Bitter Gold Hearts by Glen Cook Page B

who wore his feet backward; something that would stick out if I happened to be hanging around with a bunch of ogres and one of the bad guys showed up. I didn’t expect to find anything, but luck doesn’t play for the other side all the time. Got to keep looking for that ten to one.
    I found the nothing I expected, though not exactly because there was nothing to be found. It was one of those cases of suddenly deciding you ought to be investi­gating something somewhere else. I heard a stir in the woods behind me. Not much of one. Thinking some of the dogs had gotten brave, I turned with the stick I still carried.
    “Holy shit!”
    A woolly mammoth stood at the edge of the woods, and from where I was it looked about ninety-three hands high at the shoulder. How the hell it had come up so quietly is beyond me. I didn’t ask. When it cocked its head and made a curious grunting noise, I put the heels and toes to work according to the gods’ design. The beast threw a trumpet roar after me. Laughing. I paused behind a two-foot-thick oak and gave it a stare. A mammoth. Here. No mammoth had come this close to TunFaire in the past dozen generations. The nearest herds were four hundred miles north of us, up along the borders of thunder-lizard country.
    The mammoth ambled out of the woods, laughed at me again, cropped some grass a couple of bales at a time while keeping one eye on me. Finally convinced that I was no fearless mammoth poacher, it eyeballed the vul­tures, checked the dead ogres, snorted in disgust, and marched off through the woods as quietly as it had come. And last night I’d been unconcerned because no wolf-man had been seen since I was a kid.
    Like I said, luck is not always with the bad guys.
    It was time to stop tempting it with the one out of ten and hike on back to my rig before the horses got wind of that monster and decided they would feel more comfort­able back in the city. Too bad Garrett had to ride shank’s mare.
     
     

__XVIII__
     
    I sat on the buggy seat, beside the crossroads obelisk, and watched a parade of farm families and donkey carts head up the Derry Road. I didn’t see them. I was trying to pick between Karl Junior’s farm prison and Saucer head’s witch. The decision had actually been made. I was putting the thumbscrews on myself trying to figure if I was going to the farm first just to delay the pain skulking around the other place. No matter that I had to head the same direction to reach both and the farm was nearer. You don’t alter the past, turn the tide, or change yourself by brooding about your hidden motives. You will surprise yourself every time, anyway. Nobody ever figures out why.
    “Hell with it! Get up.”
    One of the team looked over her shoulder. She had that glint in her eye. The tribe of horses was about to amuse itself at Garrett’s expense.
    Why do they do this to me? Horses and women. I’ll never understand either species.
    “Don’t even think about it, horse. I have friends in the glue business. Get up.”
    They got. Unlike women, you can show horses who is boss. The bout with introspection rekindled my desire to lay hands on the people responsible for the human equiva­lent of sending Amiranda to the glue works. The exit to the farm was up on a ridgeline where the ground was too dry to hold tracks, and hidden by under­growth. I passed it twice. The third time I got down and led the team, giving the bushes a closer look, and that did the trick. Two young mulberry trees, which grow as fast as weeds, leaned together over the track. Once past them the way was easy to follow, though it hadn’t been cleared since Donni’s departure. I had to go through a half mile of woods, not a mile. It was dense in there, dark, quiet, and humid. The deerflies and horseflies were out at play, and every few feet I got a faceful of spider silk. I sweated and slapped and mut­tered and picked ticks off my pants. Why doesn’t every­body live in the city?
    I ran into a