D& D - Greyhawk - Night Watch (9 page)

Burko nodded again without managing to lift his gaze from the dirt at Garett’s feet, and stepped out of the way.

“Thank you,” the watch captain said politely, and he looked over his shoulder. “Let that one up, Burge.”

Burge barely moved his foot. Whisper rolled away, scrambled up, and dashed up the road as fast as he could run. The darkness quickly swallowed him. When Garett looked back, Burko was gone, too.

• “That was fun,” Burge muttered, grinning as he ad
  
• He stared ahead into the darkness that closed arou
  
• The crowd grew tense and quiet as the explosion ec
  
• SEVENTEEN
  
• TWENTY-ONE
  

“That was fun,” Burge muttered, grinning as he adjusted the hood on the lantern once more. “I liked the part about the soup.”

Garett set his throwing star back on the stud on his biceps band and gave it a twist. “When I was a kid, I loved the storytellers who worked the streets. I thought that was what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

“Cheer up, then,” Burge answered with sage sarcasm.

"You’ve still got time.”

They walked the rest of the way down the Serpent’s Back until they were deep in the heart of the Slum Quarter. Here i he buildings were crowded together, each seeming to hold up another. They leaned at treacherous angles, many without doors, without shutters on the windows. Some had no roofs. Some were only the frames of buildings whose interiors had long ago fallen into rubble.

Black, narrow alleys twisted like poisoned veins among the ruined tenements, connecting roads that had no names or whose names had been forgotten. The gutters were full of refuse and slop. The air reeked.

Yet what depressed Garett most was knowing that these buildings were full of people. He and Burge might have been the last two men on Oerth, for all the signs of life he saw about him, but behind these walls were huddled the poorest of Greyhawk’s citizens, the very old with no children to support them and no place left to go; the disabled, whose handicaps barred them from society; and the mad, who were exiled forever from the New City.

If the air reeked, it was with the smell of hopelessness, and the only wind that ever swept these streets was the breath of despair.

At the end of the Serpent’s Back, they turned up Killcat Lane and followed that for a short distance. The black outline of Greyhawk’s western wall loomed briefly against the starlit sky before they turned again and walked along a nameless street.

“We’re bein’ followed again,” Burge commented.

Garett nodded. “I don’t think they’ll bother us.”

The half-elf snapped his fingers. “Drat,” he said.

Two more turns brought them to the street commonly known as Bladder Lane. It was not really a lane. Little more than an alley, in fact. In the old days, several popular taverns had sat very close by. It was due to this fact that a mere alley, conveniently positioned, had earned such a grand name, and one that yet lingered in the memory of

Greyhawk’s citizens.

Burge lifted the lantern high as they started up the alley. With his other hand, he pinched his nostrils shut. “The taverns may be gone,” he complained, “but apparently a beloved tradition is still venerated.”

Halfway up the alley, the lantern revealed an old door. The wood was so old it had started to crack and splinter. The hinges were neither metal nor leather, but thick folds of half-rotten cloth that someone had nailed in place with slender pegs. Garett reached out and knocked.

“Maybe he’s shoppin’,” Burge suggested when they got no answer.

“I think the stores are closed,” Garett rejoined. He pushed, and the door edged open an inch. “Cat?” he called.

Still no answer came. Garett eased the door open farther until the lantern’s light spilled past the threshold. A table stood in the near corner, and the stub of a candle rested on the worn and scarred surface. Garett stepped inside and felt the wick. It was cold.

Burge shone the light around the tiny room. A pile of rags against the north wall had made the old man’s bed. Other than the table with the candle, two chairs and a footstool were the only other pieces of furniture. There was a lot of clutter, though, dirty old bottles and pieces of clay pottery, rocks and bits of driftwood, broken tools and broken toys. The Cat had been quite a scavenger. But then, so was anybody who lived in the Slum Quarter.

“He’s gone,” Burge commented needlessly.

Garett turned back toward the table. The wall above it was scratched and scarred with strange markings. Lacking any writing tool, the old man had used a knife or some other sharp instrument to make his records a permanent part of his home. Some of the symbols were zodiacal, Garett knew that much. The rest were a mystery to him— all but one.

“Bring the light closer,” he instructed Burge as he ran his linger over one particular marking, feeling the rough-cut edge. The scratch was fresher than the others, the edges still splintered and pale against the darker wood. In the light, it was plain to see—a skull with horns and a pair of snakes intertwined beneath it.

It was the blazon of the Horned Society.

For many years now, the society had been the major threat to Greyhawk’s peace. Not satisfied with their conquests in the Shield Lands on the northwestern shores of the Nyr Dyv, they sought to extend their influence, and eventually their dominance, through all the nations surrounding the great lake. Only Greyhawk’s economic might and a not-so-secret alliance with Furyondy, the strongest naval power on the lake, stood between the Hierarchs of the Horned Society and their ambitions.

“What do you know about the Cat?” Garett asked Burge as he straightened and began to move about the room.

“Not much,” Burge admitted. “He was a strange one. Kept completely to himself. Some claimed his power as a seer was great enough to make him a livin’ fit for any part of the Garden Quarter. But they also said he was afraid of it, wouldn’t use it, except when he had to, and certainly never to make money.” Burge shrugged as he followed his captain around the room. “Like I said, a strange one. Maybe a fake. Think he’s dead like the others?”

Garett shook his head. “No body,” he answered. “I think he’s left Greyhawk. There are certain things missing that suggest a journey, probably a permanent one.” “Maybe he was robbed,” Burge suggested.

“No,” Garett replied thoughtfully. “A thief in these parts would have taken everything. Certainly they wouldn’t have left something so useful and easy to escape with as the candle. No, he wasn’t robbed. But an old man would have had a cup to drink from and a dish to eat on, and I don’t see them. Nor is there a knife to eat with. And he had something that in this quarter would have been considered a treasure.” Garett stooped and pointed to a ball of thin gray hair that was speckled with dust where it lay on the floor by the bed of rags. “A hair brush,” he said. “That’s gone, too. And where are his scrying tools? Gone.”

Burge rubbed his chin as he held up the light. “The At-tloi left last night, and the dwarves and ores today. Maybe the Cat was among them. Nobody really knew where he came from.”

“Maybe,” Garett said, rising, “but I think it’s something more subtle. Let’s go find Rudi. He was supposed to locate the other seer, Duncan. But I’m willing to bet Duncan’s gone, too.”

Garett headed for the door and stepped out into the darkness, intent on making his way to the River Quarter and Queer Eye Street as fast as he could. Questions burned in his brain, and a renewed urgency filled him.

“Bet?” Burge called with amused excitement as he followed with the lantern. He paused long enough to pull the door closed. The neighborhood thieves would learn soon enough that the old man’s things were theirs for the taking. He hurried after his captain. “Did I hear someone say, ‘bet’?”

 On any given night, the River Quarter was the liveliest part of Greyhawk and the Strip was the liveliest place in the River Quarter. Even so late, the street was crowded with pleasure-seekers drawn by the taverns and gaming houses that never closed, by the whorehouses and businesses that catered to more unusual joys. It was said that anything could be bought or sold on the Strip, and if it couldn’t be bought, it could at least be rented for an evening or so.

Garett shouldered past a couple of bargemen, who still stank of the river, as he fought his way through the milling throngs that filled the street. The larger of the pair gave him a hard look and curled one meaty hand into a fist until he noted Garett’s scarlet cloak and tunic and quickly grew calm again. Garett paid the man no mind. His gaze swept over the faces in the crowd, and his thoughts raced inside his head.

He genuinely didn’t know if it was excitement or fear that had set the blood to pounding in his ears and his heart

to thundering, but it was hard to keep a stony face as he pushed and shoved through the strollers and gawkers. He glared around impatiently, seeking Rudi or the fortuneteller, Duncan, who was said to work the crowds here to earn his living. It might have been easier if he’d had some idea of what Duncan looked like. As it was, he watched for anyone who looked the part.

“A common, wealthy sir?” An old man leaned against a lamppost, carefully balanced on a crude wooden crutch. He shook a bowl as Garett walked by. “A plain copper common for an unfortunate veteran?”

That brought Garett to an abrupt halt. He had fought in too many campaigns in his younger mercenary days not to feel sympathy for the aged wretch he saw before him. The poor man’s left leg was badly twisted, and a thick scar ran down the front of the thigh and over the kneecap. He had lost his right eye, too, and a dirty bandage covered it. His clothes were filthy rags. The bones of his face showed through his pale, undernourished flesh.

Garett frowned at his own softheartedness even as he reached for the small purse he had tucked inside his wide belt. As he did so, the old veteran leaned forward, and the light from the lamp above his head shifted subtly.

Garett’s frown deepened. With one hand, he pushed his purse back in place. With his other, he reached out and seized the front of the old man’s tunic and jerked him forward. Reacting by instinct, the fellow caught his balance on his injured leg without so much as wincing or wobbling. Garett shook his head, irritated with himself, as he put one hand down the front of the old man’s tunic and drew out the small wooden hand on the chain around his neck.

The hand was the sign and license of the Beggars’ Union. All members wore it when they worked.

Realizing he had betrayed himself, the beggar shrugged off his act, straightened his posture, and pushed up the eye bandage. He wasn’t blinded at all, nor was he old. The scar on the leg, that was real, probably self-inflicted, but the cut had never gone deep enough to permanently injure bone or muscle. “What gave me away, sir?” he said with humble politeness. “I’d appreciate advice from a man with so sharp an eye.”

Garett let him go. “The makeup is good,” he answered grudgingly. “And the shadows from the light overhead heightens the general effect of gauntness. But you were too eager for my coin. When you leaned forward, the light shifted, and I saw the faint smudge of kohl you’d used to bring out the cheek bones and deepen the sockets of your eyes.”

The beggar bowed. “Thank you, sir. Now, I must move along to a new spot. This one’s no good, now that you’ve exposed me.” He pulled his bandage back down and drew his crutch under his left arm. Instantly he resumed his role, turning back into an old man again. Garett watched as he hobbled off into the crowd.

“You just can’t pass up the chance to instruct, can you?”

Garett turned at the sound of Burge’s voice. “Did you find Rudi?” he asked, remembering their purpose in coming here.

“I’ve been all the way to the north end,” his friend answered.

For an instant, they were separated as a group of merrymakers surged between them, singing and laughing. A woman ran her hand over Garett’s chest and batted her eyes at him invitingly, though she clung to the arm of another. Her companion was too involved in the song, though, to notice, and the entire party moved on.

“No sign of the little runt, or Duncan, either,” Burge concluded as they came together again and started up the street to continue their search.

“Let’s check the watch house,” Garett suggested. “Perhaps Rudi has been there. If nothing else, we can alert the patrols in this quarter to keep an eye out for Duncan.”

They headed north up the Strip. The sweet, warm smells that issued from some of the restaurants they passed reminded Garett that he hadn’t eaten. There was no time to stop, though. Instead, he paid a balding street vendor the exorbitant price of two commons for a honey-soaked melon cake the size of his palm. Garett wolfed the heavy pastry down in a couple of bites, and Burge watched disgustedly as he licked the sticky syrup from his fingers. It was hardly a meal, but at least it filled his stomach.

At the far end of the Strip, they turned up a short street and cut over to Ratwater Way. It was but a short distance up that street to the River Quarter watch house. The crowds here were thinner, mostly men who made their living along the river or on the docks, either on their way to, or just returning from the Strip. They were a raw, rough-looking sort, but Garett knew them generally to be good men. In the River Quarter, it was usually the nobles who started trouble with their superior, condescending attitudes and haughty manners.

A standard patrol of five men, led by a junior sergeant, emerged from the doors of the watch house to begin their rounds just as Garett and Burge arrived. The junior sergeant drew up sharply, signaling his men to halt as he executed a crisp salute. “Captain Starlen!” he exclaimed in surprise. “Is this an inspection, sir? Your visit honors us!” Garett did his best to hide a frown. It annoyed him when officers behaved like puppy dogs, licking at his boots, hoping for pats on the head. “Save your flattery, Sergeant,” he answered smoothly. “If you want to impress me, do it with deeds. Find me the seer named Duncan. He’s said to work the streets of the River Quarter. Do you know him?”

The sergeant paled at Garett’s tone, but quickly composed himself. “I know him,” he replied, somewhat offended as he drew back his shoulders and met Garett’s gaze. “He reads fortunes in the throws of the dice.”