Raven got all excited. He wanted to head right on out and the hell with the sun was going to hit the horizon in another hour. I wanted to hit him over the head and slow him down. That monastery looked like a damned good place to take a day off and get human again.
“Look here, Case,” he cajoled, “they’ll be making camp by now, right? Traveling with a wagon and a coach the best they could’ve done is twenty-five miles. Right? We go all night we can grab off twenty of that, easy.” He learned that about the wagon and coach from the priest.
“And then we die. You maybe never need a rest, but I need a rest and the horses need a rest and this looks like the perfect place to do it. Hell, look at the name.”
He made exasperated noises. After all this time I still didn’t understand that catching Croaker was the most important thing in the world. He was so damned tired himself his thinking was as screwy as a possum’s.
He wasn’t the only one running shy of a full load. That priest came down with both feet solid on Raven’s side.
Raven grinned when he said, “He claims the omens are so bad they aren’t letting anybody onto the grounds. They’re even chasing people out.”
I had enough of the lingo, learned from Raven, to have gotten part of that. Also something about “the bad storm coming down from the north.” I saw I wasn’t going to win this round neither, so I said the hell with it and added a few comments that would have disappointed my old potato-digging mother. I went and shared my misery with the horses. They understood me.
Raven worked a deal for some supplies and we headed out. I wondered how much farther to the edge of the world. We’d already come farther than I’d ever believed possible.
We didn’t talk much. Not because I had the sulks. I’d given up on them and went fatalistic a long time ago. I think Raven was brooding about that bit I’d caught that he hadn’t mentioned. A bad storm coming down from the north.
In the Jewel Cities lingo “bad” can mean a couple three different things. Including “evil.”
There was barely any light left when we came to a strip of woods. “Going to have to walk this part,” Raven said. “That priest said the road through is good enough, but it’s going to be hard to follow in the dark.”
I grunted. I wasn’t thinking about the woods. My mind was on the funny-looking hills on the other side. I’d never seen anything like them. They were all steep-sided, smoothly rounded, covered with a tawny dry grass and nothing else. They looked like the humped backs of giant animals snoozing with their legs tucked up underneath them and their heads turned around behind them, out of sight.
They were very dry, those hills. The light to see them hadn’t never been good, but I was sure I’d seen a few black burn scars before it got too dark to see anything.
The woods were bone-dry, too. The trees were mostly some kind of scruffy oak with small, brittle leaves that had points almost as sharp as holly leaves. They were a sort of blue-gray color instead of the deep green of oaks in the north.
A feeble excuse for a creek dribbled through the heart of the wood. We watered ourselves and the horses and took time out for a snack. I was too tired to waste energy talking, except to say, “I don’t think I got what it takes for another fifteen miles. Uphill.”
Half a minute later he surprised me by saying. “Don’t know if I got what it takes, either. Only so far you can go on willpower.”
“Hip bothering you?”
“Yes.”
“Might ought to have it looked at.”
“Good job for Croaker, since he done it. Let’s see how much we got left.”
We managed about six more miles, the last couple up the dry grass hills, before we sort of collapsed by silent agreement. Raven said, “This time we’ll give it an hour before we hit it again.”
He was stubborn, that bastard.
We hadn’t been there five minutes before I spotted evidence of that bad storm from the north. “Raven.”
He looked. He didn’t have nothing to say. He just sighed and helped me watch the lightning.
There wasn’t a cloud between us and the stars.
XXV
Toadkiller Dog, carrying the wicker man, eased over a ridge line, halted. He shivered.
For leagues now they had sensed the presence of that place over there, an aura ever increasing in intensity and its ability to irritate. If they were sons of the shadow this was a fastness of the enemy, a citadel of light. There were few such places left.
They had to be expunged when found.
“Strange magic,” the wicker man whispered. “I don’t like it.” He glanced at the northern sky. The creatures of the tree god were up there somewhere, just beyond sight.
This was not a good place to be, sandwiched between them and that place.
The wicker man said, “We’d better do it fast.”
Toadkiller Dog had no desire to do it at all. He would bypass, given a choice.
He had choices, of course, but not many. He might get away with defying the wicker man once. That once had to be saved. In the meantime he responded to the ego of the wicker man, doing the insane, the stupid, sometimes the necessary, biding his time.
The army presently numbered two thousand. The men had collapsed in exhaustion the moment their commanders stopped moving. The wicker man summoned two to help him dismount.
They were rich men, every one. Their packs bulged with the finest treasure taken from cities their masters had devoured and from fallen comrades. Few had been with the army more than two months. Of the two thousand only a hundred had crossed the sea with the Limper. Those who did not desert had no cause to be optimistic about a long life.
The wicker man leaned against Toadkiller Dog. “Scum,” he whispered. “All scum.”
Close. Most with any spark of courage or decency deserted quickly.
The wicker man eyed the sky. A faint smile stretched the ruin of his mouth. “Do it,” he said.
The soldiers groaned and grumbled as they stood to arms, but stand to they did. The wicker man stared at the temple. It abused his confidence, but he could not discern any concrete cause. “Go!” He slapped Toadkiller Dog’s shoulder. “Scout it, damn you!”
He then assembled the surviving witchmen from the northern forest. They had not been much use lately, but he had a task for them now.
There wasn’t a breath of warning. One moment the night was still except for the chirp of crickets and the uneasy rustle of men on the brink of an assault, the next it was alive with attacking manias. They came from every direction, not fifty feet high, in twos and threes, and this time their lightning was not their most important weapon.
The first flights ghosted in and dropped fleshy sausage-shaped objects four feet long. Boiling, oily flame splashed everywhere. Toadkiller Dog howled in the heart of an accurately delivered barrage. Soldiers shrieked. Horses screamed and bolted. Baggage wagons caught fire.
The wicker man would have screamed in rage had he been able. But had he had the capability, he would not have had the time.
He had begun preparing a snare. And while he had concentrated on that they had caught him flat- footed.
He was enveloped in flame. He dared not think of anything else.
He suffered badly before he shielded himself with a chrysalis of protective spells. He was sprawled on the earth then, his wicker body charred and broken. His pain was terrible and his rage more so.
Bladders continued to fall. Mantas that had dumped theirs returned with their lightning. The wicker man extended his charm to include a pair of shamans. One struggled to lift the wicker man’s battered frame. The other found the tag ends of the Limper’s charm and began to weave it stronger.
