Old Blood

Matt opened his eyes. He was lying face down on the sidewalk. He was alive, and that thought came with a little surprise and much more relief.

It was then when he felt his ribs, cracked if not broken. And nausea from all the potions he drank before the fight. There was also something sticky on his cheek. The sidewalk smelled like sunbaked dust.

‘Alive is good’, he said, trying to clear his throat, and rolled to his back. He squinted. The sky was lit by the sun that was about to rise, but the city was still asleep. He barely heard any traffic. It was Sunday morning. The rail track was empty. Almost.

A yellow dog watching him, sitting on the tracks.

‘Would you look at that’, he reached out his hand. ‘Come here boy’, he said, but as he did, the dog looked away at the other body lying on the concrete.

With a sigh, Matt started to stand up.

The potions were still guzzling in his veins, healing the wounds. The process was far from painless, but it was something he got used to over the years.

He finally found his sword and the wizard’s rod. He picked those up and then grabbed the sorcerer by the legs and started pulling him into the bushes.

‘Sorry boy,’ he said to the dog ‘No treats for you today.’

The dog tilted his head.

Matt and the others, they usually tried to pick up fights and set traps near the old railway bridge. It was above the streets, out of sight, no random pedestrians, and there was a hatch to the sewers that could fit a body, neatly hidden in the foliage. It made avoiding police and other trouble so much easier.

He hurled the wizard down the manhole and jumped into the moist darkness. It was an hour’s sewer-walk to get to headquarters and he really needed a bath to wash the dried blood off his hair. That, and a smoke.