The Silver Spike

XXIII

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."

Timmy shook like he was about to go into convulsions.

"That's enough, madam," Fish said. "You've buried your blade to the heart."

She sputtered, "Why, the nerve…"

Tully said, "Piss off, bitch. Before I kick your ass up around your ears." He used that gentle, even tone Smeds knew meant maximum danger.

So. Cousin Tully had a little canker of humanity hidden away after all. Though he would not admit it on the rack.

"I can't handle this," Timmy said. "I think I better stay dead." Fish said, "That woman won't let you rest in peace,

Timmy."

"I know. I'll do what I got to do. But not now. I know a place called the Skull and Crossbones where we can put up cheap. If it's still there."

It was there. It was a place the invaders would have ignored as too contemptible to burn. It made Smeds think of a hooker still working twenty years past her prime, pathetic and desperate.

An imperial corporal sat in a chair out front, leaning back against a wooden wall that had forgotten the meaning of paint. He held a bucket of beer in his lap. He seemed to be napping. But when they were a few steps from the door he opened his eyes, checked them over, nodded, took a drink.

"Catch his emblem?" Smeds asked Fish inside. "Yes. Nightstalkers."

The Nightstalker Brigade was the crack outfit in the northern army, rigorously trained for night operations and combat under wizard's war conditions.

Smeds said, "I thought they were out east somewhere, trying to finish the Black Company." The proudest honor on the standard of the Nightstalkers was their defeat of the Black Company at Queen's Bridge. Before Queen's Bridge those mercenaries had been so glibly invincible that half the empire had been convinced the gods themselves were on their side.

"They're here now." "What the hell is going on around here?" "Guess we better find out. What we don't know could I eat us up."

Timmy talked to the owner, whom he knew slightly. The man claimed he was full up with the dispossessed. None of those guests were evident. He hinted he might find space, though, if fate took a hand. Fishing for a bribe, Smeds figured. Which he would follow with a deep gouge.

"How much leverage on fate are we talking?" Timmy asked.

"Obol and a half. Each."

"You goddamned thief!"

"Take it or leave it."

The Nightstalker corporal stepped past Smeds and Timmy and plunked his bucket down in front of the landlord, who had gone as pale as death. "That's twice today, dogmeat. And this time I heard it myself."

The landlord gulped air, grabbed the bucket, and started to fill it.

"Don't try," the corporal said. "Offer me a bribe and you'll stay on the labor gang forever." He eyed Timmy and Smeds. "You guys pick yourself a room. On old Shit for Brains here for a night."

"I was just joshing with the guys, Corporal."

"Sure. I could tell. You had them rolling around on the floor. Bet you'll have the guy in the black mask in stitches. He loves you comedians."

Smeds asked, "What's going on around here, Corporal? We've been out of town."

"I could tell. I guess you can see your basic situation. Some bandits and deserters tore the place up. They wasn't too happy about that, down to the Tower. Since we was in the neighborhood we was one of the outfits got to come in and keep order. The brigadier, she started out life in the slums of Nihil, she figures here's a chance to get even with the kinds of assholes who made life hell when she was a kid. So you got thieves hanging from the roof trees. You got your pimps and priests and pushers, your sharpers and your fences and your whores won't learn no better working on the labor gangs eighteen hours a day so your regular citizens can get on with putting their lives back together.

"You ask me, she's too damned lenient. Gives them too many chances. Shithead here, the famous profiteer, he's done used up two of his shots now. First time he got paraded through the streets with a sign around his neck and got a week on the labor gang. This time he gets thirty lashes and two weeks. Because he's got all that shit between his ears and ain't going to learn dick about how he can't get away with it, next time they're going to drag him over to Mayfield Square and stick a spear up his butt and let him sit on it till he rots."

The corporal took a long drink from his refilled bucket, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, grinned. "Brigadier says let the punishment fit the crime." He took another long drink, looked at the landlord. "You ready to go do it, asshole?"

As he was about to follow the landlord into the street, the corporal paused. "I reckon you boys will be fair to your host, here, and treat his place right. 'Less you're looking for careers in construction." He grinned again and went.

"God damn!" Tully said.

"Yeah," Smeds agreed.

Fish said, "I have a feeling we're not going to be comfortable in this new Oar."

"Not for long," Smeds said. "But sufficient unto the day. Right now I need to get drunk, get laid, get a night's sleep somewheres besides on the ground."

"Not necessarily in that order," Tully said.

Timmy put on a strained smile. "A bath wouldn't hurt anything, either."

"Let's get doing what we got to do."