Before Rudi could respond, the door to Garett’s office burst open, nearly knocking Rudi from the chair behind it. Korbian Arthuran pushed his head inside. His face was a bloated mask of anger. “This fire has proven a fortunate little diversion for you, Starlen,” he raged, “but you’d better have some results on all these murders by tomorrow—or else, damn it!” The door slammed closed with a force that reverberated through the stone walls.
Rudi stared in surprise, holding an arm up protectively, in case Korbian returned and the door sprang open again. Finally he relaxed and rubbed a knee where the door had struck him. “What was all that about?” he asked.
“Never mind him,” Garett answered offhandedly. “What were you doing in the sewers when I sent you to find Duncan?”
Rudi swallowed and sat straighter in his chair. “I did look for her,” he explained. “But I ran into a patrol coming up the Processional from Old Town. They were on their way to the Citadel.” He hesitated and cleared his throat before looking at his commander again. “They found another floater in the old stream last night, cut up like the others. Only this time, they had a witness, sort of. At least, the old man claimed he saw them dump the body.”
Garett leaned forward. “He didn’t see the killing?”
“No,” Rudi affirmed. “Just two figures in black robes down on Pilfer Street in the Thieves’ Quarter. He says they came up out of the old sewer grate there and dropped the girl in the water.”
Garett frowned at the news. “A girl?”
“Pretty one, too,” Rudi answered. “Or she would have been when she grew up.” He blinked and looked away. “This one’s young, sir, younger than the others and carved up bad.”
Garett’s frown deepened as he began to thumb through the reports, searching for the one from the Thieves’ Quarter watch house.
“I took charge of a patrol and led them down the same grate into the sewers below,” Rudi continued while Garett rifled the papers. “We explored several of the tunnels, but didn’t find anything. That doesn’t mean much, though. There’s miles of tunnels down there.”
Garett gave up his search. The watch house apparently had not turned in its report yet. That didn’t surprise him. Any men that weren’t with Rudi in the sewers were, no doubt, busy fighting the fire in the Halls all night. In fact, the stack of reports on his desk was quite thin. Several watch houses had neglected that particular duty.
“'You believe this old man?” Garett asked Rudi.
“I do, sir,” Rudi answered firmly. “First of all, he seems a decent sort. One of the few people down there with steady, if low-paying, employment of a respectable nature. He’s a street sweeper. Secondly, folks down there are simply too upset about these murders to lie about something like this.”
’“All right, then,” Garett said, rising to his feet. “Don’t bother to change clothes tonight. We’re going back down into the sewers. Assemble four patrols. We’ll go in at different points and comb every inch of those tunnels. If there’s something down there, we’ll find it. Let Blossom and Burge know. They’ll be coming with us.”
“I’ll tell them to dress appropriately,” Rudi assured him.
“Then go grab a bath and some sleep,” Garett ordered. “We’ll all need to be fresh.”
Rudi pulled open the door. “Don’t worry,” he muttered over his shoulder. “An hour down there, and we’ll be fresh enough.”
Garett watched the door close, then slowly sat back in his chair and let his lids slide over his weary eyes. It was a pleasant moment of solitude that he badly needed. The noise of the rain beating at his window shutters was the only sound, and it lulled him gently. He shook it off, though, and rose again. He needed food before he slept, and he needed a bath as well. He left his office and left the Citadel without a word to anybody.
The rain fell in a solid silver sheet. Overhead, the sky was the color of unpolished steel. The air shivered with the force of repeated thunder blasts, and the wind whistled. Lightning crackled.
Instantly drenched, Garett lifted his face to the rain and felt the grit and ash wash away from him and run down into his clothing. At least the rain had a clean smell to it. He strode across the High Market Square, which looked more like a High Lake. The water was halfway up to his ankles. Beyond the square’s entrance, the Processional was a ribbon of dark mud.
If this was wizard-weather, Garett thought smugly, they were a little bit too late. A rain like this might have saved half the homes that the fire had destroyed.
But in his heart, Garett suspected that Prestelan Sun had nothing to do with this storm. He stared toward the tip of the tall black tower that loomed in the distance above the far northern edge of the city. It was barely visible through the curtain of rain, quiet and suddenly ominous.
Forked lightning shattered the sky, and Garett felt his hair stand on end. For an instant, the world turned stark white. Afterimages danced in Garett’s eyes, and he rubbed at them with his fists until his vision cleared. In some part of his brain, he wondered if Rankin Fasterace had made it
home in time to save his precious velvet slippers.
Then, abruptly, he realized he was the only soul in the street as far as he could see. There’s a metaphor in that, he thought wretchedly, hugging himself, for the wind had taken an unseasonably cold edge.
Soaked to the bone, he trudged his way home through lonely streets, and when he finally reached Moonshadow Lane and climbed the stairs to his small apartment, he thought the place had never felt quite so welcome.
Let the storm rage, he thought. It can’t get in.
After the rainstorm, the summer heat once more asserted itself. The night air was thick and humid,
and a carpet of mist blanketed most of the city. Overhead, black clouds, like monstrously distorted birds, raced across the sky. Only rarely did either of Oerth’s two moons dare to peek through.
The weather had put a pall on the city. In most quarters, the streets were empty. Even in the River Quarter, only a few of the boldest dockers and the most determined celebrants dared to challenge the ankle-deep mud and the winding, fog-bound roads to quaff a couple of beers. The taverns were strangely quiet. The women of the Sea Willow hung languidly out their windows, watching the night pass with bored eyes, or leaned in the doorway, allowing the scant breeze to blow upon their bodies as they restlessly wiped sweat-soaked locks back from their foreheads and thought their private thoughts. The air, usually rich with aromas from the many restaurants, bore only the fetor of the rain, mist, and muck.
Greyhawk seemed poised, Garett thought silently to himself, as if the whole city were waiting for something to happen. He felt it, too, though he couldn’t say how or why. He had slept through the entire afternoon, and his belly was full with Almi’s food. Physically, he felt great. But the quiet unnerved him.
The calls of those ever-present blackbirds in the sky caused him to look up. Kule, Oerth’s brighter moon, winked ever so shyly through the clouds and vanished again. Of the birds he saw nothing, but he heard them, heard their shrills, heard the soft beating of their wings. “Still no word from the Wizards’ Guild?”
Garett started at the sound of his own voice. Had he really spoken so loudly? The words, though muffled by the fog, ricocheted in his ears. He was sure he had only whispered. Still, it was as good as blasphemy, the way it broke the unnatural quiet.
Burge’s boots made a sick, squishing sound as he slipped a bit in the mud and recovered his balance. “Nothin’ at all, Cap’n,” he answered lowly. His eyes combed the fog as he and Garett walked, searching the swirls and eddies, as if the lieutenant expected shapes to form or foes to attack them from out of the mist. His hand never left the hilt of his sword. Such behavior surprised Garett. He thought he had never seen his half-elven friend so on edge before. Burge jerked his head to the left as they passed the darkened mouth of an alley, and watched it until they were well beyond. Only then did he continue. “Their porters aren’t even answerin’ knocks at the gate. No one�
��s even sure if they’re there.”
Garett looked up as they passed under a street lamp. It hung like a pale, washed-out ball in the gray haze, the post on which it was mounted little more than a tenuous shadow. Without stopping, he reached out to touch it to assure himself it was there.
“"You think they’ve used their magic to teleport away?” he asked uneasily. He didn’t want to think about what it meant if all the wizards—if Prestelan Sun himself—had fled Greyhawk. But why not? First the gypsy Attloi had departed. Then the magical races, the dwarves, elves, ores, and others, had slipped quietly away. Next a dragon that had lived in quiet secrecy for years as a human poet in the Halls had panicked and fled. Why not the wizards?
Garett repressed a shudder and thought unpleasantly of animals fleeing the path of a deadly storm. Even more unpleasantly, he had the feeling he was about to get caught out in the rain again.
He and Burge approached the Black Gate that led into Old Town. The guard there had been doubled at his order, and he’d tripled the patrols on the streets, though it had meant juggling shift assignments at the barracks and caused some unhappy grumbling. But he’d made himself clear. All watchmen were to be on the streets in teams of four throughout the night. No hiding out in the watch house. There’d be no more little girls stolen from their families and murdered in the night if he could prevent it.
From the guards at the gate, Garett and Burge took a pair of torches and continued on along the Processional. Old Town was just as eerily quiet as New Town, and the night seemed to hold its breath. The taverns were all closed early. Not a candle burned in any window. All was darkness, save for the glimmering of their own two torches.
Up ahead, though, as they rounded a bend in the Processional, they spied the collective gleams of many torches. The fires shimmered weakly in the silver mists, and spectral figures stirred, muttering and coughing, by Kastern’s Bridge.
“Hail, watchmen,” Garett called, uncomfortable with the way he kept his voice pitched low. He couldn’t escape the feeling that there was something out there in the night, something ominous that might be sleeping, as most things did in the night. If no one spoke too loudly, perhaps it wouldn’t waken.
“Hail yourself, Captain,” Blossom said, stepping away from the rest as she raised a hand in salute. She, too, kept her voice down unconsciously, and though she addressed Garett Starlen, her eyes wandered warily beyond him into the fog. “All assembled, as you ordered, sir.”
Garett cast a half-interested glance at the twenty torches dotting the night, barely noting the men who held them. Blossom and Rudi would have picked the best men; he had no worry on that account. He walked a few paces out onto Kastern’s Bridge. The ancient boards creaked under his bootsteps, but with a strangely wet and muted quality. He leaned on the side and peered over. The waters of the South Stream, swollen by the rain, rushed beneath, white-capped and swirling. It might have made a roaring torrent as it swept between its muddy banks, but even the stream seemed oddly muffled.
Garett tried to shake free the lethargy that filled his mind. Almost without his noticing, Burge, Blossom, and Rudi had slipped up beside him on the old bridge. They were his team, his most trusted friends.
“I haven’t forgotten the assignment I gave you, Lieutenant Blossom,” he said in a near whisper. “I still want to talk to the watchmen who found the bodies down here. But it’ll have to wait until morning. I want these sewers searched thoroughly. I mean, for the slightest clue or shred of evidence.”
“Question them when you will, Captain,” she answered. A breeze blew a strand of blond hair across her face. She reached up and swept it back with a gesture as she stared down into the water under the bridge. There was an uneasy look upon her face. “I brought them along. They’re part of our search party.”
Garett straightened, turned away from the stream, and regarded the gathered watchmen with new interest. “Which ones?” he asked, and Blossom pointed out six men. “Does that include whoever discovered the new girl?”
“A civilian did that,” she reminded him curtly, intending no impertinence. “But, yes, the officer who took the report and pulled the body out of the water is there.” She pointed the man out with an extended finger. The man looked their way, realizing he had become the object of discussion.
Garett only nodded. Later, he might want to personally question the old man who had found the girl’s body, but he didn’t want a citizen along on the search they were undertaking tonight. It was enough that Blossom or that officer knew the location of the drainage grate the old man claimed the murderers had emerged from before they dumped their victim’s body.
He looked up suddenly and scrutinized the nearest rooftops, those he could see in the fog. “Burge,” he said in a grumble, knowing the half-elf s eyesight was better than his own. “Anything up there?”
Burge scanned the roofs, turning in a slow circle as he did so. At last, he pursed his lips and shook his head. “Just some birds,” he muttered.
Garett sensed eyes upon him as surely as if a hand were touching him on the neck. The tiny hairs there rippled and stood on end. He tried to brush the feeling aside. Maybe it was one of the Old Town gangs watching from a rooftop or a shadowed alley. Or maybe it was a Thieves’ Guild member, carefully hidden, waiting to report his observations to Sorvesh Kharn.
But a worse thought occurred to Garett. At least one of the murderers they were after was a magician of great power, able to strike down from a distance Greyhawk’s most gifted seers, possibly powerful enough to drive away a rare dragon and spread a muted panic through the magical races and magic-sensitive people of the city.
Every step in his investigation brought Garett closer to that unknown wizard. He suddenly felt the weight of the five amethyst crystals in the purse beneath his belt and realized just how vulnerable he was. It might very well be that same magician who watched him now.
Garett felt cold. The mist slithered around his feet, and the wind blew feather-soft on his cheek. He stared down at the drainage grate. “Get it up,” he said.
Blossom directed a pair of brawny watchmen to lift the heavy grate. As they bent to the task, Garett turned toward the South Stream. Perhaps fifteen paces to its banks, he estimated. He envisioned two black-cloaked men emerging from the drain, disposing of a body, and vanishing again. With night to hide them, it would have been swift work and easy. It was only luck that anyone had seen them.
The grate made a loud shriek and clang, metal against metal and stone, as the two watchmen lifted it from its grooved joints, moved it aside, and set it down. Garett noted the noise instantly. His gaze swept along the dark buildings on either side of the stream’s bank. The windows were dark. Not a lamp or candle burned. Such a racket would surely draw attention. He wondered suddenly why Rudi’s witness, the old man, hadn’t mentioned it.
With the grate removed, he leaned over and shone his torchlight down the black hole. The light didn’t penetrate far. He set his foot on the first of the iron rungs, which were set deep into the moss-covered stonework, and began his descent into the sewers.
Brackish water rushed below him. In the stone-lined tunnel, it made a potent roar that filled his ears. The smell of it, a fetid, sour pungency, was almost enough to drive him back up again. He stepped down, seeking the flooring. The water surged around his ankles, up his shins, almost to his knee before he finally found footing. He let go of the rungs, careful to keep his torch dry, and with his free hand tugged the tops of his boots higher over his thighs. Then he unfastened his sword from around his waist, buckled the weapon’s belt again, and slung it over his shoulder so that it hung upon his back. He had no intention of dragging a fine blade or its scabbard through that water.
Burge came down next, and Garett moved out of the way. The light of a second torch did little to repel the oppressive gloom. The water swirled, darkly gleaming, swollen by the torrential rain. Garett moved closer to examine the bricked wall. Mold and lichen had grown thick in the cracks where the ancie
nt mortar had crumbled away. He put his hand out about shoulder height. It was easy to see on the wet stonework how high the drainage had reached during the peak of the storm.
“Ugh!” Burge exclaimed, clamping his nostrils shut with his free hand and making a face as he turned around. “You wanna find the murderers, Cap’n?” he said sarcastically. “We don’t need to go through this. Let’s just walk through town and sniff. If they been runnin’ around down here long, they’ll be easy to spot.”
Another pair of men descended, and the sewer began to brighten with the added light. Garett wasn’t sure that was an advantage, though, as he regarded the garbage and waste that floated by. Something brown and unpleasant brushed against his boot and stuck to the leather until he shook his leg to dislodge the foul mass.
The rest of the party reassembled below, leaving two men above to guard the opened grate. Soon, the patch of tunnel in which they found themselves was as bright as day. Still, Garett wondered if they would find any clues to the Old Town murders, or if the storm had completely washed any evidence away.
The last watchman down hesitated on the final rung and glared around. He made a wrinkled face and muttered. “I’m missing a decent night’s sleep for this?”
Apparently he was one of the daytimers that Blossom had conscripted for this particular duty. “Think of sleep as dying,” she told the man, slapping him rudely on his rump. “Then you won’t miss it so much.”
“She’s one of my favorite people,” Rudi whispered with a snide wink to Burge and Garett.
“Yeah,” Burge agreed, keeping his voice low, though Blossom surely heard every word being said. “But your sense of humor will be the death of you someday. If she’d actually shown up in dress uniform, as you tried to convince her was our fair captain’s order, you’d be her favorite snack food by now.”
D& D - Greyhawk - Night Watch Page 12