Finding Blood (City Underdark #1)

The Escape

Barmond knew he would survive. He didn't know how much pain he would be in at the end of it, but he would be alive. That's all he thought about as he fell, the wind blowing past him and through the holes in his torn clothes.

It turned that it was a whole lot of pain. He heard the cracks, in his leg and back, and knew that they were bad news, but when the pain reached his brain it felt as if his entire body had exploded. He fell face-first in the dirt and screams, but he screamed with his lips closed, face in the wet earth. And, when he could, he stopped himself and rolled on the side.

First his back. His spine had not snapped entirely, but it needed some fixing before he could move again. He then turned his attention to his legs, especially his left thigh. He winced. There was a reason his spine had not snapped and he had just found it: his femur had taken the whole shock and had suffered an open fracture, piercing through his clothes. It was not pretty, even when it was bloodless.

But he had to get a move on. He had been taught what to do in this situation, luckily, but he would have to focus. First, he mended the skin, pulling it close. He gritted his teeth at the pain, so strongly that he feared that he might crack them, just so that he wouldn't scream. Then he did the same fo his muscles beneath, layer after layer, until all his flesh was healed. He felt his bone slide back in place, slowly, the two ends rubbing. And finally, when it was aligned once more, he used blood to restore it.

He moved his leg, then his right one; found a second minor fracture in the second one and healed that as well. By the time he was standing again, blood was already running thin. It would have been even more desperate should Yovan had not been there.

At least he had fallen on high, wild grass and earth. There were a few more paces to go until the first houses outside the city. After one a glance upwards to check if there was anything in the sky he should be aware of, he hobbled in their direction, seeking refuge among the little houses. Because they were quite small, Barmond realized. This was a halfling neighbourhood.

Smaller than humans but adaptable, halflings went where they were welcome, which was almost everywhere, and lived among them. It wasn't rare to see a community flourish among human cities, just like it wasn't rare to spot the occasional elf or dwarf. They liked living simple lives and family was first and foremost, right before tribe. Barmond had never been terribly interested in them up to this point.

But now he was hungry. And suddenly he was really, really interested to know if they locked their door at night or kept their beggars on the streets like humans.

Although they were outside the city walls, they had built sturdy, vividly painted house with solid colourful doors. He wanted around the houses, keeping to the shadows whenever he could. Every little house had a vegetable garden, but Barmond cared little for cabbages and beetroots. He found a chicken pen but was wise enough not to try his luck with it. He knew how little blood a chicken had and how fast they could fly into a panic.

He checked each door and each window he could find, lightly, tip-toeing his way in the dark. He found what he was looking for after several minutes when he rose his nose to find an open window on the first floor of a yellow house. He could hear a snore coming through the gaping opening. He involuntarily licked his lips.

Jumping and heaving himself up was the easy part. He then found himself in a room, and in that room was a little double bed with two small figures tucked in. Contrary to their name, they were not half a human's size, rather somewhere above that limit. Next to them was a crib, and in that crib a tiny bundle of cloth.

He cared not for babies, too small for sustenance. He hadn't even cared for them while he was alive. He much prefered the vampire way of reproducing: turning an adult into another sort of adult, one that prowled the night instead of the day but that didn't lose one iota of their ability to reason and converse.