"Not bad if you sprinkle a little salt on," he said.
"And good for you, no doubt."
"Of course. Take a gander round the harbor there."
I did. And saw what he meant.
The striped-sail yacht was warping into a dock. She had passed us in the night and had pulled rank to get the first available pilot. "Needs keeping an eye on," I admitted.
"You read that guy Denny's papers. Did he mention Stormlord Thunderhead anywhere?"
"No. But a couple other wizards got memorialized. I'm willing to look for an indirect connection." When you consider the possibility of wizards being involved in anything, the smart thing to do is to assume the worst.
So chances were striped sail had nothing to do with us. But I would take the paranoid approach on the off chance.
The women raised all kinds of holler when we tied up, but nobody paid them any mind. Morley and Doris and Marsha and I went off looking for one of several coasters recommended to us by Master Arbanos. Morley left Dojango to watch the Stormlord's yacht. No one there ought to recognize him even if they were up to no good.
Our luck was in. We found a ship called The Gilded Lady planning to put out next morning. Her master was amenable to our buying passage. Morley started looking grey around the edges.
"You handled the river all right."
"No waves on the river, Garrett. Lots of waves along the coast, and the ship running parallel to them." His eyes bugged. "Let's not talk about it. Let's find someplace to put up, then get out on the town. There's a place down here even better than mine—don't you ever tell anybody I admitted that—that you've really got to try."
"I'm not in a roots and nuts mood, Morley. Looking a long voyage in the eye, I need something with more body."
"Body? Don't you care what you're doing to your body? I promise, you'll like this place. Give you a little something different. All that red meat is going to kill you, anyway."
"We did red meat the other day, Morley. But since you bring up self-abuse, let's do some calculating. Who is more likely to die young? Me eating what I want or you messing around with other guys' women?"
"You're talking apples and oranges now, buddy."
"I'm talking dead is what I'm talking."
He did not have a rejoinder for fifteen seconds. Then he said only, "I'll die happy."
"So will I, Morley. And without hunks of nut stuck between my teeth."
"I give up," he said. "Go ahead. Commit slow suicide by poisoning yourself."
"That was my plan." A tavern sign caught my eye. It had been a dry trip down the river. "I'm going to tip a few."
Doris and Marsha recognized a beer joint when they saw one, too. They grunted back and forth. Morley started trading gibberish with them.
Oh, my. Did all the triplets have an alcohol problem?
I said, "As soon as we find a place for the night somebody better check on Dojango. At least so he knows where to find us."
Morley reached a compromise with Doris and Marsha. "They can have one bucket each. That's all."
"Bucket?"
"They're big boys, Garrett."
"So I noticed." We marched into the tavern. It was early yet, so there was no crowd. Still, a silence fell and grew so deep I knew we had walked in where we were not wanted.
I've never let that stop me. I tossed a coin on the bar. "A mug of brew for me and a bucket apiece for the big boys. And my buddy here will have whatever you can stomp out of a parsnip."
Cold-eyed stare. "We don't serve their kind."
"Well, now, they don't speak Karent very well. So when you look at them there, they're still smiling. But I don't think they'll keep on smiling if I have to translate that for them. You know how grolls are when they get mad."
He thought about arguing. He might have had there been forty or fifty more people to back his play. But Doris and Marsha had begun to get the drift. Their smiles vanished and their faces grew mottled.
"We want beer," I said. "Not your women."
He did not laugh. He headed for the tap. Not many people are fool enough to make a groll mad.
They do get mean.
"Not bad beer," I said, quaffing my third while Doris and Marsha nursed their milk pails. "And serving it up didn't break one bone, did it?"
The barman wasn't interested in bantering.
Most of his regulars had deserted him.
We followed their example.
About fifty sullen men had gathered outside. Their mood looked ugly. I told Morley, "I ought to pay closer attention to what neighborhood I'm in."
"I like the way you think, Garrett."
Half a brick thrown by somebody named Anonymous arced toward us. It had some arm behind it. Doris—or maybe it was Marsha—stabbed a paw out and snagged it. He looked it over for a second. Then he squeezed it and let the powder dribble between his fingers.
That impressed me, but not the mob.
So he snapped off the timber from which the tavern's sign hung. He stripped the sign off and flailed the timber around like a switch.
That got the message across. The mob began to evaporate.
Morley asked, "Could a mule do that?"
"No."
We were more circumspect in selecting a place to spend the night.
19
"So where the hell is he?" I demanded. There wasn't a shadow of Dojango.
Morley looked bleak. He had been looking bleak for a while. I thought maybe I should buy him a bunch of carrots or something. He muttered, "Guess we'll have to scout the alleys and taverns."
"I'm going to take a gander at that ship. Catch me on the pier when you find him."
Morley said something to the two remaining triplets. They grunted and moved out. I marched on down to where I could get a look at that striped-sail ship.
There wasn't much to see, a few men lugging things off, then lugging other things on. It wasn't hard to understand why Dojango bugged out. Watching is boring work. It takes a patient guy to lurk for a living.
A man came out on the rear deck, leaned on the rail, hawked, spat into the harbor.
"Interesting." He was Big One from Morley's place and the pier.
He began scanning the waterfront almost as if he had heard me. Then he shrugged and went into a cabin.
Curious.
Maybe Dojango would have stayed on the job if he had seen that guy before.
I lazed in the shade, wishing I had a keg to nurse and wondering what was taking Morley so long. Nothing else happened except that the stevedores finished loading and unloading.
I heard a soft scuff behind me. Maybe at last...
But when I looked I saw Big One. He was not in a friendly mood.
I dropped off the bale where I'd been loafing. Did this call for lethal instruments?
He walked right up and wacked the bale with a short club. No accusations. No questions. Nothing but business. I leaned out of the way and let him have one in the gut.
It did as much good as gut-punching a barrel of salt pork.
That club was meant to scramble my brains, I feared. I hauled out a knife.
I did not get to use it. The cavalry arrived in the guise of Doris or Marsha. The groll picked Big One up by one arm and held him out like a doll. A slow grin spread over his green face. Then he casually heaved him over the bales into the harbor.
Big One never made a sound.
They would have heard me cussing fifty miles away.
Doris—or Marsha, as the case may have been—beckoned me to follow. I did, grumbling. "I could have handled him." Probably about like I had handled Saucerhead, by pounding my body off his club till it broke.