They come and they go.
There are Beings on the Street of Gods. More and less than human, they inspire worship and adoration, fear and awe, and dreams of endless power. No one knows who or what the Beings are. They existed before men built the Street of Gods, and will exist long after the Street is nothing more than rubble and memories. Some say the Beings are distillations of specific realities; abstract concepts given shape and form by human fears or wishes, or simply by the times themselves. Others claim they are simply supernatural creatures, intrusions from other planes of existence. No one knows. They are real and unreal, both and neither. They are Beings of Power, and the Street of Gods is theirs and theirs alone.
They come and they go.
Winter had come early to the city port of Haven, ushered in on blustering winds full of sleet and snow and bitter cold. Thick blankets of snow lay heavily across the roofs and city walls, and hoarfrost pearled the brickwork. Down in the street, the first of the day's pedestrian traffic struggled through the muddy slush, slipping and sliding and cursing each other through numb lips. The cold wind cut through the thickest furs, and frostbite gnawed savagely at exposed flesh. Winter had come to Haven, and honed its cutting edge on the slow-moving and the infirm.
It was early in the morning, the sun little more than a bloody promise on the starless night. The street lamps glowed bravely against the dark, islands of amber light in an endless gloom. Ruddy lanterns hung from horses and carts, bobbing like live coals on the night. And trudging through the cold and dark came Hawk and Fisher, husband and wife and Captains in the city Guard. Somewhere up ahead in the narrow streets and alleyways of the Northside lay a dead man. It wasn't clear yet why he was dead. Apparently the investigating Constables were still trying to find some of the pieces.
Murder was nothing new in the Northside. Every city has a dark and cruel side to its nature, and Haven was no different. Haven was a dark city, the rotten apple of the Low Kingdoms, but murder and corruption flourished openly in the Northside, fueled by greed and hate and bitter need. People died there every day for reasons of passion, desperation, or business. Nevertheless, this latest in a line of bloody murders had shocked even the hardened Northsiders. So the Guard sent in Hawk and Fisher. There wasn't much that could shock them.
Hawk was tall, dark, but no longer handsome. A series of old scars ran down the right side of his face, and a black silk patch covered his right eye. He wore a long furred jacket and trousers and a heavy black Guardsman's cloak. He didn't look like much. He was lean and wiry rather than muscular, and he was beginning to build a stomach. He wore his long dark hair swept back from his forehead and tied with a silver clasp at the nape. He had only just turned thirty, but already there were streaks of grey in his hair. It would have been easy to dismiss Hawk as just another bravo, perhaps a little past his prime and going to seed, but there was something about Hawk; something hard and unyielding and almost sinister. People walked quietly around him, and were careful to keep their voices calm and reasonable. On his right hip Hawk carried a short-handled axe instead of a sword. He was very good with an axe. He'd had lots of practice in his five years as a Guard.
Isobel Fisher walked at Hawk's side, echoing his pace and stance with the naturalness of long companionship. She was tall, easily six feet in height, lithely muscular, and her long blond hair fell to her waist in a single thick plait, weighted at the tip with a polished steel ball. She was in her mid- to late-twenties, and handsome rather than beautiful. There was a rawboned harshness to her face which contrasted strongly with her deep blue eyes and generous mouth. Somewhere in the past, something had scoured all the human weaknesses out of her, and it showed. Like Hawk, she wore the Guard's standard uniform for winter, with a sword at her left hip. Her hand rested comfortably on the pommel.
A thin mist hung about the street, though the weather wizards had been trying to clear it for hours. The cold seeped relentlessly into Hawk's bones as he strode along, and he stamped his boots hard into the slush to try and keep some warmth in his feet. His hands were curled into fists inside his gloves, but it didn't seem to be helping much. Hawk hated the cold, hated the way it leached all the warmth and life out of him. And in particular, he hated being out in the cold and the dark at such an ungodly hour of the morning. But this shift paid the best, and he and Fisher needed the money, so… Hawk shrugged irritably, trying to get his cloak to fall more comfortably about him. He hated wearing a cloak; it always got in the way during fights. But braving the winter cold without a cloak was about as sensible as skinny-dipping in an alligator pool; you tended to lose important parts of your anatomy. So Hawk wore his cloak, and moaned about it a lot. He shrugged his shoulders again, and tugged surreptitiously at the cloak's hem.
'Leave that cloak alone,' said Fisher, without looking at him. 'It looks fine.'
Hawk sniffed. 'It doesn't feel right. The day's supposed to get warmer, anyway. If the mists clear up, I think I might drop the cloak off somewhere and pick it up at the end of the shift.'
'You'll do no such thing. You know you get colds and flus easily, and I'm not nursing you through another one of those. A couple of degrees of fever and you think you're dying.'
Hawk stared straight ahead, pretending he hadn't heard that. 'Where is this body we're supposed to look at, anyway?'
'Silver Street. Just down here, on the left. It sounded fairly gruesome. Do you suppose it'll look like the others?'
'I hope so,' said Hawk. 'I'd hate to think there was more than one homicidal maniac running around on our patch.'
Fisher nodded glumly. 'I hate maniacs. They don't play by the rules. Trying to figure out their motives is enough to drive you crazy.'
Hawk smiled slightly, but the smile didn't last long. If this corpse was as bad as the others he'd seen, it wasn't going to be a pretty sight. A Guard Constable had found the first body down by the Devil's Hook, hanging from a lamppost on a rope made from its own intestines. The second body had been found scattered the length of Hawthorne Alley. The killer had got inventive with the third victim, on Lower Eel Street. The hands had been nailed to a wall. The head was found floating in a water butt. There was no trace of the body's genitals.
Hawk and Fisher turned into Silver Street, and found a crowd already gathered despite the early hour. Nothing like a good murder to bring out a crowd. Hawk wondered briefly what the hell all these people were doing out on the streets at such an unearthly hour, but he knew better than to ask. They'd only lie. The Northside never slept. There was always somebody ready to make a deal, and someone else ready to cheat him.
Hawk and Fisher pushed their way through the crowd. Some of the sightseers reacted angrily at being jostled out of the way, but quickly fell silent as they recognized the two Guards. Everyone in the Northside knew Hawk and Fisher. Hawk paused briefly at the thick line of blue chalk dust the Guard Doctor had laid down to keep the crowd back, and then he took a deep breath and walked quickly over it. The silver torc at his wrist, his badge of office, protected him from the ward's magic, but the blue line always made him nervous. He'd once made the mistake of crossing the line on a day he'd absent-mindedly left his torc at home, and the agonizing muscle cramps had lasted the best part of an hour. Which was why the crowd had pushed right up to the edge of the line but made no move to cross it. Thus ensuring that the scene of the crime remained intact and the Guard Doctor had room to work.
A Guard Constable was standing by, at a respectful distance from the body. His dark red cloak and tunic looked almost garish against the winter snow. He nodded affably to Hawk and Fisher. The Doctor was squatting in the bloodstained snow beside the body, but rose to his feet to nod briefly to the two Captains. He was a short, delicate man with pale face and eyes and large, clever hands. His official cloak was too large for him and looked like a hand-me-down, but he had the standard look of calm assurance that all doctors seem to be issued along with their diplomas.
'I'm glad you're here, Captain Hawk, Captain Fisher. I'm Dr. Jaeger. I haven't had much time with the body yet, but I can tell you this much: The killer didn't use a weapon. He did all this with his bare hands.'
Hawk looked at the body, and had to fight to keep his face impassive. The arms had been torn out of their sockets. The torso had been ripped open from throat to groin and the internal organs pulled out and strewn across the bloody snow. The legs had been broken repeatedly. Jagged splinters of bone pierced the tattered skin. There was no sign of the head.
