Robert Earl - Ancient blood

“I mean look… look at it.” Averland strode past the gamekeeper, brushed past the hounds and pointed. “The damned thing’s dead.”

To make his point, Averland drew back his leg, and, before Stirland realised what he was going to do, he kicked the dog’s body.

Had he not been so shocked, Stirland might have intervened in time. As it was, Averland, nineteenth elector count of his line, turned from kicking the dog to face the full force of the fist that the hunt master had swung at him.

The crunch of his breaking nose and his squeal of pain were amongst the most satisfying things Stirland had ever heard.

So much for diplomacy, he thought, and gave the orders to return home.

“Why blame the fish for swimming or the well-made arrow for flying straight?”

– Strigany aphorism Domnu Brock’s caravan had arrived at noon, its ragged wagons emerging from the forest like a battered fleet from a stormy sea.

The canvas that covered the vehicles, usually well mended and snowy white, was as torn and grubby as the flags of a defeated army The brightly-coloured patterns that covered their wooden frames were battered and chipped. Even their horses, as much a part of their owners’ families as any human, were unbrushed and slow footed with exhaustion.

It had been two weeks since the Strigany had left the last town. Two weeks, during which the domnu had mercilessly driven his people and their animals onwards, threatening, pleading, cajoling. He knew that the immensity of the Reikwald was no place to linger, not even for the hundred or so people who followed him, well armed though they were.

Now, as Domnu Brock stood on the seat of his wagon, he congratulated himself on having brought the caravan through safely. He stood tall with the pride of his achievement, his leather jerkin tight across the barrel of his chest, his bare arms folded to reveal the boulders of his biceps. Although he had seen over forty summers, Brock still maintained the heavily-muscled build that had served him well in the dozen brutal professions he had followed through the Empire, before he had rejoined his people.

His face also bore testament to a life lived, if not well, then at least thoroughly. It was a battered, misshapen face. At some point it had lost an eye, the socket covered by a patch of black silk, and the square jaw, although as heavy as a prize fighter’s, was light on teeth. It should have been a brutal face, but, somehow, the lines of good humour that cut through the wrinkles of the leathered skin prevented that. So, instead of brutal, it just looked battered.

At the moment, it looked cheerful too. Brock was smiling, his one good eye squinting against the setting sun as he looked approvingly over his people’s encampment.

It was like one big animal, he thought. The wagons were its hide. The sentry points were its senses, and the market within was its hungry belly. The thought prompted the domnu to lift his gaze and peer through the smoke of the cooking fires to the walls of the town beyond.

It was called Lerenstein, apparently. The domnu had never been this far north, so he had never been to Lerenstein before, but during his half a century on this world he had been to a hundred towns like it. He knew that the people would be ignorant, backward even. Their craftsmen would be peasants, the jewellers no more than blacksmiths, and the tailors barely able to hold a needle.

That was good. What was even better was that their purses, although crudely made, would be plump from the year’s rich harvest.

The domnu’s good eye gleamed with pleasure, and the scar that ran through the blind socket of the other twisted to keep it company. Lerenstein offered rich pickings to those who knew how to do the picking, and Brock’s people knew how to do that all right.

Then he caught sight of his son, Mihai, and he felt the familiar mixture of pride and irritation. On the one hand, although the lad was not yet twenty, he had proved himself a true Strigany a hundred times over. His wits were as sharp as his fingers were fast, and he had earned enough to buy his own wagon, even though he had not yet reached his first score. It had taken many of the wagon masters twice as long to succeed so well.

On the other hand, Mihai didn’t seem to realise what a hard world this was. He laughed too much, and talked too much. An open mouth, Brock considered irritably, meant an empty mind. Mihai lacked respect, too. Not that he was ever rude to Brock. His father had not risen to command, first, a mercenary company in his youth, and then this entire caravan in his retirement, by allowing that sort of thing, but, Ushoran knew, the disrespect was there. Mihai could never do a thing without arguing.

He didn’t seem to realise that respect was a currency that needed to be earned, spent and invested. It was the only way he would ever become domnu in his turn.

“Mihai,” Brock called, and Mihai turned to face him. Unusually for a Strigany he had red hair, a gift from Isolde, his departed mother. It glowed in the sunlight, and so did his teeth when he smiled.

I wonder how many red-haired babes and sudden weddings we’ve left behind us, Brock thought, and there it was again, that mix of pride and irritation.

“What is it?” Mihai asked. He paused, and then added, “Domnu?”

Brock remained stony faced.

“Come here,” he said. Mihai’s smile faded, and he shrugged to his companions before stepping up to the wagon. It was a gesture, Brock thought, which was calculated to infuriate him. He ground his teeth and glanced towards the Esku twins, Boris and Bran. As always they were standing behind his son like two identical shadows.

Brock remembered catching the three of them stealing cider apples when they were children. How he’d walloped them. He’d have difficulty doing that now, he thought as he regarded the men they had become.

“Greetings domnu,” they chorused, and Brock nodded to them before turning back to his son.

“What are you up to?” Brock asked him. “There’s still work to be done before nightfall. We need firewood, and the stockade can always be improved upon.”

“We were just going into town,” Mihai said, “to have a look around. It’s always good to know what’s around the next corner.”

“Is it now?” Brock asked.

“So the petrus tell us,” Mihai replied, his good humour turning to defiance. Why, he wondered, did his father have to act like such a miserable old git? It had always been that way. He supposed it was because the domnu didn’t want to show any favouritism, although that hardly made it fair.

Well, to the hells with him.

“All right,” Brock relented, seeing the sense in the idea. “Have a look around, but remember, you’ll be about as inconspicuous as three foxes in a chicken coop. Nobody trusts a Strigany, so they’ll be watching you. Behave.”

“Yes, domnu,” Mihai lied, and, with a nod that was just short of respectful, he and his two henchmen made off towards Lerenstein.

Brock watched them go, his face troubled. He had never known his own father, that was part of the problem. What rank should he think of his son as holding? Brock had always been at ease with his comrades, his subordinates, and his superiors, but with his son… Maybe he should have a talk about this with the petru.

He shrugged, and turned back to look over the rest of the caravan. The dangers of the forest lay behind them, the riches of Lerenstein ahead.

With the contented sigh of a shepherd who has led his flock to safety, Brock lit a pipe, fitted the stem between a gap in his teeth, and sat back to watch his people work. The sun had long since set, and Mannslieb had dropped behind the hills, when Mihai, Boris and Bran met up beneath Deaf Tsara’s wagon. All three were swaddled in loose black cloth. The tops of their hands were covered in charcoal, and the white skin of their faces was hidden behind dark scarves.