"Keep your head down, and your mouth shut," his father warned, the words clipped and cold as he spurred his horse into the biting wind.

Behind them, the meager guard they had managed to scrape together trailed in a somber line, the emblems of their House etched into the steel of their breastplates, remining him of a pride that had seen better days. But above them all, the banners that had flown over their lands for seventy years flapped in the gale, the twin hounds of their sigil mimicking a frantic run as if trying to flee the very poles that held them.

Trailing at the rear was the heavy cart his father had fought so bitterly to provision. Lothar looked at the groaning wooden frame and thought they might as well have wiped their backsides with what was inside for all the good it would truly do. But one did not say such things to Lord Cregan.

His father still looked every bit the warrior-lord of the eastern lands of Oizen. He possessed a chest and back as broad as an anvil, a square jaw that seemed carved from the local granite, and a shock of hair shorn tight to the hairline. He projected an air of austere authority, the kind that demanded silence in a hall and blood on a battlefield. And yet, Lothar could see the deep line of insecurity running through his father like a hidden fault line.

They were a young House, a mere seventy years of history trailing behind them, a blink of an eye compared to the ancient, moss-covered lineages of their fellow nobles. Their holdings were recently fertile, and while they lacked the martial might to challenge the great houses of Oizen or the various alliances they made with one another, they had always possessed enough strength to keep the bandits at bay and their borders secure. At least, that had been the case until someone entered the equation.

The wagon creaked and groaned in protest, its wheels churning through the deep, black sludge of the road. The heavy mud was displaced in thick, wet clumps as the wheels sank into the ruts of a trail that had been punished by the passage of thousands of boots and hooves. They ought to have arrived at the city days ago, but the wretched conditions of the Ozenian roads had slowed their progress to a crawl.

Each day of delay was another stone sitting ill in his father’s stomach. Cregan’s worries were well-founded; a new sovereign meant new laws, and Alpheo was a prince who had just clawed his way through the war of his life to press their previous master beneath his heel. He was audacious, he was famously brave, and he possessed an army that had forgotten how to retreat.

If the victors decided to practice their darker pleasures on the vanquished, what could a minor House do? They were neither ancient enough to command respect nor strong enough to offer opposition. Their next few moments before the Prince would be the most critical in their seventy-year history. They had to ingratiate themselves with the conqueror, and in the South, that meant gifts were more than customary, they were a requirement.

Trailing behind the cart, secured by thick hempen rope, was the centerpiece of their desperate gamble: the black courser. The beast wore no armor, no barding, no saddle, nor harness. It was a creature of raw, midnight muscle. Perhaps a chest of gold would have sat better with the invaders, but the coffers of their House were currently filled with nothing but the ashes of the fields.

Their lands had been ravaged twice over; the raids and burnings from three years ago, when the Yarzat forces had first struck the coastline, were barely beginning to heal when the second wave of steel had swept through. Famine was now a looming specter, and their fiefdoms were emptying as the peasantry fled in search of a crust of bread. In such a state, they could not spare even a single copper coin for a gift, leaving them with only the blood and bone of their finest stallion to offer as a price for their continued existence.

"Be at your utmost respect, boy. Do not run your mouth. No insolence can come from you, for our House’s very existence is balanced on the edge of a blade," his father warned once more, his knuckles white as a party of riders broke from the light mist and spurred toward them.

In the frantic heartbeats before they met, Lothar made one final, desperate attempt to make his father see reason. "Father, I do not know how the Prince will take your declaration. You speak of an oath made to Oizen, but these men are Yarzat. Telling a conqueror that your heart was made by beating for the man he just broke... it will not be a story he finds pleasing."

"Close your insolent mouth!" his father hissed, the insecurity beneath his granite exterior finally cracking. "We have to argue our case, and ours is a story of loyalty. We must impress upon him that we are men who keep our word.So that he may be seen the good in keeping us!"

Yes, loyalty sworn to a dead cause against one of the Fox’s ally, Lothar thought bitterly. He feared his father was blinded by the very honor he sought to save. They were walking into the den of the Fox, and his father intended to brag about how well he had served the Fox’s enemy.

But whatever arguments remained were swallowed by the wind. The riding party was upon them.

It took no genius to recognize their allegiance. In these lands, no other force would dare unfurl a banner unless it bore the mark of the victorious. As the distance closed, Lothar noticed a small, rhythmic shiver take hold of his father’s shoulder, the same tremor of primal instinct that was currently rattling Lothar’s own ribs.

The herald rode at the front, but it wasn’t the silk of a banner that captured Lothar’s terror. It was the pelts.

The riders were draped in the skins of wolves, monstrous things of gray, winter white, and charcoal black. The hollowed-out heads of the beasts rested atop the men’s own, so that as they rode, it seemed a pack of upright wolves was descending upon them, their glass eyes reflecting the dull, cold sky.

It was already cold, but Lothar could swear it had become even chiller.

Above them a black hound running on a streak of black and white flattered against the cold wind.

These were the men that put their lands to the torch two times, that killed their late prince, and a left a streak of ash riding behind them.

The riders split and circled the small party until Lothar and his father were hemmed in by fur and steel. Lord Cregan sat as still as a grave marker, waiting for their captors to dictate the terms of the encounter.

Three riders detached themselves from the pack and trotted forward, while the others kept their javelins loosely gripped, one sharp whistle and the Apulio guard would be pinned to the mud like a row of hedgehogs.

The lead rider, draped in that light-devouring pelt of midnight black, pulled his mount to a halt just inches from Cregan’s knees. An axe hung heavy at his hip, and a small buckler shield was strapped to his left wrist. The wolf’s teeth shadowed his brow, making his face look like a demon peering out from the throat of a beast.

"You got business, or you just like the smell of the mud?" the man growled. His voice was a ruin, sounding like he had swallowed the hot smoke of every village the Hounds had scorched during the war.

"I am Lord Cregan of Apulio," his father began, keeping his voice level and wisely omitting any mention of the way the man referred to him. "I carry gifts and congratulations for your Prince. We received His Grace’s notice and have made haste to swear our steel to him. We hope to receive the hospitality of the Prince and the grace of his attention... Ser."

"I ain’t no ’Ser,’" the man rasped, spitting a thick glob of phlegm into the dirt. He gave the group a cursory, insulting glance. "We got no pleasing notion of them. Call me Rut. And you’re late. By three days, if my tally’s right."

"The rain, Ru—Rut," Cregan stammered "The heavens opened, and the roads turned to soup. We lost count of how many times the cart’s wheels were swallowed by the ruts. I am sure you understand the difficulty."

"We don’t," Rut barked, his eyes cold. "Our roads in Yarzat don’t turn to shit the moment a cloud sneezes. Maybe if you spent less time bowing to Oizen, making war to us and more time paving your tracks, you wouldn’t be lagging behind like a lame mule."

Rut’s gaze drifted past them, lingering on the cart before settling on the black courser. He sniffed the air as if he could smell the horse’s lineage. "You got gold in that crate? Or just more excuses?"

"No gold. The gift is the horse," Cregan said.

"The horse?" Rut let out a dry, hacking laugh. "I’ve seen better beasts pulling plows in the Lowlands. He’s got muscle, I’ll give you that, but he ain’t gold. I’d have kept a horse for myself, nice enough beast that one, but can’t very well pocket a horse without the Prince noticing. Can’t say it’ll buy much of his pleasure, either. He had to delay the festivities because you lot couldn’t find your way through a puddle."

The shiver returned to Lothar’s spine. That did not bore good.

"You’d better pray that beast can fly, then," Rut sighed. "His Grace has a short fuse for latecomers and a shorter one for fools. It’d be a shame to see that square jaw of yours end up in a box because you couldn’t keep a schedule."

"I... I thank you, Ser," his father said, the habit of a lifetime slipping through his teeth.

Rut’s hand twitched and for a moment Lothar thought it would go toward his axe. "I told you once, lordling, I ain’t no ’Ser.’ Make two times a mistake with the Prince, and you won’t live long enough to regret it.

He too kind with the lots of you. Making war to us, burning our farms and now walking to bend to him. Were it me, your necks would have bent under a sword. But he is too forgiving.

Still, a world of advice lordling. Our prince, he hates fools and he hates waitin’. Try not to be both when you’re kneeling in the dirt. Now, get moving, the damn feast’s been delayed for the lots of you."