Murder in Cormyr - Chet Williamson [43]
To my relief, Darvik slogged off to the left, and we picked our way around the perimeter of the marshy lake. When we had gone perhaps a hundred yards, he parted a curtain of hanging moss to our left, and we entered the dimness again, leaving the open mere behind. The moss clung to me like wet, filthy hair as I went through the opening, and I continued to wipe my face with my sleeve for several minutes afterward.
At last we saw the two soldiers ahead, standing on top of a small mound that protruded from the swamp like the back of a submerged beast. They tried to look official as we approached, but I could tell that their vigil had been a tense one.
"Anything happen while I was gone?" Captain Flim asked, and one of the soldiers shook his head.
"Not a thing, sir, except… well, we did as you commanded and searched farther back in the cave, and… we found something, sir."
"The killer?" Lindavar asked.
The soldier got a funny look on his face. "I hope not, sir." Captain Flim wasn't a man who liked riddles. He pushed past the soldier and descended the stone stairs. We followed, lighting the lanterns we had brought. The steps were slimy, so we trod slowly, and twenty steps downward brought us to the floor of the cave. There was a small chamber there. Its walls were stone, and the striations showed how the levels of rock had been deposited many centuries ago, rock so hard that it stood against the encroachment of the Vast Swamp even to this day.
The floor was stone as well, except for where pockets of moisture had eroded it into a sickly claylike substance. The stone was gray, but the place where Grodoveth had bled away his heart's blood was a flat brown-red. It was the second beheaded corpse I had seen, and much more gruesome than the first. Unlike Dovo's decapitation, this one had been far from efficient.
Instead of the axe striking him in the fleshy part of the neck, the blade had hit on the left shoulder and had torn through part of Grodoveth's collarbone before taking off his head. The blow had continued downward, and the top part of Grodoveth's right shoulder was still attached to the head and neck. The torso was equally hideous to look upon, with a huge gash that had nearly severed the right arm as well as the neck. I could see the spongy interior of the lung.
"Has anything been touched?" Lindavar asked, and the soldiers shook their heads. "Darvik?" he asked the gnome, who was standing halfway down the steps, as though afraid to descend.
"No, sor. I just saw the dead man and I run. Never even made it all the way down." He gave an apologetic half smile. "Still don't care to, sor."
An axe lay on the floor against the wall, several yards from the body, and Lindavar and I knelt to examine it. There was no doubt that it was the murder weapon, for it was coated with fresh blood and bits of gore. It was much larger and heavier than the one that Dovo had been carrying and that had killed him. The iron was rusty, but the blade still appeared to be very sharp. Near the top of the curved blade, there was a spot where the rust was chipped away and the blade was dulled, and I pointed it out to Lindavar.
He nodded. "Looks as though it's been hit against stone, or possibly strong armor," he said, though I knew of no armor that could have turned a blow struck from that axe. "Do you see any marks of hands upon it?" he asked me, turning it over so that we could see both sides of the handle.
I shook my head but pointed to several marks on the handle. The first was on the inner part of the handle near the blade. It was a deep gouge that had been dug into it, and recently, for the wood exposed was untouched by the grime of years. There were two other marks, one in the center of the blade, and one near the end, as though the axe had been in a wall holder for many years. But no finger marks were visible on the wood.