this berg of the imperial disease.” Away it went again.
That crack rattled them some.
Here it came, spewing more mockery. They got so pissed they stopped doing a thorough job of searching.
There was some noise outside. Three of them charged out into the blizzard. There was a flash, a scream. A guy staggered inside. “They’re all dead out there. They took the horses.”
That damned Silent was showing off for Darling. She would be pissed at him for wasting them when he didn’t have to. I didn’t blame him, though. He’d been keeping a lot bottled up. These guys were some he could make pay.
A bunch more went charging off to avenge their buddies. The talking stone whooped and laughed and carried on.
They never caught Silent, of course. But he got some more of them. They finally took Brigadier Wildbrand and got out of there while there were some of them left to get.
A little later Silent brought ten horses in. Him and the Torques were real pleased with themselves. I think maybe Darling was the only one who wasn’t pleased with them.
LXVIII
The snowfall had ended. The sky had cleared. The world had grown almost intolerably bright by the time the Limper topped the rise that gave him his first glimpse of his destination. The silence troubled him some. There should have been birds out if nothing else. And why was there so much smoke drifting downwind from Oar, more than could be explained by all the city’s hearth and heating fires?
No matter. No matter at all. He could feel that piece of haunted silver calling him as though he had been born to wield it and it had been wrought for him and him alone. His destiny lay there, ahead, and all the mousy scrabbling around by those who would deny him would not prevent him taking that power that was rightfully his.
He strode forward, walking now, no longer rushed, confident yet still ill at ease with the silence and a lingering suspicion that all the horizons were masks being worn by his enemies.
LXIX
Toadkiller Dog was only one of a varied pack of monsters running on the Limper’s trail. But he was out in front, their leader, the only one of the crowd not carrying some dread lord or lady out of the Tower. He was the scout, the champion, and before this day was through he hoped to be entered in the annals of history as the destroyer of the last of the Ten Who Were Taken, as the closer of the door on the olden times.
He topped a low ridge line, saw Oar for the first time. He saw, from disturbances in the snow, that the Limper had paused there, too. There he was now, a remote speck tramping a lonely track across the pristine snowscape.
He dropped down onto his belly to lower his profile, listened to the silence. He watched the smoke drift from the city, noted that everything that had stood outside the walls last time had been cleared away, leaving nothing but a flat white surround. Uneasily for a moment, he surveyed the horizons, feeling almost as if distant groves were the massed helmets and spears of legions waiting in tight array.
His companions crowded up behind him. They waited till the speck that was the Limper vanished against the dark loom of the city’s walls. Then they all moved forward, marching toward doom or destiny in a gradually widening line abreast.
LXX
Smeds sat in the icy shadows shivering, unable to stop. His stomach felt hollow. It ached. He was scared. He hoped it was the cold and hunger but was afraid it was the first bite of cholera.
The air was filled with smoke and the stench of bodies being burned. Death had reaped a rich harvest during the night. Few who were not soldiers had eaten well in days. Disease made easy headway in bodies already weakened.
He watched the bridge up the ditch and wondered if Fish would ever come, and what he would do if Fish didn’t. Then he sat there and gradually convinced himself that he was the last of the four of them, possessed of the greatest treasure in the world and so poor he was forced to live in a sewer like a rat.
He scavenged through his pack for the dozenth time, looking for some scrap of food that might have gotten into it somehow. Again he found nothing but the gold and silver he had brought out of the Barrowland. A fortune, and he would have given it all for a good meal, a warm bed, and confidence that the great terrors of the world had forgotten his name.
He started. Daydreaming, he had not noticed the two men come onto the bridge. One looked like Fish. He made the signal he was supposed to make before he walked away from the other, who stayed where he was.
Smeds shoved his pack into a gap in the culvert wall, where some of the building stone had fallen away and high water had washed out some of the earth behind. Then he ran toward the light at the nether end, a hundred yards away.
Midway he stumbled over a corpse that the rats had been at for a while. He had become so inured to horror that he just went on, giving it hardly a thought.
He rushed out the other end, floundered through drifted snow, and hurried around to where he was supposed to meet Fish, masked from the man on the bridge by a hump of earth six feet high. Fish was carrying a sizable blue canvas bag. “Is it safe?” Smeds croaked.
“Looks like they’ll play square. This is the first third, along with some food and clothes and blankets and stuff I thought you could use.”
Smeds’s mouth watered. But he asked, “What now?”
“You go out on the bridge, get the second third, tell him where to find the spike. I watch from cover. He messes with you, I hunt him down and kill him. Go on. Let’s get it done.”
Smeds looked at the old man a moment, shrugged, went off to meet the man on the bridge. He was calmer than he had expected to be. Maybe he was getting used to the pressure. He was still pleased with himself for not having bent for a moment while the Rebels had him.
The man on the bridge leaned on the rail, staring at nothing. He glanced at Smeds incuriously as he approached. Another blue bag leaned against his leg. Smeds sidled up and planted his forearms on the rail on the other side of the bag.
The man was younger than Smeds had expected and of a race he’d never before seen. Easy to see why he had taken the name Exile.
“Smeds Stahl?”
“Yes. How come you’re playing this square?”
“I’ve found honesty and fair play productive over the long term. The second third is in the bag. Do you have something for me?”
“In the city wall. One hundred eighty-two paces east of the North Gate, below the twenty-sixth archer’s embrasure, in the mortar behind the block recessed to take the support brace of a timber hording.”
“Understood. Thank you. Good day.”
Smeds hoisted the bag and got the hell out of there.
“Go all right?” Fish asked.
“Yeah. Now what?”
