Dread Brass Shadows

Crask led off, still encumbered with his arsenal. It seemed impossible that he should move silently carrying all that clutter, but he managed. As did Sadler and even Winger. Me, carrying next to nothing and a trained Marine sneak, I felt like I was banging a drum.

We found no one on the second floor, just plenty of small sleeping rooms with no one home. "Bodyguards and staff," Sadler explained. "They'll be sober and near Chodo—if they're still alive."

"Where'll he be?" "In his office."

Meant nothing to me. I'd never visited his office.

Crask dropped. I did, too, pushed my nose against the banister. A half-dozen colorful, shaggy dwarves light-footed past below, headed toward the front of the house. An uproar broke out as soon as they disappeared. Crask chuckled. "Ambushed them little shits."

One dwarf hustled back bent over, holding his guts in. A limping man overtook him, cut him apart with a heavy naval sword. I asked, "Can we get around that ambush?"

"Nope."

"You're a Marine," Sadler said. "Hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle."

That didn't sound any more appetizing now than it had back then.

Crask said, "The runts used it up. Or there'd have been more guys after the dwarf."

We moved down to the ground floor, passed the dwarf, headed toward the ballroom and possible ambush. To our right were kitchens and laundries and whatnot. To our left, too, I assumed. I'd heard, during one of my visits, that such took up most of the ground floor, except the showy stuff up front and the ballroom and pool area

The ambush was pretty basic. Crask and Sadler sprang it entering the ballroom. The guy who'd slaughtered the dwarf was the healthier of the two trying to hold the fort. Crask bopped his head with the haft of his spear.

Winger whistled. "Some party room. Some party, too." The ballroom was a cozy eighty—by—one-hundred feet and three stories high. Party detritus lay everywhere. Looked like the celebration had run its course before the bloodletting started.

Crask and Sadler tied the victims. They were going to need soldiers when they took over. Sadler said, "Straight to the pool."

"I'll take rearguard," Winger said. When I glanced back, she was slipping something inside her shirt.

The pool room dwarfed the ballroom. The pool itself was that big. There was nobody there. Except Chodo's dead. Had to be thirty of those laid out amidst the party debris. We skirted the flotsam-covered pool and headed for the reception hall.

That hall runs to the front door through the front wing of the house, though wing isn't the right word. The house is a huge box with the center, i

"Not many left," Sadler observed.

I grumbled, "Maybe we've just jumped into a trap with the kingpin."

"Maybe. Let's check his office." He trotted to a closed door that would let us into the east wing, leaned against it, listened. "Not that way. Mob in there." He headed for the rear of the house. Back the way we had come.

I looked at Winger, shrugged, followed. But I was considering fading away. Things had gotten too deadly and mysterious.

We entered the east wing by means of second-floor halls built for the cleaning staff Sadler led us into a residential suite. "Chodo's kid uses this when she's in town."

"Nobody's home now." I wondered if most of the house was a mystery to Chodo. He wouldn't get to see the upper floors unless his men carried him.

"Don't look like."

Crask and Sadler started poking around in closets and tapping walls. They found what they were hunting before I became mystified enough to ask. A panel opened beside a fireplace. Of course. Chodo would have his hidden passages and whatnot. Sadler said, "We're going down to a room hidden off Chodo's office. Be real quiet." Like we needed warning.

Our destination was big for a secret room, a good eight by twelve. Winger's eyes bulged when she saw it. Stacks of moneybags lay against one wall. She gulped air and chewed it. Impressive pile, I thought, but only Chodo's day-to-day working capital. His petty cash.

A racket developed while we were crawling through the walls, the mob from outside attacking again.

Crask and Sadler moved directly to a wall, opened peepholes. Crask indicated one I could use. I'd always suspected that the kingpin employed hidden watchers during his meetings. I pulled a cork out of a hole, peeked into a room about twenty-five by forty. There were only two men in the room, Chodo and a character who provided the power to move the kingpin's chair. Chodo sat in the middle of the room, facing an open door. He looked content, not afraid. Behind him, piled furniture barricaded two outside windows.

I pictured Chodo as a big trapdoor spider calmly awaiting a victim.

Sounds of fighting came from elsewhere in the house. Chodo's pusher tensed up. Then he relaxed as two men entered the room. They supported a naked, bound woman between them.

"Ha!" I muttered. "That's her."

"Who?" Winger asked.

"The Serpent. Check out that tattoo." It was uglier than I'd imagined. The witch herself was not a disaster, but she'd begun to show the ravages of time. More evident were the ravages of stubbor

She was lucky he'd had a birthday party to preoccupy him. He might have gotten serious otherwise.

Chodo examined her critically from a few feet away. "Five pages? These are all?" He strained to lift several sheets of brass out of his lap. He seemed unaware that his place was being invaded.

"That's it, old man." The Serpent wasn't bothered by her situation, either. It seemed.

"They're damaged. Useless."

"Of course."

"Where is the book?"

A huge thug leaned in the door. "They're in the house." My heart jumped. But he didn't mean us. "Too many of them. Can't hold them off."

"Hold them in the hall out there, then. You ought to be able to handle a few dwarves. Don't kill Gnorst. I need him alive."

"Yes sir." Like if Chodo said do it, it could be done.

I watched the witch. Damned if she wasn't happy about the way things were going.

So was Chodo.

Interesting.

The kingpin eyed the witch again "Where is the book? I won't ask again."

"Fine. Then I won't have to listen to you anymore."

Chodo didn't get mad. He smiled, said, "Take her into that corner there." He murmured something to the man behind his chair, who moved him over behind a big barricade of a desk to my left I couldn't see him anymore.

Crask gave Sadler a thumbs-up

The uproar from the rest of the house had been moving closer. Now the huge thug stumbled into Chodo's office. "I'm sorry, sir " He collapsed. Chodo still didn't get upset.

A bunch of dwarves galloped in, Gnorst in their midst. He took in the setup, barked orders in dwarfish. For a moment there were a good thirty of them in there. Then some started drifting out. Most didn't want to go and a few flat refused. Gnorst smoldered. I guessed he didn't want anyone figuring out that he had visions of becoming the new Nooney Krombach.

There were a dozen left when the flow stopped. Gnorst strutted over to the kingpin. His beard waggled like he was fixing to say something.

Chodo trampled his line. Amazing. Put a little pressure on that old boy and he found all kinds of energy reserves. "Looks like six of one and half a dozen of the other, eh, Chet?"

Chet was one of the guys holding the Serpent. "Maybe seven to five."

The dwarves were baffled. Chodo was supposed to be dribbling in fear.

"I've waited a long time, Gnorst," Chodo said. "But patience pays. Today I get to see you die."