The Silver spike (25 page)

The twins, this fable insisted, had begun to feel pressed for
time. They were getting set for mass executions in which they would
slaughter the men of Oar till someone bought his life by
surrendering the silver spike.

There was no mystery at all now about what was happening to Oar.
Everyone knew about the silver spike. The knowledge seemed to
signal the opening measure of a long, dark opera of dread.

Tully fussed and worried about the impending massacre till they
neared the fire-gutted section where the bodies lay. Then he
shifted the focus of his whine. “I ain’t going in
there, Smeds. They’re dead, let them lay.”

“The hell you’re not. This whole mess came jumping
out of your pointy head. You’re going to hang in and help the
rest of us do whatever it takes to get through it alive. Or
I’ll break your head personally.”

Tully sneered. “Shit.”

“Maybe not. But you goddamned well better believe
I’ll give it my best shot. Move.”

Tully moved, startled by his intensity.

Fish caught up a minute later. He exchanged glances with Smeds,
said, “There isn’t anybody behind us. Slow down while I
scout ahead.” He went. Two minutes later he signaled all
clear and Smeds slipped into the killing place.

The smell of death was in the air already, though not yet
strong. Fish growled outside. Tully responded with a snarl but
clumped inside. Smeds eased down the cellar stairs and was
surprised to find the death room still illuminated by the stubs of
some of the candles that had been burning before.

Nothing had changed except that the corpses had stiffened and
relaxed again and a roaring swarm of flies had gathered, working
their eyes, nostrils, mouths, and wounds.

Tully said, “Oh, shit!” and dumped whatever was in
his stomach.

“I’ve seen worse,” Fish said from the doorway.
“And there’s just a bare chance this scene here could
get worse. Sit down in the chair, Tully.”

“What?”

“Sit down. Before we get to work we have to have a talk
about who got into the money Timmy kept in his bedroll.”

Tully started, went pale, tried bluster. “What the shit
you trying to pull, Fish?”

Smeds said, “Sit your ass down, Tully. Then tell us how
come you got to be stealing from Timmy and mooching from me when
you just made the biggest hit of your life.”

“What the hell are
you . . . ?”

Fish popped him in the brisket, pushed him into the chair.
“This here is serious business, Tully. Real serious. Maybe
you don’t realize. Maybe you haven’t been paying
attention to what’s going on. Look around. Come on.
That’s the boy. See this? This was our pal Timmy Locan. Just
a sweet happy kid you conned into thinking he could get rich. These
other guys did this to him. And they were gentle as virgins
compared to some of the people who are after us. Look at them,
Tully. Then tell us how you’ve been dicking up, being too
damned stupid to be scared, too damned dumb to sit tight and wait
the storm out.”

Malevolent rage filled Tully’s eyes. He looked like he was
thinking about getting stubborn where stubborn was pointless.

Smeds said, “You’re a screw-up, cousin. You had one
damned good idea in your whole damned life and as soon as we get to
work on it you got to go and try to mess it up for all of us. Come
on. What did you do? Are we all in a hole?”

A flicker of cunning, quickly hidden. “I just made a
couple bad bets is all.”

“A couple? And you lost so much you had to go stealing
from Timmy?”

Tully put on his stubborn face. Fish slapped it for him.
“Gambling. You dipshit. Probably with somebody who knew you
from before and knew you didn’t have a pot to piss in. Tell
us about it.”

The words came tumbling out and they did not disappoint
Smeds’s suspicions in the least. Tully told an idiot’s
tale of bad bets made and redoubled bets laid then doubled again
and lost again till, suddenly, here was Tully Stahl not only broke
but behind a stack of markers that added up to a bundle and the
boys holding them were not the sort to laugh it off if he reneged.
So he’d had no choice. Anyway, he would have paid Timmy back
out of his share as soon as they’d sold the spike,
so . . . 

Fish cut him off before he started justifying his idiot
behavior. Smeds knew it was coming. And knew if Tully went at it he
would turn the whole thing around so it was all their fault. He
asked, “How much you still owe, Tully?”

That hint of cunning again. Tully knew they were going to bail
him out.

“The truth,” Fish snapped. “We’re going
to cover you, yeah. But one of us is going to be there to see you
pay off. And then you’re not getting a copper more. And
you’re going to pay back every bit, with interest.”

“You can’t treat me like this.”

“You don’t want to get treated like an asshole
don’t act like an asshole.”

Smeds said, “You act like a spoiled
brat . . . ”

Fish continued, “You’ll get treated a lot worse if
you screw up again. Come on. Let’s get to work.”

Tully shrank from the menace in Fish’s voice. He turned to
Smeds in appeal. Smeds told him, “I’m not getting
killed because you can’t understand why you have to act
responsible. Grab Timmy’s legs and help me carry him
upstairs. And think about the condition he’s in next time you
get a wild hair and go to thinking about doing something. Like
anything.”

Tully looked down at Timmy. “I can’t.”

“Yes you can. Just think about what if somebody else was
to find him and figure out who he was and who he hung around with.
Grab hold.”

They moved the bodies upstairs, then waited for nightfall. Fish
knew a place not far away that would be perfect, some low ground
that turned marshy when it rained and bred diseases. The imperial
engineers were using it for a landfill. One day the bodies would
lie fifty feet below new streets.

They took Timmy out first, of course. He represented the
greatest peril. The man who had been questioning Timmy went next,
then the thugs, with the little one going last. Tully and Smeds did
the carrying while Fish floated around watching for the grays or an
accidental witness.

It went beautifully. Till the last one.

“Somebody coming,” Fish breathed. “Move it.
I’ll distract them if they spot us.”

Toadkiller Dog was amused by his companions in misfortune, so
eager to spend themselves in the digging yet so loath to do what
had to be done to ensure their strength. After four days of
increasing hunger he killed the weakest. He fed, and left the
remains to the others. It did not take them long to overcome their
reservations and revulsion. And that quickened their determination.
None wanted to be next on the menu.

But the digging took another eight days.

Only the monster himself came up out of the earth. But that
would have been the case had the digging taken only an hour.

He escaped the darkness of underground into the darkness of
night. The trail was not hard to find, It had not rained since the
hour of the Limper’s perfidy. Ha! Headed north again!

He began to trot. As he loosened up he stretched himself more
and more, till he fell into a lupine lope that left a dozen leagues
behind him every hour. He did not break stride till he had crossed
the bounds of the empire and had come to the place where the Limper
had encountered a major obstacle. He stopped. He prowled and
sniffed till he understood what had happened.

The Limper had not been welcomed back with tears of joy.

He caught something on the breeze, cast about, spied a distant
black rider armed with a flaming spear. The rider flung that
blazing dart northward.

Puzzled, Toadkiller Dog resumed his journey.

He came to another place where the Limper had had difficulties.
Again he saw a black rider with a fiery spear who hurled his dart
to the north.

One more repetition and the monster understood that he was being
encouraged to overtake the Limper, that he would be guided to the
inevitable confrontation, and that the Limper was being stalled all
along his northward journey.

What could he do when he caught up? He was no match for that son
of the shadow.

A black rider sat outside the gate of Beryl. He threw a blazing
spear to the east. Toadkiller Dog turned. He found the trail
quickly.

So. The old doom had been forced to take the long road, around
the sea. He loped on, gaining two miles for each three he ran. He
swam the River Bigotes and the Hyclades and streaked across the
seventy silvery miles of lifeless, mirror-flat salt desert called
the Rani Poor. He raced between the countless burial mounds of
Barbara to reach the forgotten highways of Laba Larada. He circled
the haunted ruins of Khun, passed the pyramids of Katch, which
still stood sentinel over the Canyons of the Undead. Warily, he
circled the remnants of the temple city of Marsha the Devastator,
where the air still shimmered with the cries of sacrificies whose
hearts had been torn out on the altars of an aloof and disdainful
goddess.

The trail grew warmer by the hour.

He came into the province of Karsus, past outposts of the empire
where auxiliaries recruited from the Grain tribes guarded the
frontier against the depredations of their own kind more
ferociously and faithfully than did the imperial legions. A black
rider armed with a spear of fire watched him race across the Plain
of Dano-Patha, where a hundred armies had contested the right of
passage north or south or east and where some legends said the Last
Battle of Time would be fought between Light and Darkness.

The Mountains of Sinjian lay beyond, and in their savage defiles
he found evidence that the Limper was again being tormented and
delayed, again with vicious traps narrowly escaped.

The spoor was heavy and hot and had the taint of newly opened
graves.

He came out onto a prominence overlooking the Straits of Angine,
where the fresh waters flowed down from the Kiril Lakes to meld
with the salty waters of the Sea of Torments. His vantage was not
far from that narrowest part of the strait that seafarers called
Hell’s Gate and overland travelers had dubbed Heaven’s
Bridge.

Hell was in session down there.

The Limper was on the south shore and wanted to cross over. But
on the north shore someone demurred.

Toadkiller Dog settled on his belly, rested his chin on his
forepaws, and watched. This was not the place to reveal himself.
Maybe at the Tower, if the Limper turned west and sought a
vengeance there.

As though they sensed his arrival, those who held the north
shore closed up shop and hauled out. The Limper hurled glamorous
violences after them. The distance was too great to do them any
harm.

The Limper went across immediately. He encountered traps
immediately. Toadkiller Dog decided he would hazard a more
difficult crossing. After dark.

There was no need to hurry now. He had the quarry in sight. He
could bide his time.

He might range ahead and lie in wait. Or he might stalk the
enemies of his enemy in order to discover the nature of their
game.

We got a break. Raven came rolling in where I was reading a book
I borrowed from the guy who owned the place where we was staying.
“We got a break. Come on, Case.”

I put the book aside, got up. “What’s
happening?”

“I’ll tell you on the way.” He stuck his head
in the next room, yelled and invoked Darling till one of the
Torques joined us. We hit the street. He started talking.
“One of those little characters from the Plain hit paydirt.
He overheard a man telling his cronies about an incident that
almost has to involve the men who stole the spike.”

I told him, “Slow down. You’re getting the soldiers
interested.” And he was. He was that eager to get at this
first assignment from Darling. “What did the guy
say?”

“He and two others were hired to snatch a man and then
help question him. Which they did. But someone came along and broke
it up. This fellow was the only one who got away. We’re going
to round him up and let him walk us through his
adventure.”

Right.

It might be the best lead we’d get but it didn’t
look that great to me. “This guy is shooting his mouth off
about what happened to him we’re going to have to get in line
to talk to him.”

“We heard first. Almost direct. We’re ahead of the
pack. But that’s why I’m in a hurry.”

I noticed he was hardly limping. “Your hip finally
starting to do right?”

“All this sitting around. Nothing else to do but get
healthy.”

“Speaking of which. I went out for a beer this afternoon.
I heard talk there’s cholera down near South Gate.”

We walked in silence a while. Then the Torque—I still
didn’t know any of their real front names—said,
“That’ll tear it, won’t it? Get a cholera
outbreak going and the pot will boil over, sure.”

Raven grunted.

Maybe this wasn’t just our best break but our only one.
Maybe we had to make it count.

We went into a place with the dumb name Barnacles. Raven looked
around. “There’s our man. Right where he’s
supposed to be.” His voice had got hard as jasper. He had
changed while we walked, turned into a critter like the Raven that
had ridden with the Black Company.

Our man was alone. He was drunk. Fortune was smiling today.
Raven told us, “You guys have a beer and keep an eye out.
I’ll talk to him.”

We did, and he did. I don’t know what he said but I never
got a chance to get even with Torque by having him buy the second
round. Raven got up. So did our man. In a minute we were all in the
street. It was almost dark out now. Our new friend was not full of
small talk. He did not seem pleased to be with us.

Raven told us, “Smiley here figured getting fifty obols
for showing us around was a lot better than the
alternative.”