Vespasien

Vespasien sat in the loft of the Spyre’s kennels, sipping barley wine, irritated that he was not hearing the grunts of lovemaking below.

Instead, Rhydderch Vethyle was working with his beasts in another way—preparing them for a hunt. Again and again, Rhydderch’s deep voice uttered a crisp command and—Vespasien supposed, since the dogs never needed to be told more than once—his hounds obeyed.

He’s got his bitches trained well, Vespasien thought with a touch of envy. As much as Vespasien tried, his own dogs always hated him. In fact, every puppy he had ever purchased had assaulted him, and Vespasien always ended up giving the damn things to the auldlings of the Spyre.

After a moment, Vespasien realized the sounds of animal training had been replaced by animal grunts. He could not contain his glee as he put down his glass of wine and peeked over the edge of the loft.

He sat back in disgust.

Rhydderch had released a mottled black male from its cage and the beast was industriously making love to the little white bitch. Brael, the Auld had called her, and she was easily one of the most hideous things Vespasien had ever laid eyes on. The dog was of no particular breed—none of Rhydderch’s hounds were—and it had a lopsided look created by the way one ear would lay flat while the other stood up straight. Its fur was shaggy and it resembled some sort of sheep or goat.

He breeds for function, not form, Daegraf, Cyriaca’s eldest son, had said of his great-uncle. The boy had sounded proud of the fact, like it was somehow a good thing to produce mutts that looked like they’d just stepped out of a cutpurse alley.

Vespasien yawned, beginning to get bored. His tipoff that Rhydderch made love to his beasts was rapidly turning out to be a few too many glasses of wine on his informant’s part and a bit too much wishful thinking on his own part.

Below, Rhydderch began to hum, miming some Brydian ballad Vespasien hadn’t heard before. Vespasien leaned forward, a little shocked. Music—in any form—was the last thing one expected when looking at the chiseled chin, the gray-blond beard, the icy blue eyes, the six feet of muscle that was Rhydderch Vethyle.

Rhydderch was sitting on a hay bale with a little red bitch between his legs, rubbing behind her ears with his fingertips as he hummed her a song. She peered up at him in obvious adoration. Vespasien felt a pang of jealousy, watching them.

Rhydderch ended his song. “Okay, Fenna, let’s give you a workout.”

The Auld stood up and made her jump over the hay bale, climb a stack of muck-buckets, lunge through a hanging pulley-rope, and scale the ladder that led up to Vespasien’s hiding place.

Vespasien lunged back, but the hound’s head lifted above the lip of the loft and the two of them stared at each other: Vespasien the spy and Fenna the ladder-climbing mutt.

Terrified of being caught eavesdropping on an Auld of the Spyre, Vespasien ‘tipped’ the dog. He reached for the stiff little strand that he felt perpetually floating at the edge of his consciousness and shoved it into the animal. Then he lowered his head to almost touching her muzzle and said, “Get.”

The dog slipped off the ladder. Vespasien heard a muffled thud, then a whine.

“Fenna!” Rhydderch’s voice sounded shocked. Guilty. “Damn it, girl...I should’ve known you were getting too old for that one.”

Though Vespasien did not dare look over the edge again, he knew that the Auld’s dog would be fine. Rhydderch was one of the most powerful Aulds in the Vethyle clan. Patching her up would be a simple thing.

Vespasien expected training to resume, according to Rhydderch’s normal schedule, but the next thing he heard was the sound of a kennel door clicking shut. “Good night, little ones.” Rhydderch said. “You’ve had enough for tonight.”

Then, to Vespasien’s amazement, he heard Rhydderch leave the kennels. He calculated the time. Rhydderch usually worked them two more hours, at least, cycling through all twelve of his curs as he trained them in this trick or that. That he had left so early suggested that the Auld had been truly disturbed at the way his dog had fallen.

Which meant Vespasien had found a weakness.

Excellent.

Vespasien climbed down from the loft and glanced at the rows of cages. The dogs watched him like motionless, wary statues. In her cage, the little red bitch was curled in the far corner, visibly shuddering. When she saw Vespasien, she started to whine. Vespasien brushed past the hay bale, toward the door.

Then he paused. His eyes returned to the red bitch now cowering in her cell. He wondered if he could get her to jump over the hay bale like Rhydderch had done. All the hounds had been well-trained—Vespasien had seen them obey the commands of several different masters.

Why not him?

As he moved toward the red hound’s kennel, the animals on either side of it began to growl and snap at him through the slotted wood. Seeing his approach, the red bitch became a quivering mass in the corner, shaking so thoroughly it was making the hay around her tremble.

For some reason, it enraged Vespasien. Seeing them so happy and jubilant in Rhydderch’s care one moment, then have them bare their fangs and growl at him the next, Vespasien couldn’t handle it. He threw open the red bitch’s door and stalked inside. The dog whimpered when he grabbed its collar and dragged it outside with him.

All around, the hounds were barking, now. Vespasien ignored them and left the red bitch beside the hay bale while he walked around to the other side. “Over,” he said, pointing to the bale.

The dog stared at him in obvious terror.

“Over, goddamn it!” Vespasien snapped.

The dog hunched backwards and began to slink back to her cell.

Vespasien felt something snap within him. He rushed after her, grabbed the animal’s collar, and dragged her back to the hay bale. He was in the process of pushing the dog over the bale when the lop-eared white bitch got loose.

To his horror, two things happened. First, the red bitch suddenly lost her cowardly nature and the fur along her back tightened under his grip. Second, the white bitch was in the process of releasing the other dogs from their kennels.

Vespasien stared. Animals weren’t that smart.

Yet suddenly he was being set upon by a pack of the beasts, all led by the shaggy white mutt. Vespasien pulled his dagger. The red one seized his hand just as the white one began savaging his leg, and Vespasien brought the knife down in the red one’s side and yanked downward, leaving a bloody path between two ribs. The red bitch whined and released his hand. Another dog rushed in to take up where she had left off, and Vespasien felt ligaments tearing in the back of his hand and wrist. Pain etched his arm like streaks of acid.

Adrenaline rushing through him, now, Vespasien stabbed blindly at the thing holding his foot. It took several tries, but something finally stuck something other than bone. The grip loosened and Vespasien shook himself free. The white bitch had collapsed on the ground, a knife-wound matting the fur of its neck a dark pink.

Vespasien cut at the third dog’s head, stabbing and raking it along the face and shoulders until it finally released his hand and stumbled backwards like a drunken thing. It collapsed near a far hay bale, panting. Vespasien saw blood leaking from its mouth.

All around him, the hounds were in an uproar. The fourth dog, a big black one that he had heard Rhydderch called Aggie, darted in and snapped at his arm. She took away a piece of skin, but was too fast for him to lodge the knife in her back as he had the others. She began circling him, staying maddeningly out of reach, and Vespasien got the distinct feeling she was waiting for an opportunity at his throat.

Enough of this, Vespasien thought, clutching his ruined hand. Hobbling, he began moving toward the door.

The black dog swooped in behind him and sank her teeth into his leg just above the knee. Vespasien cried out as he felt the flesh there rip free. Immediately afterwards, his leg went limp.

I was just hamstrung, he thought, a little laughing thought on a hysterical tide of desperation.

As the dog swooped in a second time, Vespasien knew that she meant to kill.

Crying out, Vespasien tore a pitchfork off the walls and thrust it at the dog, hoping to impale her with her own momentum.

The dog changed course at the last moment and veered off into a casual trot as she circled him. Watching.

Holding the pitchfork between them, Vespasien slid his wounded leg backwards through the dirt, towards the door to the kennels. He found he could put some pressure on it, but knew the moment he tried to rush, it would collapse from under him and the hound would be on him.

Slowly, he backed away toward the door, the hound padding back and forth just out of range, patiently waiting for an opening as he bled out on Rhydderch’s floor.

Panting, struggling to keep sweat from dripping into his eyes and blinding him, Vespasien suddenly had a great deal more respect for a forest hart. Seeing the patient, evil intentions in the black eyes of the dog that hunted him, Vespasien sympathized with the creatures of the wild. As he continued to slide backwards toward the door, trailing blood from his ruined hand and leg, Vespasien promised whatever gods that were listening that he would swear off eating wild game if he got out of Rhydderch’s kennels alive.

Vespasien fumbled at the door with his ruined hand, found he couldn’t bend the fingers properly, and then began to switch the pitchfork to the crook of his right hand in order to open the door with his left.

Sensing this was her last chance of bringing down her prey, the black bitch began to stalk closer than she had previously dared, and her legs bunched up beneath her in preparation for a leap.

“Back!” Vespasien snapped, throwing the pitchfork in her direction. He wasn’t sure if he made contact or not. Instead, he used the distraction to throw open the door, drag himself outside, slam the portal shut again behind him, and lock it. Immediately, he heard claws on the door, a nose against the crack, sucking in the smell of him.

Shuddering, Vespasien backed away. With the motion, his leg collapsed. He spent the next ten minutes trying to right himself in the dark hall of the main animal complex inside the Spyre. When he was finally upright, leaning heavily against the far wall, his eyes caught sight of the blood smeared everywhere upon the stone and his mind returned to the three hounds he’d left dead in the Auld’s kennels.

He imagined Rhydderch returning unexpectedly, finding Vespasien standing outside, mauled to the bone, his three favorite hounds dead inside.

Limping, Vespasien went to find a horse.

He needed to get out of town.