Lord of the Beasts

The sagging walls of cramped tenements seemed to press in on him with the sheer weight of the misery they contained, and he almost chose flight over intervention. But he continued to linger, casting for the thoughts of the stray dogs that knew each corner of every maze of alleys and crumbling shacks.

Almost at once he found the source of the trouble. He unbuttoned his coat and followed the agitated stream of images that flowed through his mind like water over jagged stones, abandoning the illusory safety of the street for a dank, noisome passage between two dilapidated buildings. Slurred laughter floated out from an open doorway, and a man’s voice uttered a stream of curses in a hopeless monotone. Donal felt the dogs’ excitement increase and broke into a run.

The passage ended in a high stone wall. The sound of coarse, mocking voices reached Donal’s ears. He turned to the right, where the wall and two houses formed a blind alley, a perfect trap for the unwary. And this trap had caught a victim.

A child crouched amid a year’s worth of discarded refuse, her back pressed to the splintered wood of a featureless house. The dress she wore was no more than an assemblage of rags held together with a length of rope, and the color of her long, matted hair was impossible to determine. It concealed all of her thin, dirty face except for a pair of frightened blue eyes.

A trio of nondescript dogs stalked the space directly in front of the girl, facing an equal number of men whose manner was anything but friendly. It was their voices Donal had heard, and they were far too intent on their prey to notice Donal’s arrival.

“’ere, now,” a fair-haired giant said, wiggling his blunt fingers in a gesture of false entreaty. “Don’t be so shy, love. We only wants to show you a good toim. Ain’t that roight, boys?”

“’at’s roight,” said the giant’s companion, a skinny youth whose jutting teeth were black with decay. “Yer first toim should be wiv true gents like us. We won’t disappoint you.”

“Maybe you’ll even be able t’ walk when we’re done,” the third man said, wiping the mucus from his nose with the back of his sleeve. All three broke into raucous laughter, and the girl shrank deeper into the rubbish while the dogs bared their teeth and pressed their tails between skinny flanks.

“You come wiv us now,” the first man said, “and maybe we’ll let yer doggies go. ‘R else—” He nodded to Rotten Teeth, who drew a knife and slashed toward one of the dogs. The animal darted back, shivering in terror but unwilling to abandon the girl.

Donal set down his bag and stepped forward. The dogs pricked their ears, and the girl’s eyes found him through the barrier of her tormenter’s legs. Her cracked lips parted. Fair-Hair’s shoulders hunched, and he began to turn.

With a flurry of silent calls, Donal shrugged out of his coat and tossed it on a slightly less filthy patch of ground.

“I regret to interrupt your sport, gentlemen,” he said softly, “but I fear I must ask you to let the child go.”

CHAPTER THREE

THE THREE BLACKGUARDS spun about, wicked knives flashing in their hands. Fair-Hair lunged, and Donal leaped easily out of his reach.

“Now, now,” he said. “Is this the welcome you give strangers to your fine district? I am sadly disappointed.”

Fair-Hair, Rotten-Teeth and Snot-Sleeve exchanged glances of disbelief. “’oo in ’ell are you?” Snot-Sleeve demanded.

“I’m sure you’re not interested in my name,” Donal said, “and I am certainly not interested in yours. Let the child go, and I won’t report your disreputable behavior to the police.”

Rotten-Teeth snorted. “Will you look at ‘im,” he said. “Some foin toff who finks ‘e can come ‘ere and insult us.”

“Oi remembers the last toim someone did that,” Fair-Hair said. “Not much left o’ ‘im to report to anybody.”

“‘at’s roight,” Rotten-Teeth said. “You lookin’ to ‘ave yer pretty face cut up tonoight, nancy boy?”

“That wasn’t my intention,” Donal said, listening for the scratch and scrabble of tiny feet, “but you are certainly welcome to try … if you have enough strength left after your daily regimen of raping children.”

Snot-Sleeve aimed a wad of spittle at Donal’s chest, which Donal deftly avoided. He glanced past the men to the circling dogs. They heard his request and made themselves very small, waiting for the signal to move. The girl remained utterly still.

“‘e must be crazy,” Fair-Hair muttered, peering into the darkness at Donal’s back. “‘E can’t ‘ave come ‘ere alone.”

“There ain’t no one else,” Rotten-Teeth insisted. “Let me ‘ave ‘im first.”

“Oi got a be’er idea,” Snot-Sleeve said. “‘ooever takes ‘im down gets first crack at the girl.”

“Oi don’t loik this,” Fair-Hair grunted. “Somefin’ ain’t roight….”

Without waiting to hear his friend’s further thoughts on the matter, Rotten-Teeth crouched in a fighter’s stance and advanced on Donal. The stench of his breath was so foul that Donal almost missed the subtle move that telegraphed his intentions. Rotten-Teeth’s hand sliced down at Donal’s arm, and Donal stepped to the side, grasped his attacker’s shoulder and twisted sharply. Rotten-Teeth yelped and fell to one knee.

Fair-Hair and Snot-Sleeve rushed to their companion’s defense, but they had taken only a few steps when the rats spilled from their hiding places. Rotten-Teeth gave a high-pitched whine as half a dozen dark-furred rodents swarmed over his feet. Another fifty rats and a few hundred mice raced in an ever-tightening circle about the other men’s boots, breaking rank only to nip at the humans’ ankles.

Fair-Hair swore and stabbed ineffectually at a bold male who sat on his haunches and mocked the human with a twitch of his whiskers. At the same moment the dogs sprang into action. They darted at the men, seizing sweat-stiffened woollen trousers in their jaws. The hiss of ripping fabric joined the squeaking of the rodents and the villains’ cries of fear and disgust.

The battle was over almost before it began. After failing to reduce the number of rodents by stamping his oversized feet, Fair-Hair chose the better part of valor and stumbled past Donal in a wave of terrified stench. His bare buttocks gleamed through the large hole in his trouser seat. Snot-Sleeve was hot on his heels. Rotten-Teeth came last, frantically dragging his twisted ankle behind him as if he expected to become the rats’ next meal.

A restless silence filled the little space between the walls. Donal gave his thanks to the rodents and sent them scurrying back to their nests. He retrieved his coat and casually shook it out, watching the girl from the corner of his eye. She had scarcely moved since his arrival, and her gaze held the same stark fear with which she had regarded her tormentors.

No, not fear. She had been frightened before, but now those blue eyes held far more complex emotions: suspicion, anger and a glimmer of hope swiftly extinguished. She held out her arms. The dogs wriggled close, licking her face as if she were a pup in need of a good cleaning.

They told Donal all he needed to know. He started cautiously for the girl, holding his hands away from his sides.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

She lowered her head between her shoulders and peered at him from beneath her dark brows. “Wot do you want?” she demanded.

Her directness didn’t startle him. A child left alone so young would have been educated in a hard school. She had probably been hurt so often that she regarded pain as a simple fact of life, like hunger and the casual cruelty of strangers.

“I mean you no harm,” he said, settling into a crouch. The dogs grinned at him in apology but remained steadfastly by their charge’s side. “I heard you cry out—”

“Oi never. You ‘eard wrong.”

Donal studied her face more carefully, noting the blue bruise that marked her right eye. “Did those men touch you?” he asked.

She hugged the dogs closer. The spotted, wire-haired male whined anxiously, striving to make her understand. She cocked her head and frowned. “You ain’t no rozzer, is you?”

“I am not a policeman.”

“Did you bring the rats?”

Donal considered the safe answer and immediately discarded it. “Yes,” he said. “They wouldn’t have hurt you.”

“Oi know.” She pushed a hank of hair out of her eyes. “Why didn’t you let ’em eat them nickey bludgers?”

Her hatred was so powerful that he felt the fringes of it as if she were more animal than human. “Rodents are naturally secretive creatures,” he said seriously, “and I already asked them to do something very much against their natures. Would you ask your dogs to eat a man?”

She giggled with an edge of hysteria and wrapped her arms around her thin chest. “They ain’t my curs,” she said. “But sometoims they ‘elps me, and Oi ‘elps them.”

“They’re very brave, and so are you.”

She shrugged, and the gesture seemed to break something loose inside her. “Wot’re you going to do now?” she whispered.

Her bleak question reminded Donal that he hadn’t considered anything beyond rescuing the child from her attackers. The smallest of the dogs, a shaggy terrier mix, crept up to Donal and nudged his hand. The animal’s request was unmistakable.

“What is your name?” Donal asked, stroking the terrier’s rough fur.