It only took a second to see how that worked—with an example right there. I felt one of the tapered bulges in the cord. Morley said, “The cork crushes down going through the knot, expands again on the other side.”
“How do you get your cord off?”
“They don’t. They use it only once, then it’s tainted. I’ve only ever seen one before. Cut off his own throat by a man I knew years ago. Excepting you, he was the luckiest guy I’ve ever known.”
I looked around, less interested in Snake than he was. If our killer wasn’t good he was lucky. There wasn’t a spot of physical evidence. “Kind of sad,” I said.
“Death usually is.” Which was a surprise, considering the source. But Morley has been full of surprises as long as I’ve known him.
“I mean the way he lived.” I gestured at our surroundings. He’d lived like his horses. He’d slept on straw. His only piece of furniture was a paint-stained table. “This was a professional soldier. Twenty years in, mostly spent in the Cantard. Combat pay. Prize money. A man careful enough to stay alive that long would be careful about his money. But he lived in a barn, like an animal. Didn’t even have a change of clothes.”
Morley grunted. “Happens. Want to bet he came out of the worst slum? Or off a dirt farm where they never saw two coppers the same month?”
“No bet.” I’d seen it. Raised poor, they can get pathological about squirreling it away for a rainy day—and death comes before the deluge. Sad way to live. I touched Snake’s shoulder. His muscles were still knotted. He hadn’t relaxed when he’d died. Curious.
I recalled what Cook had told me about him. “Put it on his tombstone, he was a good Marine.” I rolled him over in case there was something under him. There wasn’t, that I could see.
“Morley. It takes a guy awhile to strangle. Maybe whoever killed him tried that first, then stuck him. Instead of the other way around.”
He glanced around at the damage, which wasn’t all that obvious, considering the state of the place. “Could be.”
“You ever try to strangle somebody?”
He gave me a look. He didn’t answer questions like that.
“Sorry. I have. I was supposed to take out this sentry during a raid. I practiced before we went in.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“That was me then. I don’t like killing and I didn’t like it then, but I figured if I had to do it and wanted to get out, I’d better do it right.”
He grunted again. He was giving Snake’s former downside the once-over.
“I did it by the book. The guy was half-asleep when I got him. But I blew it. He threw me around like a ragdoll. He beat the shit out of me. And all the time I was hanging onto that damned rope. Only good I did was keep him from yelling till somebody could stick a knife in him.”
“The point?”
“If you don’t snap a guy’s neck, he’s going to fight you. And if he breaks loose, even with that Kef sidhe thing around his neck, he sees you and you got to make sure of him any way you can.”
“What you’re sneaking up on is this Snake guy was stronger than whoever hit him. Like that Venageti soldier.”
I hadn’t said the Venageti was stronger than me, but it was true. “Yes.”
“Somebody in the house probably has bumps and bruises. If someone from the house did this.”
“Maybe. Damn! Why couldn’t I have had some luck this once?”
“What do you mean?” He thinks my luck is outrageously good.
“Why couldn’t the killer leave something? A scrap of cloth. A tuft of hair. Anything.”
“Why not just wish for a confession?” Morley shook his head. “You’re so slick, you slide right past yourself. He left you a dagger and a Kef sidhe strangler’s cord. How exotic do you want to get? I told you how rare the cord is. How many daggers have you seen like this one?”
It had a fourteen-inch polished steel blade, which was unusual, but the hilt made it especially interesting. It was black jade, plain except for being jade. But at its widest point, where the middle finger of the hand would rest, there was a small silver medallion struck with a two-headed Venageti military eagle.
“A war souvenir?” Morley suggested.
“An unusual one. Venageti. Nobody lower than a light Colonel would carry it. A battalion commander in their elite forces or a regimental commander or his second in the regulars.”
“Couldn’t be a lot of those around, could there?”
“True.” It was a lead. Tenuous, but a lead. I looked down at Snake. “Man, why didn’t you blurt it out when you had the chance?”
“Garrett.”
I knew that tone. Morley’s special cautionary tone he saves for when he suspects I’m getting involved. Getting unprofessional, he’d call it. Getting bullheaded and careless, too.
“I have it under control. I just feel for the guy. I know what his life was like. It shouldn’t have ended like this.”
“It’s time to go, Garrett.”
“Yes.”
It was time. Before I got more involved emotionally.
I walked away thinking the old saw, There but for the grace of the gods . . . Over and over.
18
Morley wanted a crack at tracking whomever we’d heard fleeing. I gave him his head. He didn’t accomplish anything.
“It’s not right, Garrett.”
“What?”
“I’m getting a bad feeling. Not quite an intuition. Something beyond that. Like an unfounded conviction that things are going to turn real bad.”
Just so I couldn’t ever call him a liar, somebody screamed inside the house. It wasn’t a scream of pain and not quite one of fear, though there was fear in it. It sent those dread chills stampeding around my back. It sounded like a woman, but I couldn’t be sure. I’d heard men scream like that in the islands.
“Stay out of sight,” I told Morley, and took off.
The screams went on and on. I blew inside. They came from the west-side, third-floor balcony. I hit the stair running. Two flights up I slowed down. I didn’t want to charge into something.
The stairsteps were spotted with water drops and green stuff in bits and gobs. Under one lamp lay what looked like a dead slug. I poked it. It wiggled and I recognized it. It was a leech. I’d become closely acquainted with its relatives on that one swampy island.
There was an awful smell in the air. I knew it from that island, too.
What the hell?
There was all kinds of racket up there now. Men yelled. Peters shouted, “Get one of those spears and shove it back down.”
Dellwood, with a squeak higher than the screaming, asked, “What the hell is it?”
I moved upward carefully. I saw men against the head of the stairs, a couple with spears jabbing at something heaving on the stairs. There wasn’t enough light to show it clearly.
I had a suspicion.
Draug.
I got a lamp.
I didn’t want to see what I saw. That thing on the stair was something nobody ever wants to see, and whoever made it least of all.
It was a corpse. One that had been immersed in a swamp. What folklore called a draug, a murdered man who could not rest in death while his killer went unpunished. There are a million stories about draugs’ vengeance but I’d never expected to be a player in such a tale. They’re apochryphal, not concrete. Nobody ever really saw one.
Funny how the mind works. The thoughts you’d expect didn’t come to me. All I could think was: why me? This shot hell out of my simple case.
Peters yelled, “What do we do, Garrett?”
Besides puke? “I don’t know.” You can’t kill a draug. It’s dead already. It would just keep coming till it wore them out. “Try to cut it up.”
Dellwood did upchuck. Chain shoved him aside, flailed away with the ax part of a halberd. A couple of fingers came wriggling down where I stood. They didn’t lose their animation.
“Hold it there. I’ll come around the long w
ay.” I backed down to the balcony.
As I retreated to the stair to the first floor, I spied the woman in white watching from the top balcony east, from a spot where she wouldn’t be seen by the bunch above me. She looked more interested and animated than usual. Like she was enjoying herself. I tried to sneak up on her but she wasn’t there when I got there.
I wasn’t surprised.
I crossed through the loft, went down. The guys were hard at work, poking and hacking and stumbling over each other. Peters said, “This is getting old, Garrett.”
“I’ll buy that. Who’s it after?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Who did the screaming?”
“Jennifer. She ran into it down there somewhere. It followed her up here.”
“Where is she now?”
“In her suite.”
“Hang in there. You’re doing a great job.” I started down the hall. Then came back. Kaid and Chain cursed me. I asked, “Who was it when it was alive?”
Peters bellowed, “How the hell should I know?” He needed to work on his vocabulary. He was in a rut.
“Catch you in a minute.” I headed for Jennifer’s suite, which was identical to her father’s, apparently, one floor below. I tried the door at the end of the hall. Locked and barred. I pounded. “Jennifer. It’s Garrett.”
I heard vague movement sounds. They stopped. She didn’t open up.
I wondered if I’d have the nerve, considering all the tricks the stories say draugs and haunts try.
I tried again. She wasn’t receiving callers. I rejoined the boys. They were hanging in there. Chunks of corrupt, stinking flesh were everywhere. And the draug kept coming. Stubborn cuss. I found a spot from which I could kibbitz. “Figure out who it was yet, Peters?”
“Yeah. Spencer Quick. Disappeared two months ago. The clothes. Nobody dressed like Quick. Lots of black leather. Thought it made the women swoon. You bastard. You just going to stand there?”
I rounded up a five-foot broadsword, the kind they’d used in knighthood days to bash each other into scrap metal. I tested its edge. Not bad, considering. I took up position out of the way, behind where the thing would emerge onto the balcony. “Let it come.”
“You’re crazy,” Kaid told me.
Maybe. “Go ahead. Back off.”
“Do it,” Peters said, trusting me way too much.
They skipped away.
The dead man came in a cloud of stench, dragging what was left of him, lurching into the wall. “What’re you waiting for?” Wayne shrieked at me.
I was waiting for the draug to jump its murderer, that’s what. But it didn’t.
Of course.
They all panicked, grabbed axes and swords, and started swinging. Six of them in a crowd like that, it was a miracle they didn’t kill each other.
I stood back and watched to see if anybody took advantage of the confusion to eliminate another heir.
Now that they had room, they carved the draug into little frisky pieces. Didn’t take them long, either. They were motivated. Wayne, Tyler, and Dellwood kept hacking away long after that was necessary.
They backed off finally, panting. Everybody looked at me like they thought I ought to be next. I got the impression they weren’t satisfied with my level of participation.
“Well, then. That takes care of that. Be smart to collect up the pieces and burn them. Peters, you want to fill me in on this Quick? Who was he and how did he happen to go away without anybody thinking that was strange?”
Chain exploded. Before he could get out a coherent sentence, I said, “Chain, I want you to come with me and Peters and Tyler. We’re going to backtrack that thing.”
“Say what?” Chain gulped air. “Backtrack it?”
“Yes. I want to see where it came from. Might tell us something useful.”
“Shit,” he said, and started shaking. “I want to tell you, I’m scared. I don’t mind admitting it. All my years in the Cantard I wasn’t scared like I am now.”
“You never ran into anything like this. Not to worry. It’s done.”
Peters said, “We have some other men missing, Garrett. Suppose more of those things turn up?”
“Doesn’t seem likely. Draugs don’t run in packs. Usually.” I recalled a couple of stories. There was the Wild Hunt, a whole band of dead riders who hunted the living. “You saw how slow it was. Stay alert. You can outmaneuver them. The thing to remember is, don’t get excited. We might have wrapped this mess up if we’d let the draug go after whoever killed it.”
“Shit!” Chain swore. “It didn’t care. It just wanted to get somebody. Anybody.”
“Maybe. So let’s hit the trail.” I tried to sound perky. “Another glorious night in the Corps.” I didn’t feel perky, not even a little. I was scared stiff. “Arm up if that makes you feel better. And get lanterns.”
Peters grumbled, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Garrett.”
I didn’t have the faintest. I was just rattling around, hoping something would shake loose.
19
“Tyler, move out to the left about ten yards. Chain, you go to the right. I don’t see much of a trail. Keep an eye out.” I disposed myself and Peters between them so we spanned thirty yards. We started from the base of the front steps. “Let’s go.”
Peters said, “It was walking when it came. Wouldn’t leave much of a trail.”
“Probably not. You going to tell me who Quick was before we carved him up?”
“We?” Chain bellowed. “Will you listen to that shit?”
“Calm down,” Peters told him. “I know what he was doing. He was right. You should have told us, Garrett.”
“And warn the villain?”
“He’s pretty well warned now.”
“Safe, too. Oh. Add a name to the victim list. Somebody did it to Snake.”
Peters stopped, held his lantern overhead, glared at me. “You aren’t kidding. Snake? Why the hell Snake?”
I tried to recall who’d been sitting where when I’d let Snake out that door. Hell. Anybody with good ears could have heard. He’d used a stage whisper. Maybe he’d wanted the killer to know. Maybe he’d had something planned and it had turned in his hand. I wouldn’t let a known killer get close enough to put a noose around my neck.
“Here,” Chain said. We moved over. A strip of rotten leather hung on a bush. We redeployed.
I said, “You going to tell me about Quick?”
“I can’t,” Peters said. “I didn’t know him. He was almost as spooky as Snake. Stayed to himself, mostly. You had to use a pry bar to get three words out of him. He did fancy himself a lover. You want to find out about him, talk to the gals at the Black Shark. All I can tell you is he was somebody the General knew and thought he owed. Like all of us.”
I’d passed the Black Shark on the way to the Stantnor place. It was an evil-looking dive. I’d been considering taste-testing the house brew. Now I had business reasons to visit.
“Chain. You know anything about him?”
“Not me. Hell, sour as he was, I wasn’t surprised when he walked. Him and the old man feuded all the time. He never gave a shit about the money, far as I know. He just didn’t have nowhere else to go.”
“Tyler?”
“I didn’t know him, except he played a big role at the Black Shark. Guy was a werewolf, the way he changed personality when a woman was in sight. I figured he found somewhere he wanted to be more than he wanted to stay here.”
Great. The live ones were weird and the dead ones weirder.
We were spread out just enough. We kept finding another trace just before we lost the trail. We adjusted and kept on. It was slow going.
“Who do you think is doing it, Garrett?” Peters asked.
“I don’t have a clue.”
Chain said, “He’ll pass the word when there’s only one of us left.”
“That would work,” I admitted.
Tyler kicked in, “I’d have put money on Snak
e. He was kill-crazy in the islands. He’d go hunting alone if he went too long without action.”
I’d known a few like that, guys who got hooked on the killing. They hadn’t made it through. Death has a way of devouring its acolytes.
“Here,” Peters said. He’d found a place in tall grass where the draug had stopped. The trail was easy now. The grass was trampled down.
The trail pointed toward the swamp Peters had mentioned.
I asked, “You ever heard of Kef sidhe?”
“Kef she? What?”
“Sidhe. As in the race sidhe. Kef sidhe are professional killers. Religious assassins.”
“No. Hell. The nearest sidhe are a couple thousand miles from here. I’ve never seen one.”
Neither had I. “They’re something like elves.”
“What about them?”
“Snake was strangled with a Kef sidhe strangler’s cord. Not exactly a common item in these parts.”
Peters just looked baffled, near as I could tell by lantern light. Damn, he was ugly.
“How about a Venageti colonel’s dress dagger? Were there any souvenirs around?”
“Black-handled thing with a silver medallion? Long blade?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask why?”
“You can. I won’t tell you till I know more about the knife.”
“Snake had one he took off a Venageti colonel that he snuffed during one of his private excursions,” Chain said.
“Damn!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Somebody stuck it in him when the strangler’s cord didn’t work fast enough.” Wouldn’t you know it? Stuck with his own sticker. Hell, next thing I knew I’d find out he committed suicide.
Our villain was probably more lucky than clever, full of tricks that were working out by accident.
Chain said, “Holy shit,” in a soft voice. “We got trouble.”
“What?” Peters demanded.
“Look at this.”
We joined him. He held his lantern as high as he could.
Now there were two trails through the grass, one a yard to the side of the other. Peters and I exchanged glances, then looked at Chain. “Tyler! Get over here.”