“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. Where 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.
I stumbled over Raven is how I found him.
He was out cold. He had a slash just like mine.
The Torque was about ten feet away and just starting to twitch and make noises. He had been cut, too.
So had Smiley. Twice. The second cut was about four inches below the first, ran from ear to ear, and was the last wound he’d ever suffer.
They’d done a number on us, all right.
* * *
Raven hadn’t gotten him a swift kick but a good whack on the head. He was still rocky as we reported. His hands shook badly as he tried to sign to Darling: “One man, I think. Took us by surprise.” He was embarrassed.
I don’t think I ever saw him embarrassed like that before. But he never got took like that before, either.
I was embarrassed when my turn came because I had to report every word the man had said. I was afraid I was going to have to explain a couple of them.
She surprised me for the hundredth time by not being as ignorant as I expected.
Silent touched his cheek, signed, “Queen’s Bridge.”
Darling nodded.
I had to ask.
Silent signed, “When we fought the Nightstalkers at Queen’s Bridge they took eighteen prisoners. They marked them all on the left cheek and turned them loose.”
“What the hell? Could the soldiers themselves have the spike? Is that why they haven’t had any luck finding it? Is the brigadier playing some game of her own?” I did it in sign. You get into the habit when you’re around Darling long.
She looked at me weird for a few seconds, then signed, “We have to get out of here now. Soldiers—not Nightstalkers—are going to come any minute.”
I saw it then.
Somebody was a mad genius, a wizard at thinking on his feet. In the minutes he’d had us at his mercy he’d put together a plan that could hurl Oar into a whirlpool of chaos and violence.
He had spared us only to spark a greater bloodletting.
The twins’ soldiers would grab us, with the marks on us, and eliminate the White Rose menace. Word would get out. A significant portion of the population would start raising hell. Meantime, the twins would take our testimony on the rack and find cause to suspect the Nightstalkers and their commander. There was no love lost there now and there was no way the Nightstalkers were going to let their brigadier be arrested or even relieved of her command.
The Nightstalkers were outnumbered by the other gray regiments but they were the better, tougher soldiers and they would win in any confrontation, unless the twins themselves intervened directly.
Bloody-minded genius. Who could keep his or her mind on the silver spike with all that shit going on?
While I was thinking, Darling was flinging orders left and right. She sent all the little Plain creatures out to scout around and see who was in the neighborhood and to watch for soldiers. She sent the Torque brothers off to warn our Rebel friends. Bomanz and Silent she sent to the area where we got bushwhacked to see if they, with their talents, could pick up anything.
She looked from me to Raven and back again, deciding who should be their guide.
She picked Raven.
Before they could all work up a good scowl for me—I think Silent was pleased that he would not be leaving her alone with Raven—one of the Plain creatures zipped in to report the area clear except for an antiquated wino passed out on the wooden sidewalk half a block away.
Darling signed, “Let us go now.”
We all went.
The wave of raids and arrests started less than an hour later.
51
Smeds looked at Tully across the little table. His cousin was drinking with a grim determination but he was still stone-cold sober. Those bodies. Gruesome. Those men chasing them through the night. Those fires in the south, where they were burning the bodies of cholera victims. Now there were bands of soldiers tramping through the streets, about some nocturnal business that had set the rumors flying. It was not a time to inspire confidence in one’s security.
The soldiers—some of them—were troubled, too. Moments before, several Nightstalkers had come in to consult the resident corporal. Now the whole bunch was headed out. They looked like they expected bad trouble.
“It’s starting to come apart,” Smeds said. He felt breathless.
Shivering, Tully nodded. “If I knew what we was going to go through I would’ve said screw the spike.”
“The big hit, man. I guess when you think about it it wasn’t never that easy for nobody that ever made it.”
“Yeah. What I did, I never thought it through. Or I would’ve figured the world would go crazy. I would’ve figured
there’d be just a whole mob of them who’d kill anybody and do anything to get ahold of it. What the hell is wrong with this beer? It’s got a kick like a mouse.”
“Better enjoy it.” Fish appeared out of nowhere. He had a haggard, harried look. He joined them. “It might be the last beer in town.” He slumped, wrung out. “I’ve done what I can. All we can do is wait. And hope.”
Smeds asked, “What’s going on out there? With the soldiers.”
“They’re rounding up Rebels. They’re going to execute a big bunch in the morning. That ought to set off the explosion that will break the city wide open.”
“What if it don’t?” Tully asked.
“Then we’re screwed. Sooner or later they’ll get us. Process of elimination.” Fish stole a sip of Smeds’s beer. “Cheer up. They’re between us and the cholera. Maybe it’ll get them before they get us.”
“Shit!”
“We ought to get some sleep.”
“You kidding?”
“We ought to try. We ought, at least, to get out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say.”
* * *
Smeds fell asleep in about two minutes.
He was not sure what wakened him. The sun was up. So were Tully and Fish. Up and out of there. Something made him start shivering. He went to the common room. It was empty.
It hit him as he crossed to the door.
The silence.
The morning was as still as the grave. But for his footsteps he would have feared he was deaf. The door groaned as he opened it.
Everyone stood in the street, looking toward the center of Oar, waiting for something.
The wait was short.
Smeds felt it in the earth before it reached his ears, a monster vibration pursued by an avalanche of rage, a roar almost like a blow.
Fish told him, “They started the executions. I was afraid they would chicken out.”
The roar grew louder, rolled closer, as an entire city, in a moment, decided that it had had enough of tyranny and oppression.
The wave came into the street outside the Skull and Crossbones. The people reeled with it.
Then mothers began herding children inside. Men began moving toward city center, in a rage for death, few of them armed because the repeated searches by the grays had turned up most of the privately held weapons. They had confiscated everything but the personal knife.
Smeds decided he must be getting old and cynical. He hadn’t the slightest urge to get involved.
Neither did Fish. Tully twitched for a moment, then stood fast.
Many of the men in the street did the same. The rage was like the cholera. Not everyone had it yet. But both would claim many more before they subsided.
Fish got Smeds and Tully inside the Skull and Crossbones and sat them down. “We don’t move. We let the rumors come to us. If they turn favorable enough we’ll head for the wall whenever it looks like we’ve got a chance to get out. Smeds, go put yourself a pack together. Stuff you’ll need to travel.”
Tully whispered, “What about the spike?”
“It can take care of itself.”
“Where the hell is it, anyway?”
“Smeds, go pack. I don’t know, Tully. I don’t want to know. All I care is, Smeds found a place so good nobody else has found it.”
Smeds felt Tully’s angry stare as he moved away.
* * *
The first flurry of rumors spoke more eloquently of human savagery than it did of human nobility.
Despite knowing the mob was in an ugly mood, the regiment handling the executions had been caught off balance by the violence of the outburst following the first execution. They were swamped by the responding fury. Eight hundred died before panicky reinforcements, in no good order, arrived. Several thousand civilians and several hundred more soldiers died before it broke up. The fleeing citizens took a fair supply of arms with them.
Small-to-medium-sized riots bubbled up all over Oar, anywhere the grays appeared weak.
A mob tried to storm the Civil Palace. They were driven off but they left several fires burning, the worst of which raged out of control for hours.
A huge mob attacked the regiment that had moved in to beef up protection of the South Gate. Many captured weapons surfaced there. The mob overwhelmed the regiment but failed to flush the gate guards and failed to take the top of the wall. Archers posted there soon dispersed them.
Fish did not let Tully or Smeds go out once.
Come nightfall the situation grew both more chaotic and more sinister. The hard-pressed soldiers began to lose discipline, to indulge in indiscriminate slaughter. Youths got out and set fires, vandalized, looted. Individuals pursued private feuds. And the world’s densest population of wizards decided to become involved. Decided to gang up and eliminate their toughest competitor.
They rallied a mob and went after Gossamer and Spidersilk. This time the attackers broke through. They exterminated the bodyguard force. One of the twins was injured, maybe killed. The entire center of the city seemed to be afire. And total madness spread with the news. It got so it seemed everyone in the city was trying to murder someone else.
The crowd of wizards turned on one another.
Chaos had not trespassed much in the neighborhood of the Skull and Crossbones earlier. But now it came creeping in with a crash and a clash and a scream.
Smeds said, “We got to get out of here.”
Fish surprised him by agreeing. “You’re right. Before it gets impossible. Let’s grab our stuff.”
Tully was too worn out to do anything but go along.
The other hangers-on watched them dully as they slipped out. Half an hour later, without serious misadventure, they had established themselves in the dark murk of a partly collapsed basement barely a hundred yards from the place where Timmy Locan had died.
The madness had no hunger for that part of Oar already gnawed to the bone by the Limper’s passage.
52
Bomanz was bad worried. “There’s no limit to the insanity out there. If they keep on they’ll continue till there’s only one man left standing.”
Raven cracked, “Let’s make sure that’s us.”
We had hidden ourselves in the bell tower of an old temple less than a bow shot from the Civil Palace. If I wanted I could peek out and watch the place burn. We didn’t let anybody know where we were going to hide out. So far, thanks to the old wizard, nobody had tripped over us.
“You think it’s the spike’s fault?” I asked.
“Its influence. And the more evil done around it, the thicker the miasma of madness will get.”
So why weren’t we busting our knuckles on somebody?
Darling was upset about what was happening. Far as I could tell, she was the only one. The rest of us was just scared of it, just wanted to stay out of the way till it burned itself out.
She would have done something if she could.
I asked, “So what we going to do? Sit?” I was thinking how the craziness must have ruined the quarantine on the cholera area.
“You got a better idea?” Raven asked.
“No.”
Them that had gone out looking the other night hadn’t found nothing. Only good thing turned out to be I got to spend a couple hours talking to Darling without Silent and Raven giving me the evil eye.
“But I feel like the buzzard who got so tired of waiting for something to die he went to thinking about killing something.”
Bomanz said, “We need to decide what to do if there’s a breakout. You can bet if there is the people who know about the spike will be the first ones gone.”
“Everyone will know if it starts moving, won’t they?”
“They wouldn’t move it. Why should they? It’s safe. Or somebody would have found it. They’ll just be worried about staying alive till they can sell it.”
“What makes you think they want to sell?” I asked.
“If they could use it they would have.”
Made sense.
That’s the way bandits would work. “So why haven’t they tried to hawk it?”
“Because all these assholes here think they can take it away from them and outrun each other.”
I decided to take a nap. Talk was getting us nowhere. We weren’t doing nothing but yak and wait on the Plain critters to drop by with reports. When the spirit moved them. They don’t think like us. Some got no sense of time at all.
Which is maybe why Donkey Torque sounded so damned surprised after he took a look outside. “You guys better take a gander here.”
We crowded around him.
We had us a whole new angle on all our troubles. Everybody did.
A new gang had come to town.
A black coach had just rolled into the square in front of the Civil Palace. Four black horses pulled it. Six black riders on six black horses surrounded it. An infantry battalion followed. Surprise. Those boys were all duded up in black.
“Where the hell did they come from?” I muttered.
Raven said, “You got your wish, wizard.”
“Eh?”
“The Tower has taken an interest.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Darling. I scrunched over so she could get up beside me and see. She left her hand where it was. You can guess how many friends that made me.
Someone got out of the coach. No black for this clown. “A popinjay,” Bomanz said.
And me, “I always wondered what that meant.”
The peacock looked around at the bodies, at the remains of the palace, said something to one of his outriders. The horseman rode up the steps and into the unburned part of the building. A minute later people started tumbling out. The other riders herded them together facing the clown.
Gossamer and Spidersilk came out. A rider chivied them toward his boss. “Called on the carpet,” Bomanz said. “Be interesting to hear that.”
There wasn’t no doubt who was senior to who down there. The twins did everything but get down on their bellies. A back and forth went on for maybe ten minutes. Then the twins started sending their people scurrying off.