The twins, this fable insisted, had begun to feel pressed for time. They were getting set for mass executions in which they would slaughter the men of Oar till someone bought his life by surrendering the silver spike.
There was no mystery at all now about what was happening to Oar. Everyone knew about the silver spike. The knowledge seemed to signal the opening measure of a long, dark opera of dread.
Tully fussed and worried about the impending massacre till they neared the fire-gutted section where the bodies lay. Then he shifted the focus of his whine. “I ain’t going in there, Smeds. They’re dead, let them lay.”
“The hell you’re not. This whole mess came jumping out of your pointy head. You’re going to hang in and help the rest of us do whatever it takes to get through it alive. Or I’ll break your head personally.”
Tully sneered. “Shit.”
“Maybe not. But you goddamned well better believe I’ll give it my best shot. Move.”
Tully moved, startled by his intensity.
Fish caught up a minute later. He exchanged glances with Smeds, said, “There isn’t anybody behind us. Slow down while I scout ahead.” He went. Two minutes later he signaled all clear and Smeds slipped into the killing place.
The smell of death was in the air already, though not yet strong. Fish growled outside. Tully responded with a snarl but clumped inside. Smeds eased down the cellar stairs and was surprised to find the death room still illuminated by the stubs of some of the candles that had been burning before.
Nothing had changed except that the corpses had stiffened and relaxed again and a roaring swarm of flies had gathered, working their eyes, nostrils, mouths, and wounds.
Tully said, “Oh, shit!” and dumped whatever was in his stomach.
“I’ve seen worse,” Fish said from the doorway. “And there’s just a bare chance this scene here could get worse. Sit down in the chair, Tully.”
“What?”
“Sit down. Before we get to work we have to have a talk about who got into the money Timmy kept in his bedroll.”
Tully started, went pale, tried bluster. “What the shit you trying to pull, Fish?”
Smeds said, “Sit your ass down, Tully. Then tell us how come you got to be stealing from Timmy and mooching from me when you just made the biggest hit of your life.”
“What the hell are you …?”
Fish popped him in the brisket, pushed him into the chair. “This here is serious business, Tully. Real serious. Maybe you don’t realize. Maybe you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on. Look around. Come on. That’s the boy. See this? This was our pal Timmy Locan. Just a sweet happy kid you conned into thinking he could get rich. These other guys did this to him. And they were gentle as virgins compared to some of the people who are after us. Look at them, Tully. Then tell us how you’ve been dicking up, being too damned stupid to be scared, too damned dumb to sit tight and wait the storm out.”
Malevolent rage filled Tully’s eyes. He looked like he was thinking about getting stubborn where stubborn was pointless.
Smeds said, “You’re a screw-up, cousin. You had one damned good idea in your whole damned life and as soon as we get to work on it you got to go and try to mess it up for all of us. Come on. What did you do? Are we all in a hole?”
A flicker of cunning, quickly hidden. “I just made a couple bad bets is all.”
“A couple? And you lost so much you had to go stealing from Timmy?”
Tully put on his stubborn face. Fish slapped it for him. “Gambling. You dipshit. Probably with somebody who knew you from before and knew you didn’t have a pot to piss in. Tell us about it.”
The words came tumbling out and they did not disappoint Smeds’s suspicions in the least. Tully told an idiot’s tale of bad bets made and redoubled bets laid then doubled again and lost again till, suddenly, here was Tully Stahl not only broke but behind a stack of markers that added up to a bundle and the boys holding them were not the sort to laugh it off if he reneged. So he’d had no choice. Anyway, he would have paid Timmy back out of his share as soon as they’d sold the spike, so …
Fish cut him off before he started justifying his idiot behavior. Smeds knew it was coming. And knew if Tully went at it he would turn the whole thing around so it was all their fault. He asked, “How much you still owe, Tully?”
That hint of cunning again. Tully knew they were going to bail him out.
“The truth,” Fish snapped. “We’re going to cover you, yeah. But one of us is going to be there to see you pay off. And then you’re not getting a copper more. And you’re going to pay back every bit, with interest.”
“You can’t treat me like this.”
“You don’t want to get treated like an asshole don’t act like an asshole.”
Smeds said, “You act like a spoiled brat …”
Fish continued, “You’ll get treated a lot worse if you screw up again. Come on. Let’s get to work.”
Tully shrank from the menace in Fish’s voice. He turned to Smeds in appeal. Smeds told him, “I’m not getting killed because you can’t understand why you have to act responsible. Grab Timmy’s legs and help me carry him upstairs. And think about the condition he’s in next time you get a wild hair and go to thinking about doing something. Like anything.”
Tully looked down at Timmy. “I can’t.”
“Yes you can. Just think about what if somebody else was to find him and figure out who he was and who he hung around with. Grab hold.”
They moved the bodies upstairs, then waited for nightfall. Fish knew a place not far away that would be perfect, some low ground that turned marshy when it rained and bred diseases. The imperial engineers were using it for a landfill. One day the bodies would lie fifty feet below new streets.
They took Timmy out first, of course. He represented the greatest peril. The man who had been questioning Timmy went next, then the thugs, with the little one going last. Tully and Smeds did the carrying while Fish floated around watching for the grays or an accidental witness.
It went beautifully. Till the last one.
“Somebody coming,” Fish breathed. “Move it. I’ll distract them if they spot us.”
XLIX
Toadkiller Dog was amused by his companions in misfortune, so eager to spend themselves in the digging yet so loath to do what had to be done to ensure their strength. After four days of increasing hunger he killed the weakest. He fed, and left the remains to the others. It did not take them long to overcome their reservations and revulsion. And that quickened their determination. None wanted to be next on the menu.
But the digging took another eight days.
Only the monster himself came up out of the earth. But that would have been the case had the digging taken only an hour.
He escaped the darkness of underground into the darkness of night. The trail was not hard to find, It had not rained since the hour of the Limper’s perfidy. Ha! Headed north again!
He began to trot. As he loosened up he stretched himself more and more, till he fell into a lupine lope that left a dozen leagues behind him every hour. He did not break stride till he had crossed the bounds of the empire and had come to the place where the Limper had encountered a major obstacle. He stopped. He prowled and sniffed till he understood what had happened.
The Limper had not been welcomed back with tears of joy.
He caught something on the breeze, cast about, spied a distant black rider armed with a flaming spear. The rider flung that blazing dart northward.
Puzzled, Toadkiller Dog resumed his journey.
He came to another place where the Limper had had difficulties. Again he saw a black rider with a fiery spear who hurled his dart to the north.
One more repetition and the monster understood that he was being encouraged to overtake the Limper, that he would be guided to the inevitable confrontation, and that the Limper was being stalled all along his northward journey.
What could he do when he caught up? H
e was no match for that son of the shadow.
A black rider sat outside the gate of Beryl. He threw a blazing spear to the east. Toadkiller Dog turned. He found the trail quickly.
So. The old doom had been forced to take the long road, around the sea. He loped on, gaining two miles for each three he ran. He swam the River Bigotes and the Hyclades and streaked across the seventy silvery miles of lifeless, mirror-flat salt desert called the Rani Poor. He raced between the countless burial mounds of Barbara to reach the forgotten highways of Laba Larada. He circled the haunted ruins of Khun, passed the pyramids of Katch, which still stood sentinel over the Canyons of the Undead. Warily, he circled the remnants of the temple city of Marsha the Devastator, where the ah-still shimmered with the cries of sacrificies whose hearts had been torn out on the altars of an aloof and disdainful goddess.
The trail grew warmer by the hour.
He came into the province of Karsus, past outposts of the empire where auxiliaries recruited from the Grain tribes guarded the frontier against the depredations of their own kind more ferociously and faithfully than did the imperial legions. A black rider armed with a spear of fire watched him race across the Plain of Dano-Patha, where a hundred armies had contested the right of passage north or south or east and where some legends said the Last Battle of Time would be fought between Light and Darkness.
The Mountains of Sinjian lay beyond, and in their savage defiles he found evidence that the Limper was again being tormented and delayed, again with vicious traps narrowly escaped.
The spoor was heavy and hot and had the taint of newly opened graves.
He came out onto a prominence overlooking the Straits of Angine, where the fresh waters flowed down from the Kiril Lakes to meld with the salty waters of the Sea of Torments. His vantage was not far from that narrowest part of the strait that seafarers called Hell’s Gate and overland travelers had dubbed Heaven’s Bridge.
Hell was in session down there.
The Limper was on the south shore and wanted to cross over. But on the north shore someone demurred.
Toadkiller Dog settled on his belly, rested his chin on his forepaws, and watched. This was not the place to reveal himself. Maybe at the Tower, if the Limper turned west and sought a vengeance there.
As though they sensed his arrival, those who held the north shore closed up shop and hauled out. The Limper hurled glamorous violences after them. The distance was too great to do them any harm.
The Limper went across immediately. He encountered traps immediately. Toadkiller Dog decided he would hazard a more difficult crossing. After dark.
There was no need to hurry now. He had the quarry in sight. He could bide his time.
He might range ahead and lie in wait. Or he might stalk the enemies of his enemy in order to discover the. nature of their game.
L
We got a break. Raven came rolling in where I was reading a book I borrowed from the guy who owned the place where we was staying. “We got a break. Come on, Case.”
I put the book aside, got up. “What’s happening?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.” He stuck his head in the next room, yelled and invoked Darling till one of the Torques joined us. We hit the street. He started talking. “One of those little characters from the Plain hit paydirt. He overheard a man telling his cronies about an incident that almost has to involve the men who stole the spike.”
I told him, “Slow down. You’re getting the soldiers interested.” And he was. He was that eager to get at this first assignment from Darling. “What did the guy say?”
“He and two others were hired to snatch a man and then help question him. Which they did. But someone came along and broke it up. This fellow was the only one who got away. We’re going to round him up and let him walk us through his adventure.”
Right.
It might be the best lead we’d get but it didn’t look that great to me. “This guy is shooting his mouth off about what happened to him we’re going to have to get in line to talk to him.”
“We heard first. Almost direct. We’re ahead of the pack. But that’s why I’m in a hurry.”
I noticed he was hardly limping. “Your hip finally starting to do right?”
“All this sitting around. Nothing else to do but get healthy.”
“Speaking of which. I went out for a beer this afternoon. I heard talk there’s cholera down near South Gate.”
We walked in silence a while. Then the Torque — I still didn’t know any of their real front names — said, “That’ll tear it, won’t it? Get a cholera outbreak going and the pot will boil over, sure.”
Raven grunted.
Maybe this wasn’t just our best break but our only one. Maybe we had to make it count.
We went into a place with the dumb name Barnacles. Raven looked around. “There’s our man. Right where he’s supposed to be.” His voice had got hard as jasper. He had changed while we walked, turned into a critter like the Raven that had ridden with the Black Company.
Our man was alone. He was drunk. Fortune was smiling today. Raven told us, “You guys have a beer and keep an eye out. I’ll talk to him.”
We did, and he did. I don’t know what he said but I never got a chance to get even with Torque by having him buy the second round. Raven got up. So did our man. In a minute we were all in the street. It was almost dark out now. Our new friend was not full of small talk. He did not seem pleased to be with us.
Raven told us, “Smiley here figured getting fifty obols for showing us around was a lot better than the alternative.”
Smiley took us to an alley. “This is where we grabbed the guy.”
Raven had asked questions while we walked. “And you didn’t know anything about the guy? Like where he was coming from or where he was headed?”
“I told you. This Abel set it up and gave it to Shorts. Shorts just hired me and Tanker to back him up when he grabbed this guy with only one hand that was supposed to come through here. Maybe Shorts knew what was going on. I didn’t.”
“Convenient.”
“Yeah. The more I think about it the more I figure the only reason they had me and Tanker hang around after we got the guy down to the cellar was they planned on us never leaving if they got what they wanted.”
“You’re probably right. That’s the way those kind work.”
“And you guys don’t?”
“Not when we get cooperation. Show us that cellar.”
I was glum. Our big strike looked like it was turning into a pocket of fool’s gold. The guys who could give us answers had checked out.
Raven thought we might get something out of a look at the bodies. I was willing to bet all we would get was gagged. “Shit, this is desolate,” I said as we was getting close. “How much farther?”
“About a block …”
“Hold it!” Raven said. “Quiet!”
I listened. I didn’t hear nothing. But my eyes were good at night. By looking slightly to the side of them I could make out some guys. Three of them carrying a fourth. They were headed somewhere in a big hurry.
I told Raven. He asked, “You know this area?”
“Only vaguely.”
“Try to get ahead of them. They won’t be able to move too fast if they’re carrying a body. We’ll run them down from behind.”
Smiley said, “I’ll do a fade now.”
Raven replied, “You’ll come with us and tell us if you recognize any faces.”
Smiley started cursing.
I took off. I figured it was a waste of time but I’d give it a shot. Five minutes and I’d be lost and they’d be long gone.
I went about three hundred yards and found myself on open ground. It looked like the area where we had landed, seen from a different direction. I couldn’t see anyone in the open. Figuring they’d been to my left when I started and I’d paralleled them, I moved to my left, along the face of the ruins still standing.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Just like I expected. Whe
re were the others? I worried. I thought about yelling but decided not to. I didn’t want to look silly.
I thought I was paying attention but I guess I wasn’t.
Somebody stepped out of nowhere and kicked me in the noogies. A perfect shot. The pain exploded through me. I bent over and puked and didn’t care about anything else in the world.
He hit me in the back of the head. I went down, rooted up a little pavement with my chin. Somebody got onto me and forced me to lay out flat, facedown. He was not gentle. I wiggled a couple fingers by way of fighting back. He was not impressed.
He twisted one arm up behind me till I thought it was going to break, then whispered in my ear, “I don’t want you tromping around in my life, boy. You hear?”
I did not answer.
He twisted my arm a little more. I let out a yell, proving I was getting my wind back faster than I thought.
“You hear me, boy?”
“Yeah.”
“Next time I even see you or one of your buddies they’re going to be picking up pieces all over Oar. You understand?”
“Yeah.”
“You tell that slit she don’t mind her own business she’s going to be up to her twat in grays. You listening?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” He hit me on the head again. I don’t know why — maybe because my skull is as thick as my old man used to tell me it was — he didn’t put me all the way out. I lay there powerless but aware as he drew a knife across my left cheek. Then he got up and went away and my only companions were pain, nausea, and humiliation.
After a while I got my feet under me and stumbled off to find Raven. I hadn’t been whipped up on so bad since I was a kid. The slash burned like hell but wasn’t as bad as I’d feared.
I actually found them pretty easy, considering. Only took me about fifteen minutes. There was a little light now from a big fire burning down south. Later I found out they were getting rid of the bodies of the first hundred people to die from the cholera. The twins must have anticipated epidemics. They’d had the engineers save all the scrap lumber from the demolished buildings.