Scowling, Whuffine stepped back, sheathing his knife. “The blade’s for swollen fingers, that’s all. In fact, I’ll be on my way then, and leave you in the hands of Spilgit and Felittle.” And he hurried down the beach. He didn’t like the look of that highborn or the way the manservant was now handling that shortsword with unpleasant ease, and all things told, Whuffine was glad to be rid of them.
Coming down to the wrack, eyes scanning the corpses, he paused upon seeing the ragged bites taken out of most of them. He’d seen the work of sharks, but that was nothing like what he looked upon now. Despite his sheepskin and fox-furs, Whuffine shivered. Glancing back, he saw Spilgit and Felittle leading the strangers up the trail. Could be a bit of trouble washed up here today, eh? Well, I doubt Fangatooth and his golems will have anything to worry about. Still … He eyed the nearest, chewed-up corpse. Some of those bites looked human.
The crabs were marching up from the sea in scuttling rows, and through the moaning wind he could hear their happy, eager clicking.
I’ll set out the traps once they’ve fattened up some.
Hordilo Stinq felt Ackle the Risen’s dead eyes tracking him as, bucket of whale grease in one hand, he walked up the street opposite the King’s Heel. Most strangers did the proper thing and died after being hung, but not Ackle. If Hordilo was a superstitious man, why, he might think there was something odd about that man.
But he had more practical concerns to deal with right now. Adjusting his sword belt with one hand while tightening his grip on the iron handle of the wooden bucket, and doing his best to ignore how the icy wind stole all feeling from his fingers, he set out up the street. The ground was frozen hard, the edges of the wheel ruts slippery and treacherous, the puddles filling those ruts frozen solid. For all of that, Grimled’s progress was mapped out before him in cracked impressions, the golem’s iron boots leaving dents already leaking turgid water that pretty much froze as soon as it bled out. His gaze tracked them up to the front street’s end, where the footprints turned right and disappeared behind Blecker’s Livery.
Hordilo continued on. Those damned golems unnerved him. Ackle was right in that one thing, Hood take him. Offering up a nod and maybe a muttered greeting as one trudged past wasn’t what anyone in their right mind could call a friendship. But they were Lord Fangatooth’s creations, stamp-stamp-stamping his authority on Spendrugle and everyone calling it home, and if any acts of kindness on Hordilo’s part, no matter how modest, could alight the glint of sympathy in such abominations, well, he had to try, didn’t he? Besides, the few times there’d been trouble with some stranger, one of them would show up to sort things out right quick, and that had saved Hordilo’s skin more than once.
So in a way he owed them, didn’t he? And if it wasn’t in a walking lump of iron to feel anything about anyone, Hordilo was flesh and blood, with genuine feelings and even a heart that could break if, say, some hag of a wife he’d once loved went and did the nasty on him, and not just one animal, either, but all kinds of animals, and then told him about it with shining eyes and that soul-cutting half-smile that said she liked what her words were doing to him and besides, Ribble had been his dog, dammit! If something like that had ever happened to him, which of course it hadn’t, why, his heart might break, or at least start leaking. Because a man without feelings was no better than a … well, a golem.
Reaching Blecker’s Livery, he paused for a moment to utter a soft prayer to the memory of old Blecker, since remorse always came afterwards and never went away, when the fury of knowing that Blecker knew everything with his nickering stallion and all, well, that faded after a time, and that ex-wife he didn’t have was a seductive woman when she wanted to be, not that Ribble cared much either way, with his endless panting and witless but knowing eyes, but Blecker himself had seen plenty, hadn’t he, with his damned menagerie and all. But whisper a prayer anyway, because Hordilo knew that that was what a decent man did, but not much of a prayer, since Blecker had never known a thing about decency and nobody had complained much when he swung from the gibbet, except when they saw Hurta riding off on that stallion with Ribble chasing after them, none of them ever to be seen again-oh, there was plenty of disappointment about that, wasn’t there? That said, Feloovil had cleared his tab at the Heel and spotted him free drinks for a whole week afterwards, which was peculiarly generous of her. This was the kind of mess having a wife would have given him, and was it any wonder he was having none of that?
Rounding the livery, Hordilo halted in his tracks. Twenty paces away, Grimled was lying motionless on its back. A large black-cloaked man was kneeling beside it, his hands deep in the golem’s chest. Strange fluids were spraying out past the man’s forearms. A few paces beyond them lay two bloated corpses.
“Hey!” Hordilo shouted.
But the man ripping pieces out from Grimled’s chest didn’t look up.
Hordilo set down the bucket and then drew his sword. “Hey!” he yelled again, advancing. “What have you done to Grimled? You can’t do that! Step away from him! By the lord’s command, step away!”
At last, the stranger looked up, blinking owlishly at Hordilo.
Something in the man’s piggy eyes made Hordilo slow down and then stagger to a halt. He lifted the sword threateningly, but the blade wavered in his numbed grip. “The lord of Wurms Keep will see you hang for this! You’re under arrest!”
The stranger withdrew his hands from Grimled’s chest. They were black and dripping. “I was trying to fix it,” he said in a high, piping voice.
“You broke it!”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Explain that to Lord Fangatooth! Get up now. You’re coming with me.”
The stranger’s uncanny eyes slipped past Hordilo and fixed on the distant keep. “There?”
“There.”
“All right,” the man replied, climbing slowly to his feet. He looked over at the two corpses. “But I want to bring my friends with me.”
“Your friends? They’re dead!”
“No, not those ones.”
The man pointed and Hordilo turned to see a group appearing from the beach trail. That’s where Spilgit was going, and Felittle with him! She must have seen a ship on the reef and snuck out to the Factor, so they could get a first look. Gods below, will the treachery never end?
“But I want these ones, too,” added the stranger. “I’m saving them.”
Licking his lips, his mind in a fog, Hordilo said, “They’re past saving, you fool.”
The stranger frowned. “I don’t like being called a fool.”
The tone was flat, unaccountably chilling. “Sorry to tell you, those two are dead. Maybe you’re in shock or something. That happens. Shipwreck, was it? Bad enough you arriving uninvited, and if that wasn’t enough look what you did to Grimled. Lord Fangatooth won’t be happy about that, but that’s between you and him. Me, well, the law says I got to arrest you, and that’s that. The law says you got to give account of yourselves.”
“My selves? There is only one of me.”
“You think you’re being funny? You’re not.” Stepping back, trying to avoid a peek into the inner workings of poor Grimled-not that they worked anymore-Hordilo shifted his attention to the newcomers as they arrived.
The tall one with the pointed beard spoke, “Ah, Korbal, there you are. What have you found?”
“A golem, Bauchelain,” the first man replied. “It swung its axe at me. I didn’t like that, but I didn’t mean to break it.”
The man named Bauchelain walked over to study Grimled. “A distinct lack of imagination, wouldn’t you say, Korbal? A proper face would have been much more effective, in terms of inspiring terror and whatnot. Instead, what fear is inspired by an up-ended slop bucket? Unless it is to invite someone to laugh unto death.”