The water was clear and so shallow that she could see the narrow crevices between the stone blocks paving the bottom. Forsythia stems cast jagged shadow, and there were smears where mud'd washed from the roots of the plants. "He was a tough bastard, I give him that," Asion said, his voice oddly gentle. He nodded to the corpse on the coping of the pool. "He had to crawl most a' the way. Look at the trail." "Yes," said Ilna. "I noticed." All the corpses were at least middle-aged; this fellow was older yet. To look at, he seemed soft if not precisely fat; the sort of man who did no more work than he had to and was readier to lift a tankard than a hoe. Perhaps that had been true. The man's last living act, however, had been to pull a full-sized bush out of the ground and drag it ten double-paces to the pool while his intestines spilled out in coils behind him. He'd been laid open as if by a cleaver, but he hadn't quit until he was dead. "Mistress?" Karpos said. He sounded puzzled and therefore worried; people who accept great danger as a fact of life become concerned when faced with things they don't understand; they knew all too well what might be hiding within the unknown. "The cat didn't kill this fellow. It was a blade did this." "The Coerli had weapons," Ilna said harshly. She turned from the body and the pool. "The survivors took them away. There's nothing amazing about that!" "Then who was this cat chewing on?" the hunter said, pointing to the dead Corl. "Look at his muzzle, the blood and-" He saw Ilna's face and swallowed. "Sorry, mistress," he mumbled in a small voice.