The Silver spike (11 page)

There was faint hiss, a crack, and a blinding flash. The
beast’s fur stood straight out. Little blue sparks pranced
and crackled amidst it, though the bolt had missed.

Soldiers scurried around like hens in a panic.

That sniper had attained a tremendous speed, falling from
several miles high. It came and went too quickly for any response.
Even in daylight there would have been little chance to get it.

Flash. Crack! Screams. A man pranced in a shroud of
will-o’-the-wisp fire.

So there it was. Having made its presence known, the windwhale
was embarking on a program of terrorism and attrition that would
not stop till the wicker man proved he could stop it.

Toadkiller Dog snarled at the wicker man till the glaze left his
rheumy eyes and he nodded once, sharply. He began to shake so hard
he creaked and squeaked. He was trying to control his rage.

To yield might prove fatal.

One of those bolts, accurately delivered, could destroy his toy
body, leaving him next to powerless, his army at the mercy of the
monster above. Somewhere out there, planing around the camp, were
mantas watching for a chance at the quick kill missed during the
surprise attack.

The shaking faded. In a controlled whisper the wicker man said,
“Kill those campfires. They light us as targets.” Then
he began the slow, painful process of surrounding himself with
spells against the mantas’ bolts.

Toadkiller Dog limped around snapping and growling to make the
soldiers hurry.

Dousing the fires did not help. The mantas came in all night.
Their accuracy did not decrease. Neither did it improve.

The things seemed more interested in harassment than killing. In
keeping everyone awake and frightened of the moment the next blow
would fall. It was a weakling’s way to fight. Though no tears
fell from the sky when a bolt did splatter a soldier.

The minions of the tree god were trying to panic and disperse
the Limper’s army. That puzzled Toadkiller Dog. They were not
that tender of heart. Men slipped away by twos and threes. He
galloped as fast as he could on three real legs and a wooden one,
yelping and nipping and driving them back, and in interim moments
trying to get a feel for that monster in the sky. Some of the
deserters objected to his bullying. He had to kill a dozen before
everybody got their minds right.

Something familiar about a few of the lesser life sparks up
there.

The beast sensed the wicker man’s summons. He trotted
over. Spells now enfolded the wicker man in layers of protection.
Pain leaked out.

Toadkiller Dog was amused. The more surely the old shadow
guarded himself, the greater was his pain. To make himself
absolutely safe the Limper would have to subject himself to an
agony that would rob him of all reason, to the point where he might
not be able to get back out from behind the layered defense. The
beast wondered if they knew that up there. The wicker man knew the
answer. “The one they call the White Rose is riding the
windwhale, shaping their tactics.”

Toadkiller Dog woofed in exasperation. The White Rose! Soft of
heart but bitterly lethal of maneuver. It all fell into place. She
had locked them into no-win positions already. Without doing her
conscience an injury. The Limper could suffer protecting himself or
ease the pain and get blown off his withy steed. They could watch
their army evaporate through desertion or terrorize the men into
staying and have them mutiny.

And, from what he recalled of the White Rose, there would be a
third and subtler option, which she would push them toward. But she
could not comprehend the kind of murderous obsession driving the
Limper. She would leave opportunities and openings. She would give
second chances when the only workable choice would be to go for the
throat.

It was a night when hell was in session. No one rested. The
Limper hid so deeply in his defenses he could do nothing to stay
the harassment. The pace of the attacks increased as dawn neared,
as though the White Rose wanted them to know she could make their
day more horrible than had been their night.

The army was half-gone when the sun rose. The tree god had won
the first round.

His creatures refused a second round by day. The mantas cleared
the sky. The windwhale floated miles up and miles to the south. The
Limper collected his ragtag horde and began marching toward his
next conquest.

The time of easy killing was over. Now those who stood in the
Limper’s path were warned of his coming. Always that monster
out of the Plain of Fear hung overheard, a sword of doom ready to
fall at the slightest lapse in attention.

The White Rose made no mistakes. Whenever the Limper launched an
attack the mantas came fast and hard, trying to force him to cower
inside his spells of protection. He fought back, brought a few
down. Increasingly, he held back in hopes the windwhale would stray
too close. He looked for new weapons in the ruins of his
conquests.

The White Rose made no mistakes. Not once. But the maniacal
determination of the Limper kept his army moving, gaining on his
quarry. Till he gained his revenge, even the enmity of the tree god
was just an annoyance, the whine of a mosquito.

But after the kill . . . Oh, after the
kill!

Smeds said, “There’s something wrong.”

“I’m beginning to get your drift,” Tully said.
“You think there’s something wrong.” Smeds had
said so five times. “So does Timmy.” Timmy had agreed
with Smeds three or four times.

“They’re right,” Fish said, venturing an
opinion for the first time. “There should be more industry.
Carts on the road. Hunters and trappers.” They were out of
the Great Forest but had not yet reached cultivated country. In
these parts the tide of civilization was on the ebb.

“Look there,” Timmy said. He pointed, winced. His
hand still hurt him.

A burnt-out cottage lay a little off the road. Smeds recalled
pigs and sheep and wisecracks about the smell when they had been
headed north. There was no smell now. Fish lengthened his stride,
going to investigate. Smeds kept up with him.

It was grisly, though the disaster lay far enough in the past
that the site was no longer as gruesome as it had been. The bones
bothered Smeds the most. There were thousands, scattered, broken,
gnawed, mixed.

Fish examined them in silence, moving around slowly, stirring
them with the tip of his staff. After a while he stopped, leaned on
his staff, stared down. Smeds moved no closer. He had a feeling he
did not want to see what Fish saw.

The old man settled onto his haunches slowly, as though his own
bones ached. He caught hold of something, held it up for Smeds.

A child’s skull. Its top had been smashed in.

Smeds was no stranger to death, even violent death, and this was
old death for someone he’d never known. It should have
bothered him no more than a rumor from the past. But his stomach
tightened and his heartbeat quickened. He felt a surge of anger and
unfixed hatred.

“Even the babies?” he muttered. “They even
murdered the babies?”

Fish grunted.

Tully and Timmy arrived. Tully looked bored. The only death that
concerned him was the one awaiting him personally. Timmy looked
unhappy, though. He said, “They killed the animals, too. That
doesn’t make sense. What were they after?”

Fish muttered, “They killed for the sake of the blood. For
the pleasure of the deed, the joy in the power to destroy. For the
pure meanness of it. We know too many like that already.”

Smeds asked, “You think it was the same bunch that killed
everybody back up there?”

“Seems likely, don’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Tully grumbled, “We going to hang around here all day? Or
are we going to get hiking? Smeds, you decided you like it out here
with the bugs and furry little things? Me, I want to get back and
start enjoying life.”

Smeds thought about wine and girls and the scarcity of both in
the Great Forest. “You got a point, Tully. Even if five
minutes ain’t going to make any difference.”

Fish said, “I wouldn’t go living too high too
sudden, boys. Might set some folks to wondering how you got it and
maybe some hard guys to figuring how to get it away from
you.”

“Shit,” Tully grumbled. “Quit your damned
preaching. And maybe give me credit for a little sense.”

He and Fish went off, Tully grousing and Fish listening
unperturbed, with a patience Smeds found astounding. He was ready
to strangle Tully himself. Once they hit the city he didn’t
want to see his cousin for a month. Or longer.

“How’s the hand, Timmy?”

“Don’t seem like it’s getting any better. I
don’t know about burns. You? My skin’s got black spots
where it was the worst.”

“I don’t know. I saw a guy once burned so it looked
like charcoal.” Smeds hunched up a little, imagining the heat
of the spike in his pack burning between his shoulder blades.
“We get to town, you go see a doc or a wizard. Don’t
fool around. Hear?”

“You kidding? The way this hurts? I’d run if I
didn’t have to carry this damned pack.”

The road was festooned with old butcheries and destructions. But
the disaster had not been complete. Nearer the city there were
people in the fields, and more and more as the miles passed, backs
bowed with the weight of tragedies old and new.

Man is born to sorrow and
despair . . . Smeds shuddered his way out of
that. Him wallowing in philosophical bullshit?

They crested a rise, saw the city. The wall was covered with
scaffolding. Despite the late hour, men were rebuilding it.
Soldiers in gray supervised. Imperials.

“Gray boys,” Tully grumbled. “Here comes
trouble.”

“I doubt it,” Fish said.

“How come?”

“There’d be more of them if they were looking for
trouble. They’re just making sure the repairs get done
right.”

Tully harumphed and scowled and muttered to himself but did not
argue. He had overlooked the obvious. Imperials were sticklers for
getting things done right, obsessive about keeping military works
in repair.

The only delay was occasioned by the construction, not by the
soldiers. Tully was not pleased. He was sick of Fish looking
smarter than him. Smeds was afraid he would start improvising,
trying to do something about that. Something stupid, probably.

“Holy shit,” Smeds said, soft as a prayer, half a
dozen times, as they walked through the city. Buildings were being
demolished, rehabilitated, or built where old structures had been
razed. “They really tore the old town a new
asshole.”

Which left him uncomfortable. There were people he wanted to
see. Were they still alive, even?

Wonderstruck, Tully said, “I never seen so many soldiers.
Least not since I was a kid.” They were everywhere, helping
with reconstruction, supervising, policing, billeted in tents
pitched where buildings had been razed. Was the whole damned city
inundated with troops?

Smeds saw standards, uniforms, and unit emblems he’d never
seen before. “Something going on here,” he said.
“We better be careful.” He indicated a hanged man
dangling from a roof tree three stories up.

“Martial law,” Fish said. “Means the wise guys
are upset. You’re right, Smeds. We walk real careful till we
find out what’s going on and why.”

They headed for the place Tully stayed first, it being closest.
It was not there anymore. Tully was not distressed.
“I’ll just stay with you till I get set,” he told
Smeds.

But Smeds had not paid any rent, so they had thrown his junk
into the street for scavengers—after cashing in his empties
and stealing what they wanted for themselves—then had let
the room to people dispossessed by the disaster. Fish’s place
had gone the way of Tully’s. The old man was not surprised.
He said nothing. He did look a little more gaunt and haggard and
slumped.

“So maybe we can all stuff in at my old lady’s
place,” Timmy said. He was jittery. Smeds figured it was his
hand. “Just for tonight. My old man, he don’t like
anybody I hang around with.”

Timmy’s parents owned the place they lived, though they
were as poor as anybody else on the North Side. Smeds had heard
they got it as a payoff from the gray boys for informing back in
the days when there was still a lot of Rebel activity in Oar. Timmy
would not say. Maybe it was true.

Who cared anymore? They’d probably been on the right side.
The imperials were more honest, and better governors, if you were
at a social level where who was in charge made any difference.

Smeds did not give a rat’s ass who ran things as long as
they left him alone. Most people felt that way.

“Timmy! Timmy Locan!”

They stopped, waited while an older woman overhauled them. As
she waddled up, Timmy said, “Mrs. Cisco. How are
you?”

“We thought you were dead with the rest of them, Timmy.
Forty thousand people they killed that
night. . . . ”

“I was out of the city, Mrs. Cisco. I just got
back.”

“You haven’t been home yet?”

People jostled them in the narrow street. It was three-quarters
dark but there were so many soldiers around nobody needed to run
inside to hide from the night. Smeds wondered what the bad boys
were doing. Working?

“I said I just got in.”

Smeds saw he did not like the woman much.

She went all sad and consoling. Even Smeds, who did not consider
himself perceptive, saw she was just busting because she was going
to get to be the first to pass along some bad news.

“Your dad and both your
brothers . . . I’m sorry. They were
trying to help fight the fires. Your mother and
sister . . . Well, they were conquerors. They
did what conquerors always do. Your sister, they mutilated her so
bad she ended up killing herself a couple weeks ago.”