The Silver spike (14 page)

A whimper caught his ear.

Not five feet away he saw the glowing eyes of an infant manta.
When the windwhale fragment began to stabilize he crawled thither.
“They forget you, little fellow? Come on out here.”

The kit hissed and spat and tried to use its lightning. It could
generated no more than a spark. Bomanz dragged it out into the
moonlight. “You are a tiny one, aren’t you? No wonder
they missed you.” The kit was no bigger than a half-grown
cat. It could not be more than a month old. Bomanz cradled the
infant in the crook of his left arm. It ceased struggling almost
immediately. It seemed content to be held.

The old wizard resumed his journey.

The windwhale had become as stable as it could. Bomanz eased
nearer the side. He looked down just in time to see the other half
hit ground.

Silent and Darling joined him. As always their faces were
emotionless masks, one dusky, one pale. Silent stared down at the
earth. Darling seemed more interested in the baby manta. Bomanz
said, “Under two thousand feet now. but that’s still a
long way to fall. And there’s still that to concern
us.”

That meant the small fires still burning back where the rear
half had broken away. One of those could reach another gas bladder
any minute.

“We should get as far forward as we can and hope for the
best.” He tried to sound more hopeful than he felt.

Silent nodded.

Bomanz looked around. The monastery was burning merrily, fired
by the fire-eater. So that had worked, some. But when he listened
the right way he could sense a knot of rage and pain seething
amidst the flames.

The Limper had survived again.

And his scheme had worked some, too.

I had a hard time believing it. Raven had given up. His hip must
have hurt a lot more than he wanted to admit.

He had not moved since he had gone down, and hadn’t said
nothing since his body beat down his will. I think he was
ashamed.

I really wished the son of a bitch would figure out that he
didn’t have to be a superman. I wasn’t going to make
him stop being my buddy because he was human.

I was as wiped out as he was but I could not lay down and die.
That show up around the monastery was getting flashier all the
time. In fact, some of the fireworks was headed our way. That made
me too nervous to crap out, though even my toenails were tired.

Another blast. A rose of fire bloomed in the sky. A big hunk of
something started falling, spinning off smaller hunks of fire.

I realized what I was seeing.

“Raven, you better get your ass up and look at this
mother.”

He grunted but he didn’t do it.

“It’s a windwhale, asshole. Out of the Plain of
Fear. What do you think of that?” I saw a couple get wiped
during the big bloodletting up to the Barrowland.

“So it seems.”

Mr. Ambition had rolled over. His voice was cool but his face
was fishbelly white, like he’d stepped around a corner and
bumped noses with Old Man Death.

“So how come it’s here?” Then I shut up.
I’d imagined up a reason.

“Not for me, kid. Who on the Plain would know where to
look for me? Who would care?”

“Then . . . ?”

“It’s the battle of the Barrowland, still going on.
It’s the tree god head-to-head with whatever I felt breaking
loose up there.”

Light flashed. Fire busted out of one end of the part of the
windwhale that was still up. “That thing isn’t going to
stay up there much longer. Should we go see if we can do
something?”

He didn’t say anything for at least a minute. He looked up
at the humpbacked hills like he was thinking maybe he had enough
left to go catch Croaker after all. He couldn’t be more than
five, ten miles away, could he? Then he levered himself to his
feet, wincing, obviously favoring his bad hip. I didn’t ask.
I knew he’d claim it was just the chill air and cold
ground.

He told me, “Better get the horses. I’ll drag our
stuff together.”

Big job you took on yourself there, old buddy, since we
basically just dropped in our tracks when we couldn’t go
anymore.

Since he didn’t have much to do he mostly just stood there
watching that flying disaster cross the sky. He looked like he was
being asked to mount the gallows and put the noose around his own
neck.

“I’ve been thinking, Case,” Raven said as we
came down off the knee of the most northerly of those goofy humped
hills, headed northeast, chasing that drifting windwhale
fragment.

“Brooding is the word I would have picked, old buddy. And
you been at it since the day they finally put the Dominator down.
Looks like that explosion a while back was the last one.”

The fragment was drifting on a course that would intercept ours.
A few fires flickered on one end. It was turning end for end slowly
but had stopped its fall.

“Maybe. But you say something definite like that, the gods
will stick it to you. Let’s just hope it clears the woods. Be
rough landing in there.”

“What were you
thinking?”

“About you and me, Croaker and his gang, the Lady, Silent,
Darling. About all the things we had in common but still
couldn’t get along.”

“I didn’t see all that much you had in common. Not
once you got past having the same enemies.”

“Neither did I for a long time. And none of them saw it,
either. Else we all might have tried a little harder.” I
tried to look like I gave a shit at three in the morning.
“Basically we’re all lonely, unhappy people looking for
our place, Case. Loners who’d really rather not be but
don’t know how. When we get to the door that would let us
in—or out—we can’t figure out how to work the
latch string.”

I’ll be damned. That was about as
open-up-and-expose-what’s-inside a remark as I ever got out
of him. Filled with longing and conviction. Well shave my head and
call me Baldy. I been right up here beside him since a couple years
ago. You don’t see the changes going on in people when
you’re standing up close.

This wasn’t the Raven I’d first met, before his ego
and misadventure had gotten his soul trapped among the shadow evils
of the Barrowland, before its cleansing. He had returned from the
prison of the heart dramatically altered. Hell, he wasn’t
even the same man who had spent all his time drunk on his ass in
Oar, neither.

I had kind of mixed feelings. I’d admired and liked and
gotten along pretty good with the old Raven. Maybe I would again
once he got through his transition. I did not know what to say to
him, though I was sure he wanted a response. His knack for
befuddling me never changed. “So did you figure out how to
work it?”

“I have an unsettling premonition, Case. I’m almost
paralyzed by a dread that I’m about to find out if I’ve
learned anything.” He stared at that piece of windwhale.

I checked it, guessed it was about two miles away and five
hundred feet up. The breeze was bringing it to us.

“We going to chase it back into the hills if it carries
that far?”

“You tell me, Case. This was your idea.” He paused
to whisper to his horse. The animals were not excited about hiking
around at night either. Even if they didn’t have to carry
anybody.

Flame mushroomed out of the windwhale. Before the roar of the
explosion reached us, I said, “We’re not going to have
to worry about climbing any hills.”

The windwhale came down fast, turning end for end. When it was
about two hundred feet off the ground some chunks fell off and it
stopped coming down so fast. I had a pretty good idea where it
would hit. We hurried toward the spot.

Then what was left nosed down, sped up, and hit the ground about
a mile away. It bounced back into the air, maybe a hundred feet
high. It kept coming, straight at us now.

At the peak of its bounce it exploded again.

It bounced two more times before it stayed down and just slid to
a stop.

“Be careful,” Raven said. “There might be more
explosions.” Fires still burned on the windwhale. Somewhere
inside it was making a noise like somebody beating on the
granddaddy of all bass drums.

I said, “It ain’t dead yet. Look there.” The
end of a tentacle lay just a couple yards from me. It was jumping
around like a snake with a toothache.

“Unh. Let’s hobble the horses.”

Excited all to hell, Raven was. Like he spent his whole life
hanging around windwhales so close he could smell their bad breath.
And this one had that all over.

I caught something in the firelight. “Hey! There’s
people up on top of that sucker.”

“There had to be. Where?”

“There. Right over that black patch.” I pointed.
Some guys up there were hauling around on something.

Raven said, “Looks like somebody trying to get somebody
else out from under something.”

“Let’s get up there and give them a hand.” I
left my horse unhobbled.

Raven grinned at me. “The exuberant folly of youth. Where
does it go?”

I started climbing a blubbery, stinky cliff. He went looking for
a bush to tie the horses to, that being easier than messing with
hobbles. I was halfway to the top before he started after me.

The flesh of the windwhale was sort of spongy and definitely
smelly, with the odor of burned flesh added. The flesh trembled
with pain and failing life. Such a noble monster. I wanted to cry
for it.

“Raven! Hurry up! There’s three of them up here and
a big fire burning back there.”

Right then there was a baby explosion. It knocked me down. Gobs
of fire splattered the ground. Some of the dry grass caught.

There would be trouble if that spread.

By the time Raven dragged his carcass up I had the woman across
my shoulders and the old man, who was the only one on his feet, was
tying her so she wouldn’t slide off. Finished, the old boy
whipped around and starting trying to drag a frondlike piece of
windwhale off somebody else.

Panting, Raven looked at me, looked at the woman, grumbled,
“It had to be, didn’t it?”

I said, “Hey, this broad is solid as a rock. Or
she’s got a lead butt. She weighs as much as I do.”

“How about you get her down?” He muttered,
“I’m getting too old for this crap,” and headed
for the old man. “You. What the hell are you doing
here?” He wasn’t surprised to see the guy under the
frond, though. Having Silent drop out of the sky was just the kind
of trick he expected the fates to pull on him.

He was shaking as he helped the old man lift the frond. The old
man started fussing over Silent. A black lump of a something
glommed on to his shoulder made a sound like a kitten crying.

“Hoist him up!” the old wizard ordered. “Carry
him. We don’t have time for me to bring him
around.”

I started down then. Whatever else they said I missed. Pretty
soon they started down after me.

Something whispered overhead. The lump on the wizard’s
shoulder mewled again. A screech tumbled down from the dark. The
windwhale’s mantas had come to circle their dying
partner.

What happened to mantas when their windwhale died?

“Ouch!” Raven yelled. “Watch where the hell
you’re stepping!”

At the same time the old man said, “The arrogance of you,
man! The bloody insufferable, conceited arrogance. You, without
claim or right, demand—demand!—explanations of me. Of
me! The conceit of you surpasses comprehension. I should be asking
you what you’re doing here, fluttering around ahead of the
Limper. Are you his forerunner? His death scout? Will you get
moving? Before we get crisped like bacon?”

I got my feet on the ground, watched them. Raven was thoroughly
pissed. Maybe he never figured out that he wasn’t a lord
anymore and the world wasn’t going to jump when he barked.
And he never did have sense enough to be scared of the right
people. People like old Bomanz, who could probably turn him into a
frog if he got aggravated.

Raven didn’t get to shoot off his own mouth. Another
explosion almost shook him and the old man off the windwhale. A big
shudder rolled through the monster. That drumbeat stopped. The
beast let out with a deep groan that said everything there was to
say about death and despair.

The mantas upstairs made keening sounds. Mourning sounds. I
wondered how they would manage now.

The windwhale stopped shaking. The wizard yelled, “Get out
of here before the whole thing blows!”

Raven was staggering toward the horses when it happened. The
blast beggared everything we had seen before. I ducked away from a
blast of hot air. It hurled Raven forward. He fell on his face.
Bomanz, though closer to the explosion, rode the blast, staying
upright with footwork that reminded me of my old mother dancing. He
looked like he was in pain.

When the ring in my ears went I heard the sad song of the
mantas, again or still.

The windwhale became its own funeral pyre.

Flying chunks started grass fires all around. The horses were
upset. We were not safe yet.

Raven crawled, unable to get back up. I felt like a total Daryl
Dipshit standing there doing nothing to help, but my legs just
wouldn’t move.

The wizard caught up, hoisted Raven. They cussed each other like
a couple of drunks. I got my feet going finally and leaned into the
heat. “Come on, you guys. Knock it off. Let’s throw
this dork on a horse and get out of here before we all get turned
into pork cracklings.”

I already had the woman across one saddle like a sack of rice.
We had to do so much running her front side was going to be one
miserable bruise.

“Move it!” I yelled. “There’s a breeze
coming up.” I scooted back and got hold of the animals before
they decided they were smarter than us and headed for the high
country.

While we hoisted Silent, Raven got his first good look at
Darling. She was all beat to hell. Blood leaked from her mouth,
ears, and nose. Her exposed skin was all bruised or blood-caked.
Silent looked about as bad, and so did the wizard, pretty much, but
Raven did not care jack shit about them.