Tobin did not touch the hound this time.
He stood three long paces back, with his hands wrapped in Nell’s cloth and tucked under his arms. The first grey light had come over the lodging wall.
The big guard at the kennel gate had not slept, and his torch was still lit. Its smoke went straight up, because there was no wind at all.
“Say it once,” said Calen, very quietly. “From the chest.”
Tobin said it. The word went low and steady across the yard.
The hound, which had been on its feet since the bell, went still in the straw. Its back legs folded.
Then the front legs, one and then the other. It lay down by itself, with its head on its paws and its eye half shut.
Nobody moved.
