Although it had been brief, the Magister had found the meeting with the dwarfish mercenary to be wholly unsatisfactory. It was informative but not reassuring. It was disrespectful. The dwarf had not shown the Magister the right level of deference, in his opinion.


It was probably just as well that the Magister had not asked the dwarf's opinion on this last point for he would have discovered that in Seagrum’s words, the words that he muttered to himself as he left the meeting.


“’Effing toss pot: what on earth am I doing business with the likes of these for? Dog lovers…”


There were other words that he used as well that were a little more colourful but they are omitted here.


“Shape shifting vermin, I’d be better off working for the other side and I would if I didn’t dislike them almost as much.”


The other reason that the Magister found the meeting unsatisfactory was that he disliked the dwarf: actually, in point of fact, he really hated that “horrible little man” even though he knew that he wasn’t actually human and so the term was technically incorrect.


He sat for a moment, his breathing gradually returning to its regular gentle pace, looking forward at nothing in particular even though he could see small transparent movements across his field of vision occasionally as stuff – whatever it was – floated across the surface of his eyeballs. Slowly, ever so slowly, the noises that he hadn’t even noticed in his head were beginning to die down once more and he could begin to hear the underlying whistle of tinnitus that accompanied his existence these days.


Once his breathing was back in order and he felt that his skin had returned to its normal colour, he could at last tune back in to the world over which he presided. He rang the little bell on his desk and waited.
He heard the long loping strides of the warden bounding up the marble stairs and the patter of feet briefly followed by a pause. Then the warden stepped into the room, adjusting his flaccid garments with the look of someone who had just run up the stairs on all fours and had stopped for a second to straighten himself up and get up onto his hind legs.


“I do wish he wouldn’t do that,” the Magister thought to himself.


He wished that he could say something about it but these were difficult times: political times indeed. It just wasn’t possible to speak to such employees in a manner that appeared to demean their “genetic predisposition” as it was termed. The best outcome would be a hearing and a tribunal which would take time and be a temporary diversion and the worst outcome would result in one’s throat being torn out one night on a full moon and that, of course, was a permanent diversion.


“Arrange for Jonas to come to me as soon as possible,” he asked, using a voice of command rather than a request. It had more effect and generated a better sense of urgency with the warden, he found.


“Now if I had a stick to throw...” he mused secretively before berating himself for inappropriate thinking. It was after all a stone’s throw from thought to word and deed, he considered.


“Urgh,” queried the warden, looking perplexed and cocking his head to one side.


“Send up Jonas!” the Magister added, feeling all those angry thoughts from his meeting with Seagrum starting to surface once more.


“Jonarsh?” the warden said.


His long tongue hindered the clarity of the speech in the warden’s question.


“Yes, yes!”


The Magister tried to suppress, without much success, the irritation in his voice.


“Jonarsh?” the warden repeated, his head seeming to twist even further to one side as if that was possible.


“Yes, yes. Go on! Fetch!”


That worked: the warden was off out the door like – oh well - a dog after a rat. In short order, the Magister was alone with his thoughts once more.


“That worked. It wasn’t politically correct, but it worked,” said the voice of his normally compliant conscience.


The Magister ignored it and rang another bell, a little golden bell with an arrangement of three balls all held in together in a complicated little mechanical structure. It gave off a delicate ring of three different notes, rising neatly one after the other.


Somewhere along the corridor a door snicked open and a pair of heeled shoes could be heard walking slowly and with intent along the marble walkway. The magister could feel his pulse rising a little and felt a slight colour rise to his cheeks once more: this time in anticipation of pleasure, rather than of annoyance. He felt another stirring too as he started to let his imagination run off in the fields to play. His conscience had turned around obligingly and was looking out of the window when the woman stepped into the room.


She was dressed in a long gown of polished brown leather that buttoned downwards to her thighs, or as the Magister saw it, was open all the way up to her... he coughed, his conscience might be looking the other way but it had not yet left the room. She had long blond hair that was tied in two long ponytails down to the middle of her back.  Of course, it would be more accurate to say that the Magister’s imagination saw this for the creature entering the room was a succubus and who knows what she or he or it actually looked like. The Magister didn’t care, that much was certain. He also noticed her matching leather whip.


“I’ve had a bad morning, my dear,” said the Magister with feigned weariness, “do you think we could trade an indulgence or two?”


The woman smiled and breathed in deeply as though taking in a perfume. Perhaps it was the scent of prey. Above the Amazonian breasts that rose and fell as she breathed causing the restraining leather covering them to creak impatiently, the succubus licked its tongue across a pair of very full Cupid’s Bow lips. The Magister noticed her perfect white teeth and a gloss on the moist labium inferius, offering him the promise of...


Somewhere out of the mind of the Magister, a door closed with a soft click and long legs in three-inch stilettos started to walk professionally towards him.


“I’m feeling awfully tense, my dear...” intoned the Magister.


“Oh really?” a voice replied that was charged with sexual tension, “I hear that you have been a very, very naughty boy...”


“Oh,” the Magister whimpered.


It was the last coherent sound that passed through his lips for a while.


In order to maintain some propriety about this tale it would be appropriate to leave the Magister for a while and to explain a little about the individual called Jonas.


When he had left his master’s office, the werewolf had gone straight to the kitchens. Here, he found the remains of the meal that he had been attempting to finish off during the morning. So far the numerous demands upon his time from the wretched dwarf banging on the door and then the Magister, had managed to prevent him completing the task. Say one thing for Ranulf: he was a finisher.


He always hated it when there were interruptions to his eating. For one thing it was seriously distressing to leave a carcass lying around for anybody else to pick up as they saw fit and on the other hand, how long did it really take to polish off a meal? Not long was the answer as long as there were no interruptions.


It was a matter of moments for him to finish off the last scraps, crunching down the neck vertebrae and the right shoulder blade together with connective tissues. Then a quick wipe of his mouth on the back of his sleeve and the hapless rabbit was completely gone: no longer visible to human eyes apart from a small bloody smudge on the white floor.


Of course, to a werewolf, the smell of the snack would hang around for weeks merging and maturing with the olfactory ghosts of other hurriedly snatched meals. The kitchen was pretty much the nearest thing to heaven and certainly the only real reason for his seeking employment with the Hue and Cry. Well, that and an unfathomable feeling of affection for the Magister that defied all sense of understanding to him.


From the kitchen, the werewolf sloped out of the back door (he wasn’t allowed to leave by the front door, even though he was permitted to open it for visitors) and headed off into the town towards the waterside.
It was, as would be expected, an uneventful journey. There were than the usual cries of “slinkin’ werewolf”, “here doggy doggy” and “wo wo wo wo” and similar sounds that he neglected to remember from the various creatures that he passed on the way. Most of the offensive comments came from humans as they seemed to have the greatest fear (from the smell that they gave off) and were generally less tolerant than other species.


Along the way he took the opportunity to sniff out some of the huge accumulation of smells that presented themselves to anyone who had the skills to read them.  Mostly this was territorial stuff from dogs and from other werewolves. There were other comments left by other creatures who seemed to think that they could muscle in on the canine grapevine but somehow lacked the dexterity or the linguistic skills to deliver anything other than incomprehensible canine graffiti, usually at the corners of dark alleyways.


He also picked up some oestrogenic suggestions, mostly from female dogs but there were also a couple of were-bitches who had left some pretty saucy stuff lying around. It made him want to howl: they really must be ovulating right now! However, there were duties to be performed and he liked to think (in so far as a werewolf was concerned) that he was a professional so he headed straight for his quarry without significant deviation.


By the waterside, amongst a number seemingly derelict warehouses (some of which were supported by troll-struts, as ossified trolls were called), there was a tavern. The werewolf didn’t know the name of it because he couldn’t actually read the crude signage that swung like a gibbet outside and showed a picture of a naked human female standing on some sort of shellfish. It was incomprehensible to him but he could have described it to any other creature of canine origins by way of its current smell and that of all the latent smells that hung about the place.


Had he done this in language form to a human, he would probably have made them throw up. In truth it was possibly the dirtiest sink in the whole of the City States. It was inhabited by the filthiest collection of toe-rags and vermin that anyone was likely to see either here or in the Northern Marches and that was saying something. To the werewolf it smelled quite good actually. A quick sniff of the door handle (not good) and the werewolf slipped through.


The name, Aphrodite’s Oyster, wasn’t lost of those who frequented the place on account of the secondary line of business practiced in the upstairs rooms - most of which, including the privy out the back, could be hired out by the hour or indeed for those really in a hurry, part thereof. There was a general darkness about the place and a sense of gloom. Even the werewolf could sense something of it and he wasn’t big on human emotions. Had he been more human, he would have said that it was like the meeting of every dark, dingy Sunday afternoon with every dark and rainy Monday morning somehow all rolled into one and squeezed into an hour.


He knew his quarry by smell and picked up the scent as soon as he entered the place. He made his way to a corner by the bar, curling his way sinuously around the other inhabitants in order to avoid contact. It was a tribute to the general tolerance of the place that no one commented on the sight or smell of a werewolf moving furtively amongst them. It could also be that there were those in that place who had an even dodgier pedigree than the warden from the Hue and Cry.


“Yrgh wuht’d!” muttered the werewolf into the ear of a man who was standing by the bar.


“What’s that, mate?” came the reply.


The man hadn’t taken his eyes off the woman in a low-cut dress who was standing behind the bar and leaning forward in a professionally provocative way.


“Yu’r wanted!” repeated the werewolf, this time managing to compensate for the length of his tongue and the noise around him.


The man continued to stare at the woman, focused almost entirely on the tight cleavage offering itself to him and failing to notice the rather sad fact that as her bosom sat heavily on the bar top, the fabric of her dress was soaking up the filthy slops that lay like a patina all across the surface.


The werewolf paid no attention to her. He might have the appearance of a man (of sorts) but fundamentally in terms of sexual orientation he was all dog and to him human breast tissue was not a prime cut.

Something interrupted the shallow machinations of both their minds.

“What’s that?” the man asked again, more as a habit than a true question because he hadn’t actually heard the werewolf.


“You’re wanted.”


It was no good with werewolves, no matter how they tried, there was always a word or two that would get away from them. It was all to do with the tongue and the larynx and the way that their brains were wired. This time however, he had got it right and it seemed to sound very strange to him.


“Right!” shouted the man back above the inordinate caterwauling and spitting that had suddenly erupted somewhere else in the room. It seemed at last that a small number of the indigenes of that place had picked up the smell of dog.


“Who by?”


“The Magither,” replied the werewolf.


“The Magister, eh?” said the man only this time he said it quietly and almost entirely to himself. Only the enhanced hearing of the werewolf would have picked it up against the background of noise.


“… and what does he want?”


“He wants you.” 


The werewolf was beginning to lose the thread of this discussion. Quite frankly he would have preferred to have pissed on the edge of the bar to explain himself. As far as he could tell, several humans had already tried that approach, three already today and eight yesterday. He didn’t bother to consider the other smells but he did detect that a small troll had also left a message last Tuesday.


Jonas was an unusual character, even in this unusual world. For one thing, he came from a good family, as the saying goes. For another, he was well educated: a historian in point of fact. That probably explained his particular form of perversion.


It was well known that Jonas was a hagiographer and that he had published a number of books on the lives of a number of well known (and contemporary) saints. In fact he had only recently published one with the racy title of “The Life of Stanislaus the Bald”. Stanislaus was the famous “Father of the Northern Lands” (as he liked to be called) and author of the “Twelve Contemplations”.


Jonas had actually produced a significant work and it had been well received amongst the section of the population who could read. Admittedly this was not a large section and those who had an interest in hagiography was an even smaller sub-set. Of course, those persons who were also particularly interested in reading about a recently deceased saint whose social graces were few and whose ability to make conversation was limited to simple sentences that normally consisting of a subject, an object and a verb to hold them together was significantly smaller still. Indeed, of the five or six persons who had actually read the book, the consensus was that it was a cracking good read: an indication surely of how lonely an existence some people live.


What was less well known at this time was that Jonas had published all his works half-finished and, as it were, half-titled. In his meagre tenement in an iron bound box that gave off a rather unpleasant odour when it was opened, he kept a second and otherwise secret copy of each of his published works.  The “Life and Death of Stanislaus the Bald” was the latest addition to this clandestine library, together with a couple of relics cut from what was left of the dead man’s corpse and neatly wrapped in layers of vellum and leather. Indeed, the thumb and a piece of knuckle bone were pretty much all that was left of the poor man after the mutilated bits of the corpse were fed to the free ranging pigs who lived in biologically heated yurts in a shanty town outside the town walls down by the river.


Jonas was in fact a psychotic murderer who didn’t even have the grace to blame any of his actions on his childhood, his parents or the personal demons who tormented him. (These by the way were real in his case and not figurative). It was, as he liked to think of it, all his own work – even down to the manner by which he researched and then stalked his intended victims. Had anyone known about all this, they would have possibly drawn a little comfort from the fact that the target of his particular form of hagiography was living saints. It was a select few, possibly no more than a handful at any one time. Of course, the problem was that the authorities occasionally created new ones and so provided him with a pretty much continuous line of research.


It is perhaps a sad fact of human nature (and possibly other species as well but those that can read don’t tell) that the books in his iron bound vault would have sold far more copies than what were, quite frankly, dry old tomes with not a hint of excitement to be found anywhere between the covers. However, they were unknown and would not become a “compelling” as opposed to a “cracking” read until accidentally discovered by a couple of visitors from the Dreamlands who had the misfortune to spend the night in his former lodgings a few months after his own unfortunate goring to death by a bull in Visigon.


Jonas was also known by the authorities to be someone who got things done. In a world of constantly changing values, this was an important characteristic. It was lucrative too, but Jonas spent too much money on cheap drink and expensive women to make anything of this particular opportunity. His clandestine research also incurred a fair cost and so he was always, it seemed, struggling to make ends meet and hence the noisome lodgings in which he lived.


For this latter skill however, he was frequently sought out by persons with a problem in need of a solution. The Magister was now just one such person.


From the Magister’s perspective it would have gone a bit like this.


There is a problem with vampires. The problem is the illicit exploitation of the death pledge, a particularly devilish form of agreement that had been developed somewhere back in antiquity so that vampires could lend money in return for the borrower (also perhaps better referred to as the victim) granting certain rights and sometimes favours over their lives and those of their dependents. The solution to this particular problem had already been deployed. This was the dwarf, Seagrum.


Nothing is without consequence of course and so the deployment of the mercenary to resolve the vampire problem (and the Magister, despite his dislike of the creature, had no doubt that Seagrum would be successful) would result in another matter: the payment of the dwarf for his services.


Of course, the Magister had no problem with remunerating someone for a job well done, even a dwarf. His particular anxiety was the sum agreed and the fact that the Hue and Cry could not actually afford it. The matter became more complicated due to the source of funding for the Hue and Cry. Whilst, it has already been observed that the primary funding derived from taxes and levies on the local population, there was a secondary and little publicised source that came directly from the vampires themselves. These backhanders were known by the more business-like name of “fines”.


With the vampire problem solved, these fines were likely to diminish over time unless the Hue and Cry could introduce new requirements and impositions to kick start the process once more. There were two problems to that strategy: the short term one was that it took time to implement and even longer to reap the rewards. The longer term one was that such a strategy would of course create another vampire problem that would by definition require the employment of another Seagrum to resolve it. However, although the Magister expected to have been elevated to a higher plane by then and therefore long gone from the seat of this anxiety, he had the foresight to look for an alternative solution.


That solution was Jonas and that is why the werewolf was now accompanying the hagiographer at a rapid pace up from the waterside, across the market square and through a small number of increasingly dark alleyways until like the sun through the clouds, they emerged into the light of the grand via that lead to the offices of the Hue and Cry. When they arrived, Jonas waited at the front door for a few minutes whilst the werewolf ran around to the back and let himself in. This allowed him to fulfil his role as warden whilst at the same time not falling foul of his interdict about entering in through the front door.


That was also why Jonas was walking up the white marble staircase to the Magister’s office, ignoring the hulking but rather uncomfortable looking gatekeepers who were standing at the far end of the atrium looking at a picture with their hands behind their backs. The werewolf in the meantime, sloped off to the kitchens to see if he could sniff out any more food.


At the top of the stairs, Jonas headed straight for the Magister’s closed door, opened it and stepped in without a word. He ignored the fact that the Magister was strapped over his own desk with his naked buttocks pointing out towards the open window and his beetroot-coloured face, complete with a black leather gag looking directly at the door. He ignored, with a little difficulty, the tall woman in a leather basque who was striking the Magister repeatedly with a knotted black whip and was truly thankful that he had not arrived a little earlier from the look of the vicious implement that she held in her other hand like some kind of gruesome fairy wand.


He waited, discretely, as the woman stepped around the table to untie the Magister and remove his gag, bending provocatively in front of the hagiographer as she did so. He ignored, as best he could, her breasts as they swung forward, her dark nipples brushing against the balding red head of the Magister as she retrieved her coat from the other side of his desk. He kept his eyes forward as she walked towards him on those three-inch stilettos, one foot beautifully in front of the other at each step. He groaned with raw unguarded lust as she passed without looking at him, brushing, with the handle of her black whip, the area of his breeches where his penis strained hopefully.


He breathed once more as he heard the door close quietly behind him with a soft click and the succubus was gone from the room.


“Well,” said Jonas as the Magister started to compose his clothes, “you’re no saint and that’s for sure!”