The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company (Chronicles of the Black Company) (89 page)

Neither Raven nor Darling liked me saying that.

I think the girl figured it out about then. She got real carefully interested in Raven. But she didn’t say anything to her brother.

I got Darling to agree this was enough and our guests ought to be turned loose. She wasn’t satisfied with the way things turned out. What the hell can you do with women? You can give them exactly what they ask for and they’ll cuss you because that ain’t what they
really
want.

Just before the girl went over the side she turned and told me, “If my father was alive today he wouldn’t have to fear that he would be unwelcome in his daughter’s house.” Then she went.

All right. There was an open door if ever I seen one.

We took off the second the girl hit ground. Darling wanted to get far away before word she was there got to somebody who could do something about it. We lit out northeast, like we was headed for the Plain of Fear.

39

Every day more people came into Oar, and nobody left. A pigeon could not get out. Several had died trying.

Some elements of the population were growing restless. There were more fights than usual. More people ended up on the labor gangs. The searches went on and on and on. There was not a building in Oar that had not been tossed at least twice, not a citizen who had not been rousted. There were rumors of big tension in high places. Brigadier Wildbrand did not think she owed Gossamer and Spidersilk anything and resented having her Nightstalkers used as bullies for their personal benefit. They were elite troops, not political gangsters.

The nature of the people entering the city changed with time. Fewer were farmers or traders. More and more were dire characters with no obvious trade.

The news about the silver spike was spreading.

Smeds did not like it. It meant big trouble. How did Gossamer and Spidersilk expect to control all those witches and wizards, some of whom might be much more potent than they suspected? And the bullies they brought with them?

Chaos threatened.

Smeds understood the strategy. The twins meant to up the heat and pressure till the spike popped to the surface. If it came up in hands other than their own they were confident they could take it away.

Could they?

Every witch and wizard in town knew that, too. But they had come hunting anyway.

Only Tully was pleased. He thought the situation perfect for the auction he wanted to run. “We got to get the word out,” he told the others, over supper.

“Keep your voice down,” Fish said. “Anybody in here could be a spy. And we don’t get any word out. You heard of anybody offering to buy anything?”

“No,” Tully admitted. “But that’s because—”

“Because most of them know they can be outbid. You notice the twins aren’t offering anything. They figure they can get what they want by divine right, or something.”

“Yeah, but—”

“You have no grasp of the situation, Tully. Let me offer you a challenge.…”

“I’m fed up with your shit, Fish.”

“Indulge me in an experiment. If I’m wrong I’ll shout it from the rooftops. If I’m right, you win anyway.”

“Yeah? Let’s hear it.”

Sucked him up again, Smeds thought. His opinion of his cousin declined by the hour.

“Here’s two coppers. Go find a kid somewhere away from here. One who don’t know you. Pay him to go to the Toad and Rose and tell the bullies there that the wizard Nathan is looking to hire a couple men to help him sneak out of the city tomorrow morning.”

“I don’t get it.”

Smeds said, “Gods, Tully, couldn’t you just
once
do something without arguing about it first?”

Fish said, “The experiment will be more instructive if it simply unfolds, explaining itself as it goes.”

“Why should I do that asshole Nathan any favors?”

Smeds stood up. “I’ll do it. Otherwise we’ll be here till the middle of next week.”

“I want Tully to do it. I want him to see that there can be a direct connection between his saying something and what happens in the real world.”

“You’re putting me down again, ain’tcha?”

“Tully,” Smeds said, “shut the fuck up or I’m going to brain you. Pick up the goddamned money, hit the goddamned street, find a kid, and pay him to deliver the goddamned message. Now.”

Tully went. Smeds had gotten pretty intense.

“He’s going to get us all killed,” Timmy said as soon as he was gone.

“How’s your hand coming?” Smeds asked.

“Real good. Don’t try to distract me, Smeds.”

“Easy, Timmy,” Fish said. “I think there’s a chance this trick will get through to him.”

“Want to bet?”

“No.”

Smeds would not have taken the bet either.

*   *   *

The wizard Nathan and his four men had rented rooms just up the street from the Skull and Crossbones. The grays came there shortly before dawn. They found five dead men and two rooms torn to shreds. They sealed the area, searched it again, asked a lot of questions. Fish made sure they all got a good look at the mess. He asked Tully, “You starting to catch on?”

“Who would do something like that, man? Why?”

“Nathan was a wizard. If he was going to sneak, that meant he’d found the spike and wanted to make a run for it.”

“But he wasn’t going to leave town.”

“No. He wasn’t, Tully. But you said he was.”

Tully started to be Tully and argue, but he bit down on it and thought for a moment before he said, “Oh.”

“Next time you say something without thinking first or checking to see who’s listening, that could be us all carved up.”

Smeds said, “You maybe went too far to make your point, Fish.”

“Why?”

“This ain’t over yet. Those soldiers didn’t find anything but a mess. They’re going to figure whoever made the mess got the spike.”

“Yeah. And maybe everybody else will think so, too. Maybe even the guys who actually did it. The next few days ought to be interesting. And part of the ongoing lesson.”

“What’re you blathering now?” Tully demanded.

“That was a big gang in that place, eh? Five pro thugs and a sorcerer. Nobody would try to take them alone. I figure there was at least three guys did it. Probably more. Unless they’re a bunch that really trust each other they’re going to have trouble. Every one of them is going to know
he
didn’t get the spike, but he isn’t going to be sure about the others.”

Tully said, “Oh,” again, and after a while, “This shit is getting scary. I never thought it would get this hairy.”

“Your problem is you never thought,” Timmy muttered, but Tully did not hear him.

Fish said, “It’s just starting, Tully. It’s going to get hairier. And if we want to come out of it with our skins on we’re going to have to be very damned careful. These aren’t nice or reasonable people. They aren’t going to be interested in dealing till they got no other choice.”

*   *   *

It got hairier fast, as more, and more powerful, thaumaturgic treasure hunters poured into the city. Old feuds having nothing to do with the spike flared. The citizenry, pressed from all sides, responded by rioting on a small scale. The twins presided smugly, doing nothing to retard the escalating violence.

Smeds spent a lot of time being sorry he had let Tully get him into this in the first place. Because of the other treasure they had brought home, the living was good, but not good enough, given that he had to watch his every word every minute and spent half his time looking over his shoulder to make sure disaster was not gaining on him.

40

We were over the Forest of Cloud, south of Oar, east of Roses, west of Lords, hiding out from imperial eyes, too many of which had seen the windwhales cruising far from their proper range over the Plain of Fear. Darling wanted to let a little of the excitement die down before she moved on.

She would not let the tree god hurry her, though he was in a minor frenzy. I did not understand exactly what was up yet, but neither did some of the others, so we were getting an education from old Bomanz, who was suddenly Darling’s number-one boy.

“Since you were all there you’ll recall that in the course of the battle in the Barrowland the soul or essence, of the Dominator—the most evil being ever to walk this earth—was imprisoned in a silver spike, which was then driven into the trunk of a sapling sired by the tree god of the Plain of Fear.” He really did talk that way when he had an audience.

“At the time it was believed that would effectively contain and constrain the residual evil of the man forever. The sapling was the scion of a god, invulnerable, unapproachable, and so long-lived as to be, in practical terms, immortal. As the sapling grew, its trunk would engulf the spike. In time the old evil would not persist in so much as memory.

“However. We thought wrong.

“A band of adventurers succeeded in stunning the sapling long enough to get in and prize the spike out. If we are to credit the sapling’s own testimony—and we must, for the nonce, because it is the only testimony we have—none of those men had the least familiarity with the art, and were remarkable only because they came up with an idea that, logically, should have originated with someone devoted to the occult.”

Damn him, he did talk like that when he had an audience. And he wouldn’t stop.

“Gentlemen, the silver spike is loose in the world. It’s not the Dominator. He’s dead. But the undying black essence that drove him remains. And that could be used by an adept to summon, coerce, and shape powers even I cannot begin to imagine or fathom. That spike could become a conduit to the very heart of darkness, an opener of the way that would confer upon its possessor powers perhaps exceeding even those the Dominator possessed.

“Our mission, our
holy
mission, given the White Rose by Old Father Tree himself, is to recover the silver spike and deliver it for safekeeping, at whatever cost to ourselves, before someone of power seizes upon it and shapes it to his own dark purpose and is, in this turn, shaped—perhaps into a shadow so deep there would be no chance ever for the world to win free.”

That bit about “at whatever cost to ourselves” got a big hand. The talking buzzard pulled his head out from under his wing, cracked an eye, went to town heckling the old wizard. That finally distracted him from his windier fancies.

“Buzzard, if you were fit to eat I’d be picking up kindling right now!” he shouted. Then he got back to business. “The tree god has reason to suspect that the spike is now in Oar. The White Rose, Silent, the Torques, and some of our smaller companions will drop into the city. With the help of the underground they will establish a secure base, then will take up the hunt. Raven, Case, and I, because of our considerable familiarity with the site, will go on to the Barrowland to see what can be learned there.”

That started a bunch of bitching. Raven didn’t like being sent off someplace where Darling wasn’t. I didn’t think these guys had the right to draft me into their adventure. I got pretty hot.

Darling took me aside and calmed me down, then convinced me that even if I remained committed to the empire in my heart, helping her in this would not harm me. Maybe she was right when she said the evil she wanted to abort wouldn’t respect allegiances or philosophies. That it would divide the world into two kinds of people, its enemies and its slaves.

That was a little heavy to get down in one or two bites but I said all right, I’m just following Raven around anyway. Might as well keep on keeping on.

So that was that. I gave in. I also started giving some thought to going back to herding potatoes as a career. No potato never talked anybody into making a fool of himself.

41

Smeds came out onto the porch of the Skull and Crossbones figuring to shoot the shit with Fish, but found the only empty chair stood between Fish and the Nightcrawler corporal. He wanted to turn around but felt like he was committed.

He plopped down. “Hey, Corp. Don’t you never do nothing but sit here and drink beer?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“That’s the life. I oughta go sign up.”

“Yeah? You wouldn’t like it. Where was you at three in the morning?”

“In bed sleeping one off.”

“Lucky you. Ask me where I was at three in the morning.”

“Where were you at three in the morning?”

“With about two hundred others guys out Shant, where they got all those buildings tore down and nothing new put up yet. Looking for a monster. Some guy reported there was a monster out there bigger than the Civil Palace.”

“Was there?”

“Not even a little one.”

“Was the guy drunk?”

“Would a sober man be out there at that time of night?”

“Got something interesting coming here,” Fish interjected, jutting his chin up the street.

Smeds saw three men and a woman. She was not much to look at and too old to be interesting anyway. But she looked tough. She carried weapons like a man.

As a bunch they looked as hard and tough as any Smeds had seen. But what made them stand out was the zoo they carried with them.

The woman had a live ferret draped around her neck and chipmunks peeking out of her pockets. The tall, dark, and darkly clad man who walked to her right carried an unhooded falcon on his left shoulder. The three men behind them—Smeds thought they might be brothers—carried a bunch of monkeys and one big snake.

Smeds asked, “You going to arrest them? They’re lugging enough illegal hardware to start their own war.”

“And give you boys a show? Eh? My mama’s stupid babies never lived to make corporal.” Even so, he stuck his fingers in this mouth and whistled. When those people looked he beckoned.

The tall man looked over with tight eyes for a moment, made a slight gesture at the man with the snake. That one came over. The snake looked them over like it was sizing them up for dinner. It gave Smeds the creeps.

The corporal said, “Just a friendly word of advice, pal. The city is under martial law. Ain’t nobody supposed to tote a blade over eight inches long. ’Less he’s wearing gray.”

The snake man went back and told the tall man, who looked at the corporal hard for a moment, then nodded.