“Ow!” he was startled back to the here and now by a rap against his ribs, the kind you might get from a mischievous friend’s elbow. Unfortunately, Jag didn’t have any mischievous friends. The headache beat savagely across his brow.
The constable turned, ready to take all his frustrations out on the person attached to that unwanted elbow, but only stared in bewilderment at the empty air beside him. No one was there. Then he felt another dull rap, this time against his knee.
“If you look nose-to-nose there is nothing to see, but mind your feet, Constable Dubbispeir, or you’ll trip over me!”
Jag’s teeth clacked as his chin snapped against his chest, and the pain behind his eyes soared like a Waterdhavian opera. This might have been from changing his gaze so dramatically, but more likely it was the sight of the gray-haired gnome puffing on a long-stemmed clay pipe and gently tapping a walking stick against the constable’s leg.
“Ekhar Lorrent! Gods above, that’s all I need!!”
“You’ve trouble, friend Jag, that much I know. Murder most foul, my wagging ears tell me so. Ekhar is here, set your mind at ease. Together we’ll solve this case, quick as you please!”
Jag covered his eyes and counted to ten under his breath, then looked down at the gnome and said, “Look, Ekhar, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but would you get the hells out of my way? There haven’t been any murders in Minroe since that time Jenna the seamstress found out Taсa Felibrook was having an affair with her husband, and sewed the pair of them into a suit and evening gown.”
“‘The Case of the Tailor-Made Corpse,’ I remember it well. But come now, Jag, have you nothing to tell?” His steel-gray eyes glanced at the debris that surrounded them. The gnome winked and said, “Quite a large corpse I see lying prone over there. Something untoward happened, the scent’s in the air.”
Ekhar Lorrent could be counted on to show up every time things got out of control and blood was shed. He seemed to have a sixth sense about murder. The Fell-brook case was only one of a dozen or so that Ekhar had gotten involved in over the years. The gnome had a head for investigative work, Jag had to give him that much credit. But his knack for being in the right place at the right time and tripping over clues was more than outweighed by the fact that he was so damned annoying.
“I’m only going to say this one time, Ekhar. We’ve had a little giant trouble today. A bit of property damage, a few broken bones, but no one’s been murdered-so go home!”
“No murder, you say? Can it really be true? You don’t mind if I just look about town, do you?”
The constable let out a long sigh of relief.
“No, no. Go ahead. Look around all you like, Ekhar. Just stay out from under my feet.”
“You’ve much work to do, that much I can see. What happened to bring this giant trouble on thee?”
Jag groaned. His headache now encircled his skull like a crown of pain. He wasn’t sure whether Ekhar’s rhyming patter was an affectation or a curse placed upon the gnome by some witch, but the lengths to which the diminutive detective would go for a rhyme was maddening.
“I don’t know Ekhar, and that’s most of the problem. It’s been a quiet few weeks, which is fine with me. There haven’t even been any bar fights for my men to break up. Then, out of nowhere, this cyclops was seen circling the town.” Jag pointed absentmindedly at the dead giant. “It showed up for a few hours each day, crawling around in the scrub brush, watching the comings and goings around town. I think it was trying to be surreptitious. Who knows. Those giants are dumb enough to think that just because their heads are buried in bushes, no one will notice their enormous butts sticking in the air.”
“It spied on the town for a few days you, say?” Ekhar had his face scrunched up in a look that Jag knew only too well. “Please, finish your tale, and I’ll be out of your way.”
“There isn’t much to tell,” Jag continued. “It stopped showing up about three days ago. I figured that it’d grown bored with whatever game it was playing and gone back into the hills. Then, this morning, it comes screaming down the main road. I mean, we could hear it coming a good ten minutes before it got here. It was waving its hands in the air and shouting about how mean we all were and how it was going to wreck the town.
“You can see all the damage the damned thing did. It kicked in the front of the schoolhouse, tore the roof off M’Greely’s general store, and was absolutely wrecking the Dancing Roc Inn when we finally brought it down. I figure the confounded thing was mad, or maybe it ate some brainfever berries.”
Ekhar, who had been gazing at the buildings that had been ruined, or perhaps at the half dozen or so intervening ones that had not been touched, was struck by this last comment.
“Bainfevered, you think? Or under a spell? What makes you say this giant was unwell?”
Running his hand through his short-cropped gray hair, Jag accepted the fact that the gnome, like his headache, was not going to just go away. “You mean besides the fact that we peppered it with at least six dozen arrows before it fell? Man, I’ve never seen anything take that much punishment without even batting an eyelash. But, my first big clue was that it started foaming at the mouth just before it fell over.”
Ekhar tapped the stem of his pipe against his thin lips and raised one eyebrow. Tyr save me, Jag thought, he’s got a theory.
“The mad giant’s rampage was a tragedy nearly, but no murder’s been done, you’ve shown me quite clearly. You’ve much work to do, Jag, and I’ve no wish to delay. May I look at the giant, before I’m away?”
The constable nodded mutely. The gnome had listened to reason. He was going to leave. Jag’s prayers had been answered.
Ekhar bowed deeply, clamped his clay pipe in his teeth, and walked purposefully toward the lifeless cyclops. He stood there for a while, hands clasped behind his back, and stared at the dozens of arrows sticking out of the body. He paid particular attention to those around the giant’s face and neck, especially the one poking directly out of its sightless eye.
All of this would have been interesting, possibly even amusing to Jag Dubblspeir, except that he still had so much to do. He called four of his men aside and they huddled around him as he squatted in the muddy street.
“Three of you go around to every barn, stable, and manger in town” he pointed to the three newest recruits. He knew it was best to send them on an assignment together. It just about guaranteed that they’d stay focused on the job at hand. “Gather up every plow horse, oxen, and mule in Minroe and bring them to the hitching post in front of the Dancing Roc. While you’re at it, grab every coil of rope you come across. Make sure they’re strong and at least twenty feet long, though. We’re going to drag that cyclops out of town before it has a chance to start stinking up the place.”
The three young men stood up, saluted, mumbled “yes sir” at least five times each, saluted again, and headed off toward the Happy Horse Livery repeatedly tripping over one another the whole way.
“You, stand guard over the body” he said to the remaining deputy. His name was Riktus, and he was a few years older than the other three. While not a born soldier, Riktus had learned a lot in the three years since Jag took him on. “People are already gathering around and poking at it. If the cursed thing really was brainsick, I don’t want anyone cutting slices off it to take home as souvenirs.”
The lad snapped off a crisp salute and trotted over to his post. He could handle responsibility, Jag reflected, which meant that the Purple Dragons were sure to snatch him up when next they passed through on a visit. This job was never going to get any easier if he couldn’t find some way to get the qualified soldiers to stay. Still, knowing that the things were beginning to come under control eased the throbbing in Jag’s head. The worst of the day was surely over. Now all the constable had to worry about was that no one got too rowdy in the celebratory atmosphere that pervaded the unaffected quarters of Minroe.