Deerskin - Robin McKinley

"They're extraordinary puppies," said Lissar proudly, trying not to grin foolishly, at the same time reaching over to pry Fen's teeth out of Pur's rump. But she looked up, smiling, at Hela's face, and there was that look again; the look at Lilac's breakfast table, the look the kennel staff had given her the first evening in the common-room.

The look that had become almost palpable the afternoon she had told the story of Ash and her escape from the dragon. She had only even told it accidentally, uneasy as she was in the common-room, and not accustomed to lingering there. She was there because Ossin was, and because he obviously assumed that she would stay-that she belonged there, as the rest of the kennel staff did.

"No one can outrun a dragon," Jobe said.

"I know. We were lucky. It couldn't have been very hungry, not to have chased us." But she looked around at the faces looking back at her, and did not see "luck"

reflected in their expressions; and she wished she had said nothing.

But Ossin smiled at her, meeting her eyes as the others had not, and said, "Yes, I remember once when Nob and Tolly and Reant, do you remember him? He ran afoul of that big iruku that long winter we had, when he was only four-we were out looking for the signs of a herd of bandeer that someone had brought word of, and we surprised a pair of dragons feeding on a dead one. They're slower, of course, when they're eating, and they never really believe that anything would dare chase them away from their prey, so they aren't all that belligerent, just mean by nature-but we got out of there in a hurry. I gave the order to scatter, so they'd have a harder time, I hoped, deciding whom to chase. I don't know if that's why they decided to leave us alone or not; the dead bandeer was bigger than any of us."

TWENTY-FOUR

THERE WAS MUCH ACTIVITY IN THE KENNELS DURING HIGH summer.

From midsummer through the harvest was the hunting season; winter began early here, and the snow could be deep soon after harvest. Sometimes the last ricks and bales were raked up while the snow sifted down; sometimes the last hunts were cancelled and the hunters, royal and courtier or district nobility and vassal, helped their local farmers, the snow weighing on shoulders and clogging footsteps with perfect democratic indifference. As often as not the stooked fields were turned briefly into sharp white ranges of topographically implausible peaks and pinnacles before the farm waggons came along to unmake them gently into their component sheaves and bear them off to the barns.

The hunting-parties went out as late in the year as they could; while the season lasted-so long as the weather threatened neither blizzards nor heatstroke-Ossin rode out himself nearly every day. The inhabitants of the king's court depended on the huntsfolk and their dogs to provide meat for the table. The court held no farmland of its own, and while the king could tax his farmers in meat, no king ever had. All the wild land, the unsettled land, belonged to the royal family, who leased it as they chose to smallholders, or awarded it to their favorites-or took it back from those who angered or, betrayed them. Their own flocks were the wild beasts of the forests and hills; and wild game was considered finer meat, more savory and health-giving, than anything a farmer could raise. Rights and durations of royal land use leases were very carefully negotiated; if the land was to be cleared for agriculture, then cleared it must be; if it was to be kept wild for hunting, the king had the power to declare, each year, how much game could be taken on each leasehold (the position of royal warden, and advisor to the king on the delicate question of yearly bags, was much prized), and to name who led and maintained any local hunt. (In practice, however, the latter generations of Goldhouses were all good-natured, and almost always said "Yes" to any local nomination.) This also meant that if any aristocratic or royal tastes ran toward chicken or mutton, the noble bargainer was in an excellent position to make a trade.

The prince hunted not only for those lucky enough to live in the king's house, but also for all those that royalty owed favors, or wished to create a favor in, by a gift of wild game, or a lanned skin; for wild leather was also considered superior. The k,ing himself rode with the hunt but seldom any more, but the leather that he and his craftsmen produced was very fine, and it vas not merely the cachet of royalty that produced its reputation. Potted meat from the royal kitchens was also highly prized; no meat was ever allowed to go to waste, no matter how hot the summer, and the apprentice cooks were rigorously taught drying and salting, boiling and bottling.

There was always work to be done in the kennels at any time of year; but as the summer progressed the pace became faster. Lissar initially helped the scrubbers when some of the more senior of these were taken hunting in the hunting-parties.

Hela told her in something like dismay and alarm that other people could do the cleaning-that if she wanted occupation they would use her gladly working with the dogs. Without anyone saying it openly, there seemed to be a consensus that she had a gift for it. It was true that her guess at Harefoot's promise of more than usual speed was already coming true; and it was also true that a nervous dog, in Lissar's company, despite the seven dogs that this company included, was calmer. This had been discovered when they gave her dogs to groom; after Ash, all the short-haired fleethounds seemed almost a joke in comparison, but the touch of her hands most dogs found soothing.

So occasionally they gave her a tired or anxious dog for a few days; and each of those dogs returned from its odd holiday better able to listen to its training and adapt itself to its job. This made no sense on the surface of it, since six of Lissar's seven dogs wished to play vigorously with every creature they met, and could be ruthless in their persistence (only to Ash did they defer); but somehow that was the way of it nonetheless.

Lissar herself did not know why it was true, nor could she explain why it was so clear to her that the small pudgy Harefoot would justify her name soon enough. She did acknowledge that dogs listened to her. It seemed to her merely obvious that the way to make acquaintance with a dog was to sit down with it for a little while, and wait till it looked at you with... the right sort of expression. Then you might speak to it while you looked into each other's face.

She heard, that summer, for the first time, the name Moonwomun spoken aloud.

Deerskin they called her to her face; but Moonwoman she heard more than once when she was supposed to be out of earshot. She thought of the Lady, and she did not ask any questions; she did not want to ask any questions, and when she heard the name uttered, she tried to forget what she had heard.

She and Ash and the puppies, and occasionally one of her fourlegged reclamation projects, often went out to watch the hunt ride out. Particularly on the days when someone wealthy or important was being entertained- "Gods! Give me a sennight when we can just hunt!" groaned Ossin. "If we have many more weeks like this one, with my lord Barbat, who does not like riding through heavy brush, we may be hungry this winter!"-it was a grand, and sometimes colorful, sight. Ossin and his staff dressed plainly, but their horses were fine and beautiful, no matter how workmanlike the tack they wore; and the great creamy sea of fleethounds, most of them silver to grey to fawn to pale gold, with the occasional brindle, needed no ornament. A few scent-hounds went with them, brown and black and red-spotted, lower and stockier than the sighthounds; and then some members of Goldhouse's court attended, bearing banners and wearing long scalloped sleeves and tunics in yellow and red; and if there were visiting nobility, they often dressed very finely, with embroidered breastplates and saddle-skirts for the horses, and great sweeping cloaks and hats with shining feathers for the riders. Occasionally some of these carried hawks on their arms. Lissar had eyes mostly for the fleethounds.

Hela and the other staff left behind sometimes came out as well with half-grown dogs on long leashes. Lissar's puppies were loose (only once had one, Pur, bolted after the hunting-party; when, the next day, he was the only one of them all on a leash he was so humiliated that forever after he would face away from the hunters, and sit down, or possibly chase butterflies, resolutely ignoring everything else around him).

After the party had ridden out, there were lessons in the big field, although occasionally these were shortened if there were visitors waiting to see available pups put through their paces. The prince's interdiction about Lissar's family continued to hold; but Lissar preferred to stay out of the way of these activities nonetheless, just in case someone who could not be said "no" to took an incurable liking to one of her puppies, or merely made the prince an offer he could not refuse, including perhaps half a kingdom and a daughter who did ride and hunt.

It was on one of her long afternoons wandering beyond the cultivated boundaries of the king's meadow that a woman approached her. Lissar had begun wearing her deerskin dress again of late; she found it curiously more comfortable for long rambles, for all the apparent practicality of the kennel clothing standard. She was barefoot, of course, and on this day she had three leashes wrapped around her waist, in case she should need them. The dogs had all registered a stranger long before Lissar could differentiate this human form from any other, the puppies bounding straight up into the air to see over the tall grass, and the other three grown dogs and Ash standing briefly, gracefully, on their hind legs. Ash, as leader, made whuffling noises through her long nose. Lissar was not worried, but she was a little wistful that her solitary day was coming to an end sooner than she had wished.

Ordinarily she would not have stayed away even so long; she had missed out on doing any of the daily chores. But she had the three extra dogs with her today, dogs that Ossin had said of, "These need only one or two of Deerskin's days; but they've been hunted a little harder than they should, and they need a holiday." These three had the usual perfect manners of the prince's hunting dogs, and were no trouble; each of them had looked her mildly in the eye almost at once when she sat down to make their acquaintance; and they showed a tendency to like being petted, as if in their secret hearts they wished to be house-dogs instead of hunters. "One day," she told them, "when you have retired, you will go to live with a family who will love you for your beauty and nothing more, and if you're very lucky there will be children, and the children will pet you and pet you and pet you. Ossin has a list, I think, of such children; he sends his hunting-staff out during the months they are not needed for that work, to look for them, and add names to the list." The fleethounds stared back at her with their enormous dark liquid eyes, and believed every word.

She had spoken to each in turn, cupping her hand under their chins, and smiling at them; and then she had taken enough bread for her, and biscuit for all ten of her companions, for a noon meal. She took a few throwing-stones as well, just in case she saw something she wished to try, for she felt out of practice, and her eyes were still better for the crouched and trembling rabbit in the field than the dogs' were; their eyes responded to motion. Not that there was much chance of any honest hunting whatsoever, with the puppies along; but the three extra adults were helping to keep order, and it would be too bad if she missed an opportunity.