Pell Ashvorn's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Pell Ashvorn split logs behind the tavern while the gold ring bounced against his chest. It was a signet, heavy, older than the town. It marked him as the last heir to a throne no one here believed he had a claim to. To them he was a woodcutter with a bent axe and mud on his boots. He had come to the capital to say otherwise. So far, no one had let him past a gate. He wiped his hands and went to the steward's office one last time. A clerk with ink-stained cuffs did not rise from his stool. Pell lifted the ring on its cord and set it on the counter. "This is the royal seal," Pell said. "I mean to claim what it stands for." The clerk barely glanced at it. "Any tinker can buy a stamped ring at market. Show me proof you're anything but a laborer, and I'll waste a lord's time. Not before." He waved toward the door. "Out." Pell walked into the yard with his jaw tight. The ring was real. His claim was real. But truth without proof was nothing here. He needed one soul in the capital to know his face and say so aloud. A commotion rose near the kennels. A groom cursed and tugged a rope. On the end of it stood an old wolfhound, tall, silver at the muzzle, its long coat brushed and fine. A royal dog, well-loved once, now gray and stubborn. The hound had planted its feet and would not move. Then it lifted its head. It stared straight at Pell. The old dog pulled free of the groom and crossed the yard. It did not bark or growl. It pressed its head against Pell's leg and leaned there, the way a dog leans on someone it has missed for years. Pell went still. His hand found the rough fur without thinking. Something in him remembered this animal, or the animal remembered him. "Off," the groom snapped, then stopped. The dog would not leave. It sat at Pell's boots and looked up as if it had come home. Men had gathered. A stablehand frowned. "That's the old royal hound. It won't go to strangers. Won't go to anyone. Bit two lords last spring." "It went to him," someone said. Pell felt the yard change around him. The clerk had come to the doorway. His face had lost its bored twist. He looked at the ring on the counter, then at the dog leaning on the woodcutter, and he did not tell Pell to get out. "The kennelmaster served the old house forty years," the clerk said slowly. "He'll want to see this dog choose a man. And the man it chose." Pell rested his hand on the hound's head. He had walked in a laborer. He would walk out as a claim worth answering. The steward's office would open its doors now. What waited behind them, he did not yet know.