Detective Strongoak and the Case of the Dead Elf. Terry Newman

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СКАЧАТЬ by the smell of treasure trove, or maybe it was the drink, or perhaps I was guilty of not yet giving the case the attention it deserved … either way, I didn’t hear the swish of the mace until the briefest of moments before it took me with it into the dark that has no name. It’s like the dark that has got a name, but it was rotten to its parents and they disowned it completely, which has made it a whole lot meaner.

      A rhythm section began playing on my skull’s back door – a good solid bass thump with fast persistent beating timpani. Nothing too refined involving brushes or sticks with tapered shoulders and fancy tips, just good solid mallets that displaced thinking with a pulsing cavalcade of agony.

      Carefully I opened my eyes. I was lying on my front on the rug. I tried to focus on it, but the gnomes’ handiwork just made my head spin, so I tried my sleeve instead. When that didn’t work I compromised and concentrated on my hand. As I raised it into view, a few tiny grains of sand caught the last of the evening light and fell onto the patterned flooring.

      The different percussive elements at play in my noggin became identifiable: the beating was the blood returning to the pulpy spot on my head and the thumping turned into Grove’s footsteps coming up the stairs four at a time. He burst into the room.

      ‘Axes and blood, I thought you were gone too long!’

      Grove helped me carefully to my feet. Whatever had been under the bed was long gone, as was my attacker. Grove then picked me up and carried me down the stairs, which would have been embarrassing if I could have got there any other way. As it was I didn’t complain. He put another large glass of his special gravy inside me. This made me feel, not so much better, as just rather less. A third, however, had me wanting to go hunting dragons with a fruit knife. Instead we opted to go looking for managers, as they were now suspiciously overdue.

      We found him unceremoniously dumped, tied up in a storeroom, assailant unseen and unknown. A busy officious man, he wanted someone to blame. He decided I would do, which I didn’t need, so I quickly helped myself to what passes for fresh air at that time of year in the Citadel. Before I departed I pledged to keep Grove informed of my findings. Grove, in turn, said he would pull in a few favours and see if there had been any word concerning young Goodfellow’s departure. He would also try to get more information from the manager, when he was in a better mood. Grove slipped a small bottle of his special gravy into my pocket, in case the pain returned. We shook on it. He had the kind of grip that reminds you of how tree roots are supposed to be able to split stone, given the time and the inclination, but he held my calloused mitt as carefully as a first-time mother holds a baby. I felt so secure I almost burst into tears. Then again, three of those drinks will do that to anybody.

      Things were beginning to buzz and the nightworms were moving when I left The Old Inn and hit the cobbles. Lights appeared on everything that wasn’t moving and quite a few things that were; blue elf lights of iris-popping purity, yellow dwarf lights, homely and welcoming, and red wizard lamps, glowing with hidden power and slightly sinister, like a prophet with a hard-on. And everywhere multicoloured gnome lights – instant party-time for Hill folk. Evening vendors were out early to catch those homeward bound. Spice sausage and burnt-blood pudding, cold taffies and the prince of pickles, a heady cocktail for the nose and instant indigestion for the over-stressed Citadel shuttle worker. And all mixed together with the smoke and choke of too many folks, in too little space, driving too many wagons. Representatives from every corner of Widergard: men and elves, dwarfs and gnomes, goblins and trolls, most minding their own business, some minding other people’s business and no small number looking for business.

      The night-time Citadel clocking on for the summer evening shift.

      The roads to Old Town were as packed as I had ever seen them. Citadel guards, in warm-weather outfits of short-sleeved tabards and dark visors, were directing traffic with the air of tired magicians, to the music of a thousand overworked steam-powered fans. I was making far better time than anyone stuck in a wagon, boilers and tempers overheating. Old Town is not actually any older than anywhere else in the Citadel, the Hill being built all of a period, as it were. It just so happens that the High Council thinks it’s a good idea to corral all the visitors and tourists into one particular area – makes it easier to get at their bulging purses. I pushed my way through rubber dragons, battle-axe keyrings and various other tasteful knick-knacks until I ended up by a small pavement inn at the corner of Twelve Trees and Mine, and it was there that I ran into the march and the reason why traffic was backing up.

      Demonstrations were the big thing of that year’s election campaigns. All the major parties had been out and about, airing their views and bad haircuts. Near riots had accompanied some of the more volatile pairings as rival supporters met and clashed. This march, however, was not of that ilk. This was forged from a different metal. In front of me a new force in Citadel politics was flexing its muscles.

      My progress interrupted, I got myself a glass of something dark and sticky from a roadside vendor and sat and watched the free entertainment. I could see the placards above the heads of the watching crowd, carried by members of the newly convened Citadel Alliance Party. The placards were all very neatly written, on good parchment, stretched over well-constructed frames. The message seemed to be one of co-operation and ‘getting folk together’. The majority of demonstrators, though, were men, although the leaders seemed to be Lower Elves. They’re the elves that don’t get invited to all the very best elf parties, but they still look down their collective perfectly shaped noses at the rest of the population. There were even a few dwarf brothers who should have known better. They all walked neatly by, two by two. Everyone wore the shirts of the party’s sky blue, all neatly ironed. There was no ranting and no raving and indeed an unnatural silence fell upon the normally vocal bystanders as they passed. Nobody shouted, nobody even heckled from the sidelines. The few children that cried out of turn were hushed by their mothers. The whole march passed by without an incident. This worried me more than anything else. I immediately finished my drink, and left, feeling distinctly uneasy.

      The crowds began to thin and I soon found myself walking through the Wizard’s Gate, one of the huge sets of ironclad doors built into the walls that separate the different levels of the Hill. The imposing blackness of the gate and the impressive strength of the cladding had been somewhat spoilt by a scribbled legend in faded white paint informing us that ‘Bertold loves Lucer.’ I hoped that Bertold’s intrepidity had been rewarded all those years ago and that Lucer had succumbed to his charms (and climbing ability) and they were now happily living in domestic bliss in the Bay suburbs. Well, that’s assuming the wizards had not found him first and made something far less appealing out of him, of course.

      I started humming the children’s skipping song:

       Walls of the Citadel,

       One to Ten,

       One for the elves,

       And one for the men,

       One for the wizards,

       And the Keepers of the Trees,

       One for the dwarfs,

       But none for the pixies.

       Round and round the Hillside,

       Round and round the town,

       Keep them hid,

       Or the walls come down.

      It was a surprisingly subtle little rhyme piece, with a built-in offbeat on the pixie line deliberately contrived to lure the unwary into the twirling rope. I had never worked СКАЧАТЬ