"Not as Sheriff' s deputies?"
"Nay, they answer to none but Thorin ... or, mayhap, to Rimer. Their names are Jonas, Depape, and Reynolds. They look like hard boys to me ... although Jonas's boyhood is so long behind him that I imagine he's forgot he ever had one."
"Jonas is the leader?"
"Aye. He limps, has hair that falls to his shoulders pretty as any girl's, and the quavery voice of an old gaffer who spends his days polishing the chimney-comer... but I think he's the most dangerous of the three all the same. I'd guess these three have forgot more about helling than you and yer friends will ever learn."
Now why had she told him all that? She didn't know, exactly. Gratitude, perhaps. He had promised to keep the secret of this late-night meeting, and he had the look of a promise-keeper, in hack with his father or not.
"I'll watch them. And I thank you for the advice." They were now climbing a long, gentle slope. Overhead, Old Mother blazed relentlessly. "Bodyguards," he mused. "Bodyguards in sleepy little Hambry. It's strange times, Susan. Strange indeed."
"Aye." She had wondered about Jonas, Depape, and Reynolds herself, and could think of no good reason for them to be in town. Had they been Rimer's doing. Rimer's decision? It seemed likely - Thorin wasn't the sort of man to even think about bodyguards, she would have said; the High Sheriff had always done well enough for him - but still... why?
They breasted the hill. Below them lay a nestle of buildings - the village of Hambry. Only a few lights still shone. The brightest cluster marked the Travellers' Rest. From here, on the warm breeze, she could hear the piano beating out "Hey Jude" and a score of drunken voices gleefully murdering the chorus. Not the three men of whom she had warned Will Dearborn, though; they would be standing at the bar, watching the room with their flat eyes. Not the singing type were those three. Each had a small blue coffin-shape tattooed on his right hand, burned into the webbing between thumb and forefinger. She thought to tell Will this, then realized he'd see for himself soon enough. Instead, she pointed a little way down the slope, at a dark shape which overhung the road on a chain. "Do ye see that?"
''Yes." He heaved a large and rather comical sigh. "Is it the object I fear beyond all others? Is it the dread shape of Mrs. Beech's mailbox?"
"Aye. And it's there we must part."
"If you say we must, we must. Yet I wish - " Just then the wind shifted, as it sometimes did in the summer, and blew a strong gust out of the west. The smell of sea-salt was gone in an instant, and so was the sound of the drunken, singing voices. What replaced them was a sound infinitely more sinister, one that never failed to produce a scutter of gooseflesh up her back: a low, atonal noise, like the warble of a siren being turned by a man without much longer to live.
Will took a step backward, eyes widening, and again she noticed his hands take a dip toward his belt, as if reaching for something not there.
"What in gods' name is that?"
"It's a thinny," she said quietly. "In Eyebolt Canyon. Have ye never heard of such?"
"Heard of, yes, but never heard until now. Gods, how do you stand it? It sounds alive!"
She had never thought of it quite like that, but now, in a way listening with his ears instead of her own, she thought he was right. It was as if some sick part of the night had gained a voice and was actually trying to sing.
She shivered. Rusher felt the momentary increased pressure of her knees and whickered softly, craning his head around to look at her.
"We don't often hear it so clearly at this time of year," she said. "In the fall, the men bum it to quiet."
"I don't understand."
Who did? Who understood anything anymore? Gods, they couldn't even turn off the few oil-pumps in Citgo that still worked, although half of them squealed like pigs in a slaughtering chute. These days you were usually just grateful to find things that still worked at all.
"In the summer, when there's time, drovers and cowboys drag loads of brush to the mouth of Eyebolt," she said. "Dead brush is all right, but live is better, for it's smoke that's wanted, and the heavier the better. Eye-bolt's a box canyon, very short and steep-walled. Almost like a chimney lying on its side, you see?"
"Yes."
"The traditional time for burning is Reap Mom - the day after the fair and the feast and the fire."
"The first day of winter."