The Silver spike (8 page)

Tully started protesting his innocence of having entertained any
such thoughts. Smeds watched Timmy Locan throw sticks. He ignored
Tully. After a while he watched Fish approach from the direction of
the town. The old man was carrying something over his shoulder.
Smeds couldn’t make out what it was. He hoped it was another
of those dwarf deer like the old man had got a couple weeks back.
That had been some good eating.

Timmy spotted Fish. He lost interest in his sticks, wandered
over.

It wasn’t a deer Fish had, it was some kind of bundle that
clanked when he dropped it in front of the log. He said,
“Smell’s gone over there. Thought I’d poke
around.” He opened his bundle, which he had folded from a
ragged blanket. “Those guys didn’t take time out to
loot when they went through over there.”

Smeds gaped. There were pounds and pounds of coins, some of them
even gold. There were rings and bracelets and earrings and broaches
and necklaces and some of them boasted jewels. He’d never
seen so much wealth in one place.

Fish said, “There’s probably a lot more. I just
picked up what was easy to find and quit when I had as much as I
could carry.”

Smeds looked at Tully. “And you wanted to cut out because
the whole thing was a big bust.”

Tully looked at the pile, awed. Then his expression became
suspicious and Smeds knew he was wondering if Fish had hidden the
best stuff where he could pick it up later. Typical Tully Stahl
thinking, and stupid.

If Fish had wanted to hold out he would have just hidden the
stuff and not said anything. Nobody would have known the
difference. Nobody was interested in that town. Nobody even wanted
to think about what happened there.

“What’s this?” Fish asked, glancing from Tully
to Smeds.

Smeds said, “He was whining about how the whole thing was
a big damned bust and he was sick of it and wanted us to go home.
But look here. Even if we don’t have no luck with the tree we
made out like bandits. I could live pretty good for a good long
time on a share of this.”

Fish looked from Tully to Smeds and back again. He said,
“I see.” And maybe he did. That old man wasn’t
anybody’s fool. He said, “Timmy, you got a good eye for
this kind of thing. Why don’t you separate that out into
equal lots?”

“Sure.” Timmy sat down and ran his hands through the
coins, laughing. “Anybody see anything he’s just got to
have?”

Nobody did.

Timmy was good. Not even Tully found any reason to complain
about his divvying.

Fish said, “There’s bound to be more over there. Not
to mention a lot of steel that could be cleaned up and wholesaled
if we brought a wagon up and carried it back.”

After they squirreled their shares, Tully and Old Man Fish
headed back to town. Smeds didn’t want to go anywhere near
the place but figured he had to go along to keep Tully honest.
Timmy wouldn’t go at all. He was happy building up the
woodpile.

Looting the town made for a ten-day full-time job, what with
having to clean up all the weapons and some other large items of
value and then bundling them protectively and hiding them for later
recovery. They came up with enough money and jewelry and small
whatnots to make a heavy load for each of them.

Even Tully seemed pleased and content. For the moment.

One night, though, he said, “You know what bugs me? How
come nobody else in the whole damned city of Oar ever got the same
idea I did? I’d have bet my balls that after this long
we’d be up to our asses in guys trying to glom on to that
spike.”

Old Man Fish grunted. “I’ve been wondering why no
one’s come to see what happened to the garrison.”

Nobody had any ideas. The questions just sort of lay there like
dead fish too ripe to be ignored and too big to shove out of the
way.

Fish said, “I reckon it’s time we torched her and
seen if she’s going to do it or not. That woodpile gets any
bigger Timmy ain’t going to be able to throw them that
high.”

Smeds realized he was reluctant to take the next step. Tully
didn’t seem too anxious, either. But Timmy had a grin on ear
to ear. He was raring to go.

Tully leaned over and told Smeds, “Little dip did some
torch work back in town. Likes to see things burn.”

“We got a good day for it here,” Fish said. “A
nice breeze to whip up the fire. A hot, sunshiny day, which is when
we know it’s asleep the deepest. All we have to do is look in
our pants and see if we got some balls, then go do it.”

They looked at each other awhile. Finally, Smeds said,
“All right,” and got up. He collected the bundle of
brush that would be his to throw. Fish and Timmy got theirs. Tully
had to go along.

They lit the bundles off down in the bottom of the hole the
monster dug, then jumped out and charged the mountain of sticks
from the windward side. They heaved their bundles. Tully’s,
thrown too far away, fell short, but that did not matter.

They ran like hell, Smeds, Timmy, and Fish in straight lines,
Tully zigging and zagging. The tree did not wake up before
they’d all made the cover of the woods.

The fire had reached inferno proportions by then.

Random bolts of blue lightning flailed around. They did not come
for long, though.

Smeds could feel the heat from where he crouched, watching. That
was one bitch of a bonfire. But he was not impressed. What he was,
mainly, was sad.

The fire burned the rest of the day. At midnight Timmy went to
check it out and came back to say there was still a lot of live
coals under the ash and he hadn’t been able to get near
it.

Next morning they all went to look. Smeds was astounded. The
tree still stood. Its trunk was charred and its leaves were gone,
but it still stood, the silver spike glittering wickedly at eye
level. And it did not protest their presence, no matter how close
they got.

That was not close enough. There was a lot of heat in the ash
still. They hauled water from the river and splashed down a path.
Timmy Locan volunteered to take the pry bar and go pull the
spike.

“I can’t believe it,” Tully said as Timmy
leaned on the bar and the tree didn’t do anything about it.
“I can’t goddamned believe it! We’re actually
going to do it!”

Timmy grunted and strained and cussed and nothing happened.
“This son of a bitch ain’t going to come!
Oh!”

It popped loose. Timmy grabbed at it as it sailed past, grabbing
it left-handed for a second.

Then he screamed and dropped it. “Oh, shit, that bastard
is hot.” He came running, crying, and shoved his hand into
the last bucket of water. His palm was mostly red and beginning to
show patches of blister already.

Fish took a shovel and scooped the spike out of the ashes.
“Look out, Timmy. I’m fixing to dump it in
there.”

“My hand . . . ”

“Ain’t good to do a bad burn that way. You head back
to camp. I got some salve there that’ll do you a whole lot
better.”

Timmy pulled his hand out. Fish dumped the spike. The water
hissed and bubbled. Fish said, “You carry the bucket,
Smeds.”

Just as Tully said, “We better make tracks. I think its
starting to wake up.”

It was hard to tell against that sky, but it did look like there
were tiny flecks of blue out on the ends of the smallest surviving
twigs.

“The spike ain’t conducting heat into the heartwood
anymore,” Fish said. “Scat,” he told the backs of
a lot of pumping legs and flailing elbows.

Smeds looked back just before he plunged into the woods. Just as
the tree cut loose with a wild, undirected discharge. The flash
nearly blinded him. Ash flew in clouds. The pain and disappointment
and . . . sorrow?  . . . of
the tree touched him like a gentle, sad rain. He found tears
streaking his face and guilt in his heart.

Old Man Fish puffed into camp one step ahead of Tully, who was
embarrassed because the old-timer had outrun him. Fish said,
“We got a lot of daylight left. I suggest we get the hell on
the road. Timmy, let me look at that hand.”

Smeds looked over Fish’s shoulder. Timmy’s hand
looked awful. Fish didn’t like the look of it either. He
stared at it, grunted, frowned, studied it, grunted again.
“Salve won’t be good enough. I’m going to collect
up some herbs for a poultice. Thing must have been hotter than I
thought.”

“Hurts like hell,” Timmy said, eyes still
watery.

“Poultice will take care of that. Smeds. When you get that
spike out of the bucket don’t touch it. Dump it on that old
blanket. Then wrap it up. I don’t think anybody ought to
touch it.”

“Why the hell not?” Tully asked.

“Because it burned Timmy badder than it should have.
Because it’s a bad mojo thing and maybe we shouldn’t
ought to take any chances.”

Smeds did it the way Fish said, after the old man went hunting
his herbs. After he dumped the bucket he moved the spike to a dry
part of the blanket with a stick. “Hey! Tully! Check this.
It’s still hot even after it was in that water.”
Passing his hand above it he could feel the heat from a foot
away.

Tully tried it. He looked troubled. “You better wrap it up
good and tie it tight and put it right in the middle of your
pack.”

“Eh?” Tully didn’t want to carry it himself?
Didn’t want it in his control every second? That was
disturbing.

“You want to come give me a hand awhile here?” Tully
asked. “I can’t never get this pack together by
myself.”

Smeds finished bundling the spike, went over, knowing from his
tone Tully had something he wanted to whisper.

As they stuffed and rolled and tied, Tully murmured, “I
decided not to do it on the way back. We’re still going to
need them awhile. We’ll do it later, in the city
sometime.”

Smeds nodded, not saying he wasn’t going to do it at all,
and was going to try his damnedest to see that Fish and Timmy and
he himself got fair shares of the payoff for the spike.

He had a good idea what was going on inside Tully’s head.
Tully wasn’t going to be satisfied with the big hit
they’d made already. Tully was thinking Fish and Timmy made
good mules. They could haul their shares back. Once they got to
town he could take them away.

Smeds had a suspicion Tully wasn’t going to be satisfied
with a two-way split, either.

Our fire burned down till it wasn’t nothing but some
patches of red. Once in a while a little flame would shoot up and
prance around for a few seconds, then die. I stared up at the
stars. Most were ones I’d known all my life, but they had
moved to funny parts of the night. The constellations were all
askew.

It was a good night for shooting stars. I’d spotted seven
already.

“Uncomfortable?” Raven asked. He was watching the
sky, too.

He startled me. He hadn’t said anything since back around
lunchtime. We didn’t talk much anymore.

“Scared.” I had lost track of time. I had no idea
how far we’d come or where we were, except that it was one
goddamned long ways from home and down in the south.

“And wondering what the hell you’re doing here, no
doubt.”

“No. I think I got a handle on that. My trouble is I
don’t like having to sneak everywhere, like a thief. I might
get treated like one.”

I did not add that I did not like being in places where the only
person who could understand me was him. If something happened to
him . . .  That was what scared me the
most.

It was too awful to think about.

I said, “But it’s too late to turn back.”

“Some say it’s never too late.”

So he was thinking about his kids again, now he was plenty safe
from the risk of actually having to deal with them. Also, maybe, he
was having second thoughts about our ride into the unknown.

Opaque as they were to me, and maybe even to him, powerful
emotions were driving him. They had Darling’s name hung all
over them, though he never mentioned her. One monster of a guilt
was perched on his shoulders, flapping and squawking and pecking at
his eyes and ears. Somehow he was going to silence that beast by
catching his pal Croaker and passing the word about what happened
in the Barrowland.

It didn’t make no sense to me. But people never do, a
whole lot.

Maybe the determination was starting to wear thin. It was one
thing to take off after a guy expecting to catch him in a few weeks
and a few hundred miles and something else to be on the track still
after months and months and thousands of miles. People aren’t
built to take that without any letup. The road can blunt the most
iron will.

He let the edges of it show when he said, “Croaker’s
been gaining on us again. He doesn’t have to be as careful as
we do. We have to speed it up somehow. Else we’re going to
chase him all the way to the edge of the world and still never
catch him.”

Hell. He was talking to himself, not to me. Trying to find some
enthusiasm he had misplaced somewhere back up the road. There
wasn’t no way we were going to kick up the pace any. Not
without giving up any thought of watching out for trouble from the
people in the countries we were going through.

We were pushing so hard now we were killing ourselves
slowly.

I glimpsed something off to the north. “There. Did you see
that? That’s what I was telling you about the other day.
Lightning from a clear sky.”

He missed it. “Maybe it’s storming up
there.”

“Just keep an eye peeled.”

We watched a series of flashes so dim their source had to be way
over the horizon. Usually that kind of lightning lights up or
silhouettes the tops of clouds.

“There isn’t one cloud,” Raven said.
“And we haven’t seen one for weeks. And I’d bet
we won’t see any as long as we’re crossing this
steppe.” He watched another flash go. He shivered. “I
don’t like it, Case. I don’t like it at all.”