The Heart of Dog

by Doranna Durgin

  "Sorry, son," Tallon told him, tossing the cloth away and digging out another, soaked in tomato juice. "It was the only way." He scrubbed at Sabre's face and then brought out yet another cloth, one he used more gently—wiping away the juice, smoothing Sabre's fur back into place with a petting motion, even wiping along his gums and jowls.

  When he was through, Sabre blinked up at him, panting, able to breath and see again. He gave a tentative wag of his tail and Tallon smiled at him. "Good boy."

  Oooh. A Good Boy!

  Not far—though definitely upwind—Taliya called to them—two short yipping human barks. Tallon answered in kind, locating them, and in only a few moments, Shiba took up the trail cry.

  Sabre understood it, then.

  They'd used him, used his speed...made the smugglers think Shiba was on their trail so they'd deploy their skunk...and now Shiba had circled round him, her nose protected and intact, and taken up the trail.

  He felt a strange twitch of pride.

  But she was alone.

  Sabre barked frustration, pulling at the collar, and whined his most beseeching whine at Tallon. He didn't need his nose to back Shiba, he needed only his legs—and he still had those. He whined again, wagging just the tip of his tail, and widened his eyes in hopeful attention.

  "God and goddess," Tallon muttered. "How does she resist you?"

  Sabre knew permission when he heard it. He sprang to his feet, dug in his claws, and sprayed dirt and leaves into Tallon's face with his take-off. Tongue lolling, eyes squeezed into slits against the undergrowth, he ran flat-out through the woods, his body stretching, coiling, exploding, barely heeding the obstacles in his way.

  He knew he was on trail again by the deep hoof prints before him, signs of a horse being pushed to speed in these tight woods. And then Shiba was just ahead—first just her belling voice in his ears, and then her butt in his face.

  Bitch-butt.

  Sabre was glad to see it.

  He hung back, trusting her nose, until he saw the flash of movement through the trees. Then his bark roughened, grew choppy; he found a place to pass her and did, surging into his powerful speed. In moments he was barking treed, leaping up against the side of the horse to reach the magic carried by the man who rode it.

  "[Critter]-spawn!" the man spat as the horse faltered; he jerked on the reins, fighting his mount while Sabre leapt at them again and again, knocking them both off balance—delaying them, not even considering that the man might turn the horse against him until one hard hoof landed on his front leg, briefly trapping him...snapping the limb in a clean break.

  Sabre didn't feel it just then, not with his quarry so close. But the injury stole his agility, and the man easily kicked him aside; Sabre's strong tail was the next to break, and by then he was beginning to feel his hurts, hesitating—

  The man drove the horse onward, kicking it into compliance, aiming it at Sabre...

  Shiba. Bellowing all the while, she bounded into the fray from behind and with one mighty leap latched up high on the horse's tail. The animal froze—an instant only, and then it hunched its back and kicked out, but she was too high up, too close, for the kick to do anything but knock her aside with its hock; she was back on the tail in an instant, worrying it, growling, fierce in her trail fury. And all the while the man hammered his heels into the horse, yanking its head around to aim for Sabre and his steady cry of treed for Tallon and Taliya.

  Shiba hampered them, and the man shook out the whip to lash at her—and hit the horse right along with her.

  Too much for any horse, even a good one.

  This wasn't a good one.

  It launched into a bucking protest, dislodging both Shiba and the smuggler.

  Shiba landed on her feet. The smuggler, not as agile, rolled to a dazed landing on his stomach. Unlucky for him that he had clipped his long, scruffy hair at the back of his head.

  Unlucky.

  Just as he made the effort to prop himself up on his elbows, Shiba landed heavily on his back, pouncing on the trailing tail of hair. She braced her feet on his back.

  She pulled.

  The man's head came up, eyes slitted, skin stretched, and a squeak of protest in his throat.

  Treed!

  Sabre hobbled forward, stuck his nose in the man's face, and bellowed as loudly as he could.

  Which is exactly how Taliya and Tallon found them.

  6.

  Sabre shifted his awkwardly splinted leg and woofed to let Taliya know they had visitors—as had been the case every day since Tallon had carried Sabre back to this cabin.

  True, he'd used a sling made from the smuggler's shirt, for no man carried a densely boned, muscle-packed linehound far without help, not even a lineman trying to impress a linewoman.

  Taliya had seemed quite impressed indeed.

  Now she came out of the cabin, raising a hand as Tallon and Shiba broke through the trees surrounding their cabin. Tallon went to Sabre first—wise man—offering a treat of dried meat; Sabre accepted it delicately between his front teeth and swallowed it whole.

  He was learning to wag his bottom instead of his broken tail.

  Shiba sniffed Sabre's toes—still his—and sat nearby while Tallon went to greet Taliya. He seemed to have some sort of treat for her, too, although it didn't smell like dried meat. Nothing important, then. Sabre would have ignored them altogether if the strange magicsmell hadn't filled the air.

  He'd finally realized the truth of it the day before.

  The magic wasn't Tallon. It wasn't Taliya.

  It was something that happened when the two of them came together, and he was critter-bedamned if he could understand why.

  But it made Taliya happy. And it made her not-happy when Sabre pestered Tallon, so though it tore at his linehound sense of duty, he was willing to ignore the magicsmell.

  For Taliya.

  Shiba seemed to have come to the same conclusion. Though her eyes glinted and her nose flared at the scent of it, she turned her back on the humans—why did they lean so close to one another, anyway?—and sniffed Sabre's toes again, her long, graceful ears brushing his feet.

  Ohh, that itch again. Where—he nibbled his side—not there—and lifted a hind foot to his ear—not there—and tried desperately to reach the spot under his splinted front leg—no, not there—and then noticed that Shiba had engaged herself in the same sort of frustrated exercise. She twisted around, trying to reach the loose skin directly over her spine, that glossy black fur twitching with her efforts...

  Mesmerized, Sabre gave up on his own scratching and reached over to nibble the spot for her.

  To his utter astonishment, his own vague prickling sensations instantly vanished.

  Shiba regarded him in momentary surprise, then—still twisted around—she solemnly cleaned his face with her tongue.

  It seemed he'd finally found the right bitch to scratch.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Return to Table of Contents

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Bitch Bewitched

  The Right Bitch series, #3

  by Doranna Durgin

  1.

  Puppies.

  Blind, squirmy, deaf, legs too feeble to walk, pale purplish skin beneath the blue ticking yet to come, blunt, flattened noses perfect for nursing, little pink tongues curling with surprising strength around the nipple.

  Puppies.

  They were Shiba's, and she thought them perfect in every way.

  She could almost ignore the human discussion in the background—Tallon's admiration, Taliya's cooing. Once Tallon had been Shiba's lineman; once Taliya had handled Shiba's mate Sabre. But when they all moved into the same cabin those particular lines had become blurred and now they all belonged and worked with each other, human and blue-tick hound.

  Shiba nudged a still-damp pup—the only girl of three, mostly black with her white marking only her lower legs, chest, and undercarriage. A white blaze, tiny tan dots at her eyebrows.

  Perfect.


  And Taliya said, "You don't suppose there'll be trouble, do you? Given where they were conceived?"

  2.

  Babies.

  Loud, pink, endlessly eating and gooing and gurgling, reaching out from its small, barred environs to grab an unwary tail.

  Just one baby human, but it was enough. It was getting older now, and louder, and it woke Shiba from exhausted sleep in her special cabin bedding. Taliya had borne that baby human months ago, and it hadn't even tried to walk. It wasn't natural.

  Taliya swooped the baby human up and the wailing ceased; Shiba closed her eyes and only in the absence of the noise did she realize Tallon and Taliya had company on the porch—the Line Mate, Eldon, who oversaw the spellrunner patrol duty for this entire section of the heavily forested border between Ours and Theirs.

  Tension laced Tallon's voice. "You're sure? Magic? You really think this is wise?"

  Eldon didn't sound entirely happy, either. "We're losing the battle...smuggled magic is getting past even our best teams, because the Others are using magic to do it. And they're using magic against us, which breaks every treaty ever written. There are even rumblings that they might target individual linemen. So...we found some free agent magic users, and they've made up these potions."

  Something clinked. Taliya said most definitely, "I don't want this stuff near the baby."

  "She's not even standing yet," Tallon pointed out, but he sounded unhappy...as though he'd made an argument for something he didn't even want.

  "It's harmless," Eldon said. "It's got to be used with purpose, and it's got to be used in the presence of something distinctly magic. Even if the baby got her hands on it, she couldn't do anything with it. But if you run into trouble out there, this potion will reverse the effects of any magic aimed your way."

  And Taliya said, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

  3.

  Babies. Babies and puppies.

  Squalling, pooping, peeing, vomiting, legs strong enough to get them in trouble, always hungry, sharp little teeth—

  "YIPEYIPE!"

  They'd snuck up on her again. Shiba leaped to her feet, scattering puppies across the thin, shady grass. She hastily removed herself from reach, sitting beside Sabre to sulk.

  Truth be told, she sat on Sabre. Pretty much the only way to get his attention when he was hound-in-the-shade, don't-know-anything-about-puppies.

  "I don't blame you, Shiba," Taliya said, wincing as she pulled the baby human from her breast and put it to her shoulder. It still hadn't grown much, unlike the puppies—now strong enough to pounce, to leap, to fight fiercely over sticks and twigs and summer leaves. There was Bent, who'd broken the tip of his tail on his first day, and Trey, who'd been the third one born. And there was Cutter, the girl they now just called Cuttie.

  Taliya loyally insisted they'd chosen the name for the pup's precocious ability to cut right through to a scent. Tallon, with much wincing, maintained it was for the pup's shrill, insistent voice, emitted at every possible opportunity. "That's almost too high to hear," he'd say. And he'd add darkly, "I wish it was."

  But they conspicuously didn't talk about whether the pups might be affected by Shiba's wild romp with Sabre in the borderlands, the forested swath of land that the linemen and linehounds patrolled to keep spellrunners out. Like Sabre, like all the other linehounds, Shiba could scent and trail any magicsmell.

  And Shiba was more than ready to return to patrol. Sabre was just as ready for her help, worn out from pulling double duty. Shiba thought better of sitting on his head and slid aside so she only sat on half of it, turning to give his exposed muzzle a quick solicitous lick. He twitched, but didn't open his eyes.

  Hound-in-the-shade, hot summer day.

  "Let's put them all in their little jails," Taliya muttered, wincing as the baby human emitted a resounding belch, not all of which was air. She always had a cloth to hand these days, and now she took the baby human inside—up the solid porch steps, into the depths of the cabin where the thing called a crib would keep it out of trouble for a while.

  Shiba glanced at the pups, asleep in a heap of fat, sleek puppy limbs. The boys were both marked lightly, their thin ticking broken only by modest patches of black. The girl had taken Sabre's black body and Shiba's even, silvery ticking, a splot of white at the end of her tail and a blaze running straight and true between her eyes. Taliya scooped them up and gently deposited them in the wood-and-wire corral on the porch. Their jail, she called it. It held water, it held an old blanket, and it gave Shiba and Taliya time to themselves. For Taliya to sleep, and Shiba to run. Quiet time.

  "Yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi!" Cutter cried, starting awake.

  "It'll be good," Taliya muttered after after Shiba was tacked up and prancing on the edge of the clearing for her run, "when things get back to normal around here."

  4.

  Normal.

  Normal was running through the thick woods in search of magicsmell. Normal was drinking in the rich scents of the ground cover, the trail spoor of the animals who lived there, the spongy ground playing out beneath Shiba's feet—here, now, as she took a precious break in the woods. Normal wasn't—

  "Ahyi-yi!" Taliya's voice hit full shriek. Shiba abandoned her gentle homeward trot for a full-on gallop, reaching the yard at such speed that she ran smack into Sabre as he bolted awake in high alarm. They untangled as the cry came again from inside the cabin. "Ahyi-yi! Those...those... those!"

  Both of them could hear the unspoken word.

  Puppies.

  Sabre eyed the dark, cool space under the porch. Not a complex thinker, her Sabre, but he had an instinct for safety and a speed Shiba could never match on trail. He displayed some of his speed right then, diving for the cool darkness. For a moment his tail lay exposed, but in afterthought he withdrew it neatly into the shadow.

  Shiba ran for the puppy jail.

  Empty.

  Completely and totally empty, its panels crooked and fallen. And then she ran into the cabin, where she was assaulted by a plethora of odors and visual chaos. Puppy chaos. The diaper box, overturned in the middle of the floor with the used contents spread and torn and decorating the furniture. The baby, squalling at Taliya's shouts of anger and dismay. Furniture overturned, cushions scattered and leaking filling, not an single spot in the cabin's little shared living space that hadn't been touched by—

  Puppies.

  Shiba felt an absurd swell of pride that the puppies had so ably climbed atop table and chair—and then a surge of alarm.

  For there were no puppies here.

  She ran into the back rooms, into the cooking room, into the pantry, her nose to the floor and so full of puppysmell and puppypoosmell and puppypeesmell that she blundered blindly back into the main room with wrinkled muzzle, where she sneezed violently in Taliya's face.

  Taliya, crouched to pick up a broken bowl, wasted neither words nor time. "Out," she said. "Outside right now!"

  Shiba bounded outside and down off the cabin porch. Out in the yard that was really a beaten down clearing, she began quartering for scent.

  Taliya followed right behind her, except she had the baby human and she used the stairs. She had a blanket with only one hole, and she hastily spread it over the ground, plunking the baby human in the middle. She glanced at Shiba's frantic quartering with a mother's knowing eye, and then snapped, "Sabre! Watch the baby!"

  Sabre's tail reappeared from the shadows long enough to thump a few quick times against the ground; he swapped ends so that his nose peeked out, and Taliya returned inside, trusting him to watch. As well she herself could watch, with Sabre linehound bred and trained and carrying the heritage of magic-enhanced dogs from over the border with Theirs.

  And Shiba trusted him, too, so she put her nose to the ground and found the scent of her gamboling, frisky, bold and yet completely naive puppies. Puppies who had no knowledge of the wolves, the eagles, the big cats or the bears surrounding this area. Puppysmell, more puppysmell, filling her nose so thickly that she
almost didn't notice the...

  Magicsmell.

  Magicsmell, mingling here with her puppies.

  Shiba gave voice, bawling her urgency to the trees.

  5.

  Shiba loped along the meandering scent, found herself circling home—stopped short at the sight of her youngsters gamboling toward the baby human.

  Found, found, found! Safe and back in the yard! Shiba plunked down into a sit, relief making her breathless in the best of ways. The puppies tumbled forward, their movement revolving around a strange object; they took turns dragging it, mouthing it, bumping it along.... Trey fell over the baby human's chubby leg and it chortled with glee.

  Magicsmell.

  Sabre crawled out from beneath the porch, his nose lifted to scent the air. "Wuhf," he said softly.

  And Taliya poked her head out the door to check on the baby human and relief crossed her sharp features. "Puppies!" she said. "Where have you—" Her eyes narrowed, the relief fled. "What have you got? Don't eat that!"

  Even as Shiba eased in closer, Cuttie clamped her teeth into the end of the object they all coveted—and no wonder, for were they not bred to trail magicsmell?—and tugged. And Shiba realized it was a cork, and Sabre realized it was a cork, and Taliya shouted, "Cutter, no!" and with a clink and a pop, Cuttie plopped back on her bottom, her long ears flopping and her face the very study of surprise.

  Nothing happened. Taliya jumped off the porch, muttering to herself, "It can't do anything, Eldon said it can't do anything—" and Shiba loped for the center of the clearing and poofsquallwailyi-yi-yishrieeek! suddenly she couldn't see the blanket or the baby human or the puppies. Her gaze skittered uncontrollably away from the sight; Taliya made a pained noise and threw her hands in front of her face—but neither of them stopped running for the young ones and in the background Sabre let loose with full bawl at the wash of magicsmell that swamped the air.