Master of Hounds Series Bundle (EBOOK, LGBT)

ONE

“THROW HIM TO the dogs.”

Princep Kaeto, the emperor’s son, waved a careless hand toward two guards holding a bound prisoner between them. The pair dragged the unfortunate man forward to the entrance of the royal kennels, where sounds of growling and scrabbling could be heard coming from within.

Caius Oppita, once a respected Legatus of the Alyrion Imperial Guard, stood at parade rest as the order was given, his eyes fixed impassively ahead. Gossip had been rampant in recent weeks concerning the steady parade of prisoners arriving at the royal compound, only to meet inventive and grisly ends on the direct order of the princep. The lithe young man with bound hands and a bag tied over his head was only the latest to confront such an unpleasant fate.

One of the guards addressed the master of hounds, who stood next to the kennel doors, his head bowed in groveling subservience. “Have the beasts been starved for a full week, as His Highness requested?” he asked formally.

The houndsman’s shoulders hunched a bit further inward. “Yes—it is as my imperial lord has commanded. They are near-mad with hunger.”

The guard nodded. “Then lead the way and hold them off while we toss this piece of garbage into the cage with them.”

With a deep breath, the houndsman straightened his spine. He clutched the handle of the whip coiled at his side with a white-knuckled grip, as he entered the low building to complete his unpleasant task. The guards pulled their captive along, following him into the kennel’s dark interior. Inside, the ominous growls erupted into full-throated baying, growing in pitch and intensity until the sounds filtering out to Caius and the other observers standing in the courtyard became positively frantic.

Caius fought down a wave of queasiness, not allowing it to show in either his face or his bearing. He’d been a soldier for twenty-nine of his forty-six years… had seen men hacked apart by swords, trampled under the hooves of warhorses, and dying of dysentery in the battle camps. Yet something about this casual cruelty still sickened him. If the talk making the rounds of the palace was accurate—and he had every reason to believe it was—then the only crime committed by the men being executed under Kaeto’s hand involved their conception. The wrong seed had reached the wrong womb, resulting in the birth of another inconvenient bastard son.

A few moments later, the guards re-emerged from the kennel. The one who had spoken to the houndsman approached Kaeto and bowed low.

“The master of hounds will stay to watch until the beasts calm enough for whatever remains of the prisoner to be removed,” he said, speaking over the din of howling and snarling. “I don’t expect they’ll leave much behind.”

Kaeto made a dismissive gesture. “Let the creatures crack the bones and suck the marrow, for all I care. Leave the filthy whore-son to rot in the manure pile after they shit him out.”

Caius continued to stare straight ahead, his expression granite. Stoicism was not enough to prevent him from becoming the next focus of the princep’s attention, however.

“You disapprove of my words, Legatus?” Kaeto’s voice held amusement, which was somehow even more galling than anger would have been.

I disapprove of your actions, Caius thought. Not just your words.

Aloud, he only said, “I prefer witnessing honorable death in battle to death by execution, Your Highness.”

The dogs were still in an uproar, though he’d heard no sounds of human screaming. They must’ve gotten the sad bastard by the throat quickly. At least that would have shortened his suffering, if nothing else.

“Still a soldier to the core, eh?” Kaeto replied. His tone changed, becoming pointed. “Well, if not for certain limitations, of course…” He trailed off, flicking his fingers in the general direction of Caius’ twisted left shoulder, where a blow from a battleaxe had mangled the muscles on his dominant side some years ago. “At any rate, Legatus, it’s all for the best. I’m certain you’ve heard the rumors. We can’t leave men like that walking around free, now can we?”

“Indeed, Your Highness,” he said tonelessly.

Thankfully, Kaeto appeared to lose interest in the exchange when Caius failed to rise to the bait.

“Now,” said the princep, turning to address his entourage. “I believe that’s quite enough of that unpleasantness. Come. Let us return to the palace and see about procuring a meal—preferably one with less gristle than what the dogs are currently enjoying.”

Polite titters greeted the tasteless joke.
Kaeto shot Caius a haughty glance. “You. Stay behind. Report to me when the thing is done and the remains disposed of—since that seems to be important to you. One does like to have someone they can trust keeping an eye on events.”

Caius felt a muscle in his jaw twitch. “As you wish, Your Highness,” he replied in a monotone, thinking that from the sound of it, the ‘thing’ had been done less than a minute after the cage door had slammed closed.

He stood stiffly as the princep, the guards, and the group of fawning courtiers removed themselves from the courtyard, presumably in search of less bloody entertainments. A short time later, he found himself alone except for the houndsman’s apprentice—a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age, with a mop of brown hair and wide gray eyes.

Flies buzzed through air heavy with humidity and the musky smell of animals. With no one but the boy left to see, Caius closed his eyes, feeling the familiar pull of the skin around an old scar bisecting his left eyebrow. The barking inside the kennel had already died down to occasional whines and yips.

His eyes flew open when it unexpectedly erupted again, the sound of baying and growling followed closely by a man’s high-pitched shrieks, growing in desperation only to be cut off abruptly. The fine hair on the back of Caius’ neck prickled.

What in Deimok’s name?

“Go see what’s happening,” he ordered the boy. It seemed decidedly unlikely that the prisoner could have survived the first round of canine frenzy, but apparently he had. Whatever the case, it sounded as though the unlucky man’s time was finally up.

The apprentice gulped nervously and disappeared into the building, only to erupt from the kennel’s doorway a few moments later like a cork shot from a bottle of sparkling wine. His face was pale as a sheet as he ran full-pelt across the cobbled yard.

“Sir, come quickly, please!” he begged. “It’s my master, he’s… he’s—”

The words choked to a standstill, lodging in his skinny throat. Caius followed with a frown as the boy grasped his sleeve and tugged him in the direction of the cacophony coming from inside the structure. Unsure what he would find, he slipped his ceremonial sword from its sheath right-handed—aware on some level that the weapon would not be enough to fend off an entire pack of crazed hounds, should such a thing become necessary.

Cool shadows enveloped him as he slipped through the door after the boy. Caius blinked rapidly in the kennel’s dimly lit interior, straining to see in any detail beyond the mass of dark, milling shapes behind a wall of metal bars. That was something, at least—the cage door was closed, and none of the dogs appeared to be loose. Beside him, the pale apprentice still clutched at Caius’ left sleeve, but now the boy’s frightened panting had descended into poorly stifled sobs.

Caius tugged his arm free, moving cautiously closer to the bars. As his vision adapted to the low light, he could make out a limp form being jerked to and fro in the middle of the snarling melee. It was vaguely human-shaped… but becoming less so by the second. Again, the feeling of nausea assailed him at the idea of executing someone in such a manner.

He started to turn to the boy, ready to growl at him to explain himself. That was when he noticed two of the hounds fighting over a braided rawhide whip, like pups playing tug-of-war with a length of chewed rope. His brows drew together, and he gave the large area beyond the bars a longer, searching look.

Where was the houndsman?

Now that his eyes had grown accustomed to the dimness, he could make out a second figure hunched in the far corner; back turned to the carnage. It… wasn’t the master of hounds.

Dusky skin stretched across lean muscles. The figure appeared to be completely naked. His fingers twined through wild spirals and mats of dark hair, clutching at his own head as though that was the only way he could hold up its weight.
Twisted scars from a long-ago flogging crisscrossed his back.

Caius stood frozen for several moments, attempting to force the tableau into some sort of context. The hounds had left the prisoner untouched—at least beyond ripping away his clothing—and instead savaged their caretaker?

Even now, the animals continued to tear at the corpse, their muzzles coated with gore.

That the houndsman was dead was not in question… and Caius supposed the apprentice’s hysteria made sense now. The boy had sunk to the ground behind him, his back pressed to the wall near the door through which they’d entered. He didn’t beg Caius to stop what was happening. Any fool could see there was no point in even trying at this late juncture. Instead, the lad merely looked on with unblinking horror as the animals fed on what had, mere minutes ago, been his master.

A living person.

Practicality reared its head. “Is there another whip?” Caius asked. “We should try to get them off the body while there’s still something left to bury—”

“No. Let them eat.” The raspy voice came from the hunched figure in the back. The prisoner hadn’t moved until that moment, but with those words, he let his hands slide free of his hair and looked over his shoulder at Caius. “They’re starving. And since I imagine that man was the one who starved them, there’s a kind of justice to it, I suppose.”

Caius buried the prickle of unease running up his spine. “You. Why aren’t you dead?”

The prisoner rose, a bit unsteadily. He seemed either unaware or uncaring of his nakedness as he turned to face Caius and walked toward him.

“I always had a way with dogs,” he said. His voice sounded detached. Far away. Around him, the animals parted like water, making way for his passage as he approached the barred door. His chest rose and fell on a deep, unsteady breath. “It’s been a while, though. Wasn’t sure if I still had the knack or not. Guess I do.”

Caius’ sense of unease didn’t lift, though its flavor shifted incrementally as he became acutely aware of the other man’s body. The prisoner stood barely more than arm’s length away from him, separated by the heavy iron bars. Caius judged him to be in his mid-twenties, though he looked older than that. Not surprising, after what had probably been years spent languishing in prison for the crime of being born an emperor’s illegitimate son.

It was apparent from his skin color and his unusual hair that his mother must have been from one of the southern lands—perhaps Kulawi. His eyes were a rich brown shade, heavy-lidded and accented by dark lashes. His body was hairless except for thatches of black at his armpits and groin. There wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on his frame, but rather than appearing frail, his arms and legs were corded with lean muscle and sinew. It was the body of someone who’d been used on the prison work crews rather than kept chained in a cell day in and day out. When he spoke, his accent was provincial, but not unpleasant to the ear.

“So, are you going to kill me now, soldier?” he asked, sounding more tired than fearful. His eyes landed rather pointedly on Caius’ drawn sword. Around him, several of the hounds looked up from their grisly meal, and Caius heard the low rumble of warning growls as the beasts sensed the sudden change in atmosphere.

Caius’ disquiet over the entire situation coalesced into a sharp, burning point beneath his ribcage. “Do you even know why you’re here?” he asked, in lieu of answering the man directly.

The prisoner still looked unutterably weary. “Some nobleman or the other couldn’t keep his prick where it belonged, and nine months later, there was me. No clue why someone suddenly decided to turn me into dog meat after ten years of wasting perfectly good food and clothing on me in prison, though.”

Caius blinked.

Good god.

The poor bastard didn’t even realize who his father was, did he?

An idea both terrible and wonderful in its simplicity percolated through Caius’ mind, pushing his heartbeat into a gallop.

“You haven’t answered my question,” said the prisoner. “Will I die now at your hands, instead becoming food for the pack?”

For a long moment, Caius stood poised on the cusp of what would arguably be an act of treason, wavering. He had watched in silence for the past three years as the empire his family had served for generations slid ever downward, spiraling into corruption and depravity.

The emperor—once a military and organizational genius well on his way to conquering the known world—was losing his wits and his health in equal measure. Of the emperor’s three legitimate sons, one was a drunkard, one was a sadist, and one was a manipulative bootlicker. Between them, they threatened to tear Alyrios apart with their power struggles.

And Caius, once a respected general in the Alyrion army, had somehow become the man whose job it was to make sure that the bones of a dead imperial bastard were cleaned up after being devoured by His Highness’s hunting dogs.

Almighty Deimok, how had his life come to this?

Twenty-nine years of loyalty and military discipline creaked under the accumulated strain, like rotting timbers on a bridge giving way beneath the force of a flood-swollen river. Caius met the eyes of the man standing on the other side of the bars. The prisoner’s gaze was dull with resignation.

“No,” he croaked, barely recognizing his own voice. “I’m not going to kill you. Though we may both end up dead if we’re not careful.”

-End of sample