by Aldus Marius on Sun Sep 26, 2004 11:49 pm
Marius, meanwhile, had run into difficulties.
The unloading and stabling of Pere' had gone smoothly enough; his rider had wondered briefly at the absence of staff, then rationalized that the stablehand(s) must simply be busy elsewhere. Marius groomed his horse, then the dogs got some of the leftover barbeque he'd brought along, and Marius himself polished off the rest. By this time Peregrinus had cooled off and could be watered and fed; the Wanderer did this between swigs from his canteen, which he had somehow managed to fill with cream soda before he'd left town! So far, so good; and while Mari knew better than anyone about the need to stay on one's toes in a strange place, he couldn't help but think Curio's worries were baseless. In retrospect, he would later tell himself, that must've been the fatigue talking...
Once everyone's needs had been seen to (and Pere' was munching sweet green hay out of a net-bag), Marius and the canine contingent found places in the large, clean stall to bed down for the night. The straw was fresh, soft, and piled high; the taverna itself might be a little decrepit, but the horse facilities were first-rate! That's it, thought the veteran; there must be stablehands about, and good ones, too. Looking in on Draco's and Curio's mounts, he saw they had received almost as decent care as he'd given Pere' himself. Thus reassured (or, some might say, lulled), Marius returned to his chosen hollow in the straw, threw the Wolf-cloak over himself, curled up puppy-dog-wise and let the tension of the last few days leach out of him. In under ten minutes he was asleep.
But not for long. The missing stable-boy returned from his dinner-break in the cucina. As a routine matter, he walked up and down the aisle of the barn with an oil-lamp in hand, noting departures and arrivals and the new horse left by an Imperial postman who had swapped it for a fresh one from the inn. At one stall he checked his stride, then resumed; occasionally a rider would insist on sleeping with his horse, and the horses who merited this special treatment were generally either very good or very bad...
He checked again; backed up. That was NOT a man curled up on the straw; it was a large wolf!! This impression was only confirmed when an equally-large growl emanated from right around that spot; the growl was actually Meinard, but the young man's eyes were so riveted on the deathly threat he saw to his livestock that the small dogs escaped his notice.
Creeping as quietly as he could to a certain wall of the barn, he reached for a wooden peg and seized the cudgel that was hanging there by a leather thong. He could not hope to kill a wolf with such a thing, but he could make its life pretty miserable until it wised up and fled the stables. Tiptoeing back to Pere's stall, he hung the lamp on a peg and slipped in. By now both dogs were barking up a storm. Still Marius slept...
...until the servant landed a solid blow on the back of his neck ("Heia!! Halali!!! --OUT, ya mis'rable beast!!"), and all hell broke loose.
Eyes wide, Marius leapt up with a great thunderous snarl that must've had any nearby priests recalculating the auspices. Meinard, already barking, sprang forward to defend his master. Curli-Su, the least experienced in combat, kept on barking. The horse Peregrinus knew exactly what was going on and spun around while rearing, in the way certain Spanish horses do. Teeth bared, hooves flashing, he became suddenly the meanest thing the stablehand ever saw. Unless it was the two sets of fangs that grabbed him from the straw (for by now Curli had figured things out); or the man's face under the Wolf's mask, fangs flashing in the lamplight--
--The lamplight! The groom had been so startled by Pere's maneuver that he'd knocked down the lamp! So of course it landed in the straw, and might well have burned down the barn if Marius hadn't spotted it and launched himself at it, extinguishing the little flame with one big belly-flop.
The stablehand still wasn't quite sure of what he'd seen, and with the horse's hooves about to crown him he didn't want to stand there trying to figure it out. Plenty of time for that later! For now, there were still two vicious dogs--one vicious horse--and some...thing, not quite wolf, not quite man, but who cared??--it did not belong in his stable!! He dropped and rolled out from under Peregrinus' forefeet, and when Marius stumbled out after him to read him the Acta Diurna, fell to with the club in earnest, swinging blindly in the dark but hitting more than he missed, and being repeatedly bitten in turn by the dogs of the Wanderer.
Marius stumbled, yelling and cursing, towards the door. The stablehand was right behind him, then the dogs, and finally the horse, who had forsaken his stall for the pleasures of melee combat like in the good old days. Marius got a good flogging; the servant got small-dog impressions right up to his calves; but he didn't stop whaling away at the strange bipedal "wolf" until Peregrinus sank his teeth into the young man's shoulder, hauled him up off his feet, and flung him back down the aisle. (This, incidentally, freed the groom of the two dogs.)
Marius burst into the courtyard in a rout, hands over his head and the front of his tunic burnt right through. He got about halfway across when he noticed he'd lost his escort. His dogs came running out to greet him, but he could still hear Pere' raising pandemonium inside. Gathering his wits, he put his fingers to his teeth and whistled--FWEET!!--and the commotion ceased. Yes, there were advantages to riding a retired Cavalry mount...not the least of which was the ability to call him off any Stable-boys who refused to stay Petrified.
A long silence later, Pere' resettled himself in his stall. The dogs, panting, still milled around their master's feet. The stable-boy finally emerged. Mari had to keep the dogs from nailing him again. Then, hoping to defuse the situation, he grinned and wisecracked, "Son, if'n y'all had a No-Pets policy, why didn't y'all jes' say so?!?"
At last the younger man saw that Marius was just as human as himself; maybe more so, as the veteran had nearly gotten himself brained for choosing the wrong color pajamas. "Oohh, bugger it--I'm gonna lose my job over this, ain't I?"
"Not if I can help it," said Marius; "I've never seen travellers' horses so well seen to, or so well-defended! I hope there's more than one of you here, for I intend to give you and your establishment the strongest recommendation. I am a Bard, you see, and travel constantly; and I will make sure that anyone who goes by this stretch of road on horseback spends the night here if possible. I'll put in a good word to your manager, too, of course. And, uh..."
The stablehand was gawking in earnest this time. "But...but...the fire!"
"It didn't spread. No harm done."
"But...your tunic!"
"I have a spare in my pack, if you'll let me back in to go get it."
"But...your dogs...?"
Marius saw what he was getting at. "As I'd been about to say, I've got other things in my kit that'll be good for those bites; I am a Healer, too..."
They negotiated in this fashion, and at the end of it neither man had any reason to fear a lawsuit. They returned to the barn, where Marius put Pere' in a different stall, the horse having made it very clear that he wasn't going to allow the stablehand into the one Marius' stuff was in. Once transferred, he was quite amenable. Then Mari could go for his first-aid kit and treat the other man's wounds; and just because the youth believed the treatments could be effective, they were so.
At last Mari changed into his spare tunic--the well-cared-for one with the Equestrian stripe; it was all he had now until he could buy another travelling one. The stable-boy blanched. Bard, Healer, Knight of the Romans--who WAS this man?
And so it was that Marius the Wanderer returned to his companions: with the rumpled look of a brawler inside the clothing of a man of means, which he covered up as best he could (but not very well) with a Wolf-cloak.
"Avete amici," he mumbled (for his many bruises were beginning to swell), "Seems there's something living that does mind dogs on straw... Have I missed anything?"
Aldus Marius Peregrinus.