Robert Earl - Ancient blood

The three Strigany crouched down around him, ears straining for any sound that might indicate that the guard’s strangled cry had been heard.

“Is he dead?” Boris asked unhappily, and Bran felt for his pulse.

“No. You couldn’t even do that right, you great ox.”

“I wasn’t trying to,” Boris snapped back.

“Keep your voices down,” Mihai suggested, and peered down into the unconscious guard’s drink-sodden features. “Maybe we should kill him,” he said. “He’ll tell everybody we were Strigany, for sure.”

“Doesn’t mean that anybody will believe him,” Bran said, but they all knew that everybody would. In the past, their caravan had been blamed for floods, forest fires, disappearing villagers, and, even, on one memorable occasion, the outbreak of root weevil. If they had been blamed for these things, which they couldn’t have done if they’d tried, then they would certainly be blamed for this.

“Ushoran, I hate peasants,” said Boris, and for once his brother agreed.

“Even so, I don’t like the idea of killing him.”

“Neither do I,” Mihai said angrily, “but what else is there?”

The three of them sat in silence for a moment. They knew very well what else there was, but none of them wanted to say it. It was Mihai who broke the silence.

“Looks like it’s going to have to be the petru, then,” he said, sighing miserably, “and the domnu will probably find out.”

The guard grunted and his eyes flickered open.

“This is all your fault,” Mihai told him, and a short right hook sent the guard back down into oblivion.

Petru Engel sat, as still and as wrinkled as a lizard, within the confines of his wagon. It was as tightly organised, and as immaculately clean as all of the Striganies’ wagons. Like all of them, it also had its own distinctive smell. In this case it was a mixture of pipe weed, lamp oil and the scent of the petru himself.

The old man had lived within these wooden walls for more than seventy years, and Ushoran willing, he intended to live within them for another seventy. Tonight, as on most nights, he was as wide awake as the owls that hunted through the darkness outside.

The petru loved this time. In the stillness, it was so easy to silently recite the stories of his people, telling them, and retelling them to himself, so that the tracks of them were pressed ever more indelibly into his mind.

With his thoughts as placid as a pond, the tales virtually told themselves. In the peace and the tranquillity of the sleeping camp…

There was a flurry of knocks against his door.

The petru’s eyes cleared, brightening into alertness above the grey thatch of his beard. There was another flurry of knocks, and he stretched before going to open the door. The other good thing about these nocturnal meditations, he reflected, was that he was ready for callers. For some reason, the more distressed somebody was, the more likely they were to wait until the middle of the night before coming to ask his advice.

“No need to knock so loudly,” he grumbled, as he lifted the latch. “I was waiting for you.”

“How did you know we were coming?” his visitor asked. The petru just shook his head mysteriously as he tried to identify the men who stood in the darkness outside. There were three of them. No, not three, he realised, four. One was slumped unconscious between the rest.

He shifted so that lamplight spilled from his door. The scant illumination it cast was enough. He recognised Mihai, the domnu’s son, by his red hair, and his two friends by the fact that they were always with him.

“Come in, Mihai,” the petru said, drawing back into his wagon, and gesturing for them to follow. “You too, Boris and Bran.”

The trio bowed politely towards the petru’s family shrine as they entered, dragging their unconscious companion with them.

“Ah yes,” the petru said sagely, and nodded towards the stunned watchman, while wondering what in the seven hells had happened, “but first, why don’t you tell me in your own words what happened?”

“Had a bit of trouble on the city walls,” Mihai said. He had been ready to lie, but, against the all-knowing wisdom of the petru, deception was obviously impossible. “We were on our way back from the city when we bumped into the watchman here.”

The petru’s knees popped as he squatted down beside the watchman and felt the bruises on the man’s chin. To his relief, there was a pulse beneath them.

“Care to tell me what was worth creating all this trouble for?” he asked.

“You’re right, petru, it was stupid of us. It’s just been so long since we’ve had any fun.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“A ham, three bottles of brandy, four shillings and three pennies, and a bag of tobacco.”

Petru Engel nodded distractedly. He had taken the guard’s head between his hands, and started rolling it with the steady rhythm of a prospector panning for gold. After a few moments, the man’s bloodshot eyes blinked open and he grunted.

“Look at me,” the petru told him. The man looked.

Neither Mihai nor the twins understood what happened next, let alone how it was done. All they saw were the patterns that the petru’s thumbs pressed into the dirty skin of the guard’s temples, and all they heard were the numbers the old man chanted, his voice as steady as a hypnotist’s.

Petru Engel didn’t say anything else until the guard’s eyes had glazed back over, and spit had started to drool from his slack mouth.

“Tonight,” he said, “you drank some ale. What did you do tonight?”

“Drank,” the man slurred, “ale.”

“After you had drunk the ale, you went to vomit over the wall,” the petru told him. “What did you do after you had drunk the ale?”

“Puked,” he said, his gorge rising as he spoke, “over the wall.”

“That was when you fell.”

“Fell. I fell.”

“You won’t wake up until daylight comes. When you do, you will remember that you drank some ale, you vomited over the wall, you slipped and you fell.”

The man grunted.

“Now sleep,” the petru told him. “Sleep deeply. Sleep well.”

The man’s eyes snapped closed. Even his three captors yawned, their eyes watering and jaws cracking.

“Now, I suggest that you take him back to the base of the wall.”

“Yes, petru,” Mihai said, nodding gratefully, “we will. About the expedition… Will you tell the domnu?”

“No need for that,” the petru said, shaking his head, and letting the three feel a moment of false relief, “After all, you will be telling him yourself, tomorrow. Oh, and that pipe weed you mentioned, just pop it on the ledge there would you?”

“Yes, petru,” Mihai said miserably. Then he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and led his little group out of the caravan.

He’ll make a good domnu one day, the petru thought, as his visitors slipped back into the night, carrying the guard between them. That is, unless his father kills him tomorrow.

A grin split the old man’s face as he reached for the tobacco they had left, and filled his pipe.

“The fox fears the wolf, the wolf fears the boar, the boar fears the ogre. What an animal fears is as much a part of it as its fur or teeth. What an animal fears is part of what defines it, but Strigany are not animals.”

– From the Ode to Ushoran “It’s really quite simple, your lordship,” Stirland’s chancellor told him, as his liege paced up and down the great hall of his castle. “As we have discussed, there is a key for every lock, and the key for Averland is the Strigany.”

“But it’s ridiculous,” Stirland said. “What does he care what happens to the Strigany? If they rob the burghers it serves the swine right. To think of all the trouble I had getting my tribute from Arnborst this year. I still say we should have hung some of the burghers. Burghers! Like they’re any better than honest peasants who pay their tithes.”