allowing him to slide back into his snowy hole, as she whipped out her blade and ran toward the street to find the captain of the guard stretched out, his throat and stomach ripped open.
“I saw them!” Bud cried as he struggled through the drift. “Rabid weasels! I only got a glimpse, but I saw them! They were giants!”
Beer-Sheba glared at her companion. “How could you possibly see them with a face full of snow and the drift over your head?” She bent over the captain’s body. No tracks showed in the snow around him. Beer-Sheba moved into the empty street. The wind howled and the snow swirled; the Rampant Rooster’s sign creaked on its chains as it swung back and forth above her head. Nothing else stirred, no person crept about, no dog or cat prowled for scraps. Yet clearly something was afoot.
If Beer-Sheba shivered, the cold was not the cause.
She crept toward the broken door of her tavern. Light from the fireplace inside seeped out upon the snow, staining it with shifting shades of orange and yellow and red. In that glow, she observed the footprints of her customers, already filling with snowfall and nearly invisible. With Bud close behind, she moved up the street.
“Something’s there!” Bud whispered, pointing into a narrow alley between a warehouse and a stable. He clutched a beer mug in his hand, a sure sign that he was nervous and ready for action. The dwarf was deadly with a beer mug. Beer-Sheba peered, and then spied something softly fluttering in the wind. With sword held ready, she moved toward it only to find the crouching form of Lady Gravelot.
Lady Gravelot looked up, her eyes bright with terror. “He’s dead!” she cried, pointing farther down the alley. “He’s dead! He tried to kiss me, and then it happened!”
Beer-Sheba recognized hysteria and dealt Lady Gravelot a sharp slap across the face. “Stop it!” she ordered. “What happened?”
Lady Gravelot sniffed. “Lord Pompey! He tried to kiss me! Then suddenly, he was flying around in the air like some animal was shaking him, and blood was flying everywhere! And guts and veins and . . . and whatever! It was awful! Look at my white diaphanous gown!”
More hysteria. Beer-Sheba slapped Gravelot again. “But what killed him? Surely you saw something—some animal or some creature?”
Bud waded through the snow toward the far end of the alley. He made a retching noise and then called back over his shoulder. “It’s Pompey, all right. There’s no head left or much else by which to recognize him, but I know the foppish clothing. Something made a right mess of him.”
“Rabid weasels!” Lady Gravelot cried. Beer-Sheba drew back to slap the hysteria out of her again, but Gravelot put up a hand. “No, honestly! That’s what he kept screaming! It’s like he was seeing something I couldn’t see. But there was nothing there!”
“Well, he couldn’t have done that to himself,” Bud grumbled as he returned to Beer-Sheba’s side.
“I’m not so sure,” Beer-Sheba muttered. She helped Lady Gravelot up. “We’ll see you safely home, but any explanations to your husband are strictly your affair. He might wonder about all the blood.”
Gravelot said nothing as she tried hastily to wipe her hands, but she followed Beer-Sheba and Bud from the alley into the street. In short time, they passed through the town’s rough wooden gate and past the small cluster of homes and shops just outside the walls. All the homes were dark. Here and there, a chewed and shredded body lay along the path. Beer-Sheba watched the doors and windows. She could feel the townspeople cowering behind them, barely daring to peek out.
“Always a man,” Beer-Sheba noted. She turned toward Gravelot. “Why weren’t you eaten, too, I wonder?”
Lady Gravelot clutched her throat. “Too sweet?” she suggested.
Bud snorted. “Old meat is more likely.” Then he stopped in his tracks.
Beer-Sheba stopped, too. Close ahead, the walled estate of Lord and Lady Gravelot stood framed against a background of distant gray mountains. “What is it, Bud?”
“I hear them,” the dwarf whispered, his eyes widening, his bearded face coloring with fear. “Clawing and gnawing! Rabid weasels!”
Beer-Sheba listened. All she heard were snowflakes falling on the crisp ground and the frightened, raspy breathing of her companions. But then, a high-pitched shriek came from behind the walls of the Gravelot estate. A chorus of screams followed that. The manor gates flung open, and a member of the household guard rushed out to collapse in the snow. Beer-Sheba rushed forward