I was as wiped out as he was but I could not lay down and die. That show up around the monastery was getting flashier all the time. In fact, some of the fireworks was headed our way. That made me too nervous to crap out, though even my toenails were tired.
Another blast. A rose of fire bloomed in the sky. A big hunk of something started falling, spinning off smaller hunks of fire.
I realized what I was seeing.
“Raven, you better get your ass up and look at this mother.”
He grunted but he didn’t do it.
“It’s a windwhale, asshole. Out of the Plain of Fear. What do you think of that?” I saw a couple get wiped during the big bloodletting up to the Barrowland.
“So it seems.”
Mr. Ambition had rolled over. His voice was cool but his face was fishbelly white, like he’d stepped around a corner and bumped noses with Old Man Death.
“So how come it’s here?” Then I shut up. I’d imagined up a reason.
“Not for me, kid. Who on the Plain would know where to look for me? Who would care?”
“Then...?”
“It’s the battle of the Barrowland, still going on. It’s the tree god head-to-head with whatever I felt breaking loose up there.”
Light flashed. Fire busted out of one end of the part of the windwhale that was still up. “That thing isn’t going to stay up there much longer. Should we go see if we can do something?”
He didn’t say anything for at least a minute. He looked up at the humpbacked hills like he was thinking maybe he had enough left to go catch Croaker after all. He couldn’t be more than five, ten miles away, could he? Then he levered himself to his feet, wincing, obviously favoring his bad hip. I didn’t ask. I knew he’d claim it was just the chill air and cold ground.
He told me, “Better get the horses. I’ll drag our stuff together.”
Big job you took on yourself there, old buddy, since we basically just dropped in our tracks when we couldn’t go anymore.
Since he didn’t have much to do he mostly just stood there watching that flying disaster cross the sky. He looked like he was being asked to mount the gallows and put the noose around his own neck.
“I’ve been thinking, Case,” Raven said as we came down off the knee of the most northerly of those goofy humped hills, headed northeast, chasing that drifting windwhale fragment.
“Brooding is the word I would have picked, old buddy. And you been at it since the day they finally put the Dominator down. Looks like that explosion a while back was the last one.”
The fragment was drifting on a course that would intercept ours. A few fires flickered on one end. It was turning end for end slowly but had stopped its fall.
“Maybe. But you say something definite like that, the gods will stick it to you. Let’s just hope it clears the woods. Be rough landing in there.” “What were you thinking?”
“About you and me, Croaker and his gang, the Lady, Silent, Darling. About all the things we had in common but still couldn’t get along.”
“I didn’t see all that much you had hi common. Not once you got past having the same enemies.”
“Neither did I for a long time. And none of them saw it, either. Else we all might have tried a little harder.” I tried to look like I gave a shit at three in the morning. “Basically we’re all lonely, unhappy people looking for our place, Case. Loners who’d really rather not be but don’t know how. When we get to the door that would let us in-or out-we can’t figure out how to work the latch string.”
I’ll be damned. That was about as open-up-and-expose-what’s-inside a remark as I ever got out of him. Filled with longing and conviction. Well shave my head and call me Baldy. I been right up here beside him since a couple years ago. You don’t see the changes going on in people when you’re standing up close.
This wasn’t the Raven I’d first met, before his ego and misadventure had gotten his soul trapped among the shadow evils of the Barrowland, before its cleansing. He had returned from the prison of the heart dramatically altered. Hell, he wasn’t even the same man who had spent all his time drunk on his ass in Oar, neither.
I had kind of mixed feelings. I’d admired and liked and gotten along pretty good with the old Raven. Maybe I would again once he got through his transition. I did not know what to say to him, though I was sure he wanted a response. His knack for befuddling me never changed. “So did you figure out how to work it?”
“I have an unsettling premonition, Case. I’m almost paralyzed by a dread that I’m about to find out if I’ve learned anything.” He stared at that piece of windwhale.
I checked it, guessed it was about two miles away and five hundred feet up. The breeze was bringing it to us.
“We going to chase it back into the hills if it carries that far?”
“You tell me, Case. This was your idea.” He paused to whisper to his horse. The animals were not excited about hiking around at night either. Even if they didn’t have to carry anybody.
Flame mushroomed out of the windwhale. Before the roar of the explosion reached us, I said, “We’re not going to have to worry about climbing any hills.”
The windwhale came down fast, turning end for end. When it was about two hundred feet off the ground some chunks fell off and it stopped coming down so fast. I had a pretty good idea where it would hit. We hurried toward the spot.
Then what was left nosed down, sped up, and hit the ground about a mile away. It bounced back into the air, maybe a hundred feet high. It kept coming, straight at us now.
At the peak of its bounce it exploded again.
It bounced two more times before it stayed down and just slid to a stop.
“Be careful,” Raven said. “There might be more explosions.” Fires still burned on the windwhale. Somewhere inside it was making a noise like somebody beating on the granddaddy of all bass drums.
I said, “It ain’t dead yet. Look there.” The end of a tentacle lay just a couple yards from me. It was jumping around like a snake with a toothache.
“Unh. Let’s hobble the horses.”
Excited all to hell, Raven was. Like he spent his whole life hanging around windwhales so close he could smell their bad breath. And this one had that all over.
I caught something in the firelight. “Hey! There’s people up on top of that sucker.”
“There had to be. Where?”
“There. Right over that black patch.” I pointed. Some guys up there were hauling around on something.
Raven said, “Looks like somebody trying to get somebody else out from under something.”
“Let’s get up there and give them a hand.” I left my horse unhobbled.
Raven grinned at me. “The exuberant folly of youth. Where does it go?”
I started climbing a blubbery, stinky cliff. He went looking for a bush to tie the horses to, that being easier than messing with hobbles. I was halfway to the top before he started after me.
The flesh of the windwhale was sort of spongy and definitely smelly, with the odor of burned flesh added. The flesh trembled with pain and failing life. Such a noble monster. I wanted to cry for it.
“Raven! Hurry up! There’s three of them up here and a big fire burning back there.”
Right then there was a baby explosion. It knocked me down. Gobs of fire splattered the ground. Some of the dry grass caught.
There would be trouble if that spread.
By the time Raven dragged his carcass up I had the woman across my shoulders and the old man, who was the only one on his feet, was tying her so she wouldn’t slide off. Finished, the old boy whipped around and starting trying to drag a frondlike piece of windwhale off somebody else.
Panting, Raven looked at me, looked at the woman, grumbled, “It had to be, didn’t it?”
I said, “Hey, this broad is solid as a rock. Or she’s got a lead butt. She weighs as much as I do.”
“How about you get her down?” He muttered, “I’m getting too old for this crap,” and headed for the old man. “You. What the hell are you doing here?” He wasn’t surprised to see the guy under the frond, though. Having Silent drop out of the sky was just the kind of trick he expected the fates to pull on him.
He was shaking as he helped the old man lift the frond. The old man started fussing over Silent. A black lump
