Adam Epstein - The Familiars - Animal Wizardry

Aldwyn moved stealthily to the bucket, grabbing a large flat-fish in his mouth. Soon, he’d be feasting in the privacy of the city’s chimney tops, enjoying a nice—

Thwack!

A cat trap snared his tail, missing his neck by a matter of inches. Aldwyn spun around to see a metal coil twist around his fur. He fought the urge to let out an ear-splitting cry, instead burying his whiskers in the back of his right front paw and emitting a muffled whimper. After the initial shock had passed, there was just one question left on his mind: Since when did the old fishmonger set traps ?

Then things went from bad to worse because out from behind the salting closet emerged the dark, foreboding figure of a man cloaked in black, his face scarred by claw marks. He wore black leather boots with bronze spikes protruding from the toes and carried a crossbow slung over his shoulder. His eyes lit up with cruel delight.

“Gotcha!” said the mysterious figure.

Aldwyn desperately tried to free himself from the rusty metal vice, using his hind legs to push.

“Teach you to steal from me, cat,” snarled the fishmonger, popping his head around the corner with a satisfied glint in his eyes.

Aldwyn couldn’t believe that he had walked right into an elaborate trap! He, the cleverest alley cat in all of Bridgetower, had let himself be outsmarted? That was only supposed to happen to mice and cockroaches. Not him.

The man in black took a step forwards, pulling out a long wooden pole with a circular rope at the end. At the sight of the dreaded noose stick, Aldwyn’s survival instinct kicked in. He leaped for the window. Aldwyn’s torso twisted through the open crack, but the metal trap dangling from his tail was too big for the narrow slit. Stuck between inside and outside, Aldwyn glanced back to see the cloaked figure fast approaching. His paws pushed at the window, trying to open it enough to set himself free. The figure reached out to snatch him, but then, at the last second, the window budged another few centimetres, allowing Aldwyn to pull the trap through. He tumbled backwards into the alley, away from the man’s grasp.

Aldwyn landed on his feet—one of the advantages of being a cat—and took off running. The metal trap dragged behind him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the fishmonger emerge alongside his scar-faced accomplice at the window.

“He’s getting away!” hollered the fishmonger.

“Well, he won’t get far,” responded the man with the bronze-tipped boots, not looking the least bit concerned.

Aldwyn sprinted down the alley, sparks flying as the metal scraped against the cobblestones, fighting hard to keep his balance. He had been chased before, but never with a trap stuck to his tail like a very angry crab. Usually Aldwyn would have made a dash for the rooftops to get away, but he couldn’t, not with this thing weighing him down. He glanced back to see his pursuer exit the fish and fowl shop, pulling his crossbow from his side.

Still carrying the fish in his mouth, Aldwyn darted between two buildings and found a hiding place in a pile of scraps discarded by the neighbouring swordsmith. He dug his way in, then crouched very still.

“Hey, whiskers, what’s the big idea?” asked a voice from behind him.

Aldwyn turned to see a skinny rat gnawing on a piece of mouldy bread with several of his rodent friends. With the fish between his teeth, Aldwyn whispered, “Gentlemen, nice to see you all again. Don’t mind me. Just passing through.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” said the skinny rat, now recognising Aldwyn. “Last time you said that, you brought a knife-wielding butcher into our scrap heap.”

“Which we can all agree was really quite funny when you think about it,” said Aldwyn with a chuckle. “Right?”

The rats just stared back at him coldly, none too amused.

“I can tell this is a sore subject. But I’m more than willing to let bygones be bygones if you are.”

One of the other rodents, short and stout with curly whiskers, looked down and saw the cat trap around Aldwyn’s tail. “You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you?”

“What, this?” replied Aldwyn, pointing to the metal snare. “It’s the latest fashion. They come in three different shades of rust.”

The skinny rat poked his head round the corner, then darted back with panic in his eyes.

“It’s Grimslade!”

And suddenly Aldwyn knew that he really was in trouble: Grimslade was the infamous bounty hunter. Flyers plastered around the city advertised his services to kill any pest or vermin in exchange for a bounty, to be paid in gold coins or jewels. Grimslade loved his job. Especially when he got to hunt cats. Rumour had it that his distaste for felines went back to his childhood, when his mother paid more attention to her five Abyssinian shorthairs than to him. While his mother’s aristocratic pedigree cats had been allowed to curl up in the warmth of a bed each night, young Grimslade was forced to sleep on the cellar floor. Those early years of neglect had turned him into a bounty hunter: the vindictive, ruthless killer of all creatures who walked on four, six or eight legs, that he was today. Yes, Grimslade was what was commonly known as extremely bad news . And he was stalking Aldwyn through the streets of Bridgetower. Aldwyn tried to keep his cool, but there was real fear in his eyes now.

Together, the rats began pushing Aldwyn out from their hideaway.

“All right, so long,” said the skinny rat. “Bye-bye now.”

“Wait,” said Aldwyn, pretending to be a friend. “From one furry animal brother to another, please help me out. You know I would do the same for you.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, the rats shoved Aldwyn back into the open, right into Grimslade’s line of sight. The bounty hunter took aim, firing off his crossbow and sending a bolt whizzing past Aldwyn’s shoulder.

Word had travelled across the rooftops that Grimslade kept a collection of paws from his previous bounties and Aldwyn did not want to become part of his trophy case. As Grimslade pulled back the mechanism for a second shot, Aldwyn darted for cover behind one of the lamp posts. Grimslade’s arrow shattered the glass bowl housing the candle above Aldwyn’s head, sending a shower of still-warm wax onto the ground. Aldwyn stood there panting, pondering his next move. Then he heard the sound of metal smashing against metal, and he had an idea. He took off running for the nearby swordsmith’s workshop.

In the soot-covered and smoke-filled smithy, a large man was hammering flat a broadsword, the kind used by the queen’s soldiers when they patrolled the streets for pickpockets and vandals. The swordsmith, protected from the embers that were leaping from the hearth by nothing more than a leather apron, was covered in sweat from the heat of the dancing flames. He kept pounding away at the sword, sending tiny bursts of blue sparks from the anvil into the air. Aldwyn leaped for the ironwork table, carefully positioning the trap directly between the falling hammer and the sword. With a loud clang, the hammer came down square on the metal trap, splitting it in half, allowing Aldwyn to slip his tail free. He made a mental note to add this to his list of greatest escapes, then bolted out through a side door before the swordsmith could even realise what he had done.

Finally trap-free and back at full speed, Aldwyn’s feet barely touched the ground. He ran through the copper district, where merchants were busy setting up displays of hand-crafted candlesticks and cooking vats outside their shop fronts. But Grimslade emerged once more, not to be denied his prize. This was, after all, the same man who was said to have burned an entire building to the ground just to root out a single ’roach. When Aldwyn looked back, he was emboldened by the growing distance between him and his pursuer, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. He kept running at full speed. The next time he looked back, he saw that Grimslade had done something unexpected: he had stopped dead in his tracks. He loosened the gold drawstrings of a leather pouch hanging from his belt and a shadowy puff of smoke burst out, quickly assuming the shape of a dog. Aldwyn tried hard not to panic, because just as tales of Grimslade’s villainous doings had spread through the back alleys, so too had stories of his shadow hounds. Concocted from black magic, these canine apparitions were conjured from a mix of onyx, black mondo grass and burned lupine hair. The tongueless cave shamans from Stalagmos who brewed these predatory demons found they could fetch a rich purse in the Sewer Markets from assassins like Grimslade. And they were well worth the coin. First created to guard the pitch-black jasper mines of Udula, shadow hounds could see in the complete absence of light and their teeth could cut through chain mail. It was enough to make any feline fugitive’s paws tremble. Aldwyn was beginning to wonder if the fresh and juicy flounder he still held in his mouth was really worth the trouble.