“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.
“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.
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.
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.