The Silver spike (5 page)

“Yes. Soon. For the horses.”

“Sure.” I kept my face blank. Inside I was wishing I
had balls enough to yell at him that he didn’t have to go on
being the iron man for me. He didn’t have to prove anything
to me but that he could stop sucking wine by the gallon and could
stop feeling sorry for himself. He wanted to show me how much guts
he had, let him show me he had the kind it took to go find his kids
and make up with them. He didn’t have to prove anything to
that old man over there in the trees, did he?

I wished he would go ahead and announce the decision I knew he
was going to make. I was getting uncomfortable, knowing I was being
watched. “Come on. Which way?”

He responded by spurring his mount down the south road. What the
hell was this? I even started to turn east before I realized what
he’d done.

I caught up. “Why south?”

Kind of hitting it sideways, he told me, “Croaker was
always an understanding kind of guy. And forgiving.”

The son of a bitch was crazy.

Or maybe he’d suddenly gone sane and didn’t need to
whimper over Darling anymore.

The three-legged beast carried the head to the heart of the
Great Forest, to the altar at the center of a ring of standing
stones that had been in place for several thousand years. It could
barely squeeze through the picket of ancient oaks surrounding that
greatest of the holy places of the pitifully diminished forest
savages.

The monster deposited the head and hobbled back into the dappled
woods.

One by one the beast hunted down the shamans of the woodland
tribes and compelled them to go to the head. In their terror those
petty old witch doctors threw themselves upon their faces before it
and worshiped it as a god. They swore oaths of fealty for fear of
the jaws of the beast. Then they began tending to the head’s
needs.

Not once, to any, did it occur to take advantage of its
powerlessness to destroy it. The fear of it was impressed too
deeply into their kind. They could not imagine resistance.

And, always, there was that slavering monster to overawe
them.

They went away from the holy place to collect willow withes,
mystical herbs, rope grasses, leather both raw and tanned, blessed
feathers, and stones known to possess magical properties. They
gathered small animals appropriate for sacrifices, and even brought
in a thief who was to be killed anyway. The man screamed and begged
to be dispatched in the usual way, fearing the perpetual bondage
and torment of a soul dedicated to a god.

Most of the stuff collected was junk. Most of the shamans’
magic was mummery, but it proceeded from a deeper truth, from a
fountain of genuine power. Power that was real enough to serve the
head’s immediate purpose.

In that oldest and most sacred of their holy places the shamans
wove and built themselves a wicker man of willow and rope grasses
and rawhide. They burned their herbs and slaughtered their
sacrifices, christening and anointing the wicker man with blood.
Their chanting invocations possessed the ring of stone for
days.

Much of the chant was nonsense, but forgotten or only partly
understood words of power lingered in its rhythms. Words enough to
do.

When those old men finished the rite, they set the head on the
wicker man’s neck. Its eyes blinked three times.

One wooden hand snatched a staff from a shaman. The old man
fell. Tottering, the amalgam moved to a patch of bare earth. With
the foot of the staff it scratched out crude block letters.

Slowly the thing gave the old men their orders. They hurried
off. In a week they were ready to make improvements on their
handiwork.

The rites this time were more bloody and bizarre. They included
the sacrifice of two men snatched from the ruined town beside the
Barrowland. Those two were a long time dying.

When the rites were finished the wicker man and its corrupt
burden possessed more freedom of movement, though no one would
mistake the construct for a human body. The head could now speak in
a soft, gravelly whisper.

It ordered, “Collect your fifty best warriors.”

The old men balked. They had done their part. They had no taste
for adventures.

The thing they had created whispered a chant in which there were
no waste words. Three old men died screaming, devoured by worms
that ate them from within.

“Gather your fifty best warriors.”

The survivors did as they were told.

When the warriors came they hoisted the wicker man onto the back
of the crippled monster. No woodland pony or ox would allow the
amalgam to mount it. He then led the band down to the wreck of the
town at the Barrowland. “Kill them all,” he
whispered.

As the massacre began the wicker man moved past, his ruined face
fixed southward. His eyes smoldered with a poisonous, insane
hatred.

Timmy came flying into camp moments after the racket started. He
was so scared he could hardly talk. “We got to get out of
here,” he choked out, in one-word gasps. “That monster
is back. Something is riding it. Some savages are killing them in
the village.”

Old Man Fish nodded once and dumped water on the fire.
“Before it remembers us. Just like we rehearsed
it.”

“Oh, come on,” Tully snarled. “Timmy’s
probably seeing things. . . . ”

The tree cut loose with the granddaddy of all blue bolts. It
filled the forest with its glow and banged like heavenly
lightning.

“Holy shit,” Tully whispered. He took off like a
stampeded bear.

The others were not too far behind.

Smeds was thoughtful as he trotted along, his arms filled with
gear. Fish’s precautions had paid off. Maybe. Like the old
boy said, they weren’t out nothing getting away for a
while.

From behind came a flare in a rosy peach shade answered by
another blast of blue. Something yowled like the lost soul of a
great cat.

Tully claimed Fish thought too much. But here was Fish turning
out to do more and more of the leading while Tully eased into
Smeds’s old place as shirker and complainer. Timmy
wasn’t changing, though. He was still the handy runt with the
thousand stories.

Fish and Timmy were putting more into this than Tully. Smeds
didn’t think he could cut them. Especially not if the payoff
was as big as Tully expected. No need to be bloody greedy then.

Smeds squatted beside his log, placed his stuff in the nest of
branches left to hold it. Tully was on the river already, splashing
away. “Sshh!” Fish said. Everybody froze, except Tully
out there, splashing away.

Old Man Fish listened.

All Smeds heard was a lot of silence. Nor was there any
lightning anymore.

Fish relaxed. “Nothing moving. We got time to
strip.”

Smeds took the old man’s word but he didn’t waste
any time getting naked and shoving off.

Lying on his chest on a log in the middle of a river in the
middle of the night, Smeds felt the first nibbles of panic. He
could not see the island for which they were headed, though Fish
said there was no way they could miss it from where they had left
the bank. The current would carry them right to it.

That was no reassurance. He could not swim. If he missed the
island he would drift maybe all the way to the sea.

A sudden barrage of blue flares illuminated the river. He was
surprised to see that Fish and Timmy were nearby. And for all his
furious splashing Tully was only a hundred feet ahead.

He felt an urge to say something, anything, just to draw courage
from the act of communication. But he had nothing to say. And
silence was imperative. No point asking for trouble.

During the coming hour he relived every moment of fear
he’d ever known, every instance of misfortune and disaster.
He was very ragged when he spied the darker loom of the island dead
ahead.

It wasn’t much of an island. It was maybe thirty feet wide
and two hundred yards long, a nail paring of a mudbank that had
accumulated weeds and scrub brush. None of the brush was taller
than a man. Smeds thought it a pretty pathetic hideout.

At the moment it looked like paradise.

A minute later Fish whispered, “It’s shallow enough
to touch bottom. Walk your way around to the far side so there
won’t be tracks coming out over here.”

Smeds slid off his log, discovered the water was no deeper than
his waist. He followed Fish and Timmy, his toes squishing in the
bottom muck, his calves tangling in water plants. Timmy yipped as
he stepped on something that wriggled.

Smeds glanced back. Nothing. There had been no fireworks since
the exchange that had shown him his companions on the river. The
forest had begun to recall its night murmur.

“What took you guys so long?” Tully asked, with a
touch of strain.

Smeds snapped, “We took time to pick up some stuff so we
wouldn’t starve to death out here. What’re you going to
munch, fireball?”

Smeds wondered if an occasional dose of stress wasn’t good
for the state of a guy’s common sense. He’d dug up some
useful memories during his helpless voyage.

Tully had run off on him before. When they were little, as a
simple act of cruelty, and later, abandoning him to the mercies of
bullies or leaving him to be beaten by a merchant when he,
unwitting, had distracted the man while Tully had snatched a
handful of coppers and run.

Tully bore watching.

Smeds could see the shadow of the future. Get Old Man Fish and
Timmy Locan to kype the spike. Get dumb old Smeds to croak them
when they do. Then take the loot and walk. Who is Smeds going to
complain to when he has the blood of two men on his hands?

That would be just like Tully. Just like him.

They stayed on the island four days, feeding the gnats, broiling
in the sun, waiting. It went hardest for Tully. He mooched food
enough to get by, but he could not borrow dry clothing or a blanket
to keep the sun off.

Smeds had a feeling Fish drew the wait out mainly for
Tully’s benefit.

Fish went over to the mainland the fourth afternoon. Walking.
The channel between the island and bank was never more than
chest-deep. He carried his necessaries atop his head.

He did not return till after dark.

“Well?” Tully demanded, the only one of them with
any store of impatience left.

“They’re gone. Before they left they found our camp
and savaged it. They poisoned everything and left dozens of traps.
We won’t go back there. Maybe we can find what we need in the
village. Those folks won’t be needing anything
anymore.”

Smeds learned the truth of Fish’s report next day, after a
pass near their old camp to show Tully he was wasting his time
whining for his stuff. The massacre had been complete, and had not
spared the dogs, the fowl, the livestock. It was a warm morning and
the air was still. The wings of a million flies filled the forest
with an oppressive drone. Carrion eaters squawked and barked and
chittered, arguing, as though there was not a feast great enough
for ten times their number. The stench was gut-wrenching even from
a quarter mile away. Smeds stopped. “I got no
business to take care of over there. I’m going to go eyeball
the tree.”

“I’ll give you a hand,” Timmy said.

Tully looked at Smeds with a snarl. Old Man Fish shrugged, said,
“We’ll meet you there.” The stink and horror
didn’t seem to bother him.

The wicker man strode through the streets of the shattered city
like an avenging god, stepping stiffly over the legions of the
dead. The survivors of his forest warriors followed, awed by the
vastness of the city and aghast at what sorcery had wrought. Behind
them came a few hundred stunned imperial soldiers from the Oar
garrison. They had recognized the invader and had responded to his
call to arms—mainly because to defy him was to join those
whose blood painted the cobblestones and whose spilled entrails
clogged the gutters.

Fires burned in a thousand places. The people of Oar sent a
great lament up into the darkness. But not near the dread thing
stamping the night.

Furtive things moved in the shadows, rushing away from their
places of hiding. Their fear was so great they could not remain
still while the old terror passed. He ignored them. The backbone of
resistance had been broken.

He ignored everything but the fires. Fire he avoided.

Bowstrings yelped. Arrows zipped into the wicker man as if into
an archery butt. Chunks of willow and bits of stone flew. The
wicker man reeled. But for the woodland warriors he would have
toppled. Breathy rage tore through the head’s tortured
lips.

Then words came, soft and bitter, chilling the hearts of those
near enough to hear. More arrows ripped the fabric of the night,
battered the wicker man, clipped one of his ears, felled one of the
savages supporting him. He finished speaking.

Screams tore the shadows fifty yards away. They were terrible
screams. They brought moisture to the eyes of the soldiers who
followed the wicker man.

Those soldiers stepped over the knotted, twitching, whining
forms of men wearing uniforms exactly like their own, brothers in
arms whose courage had been sufficient to buoy their loyalty. Some
shuddered and averted their eyes. Some took mercy and ended the
torment with quick spear thrusts. Some recognized old comrades
among the fallen and quietly swore to even accounts when sweet
opportunity presented itself.

The wicker man proved as unstoppable as a natural disaster. He
passed through Oar, trailing death and destruction and accumulating
followers, and came to the city’s South Gate, where Loo and
his sidekick vanished in a flurry of heels. The wicker man extended
a hand, whispered secret words. The gate blasted to flinders and
toothpicks. The wicker man stamped through and halted, staring down
the darkened road.