The Silver spike (2 page)

“It might. You hear the part about the silver
spike?”

Smeds thought. “Yeah. They stuck it in a tree. I thought
that would be handy to glom on to. Then I thought some more and
figured there wouldn’t be enough silver in it to make it
worth the trip.”

“It isn’t the silver, cousin. It’s
what’s in the silver.”

Smeds turned it around in his mind some. He couldn’t find
Tully’s angle. “You better lay it out by the
numbers.” Smeds Stahl was not known for his keen mind.

“That big nail has the soul of the Dominator trapped in
it. That means it’s one bad hunk of metal. You take some big
wazoo of a sorcerer, I bet he could pound it into some kind of
all-time mean amulet. You know, like in stories.”

Smeds frowned. “We aren’t sorcerers.”

Tully got impatient. “We’d be the middlemen. We go
up there and dig it out of that tree and hide it out till word gets
around that it’s gone. Then we let it out that it’s for
sale. To the highest bidder.”

Smeds frowned some more and put his whole brain to work. He was
no genius but he had plenty of low, mean cunning and he had learned
how to stay alive. “Sounds damned dangerous to me. Something
we’d need help on if we wanted to come out of it in one
piece.”

“Right. Even the easy part, going up there and liberating
the damned thing, would be more than a two-man job. The Great
Forest might be a pretty rough place for guys who don’t know
anything about the woods. I figured we’d need two more guys,
one of them who knows about the woods.”

“Already we’re talking a four-way split here, Tully.
On how much?”

“I don’t know. Give them time to bid it up, I think
we’d be set for life. And I ain’t talking no four-way
split, neither, Smeds. Two ways. All in the family.”

They looked at each other. Smeds said, “You got the plan.
Tell me.”

“You know Timmy Locan? Was in the army for a
while?”

“About long enough to figure out how to go over the hill.
Yeah. He’s all right.”

“He was in long enough to learn how it works. We might run
into soldiers up there. Would your heart be broken if they found
him in an alley with his head bashed in?”

That was an easy one. “No.” His heart would be fine
as long as it wasn’t Smeds Stahl they found.

“How about Old Man Fish? He used to trap in the Great
Forest.”

“Couple of straight arrows.”

“That’s what we need. Honest crooks. Not some guys
who might try to do us out of our share. What do you say? Want to
go for it?”

“Tell me how much is in it again.”

“Enough to live like princes. We going to go talk to those
guys?”

Smeds shrugged. “Why not? What have I got better to
do?”

He looked at the ceiling. “You better get some
clothes on.”

Heading down the stairs, Smeds said, “You’d better
do the talking.”

“Good idea.”

Heading up the street, Smeds asked, “You ever killed
anybody?”

“No. I never needed to. I don’t see where I’d
have any problem.”

“I had to once. Cut a guy’s throat. It ain’t
like you think. They spray blood all over the place and make weird
noises. And they take a long time to croak. And they keep trying to
come after you. I still get nightmares about that guy trying to
take me with him.”

Tully looked at him and made a face. “Then do it some
other way next time.”

Each night there was moonlight enough, a thing came down out of
the northern Great Forest, quiet as a limping shadow, into the lorn
and trammeled place of death called the Barrowland. That place was
heavy with the fetor of corruption. A great many corpses lay
rotting in shallow graves.

Limping on three legs, the thing cautiously circled the
uncorrupted carcass of a dragon, settled on its haunches in the
hole it was digging so patiently, night after night, with a single
paw. While it worked it cast frequent glances toward the ruins of a
town and military compound several hundred yards to the west.

The garrison had existed to shield the Barrowland from
trespassers with evil intentions and to watch for signs that the
old darkness in the ground was stirring. Those reasons no longer
existed. The battle in which the digging beast had been crippled,
in which the dragon had perished, in which the town and compound
had been devastated, had put an end to the need for a military
stewardship.

Except that it had not occurred to anyone in authority to give
the surviving Guards new assignments. Some had stayed, not knowing
what else to do or where else to go.

Those men were sworn enemies of the beast.

Had it been healthy, the thing would not have been concerned. It
could have dealt with those men easily. Healthy, it was a match for
any company of soldiers. Crippled and still suffering from a dozen
unhealed wounds, it would not be able to outrun a man let alone
outfight those it would have to get through before it could pursue
the messenger the Guards were sure to send flying to their masters
if they discovered it.

Those masters were cruel and deadly and the beast stood no
chance against them even when in the best of health.

Its master could protect it no more. Its master had been hacked
to pieces and the pieces burned. Its master’s soul had been
imprisoned in a silver spike that had been driven into his
skull.

The beast was doglike in appearance but rather uncertain in
size. It had a protean nature. At times it could be as small as a
large dog. At other times it might be the size of a small elephant.
It was most comfortable being about twice the size of a war-horse.
In the great battle it had slain many of its master’s enemies
before overpowering sorceries had driven it from the field.

It came stealthily, again and again, despite the fear of
exposure, the pain of its wounds, and its frustration. Sometimes
the wall of its excavation collapsed. Sometimes rainwater would
fill the hole. And always there was the inescapable vigilance of
the only truly watchful guardian the victors had left.

A young tree stood among the bones, alone. It was near immortal
and was far mightier than the night skulker. It was the child of a
god. In time, each night, it wakened to the digger’s
presence. Its reaction was uniform and violent.

A blue nimbus formed among the tree’s limbs. Pale
lightning ripped toward the monster. It was a quiet sort of
lightning, a sizzle instead of boom and crash, but it slapped the
monster like an angry adult’s swing at a small child.

The beast suffered no injury, only extreme pain. That it could
not endure. Each time it was hit it fled, to await another night
and that delay before the child of the god awakened.

The monster’s work went slowly.

Darling left Raven standing there. She rode off with that guy
Silent and some other guys that were all that was left of the Black
Company, a mercenary outfit that really wasn’t anymore. A
long time ago they was on the Lady’s side but something
happened to piss them off and they went over to the Rebel. For a
long time they was almost the whole Rebel army.

Raven watched them go into the woods. I could tell he wanted to
sit down and cry like a baby, maybe as much because he
couldn’t understand as because she did ride off on him. But
he didn’t.

In most ways he was the toughest, hardest bastard I ever saw,
and not always in the best ways. When I first found out he was
Raven and not Corbie I like to crapped my drawers. A long time ago
there was a Raven that rode with the Black Company that was the
baddest of the bad. He was with them only about a year before he
deserted but he made himself a big rep while he was there. And this
was the same guy.

He said, “We’ll give them a couple hours’ head
start so it don’t look like we’re dogging them, then
we’ll get out of here.”

“We?”

“You want to hang around here now?”

“That would be desertion.”

“They don’t know if you’re dead or not. They
haven’t counted noses yet.” He shrugged. “Up to
you. Come or stay.”

I could tell he wanted me to come. Right then I was the only
thing he had. But he wasn’t going to make no special appeal.
Not hard guy Raven.

I didn’t have no future at the Barrowland and I sure as
hell wasn’t going back to ride herd on potatoes. And I
didn’t have anybody else in the world, either. “All
right. I’m in.”

He started walking into town. What was left after the fight. I
tagged along. After a while, he said, “Croaker was about the
closest thing to a friend I had when I was in the Company.”
He was still confused.

Croaker was the boss merc. He wasn’t boss back when Raven
was with them, but they had been through a few captains since the
old days. Raven was confused because his old buddy and him had
gotten in a fight after the Dominator got put down.

Probably to show off for Darling, Raven had decided he was going
to round everything off and close the books by getting rid of the
Lady, who lost her powers during the battle. And Croaker said no
you don’t and didn’t back down. He put an arrow into
Raven’s hip just to show him he was serious.

“Is a friend somebody who just stands back and lets you do
whatever you want whenever you want to do it?” He gave me one
of his puzzled looks. “Maybe he was a whole lot more her
friend than he was yours. Way I heard tell, they spent a lot of
time together. They rode off into the sunset together. And you know
the way those guys are about brotherhood, sticking together no
matter what, the Company being their family, them against the whole
world. You told me about it enough.”

There was more I could have said. I could have given it to him
by the numbers, how they felt about brothers who ran out on them,
but he wouldn’t have got it.

There wasn’t nobody with more guts in a fight than Raven.
He wouldn’t back down from nobody or nothing. But in the
emotional tight spots he was ready to pack up and run in a minute.
He did it to the Company and he did it to Darling, but they could
take care of themselves when he did.

I think maybe the worst stunt he ever pulled, and the one that
still bugs him the most, is when he ran out on his kids.

He did that back when he enrolled in the Black Company. Maybe he
had his reasons, and good ones at the time. He comes up with good
excuses. But there’s no getting around the fact that he left
his kids when they were too young to take care of themselves.
Without making any arrangements for them. He never even told
anybody he had kids till he told me, sort of, when he was still
being Corbie and started trying to find out what happened to them.
They would be grown up now. If they survived.

He didn’t find out anything.

I figured he would make finding them his quest now. He
didn’t have anything else going. And trudging through the
forest headed south, he made noises like that was what he was
planning to do.

We got as far as Oar. He went out on a drunk. And stayed on
it.

I went on one, too. I went through me some bad girls. All the
things a guys does when he’s been out in the woods for a long
time, then hits the city. Took me four days to work through that
and another day to shake the hangover. Then I took a look at Raven
and saw he was just getting started.

I went and found us a cheap place to stay. Then I got me a job
protecting a rich man’s family. That wasn’t hard to do.
There were all kinds of rumors about what happened in the
Barrowland. The rich saw troubled times coming and wanted to get
themselves covered.

Darling and her bunch were in the city somewhere, for a while.
So were the bunch from the Black Company. We didn’t run into
any of them before they left out.

Smeds got sick of Tully’s idea before they were four days
out of Oar. Nights were cold in the forest. There was no place to
hide from the rain. Whole hordes of bugs chewed on you and you
couldn’t get rid of them when you were sick of them like you
could with lice and fleas and bedbugs. You could never get
comfortable sleeping on the ground—if you could sleep at all
with all the racket that went on at night. There were always sticks
and stones and roots under you somewhere.

And there was that bastard Old Man Fish, hardly saying shit but
always sneering at you because you didn’t know a bunch of
woodsy stuff. Like you needed to know that shit to stay alive on
the North Side.

It was going to be a pleasure to cut his throat.

Timmy Locan wasn’t much better. Little carrot-top runt
never shut up. All right, so he was funny most of the time. So he
knew every damned joke there ever was and knew how to tell them
right and half of them were the kind you wanted to remember so bad
it hurt, so you could crack up your friends. But they never came
out right for you even when you did remember
them . . .  Damn it, even funny got old after
four days.

Worse than funny, the little prick never slowed down. He bounced
up in die morning like he knew it was going to be the best damned
day of his life and he went after every damned day like it was.
Short people weren’t supposed to be joyous, they were
supposed to be cocky and obnoxious. Then you could thump on them
and shut them up without feeling bad about it.

Worst thing of all was, Old Man Fish said they couldn’t
follow the road on account of they might run into somebody who
would want to know what they were up to or somebody who might
remember them after they did the job. It was important that nobody
knew who did it. But busting through the tangle of the woods was
awful, even with Old Man Fish finding the way.

Tully hated it worse than Smeds, but he backed the old man
up.

Smeds had to admit they were right. What he didn’t have to
admit was that the expedition was worth the slapping branches, the
stabbing, tearing briars, and the for gods’ sake spidenvebs
in the face.