Saucerhead grumbled, "You couldn't hit a bull in the butt with a ten-foot pole if you was inside the barn." While I tried to figure that out, he grabbed the ogre, who was as big as he was, and tried to shake him awake. It didn't work. Not much of a necromancer, my buddy Saucerhead.

He didn't try the dwarf That guy had gotten pounded down a foot shorter than he started out. So Tharpe just stood there shaking his head and looking baffled. I thought that was such a good idea I did it, too. And all the while, that old bartender was howling about damages while his clientele tried to dig holes in the floor to hide in

"Now WHAT ?" Saucerhead asked.

"I don't know." I peeked outside.

"They gone?"

"Looks like. People are starting to come out." A sure sign the excitement was over They would come count the bodies and lie to each other about how they saw the whole thing, and by the time any authority arrived—if it ever did—the story's only resemblance to fact would be that somebody got dead

"Let's go ask Tinnie."

Sounded like a stroke of genius to me.

3

Tinnie Tate wasn't some mousy little homemaker for whom the height of adventure was the day's trip to market. But she Wasn't the kind of gal who got messed up with guys who stick knives in people and run in packs shooting crossbow volleys at citizens, either. She lived with her uncle Willard. Willard Tate was a shoemaker. Shoemakers don't make the kinds of enemies who poop people. A shoe doesn't fit, they bitch and moan and ask for their money back, they don't call out the hard boys.

I thought about it as I trotted. It didn't make sense. The Dead Man says when it doesn't make sense, you don't have all the pieces or you're trying to put them together wrong. I kept telling me, Wait till we see what Tinnie has to say. I refused to face the chance that Tinnie might not be able.