Bitter Gold Hearts

It's a lot easier to seethe against Raver Styx and her ilk. They profit no matter how the fighting goes. I used the route Saucer head and Amiranda had fol­lowed. The moon was now full. The team didn't mind night travel, even with me at the traces. And the nation of horses has been out to get me ever since I can remember. It was a smooth, quiet ride with very little to see. The only traffic I encountered was the night coach from Derry, half an hour ahead of schedule and just lumping along with its two or three somnolent passengers and load of mail. Guard and driver tossed me friendly greetings, which showed how worried they were about the night. I suppose, theoretically, that I should have had one hand on a silver blade at all times. There was a full moon. But there hadn't been a confirmed wolfman inci­dent this close to the city since before I went into the Marines.

Once I did unravel a murder that had been dressed up to look like a wolfman's work. It's a hell of a way to make sure your old man doesn't get the chance to write you out of the will. I reached the dire crossroad about the same time Saucer head had. I gave it a look around as it stood, considering the fact that there was more moon than there had been that night. I didn't see or get a feel for any­thing, so I loosened the horses' harnesses, made sure they couldn't run off, climbed onto the buggy's seat, and napped. I did a good job of snoozing, too. I thought first light would waken me, but the honor went to a ten-year-old who shook my shoulder and asked, "Are you all right, mister?"

I counted my hands and feet and purse and discovered that I hadn't been murdered, mutilated, or robbed. "I am indeed, son. Except maybe for a case of premature senility."

He looked at me funny and asked a few kidlike ques­tions. I tried giving reasonable answers and asked him a few in turn. He was on his way somewhere to help somebody with farm chores, but he let me buy him breakfast. Which goes to show how tame it really is around TunFaire these days, for all we city people put down the country. No city boy would have risked hang­ing around with a stranger. The real monsters of today live in the city's shadows and cellars and drawing rooms.

He didn't tell me one thing even remotely useful. Acting on the premise that it is never wise to put temptation into the path of an honest man, I led my team into the woods opposite the area I intended to explore. I made sure the beasts wouldn't have the pleasure of de­serting me, returned to the diamond, and checked to make sure they and the rig were invisible, then went across and started looking through the bushes. It wasn't hard to find where the dead and wounded had been thrown into hurried concealment. The brush was torn and trampled. The corpses had been cleared away but their drippings had been ignored, at least by the cleanup crew. The flies and ants had come and gone. The bloodstains were now the province of a gray-black, whisk­ery mold that described perfectly every spot and spill. Which didn't tell me anything except that a lot of people had done a lot of bleeding.

My woodcraft was no longer what it had been in my Marine days, but it took no forest genius to follow either of the trails leading deeper into the woods. The first I tried split after about a third of a mile, heavy traffic having turned eastward suddenly. It looked like four or five ogres had been on Saucer head's trail when they were recalled by their buddies. The other trail ran down into the woods east of where I stood.

I didn't need to follow Saucer head to know where he'd gone. I turned east.

Five hundred yards along I paused, planted the back of my lap on a fallen tree trunk, and told my brain to get to work. I knew what I would find if I went on a little farther. I could hear the flies buzzing and the wild dogs bickering with the vultures. Much closer and I would smell it, too. Did I have to look?

Basically, there was no getting out of it. There was maybe one chance in a hundred that I was wrong and the centerpiece of that grisly feast was a woods bison. If I was right, chances were ten to one against me finding anything that would split things wide open. But you can't skimp and take shortcuts. The odds are always against you until you do stumble across that one in ten.

Still, dead people who have been lying around in the woods for days aren't particularly appealing. So I spent a few minutes considering a spider web with dew gems still on it before I put my dogs on the ground and started hoofing it toward a case of upturned stomach.

Five years in the Marines had brought me eyeball to eyeball with old death more times than I cared to remem­ber, and my life since has provided its grisly encounters, but there are some things I can't get used to. Conscious­ness of my own mortality won't let me.