Toadkiller Dog and the wicker man were the serpent’s deadly fangs.
Even the wicker man had physical limits. And periods of lucidity. At Roses, after the city’s punishment, in a moment of rationality, he decided that neither he nor his soldiers could survive the present pace. Indeed, losses among his followers came more often from hardship than from enemy action.
He camped below the ruined city several days, recuperating, till wholesale desertions by plunder-laden troopers informed him that his soldiers were sufficiently rested.
Five thousand men followed him in his march toward Charm.
* * *
The Tower was sealed. They recognized him in there. They did not want him inside. They named him rebel, traitor, madman, scum, and worse. They mocked him. She was absent, but her lackeys remained faithful and defiant and insufficiently afraid.
They set worms of power snaking over stone already adamantine with spells set during the Tower’s construction: writhing maggots of pastel green, pink, blue, that scurried to any point of attack to absorb the sorcerous energy applied from without. The wizards within the Tower were not as great as their attacker, but they had the advantage of being able to work from behind defenses erected by one who had been greater than he.
The wicker man spewed his fury till exhaustion overcame him. And the best of his efforts only left scars little more than stains on the face of the Tower.
They taunted and mocked him, those fools in there, but after a few days they tired of the game. Irked by his persistence, they began throwing things back at him. Things that burned.
He got back out of range.
His troops no longer believed him when he claimed that the Lady had lost her power. If she had, why were her captains so stubborn?
It must be true that she was not in the Tower. If she was not, then she might return anytime, summoned to its aid. In that instance it would not be smart to be found in the wicker man’s camp.
His army began to evaporate. Whole companies vanished. Fewer than two thousand remained when the wicker man’s sorceries finally breeched the Tower gate. They went inside without enthusiasm and found their pessimism justified. Most died in the Tower’s traps before their master could stamp in behind them.
He fared little better.
He plunged back outside, rolled on the ground to extinguish the flames gnawing his body. Stones rained from the battlements, threatened to crush him. But he escaped, and quickly enough to prevent the defection of his few hundred remaining men.
Toadkiller Dog did not participate. And he did not hang around after that humiliation. Cursing every step, the wicker man followed him.
The Tower’s defenders used their sorcery to keep their laughter hanging around him for days.
* * *
The cities between Charm and the sea paid, and Opal doubly. The wicker man’s vengeance was so thorough he had to wait in the ruins six days before an incautious sea captain put in to investigate the disaster.
The wicker man’s rage fed upon his frustration. The very fates seemed to conspire to thwart his revenge. For all his frenzied and indefatigable effort he was gaining no ground—except in the realm of madness, and that he did not recognize.
In Beryl he encountered wizardry almost the equal of that he had faced at the Tower. The city’s defenders put up a ferocious fight rather than bend the knee to him.
His fury, his insanity, then, cowed even Toadkiller Dog.
19
Tully sat on a log and scratched and stared in the general direction of the tree. Smeds didn’t think he was seeing anything. He was feeling sorry for himself again. Or still. “Shit,” he muttered. And, “The hell with it.”
“What?”
“I said the hell with it. I’ve had it. We’re going home.”
“Listen to this. What happened to the fancy houses and fancy horses and fancy women and being set for life?”
“Screw it. We been out here all damned spring and half the summer and we ain’t got nowhere. I’m going to be a North Side bum all my life. I just got a big head for a while and thought I could get above myself.”
Smeds looked out at the tree. Timmy Locan was out there throwing sticks, a mindless exercise that never bored him. He was tempting fate today, getting closer than ever before, policing up sticks that had flown wide before and chucking them onto the pile around the tree. That was less work than gleaning the woods for deadwood. The nearby forest was stripped as clean as parkland.
Smeds thought it looked like they could set the fire any day now. In places the woodpile was fifteen feet high and you couldn’t see the tree at all.
What was Tully up to? This whining and giving up fit in with his behavior since their dip in the river, but the timing was suspect. “We’ll be ready to do the burn any day now. Why not wait till then?”
“Screw it. It ain’t going to work and you know it. Or if you don’t you’re fooling yourself.”
“You want to go home, go ahead. I’m going to stick it out and see what happens.”
“I said we’re going home. All of us.”
Right, Smeds thought. Tully was cranking up for a little screw your buddy. “What you want to bet you come up outvoted three to one, cousin? You want to go, go. Ain’t nobody going to stop you.”
Tully tried a little bluster, coming on like he thought he was some kind of general.
“Stuff it, Tully. I ain’t no genius, but just how dumb do you think I am?”
Tully waited a little too long to say, “Huh? What do you mean?”
“That night you went chickenshit and run off to the river on us. I got to thinking about how you done that to me before. You ain’t going to pull it on me this time, Tully. You ain’t taking off with the spike and leaving old Smeds standing there with his thumb up his butt.”
Tully started protesting his innocence of having entertained any such thoughts. Smeds watched Timmy Locan throw sticks. He ignored Tully. After a while he watched Fish approach from the direction of the town. The old man was carrying something over his shoulder. Smeds couldn’t make out what it was. He hoped it was another of those dwarf deer like the old man had got a couple weeks back. That had been some good eating.
Timmy spotted Fish. He lost interest in his sticks, wandered over.
It wasn’t a deer Fish had, it was some kind of bundle that clanked when he dropped it in front of the log. He said, “Smell’s gone over there. Thought I’d poke around.” He opened his bundle, which he had folded from a ragged blanket. “Those guys didn’t take time out to loot when they went through over there.”
Smeds gaped. There were pounds and pounds of coins, some of them even gold. There were rings and bracelets and earrings and broaches and necklaces and some of them boasted jewels. He’d never seen so much wealth in one place.
Fish said, “There’s probably a lot more. I just picked up what was easy to find and quit when I had as much as I could carry.”
Smeds looked at Tully. “And you wanted to cut out because the whole thing was a big bust.”
Tully looked at the pile, awed. Then his expression became suspicious and Smeds knew he was wondering if Fish had hidden the best stuff where he could pick it up later. Typical Tully Stahl thinking, and stupid.
If Fish had wanted to hold out he would have just hidden the stuff and not said anything. Nobody would have known the difference. Nobody was interested in that town. Nobody even wanted to think about what happened there.
“What’s this?” Fish asked, glancing from Tully to Smeds.
Smeds said, “He was whining about how the whole thing was a big damned bust and he was sick of it and wanted us to go home. But look here. Even if we don’t have no luck with the tree we made out like bandits. I could live pretty good for a good long time on a share of this.”
Fish looked from Tully to Smeds and back again. He said, “I see.” And maybe he did. That old man wasn’t anybody’s fool. He said, “Timmy, you got a good eye for this kind of thing. Why don’t you separa
te that out into equal lots?”
“Sure.” Timmy sat down and ran his hands through the coins, laughing. “Anybody see anything he’s just got to have?”
Nobody did.
Timmy was good. Not even Tully found any reason to complain about his divvying.
Fish said, “There’s bound to be more over there. Not to mention a lot of steel that could be cleaned up and wholesaled if we brought a wagon up and carried it back.”
After they squirreled their shares, Tully and Old Man Fish headed back to town. Smeds didn’t want to go anywhere near the place but figured he had to go along to keep Tully honest. Timmy wouldn’t go at all. He was happy building up the woodpile.
Looting the town made for a ten-day full-time job, what with having to clean up all the weapons and some other large items of value and then bundling them protectively and hiding them for later recovery. They came up with enough money and jewelry and small whatnots to make a heavy load for each of them.
Even Tully seemed pleased and content. For the moment.
One night, though, he said, “You know what bugs me? How come nobody else in the whole damned city of Oar ever got the same idea I did? I’d have bet my balls that after this long we’d be up to our asses in guys trying to glom on to that spike.”
Old Man Fish grunted. “I’ve been wondering why no one’s come to see what happened to the garrison.”
Nobody had any ideas. The questions just sort of lay there like dead fish too ripe to be ignored and too big to shove out of the way.
* * *
Fish said, “I reckon it’s time we torched her and seen if she’s going to do it or not. That woodpile gets any bigger Timmy ain’t going to be able to throw them that high.”
Smeds realized he was reluctant to take the next step. Tully didn’t seem too anxious, either. But Timmy had a grin on ear to ear. He was raring to go.
Tully leaned over and told Smeds, “Little dip did some torch work back in town. Likes to see things burn.”
“We got a good day for it here,” Fish said. “A nice breeze to whip up the fire. A hot, sunshiny day, which is when we know it’s asleep the deepest. All we have to do is look in our pants and see if we got some balls, then go do it.”
They looked at each other awhile. Finally, Smeds said, “All right,” and got up. He collected the bundle of brush that would be his to throw. Fish and Timmy got theirs. Tully had to go along.
They lit the bundles off down in the bottom of the hole the monster dug, then jumped out and charged the mountain of sticks from the windward side. They heaved their bundles. Tully’s, thrown too far away, fell short, but that did not matter.
They ran like hell, Smeds, Timmy, and Fish in straight lines, Tully zigging and zagging. The tree did not wake up before they’d all made the cover of the woods.
The fire had reached inferno proportions by then.
Random bolts of blue lightning flailed around. They did not come for long, though.
Smeds could feel the heat from where he crouched, watching. That was one bitch of a bonfire. But he was not impressed. What he was, mainly, was sad.
The fire burned the rest of the day. At midnight Timmy went to check it out and came back to say there was still a lot of live coals under the ash and he hadn’t been able to get near it.
Next morning they all went to look. Smeds was astounded. The tree still stood. Its trunk was charred and its leaves were gone, but it still stood, the silver spike glittering wickedly at eye level. And it did not protest their presence, no matter how close they got.
That was not close enough. There was a lot of heat in the ash still. They hauled water from the river and splashed down a path. Timmy Locan volunteered to take the pry bar and go pull the spike.
“I can’t believe it,” Tully said as Timmy leaned on the bar and the tree didn’t do anything about it. “I can’t goddamned believe it! We’re actually going to do it!”
Timmy grunted and strained and cussed and nothing happened. “This son of a bitch ain’t going to come! Oh!”
It popped loose. Timmy grabbed at it as it sailed past, grabbing it left-handed for a second.
Then he screamed and dropped it. “Oh, shit, that bastard is hot.” He came running, crying, and shoved his hand into the last bucket of water. His palm was mostly red and beginning to show patches of blister already.
Fish took a shovel and scooped the spike out of the ashes. “Look out, Timmy. I’m fixing to dump it in there.”
“My hand…”
“Ain’t good to do a bad burn that way. You head back to camp. I got some salve there that’ll do you a whole lot better.”
Timmy pulled his hand out. Fish dumped the spike. The water hissed and bubbled. Fish said, “You carry the bucket, Smeds.”
Just as Tully said, “We better make tracks. I think its starting to wake up.”
It was hard to tell against that sky, but it did look like there were tiny flecks of blue out on the ends of the smallest surviving twigs.
“The spike ain’t conducting heat into the heartwood anymore,” Fish said. “Scat,” he told the backs of a lot of pumping legs and flailing elbows.
Smeds looked back just before he plunged into the woods. Just as the tree cut loose with a wild, undirected discharge. The flash nearly blinded him. Ash flew in clouds. The pain and disappointment and … sorrow?… of the tree touched him like a gentle, sad rain. He found tears streaking his face and guilt in his heart.
Old Man Fish puffed into camp one step ahead of Tully, who was embarrassed because the old-timer had outrun him. Fish said, “We got a lot of daylight left. I suggest we get the hell on the road. Timmy, let me look at that hand.”
Smeds looked over Fish’s shoulder. Timmy’s hand looked awful. Fish didn’t like the look of it either. He stared at it, grunted, frowned, studied it, grunted again. “Salve won’t be good enough. I’m going to collect up some herbs for a poultice. Thing must have been hotter than I thought.”
“Hurts like hell,” Timmy said, eyes still watery.
“Poultice will take care of that. Smeds. When you get that spike out of the bucket don’t touch it. Dump it on that old blanket. Then wrap it up. I don’t think anybody ought to touch it.”
“Why the hell not?” Tully asked.
“Because it burned Timmy badder than it should have. Because it’s a bad mojo thing and maybe we shouldn’t ought to take any chances.”
Smeds did it the way Fish said, after the old man went hunting his herbs. After he dumped the bucket he moved the spike to a dry part of the blanket with a stick. “Hey! Tully! Check this. It’s still hot even after it was in that water.” Passing his hand above it he could feel the heat from a foot away.
Tully tried it. He looked troubled. “You better wrap it up good and tie it tight and put it right in the middle of your pack.”
“Eh?” Tully didn’t want to carry it himself? Didn’t want it in his control every second? That was disturbing.
“You want to come give me a hand awhile here?” Tully asked. “I can’t never get this pack together by myself.”
Smeds finished bundling the spike, went over, knowing from his tone Tully had something he wanted to whisper.
As they stuffed and rolled and tied, Tully murmured, “I decided not to do it on the way back. We’re still going to need them awhile. We’ll do it later, in the city sometime.”
Smeds nodded, not saying he wasn’t going to do it at all, and was going to try his damnedest to see that Fish and Timmy and he himself got fair shares of the payoff for the spike.
He had a good idea what was going on inside Tully’s head. Tully wasn’t going to be satisfied with the big hit they’d made already. Tully was thinking Fish and Timmy made good mules. They could haul their shares back. Once they got to town he could take them away.
Smeds had a suspicion Tully wasn’t going to be satisfied with a two-way split, either.
20
Our fire burned down till it wasn’t nothing but some patches
of red. Once in a while a little flame would shoot up and prance around for a few seconds, then die. I stared up at the stars. Most were ones I’d known all my life, but they had moved to funny parts of the night. The constellations were all askew.
It was a good night for shooting stars. I’d spotted seven already.
“Uncomfortable?” Raven asked. He was watching the sky, too.
He startled me. He hadn’t said anything since back around lunchtime. We didn’t talk much anymore.
“Scared.” I had lost track of time. I had no idea how far we’d come or where we were, except that it was one goddamned long ways from home and down in the south.
“And wondering what the hell you’re doing here, no doubt.”
“No. I think I got a handle on that. My trouble is I don’t like having to sneak everywhere, like a thief. I might get treated like one.”
I did not add that I did not like being in places where the only person who could understand me was him. If something happened to him … That was what scared me the most.
It was too awful to think about.
I said, “But it’s too late to turn back.”
“Some say it’s never too late.”
So he was thinking about his kids again, now he was plenty safe from the risk of actually having to deal with them. Also, maybe, he was having second thoughts about our ride into the unknown.
Opaque as they were to me, and maybe even to him, powerful emotions were driving him. They had Darling’s name hung all over them, though he never mentioned her. One monster of a guilt was perched on his shoulders, flapping and squawking and pecking at his eyes and ears. Somehow he was going to silence that beast by catching his pal Croaker and passing the word about what happened in the Barrowland.
It didn’t make no sense to me. But people never do, a whole lot.
Maybe the determination was starting to wear thin. It was one thing to take off after a guy expecting to catch him in a few weeks and a few hundred miles and something else to be on the track still after months and months and thousands of miles. People aren’t built to take that without any letup. The road can blunt the most iron will.