Red Iron Nights (11 page)

“Comes of living right.”

“Comes of eating horse fodder till you have the sense of a mule.”

“You could do with more horse fodder yourself, Garrett. Meat is filled with the juices of things that died terrified. They make you timid yourself.”

“I have to admit I never heard anybody call a cabbage a coward.”

“There they go. All clear.”

There who go? Were we hanging around soaking because he’d seen someone? Why didn’t he tell me these things?

He did have better night vision. One of the advantages of his elvish blood. The disadvantages, of course, started with a conviction of personal immortality. It isn’t true, what you hear about elves being immortal. They just think they are. Only an arrow through the heart will talk them out of the idea.

Morley took off toward the Hamilton place. I followed, watching everywhere but where I was going. I heard a sound, looked for its source as I jumped ten feet high, walked right into the Hamilton wall.

“You must have been some Marine,” Morley grumbled, and continued muttering about no wonder Karenta couldn’t win in the Cantard if I represented the kingdom’s best and brightest.

“Probably a hundred thousand guys down there would be happy to let you show them how to do it.” Morley wasn’t a veteran. Breeds don’t have to go. The nonhuman peoples all have treaties exempting people up to one-eighth blood. The nonhumans you see in the Cantard are natives or mercenaries, and usually both. And agents of Glory Mooncalled besides. Except for the vampires and werewolves and unicorn packs, who are out to get everybody.

The Cantard is a lot of fun.

Morley squatted, cupped his hands. “I’ll give you a boost.” The wall was nine feet high.

“You’re lighter.” I could toss him right over.

“That’s why you go first. I can climb up there without help.”

A point. Not one that fired me up to go first, but a point. This business was more in his line than mine. He wouldn’t buy my plan which was to go pound on the front gate and ask to see the deadly coach. That was too prosaic for his sense of adventure.

I shrugged, stepped into his cupped hands, heaved my reluctant bones upward, grabbed the top of the wall in expectation of getting my fingers ripped to hamburger by broken glass. Broken glass is an old trick for discouraging uninvited company.

Oh, my. Now I was really disheartened. There was no broken glass. I pulled my chin up level with the top, peeked. Where was the trap? They had to have something really special planned if they didn’t use broken glass.

Morley whacked me on the sole. “Better move your ass, Garrett. They’re coming back.”

I didn’t know who “they” were but I heard their footsteps. I took a poll. Opinion was unanimous. I didn’t want to find out who they were. Up and over I went. I landed in a small garden, gently, failing even to turn an ankle. Morley landed beside me. I said, “This’s too easy.”

“Come on, Garrett. What do you want? You have a closed house here. Who’s going to guard that?”

“Exactly what I want to know.”

“You ever begin to sound optimistic, I’m going to flee the country. Come on. Sooner we do it, the sooner you’re out of here.”

I grunted agreement. “Looks like the coach house there.” I don’t like sneaking, much. I still thought we should have tried the front way.

Morley scooted to a door in the side of the coach house. I let him lead. I noted how carefully he moved, for all he did so quickly. Whatever he said, he wasn’t taking chances.

In his line you didn’t get old taking anything for granted. My line either, for that matter.

Neither of us had brought a lantern. You do dumb things when you rush. Still, there was light enough leaking from nearby homes to let Morley see a little. He told me, “Somebody was here before us. They jimmied the lock.” He tried the door. It opened.

I looked over his shoulder. It was blacker than the inside of a buzzard’s belly in there, and about as inviting. Something made noises and shuffled around. Something breathed. Something a lot bigger than me. Always a courteous kind of guy, I offered, “After you, sir.”

Morley wasn’t that sure he was immortal. “We need a light.”

“Now he notices. This the kind of planning you re going to do when you take over in the Cantard?”

“I’ll be back in five minutes.” He vanished before I could argue.

18

Five minutes? It was more like twenty. The longest twenty I ever lived, excepting maybe a few dozen times in the islands when I was in the Corps, dancing the death dance with Venageti soldiers.

He wasn’t gone ten of those five minutes when, from my lurking place under a crippled lime tree—where I was trying to drown less speedily—I noted a light moving past a downstairs window inside the Hamilton house. Probably a candle. It had a ghostly effect, casting a huge, only vaguely humanoid shadow on a drawn shade.

I gulped air.

Damn me if my luck didn’t hold. Somebody came outside and headed straight for the coach house. I heard muttering, then realized that there were two of them. The guy with the candle was leading.

Closer. It was my old buddy with the bad stomach. He didn’t look like much now, a sawed-off runt in clothes that had been out of style since my dad was a pup. He wore the kind of hat they call a deerstalker. I’d never seen one outside a painting before. He was bent and slow and shaky and a damned near perfect match for my notion of what a pederast ought to look like.

Hunking along behind, having trouble navigating, was Scarface, the guy Saucerhead had bounced around so thoroughly. He moved slower than the old guy, like he’d aged a hundred years overnight. Saucerhead hadn’t broken much but he’d left both of them with plenty of pain.

Now what? Jump in and make a citizen’s arrest? Accuse somebody of something and maybe get my own bones rearranged? Maybe cause the geezer another attack of dyspepsia and have him belch carnivorous butterflies all over me? Maybe just end up in court for assault? My mind wanders at such times, examining the dark side. I wish I had Saucerhead’s capacity for lack of doubt.

There
are
advantages to being simple.

While I tried to decide and wondered where the hell Morley was with the light, those two dragged their bruise collections inside the coach house. Light flowed through cracks as they lit lamps or lanterns. Talk continued, but I could distinguish no words.

I crept to the doorway, still could make out nothing. I heard a horse snort, jumped. Boy, was I glad I hadn’t gone in there before. They would’ve ambushed me for sure.

It sounded like they were fixing to harness a team. The cussing level suggested that was difficult when you were all bruised up. Sounded like some impressive descriptive work being done in there. I wanted to hear more. I need to expand my vocabulary.

I slipped my fingers into the gap between the door and its frame, pulled outward slowly till I had a crack through which to peek. So I could spy on a whole lot of horse stalls and tack racks doing a whole lot of nothing. Pretty dull stuff. I had the wrong angle.

Someone had the right angle to see the door move inward. I heard one voice say something soft but startled. Heavy footsteps lumbered my way, like a stomping troll wearing stone boots. I thought about doing a fast fade but thought too long. I barely had time to duck aside before the door flew open.

I couldn’t run, so I did the next best thing. I bopped Scarface over the head with my listen stick. His conk
thunked
like a thumped watermelon. He sagged, looked at me like I wasn’t playing fair. Well, why should I? That’s dumb with his kind. I’d get hurt if I tried. I thumped him again to make my point.

I bounced over Scarface, popped inside, charged the little character with the sour stomach and antique clothes. Don’t ask me why. Seems plenty dumb in retrospect. Just say it seemed like a good idea at the time.

He was trying to get the street doors open. I can’t imagine why. His team were still in their stalls. He wasn’t going to drive away. And he wasn’t going to outrun anybody on foot either. But there he went, heaving away and spitting green moths.

He heard me coming and spun around. For him a spin was a slow turn. His one hand dropped to a kind of frayed rope that served him as a belt, hitched his pants. His eyes started glowing green. I got there with my stick.

One of his moths bit me. Stung like hell. And distracted me so the old boy could slide aside enough for me to whap his shoulder instead of the top of his gourd. He howled. I bellowed and flailed at bugs. His eyes flared and his mouth opened wide. I avoided his gaze and the one big green butterfly that flew from his maw. I flailed crosswise, catching him alongside the jaw.

I put too much on it. Bone cracked. He folded like a dropped suit of clothes.

My juices were flowing. I bounced around looking for more trouble, so cranked the horses just backed up in their stalls and waited for me to go away. I checked Scarface. He was snoring, getting soggier by the second. I darted back to the old man . . . 

Who wasn’t snoring. He was making funny noises that said he wouldn’t be breathing at all pretty soon. I’d broken more than his jaw.

A green giant butterfly crept halfway out from between his lips, got stuck. He held on to his crude rope belt with both hands, like he didn’t want to lose his pants, and started shaking.

I’m not in the habit of croaking people. I’ve done it, sure, but never really by choice and never because I wanted to.

Now I
was
wound up. This was the Hill. Up here the guardians of the peace were no half-blind, unambitious Watchmen interested only in collecting their pay. If I was caught anywhere near a dead man . . . 

“What the hell is this?”

I didn’t quite leap into the hayloft. Just maybe ten feet. Not even a record for the standing broad jump. But I was out the door the old man had wanted to use, thirty feet into the wet, before I recognized Morley’s voice.

Still shaking, I went back and told him what had happened. The presence of a dying man didn’t rattle him at all. He observed, “You’re learning.”

“Huh?”

“Case solved and wrapped in a day. You dig up your buddy Block, tell him where to find his villain, end up with your pockets stuffed with gold. You still have the luck.”

“Yeah.” But I didn’t feel lucky. I didn’t
know
that that little old man had gotten his thrills carving on pretty girls.

Morley closed the yard door, eased toward the street door. I said, “Hold it. I have to take a look around in the house.”

“Why?” He said that sharply, like he didn’t want me going that way.

“In case there’s any evidence. I need to know.”

He gave me the fish eye, shook his head, shrugged. The notion of a conscience was alien to him. “If you have to, you have to.”

“I have to.”

19

I tripped over the old man’s sidekick as I stepped into the garden. Well! Another mystery. Some wicked soul had come along and stabbed him in his sleep.

I scowled at Morley. Morley wasn’t abashed. “Didn’t need him, Garrett. And now you won’t need to keep looking back.” Just because the guy had caused a scene at the Joy House.

I didn’t argue. We’d had the argument more times than I liked to recall. Morley knew neither pity nor remorse, only practicality. Which, he had a habit of reminding me, was why I turned to him so often.

Maybe. But I think I go to him because I trust him to cover my back.

I’d grabbed the old man’s lantern. It was out now, after my spill. I pushed it aside, dragged the body into the coach house, closed the door, and headed for the big house by the light of the lantern Morley carried. I snagged the extinguished lantern as I went.

The house wasn’t locked. It took us only moments to get inside and find something.

We entered through a dusty kitchen. We needed go on no farther. Seconds after we entered, Morley said, “Check this, Garrett.”

“This” was a three-gallon wooden bucket. A tribe of flies had made it a place of worship. Their startled buzz and the smell told me that it was no water pail. Rusty cakes of dried blood adorned it.

“They had to use something to carry the blood away.” I shone my light around, spotted a set of knives on a drainboard. They were not ordinary kitchen knives. They were decorated with fancy symbols. They were decorated with dried blood too.

Morley observed, “They didn’t take good care of their tools.”

“You didn’t see the way they moved. After they’d danced with Saucerhead they probably didn’t feel much like doing housework.”

“You satisfied now?”

I had to be. “Yeah.” No point lollygagging around, maybe getting ourselves hanged with all that evidence.

Morley grinned. “You really are learning, Garrett. I figure maybe another hundred years and you can get by without a baby-sitter.”

I wondered if maybe he wasn’t a little too optimistic.

Being no fool, Morley went his own way. I found Captain Block the last place I expected, at the bachelor officers’ quarters at the barracks the Watch shares with the local army garrison. Those troops are less use than the Watch, coming out for nothing but ceremonies and to stand guard at various royal edifices.

I got the usual runaround trying to reach Block, but it had no heart in it. Maybe he’d left word a certain battered old Marine might want to get hold of him sometime.

He was dressing when I walked in and started dripping on his carpet. “I take it you’ve got something, Garrett.” For the life of me I couldn’t figure why he wasn’t thrilled to see me, just because it was after midnight.

“I found your man.”

“Huh?” Dumbstruck is really amazing on a naturally dumbfounded face.

“That villain you wanted found? The fellow who entertained himself by whittling on pretty girls? If you want him, I’ve got him.”

“Uh . . . yeah?” He didn’t believe me yet.

“Put your slicker on, Cap. I’ve had me a long, hard day and I want to get on home.”

“You found him?”

Ta-da! First thing you knew, he’d figure it out. “Yep. But you’d better get rolling if you want to cash in.”