Robert Earl - Ancient blood

Five feet later, his bare feet caught on the top of the door jam. It was too narrow to stand on, but it was wide enough to scrape the skin off of Mihai’s insoles, and bounce him away from the wall and into the street.

Straightening his legs and throwing his arms out, Mihai landed. The impact knocked the breath out of him, and, as he tumbled across the street, the hard fists of the cobblestones punched painfully into him. A rib snapped. Something popped within his shoulder. Stars exploded across his field of vision, and, as he rolled to a stop against the house on the other side of the street, he was already spitting blood.

By the time he could stand up, the twins were already on the street with him, their concern turning to relief.

“Very pretty,” Boris whispered, “but let’s save the circus tricks for later.”

“It isn’t that we don’t like to see some sense knocked into you,” Bran added. “It’s just that we don’t have time to waste.”

“I’m fine,” said Mihai sarcastically, “thanks for asking.”

The twins smirked with relief beneath their scarves, as Mihai, grimacing at the pain, pressed his shoulder against the wall, and, with a sudden jab, popped the bone back into its socket.

“Do you want to watch me do it again?” he asked. “You know me, always ready for a bit of impromptu acrobatics.”

“You know what?” Bran asked, glancing quickly up and down the street. “I think we’re almost there. Do you want to stroll over and do the dogs while we go back up?”

“All right,” Mihai agreed, pleased that somebody else had suggested it. It was easy enough to hide his pain down here, but climbing back up would be another thing. “Wait until you see me with them, and then go in. Wave on the way out, and I’ll meet you back at the wall.”

“Will do,” the twins chorused, and then raced each other to be the first one back up the rope they had used to abseil down from the rooftops.

Mihai took a moment to blink away the last of his tears. Then he rearranged his tattered clothing, and limped painfully off towards their target. The innkeeper was proud of his two dogs. It never occurred to him for a moment that they would be a source of mockery. Indeed, when people sniggered behind his back, it wasn’t the dogs that they were mocking, but the contrast between them and their master, and the fact that the dogs were everything that their master was not.

The innkeeper was small, so small that more than one drunken customer had had his head broken for suggesting that his host might have had halfling blood. The innkeeper’s dogs, on the other hand, although definitely mongrels, were massive. Their shoulders were as high as most men’s waists, and their fangs wouldn’t have shamed a boar. They had none of the lankness of the Empire’s coach dogs, either. They were thickly muscled, especially around the traps of their jaws.

Then there was the matter of hair. The innkeeper was as bald as a new-born babe. The dogs, by contrast, had shaggy grey pelts that hinted at wolves in their ancestry, or maybe, somebody had once suggested, even bears.

Although his customers sometimes sniggered behind the innkeeper’s back, they had more sense than to do it to his face. The one characteristic he and his dogs did share was a fierce loyalty to each other. Not only that, but, somehow, whenever the conversation turned to their master, the dogs’ ears pricked into wicked little points, and their lips curled back to reveal teeth that always seemed to be at groin level.

That was why, his customers decided, the mismatch between the innkeeper and his dogs wasn’t really funny, not at all.

Mihai had never seen the innkeeper, so he had no opinion. He wouldn’t have wasted time on forming one, either. He was too busy concentrating on the dogs.

They stood on the other side of the iron-barred gate that led to their master’s premises, dead still as they watched the Strigany. When he had called to them through the bars, they had padded silently over to see what he was. Lesser dogs might have barked, but they didn’t. When it came to intruders in their master’s yard, they had long since learned that barking just spoiled the fun.

And yet, as Mihai spoke to them, they began to wonder if he was an intruder at all. The words he used were as meaningless as any human’s, but the intent in them was clear. He was neither predator nor prey. He was their friend.

They cocked their ears to hear him better. His voice was as warm as the den they had been born in, as sweet as a rabbit. It was as soothing as a full belly, or the stroke of their master’s hand, and just as welcome. Their tails began to wag.

Then, with the insane confidence of the truly faithful, Mihai pushed his upturned palm through the bars. It was empty and open, and he bent it downwards so that the arteries and veins beneath his skin were exposed.

The dogs paused, confused. Then their muzzles wrinkled above their canines, and they sniffed. Their tails paused, and then wagged faster.

Mihai smiled, although he was careful not to show his teeth. Instead, he recited another verse of the animal charm. He had learned it as well as all Strigany, and better than most. The words flowed sweetly as he concentrated on lacing them with suggestion.

The dogs’ ears twitched eagerly and they sat down before him. The instinct to defend their territory was as forgotten as their love of violence. They were too busy listening, as spellbound by Mihai’s voice as children engrossed in their favourite bedtime story.

Above, the darkness flickered as two shapes made their way to the top of the inn. If the dogs heard the thud or the rustle as the twins landed on the thatch of their master’s roof and began to cut their way through, they gave no sign. They remained silent and still, their eyes mesmerised, as Mihai continued to speak to them.

It didn’t take the twins long to emerge. Mihai couldn’t see what they were carrying, but, as they fled, the bulge of their tunics made them look like acrobatic hunchbacks. He waited until they had vaulted over the peak of the carriage house before he recited the last verse of the charm, his voice whispering to silence as gradually as a falling tide leaving a beach.

Then, with the dogs still spellbound, he moved slowly away, turned and disappeared into the night. “What did you get?” he whispered to Bran, as Boris descended from the roof behind him.

“All sorts,” Bran whispered back, and patted the bulge in his tunic. “We’ll show you once we’re clear.”

His twin joined them, loosely looping the rope around his shoulders, and the three of them scurried up the steps that led up to the town wall. Once they reached it, Mihai took a peek through the battlements at the reassuring sight of the encampment beyond. The watch fire glowed a dull red, the occasional spark of flame reflecting off the varnished wagons that were their homes.

He was just about to ask Boris for his length of rope, so that he could knot the two ends together into an abseiling loop, when, from out of the darkness, there was a grunt and a curse.

Mihai and Bran froze. Boris, who had tripped over the sleeping watchman, rolled back to his feet.

The three Strigany watched as the watchman struggled to his feet. They could smell the stink of ale on his breath as he cursed again, blinking the sleep from his eyes, and peering into the darkness. Then he saw the Strigany, and his head cleared enough for him to open his mouth to shout an alarm.

All three of them hit him at the same time. Boris grabbed his ankles, and threw him forward, even as Bran’s fist impacted on his temple, and Mihai’s fingers found his throat.

Beneath this three-sided attack, the guard was lifted, twisting, into the air, and then dropped, with the dull thud of a piece of beef hitting the butcher’s block.