For an instant Bomanz thought his world was falling apart. Then he realized Besand was fishing. A dedicated fisherman, the Monitor. Shaken, he countered, “I’m sick of your sadism. If you really suspected anything, you’d be on me like a snake on shit. Legalities never meant anything to you Guards. You’re probably lying about Men fu. You’d haul your own mother in on the word of a sorrier villain than him. You’re sick, Besand. You know that? Diseased. Right here.” He tapped his temple. “You can’t relate without cruelty.”
“You’re pushing your luck again. Bo.”
Bomanz backed down. Fright and temper had been talking. In his own odd way Besand had shown him special tolerance.
It was as though he were necessary to the Monitor’s emotional health. Besand needed one person, outside the Guard, whom he did not victimize. Someone whose immunity repaid him in a sort of validation... I’m symbolic of the people he defends? Bomanz snorted. That was rich.
That business about being retired. Did he say more than I heard? Is he calling off all bets because he’s leaving? Maybe he does have a sense for scofflaws. Maybe he wants to go out with a flash.
What about the new man? Another monster, unblinkered by the gossamer I’ve spun across Besand’s eyes? Maybe someone who will come in like the bull into the corrida? And Tokar, the possible Resurrectionist... How does he fit?
“What’s the matter?” Besand asked. Concern colored his words.
“Ulcer’s bothering me.” Bomanz massaged his temples, hoping the headache would not come too.
“Plant your markers. Men fu might jump you right here.”
“Yeah.” Bomanz took a half dozen stakes from his pack. Each trailed a strip of yellow cloth. He planted them. Custom dictated that the ground so circumscribed was his to exploit.
Men fu could make night raids, or whatever, and Bomanz would have no legal recourse. Claims had no standing in law, only in private treaty. The antique miners exercised their own sanctions.
Men fu was under every sanction but violence. Nothing altered his thieving ways.
“Wish Stancil was here,” Bomanz said. “He could watch at night.”
“I’ll growl at him. That’s always good for a few days. I heard Stance was coming home.”
“Yeah. For the summer. We’re excited. We haven’t seen him in four years.”
“Friend of Tokar, isn’t he?”
Bomanz whirled. “Damn you! You never let up, do you?” He spoke softly, in genuine rage, without the shouts and curses and dramatic gestures of his habitual semi-rage.
“All right, Bo. I’ll drop it.”
“You’d better. You’d damned well better. I won’t have you crawling all over him all summer. Won’t have it, you hear?”
“I said I’d drop it.”
Eight
The Barrowland
Corbie came and went at will around the Guard compound. The walls inside the headquarters building boasted several dozen old paintings of the Barrowland. He studied those often while he cleaned, shivering. His reaction was not unique. The Dominator’s attempt to escape through Juniper had rocked the Lady’s empire. Stories of his cruelties had fed upon themselves and grown fat in the centuries since the White Rose laid him down.
The Barrowland remained quiet. Those who watched saw nothing untoward. Morale rose. The old evil had shot its bolt.
But it waited.
It would wait throughout eternity if need be. It could not die. Its apparent last hope was no hope. The Lady was immortal, too. She would allow nothing to open her husband’s grave.
The paintings recorded progressive decay. The latest dated from shortly after the Lady’s resurrection. Even then the Barrowland had been much more whole.
Sometimes Corbie went to the edge of town, stared at the Great Barrow, shook his head.
Once there had been amulets which permitted Guards safely within the spells making the Barrowland lethal, to allow for upkeep. But those had disappeared. The Guard could but watch and wait now.
Time ambled. Slow and grey and limping, Corbie became a town fixture. He spoke seldom, but occasionally enlivened the lie sessions at Blue Willy with a wooly anecdote from the Forsberg campaigns. The fire blazed in his eyes then. No one doubted he had been there, even if he saw those days a little walleyed.
He made no true friends. Rumor said he did share the occasional private chess game with the Monitor, Colonel Sweet, for whom he had done some special small services. And of course, there was the recruit Case, who devoured his tales and accompanied him on his hobbling walks. Rumor said Corbie could read. Case hoped to learn.
No one ever visited the second floor of Corbie’s home. There, in the heart of the night, he slowly unravelled the treacherous mare’s nest of a tale that time and dishonesty had distorted out of any parallel with truth.
Only parts were encrypted. Most was hastily scribbled in TelleKurre, the principal language of the Domination era. But scattered passages were in UchiTelle, a TelleKurre regional vulgate. Times were, when battling those passages, Corbie smiled grimly. He might be the only man alive able to puzzle through those sometimes fragmentary sentences. “Benefit of a classical education,” he would murmur with a certain sarcasm. I Then he would become reflective, introspective. He would take one of his late night walks to shake revenant memory. One’s own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid. Death is the only exorcism.
He saw himself as a craftsman, did Corbie. A smith. An armorer cautiously forging a lethal sword. Like his predecessor in that house, he had dedicated his life to the search for a fragment of knowledge.
The winter was astonishing. The first snows came early, after an early and unusually damp autumn. It snowed often and heavily. Spring came late.
In the forests north of the Barrowland, where only scattered clans dwelt, life was harsh. Tribesmen appeared bearing furs to trade for food. Factors for the furriers of Oar were ecstatic.
Old folks called the winter a harbinger of worse to come. But old folks always see today’s weather as more harsh than that of yore. Or milder. Never, never the same.
Spring sprung. A swift thaw set the creeks and rivers raging. The Great Tragic, which looped within three miles of the Barrowland, spread miles beyond its banks. It abducted tens and hundreds of thousands of trees. The flood was so spectacular that scores from town wandered out to watch it from a hilltop.
For most, the novelty faded. But Corbie limped out any day Case could accompany him. Case was yet possessed of dreams. Corbie indulged him.
“Why so interested in the river, Corbie?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because of its grand statement.”
“What?”
Corbie swung an encompassing hand. “The vastness. The ongoing rage. See how significant we are?” Brown water gnawed at the hill, furious, fumbling forests of driftwood. Less turbulent arms hugged the hill, probed the woods behind.
Case nodded. “Like the feeling I get when I look at the stars.”
“Yes. Yes. But this is more personal. Closer to home. Not so?”
“I guess.” Case sounded baffled. Corbie smiled. Legacy of a farm youth.
“Let’s go back. It’s peaked. But I don’t trust it with those clouds rolling in.”
Rain did threaten. Were the river to rise much more, the hill would become an island.
Case helped Corbie cross the boggy parts and up to the crest of the low rise which kept the flood from reaching cleared land. Much of that was a lake now, shallow enough to be waded if some fool dared. Under grey skies the Great Barrow stood out poorly, reflecting off the water as a dark lump. Corbie shuddered. “Case. He’s still there.”
The youth leaned on his spear, interested only because Corbie was interested. He wanted to get out of the drizzle.
