The Silver spike (33 page)

Smeds said, “I guess for guys like us it don’t
matter who’s running things anyway. Whoever it is
they’re going to try to stick it to us.”

The heavens had cut loose now, dumping snow so heavily it had
become their ally.

Fish started explaining what he wanted Smeds to do.

The gang came smashing in out of the blizzard. Raven snarled,
“We lost them.”

Stubby Torque said, “You can’t see your hand in
front of your face out there.”

“You tracked Raker down in a snowstorm in Roses,
didn’t you?” I asked Raven.

“Different circumstances.” He was double-pissed now
because of what he thought he saw when he busted through the door.
As if we could have done anything about it carved up the way we
were.

Darling shut them up. She made it clear she’d had her mind
on business because she told them what we were going to do if those
guys told the gray boys where to find us again. She felt almost
sorry for those two.

She overdid the empathy sometimes. I don’t have any for
guys who stick knives in me.

The excitement started a few hours later when a couple of our
little spies from the temple came charging in to tell us how a guy
who sounded like the one who stabbed me had dropped in on Exile to
see if he could cut a deal. As a good-faith gesture he’d told
Exile where he could find us and Brigadier Wildbrand. He’d
also told Exile his headquarters was so riddled with spies he
couldn’t sneeze without some Plain creature reporting it.

That meant big excitement over there. A bunch of our little
allies didn’t get the word in time to get out. Gossamer and
Spidersilk led the exterminator squads. Meantime, they were
throwing together a gang to come after us. They figured we’d
hear they were coming but counted on us getting caught being on the
move in a city alert for us.

I thought they were a little optimistic there, considering
Bomanz and Silent had done a good job keeping us from being noticed
before. But Exile probably wouldn’t know we had those kinds
of resources. Not about Bomanz, at least. I figured his big panic
would come when he started wondering what resources Darling could
call up out of the Plain.

She did have something cooked up with the tree god. What I
didn’t know. It wouldn’t be anything small.

Nothing like being nailed down on the bull’s-eye of
history in the making without a fool’s notion of what was
going on. Nothing personal, Case, old buddy, but they can’t
make you tell what you don’t know.

Darling told Silent and the Torques to get the horses out so
they could not be recaptured. They were going to hide them on an
empty lot nearby. Yeah? What would they do about tracks? Something
wizardly, I guess.

Horses were part of her plans. Whatever they were. I had caught
part of an argument with Silent where she told him she wanted to
steal a bunch more.

One heroic little rock monkey hung in the temple till the last
moment, near getting himself fried by the twins so he could find
out as much as possible about Exile’s deal for the spike.

There was a deal. The monkey said Exile was going to play it
straight and keep his end of the bargain if the guys with the spike
kept theirs. The monkey said the guy dealing for them had no idea
where the spike was nor any idea where the guy who did know was
hiding.

Made sense to me. And to Exile, I guess. He didn’t waste
no time jacking the guy around, just asked the go-between how they
wanted to make the exchange.

We’d had the guy who knew! I’d lived in the same
damned tent with him for days! I wanted to kick some Nightstalkers
around for lying to us.

Raven got the wind up, too. “How the hell are we supposed
to con people into fighting the empire if the bastards go honest on
us? Whoever heard of a wizard dealing straight?”

Bomanz gave him some dirty looks but never got no chance to
argue because right then we got word that Exile’s boys were
closing in.

When they busted in all they saw was Brigadier Wildbrand and her
buddy sitting on the floor by our runt menhir. The rest of us were
still there but Bomanz had disguised us as heaps of manure and
whatnot while we gave the Nightstalkers the idea we were sneaking
out.

The talking stone boomed out, “Hi, guys! You’re too
late again. You’re always going to be too late. Why
don’t you wake up and come on over to the winning side? The
White Rose don’t hold no grudges.”

The raiders were all Exile’s personal guards, unlikely
recruits, but the stone kept nagging them.

They spread out. Some rushed into the loft where nobody was
hiding. Some went to work to get the Nightstalkers loose. And some
went to work trying to figure how to silence that bigmouth
stone.

The menhir vanished. And just when their eyes stopped popping,
here it came back. “You boys better get your hearts and heads
right fast. It’s almost dawn now and before sunset tomorrow
the White Rose is going to cure this berg of the imperial
disease.” Away it went again.

That crack rattled them some.

Here it came, spewing more mockery. They got so pissed they
stopped doing a thorough job of searching.

There was some noise outside. Three of them charged out into the
blizzard. There was a flash, a scream. A guy staggered inside.
“They’re all dead out there. They took the
horses.”

That damned Silent was showing off for Darling. She would be
pissed at him for wasting them when he didn’t have to. I
didn’t blame him, though. He’d been keeping a lot
bottled up. These guys were some he could make pay.

A bunch more went charging off to avenge their buddies. The
talking stone whooped and laughed and carried on.

They never caught Silent, of course. But he got some more of
them. They finally took Brigadier Wildbrand and got out of there
while there were some of them left to get.

A little later Silent brought ten horses in. Him and the Torques
were real pleased with themselves. I think maybe Darling was the
only one who wasn’t pleased with them.

The snowfall had ended.The sky had cleared. The world had grown
almost intolerably bright by the time the Limper topped the rise
that gave him his first glimpse of his destination. The silence
troubled him some. There should have been birds out if nothing
else. And why was there so much smoke drifting downwind from Oar,
more than could be explained by all the city’s hearth and
heating fires?

No matter. No matter at all. He could feel that piece of haunted
silver calling him as though he had been born to wield it and it
had been wrought for him and him alone. His destiny lay there,
ahead, and all the mousy scrabbling around by those who would deny
him would not prevent him taking that power that was rightfully
his.

He strode forward, walking now, no longer rushed, confident yet
still ill at ease with the silence and a lingering suspicion that
all the horizons were masks being worn by his enemies.

Toadkiller Dog was only one of a varied pack of monsters running
on the Limper’s trail. But he was out in front, their leader,
the only one of the crowd not carrying some dread lord or lady out
of the Tower. He was the scout, the champion, and before this day
was through he hoped to be entered in the annals of history as the
destroyer of the last of the Ten Who Were Taken, as the closer of
the door on the olden times.

He topped a low ridge line, saw Oar for the first time. He saw,
from disturbances in the snow, that the Limper had paused there,
too. There he was now, a remote speck tramping a lonely track
across the pristine snowscape.

He dropped down onto his belly to lower his profile, listened to
the silence. He watched the smoke drift from the city, noted that
everything that had stood outside the walls last time had been
cleared away, leaving nothing but a flat white surround. Uneasily
for a moment, he surveyed the horizons, feeling almost as if
distant groves were the massed helmets and spears of legions
waiting in tight array.

His companions crowded up behind him. They waited till the speck
that was the Limper vanished against the dark loom of the
city’s walls. Then they all moved forward, marching toward
doom or destiny in a gradually widening line abreast.

Smeds sat in the icy shadows shivering, unable to stop. His
stomach felt hollow. It ached. He was scared. He hoped it was the
cold and hunger but was afraid it was the first bite of
cholera.

The air was filled with smoke and the stench of bodies being
burned. Death had reaped a rich harvest during the night. Few who
were not soldiers had eaten well in days. Disease made easy headway
in bodies already weakened.

He watched the bridge up the ditch and wondered if Fish would
ever come, and what he would do if Fish didn’t. Then he sat
there and gradually convinced himself that he was the last of the
four of them, possessed of the greatest treasure in the world and
so poor he was forced to live in a sewer like a rat.

He scavenged through his pack for the dozenth time, looking for
some scrap of food that might have gotten into it somehow. Again he
found nothing but the gold and silver he had brought out of the
Barrowland. A fortune, and he would have given it all for a good
meal, a warm bed, and confidence that the great terrors of the
world had forgotten his name.

He started. Daydreaming, he had not noticed the two men come
onto the bridge. One looked like Fish. He made the signal he was
supposed to make before he walked away from the other, who stayed
where he was.

Smeds shoved his pack into a gap in the culvert wall, where some
of the building stone had fallen away and high water had washed out
some of the earth behind. Then he ran toward the light at the
nether end, a hundred yards away.

Midway he stumbled over a corpse that the rats had been at for a
while. He had become so inured to horror that he just went on,
giving it hardly a thought.

He rushed out the other end, floundered through drifted snow,
and hurried around to where he was supposed to meet Fish, masked
from the man on the bridge by a hump of earth six feet high. Fish
was carrying a sizable blue canvas bag. “Is it safe?”
Smeds croaked.

“Looks like they’ll play square. This is the first
third, along with some food and clothes and blankets and stuff I
thought you could use.”

Smeds’s mouth watered. But he asked, “What
now?”

“You go out on the bridge, get the second third, tell him
where to find the spike. I watch from cover. He messes with you, I
hunt him down and kill him. Go on. Let’s get it
done.”

Smeds looked at the old man a moment, shrugged, went off to meet
the man on the bridge. He was calmer than he had expected to be.
Maybe he was getting used to the pressure. He was still pleased
with himself for not having bent for a moment while the Rebels had
him.

The man on the bridge leaned on the rail, staring at nothing. He
glanced at Smeds incuriously as he approached. Another blue bag
leaned against his leg. Smeds sidled up and planted his forearms on
the rail on the other side of the bag.

The man was younger than Smeds had expected and of a race
he’d never before seen. Easy to see why he had taken the name
Exile.

“Smeds Stahl?”

“Yes. How come you’re playing this
square?”

“I’ve found honesty and fair play productive over
the long term. The second third is in the bag. Do you have
something for me?”

“In the city wall. One hundred eighty-two paces east of
the North Gate, below the twenty-sixth archer’s embrasure, in
the mortar behind the block recessed to take the support brace of a
timber hording.”

“Understood. Thank you. Good day.”

Smeds hoisted the bag and got the hell out of there.

“Go all right?” Fish asked.

“Yeah. Now what?”

“Now I join up with him to go see if you’told the
truth. If you did he gives me the final third. If not he kills me
and comes looking for you.”

“Shit. Why not head out now? What we got ought to be
enough.”

“He’s played straight. I figure it would be smart to
play it that way with him. We aren’t going to get out of Oar
for a while. Be nice to know there was somebody who wasn’t
out to get us. You go back wherever you was hiding. I’ll come
back to the bridge.”

“Right.”

Smeds was just about to drop back into the ditch when alarm
horns began blowing all over the city.

The Limper had come.

Raven got him a wild hair. He’d go snag the spike and that
would be a big foot in the door with Darling. The guy’s head
was getting a little bent. He didn’t tell nobody but Brother
Bear Torque, who he conned into going along with him.

He started out lucky. They hit no gray patrols. As they got into
the heart of the city, here came Exile and an older guy just like
they had timed it for Raven’s benefit. They followed the
two.

Exile and his companion ended up leaning on the rail of a
footbridge over a big drainage ditch. Raven and Torque watched from
a distance. The area around the ditch was clear. They
couldn’t get as close as Raven wanted.

“What the hell are they doing?” Torque asked.

“Waiting, looks like.”

The older man resumed moving, went on, and vanished among
tenements beyond the ditch. Five minutes later another man came out
to the bridge, talked to Exile a little, walked away with a
bag.

“That tears it,” Torque said. “Time to bend
over and kiss our asses good-bye.”

“He hasn’t got hold of it yet,” Raven growled.
“We stick and see what turns up. Look here.” The older
man was coming out to rejoin Exile.

They just stood there.

“Look!” Raven pointed.

The covert from which they watched was about ten feet higher
than the bridge. Just enough of an elevation to reveal the head and
shoulders of a man crossing the snow north of the bridge, behind a
mound that would mask him from the men on the bridge. He carried
two blue bags.