Read Online Dog and Dragon-ARC by Dave Freer - Free Book Online Page B

their party was going to Carnac.”
    Mournfully Fionn fished out a coin from the corner of his pouch. Rubbed the edge of it, with a good imitation of regret. It was larger than the pennies, and gleamed. “I only have this. I’ll go hungry before I give you all of it. Make change for me.”
    The innkeeper took it. Looked at the unfamiliar face stamped onto it—the silver pennies were so thin and worn, it was hard to tell what they were. “Where is this from?” he said suspiciously.
    “How would I know? Some drunken merchant gave it to me in a tavern as payment for my juggling. The light was bad and he probably thought it was a copper. I did, then. I didn’t go looking for him in the morning to ask. It’s silver. Worth at least twenty pennies. Give it back if you don’t want it.”
    The innkeeper slipped it into his pocket. “I’ll give you ten for it.”
    “Eighteen I’ll take. No less,” said Fionn.
    “What’s money to a corpse? You’re lucky to be alive out there, on your own in the dark. Wolves or monsters get most such fools.”
    “I didn’t plan it,” said Fionn. “The others ran the other way when we had our little run-in with the afanc at the ford. It ripped my cloak, curse it.”
    “You’re lucky it was just your cloak.”
    “Ach, the dog gave me warning. I sleep sound enough knowing he’s there,” said Fionn. “Now either give my silver back or give me eighteen silver pennies for it.”
    For a moment it looked like the innkeeper was weighing up whether simple murder would not solve this dilemma. Then he sighed. “Seventeen. And that’s merely because the dog looks hungry.”
    “I haven’t let him eat a rascally innkeeper for weeks,” said Fionn, sardonically. “Seventeen. Provided you feed him too.” Twenty silver pennies was still far too little for the weight of the coin—had it been silver, or going to be staying in the innkeeper’s pouch.
    The beer was good, the squirrel stew adequate. Fionn found the quarters less so. The window was thoroughly barred with heavy iron bars and a fair amount of magework too. In fairness, Fionn had to admit it did seem directed less to keeping him in, as to keeping the various forest denizens of Brocéliande out. Only he had thought a little fly around would help to orientate himself, and quite possibly make the denizens of the forest a little more wary. With self-mocking virtue, Fionn laughed at himself. There was nothing quite as easy as performing a public service, while actually looking for the sort of magical chaos his Scrap of humanity would be generating, just by the way she was. So he sat down and took out a fragment of the coin he’d given the innkeeper, and called it back to itself to be whole again. He was rewarded a few moments later by the coin squeezing itself under the door, and rolling across to him. The dvergar coin would follow its heart piece for miles. Fionn had once thought he’d lost it, when it had been trapped in an iron strongbox. But sooner or later, someone had opened the box. Besides, it wasn’t silver, but actually a great deal harder. Dvalinn said it would burrow its way out of anything in time.
    Díleas growled at the coin, as Fionn put down a hand to allow it to roll up to his pouch. Fionn shook his head at the dog. “Tch. After it paid for your dinner too.”
    The dog informed him—by jumping up onto the bed—just where he was planning to sleep. Fionn suggested he try curling up under his tail. Díleas thumped the bedclothes with said tail, and ignored him.
    Later that night—by the feel of it, approaching dawn—Díleas woke him with a nose in his ear, and a low growl.
    No human would have heard it…or smelled it. But someone was talking, and there was a faint smell of wolf. An odd smell of wolf. And it wasn’t coming in through the window. Fionn got up. So did Díleas.
    “I think you should wait. Those claws of yours make a noise on the wood,” said Fionn quietly, and slipped out. He moved as quietly as