The young woman shouted, “You can’t leave me, you nasty woman! Just you try it! I’ll catch you if I have to . . . sleep with a man and kill him and steal his horse!”
It bemused me that Bea had arrived at that as the first solution for her predicament. “Whistler, turn around and take her home. The path is probably choked with dangerous foxes and badgers and cows.”
Halla spoke from behind me. “I would like to keep your manservant. When the dog possessor tries to kill me, I can hide behind this man, who will be killed instead. Let him stay.”
I waved a hand at her. “Don’t be humorous.”
“Oh, no.” Halla examined Whistler and then me. “I am not being humorous.”
Whistler smiled at Halla, his brown teeth looking normal in the moonlight. In his gravelly voice, he said, “You see, Bib? You need me. It’s fated by the gods.”
“What horseshit!”
Actually, it might not have been horseshit. The gods might have been fating us to do all kinds of things, and I would never have known it. But it pleased me to say horseshit because Whistler was making me mad and I hated the gods worse than a stick in the eye. “We may be going to get our damned heads cut off! You don’t know.”
Whistler laughed. “Bib, since you showed up, I’ve gotten richer than I’ve ever been in my life. Richer than anybody I ever knew.”
“Don’t you have enough money already, then?”
Whistler cocked his head and stared at me as if I’d said he had already had enough sex and needed no more. “No. Bib, you are lucky. Or at least I’m lucky when you’re around, and that’s good enough.”
Halla cleared her throat, and I knew the argument was over.
“Well, come on, then.” I pointed at Bea. “You go home.”
Bea stiffened for ten seconds and then slumped. “All right. But you promise me that you won’t fail. Or die.”
“Well . . . I promise that if I have to do one, then I’ll do the other as well.” I was lying right to her face, of course. If death seemed likely, I would run like hell and not worry a jot about failure.
Whistler leaned in to say something to Bea. She stumbled against him for no damn reason at all, except to press herself against his body. She gazed up at him. “I could be useful on the trail. I can cook and gather wood. I can set a fine snare.”
Whistler glanced at me. My expression must have been monstrous, because he shook his head and stood her up straight. “It’s too dangerous.”
Bea turned toward me. “Can I at least wait until the sun is up before I leave?”
I snapped, “You can wait until Krak sings on your birthday for all I care, as long as you don’t follow us.”
Bea walked off toward the horses, letting her hand linger on Whistler’s arm. She sat down close to the mule, facing away from us.
I continued to keep watch until two hours before sunrise, when Whistler walked up to me. He normally favored his right leg a little, so I knew his step. He cleared his throat and pointed. “Bib, something strange is out there.”
“Go kill the shit out of whatever it is.”
“I don’t know whether it’s that kind of strange. I mean, maybe it’s not strange like a wolf you can club, but maybe it’s strange like a ghost or something.”
I peered out where he had pointed. Something sure as hell was there. After a few seconds, I noticed small things moving through the grass, almost too subtle to see. Then two eyes glowed green in the moonlight. Several more somethings joined in, their eyes bright under the big moon. The horses started snorting and stamping.
“Halla!” I pointed and drew my sword.
Several of the things stopped moving, and I scrutinized them. “They’re plains cats.”
A plains cat bulked about twice the size of a house cat. It dined on rats, gophers, and inattentive snakes. I couldn’t count the waving tails in the grass, but I saw forty or fifty glowing eyes.
From behind me, Bea gasped. “Where did all those damned eyeballs come from?” She bent and grabbed a long stick of firewood.
I turned and saw another seventy or eighty eyes out past Bea. I scanned the whole area and estimated more than two hundred eyes. It might have been three hundred. Once the number of cats ripping into your flesh exceeds a hundred, the exact total is mere curiosity.
I swiveled my head in all directions. “I’m not so tired as I thought.”
Halla was gazing around too. “Yes, I could ride away right now if necessary.”
Whistler was already saddling Bea’s mule. “We’re not leaving her behind!” he snarled over his shoulder.
I didn’t have any idea of contradicting him. All of us saddled our mounts in a hurry and rode away into the darkness exactly as fast as a scared mule. None of the eyeballs chased us, so I suppose we left the plains cats behind. I didn’t see any more before sunrise, but I turned in the saddle to check now and then, just to be safe.
FIVE
I have found that murdering somebody becomes far easier when you know where they are. Knowing other things about them helps too. Are they an innately supernatural being or some perverse sorcerer? Also, understanding what they want and how many ways they can kill you may prove decisive, although it is rare to possess all that knowledge.
We didn’t know any of those things about Floppy-Ass, but I hoped that this oracle would.
We arrived at the fair before midmorning. It stood surrounding the crossroads and spread three hundred paces in every direction. It lay within walking distance of five villages and two dozen outlying farms. Hundreds of people wandered and jostled around. The fair ended today, so everybody would come. People had raised a few simple canvas tents, others had set up rude stalls, and one wooden