“Can you help me?,” asked the faun. Blood covered his hairy arms and goat legs. Tears drifted down his face. “I don't know what to do.”

Pitt spotted a crowd charging up after the faun. He should have known things were going too smoothly for him. He took a breath and decided he needed to do something before he was dragged along by whatever the gods had thrown in his way.

“Bring her in and put her on the counter inside,” Pitt said. He held the door open for the distressed faun. He indicated the wooden desk used by the town clerk to settle business with a hand.

This was bad for the faun. The locals would love to blame him for whatever had happened. A hanging or a burning was a short jog to whatever could be used to hold the demihuman in place.

“The girl has been stabbed, Pitt,” said Flaketon. “I can see at least three, or four, wounds through her dress.”

“I tried to heal her,” said the faun. He stepped away from the body. “I tried and tried, but I couldn't heal everything.”

“Monster,” said the mayor. He had walked out of his office at the commotion. “You killed Isadora. You'll pay for this.”

“Shut up, idiot,” said Pitt. The mayor looked at him. He didn't see any anger, but he felt something sparking in the room. “Fauns don't attack people.”

The crowd reached the door and tried to force their way inside. They couldn't move the foot holding the doors shut against their combined strength. The wood bent under their weight, but the rest wouldn't move.

Pitt measured his options and didn't like the ones close at hand. He needed a plan to clear the faun, the carnival, and keep him from killing the whole town. He was struggling with anything that didn't lead to killing the town.

“All right,” said Pitt. “Let's start with trying to get these people to leave. Then we can see about finding the real killer.”

“How are you going to do that?,” asked Flaketon.

“I am going to ask nicely,” said Pitt.

“This faun is the real killer,” said the mayor. “How can you say he isn't?”

“Experience,” said Pitt. “I've been all over the world. Fauns are the second worst combatants in the world.”

“What's the worst?,” asked Flaketon. He had heard mercenaries riding with the wagon train say that, but he had never had to see proof of their claims.

“Nymphs,” said Pitt. He gestured for Flaketon and the faun to move out of the way. He had to allow the door to open so he could see about dispersing the crowd. Then he would have to sort the rest out like Pantalus.

He stepped away from the doors and allowed them to explode inward. He stepped forward with hands extended and pushed. The living mass caught in his ram was thrown away from the town hall and into the street. He stepped outside and closed the doors as the bodies fell.

He rolled a cigarette as the crowd tried to get themselves back together into a mob. He snapped his fingers to set the weed and paper on fire. He took a puff and waited for someone to get in front of the mob and make their demands.

Probably wanted the faun's head on a pike was his best guess.

Any other demihuman and he might have listened. Elves and Dwarves and Orcs were as dangerous as they come, and one of them might be counted on to murder a girl for personal reasons. Fauns couldn't even hunt animals for food and subsisted on vegetables and fruits.

Some of them were known to teach healing arts to anyone who wanted to know. They had a channel to a grant that allowed that.

“Give us the monster!,” exclaimed one of the townies, finally making it to his feet.

“No,” said Pitt. He puffed on his cigarette. “Go home. Quit being stupid.”

“He killed someone,” said another. “We all saw him carrying a body.”

“Fauns don't kill anything,” said Pitt. “Go home. That's the best thing you can do until things are sorted out.”

“Why should we listen to you?,” said the first man. “You're probably in with him.”

“You don't have to listen to me,” admitted Pitt. “I mean I can't kill all of you in a blink of an eye, set your corpses on fire, and clean the town out. I would have to be some kind of mythological figure to do that. That doesn't mean I wouldn't be able to kill the first one to cross the line. Who wants to step up and try their luck?”

The crowd looked at each other. Some decided to step forward and try their luck. They went down with broken limbs and faces. No one had seen the stranger move. He threw the remains of his cigarette to the ground.

“You don't want to see what will happen if I pull a blade,” said Pitt. “Go home. Send a cleric for these nitwits if you can find one. Don't start any more trouble, and I'll find your killer.”

Muttering in the crowd didn't rise to challenge his words. A runner broke off to carry word to the nearest temple. Broken limbs could be fixed by any cleric worth his tithe.

It would just hurt some as the grant was used. And some gods tended to refuse if the wounded wasn't good enough in their opinion.

He had never worked out the rules for that, but he had noted Avrii Noll didn't heal anyone not hurt in a fight of some kind. Falling off a horse was just not good enough for the god of war.

Pitt watched the crowd long enough to light another cigarette. He told himself he could quit any time as he walked back inside and closed the door. He puffed on the smoke as he considered the bloody faun, the dead girl, the carnival booker, and the mayor. Some words had been exchanged while he had been dealing with the mob outside from the looks of things.

“That was a big threat,” said Flaketon.

"I have fought all over the known world,” said Pitt. “And I have killed most anything people have talked about at one point or the other. Trust me when I say that the only reason I'm not burning this hole down is because I'm trying to not kill as much as I used to. This isn't getting me closer to my Highlands, so I am going to have to straighten everything out before the carnival moves on. I guess Gram should stay on alert until we can move on. I doubt he will have trouble with the locals, but he should be ready to cut some people up if they try to get at the wagons and animals.”

“I guess I should go back and wait for things to settle down,” said Flaketon.

“Go ahead and get the wagons moving,” said Pitt. “There's no point in you guys being any more involved than what you are. It's better if you move on. I can deal with everything on my own.”

“How are you going to do that?,” asked the Mayor. He didn't seem as impressed as he should have been in Pitt's opinion.

“We're going to look at the scene of the crime and see what's there,” said Pitt. “What's your name, faun?”

“Roland,” said the faun. “My father said it was the name of a great hero.”

“I wouldn't say he was all that great,” said Pitt.

“I don't see what use this will be,” said the Mayor.

“You will since you're going to be helping us out,” said Pitt. “After all when I put the arm on the real murderer I'm going to need someone to show the town their trust was misplaced.”

“You're joking,” said the Mayor. “I'm not going with you.”

“You can walk, or you can be dragged,” said Pitt. “Make your choice.”

“I would pick walking,” said Roland. “The ground is rough between here and where I found her.”

“I would walk too,” said Pitt. “Nothing hurts more than the back of your head hitting the ground over and over.”

“I'll go and get the wagons started to our next destination,” said Flaketon. “This has been one of our stranger stops in my experience.”

“If you're ever in the Highlands, drop around,” said Pitt. “Better go out the back so you can avoid the crowd in the front. We'll go out the front and give you a distraction.”

Flaketon nodded and made his way through the building. Pitt waited for him to get out of sight before he went to the front door. He wished he had some water for Roland to wash his arms off. The blood was bound to enflame some of the townies into doing something stupid.

He pushed out the front door, supporting the Mayor with a hand on the back of his neck. He made sure Roland was close so he could defend the faun without losing his grip on his hostage.

One closing of his hand would be all she wrote for the bitter old man.

He doubted Pantalus would approve, but he expected the old man to understand after a review of what was going on.

“What do you think you're doing?,” said one of the townies. He didn't look happy that Pitt was escorting his leader and suspected murderer out of the town hall.

“Roland is taking the Mayor and me to where he found the girl,” said Pitt. “After that, I plan to track the murderer down and do to him what I did to your neighbors.”

The cleric hadn't arrived yet. There might some hold up at the local temple. There might not be a local temple. Pitt's victims might be in for a lot of pain before help arrived.

He sometimes regretted not learning any of the healing arts, but his gift hadn't really allowed it. It was the same reason he didn't know a lot of clerical or lay magic.

“Which way, Roland?,” asked Pitt. “We might as well get this over with while we can.”

“It's this way,” said the faun. He skittered around the townspeople and headed south.

Pitt helped the Mayor along in the demihuman's wake. He kept an eye on the people. They watched but they didn't move to stop him from kidnapping the official.

“I found her close to the stream,” said Roland. He led the way into the nearest trees as silently as a ghost.

Pitt made sure that none of the branches from the nearby trees beat the Mayor as they tried to keep up with the faun. The demigod could have moved faster on his own, but they couldn't afford to leave their one witness behind.

Pitt noticed the blood on the branches as they moved forward. It had dried while indicating movement back toward town. It didn't look like it was sprayed on the leaves, but rubbed on.

That matched Roland moving through the forest with the body in his arms. Splotches on the ground added more proof to the trail.

Roland paused when he reached a clearing surrounded by rocks that reached up to waist height. He turned in a circle, dried blood on his hands as he searched his memory.

“This is where I found the girl,” said Roland. He pointed at trees to the east. “I came from that way. I don't know which way she came from to get here.”

“I do,” said Pitt. He scanned the clearing with squinting eyes. “She came from that way. The blood points the way.”

He pointed at a trail on the grass and leaves leading to the southwest.

“That leads to the Ihorn Stream,” said the Mayor. “It's named after one of the farmer families that supports the town.”

“Let's go and have a look at what's there,” said Pitt. “Maybe we'll find where the girl was hurt at first before she came this way.”

“Isadora was a neighbor to the Ihorns,” said the Mayor.

“That doesn't mean a thing at this point,” said Pitt. He didn't like the Ihorns hadn't raised an alert that their neighbor had been hurt and fled into the woods. It didn't look good after he had seen what had happened to her.