Berthold said something to the guard, and the guard looked from Berthold to Bob, shrugged, and stepped aside for us to enter.
Inside, the place was a mess. Like all Outlandish furniture, the stuff in Art’s house was made from wood, and his chairs and tables and cabinets had been crushed and smashed, their fragments scattered around. And, as Bob had said, fragments of Art had been scattered around too. Most of him was lying in the corner, naked, curled into a stiff, ragged ball, torn and clawed, but bits and pieces of him dotted the walls, the floor, and even, in a few places, the ceiling. Flies were buzzing everywhere, tipsy, astonished at their good luck.
Berthold crossed the floor and squatted down beside the body. “Doder?” he said, holding up his empty crock.
I pulled out another crock, pulled out its cork, stepped across the room, and exchanged it for the empty one. I slipped the empty into the sack.
Berthold took a sip of mead. “What impresses you most about the body?” Berthold asked me.
“Well,” I said. “For one thing, it’s very dead.”
He frowned sourly. “An extremely astute observation.”
He glanced across the room. “What’s that?” he asked, and stood and strode across the room to a shattered cabinet. Squatting down again, he lifted away some chunks of wood and revealed three golden figurines. The Outlanders were fond of gold figurines, and even I knew that each one of them possessed a few. These were about two inches tall. One was a fish, one was a crab, and one was a scorpion.
Berthold turned to Bob. “Are these the only figurines that Art owned?”
“He kept pretty much to himself,” said Bob. “I liked Art, but I didn’t know much about him. You could talk to Bill, Tammy’s husband. He and Bob used to hang out together. But why’re you asking, man? A lion wouldn’t bother with a figurine.”
“Not unless, as Leo says, it was some sort of ghost lion.” He stood. “Where are the tracks you mentioned?”
“This way,” said Bob, who led us out of the room and through the kitchen to a back door. “This was open,” he said, “when Lou found the body.” He opened the door and pointed to the ground. The earth was hard, worn down by many years of passage, but you could make out the pads of a lion’s feet and the deep indentations of its claws.
“A large one, eh, Doder?” said Berthold.
Large was an understatement. The lion that made those tracks had been enormous. “We’re not really going to track this thing?” I asked him.
“Not as yet. Bob, where exactly is Bill’s house?”
“I can show you,” said Bob.
“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. I know you must have things to do. If you’ll tell me where it is, I’m sure that Doder and I can find it.”
“Okay, sure. Is it all right to bury him now?”
“Certainly. Will we see you at Leo’s house for dinner?”
“Sure.” And then Bob gave us directions, and Berthold and I set out for Bill’s house.
As soon as we were out of earshot, Berthold said to me, “Doder, in the future, unless I ask for your opinion, please keep it to yourself.”
“What? You mean that thing about virgins?”
“Exactly. It’s not a good idea to ridicule someone else’s religion.”
“Sacrificing a virgin? That’s a religion?”
“How is their sacrifice any different from ours? At the next Vernal Equinox, we’ll be sacrificing Gunnar.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, “but that’s the way things are supposed to happen. I mean, Gunnar’s a man. We’re talking about virgins here, two of them. All right, they’re Outlanders. But still, it’s an incredible waste.”
“I understand your feelings. But I’d prefer that, when anyone else is present, you keep them, and your opinions, to yourself.”
“Fine,” I said. “Fine.”
“I’ll have another crock, please.” He handed me the empty one.
No one else was present, so I ventured an opinion. “You’re going through those crocks pretty quickly.”
“This is at least a three-crock problem,” he said.
I handed him another crock.
Bill’s house was near the center of the village, just off the central square. It was a bit larger than Art’s and in better shape. In the enclosure at its side stood a gigantic gray bull. It glowered at us from beneath a colossal pair of horns as we approached. Just outside the house’s front door was a large set of weighing scales.
“What are those for?” I asked Berthold.
“Bill is the tax collector,” he said. “In exchange for a percentage of crops, the Outlanders receive an equal weight of manure from that animal,” he nodded toward the bull, “to fertilize the fields for next year.”
“They hand over part of what they make, and they get bull manure in return?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s what they call ‘agriculture’?”
“No,” he said. “They call that ‘politics’.”
“How come you know so much about them?” I asked him. “The Outlanders.”
“They intrigue me. Their enthusiasm, their love of technology. They are, I believe, the wave of the future.”
“And what does that make us?”
He smiled another cryptic smile. “The wave of the past.”
“You’re kidding.”
“As you ought to know by now, Doder,” he said, “I never kid.”
On that breezy note, we climbed up the steps and Berthold knocked at the door. After a moment, it was opened by a short Outlander male who wore the usual plaid shirt, but this one was gray rather than red. Berthold said something in Outlandish, and the male stood back and gestured for us to come in.
The interior of the “living room” was like the interior of the similar room in Art’s house, but without the damage. Berthold and the Outlander chattered for a while, and then the Outlander led us back through a corridor to what was apparently a sleeping chamber.
Here, damage had been done. On the sleeping box lay a stained and torn cloth mattress, tufts of straw poking through ragged rents in the material. Deep scratches ran along the wooden wall. More dark stains covered the wooden floor.
Jabbering away, the Outlander walked to the window and opened it. Berthold asked him something, and the Outlander frowned, then went to a cabinet against the far wall and opened that. He reached in and pulled out a pair of small gold figurines, a goat and a bull. Berthold asked him some questions, the man answered them.
Berthold said something else, and the Outlander lowered his head and kept it there for a moment. When he raised it, a few tears were trickling down his cheek.
Berthold jabbered a few more words and the Outlander nodded.
Berthold turned to me. “Come along, Doder.”
Outside, he handed me his empty crock. I took it, handed him a new one, and asked him, “That was Bill, Tammy’s husband?”
“Yes.”
“How come the lion didn’t kill him too?”
“He was away, visiting relatives in another village.”
“Lucky for him.”
Berthold turned to me. “He lost his wife, Doder.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.” Berthold wasn’t married, of course.
He took a thoughtful sip of mead.
“Did you find out anything else?” I asked him.
“One or two things. One of which is suggestive, and may even be crucial.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“All in good time.” He was like that, Berthold, very secretive. By this point, as I later learned, he knew pretty much exactly what had gone on in the village. You’d think that he’d be willing to share his knowledge with the person who was carting around that damned sack of his.
But no. “First,” he said, “we must speak with the relatives of Wally the Water Bearer.”
And so we spoke to the relatives of Wally the Water Bearer, his aunt and uncle, inside their house, and a lot more jabbering went on. They hauled out some more gold figurines and jabbered some more, and then Berthold and I left.