D& D - Greyhawk - Night Watch Read Online Free PDF Page B

impression.
    There was more here, though. Something to take note of. It couldn’t be coincidence. Garett didn’t believe in coincidence , especially when murder was involved. He looked to Burge and turned his back to the others. In a voice too low for anyone else to hear, he said, “Kathenor was a seer.”
    Burge raised an eyebrow. “Think there’s a connection, Cap’n?”
    “I think we’re not going back to the Citadel yet,” Garett answered, his head bobbing up and down slowly, his mind racing. Here was a mystery. The high priest of the wealthiest temple in Greyhawk and an old gypsy fortune-teller, both murdered on the same night, apparently in the same hour. He put his hands together and began to rub circles on his left palm with his right thumb. It was a habit he had when confronted with a puzzle. “I want to see the body,” he announced.
    “I told you!” the night watch leader beamed suddenly, his face lighting up as he turned to the Attloi at his side. “If your friend had to get murdered, night’s the time for it. Captain Starlen there, he knows what’s what. We’ll have the killer now, that’s for sure, and soon!” He turned back to Garett, and flashed a proud smile. “Who do you think did it, Captain, sir?”
    Garett put on his best patient expression. “Maybe I’d better see the body first,” he reminded.
    “Right,” the night watchman agreed with a hint of embarrassment. “Right this way.” He parted the Attloi men
    and beckoned, and they all started south on the Processional for the Foreign Quarter.
    The gypsies dwelled in the poorest section of the Foreign Quarter. The stone and stucco tenements rose up ominously, shutting out the moonlight, as the party turned off Marsh Street and walked up Chokerat Road. Here there were no street lamps, and Garett was grateful for the night watchmen’s lanterns. The air in this part of the city smelled vaguely of the swamps that stretched just beyond Greyhawk’s wall. Whenever the wind blew, it brought the marshy odor.
    As they turned another corner and started up Mouser’s Way, the heart of the Attloi community, they spied torches and a crowd of people all quietly packing wagons, hitching mules, and preparing to leave. No matter that it was the dead of night. Even as Garett and his companions drew nearer, a pair of carts separated from the rest and headed for the Marsh Gate, the closest exit from the city. A man and his son drove the mule. A woman and two small daughters walked alongside. No one was speaking.
    The night watch leader brought the group inside Exe-bur’s apartment. The single room was filthy and littered with possessions, knickknacks, and things Garett guessed the old man had scavenged from the alleyways of Greyhawk. A pair of candles burned on the table in the center of the room, and a deck of fortune-telling cards lay scattered all about, as if a powerful wind had swept through the only window.
    On the floor beside a chair that had turned over, Exebur’s body lay in a pool of its own blood. As the night watchman had assured him, the throat had been cut. A thin red line was plainly visible from one side of the neck to the other, and the edge of a single card was still deeply embedded under the left jaw.
    “I’ve seen paper cuts,” Burge muttered, “but this is ridiculous.”
    Garett took one of the candles and knelt by the body. He
    bit his lip. Then, seizing a corner of the deadly card, he drew it out and held it up to better light. Blood streamed down one edge and dripped on the knee of the captain’s trousers until he stood up.
    The card was saturated with Exebur’s life fluid, but it was still possible to see the huge black bird painted upon it, wings displayed, its red eyes burning, a naked man and woman grasped in each of its talons as it swept them into the air.
    Garett shivered as he looked at the card. The Raptor, it was called by the Attloi. Or, sometimes, The Bird of Prey. He placed the card down on the table and