The one-eyed dog had earned his keep, with extra credits to last nine lifetimes, but Emil was using them all up in one night. That infernal barking. Not just loud, but shrill, as if the beast’s other ear were being ripped out.

pixabay photo by spider0701

“Halt,” Klaus shouted, pulling a pillow over his head.

Boing! Boing! Emil leaped straight up, swatting the door latch. That crazy, crafty, stubborn little villain got the door open himself.

“I am no longer shocked that someone tried to kill you!”

The dog catapulted into the night while Klaus hurried into his pants, boots and cloak.

Under a full moon, with the ground frosted white, Klaus broke into a run along Emil’s familiar path to the stream and followed his yipping, past the usual rabbit warren, past the old oak with the squirrel, and on, until a gyrating tail jutted out from a thicket. Dirt went flying from paws that moved unbelievably fast.

“Enough, Emil.”

Emil, so quick to learn new commands, obeyed only when it suited him. He dug until something pale and fleshy came to light. Klaus bent down.

This was no animal.

Not since his first day as a battlefield medic, sawing off arms and legs of young men who'd been perfectly healthy minutes before, had Klaus felt so queasy.

The dog kept digging. Klaus pushed away leaves and branches, took a blade from his cloak, and slashed thorn bushes. There wasn’t much to dig. A grave this shallow suggested someone in a big hurry, or someone who wanted the body to be found, or both.

Klaus stood back, grasped what felt like two ankles, and inched backward, pulling, dragging. Emil sniffed around and started barking at a fresh pile of horse manure.

“Ah, Emil. If you could talk, I’d have you follow that trail, find out who did this, and report back to me.”

He laid out the body. A serving wench, half dressed, bodice unlaced and skirt hiked up. He wished for someone he could send in search of the gravediggers, but exiles like him had no neighbors.

Sunbeams peeked over the horizon, shedding light on the hastily buried corpse. On her arms, dark liquid beads formed along fresh scratches.

@tinypaleokitchen won Contest #3 with this photograph as story prompt for Contest #4

Corpses didn’t bleed. She had been left for dead, and if not for Emil, she would have expired before anyone ventured far enough from the road to find her.

“Oh, Emil,” he cried. “Good boy, Emil.”

He couldn’t share the tail-wagging joy, knowing how little life remained in this cold, cold body. The sun, however, rose higher, as if sending warmth and hope.

“Ah, Emil! This one may be harder to resurrect than you were.”

The dog listened, his one ear cocked, his one eye full of concern. Surely, animals had souls.

Klaus scooped the dirty young wench into his arms, enfolded her in his cloak, and hiked back to the cottage.

Desperate to warm her, he allowed the eager Emil to snuggle under a blanket with his find. Hands shaking, he assembled tools, hot water, clean linens.

She had not been raped. One consolation. But who clobbered her over the head, stripped her outer garments, and dumped her?

Day turned to night, and night into day. Like a mother hovering over her sick child, Emil watched the wretched girl whenever Klaus dozed off, and he slept only when Klaus was awake.

Sometimes the girl moaned but didn’t awaken. Better for her to sleep through the pain. Klaus added sedatives to the feeding tube he’d devised.

Up! Up! Bark! Bark! Emil summoned him one night, springing up and down like no other dog Klaus had seen.

A voice, soft and weak, in English: “My head is on fire.”

Klaus bolted to her side. Her bruised eyes, partly open, focused on Emil. He immediately sprang up and down again, this time for sheer joy.

“Am I in hell?” she whispered. “What is that?”

Klaus laughed. “That little demon is your guardian angel, mein Schatz.” Did she know German? My treasure might translate into an unwelcome endearment.

She drifted in and out of sleep, asking the same questions whenever she awoke. She tried to recall her name, where she’d come from, how she came to be here, only to clench her fists in frustration.

Emil made her smile, though, with his tilted head and human expressions.

“Why am I wearing a man’s clothing?” she asked one morning on getting out of bed and trying to walk.

“Because you came into my world with nothing,” Klaus said. “Like a baby. The sooner you remember--”

With a wave of her hand, she stopped him. “I rather like wearing pants,” she said. “I don’t miss being dressed.”

Being dressed? This wasn't the first time she'd sounded more like a lady than a servant girl.

When she was ready for longer walks, Emil led her on his daily path to the river, stopping at the spot where he’d found her. Her face, no longer swollen and bruised beyond recognition, grew more pleasing to behold every day.

“Why do I not know who I am?” She caught her reflection in the calm water, as the sun was rising, and stared at a face she couldn't name.

He was in no hurry to return her to wherever, but she should at least learn her own name, and he was a physician, exiled or not. "You've been badly hurt," hd said. “Sometimes, the mind has to protect us from traumas that would drive us mad, if we remembered.” He thought of certain soldiers he never could block from his mind, and he thought of the king, and the false charges of treason, and the prison he’d escaped from; but just as he started sinking into the old despair, Emil boing-boinged in place, as if his sole purpose was to make sad people smile again.

Klaus took hold of her shoulders and got her to face him. “You are here for a reason,” he said. “Emil found you because you are meant to live, and I found Emil because he would lead me to you."

He could think of no other reason he should still be alive.

A tear rolled down her cheek, and he thumbed it away. "I will find who did this to you. I will find out who you are.”

Emil yipped as if to say "You mean we," the one-eyed, one-eared little devil.

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Thank you, GMuxx, for hosting yet another contest! For years this story has been evolving in my mind, and your prompt gave me the incentive to get it started at last.

The movie "A Royal Affair" loosely inspired this one. (Struensee! The good doctor, beheaded and disemboweled!)

My great-uncle lived along the river with a rat terrier named Emil, who was chained outside every time I saw him, and so happy for a visitor, he'd launch into the phenomal boing-boing leaps, ludicrously high and surprisingly vertical.

Huge thanks to @bex-dk, @rhondak, @steemitgraven29 (ggalanter), and @authorofthings for commenting on my story while it was up for critique at Fiction Workshop.

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