"Good to see you back to your normal cheerful self. What creature? Why?"
That Dean. The fiend brought not one, not two, but three women in here. Get rid of him, Garrett. Throw him out. So. A fantasy meal explained. Dean wanted me to see what I didn't have to be missing. Him and me, we were going to have to have a little talk, man to man, and get things straight. Real soon now. I settled in my visiting chair, sipped some beer, then cut loose. The Dead Man sulked and pretended to ignore me, but he took in every word. He had to have something to distract himself while he waited for Glory Mooncalled to prove out his hypothesis. I talked for two hours nonstop, with good old Dean keeping my mug topped. He enjoyed a little vicarious adventure. And his coming and going showed just how little depth there was to the Dead Man's animosity. I finished my report, having spared no detail. There is something missing, Garrett.
"I know that. Either that or I know too much and I'm getting distracted."
You are not getting distracted.
"I keep thinking I've got the kidnap side figured out. Three different times I've decided that Junior kidnapped himself. Then I find myself up to my ass in ogres again, with them perfect for the villains. And if the kid did kidnap himself, why did he come home? He and his sister want out of there so bad they can taste it. The way it went down, with no direct exchange, all he had to do was take the gold and hike and leave his mommy wearing weeds."
The ransom money was paid?
"Willa Dount scrounged two hundred thousand and delivered it to somebody. Junior came home next day. Amber is digging on that for me. The deep-down root thing that bugs me can be tied up in one bow. Why did Amiranda have to die? Real kidnapping or fake, with her in on it or not, why did she have to be killed?"
/ am certain you will unmask the reason. You have allowed yourself to become emotionally entangled. Again. I saw him sizing up one of his favorite hobbyhorses, getting ready to mount up and ride. Dean had gone to answer the door a minute before. I got up. "My transportation is here. You mull it over while you're killing time. Maybe you'll spot a connection I've missed."
I didn't doubt that he had seen one or two already but didn't feel obligated to point them out. Neither of us had a real money interest here, and he had no emotional investment, so whether he saw something or not he would just let me exercise my own genius.
I visited the armory. Unlike Saucer head I don't figure my hands are my best defense. I tossed a bundle into the buggy, under the seat, and was about to flick the traces when Dean came stumbling out of the house with a hamper.
"Mr. Garrett. Wait."
"What's this?"
"Provender. Victuals. Rations."
"Leftovers?"
"That too. A man has to eat something. What were you going to do out there?"
Hell. I'm a city boy. I don't think about food. "I was going to borrow a page from Morley Dotes and live off roots and bark, but rather than injure your feelings I'll just park that hamper up here beside me and suffer."
He smiled smugly as I pulled away. For however long I subjected myself to this rustication, every bite would remind me that I needed a feeder and a keeper, and the fodder would, for certain, be the best of the best cooked up by his nieces.
The man was obsessed. That is all I can say. He had worked for me long enough to know I wasn't the kind of catch you'd want your female relations stuck with. But he persisted.
Karenta is a kingdom at war. You'd expect some sort of watch to be kept on the entrepots to one of its most important cities, in case some enterprising Venageti commander decided to try something imaginative. But the war has been going on since my generation were kids, seldom spilling out of the Cantard and the adjoining seas. Any guards who were awake when I left were too busy playing cards to step out and check my bona fides. But our lords from the Hill want the ordinary folk to seethe with fervor against the enemy.
It's a lot easier to seethe against Raver Styx and her ilk. They profit no matter how the fighting goes. I used the route Saucer head and Amiranda had followed. The moon was now full. The team didn't mind night travel, even with me at the traces. And the nation of horses has been out to get me ever since I can remember. It was a smooth, quiet ride with very little to see. The only traffic I encountered was the night coach from Derry, half an hour ahead of schedule and just lumping along with its two or three somnolent passengers and load of mail. Guard and driver tossed me friendly greetings, which showed how worried they were about the night. I suppose, theoretically, that I should have had one hand on a silver blade at all times. There was a full moon. But there hadn't been a confirmed wolfman incident this close to the city since before I went into the Marines.
Once I did unravel a murder that had been dressed up to look like a wolfman's work. It's a hell of a way to make sure your old man doesn't get the chance to write you out of the will. I reached the dire crossroad about the same time Saucer head had. I gave it a look around as it stood, considering the fact that there was more moon than there had been that night. I didn't see or get a feel for anything, so I loosened the horses' harnesses, made sure they couldn't run off, climbed onto the buggy's seat, and napped. I did a good job of snoozing, too. I thought first light would waken me, but the honor went to a ten-year-old who shook my shoulder and asked, "Are you all right, mister?"
I counted my hands and feet and purse and discovered that I hadn't been murdered, mutilated, or robbed. "I am indeed, son. Except maybe for a case of premature senility."
He looked at me funny and asked a few kidlike questions. I tried giving reasonable answers and asked him a few in turn. He was on his way somewhere to help somebody with farm chores, but he let me buy him breakfast. Which goes to show how tame it really is around TunFaire these days, for all we city people put down the country. No city boy would have risked hanging around with a stranger. The real monsters of today live in the city's shadows and cellars and drawing rooms.
He didn't tell me one thing even remotely useful. Acting on the premise that it is never wise to put temptation into the path of an honest man, I led my team into the woods opposite the area I intended to explore. I made sure the beasts wouldn't have the pleasure of deserting me, returned to the diamond, and checked to make sure they and the rig were invisible, then went across and started looking through the bushes. It wasn't hard to find where the dead and wounded had been thrown into hurried concealment. The brush was torn and trampled. The corpses had been cleared away but their drippings had been ignored, at least by the cleanup crew. The flies and ants had come and gone. The bloodstains were now the province of a gray-black, whiskery mold that described perfectly every spot and spill. Which didn't tell me anything except that a lot of people had done a lot of bleeding.
My woodcraft was no longer what it had been in my Marine days, but it took no forest genius to follow either of the trails leading deeper into the woods. The first I tried split after about a third of a mile, heavy traffic having turned eastward suddenly. It looked like four or five ogres had been on Saucer head's trail when they were recalled by their buddies. The other trail ran down into the woods east of where I stood.
I didn't need to follow Saucer head to know where he'd gone. I turned east.
Five hundred yards along I paused, planted the back of my lap on a fallen tree trunk, and told my brain to get to work. I knew what I would find if I went on a little farther. I could hear the flies buzzing and the wild dogs bickering with the vultures. Much closer and I would smell it, too. Did I have to look?