Paul Kidd: White Plume Mountain

“Sweet Pelor!” One officer stood and carefully examined anoutstretched hand that held a dagger. The hand lay at least three feet away from its original body. “What in the name of the Abyss did this?”

Hovering at the alley entrance, a small boy stared in horrified fright. The boy’s father pushed the lad quickly back out of view andkept himself well away from the blood-spattered cobblestones.

“We heards them fighting, the lad and me, heards themfighting a while after sunset.” The man bobbed his head as he spoke, lookingleft and right like a terror-stricken bird. “Screaming like fear itself, theywere. Kept screaming for nigh ten minutes till it was done.”

At least a dozen men lay slaughtered in the alleyway. Dark clothing, hoods, cloaks and sheathed weapons had been scattered like chaff. One law officer rolled over the torso of a corpse, dislodging a storm of flies. The dead man had a pocket in his cloak lining that contained several thin strips of birchwood.

“Sir? Birch.”

Flat birchwood strips could be wormed through cracks in doors and window shutters to lift latches free. A cursory search of the bodies turned up climbing hooks and ropes, lockpicks, and chisels.

The senior officer pondered. This had been a very large party of burglars. Trigol was blessed with three different thieves’guilds-organizations that robbed rich and poor alike while running protectionrackets across the city. There was no way of telling one guild from another.

Waving the stink away with his cloak, the senior officer backed fastidiously away from the corpses. “Why were they here?”

The peasant at the end of the street edged nervously forward, watching the shadows and the skies. “They drink there sometimes, sir, in thecellar tavern down at the end of the street. We sees them, but we doesn’t go in.But you didn’t hear it from me, sir! Common knowledge, sir. Common as muck!”

It was all news to the three law officers. Law enforcement in Trigol consisted of armed patrols to keep the streets safe. The doings of the thieves’ guilds remained an absolute mystery. With refugees from fallen kingdomsflooding into the city and bringing their cults and feuds, there was already more trouble than the law could handle. The new temples with their private armies and their mutual hate were a far more present source of danger.

There was nothing to be gained from standing in an alleyway filled with carrion. The law officers retreated, waving the town guard forward to do their job. A heavy cart was backed into the alleyway, and long firepoles prodded a gelatinous cube into the lane. The giant jelly moved slowly over the corpses, absorbing them into its ever-hungry mass one by one. As the creature slurped and slobbered, one officer, more conscientious than most, stalked over to the nervous peasant and tried talking to the man.

“Did you see what happened, Citizen?”

“No, sir!” The peasant kept his eyes searching the roof linesoverhead. “We heards them, though, heards them start and heards them finish!Stayed indoors with the doors bolted until the other gentlemen arrived an hour later.”

“Other gentlemen?”

“Big fellows, sir-swords and cloaks.” The man kept up hisvigil, looking the rooftops up and down. “Not from your side of the law, if youcatch my drift, sir. But we didn’t want no trouble. We told them what we heardjust like we done with you.”

The man pushed his son out of sight behind him and backed hastily away, leaving the three lawmen standing in the street alone. The men faced each other, unwilling to confess that they had pieced together no real clues.

One officer tapped slowly and thoughtfully at his chin. “Twothieves’ guilds? Two groups attacking one another?”

“Then why aren’t any of the dead locked in combat?” Hiscomrade motioned to the corpses. “These men look like they were slaughtered asthey tried to flee.”

Two of the officers shrugged and went their separate ways. Their comrade stood gazing in anxiety down the alleyway, his brow furrowed as he tried to picture just what horror might have come to roost in Trigol.

A flicker of motion amongst the trash suddenly caught his eye. The man walked a little way into the alley and stooped to examine a huge white feather that had been trapped underneath a corpse. The feather was long and stiff. It looked like a feather from an eagle or perhaps a swan. The officer made to touch the thing but hesitated as a sudden sensation of revulsion set his flesh creeping. The man jerked his hand away and suddenly looked up to scan the rooftops.

With a nervous stir of motion, a thin face peeked about the alley corner. The peasant’s son saw the law officer and crept a little closerwith awe shining in his eyes. He spared another glance at the rooftops, then nervously came forward.

“Is the lady going to punish all the thieves, sir?”

The law officer stared from the boy to the feather and slowly rose. “What lady, son?”

“The white lady. The one who said she was going to eat up alltheir souls.” The boy watched the shadows, his big eyes gleaming with terror.“She came here with a man, and the man had the star-sword. Are they comingback?”

The officer backed out of the alleyway, shepherding the boy back out into the light.

“I don’t know, son.” The officer slowly wiped clean hishands. “Get inside. And tell your family not to go out when it gets dark.”

Crouching as he ran, the Justicar sped through the shadows,making enough noise to wake the dead. Dried blackberry brambles cracked as he crashed through the dark underbrush. For the moment, speed came first and foremost.

His enemies would be unable to hear anything above their own clumsy progress through the brush. By the time they thought to stand still and listen, the Justicar had found a hollow covered over with bracken fronds and had gone to ground. Utterly invisible, he lay with his sword gripped in his left gauntlet, his sharp senses feeling every stir and movement in the night.

A second set of senses worked alongside his own. The Justicar lifted his head and slowly scanned the darkness. “Cinders? Talk to me.”

Sentience rippled through the black pelt hanging across the Justicar’s shoulders. Tall canine ears twitched, and the black fur seemed totingle as the creature scented approaching prey.

A whisper sounded in the Justicar’s mind. Left.

“Human?”

Ogre and one man.

That would be the caravan’s “scout” with more of his ogreambush party. The Justicar’s hard gaze glared at the brambles, distastewrinkling his face as he planned punishment for the unworthy souls.

There would be another human, a man riding a horse with a golden tail-most probably the leader of the bandits. The Justicar tried topicture just where the man might be even as he heard the ogres crash toward him through the dry ferns on their way to the caravan.

Close!

The Justicar lay flat, his own senses tingling as the pelt’scanine ears swiveled to track the enemy that came blundering through the brush. They passed by the Justicar’s hiding place. He let them move past him, rose tothe ragged rhythm of their movements, then drove his sword through an ogre’sspine.

The dying creature screeched in agony, its death screams causing other ogres to stop and search wildly through the brush. The Justicar twisted his blade and ripped it free, whipping about to face a maddened charge.

Three ogres roared in blood-curdling fury as they lumbered through the ferns. One leaped high to clear a stand of blackberries, and the black sword met it in mid-flight with a heavy, deadly sound. The force of the blow doubled the massive creature in two. The Justicar ripped his blade free before the creature even hit the ground, leaving the huge corpse to crash beside him in a thunder of blood and broken steel.