The dogs were getting closer. The boy could hear their music. Deep-throated, eighty voices together, calling as one now that they were locked on to the scent. His scent. He ran on. Low-growing hazel branches lashed his face. Brambles tore and snatched at his legs. Tree roots, hidden in the leaf mold, tried to trip and bring him down. Over a fallen oak, its dead wood cracking in his hands as he grabbed and clambered. Then the stream, ice cold and slippery under his bare feet. He paused in the mud on the far side. Where now? His heart seemed to fill his whole body and head with its thumping. The stream tinkled unconcernedly. The boy wanted to lie down and roll in it, to splash and cool his hot face, but there was no time. He had to run.
The stream caused the dogs no confusion. The boy's scent was strong and fresh. Very fresh. The pack leader spoke and plunged across and the others followed, taking up the call again, excited, expectant. Born to hunt.
The boy was running uphill now. Fewer trees, firmer ground, but it was steep and getting steeper. The muscles in his legs began to stiffen, his knees shrieked at him to stop, but he couldn't, not yet. Not yet. Then the ground leveled unexpectedly and straight ahead of him was a cliff of chalk. He'd gone wrong. There shouldn't be a cliff, just a path through low-growing blackthorn up onto the downs. Confused, he cast around, then stumbled on toward the cliff, as if the path would suddenly appear. But there was only the cliff, high and wide and sheer. The hound music was momentarily quieter, deflected by the change in level of the ground, but the boy knew the dogs were still coming.
He tried to climb the cliff, clutching at tufts of grass and deep-rooted blackthorn, clawing his way upward. But the chalk was treacherous, crumbling beneath his toes and coming away in his fingers, so that he slipped and fell, scraping and bloodying his knees as he went. And as he hit the ground, the dogs arrived. The boy picked himself up and faced them. There was nowhere to run, and he could run no further anyway. The chase was over.
The dogs crowded forward triumphantly behind the pack leader, their noise deafening now that they were so close. Mastiffs. Massive and powerful. Born to hunt and trained to kill. The pack leader launched itself at the boy, knocking him to the ground and pinning him there with huge, hard paws. The boy felt a gust of suffocating dog's breath as the mastiff opened jaws that could snap a man's neck.
And then it licked him. A slobbering lick from chin to forehead. The helpless boy gurgled with pleasure as the dog lapped at his nose, his cheeks, his ears, while its tail wagged furiously. The boy grabbed the dog's own ears and waggled them, then was aware of yelping and turmoil, and the crack of a whip.
The rest of the pack was backing off, turning and cowering. The whip cracked again, inches from the boy's head and that of the pack leader. Voices shouted, men's voices, one harsher and closer than the rest. The pack leader sprang sideways from the boy as the whip bit into its flank. And the boy found himself staring up at a man on a sweating horse. The man seemed very high above him. High as the blue sky itself.
"Get up, you little cur," the man said.
The boy did as he was told.
"Good chase, Tullo," he panted.
The man grunted. "Better still if they'd torn you to bits."
He turned his horse away and cracked the whip again at the mastiffs. Men on foot were using sticks, herding the dogs into a dense, subdued mass. The leader of the pack glowered and snarled at the man on the horse but backed slowly into the pack, no longer the dominant leader but a wary, resentful subject, acknowledging the power of the whip.
Then they were gone. Men, dogs, and horses. Out of sight, back down the hill toward the stream, the forest, and home. Leaving the boy where he stood, as if he were nothing to them. Which he was. Except to the dogs.
Sir Edmund Dowe was a happy man. He watched with pride as the pack of mastiffs, his mastiffs, the finest in all of England, streamed back into their paddocks. He leaned on the wooden rail, Tullo, his huntsman, standing beside him.
"They're looking fit, Tullo. Plenty of muscle. And they did well this morning."
"Well enough, sir, but the boy was lazy. Should have run farther."
Sir Edmund frowned. "Cain's Cliff, you said. That's more than far enough."
"He'll ruin them." Tullo's voice was bitter.
"Far enough for the hounds." Sir Edmund gave the sour-faced man a hard look. "And for me."
Tullo nodded curtly. "Sir."
There was resentment rather than agreement in his eyes. But he knew who was master, just like the hounds.
"Kempe has a dead cow," said Sir Edmund. "Take the cart and fetch it for their supper."
He returned his gaze to the mastiffs, dismissing Tullo, who nodded again. "Sir," he said, and walked away.
Sir Edmund didn't like the man, didn't like him at all. But he was a good huntsman. Over-generous in his use of the whip, perhaps. And the chain. And the stick. But dogs, like servants, had to be taught to mind their manners. Tullo knew his countryside and was cunning in the ways of deer, hare, and boar. That was all one wanted of a huntsman. He didn't need to be likeable. And he did keep the kennels in splendid order. Sir Edmund was almost as proud of his kennels as he was of the mastiffs who lived in them. Like the mastiffs themselves, the kennels . . .
Excerpted from Dogboyby Christopher Russell Copyright ©2006 by Christopher Russell. Excerpted by permission.
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