Trembling With Fear 03/04/2018

Dogs Of War

“Dogs eat corpses, you know,” the drunken soldier snarled. “Wild dogs, they’ve got no respect for the dead. They tear the fallen up. They don’t even wait until the body is cold. They lap from a wound. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it with my own two eyes.

“I’ve had to kick them away,” he said as though the horror were still fresh in his memory.

He slammed his crested helmet down on the bar and demanded an another ale.

He was already five in that night. Frothy head from the stein clung to his beard, capping it like an inverted mountain. He was maudlin, tearing up, acting out for attention no one bequeathed him in the dark, dingy tavern where hard men choked down hard drinks.

“I’ve seen things, you know,” he said loudly but to no one in particular, scanning the room to see if anyone was paying him any mind. “Believe me, I’ve seen things.”

Suddenly, the barmaid lunged forward and plucked out the soldier’s eyes. Her nails were sharp as talons. Blooded geysered from the sockets. The soldier groped around futilely, reflexively reaching for his sword, as he collapsed back off the barstool onto the filthy, sawdust-strewn floor.

She impassively studied the plump, egg-like eyeballs cradled in her palm. Nerve endings dangled off the ends like sprouts. They dripped little blotches of crimson.

“Good that you’ve seen things,” she said matter-of-factly, plopping them into an empty glass as she arched her neck, casually flipping her hair back into place. “Then these are worth keeping. I’ll add them to the collection.”

Another soldier slumped at the end of the bar straightened up.

His hand hovered toward his sword hilt, but he was more put on alert than roused to action by the sudden slaying.

“What the hell did you do that for?”

Her stony eyes softened, widened doe-like after a seeming flash of panic that may have flickered by too fast to be real. Her posture slackened after her body ostensibly rippled with fear, or at least a little shiver of something. She leaned toward the confrontational soldier, took a supplicating tone and addressed him as though he were a reasonable man who surely understood.

“Gotta feed the dogs,” she said. “They’re going to revert to being feral if I don’t quiet their howling and sate their hunger but soon. We’ve got few provisions what with the war rationing, and most of our customers are off fighting. He said dogs eat corpses and it just clicked. I saw we had a solution to our problem. It won’t be a problem soon.”

“By Jove that man served the Republic,” the soldier said with thunderous indignation.

“You don’t understand, those dogs need to be fed,” she said, with real, palpable terror in her voice. “Dear Lord, they need to be fed. Last night, why… ”

The barmaid, so nonchalant a moment after killing a man who had done little more than spout off, now seemed tense and deeply afraid.

“Wouldn’t be much good to you on the battlefield when he’s always stinking drunk anyway,” the barmaid reasoned. “He was a boozer. In fact he was probably a defector. Or maybe he was even just lousy in a fight. Think about it. He could have gotten you killed out there.”

The soldier adjusted his armor and wobbled uncertainly to his feet. His face was grim, his eyes steely.

“Look, all the ale you can drink for your silence,” she said pleadingly, sliding him a foamy pewter stein.

Suds slopped out onto the rough-hewn wood as the beer skated across the bartop.

Not necessarily pacified, the second soldier grabbed at the pint, reflexively. But quicker than he could process, she sprung again with a dagger that materialized out of nowhere, slitting his throat nearly from ear to ear, though he staggered back too much for a perfect incision.

He stumbled around, drawing his sword as his slit throat spurted like a fountain all over the bartop. His blade clanked down on the ground, clattering around feebly.

The soldier could barely keep his wobbly footing as blood oozed from his throat, leaving him weakened and confused. Dizzy, he heaved toward the back door with the last ounce of his strength, to make an escape. He tumbled into the alley. The moon cast everything in an eldritch iridescence.

He rolled around in the dirt and gravel and a dank liquid he suspected was urine, trying to get his balance back. He might be able to summon enough in reserve to rise back up to his feet.

That’s when he heard the snarling.

It was deep, guttural, more ferocious than anything he ever encountered.

The barmaid called out fearfully from inside the lit building, “I warned you about the dogs. I’m no saint but I’m no liar. Those dogs, they…”

He looked up in the pitch of blackness outside and couldn’t make out the phantasmagoria of fangs and mangy fur as his vision blurred and faded. Blood was just pouring out of his neck.

The barmaid was still shouting inside, but he couldn’t make out a word of it.

“They’re not dogs,” he exclaimed in surprise. “They’re not dogs. They’re…”

“We’ve got nothing to feed the dogs while you’re always out fighting your endless war,” she yelled. “We get the scraps, and we have no scraps left over to throw out to placate them.”

Panic blanched the staggering soldier’s face in the jet-black alley.

“They’re not… They’re not… ”

They drew nearer and nearer, and lunged.