to find the man’s back slashed open, his spine nearly severed. With his last breath, he raised a hand and gasped, “Rabid weasels!”
Lady Gravelot also screamed. “My beloved husband! My Hugo!”
Beer-Sheba scowled. Gravelot wouldn’t be offering any explanations to her beloved husband tonight or any night. She ran through the gates and through the open manor doors, finding dead servants and guards everywhere.
“Don’t you have any maids?” Beer-Sheba inquired. It couldn’t be a coincidence that all the victims were men.
“What kind of fool do you think I am?” Gravelot snapped indignantly. “I never hire women. I wouldn’t trust my husband with them!”
Beer-Sheba rolled her eyes and hugged her cloak more closely around her for warmth. The manor’s main hall was a gory scene of death and destruction with splattered walls and blood-slick floors. Gravelot had quite a cleanup job ahead. “Now that your husband isn’t an issue, you might want to rethink that,” she said.
The Lady Gravelot sprang to a staircase. “I don’t know that Hugo is dead yet!” she shouted. “He can’t be dead! I love him!” With that, she gathered her gown and bounded up the stairs to the upper levels.
“Shall we follow her?” the dwarf inquired.
Beer-Sheba shook her head. “I can’t think of a reason why. We walked her home—that was all I promised.” She headed for the door. “I want to search a little further up the road.”
As they passed back into the snowy night, Beer-Sheba heard a long wail behind them. The sound echoed through the manor and followed them into the road. For a moment, she felt a twinge of sympathy for Lady Gravelot. It couldn’t be easy to lose a Hugo.
“You said you heard them,” Beer-Sheba said to Bud.
Bud nodded. “A monstrous sound! My very scrotum shriveled up in fear.” He glanced from side to side as they walked, dark eyes searching, and a beer mug ready in each hand. Beer-Sheba had fought many a battle with Bud at her side, but she’d never seen him so wary and anxious.
Not far outside of town, they arrived at a bridge over a frozen creek. There were no footprints at all in the snow. If any of her customers had passed this way, the snowfall had long since covered their tracks. Beer-Sheba paused long enough to gaze toward the looming mountains and back at the Gravelot estate. Some feeling—not a rabid weasel!—gnawed in the back of her mind. She felt that she was being watched.
Frowning, she stepped onto the bridge. With a loud howl, a snow-troll leaped up from the frozen creek to block her path. Its pale skin and white hair camouflaged it in the snowfall, yet Beer-Sheba saw it raise a massive fist to strike her down. As she raised her blade, Bud flashed heroically past her and slammed his fire-hardened glass mugs down upon the creature’s bare toes. The snow-troll roared in pain and swept the dwarf aside to turn toward Beer-Sheba again.
Beer-Sheba swept the folds of her cloak back, revealing her chainmailed bikini-clad body in all its shapely glory. The troll hesitated. “Huh?” it grunted as it looked closer. It was all the hesitation Beer-Sheba needed. She slammed a booted foot into its trollish groin. The creature doubled over in pained surprise. Beer-Sheba swung her blade in a glimmering arc and blood showered the snowy bridge as the troll’s head flopped over the edge and into the frozen dark.
Bud stood back as the troll fell dead. “He just got mugged,” Bud said.
“Cut down in his prime,” Beer-Sheba added. “And that’s the advantage of a chainmail bikini. They fall for it every time.” She wiped her blade and sheathed it.
The dwarf nudged the far larger troll with a boot. “Think this is what got the others? It’s practically invisible in this kind of a storm. That might explain why so few people saw it.”
Beer-Sheba pursed her lips thoughtfully, and then pointed to the ground. “This thing leaves footprints,” she observed. “Very big footprints. And it wasn’t exactly silent when it attacked us.”
She moved forward, jumping the troll’s body and crossing the bridge with an energy and eagerness that surprised her. The cold wind blew against her face and swept through her hair, but she barely noticed.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Bud observed with a wry grin.
Beer-Sheba let go a deep sigh and admitted, “I haven’t felt this alive since we braved the dreaded labyrinths of Sefwah and fought the Flame Wars.”
“Those were good days and good times,” Bud acknowledged. “I’ve been thinking