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Hair of the Dog Or The Continuing Adventures of Harry Lefferts

Written by David Carrico

Late December 1633

Near the border between France and Spanish Netherlands

Sieur Chretien de la Roche awoke in misery. The bolster under his throbbing head seemed particularly hard this morning, and for some reason it was damp. A timeless interval passed, and it came to his attention that the entire bed was hard, much harder than he remembered it being. More eternity passed and, against great resistance, he managed to force open his eyes. It slowly dawned on him that he was not in his bed in the family hôtel. In fact, he was not in bed at all. He appeared to be sprawled on a floor—and a not particularly clean one at that—with his cheek resting in what seemed to be a puddle of drool.

The sieur contemplated moving for an age, and finally mustered the energy to drag his hands up level with his shoulders and place the palms on the floor. At long last, he exerted himself to arise from his hard bed, but no sooner had he raised himself from the floor than a white-hot spike of pain shot through his head, and he collapsed back to the floor, on his back now.

"Mon Dieu," he gasped hoarsely, "if I must be crucified, could it not have been done through my hands and feet, like normal?"

More moments passed, and suddenly de la Roche became aware of pressure, of waves, of mounting rebellion in his body. Head forgotten, he rolled back to his hands and knees and scrabbled for the chamber pot. Reeling, he noted that apparently he had used it for its normal purpose sometime during the night, then his mouth locked rigidly open and it seemed like everything that had ever passed through his mouth during his entire life now spewed forth. Finished—at least for the moment—he huddled on the floor, misery compounded; head feeling like that of Sisera when Jael pounded the tent stake through it, cold, sweating, shivering, mouth tasting of hot sulfur.

Finally, he managed to sit up, back on his heels. He wiped the splatter drops off of his face with a sleeve that, in keeping with his surroundings, was also noticeably less than clean. The agony in his head had dwindled to a dull throbbing, although it still felt as if his eyeballs were being pushed out of their sockets. Looking around at the unfamiliar room, de la Roche deduced that he was in an inn, and a remarkably unprepossessing inn at that. For an instant, he was puzzled as to why he was here, but then the memories came cascading back: gambling with his friends and a couple of strangers; one of the strangers accusing him of cheating with dice (he didn't think of it as cheating, simply as an unusual skill); his perforce challenging the stranger to a duel, only to discover that the stranger was the son of the comte de Rochefort, one of the deadliest swordsmen in Paris, nay, all of France.

The remaining memories were a jumble—fleeing to the family hôtel in a panic, gathering together what clothes and funds he could find, telling one of the stable boys to saddle two horses and fleeing Paris as fast as he could with Luc, the stable boy, riding right behind him as a servant. In his mind he thought to go to Antwerp. Surely he could persuade (or bribe) the Spaniards to let him pass through their lines. He didn't remember how long they had ridden before they found this small insignificant inn in a small insignificant village. He did have a vague recollection of drinking a great quantity of appallingly bad brandy last night, however.

Looking down at the chamber pot which sat in front of his knees, he determined that its current contents was even more noisome in composition than it had been before he deposited what remained of his dinner and the brandy. His stomach lurched again, and he looked away hurriedly.

Luc—why wasn't Luc here, tending to him? Angry, de la Roche tried to call out, but all that issued from his throat was a sound reminiscent of the caw of a crow. Crawling over to the bed, he laboriously climbed up it and managed to gain his feet. Leaning heavily on the walls, he lurched around the room until he found the door and almost fell through it.

****

Harry Lefferts and the members of what everyone in Grantville now called "The Wrecking Crew" looked up from their mugs to see an apparition stumble down the stairs from the second floor of the small inn. They had paused in their trip to the Channel long enough to grab a meal and make sure they were still on the right road. If I didn't know better, Harry mused, I'd swear that one of the actors from those awful Grade B zombie movies me and Darryl used to watch when we were in high school just materialized. He snickered. In fact, this guy looks more like the real thing than any of the movie characters ever did.

The haggard figure stood wavering at the foot of the stairs, until one of the serving wenches approached him. His thin, bony face creased in a snarl, and he took a swing at her and shouted in French that he wanted to see Luc, before his knees gave way and he dropped into a chair at a nearby table. Harry frowned. He didn't much like folks that abused women, but when the wretch remained seated he turned back to his mug.

"Mein Gott," Paul Maczka muttered, "I've seen three day corpses that looked better than him. Mind you, I've been hung over enough before that I felt like he looks."

A thought fluttered at the edge of Harry's mind, but it wouldn't settle yet. He looked up as the zombie began to shout again.

****

De la Roche was still concentrating on keeping his stomach in place when Luc appeared from the rear door of the common room and hurried over to stand before him. "I am here, master." The zombie started to berate the boy for not addressing him properly, but just at that moment his aching head gave up the fogged memory wherein he had told the stable boy to not call him sieur or lord. So instead he began to rant at the boy for abandoning him in the room.

". . . and you left me lying on the floor!" he ended with a final snarl, nose to nose with the lad and watching the boy wince away from the breath he knew all too well was foul.

"But master, I could not move you. First you hit me, then you grabbed me and called me Madeline." Luc was cringing now. De la Roche's temper flared, ...