Doranna Durgin - A Bitch in Time

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2024-11-24 0 0 25.28KB 12 页 5.9玖币

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A Bitch in Time

Doranna Durgin

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Shiba sat on the bare wood planks of the cabin porch, wiggling her bottom away from a

persistent splinter. Mail hung heavily on her shoulders and across her back, and the

leather-lined helmet chafed her ears despite its custom contours. Hot in the sun, it was. Across

the tunic on her broad chest hung a short row of service pins and one smooth, polished medal.

Shiba would have ripped it off if she'd been given the choice. What good was valor when it

wasn't enough?

Good for a thorough rolling-on, that's what.

Beside her stood the Line Mate, the man in charge of the border cabins that represented the

first line of defense against illegal magics. He wore his only everyday work clothes. Well, he

wasn't waiting for his new partner.

"Patience," he said, resting his hand on the skirt of mail that hung over her long ears. "He'll

be here. Naught for you to worry."

Shiba made a grumping noise and lifted her nose to the air, expertly sorting it for any taste

of stranger-odor. There! Was that… ? She whined, licked her lips, and tried again. Definitely!

"Coming, is he?" the Line Mate asked, expectantly eyeing the path that led from the woods.

His other name was Eldon, though Shiba thought he ought to pick one name or the other and

stick with it. "All right. Just you keep in mind that he's only recently lost his own partner. That

does things to a lineman, you know."

Shiba's tail quivered, and her forehead furrowed into furry wrinkles. The scent of her new

partner was strong in her nose, stronger than any words Eldon might say. People talked all the

time anyway, whether they had something to say or not. She strained her eyes-not the strongest

of her senses-and yes, there he was! Just visible through the trees at the edge of the cabin's

small clearing, a tall walking stick in one hand and a full satchel slung over the other shoulder.

Shiba whined as he emerged from the woods, and licked away the drool gathering on her lips.

"Easy," said Eldon, as Shiba's new partner approached. The man's easy stride seemed a tad

too casual.

"Tallon," Eldon said. "Welcome. You made good time."

"Good enough," the man said. Shiba liked his voice. It had a roughly furry texture not unlike

her own. He nodded at her. "See you musta spent some time getting ready for me. Wasn't

necessary."

"I didn't do it for you," Eldon said. "I did it for her. She was strongly attached to the old

man. It's good for her to have a little ceremony, something to mark your arrival as out of the

ordinary. I can't help but worry about the way you two are going to mesh."

Tallon dropped the satchel and looked thoughtfully at his new linehound.

Shiba gave him her Noble Beauty pose. After all, she was of the best bloodlines and

strikingly marked. The black of her back was glossy beneath her chain mail, and her chest,

belly, and legs were white, so heavily ticked with black that from any distance they looked

blue silver. The black of her head and ears was divided by a neat ticked blaze that spread out

to take over her muzzle, and her eyebrows were punctuated by deep brown. Her body was

sturdy, her tail strong and graceful, and her ears fell long and soft, the perfect complement to

her hanging flews. Best of all, her legs-long, heavy-boned and angular-were up to the task of

following her incomparable nose.

She knew all this because Jehn, her former partner, had told her so. She believed him

utterly, just as she believed everything he said.

Tallon just shrugged. "We'll get along fine," he said. "Jehn'll have trained her right, and

beyond that, a dog's a dog."

Shiba couldn't believe her ears. She looked at Eldon, who appeared to be speechless. A

dog's a dog, ey? Her ears, previously cocked forward like big floppy wings at the side of her

head, flattened. She rose and circled the man, eyeing him with cold brown eyes. A dog's a dog?

Well, this dog was a bitch. Tallon would not only do well to keep that in mind, he was about to

find out exactly what it could mean.

Shiba gave his satchel a sideways look. It did mean she couldn't lift her leg on the thing. But

there were other ways… Shiba dropped shoulder-first on the satchel and rolled with the

dramatic wiggles and flourishes commonly reserved for the rankest carrion.

Tallon seemed to have missed the point, for he never made the necessary apologies and

overtures to earn Shiba's forgiveness. Of all the linemen on the border, why give her this one to

break in? No matter how long he'd been a lineman elsewhere, Tallon was the green one here,

for this was her territory. A lifetime-all three years of it-of protecting this section of the border

from spellrunners meant that she knew all its hiding places, and all the tricky runners in the

area.

For a while there, spellrunners had taken to disguising the smell of magic with the much

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