The Silver Spike

by Glen Cook

  She sure had the respect of the tree god and all the pull with him she wanted. I think he’d indulge her in anything.

  She don’t put on no airs, neither.

  It was strange for a while. You had Darling in one spot with Silent always close, trying to stay between her and Bomanz and her and Raven at the same time, only Raven and the wizard would not get anywhere near each other because they did not trust each other any more than Silent trusted either of them.

  It was all kind of amusing. Because when you are on the back of a monster a couple of miles up in the air, sharing that back with a couple hundred critters that would have you for breakfast if you don’t behave, you sure as shit ain’t going to get away with nothing, no matter what you’d like to try.

  The Torque boys knew that. I knew it. Darling knew it. But those other three geniuses, Bomanz, Raven, and Silent, was so busy being important plugging up the knothole at the center of the universe that that never occurred to them.

  The Torques were a little nervous about me, though. I used to be Guards and they was Black Company. They thought I might be lugging a grudge.

  But I was saying the White Rose don’t put on no airs. Not even being the White Rose. She don’t like being called anything but Darling. She did not mind when I came around trying to talk to her. Only Raven and Silent minded. I told Raven to stuff it when he objected and I guess she gave Silent the same message. He didn’t do nothing but stand around looking like he was making up his mind where to start carving when I talked to her.

  Mind you, these were grown men. Plenty older than me.

  It was Raven’s fault I could talk to her at all. He had only himself to blame. It was him insisted I learn the sign language so we could communicate in situations where we couldn’t talk out loud.

  Not that we talked much at first, Darling and me. Just hi-how-you-doing stuff. I wasn’t very good at it. She taught me more sign as we went along.

  She didn’t come right out and say it, but I got the feeling she was starved for somebody to talk to besides Silent. She couldn’t say it with him hovering over her like he did all the time.

  When I started out the only thing I was really wanting to find out was what she really thought about Raven. I wanted to keep him from making any more of a fool of himself than he already had. Maybe she figured that. She was sharp. She never gave me a chance to work it in.

  So after a couple days we were talking about what it was like being country kids growing up with a war going on all around. It was easy to understand why she had gone the way she had. Everybody knew the story so she didn’t need to explain.

  I told her I joined up to get away from the farm, and from where I stood back then the Rebels didn’t look no cleaner than the imperials. Maybe less, because she hadn’t come along to start cleaning them up yet. And the imperials got paid. Good, and on time.

  She did not seem offended, so I added my secret philosophy of life: any dork who became a soldier for an idea instead of the money deserved to die for his country. You’re going to put it all on the table, six up with some other guy, it damned well better be for stakes you can carry away.

  That did offend her. It got scorching for a few minutes, then sort of settled down to a sustained low heat, her trying to convince me that there were abstractions worth fighting and dying for and me clinging to my position that no matter how admirable the cause there was no point getting killed for it because even only twenty years down the road nobody was going to remember you or give a rat’s ass if they did.

  Two days went by that way. I got a feeling that if there hadn’t been so much ego getting in the way Raven and Silent would have ganged up on me for hanging around with their girlfriend.

  She was easy to talk to. I let out things I never said before because I thought they had no value, considering the source. Stuff about how people and the world worked, like that.

  I never realized my outlook was so cynical till I tried to tie it up and put it across in that unsubtle way you have to use with sign.

  I told her I could not believe in her movement because it did not promise anything for the future except freedom from the tyranny of the past. I told her that what little philosophy I’d detected driving the movement totally ignored human nature. That if the Rebels ever did manage to topple the empire, whatever replaced it would be worse.

  That was the lesson of history. New regimes, to make sure they survived, were always nastier than the ones before them.

  I kept after the theme of what did the Rebels offer in place of the empire? In my limited experience the people of the empire were more secure, prosperous, and industrious than they had been before its coming — except in areas where there was an active Rebel presence. I told her that for the great mass of people freedom was not an issue at all. That it was an alien concept, at least as her Rebels seemed to define it.

  I told her that for a peasant — and peasants probably make up three-quarters of the population — freedom meant being able to provide for a family and market any surpluses.

  When I left home the potato fields and all the rest of it were held communally. The work was long and hard and boring, but no one ever went hungry and even in the lean years there were surpluses enough to provide for a few little luxuries. In my grandfather’s time, though, our fields had been just one more parcel among scores owned by one great landholder. The people who lived there were part of the furniture, like the trees and water and game, legally bound to the land. They had any number of obligations to the lord that had to be fulfilled before they could work the land. And of the product of the land they had to hand over fixed amounts to the landholder. First. If it was a bad year the lord could take everything.

  But they had not had to walk in the Lady’s dark shadow. So they must have been blissfully happy little farm animals.

  I told her that the sons of the landholders were all backbones of the Rebel cause now, determined to liberate their enslaved homelands.

  I told her I had no illusions about the Lady having any love or concern for the common people. She obliterated existing ruling classes simply to be rid of potential challenges to her own power. She had plenty of disgusting minions whose assigned domains were terrible places to be.

  Finally, I argued that the empire was in no danger of falling apart, despite the fact that she had disarmed the Lady during the showdown in the Barrowland. The Lady had been obsessed with expanding her borders and the reach of her power. She had created an efficient machine to handle the domestic work of the empire. That machine had not been broken.

  We had been in the air four days. Evening was coming on and ahead brown gave way to the hazy blue of the Sea of Torments. We had come a long way in a short time. When I thought about all the shit me and Raven went through to get down there to that monastery, damn! This was the only way to travel.

  I left off arguing with Darling. I felt a little guilty. As that day had gone on she had argued back less and less. I think I was throwing a lot of stuff at her that she probably hadn’t ever thought about. On a smaller scale I’ve always known people for whom a goal was everything, who never thought nothing about the consequences of the goal achieved.

  Of course, I did what everybody else does. I underestimated the hell out of her.

  Next day I didn’t run into her till around noon. I guess I was avoiding her. But when I did see her she had bounced back.

  About the same time I noticed the dark loom of land on the northern horizon and right afterward realized we were losing altitude. The windwhales were sliding into some kind of formation, a triangle above with us below. Mantas were taking to the air, gliding toward the coast.

  I asked her, in sign, “Where are we? What is happening?”

  She replied, also in sign, “We are approaching Opal. We are going to find Raven’s children. We are going to compel him to confront his past.”

  That was a measure of how much the tree god valued and respected her. Though he had yanked his minions away from that monastery and
had ordered them to scurry north because there was no time to lose, he would let her interrupt the journey for this because it was important to her.

  I figured Raven didn’t know what was coming. He’d probably need a lot of support when it hit him in. I went looking for him.

  XXXVII

  There was nothing out at the fourth hour; Smeds reflected. The soldiers were all off somewhere loafing because the bad boys all had sense enough to be home in bed. The bakers had not yet stumbled out to their doughs and ovens. The only sound in the street was that of the drizzle falling, of the water dripping from the roofs. He and Fish made no noise. Fish seemed not to be breathing.

  There would be one problem with this one they had not faced with the other. He had seen them both before. On the other hand, they were making their move at this ungodly hour, reasonably expecting to catch him in his bed.

  Breaking in should be easy, from what they recalled of the physician’s place. The deed itself would have to be done quietly. There was, they suspected, a live-in housekeeper. They did not want to add her to their weight of conscience.

  “There it is,” Smeds said.

  Like the wizard, the physician was prosperous enough to occupy his own freestanding combination home and place of business. The structure was barely a decade old. A few years before it had been built, that part of town had burned during an outbreak of violence between Rebel sympathizers and mercenaries in the imperial service. The middle class had come in to build homes upon the graves of tenements.

  “Front door to the house and door to the office,” Fish murmured. “Assume a back door. These places all have a little fenced-in garden behind them. Three windows we can see. I’m surprised vandals haven’t destroyed that leaded-glass monstrosity.”

  The physician’s office was scabbed onto the side of his home, set a little back. It had its own little porch and door, and beside the door a marvelously dramatic floor-to-ceiling leaded-glass window six feet wide.

  “Go,” Fish said.

  Smeds dashed across and crouched in the slightly deeper shadow beneath the window on the building’s right front. His thoughts about the weather were not polite. He was miserable enough without a soaking drizzle added on for frosting.

  Fish came across as Smeds rose to test the window. He was not surprised to find it tightly secured. Fish went to the house door, achieved no better result. Smeds crossed behind him and checked the second front window. Solid. He slid around the corner of the house.

  Fish was crouched in front of the office door, which he had pushed open about three inches. Smeds joined him, his knife sliding into his hand. “It was unlocked?”

  “Yes. I don’t like it.”

  “Maybe it’s so clients can get in anytime.”

  Fish ran his hand up the inside of the door. “Maybe, but there’s a heavy latch catch. Let’s be careful.”

  “Careful is my middle name.”

  Fish pushed the door open, looked inside. “Clear.” He slipped in.

  Smeds followed, headed for the door connecting with the house. It was unlocked, too. It opened toward him. He pulled. It swung smoothly, soundlessly. He heard a faint snick behind him as Fish closed the latch. He saw nothing suspicious in the room before him. He stepped inside.

  Maybe it was a whisper of cloth in motion. Maybe it was a little intake of breath. Maybe it was both. Whatever, Smeds spun down and away.

  A line of fire sliced across his shoulder blade.

  He landed on his knees facing the office, watching a shape collide with Fish. Fish said, “Shit!” At the same moment the shape squealed. Then it threw itself sideways and floundered through the leaded-glass window a step ahead of Smeds.

  Fish came to the window. “That was him.”

  “He was expecting us.”

  “Too damned smart. Figured too much out. Can’t let him get away.” Fish jumped through the window.

  The physician was going for all he was worth, legs and arms flailing. That fat little hedgehog was no sprinter.

  Smeds followed Fish. He passed the older man moments later, and gained steadily on his prey, who had gotten a sixty-yard head start. The physician glanced back once, stumbled. Smeds gained ten yards while he was getting his balance. Fear lent him renewed stamina and speed. He stayed the same distance ahead for half a minute.

  The physician knew he was not going to outrun anyone. Smeds knew he knew that. Unless he was running in a blind panic he had developed a strategy, had chosen an ultimate destination …

  The physician zigged right, into a narrow alleyway.

  Smeds slowed, approached cautiously.

  Footfalls pounded away in the darkness.

  He went after them. He was just as careful rounding another corner, again without need. Gods, it was dark in there! Third corner.

  He stopped dead. There were no sounds of flight. He tried listening for heavy breathing but could not be sure he heard anything because his own intruded too much.

  What now?

  Nothing to do but go forward.

  He dropped down and advanced in a careful duck walk. His muscles protested. He was grateful for the toughening they had gotten in the Great Forest.

  There! Was that breathing?

  Couldn’t tell for sure. The echoes of Fish’s approach overrode it.

  Scrape! Swish!

  What must have been a foot missed his face by a fraction of an inch. He flung himself forward but the physician was already moving again. Smeds’s knife ripped along his hip.

  Smeds went down hard but caught hold of a heel and managed to hang on. He snaked forward, stabbing at the man’s calf, his target invisible in the darkness. The man squealed like an injured rabbit.

  Smeds was so startled he let go. Then he realized he was letting his man get away. He got up and charged ahead, smashed into the man.

  “Please! I won’t tell anyone! I swear!”

  Pain slashed along Smeds’s ribs on this left side.

  He flailed away with his knife, hitting anything he could. The physician tried to scream and fight back and ran away all at the same time. Smeds held on with one hand, kept hacking with the other. The physician pulled him out into a street.

  Smeds kept hacking.

  The physician collapsed.

  Fish arrived. “Shit, Smeds. Shit.”

  “Got him.”

  “You sure he didn’t get you, too?”

  Smeds looked at himself. He was covered with blood. Some of it was his own.

  Somebody yelled up the street. People had begun coming to stoops and windows.

  Fish bent, slashed the physician’s throat, said, “We’ve got to get out of here. There’ll be soldiers here in a minute.” He looked at the dead man’s hand. “Unh. A mess. He touched you with that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Come on.” Fish offered him a hand. “You make it?”

  “I’m all right for now.”

  Fish headed back into the alley.

  Smeds began feeling it as soon as the excitement began to go out of him. He knew he would not be able to get away if a chase developed.

  Instead of making for the Skull and Crossbones Fish headed into the West End.

  “Where we going?” Smeds asked.

  “Reservoir. Get you cleaned up. We take you home looking like that the gray boys are going to be around to ask what happened before you can get your boots off.”

  XXXVIII

  I don’t know what I expected to see when we got to Opal. Maybe nothing changed from my last time there. I sure wasn’t ready for the mess we found. I gaped incredulously as we glided over the ruins, where a few survivors scurried around like frightened mice. I went and told Darling, “Don’t look to me like there’s much chance we’ll find the people you want.”

  Odds never bothered Darling.

  Raven and Silent now had especially black feelings for me. I’d had the gall to tell Darling who she had to find if she wanted to force Raven to face his past. Neither of them wanted th
at to happen.

  Both of them was so busy thinking about themselves they didn’t have time to wonder what Darling really thought or felt about anything.

  We crossed most of the city. Up north we spied several large, neatly arranged camps. The tents were too numerous to be all army, but they showed us that the imperials were there, responding to the destruction of the city in a quick, orderly fashion. Below, soldiers and civilians were at work leveling way for the new. Though they stopped to gawk, these people did not run away.

  Darling ordered us to watch for the standard of the military commander. She figured that was the place to start since the city was obviously under martial law. I couldn’t figure why she thought she’d get any cooperation, though.

  I asked, “What do you feel about old Raven these days?” I was real careful to keep my hands hid from him and Silent both.

  I figured she wouldn’t understand what I meant. I was wrong. She signed, “Once I had a child’s love for a man who saved me and nurtured me and risked everything to protect me when, long before I could believe it myself, he recognized the role I would play in the struggle with the darkness. That child was like a very little girl in some ways. She was going to marry Daddy when she grew up, and it never occurred to her that things might not turn out that way till she tried to pursue it, and to press it.

  “I was never really a girl, or a woman, or a human being to Raven, Case. Even though he did awful things for me. I was a symbol, an expiation, and when I insisted on becoming a person he did the only thing he could do to keep on serving the symbol and not have to deal with a flesh-and-blood woman.”

  “That is kind of how I always though it was,” I signed.

  “Many men admire Raven. He fears nothing concrete. He takes no crap from anyone. People who mess with him get hurt, and the hell with the consequences. But those are the only dimensions he has. They are the only dimensions he permits himself. How can I remain emotionally entangled with a man who will not allow himself emotions, however much he did for me in other ways? I appreciate him, I honor him, I may even revere him. But that is all anymore. He cannot change that with some demonstration, like a boy hanging by his knees from a branch to impress a girl.”