The Dog and the Wolf Read Online Free PDF

the vestal Julia led her father and Corentinus to adjacent guestrooms, mumbled goodnight, and left them. They stood mute in the gloom of the corridor. Each had been given a candle in a holder. The flames made hunchbacked shadows dance around them. Chill crept inward.
    “Well,” said Gratillonius at last, careful to keep it soft and in Latin, “we had to work for it, but we seem to have gained a strong ally.”
    Darkness ran through the gullies in Corentinus’s face. “We may hope. Still, be wary of her, my son. Be wary of them all.”
    “Why?’
    “A dog abandoned grows desperate. If it does not find a new master, it goes the way of the wolf. These poor souls have been abandoned by their Gods.”
    Gratillonius tried to smile. “You offer them another.”
    “Whom they will perhaps not accept, as long as the old smell haunts them.”
    “But the Gods of Ys are dead!” Gratillonius exclaimed. “They brought Their city down on Themselves—” down and down into the deeps of the sea.
    Corentinus sighed, “I’m afraid it’s not that easy. The Enemy never gives up, not till Judgment Day.” He clapped his friend’s shoulder. “Don’t let him keep you awake, though. You need your rest. Goodnight.”
    —Gratillonius recognized the chamber assigned him. Here he and Dahilis had lodged when they came to ask a blessing on their unborn child, she who would become Dahut. He gasped, knotted his fists, and struggled not to weep. Only after he had surrendered did sleep come to him, full of fugitive dreams.
    3
    Southbound out of Gesocribate, Niall and his men passed within sight of the island Sena. Low it lay in the heaving seas, bare of everything but sere grass and brush, a pair of menhirs near the middle, and some stones of the building at the east end. Wind whistled as it drove smoke-gray clouds overhead. Waves ran murky, streaked with foam, bursting in white where they struck rocks. A few seals swam in them, following along with the ship at a distance as if keeping watch. Cormorants rode the surges, dived, took flight on midnight wings.
    Niall nodded. “Lir was more wrathful that night than ever I knew,” he said slowly.
    A shiver passed through Uail maqq Carbri, and him a hardened man. “I do think the Goddess willed it too,” he muttered. “That was Her house.”
    “Like the Ulati when they burned down Emain Macha before we could make it ours. Someday men will dare settle here again because of the fishing grounds. They will take those stones for their own use. Then the last trace of Ys on its holy isle will be gone. But I have seen the ruins. That is enough.”
    Uail’s gaunt countenance drew into a squint as he peered at his lord. “Was it for your enjoyment you had us come this way?”
    Niall straightened, taller than any of the crew, a tower topped with the silvering gold of his hair. “It was not,” hesaid grimly. “Let no man gloat that Ys is fallen, for a wonder and a glory it was in the world. When we return home, I will be forbidding poet and bard to sing this one deed of mine.”
    Uail kept silence. The King had told how he destroyed Ys, then laid gess on further talk about it unless he spoke first. He could not thus keep the story from spreading, but it would take root more in humble dwellings than in high. Most likely after a few lifetimes it would be forgotten, or be a mere folk tale with his name no longer in it.
    Niall’s eyes were like blue lightning. “I did what I did to avenge my son and my brave men, a sworn duty,” he went on. “Else would that never have been my desire. As was, at the end I must … force myself.” He gripped the rail and looked afar. The handsome visage was briefly twisted out of shape.
    “You need not have this pain, dear,” Uail ventured to say. “We could have gone directly back to Ériu.”
    Niall shook his head. “I must see what I wrought and make sure the vengeance is complete.”
    The ship toiled on eastward under oars. Ahead cruised her two attendant