come to punish the Lady and her sons for her husbands rebellion against the English King Edward.
It had come as a shock to Dog Boy to see all those men more folk than he had ever seen in his life before flowing round the castle like spilled oil. It was even more a shock to see how unruly the Herdmanston dogs were, so that the wolf-howls of them set every hound in Douglasdale off. Berner Philippe had been furious but, to everyones surprise, the sight and smell of Dog Boy had calmed the two great beasts almost at once.
This one is Mykel, Master Hal had told him, and the dog had looked at Dog Boy with great, limpid eyes. It means great, an old Lothian word. The other is called Veldi, which means power in the same tongue.
Dog Boy nodded, breathless with the attention of the towering, smiling Hal and his towering, smiling crew, with names like Bangtail Hob and Ill Made Jock. Veldi, pink tongue lolling from between the white reefs of its teeth, looked at Dog Boy, the blue-brown eyes unwinking, and he felt the sheer heartleap of surety that these dogs were angels in disguise.
He tried to say as much, but could only manage angels, which made the giants laugh. One clapped him on the shoulder, almost driving him into the ground with the strength of it.
Angels, is it? Wee lad of pairts you, are ye not? this one said Dog Boy had heard the others call him Tods Wattie. Yell chirrup different first time these hoonds of hell mak ye birl yer hocks in the glaur.
From his bitterness, Dog Boy knew the dogs had somersaulted Tods Wattie into mud at least once; he could have sworn Mykel winked at him and he laughed, which made Tods Wattie scowl and all the others slap their thighs at his expense.
Sir Hal, grinning, had told him to take good care of his pets and Dog Boy had looked up into the old-young face, bearded and with eyes like sea haar, and loved the man from that moment; Mykel nudged a rough muzzle under his arm and stared at him with huge blue-brown eyes.
Once, on the day he had arrived in Douglas, Dog Boy had seen a hound as big as Mykel. A wolfhound, he had learned, rough-coated and big as a pony it seemed but Dog Boy knew that he had been smaller then and had an idea that the deerhounds were even longer in the leg.
That animal had died when Dog Boy was eight, two years after his mother, walking proud and desperate, had shepherded him through the gatehouse of this place, which had been wooden then. On it had hung the Douglas shield, with its three silver stars mullets, Dog Boy had been told, though he could not see that they looked like fish. He now knew because Jamie Douglas had told him that it came from the French, molette, which was a six-arrayed star.
Jamie, despite their differences in rank, was his friend and could read and knew where France lay. Dog Boy could not read at all and had no idea even where England was and a vague idea that Scotland lay fairly close to Douglasdale.
He knew that the English of England had come to Douglasdale, all the same, for Jamie spoke of little else these days, bitter that his mother had given in without a fight; now the Carrick men swarmed inside and outside Douglas Castle and the Lord Bruce, young and certain of himself to the point of arrogance, had politely taken over, in the name of the English even though he was not one.
The one certainty in Dog Boys life, the thing that he hugged to himself when everything else seemed to whirl like russet leaves in a high wind, was his age eleven. He knew this because he heard his mother say it, knew her voice better than he did her face.
He could not remember his father, though he had a rag-edged memory of stumbling in the plough ruts behind a man making kissing sounds to two oxen which were not his own, watching the plough blade curve a wave out of the earth.
He could feel it yet between his naked toes, see the birds wheel and cry at the exposed beetles and worms. It had been his job to get to the worms first and tuck them safely back in the torn ground, for they were ploughers of the earth every bit as much as Man. He heard a voice say that and thought it might have been his father but all that was gone, save for the moment when the great slab face of his da came down to his level, the crack-thumbed hands on either of his thin shoulders.