We put Tracker and mutt into a guarded cell. They did not protest. I went to my quarters after wakening Otto, who was overdue. I tried to sleep, but that damned packet lay on the table screaming.

I was not sure I wanted to read its contents.

It won the battle.

Chapter Seven:
THE SECOND LETTER

Croaker:

Bomanz peered through his transit, sighting on the prow of the Great Barrow. He stepped back, noted the angle, opened one of his crude field maps. This was where he had unearthed the TelleKurre axe. "Wish Occules' descriptions weren't so vague. This must have been the flank of their formation. The axis of their line should have paralleled the others, so. Shifter and the knights would have bunched up over there. I'll be damned."

The ground there humped slightly. Good. Less ground water to damage buried artifacts. But the overgrowth was dense. Scrub oak. Wild roses. Poison ivy. Especially poison ivy. Bomanz hated that pestilential weed. He started scratching just thinking about it.

"Bomanz."

"What?" He whirled, raising his rake.

"Whoa! Take it easy, Bo."

"What's the matter with you? Sneaking up like that. Ain't funny, Besand. Want me to rake that idiot grin off your face?"

"Ooh! Nasty today, aren't we?" Besand was a lean old man approximately Bomanz's age. His shoulders slumped, following his head, which thrust forward as though he was sniffing a trail. Great blue veins humped the backs of his hands. Liver spots dotted his skin.

"What the hell do you expect? Come jumping out of the bushes at a man."

"Bushes? What bushes? Your conscience bothering you, Bo?"

"Besand, you've been trying to trap me since the moon was green. Why don't you give up? First Jasmine gives me a hard way to go, then Tokar buys me out so I have to go digging fresh stock, and now I have to dance with you? Go away. I'm not in the mood."

Besand grinned a big, lopsided grin, revealing pickets of rotten teeth. "I haven't caught you, Bo, but that don't mean you're innocent. It just means I never caught you."

"If I'm not innocent, you must be damned stupid not to catch me in forty years. Damn, man, why the hell can't you make life easy for both of us?"

Besand laughed. "Real soon now I'll be out of your hair for good. They're putting me out to pasture."

Bomanz leaned on his rake, considered the Guardsman. Besand exuded a sour odor of pain. "Really? I'm sorry."

"Bet you are. My replacement might be smart enough to catch you."

"Give it a rest. You want to know what I'm doing? Figuring where the TelleKurre knights went down. Tokar wants spectacular stuff. That's the best I can do. Short of going over there and giving you an excuse to hang me. Hand me that dowser."

Besand passed the divining rod. "Mound robbing, eh? Tokar suggest that?"

Icy needles burrowed into Bomanz's spine. This was more than a casual question. "We have to do this constantly? Haven't we known each other long enough to do without the cat-and-mouse?"