The Silver Spike

  It was no place he wanted to spend any time. It would be cold and damp and infested with rats and, these days, probably, human vermin. But he could think of nowhere else to get out of sight, even for an hour.

  “When I was a kid we used to —”

  “Don’t tell me. If I don’t know I can’t tell anybody. Just tell me where’s a good place for you to see me without me or anybody watching me seeing you.”

  Smeds thought about it and mentioned a place he did know was there because his labor battalion had passed that way every morning and evening when he was doing time. He described it, asked, “What are we up to?”

  “I’m going to see if Exile will talk deal.”

  “Oh, shit, man! He’ll take you apart.”

  “He might,” Fish admitted. “But we know somebody’s going to do that real soon anyway. He’s the only one who’s offered any serious deal.”

  “I think if I had my druthers I’d rather the Rebels got the damned thing. The imperials are nasty enough without it.”

  Fish grunted. “Maybe. But they don’t want to pay for it. They want you to do it for love. I’m a whore too old and set in her ways not to want to get paid for my trouble.”

  Smeds said, “I guess for guys like us it don’t matter who’s running things anyway. Whoever it is they’re going to try to stick it to us.”

  The heavens had cut loose now, dumping snow so heavily it had become their ally.

  Fish started explaining what he wanted Smeds to do.

  LXVII

  The gang came smashing in out of the blizzard. Raven snarled, “We lost them.”

  Stubby Torque said, “You can’t see your hand in front of your face out there.”

  “You tracked Raker down in a snowstorm in Roses, didn’t you?” I asked Raven.

  “Different circumstances.” He was double-pissed now because of what he thought he saw when he busted through the door. As if we could have done anything about it carved up the way we were.

  Darling shut them up. She made it clear she’d had her mind on business because she told them what we were going to do if those guys told the gray boys where to find us again. She felt almost sorry for those two.

  She overdid the empathy sometimes. I don’t have any for guys who stick knives in me.

  The excitement started a few hours later when a couple of our little spies from the temple came charging in to tell us how a guy who sounded like the one who stabbed me had dropped in on Exile to see if he could cut a deal. As a good-faith gesture he’d told Exile where he could find us and Brigadier Wildbrand. He’d also told Exile his headquarters was so riddled with spies he couldn’t sneeze without some Plain creature reporting it.

  That meant big excitement over there. A bunch of our little allies didn’t get the word in time to get out. Gossamer and Spidersilk led the exterminator squads. Meantime, they were throwing together a gang to come after us. They figured we’d hear they were coming but counted on us getting caught being on the move in a city alert for us.

  I thought they were a little optimistic there, considering Bomanz and Silent had done a good job keeping us from being noticed before. But Exile probably wouldn’t know we had those kinds of resources. Not about Bomanz, at least. I figured his big panic would come when he started wondering what resources Darling could call up out of the Plain.

  She did have something cooked up with the tree god. What I didn’t know. It wouldn’t be anything small.

  Nothing like being nailed down on the bull’s-eye of history in the making without a fool’s notion of what was going on. Nothing personal, Case, old buddy, but they can’t make you tell what you don’t know.

  Darling told Silent and the Torques to get the horses out so they could not be recaptured. They were going to hide them on an empty lot nearby. Yeah? What would they do about tracks? Something wizardly, I guess.

  Horses were part of her plans. Whatever they were. I had caught part of an argument with Silent where she told him she wanted to steal a bunch more.

  One heroic little rock monkey hung in the temple till the last moment, near getting himself fried by the twins so he could find out as much as possible about Exile’s deal for the spike.

  There was a deal. The monkey said Exile was going to play it straight and keep his end of the bargain if the guys with the spike kept theirs. The monkey said the guy dealing for them had no idea where the spike was nor any idea where the guy who did know was hiding.

  Made sense to me. And to Exile, I guess. He didn’t waste no time jacking the guy around, just asked the go-between how they wanted to make the exchange.

  We’d had the guy who knew! I’d lived in the same damned tent with him for days! I wanted to kick some Nightstalkers around for lying to us.

  Raven got the wind up, too. “How the hell are we supposed to con people into fighting the empire if the bastards go honest on us? Whoever heard of a wizard dealing straight?”

  Bomanz gave him some dirty looks but never got no chance to argue because right then we got word that Exile’s boys were closing in.

  When they busted in all they saw was Brigadier Wildbrand and her buddy sitting on the floor by our runt menhir. The rest of us were still there but Bomanz had disguised us as heaps of manure and whatnot while we gave the Nightstalkers the idea we were sneaking out.

  The talking stone boomed out, “Hi, guys! You’re too late again. You’re always going to be too late. Why don’t you wake up and come on over to the winning side? The White Rose don’t hold no grudges.”

  The raiders were all Exile’s personal guards, unlikely recruits, but the stone kept nagging them.

  They spread out. Some rushed into the loft where nobody was hiding. Some went to work to get the Nightstalkers loose. And some went to work trying to figure how to silence that bigmouth stone.

  The menhir vanished. And just when their eyes stopped popping, here it came back. “You boys better get your hearts and heads right fast. It’s almost dawn now and before sunset tomorrow the White Rose is going to cure this berg of the imperial disease.” Away it went again.

  That crack rattled them some.

  Here it came, spewing more mockery. They got so pissed they stopped doing a thorough job of searching.

  There was some noise outside. Three of them charged out into the blizzard. There was a flash, a scream. A guy staggered inside. “They’re all dead out there. They took the horses.”

  That damned Silent was showing off for Darling. She would be pissed at him for wasting them when he didn’t have to. I didn’t blame him, though. He’d been keeping a lot bottled up. These guys were some he could make pay.

  A bunch more went charging off to avenge their buddies. The talking stone whooped and laughed and carried on.

  They never caught Silent, of course. But he got some more of them. They finally took Brigadier Wildbrand and got out of there while there were some of them left to get.

  A little later Silent brought ten horses in. Him and the Torques were real pleased with themselves. I think maybe Darling was the only one who wasn’t pleased with them.

  LXVIII

  The snowfall had ended. The sky had cleared. The world had grown almost intolerably bright by the time the Limper topped the rise that gave him his first glimpse of his destination. The silence troubled him some. There should have been birds out if nothing else. And why was there so much smoke drifting downwind from Oar, more than could be explained by all the city’s hearth and heating fires?

  No matter. No matter at all. He could feel that piece of haunted silver calling him as though he had been born to wield it and it had been wrought for him and him alone. His destiny lay there, ahead, and all the mousy scrabbling around by those who would deny him would not prevent him taking that power that was rightfully his.

  He strode forward, walking now, no longer rushed, confident yet still ill at ease with the silence and a lingering suspicion that all the horizons were masks being worn by his enemies.

  LXIX

&n
bsp; Toadkiller Dog was only one of a varied pack of monsters running on the Limper’s trail. But he was out in front, their leader, the only one of the crowd not carrying some dread lord or lady out of the Tower. He was the scout, the champion, and before this day was through he hoped to be entered in the annals of history as the destroyer of the last of the Ten Who Were Taken, as the closer of the door on the olden times.

  He topped a low ridge line, saw Oar for the first time. He saw, from disturbances in the snow, that the Limper had paused there, too. There he was now, a remote speck tramping a lonely track across the pristine snowscape.

  He dropped down onto his belly to lower his profile, listened to the silence. He watched the smoke drift from the city, noted that everything that had stood outside the walls last time had been cleared away, leaving nothing but a flat white surround. Uneasily for a moment, he surveyed the horizons, feeling almost as if distant groves were the massed helmets and spears of legions waiting in tight array.

  His companions crowded up behind him. They waited till the speck that was the Limper vanished against the dark loom of the city’s walls. Then they all moved forward, marching toward doom or destiny in a gradually widening line abreast.

  LXX

  Smeds sat in the icy shadows shivering, unable to stop. His stomach felt hollow. It ached. He was scared. He hoped it was the cold and hunger but was afraid it was the first bite of cholera.

  The air was filled with smoke and the stench of bodies being burned. Death had reaped a rich harvest during the night. Few who were not soldiers had eaten well in days. Disease made easy headway in bodies already weakened.

  He watched the bridge up the ditch and wondered if Fish would ever come, and what he would do if Fish didn’t. Then he sat there and gradually convinced himself that he was the last of the four of them, possessed of the greatest treasure in the world and so poor he was forced to live in a sewer like a rat.

  He scavenged through his pack for the dozenth time, looking for some scrap of food that might have gotten into it somehow. Again he found nothing but the gold and silver he had brought out of the Barrowland. A fortune, and he would have given it all for a good meal, a warm bed, and confidence that the great terrors of the world had forgotten his name.

  He started. Daydreaming, he had not noticed the two men come onto the bridge. One looked like Fish. He made the signal he was supposed to make before he walked away from the other, who stayed where he was.

  Smeds shoved his pack into a gap in the culvert wall, where some of the building stone had fallen away and high water had washed out some of the earth behind. Then he ran toward the light at the nether end, a hundred yards away.

  Midway he stumbled over a corpse that the rats had been at for a while. He had become so inured to horror that he just went on, giving it hardly a thought.

  He rushed out the other end, floundered through drifted snow, and hurried around to where he was supposed to meet Fish, masked from the man on the bridge by a hump of earth six feet high. Fish was carrying a sizable blue canvas bag. “Is it safe?” Smeds croaked.

  “Looks like they’ll play square. This is the first third, along with some food and clothes and blankets and stuff I thought you could use.”

  Smeds’s mouth watered. But he asked, “What now?”

  “You go out on the bridge, get the second third, tell him where to find the spike. I watch from cover. He messes with you, I hunt him down and kill him. Go on. Let’s get it done.”

  Smeds looked at the old man a moment, shrugged, went off to meet the man on the bridge. He was calmer than he had expected to be. Maybe he was getting used to the pressure. He was still pleased with himself for not having bent for a moment while the Rebels had him.

  The man on the bridge leaned on the rail, staring at nothing. He glanced at Smeds incuriously as he approached. Another blue bag leaned against his leg. Smeds sidled up and planted his forearms on the rail on the other side of the bag.

  The man was younger than Smeds had expected and of a race he’d never before seen. Easy to see why he had taken the name Exile.

  “Smeds Stahl?”

  “Yes. How come you’re playing this square?”

  “I’ve found honesty and fair play productive over the long term. The second third is in the bag. Do you have something for me?”

  “In the city wall. One hundred eighty-two paces east of the North Gate, below the twenty-sixth archer’s embrasure, in the mortar behind the block recessed to take the support brace of a timber hording.”

  “Understood. Thank you. Good day.”

  Smeds hoisted the bag and got the hell out of there.

  “Go all right?” Fish asked.

  “Yeah. Now what?”

  “Now I join up with him to go see if you’told the truth. If you did he gives me the final third. If not he kills me and comes looking for you.”

  “Shit. Why not head out now? What we got ought to be enough.”

  “He’s played straight. I figure it would be smart to play it that way with him. We aren’t going to get out of Oar for a while. Be nice to know there was somebody who wasn’t out to get us. You go back wherever you was hiding. I’ll come back to the bridge.”

  “Right.”

  Smeds was just about to drop back into the ditch when alarm horns began blowing all over the city.

  The Limper had come.

  LXXI

  Raven got him a wild hair. He’d go snag the spike and that would be a big foot in the door with Darling. The guy’s head was getting a little bent. He didn’t tell nobody but Brother Bear Torque, who he conned into going along with him.

  He started out lucky. They hit no gray patrols. As they got into the heart of the city, here came Exile and an older guy just like they had timed it for Raven’s benefit. They followed the two.

  Exile and his companion ended up leaning on the rail of a footbridge over a big drainage ditch. Raven and Torque watched from a distance. The area around the ditch was clear. They couldn’t get as close as Raven wanted.

  “What the hell are they doing?” Torque asked.

  “Waiting, looks like.”

  The older man resumed moving, went on, and vanished among tenements beyond the ditch. Five minutes later another man came out to the bridge, talked to Exile a little, walked away with a bag.

  “That tears it,” Torque said. “Time to bend over and kiss our asses good-bye.”

  “He hasn’t got hold of it yet,” Raven growled. “We stick and see what turns up. Look here.” The older man was coming out to rejoin Exile.

  They just stood there.

  “Look!” Raven pointed.

  The covert from which they watched was about ten feet higher than the bridge. Just enough of an elevation to reveal the head and shoulders of a man crossing the snow north of the bridge, behind a mound that would mask him from the men on the bridge. He carried two blue. bags.

  Alarm horns tore the guts out of the quiet.

  The men on the bridge took off.

  Torque said, “We better get back. …”

  “Wait!” There was a nasty gleam in Raven’s eyes. “Exile will be busy with the Limper. We get that man to tell us where the spike is, maybe we can get to it first.”

  LXXII

  Smeds had gotten back to his starting point. He put the two bags into hiding with his pack, except for a couple of army blankets, a heavy coat, a knife, food, and a bottle of brandy. He stuffed, warmed his veins, listened to the horns. They were going berserk up there.

  A noise from down the culvert shocked him. He listened closely, figured it had come from about where the corpse lay, and had been made by something a lot bigger than a rat.

  He rose carefully, filled his coat pockets with food, laid his blankets in atop the treasure — and froze.

  A man stood silhouetted in the nearer end of the culvert. One of those Rebels. Fish had been right. The bastards just wouldn’t let up.

  The man was coming in.

  Smeds lifted himself into t
he hole with his plunder. It was a tight fit and a pathetic attempt at concealment but he was counting on the man’s vision needing a long while to adjust from the brightness outside.

  Absolutely.

  The man was still moving tentatively when he came abreast of Smeds. Smeds reached out and cut his throat.

  The man made an injured-rabbit noise and started thrashing around. Smeds climbed down and walked to the mouth of the culvert. He paid no attention to the noise made by someone stumbling toward him from behind. He looked out into the glare, his eyes smarting. He moved out carefully, ready for anything. And found himself alone.

  The ditch bank was almost vertical there, faced with stone, twelve feet high, spotted with ice. A lot of snow had blown into the ditch. Smeds floundered through it.

  An angry bellow from inside the culvert gave him added incentive to make sure of his hand and toe-holds as he climbed.

  He heard the man come out as he rolled over the lip of the ditch. He got to his feet and waited.

  An angry face rose above the brink. Smeds kicked as hard as he could, caught the man square in the center of the forehead. He pitched backward. Smeds stepped to the edge, looked down at the figure almost buried in the snow. He caressed the knife in his coat pocket, thought better of going down there because two women and several children had paused near the footbridge, watching. “I-hope you freeze to death, you son of a bitch.” He kicked loose snow down, turned, and walked away.

  He felt better than he had in a week and right then did not much give a damn what the future held.

  LXXIII

  Darling was foaming at the mouth when the alarm horns brayed. She had discovered Raven and Bear missing and was as thoroughly pissed off as I could imagine her getting. Whatever she had in mind, whatever she was making us get dressed up for, she had counted on having more bodies backing her.