Robert Earl - Ancient blood

“Perhaps it will rain,” he suggested as the laughter died away, “and we won’t find the scent.”

“Don’t worry about that, your lordship,” the hunt master assured him with a malicious confidence. “If we start now, it shouldn’t take us long to pick up a scent.”

“Well said,” Stirland agreed, stirring himself from his cheerful reverie. “Let’s not waste any more of the day. Take the dogs out front, Heinz. The rest of you, fall in behind me and Averland. And don’t worry,” he told his fellow nobleman as the hounds loped off down towards the nearest patch of trees, “if we do find a boar you can take the first stab at it.”

“Oh,” Averland said, “good.”

He wished, not for the first time, that he’d tried to ally himself with somebody else. By the time they had descended into the forest, Stir-land’s earlier irritation was quite forgotten. He loved it here. The spreading boughs of the trees above turned the sunlight into a thousand shades of green and gold, and the dark labyrinth of the tree trunks always promised a good hunt.

As the party moved silently forwards, the elector count fought back the temptation to whistle an accompaniment to the songbirds hidden in the branches. Instead, grinning at the thought of what lay in store, he slipped his boar spear from its holster and tested its weight.

“Why are you doing that?” Averland asked, his voice shrill enough to draw several disapproving stares.

“Just testing the heft of it,” Stirland replied, his voice a hunter’s soft murmur.

“You haven’t seen anything?” Averland whined, loudly enough to silence the nearest songbirds.

Stirland took a deep breath, and bit his lip. “No, just getting ready,” he whispered.

“What’s that you said?” Averland cried.

“I said, no,” Stirland snapped. “Can you do me a favour, Averland old man, and keep your voice down? The animals don’t like it.”

“Oh,” Averland said, “all right.”

Damned fool, Stirland thought. He was still struggling to contain his disgust when, at a signal from the hunt master, the party drifted to a halt.

Stirland, who realised that he was going to have to treat Averland like the idiot he was, glanced over to tell him to stop, too. When he saw that he had already done so, he felt a moment’s surprise. Then he realised that the only reason Averland had halted was that his mare had the sense that he lacked.

For a moment, he considered telling Averland to stop digging his heels into the animal’s flanks. Then he decided against it. As long as the idiot kept his mouth shut, he didn’t care what he did.

Instead of wasting any more time on his guest, Stir-land nudged his horse slowly forward. Its hoofs fell with a practiced stealth that made the gelding worth its weight in silver. Soon Stirland was beside Heinz, and he leaned over so that the hunt master could whisper into his ear.

“Look at the hounds, my lord,” he said.

Stirland, ignoring the garlic that laced the man’s breath, did so. They were pacing back and forth warily, their hackles raised in bristling manes, and their tails as straight as pokers. Usually, they showed more enthusiasm, more joy. As it was, every stiff-legged movement betrayed the hounds’ anxiety about the prey they had found.

“Look at them,” Stirland gloated, “it must be boar, mustn’t it?”

“Possibly, my lord,” Heinz agreed, “or something else.”

“Yes, it’s boar all right,” Stirland mused. “Tell you what, why don’t Averland and I follow behind the dogs from now on? They’ve obviously got a strong enough scent to follow. You can ride behind us.”

At another time, Heinz might have argued with his master. The hunt master loved his dogs, and he hated the idea of being even momentarily separated from them. On the other hand, the thought of what Aver-land might do when faced with a boar was an intriguing one. The shrill, nervous aristocrat had been the butt of the household’s contempt from almost the moment he had arrived, and the hunt master had a feeling that he was not about to acquit himself well.

“As you say, my lord,” he conceded. “Just be careful that Nellie there doesn’t get to the boar before you. She’s a brave old girl, despite her age.”

“Don’t worry,” Stirland reassured him, “I’ll look after them. I’ll-”

He was cut off by a sudden, terrible howl from Nellie herself. As Stirland and the gamekeeper exchanged a surprised glance, the rest of the pack joined in. As one, they had turned towards a slope that led down towards a tangled ravine, their teeth bared, and their ears lying back flat along their skulls.

“What’s wrong with them?” Stirland asked, appalled by the din the hounds were making.

Then the wind shifted, and even he could smell the scent that had so affected the hounds. At first, he thought that it was a goat, and then a boar. Then, with a rush of exhilaration that sent his heart galloping, he realised that it was neither. No natural animal stank so badly, which meant that the things the hounds had found were…

“Beastmen,” the gamekeeper hissed, his voice as low as the hiss of his drawn hunting sabre.

Stirland’s pulse quickened, as his steed shifted nervously beneath him. For the first time, he heard the movement that was crushing through the undergrowth that covered the ravine. He also heard the sound of snapping twigs from the dark hollows to either side of them, and the silence that had replaced the birdsong.

The elector count snarled, or maybe it was a grin. Either way, in the gloom of the forest, his bared teeth were as sharp and as yellow as his hounds’.

“Men,” he called back, his voice as level as a crossbow bolt, “we are ambushed. Form up on me.”

“What do you mean ‘Ambushed’?” Averland asked, terror in his voice. “How can we be ambushed? This is ridiculous.” His terror quickly turned to outrage. “I’m returning to the castle. There’s obviously no game here. Honestly, Stirland, this is no pastime for a gentleman.”

Luckily, Stirland was no longer paying the slightest bit of notice to him.

“Karl,” Stirland said to the man beside him, “you and your boys look out to our rear. Gьnter, you keep an eye on my Lord Averland.”

“Now look here-” Averland began.

Before he could finish, however, the jaws of the ambush closed around them with a terrible hunger. It wasn’t the first time Stirland had seen this enemy. He had once passed a pile of their horned heads, left to rot, beside the mile post outside Nuln. When he was a boy, he had seen some of the trophies his father’s men had brought back from war, too: snuff boxes made from horns, dice made from bones, and purses made from other parts.

Once, when he’d been a student, he’d even seen one of the things torn to pieces in a pit full of dogs. He had lost a packet on that particular sporting event, but it had been worth it to see such a fight.

However, none of that had prepared him for meeting them head-on, or for the shock of their onslaught.

Although they moved with a weasel’s stealth, and although they burst from the brambles as easily as partridge, many of the misshapen pack were massive beasts. The largest stood taller than any man Stirland had ever seen, and the muscles that rolled beneath the stinking mat of their hides looked as strong as the hawsers that towed the barges down the Reik.

Stirland’s grin faded, and he let his steed jitter backwards.

The nearest of the things tore free of the last of the brambles, and shook off a shower of thorns and blood. Its head was almost ox-like, Stirland thought, apart from the viciously sharpened horns, and the glitter of insane intelligence in the reddened eyes… and the fangs.

His horse whinnied in fear, its voice joining the hounds’ chorus of terror, and for a single, shameful moment, Stirland thought about retreat.