But after the kill... Oh, after the kill!
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?”
