Robert Earl - Ancient blood

“Got the gear?” Mihai whispered.

“Yes,” Bran lisped, softening the s so that it wouldn’t carry. “No help from Boris, of course. I didn’t even think I’d be able to wake him up.”

“Funny,” Boris said. “Hilarious. We’ll all probably laugh at that one later.”

“Who’s laughing?” Bran spread his hands innocently. “I’m just glad your snoring didn’t wake dad up.”

“If he can sleep through your jabbering, he can sleep through anything.”

“Let’s get moving,” Mihai said, interrupting their bickering. On another occasion he would have let them carry on. It was always entertaining, even if he sometimes did have to break up the occasional fight. There was no time for such fun and games tonight, though. Tonight they had work to do.

“We’ve got some ground to cover before we even get there, remember,” he told them and, before they could reply, he set off.

The trio crawled silently through a gap in the stockade and out onto the common beyond. Then, quiet as smoke, they drifted across the field towards the town of Lerenstein.

Its walls were as black and as featureless as an open grave against the starlit expanse of the night sky. Even so, the Strigany, reading Lerenstein’s silhouette as easily as if they had lived there all their lives, moved directly towards the section of the wall that they had previously identified. There was an angle there, a corner where an extra section of the growing town had been walled in.

When they reached the place, the three Strigany stopped and waited. They listened to the distant barking of a dog, the brush of the wind against the trees, and the faint crackle of the watch fire in their own encampment. Only when they were satisfied did Mihai lead on.

He pressed his body into the corner the two walls made, and started climbing. The angle made it easy, and the poor masonry even easier. His fingers and toes, well versed by a lifetime of mischief, found so many holds and ledges that he raced up the wall as easily as a squirrel up a tree.

Thirty feet later, his fingers found the edge of the battlement. The wiry tendons in his forearms stood out as he pulled himself up, and he slithered onto the walkway with a serpentine grace.

Again he paused, listened, and looked. Lerenstein lay below him, the night-blackened roofs reminding him of the steepled wings of sleeping bats. In the distance, the dog finally stopped barking.

Mihai turned and looked back over the wall. He made a fist and put his arm out over the edge. Then he opened and closed his hand, the white flash of his palm, the signal that Boris and Bran would be waiting for. Mihai waited until he saw the first hint of movement in the darkness below, and then sank back down onto his heels. A moment later, the twins rolled over the wall to join him. They took a couple of deep breaths, and then, without a word passing between them, all three stooped down below the silhouette of the crenellations and loped off along the town wall.

It didn’t take them long to find the building they had spotted that afternoon. The temple was big enough to be fit for Ushoran, let alone the lesser god to whom it was actually dedicated, and the size of it meant that it backed so far from the street that it almost touched the wall.

Again, Mihai led the way. He took a deep breath, and then raced along the wall, twisting at the last moment to hurl himself towards the building. There was moment of free fall, and then the thunk of the roof beneath him.

He landed on all fours, muscles taut, and joints sprung so as to soften the impact of his fall. The tiles remained solid beneath his hands and feet, and with a silent prayer of thanks to his god, he scuttled up the slope of the roof, already looking for the next perch.

There it was, a high barn that served as both stable and warehouse. It was thatched, too. Perfect.

Mihai licked his lips as he heard the twins landing lightly behind him. In the daylight, and from the street below, the distance between this roof and the next hadn’t seemed much. Now, he wasn’t so sure that they hadn’t underestimated it. The ten feet that separated the two roofs seemed a lot more.

Boris and Bran appeared on either side of him.

“Best use the rope,” Bran whispered, leaning close enough for Mihai to feel the warmth of his breath.

“I reckon,” Boris said, and Mihai smiled. If these two agreed on something, then he wasn’t going to argue.

“All right. Give it to me, I’ll take it. Right. You two get ready for the bounce.”

Mihai looped the coil of rope around his shoulders, as the twins slipped over the ridge of the roof, and eased their way down the other side. When they were almost at the gutter, they stopped and sat facing each other, legs outstretched for maximum traction.

They linked hands to make a sling. Then they turned, and nodded towards Mihai.

He didn’t realise that he was grinning as he leapt over the ridge and rushed down the roof. The grin grew even wider as the sole of his right foot punched into the twins’ interlocked palms, like a stone into the sling of a trebuchet. Then he was being hurled through the air, the void blurring beneath him, and he bit back a howl of joy.

The rush ended as he crashed into the thatch. His fingers closed on thick handfuls of straw, and he pulled himself up, wriggling through the thatch like a snake through the grass. He made for the chimney stack at the corner of the roof, tying off the rope and throwing the weighted end back to the twins.

He grinned as he watched them silently arguing over who would go first, both gesticulating like mime artists. Bran won and, wrapping the rope around his wrist, he leapt across the street, grabbing an extra couple of feet of rope as he jumped forward, so that, when he swung down, his feet hit just below the gutter.

He scrambled onto the roof, and then threw the rope back to his brother. By the time the two of them had joined Mihai, he had already untied the rope and picked out the next roof. This is easy, he thought, looking out across the rooftops of Lerenstein. The buildings were huddled together as close as a herd of animals seeking to defend themselves against some predator.

Fat lot of good it does them, Mihai thought with a smug grin. This is too easy.

Indeed, it wasn’t until three houses later that he fell. He decided that it wasn’t his fault. If the twins hadn’t been on the point of violence over whose turn it was to swing across on the rope next, Mihai would have used it.

As it was, he had shut them up by taking a run down the slope of the clay-tiled roof that they’d been perched on, bunching his legs, and hurling his body forward in a wild dive. It was a good jump, and would surely have carried him across, if only the clay tiles at the bottom of the roof hadn’t shattered beneath his feet.

The shards had bitten into his soles, even as he tumbled clumsily into the space between the houses, and suddenly the exhilaration, which had filled his belly with fire, had curdled into stomach-churning terror. Freefall had made a lethal weapon of the cobbled street below, and it was already rushing to meet him. He twisted in mid air, and snatched for the guttering.

He got three fingers to the gutter. Not enough to hold on, but enough to swing him into the wall. As his fingers slipped from their precarious hold, Mihai scrabbled at the crumbling plaster of the building, trying to find a hold.

Below him, a long, long way below, the falling roof tiles shattered, the noise terrifyingly loud in the quiet streets.

Mihai, meanwhile, was plummeting past a window. He grabbed for the ledge, and it broke his fall. Then, as the weight of his body swung unsupported beneath him, he was tumbling down again.

He bit back the scream that tightened his throat, and tried to think through the fog of panic that had gripped him.