“Now I join up with him to go see if you’told the truth. If you did he gives me the final third. If not he kills me and comes looking for you.”
“Shit. Why not head out now? What we got ought to be enough.”
“He’s played straight. I figure it would be smart to play it that way with him. We aren’t going to get out of Oar for a while. Be nice to know there was somebody who wasn’t out to get us. You go back wherever you was hiding. I’ll come back to the bridge.”
“Right.”
Smeds was just about to drop back into the ditch when alarm horns began blowing all over the city.
The Limper had come.
LXXI
Raven got him a wild hair. He’d go snag the spike and that would be a big foot in the door with Darling. The guy’s head was getting a little bent. He didn’t tell nobody but Brother Bear Torque, who he conned into going along with him.
He started out lucky. They hit no gray patrols. As they got into the heart of the city, here came Exile and an older guy just like they had timed it for Raven’s benefit. They followed the two.
Exile and his companion ended up leaning on the rail of a footbridge over a big drainage ditch. Raven and Torque watched from a distance. The area around the ditch was clear. They couldn’t get as close as Raven wanted.
“What the hell are they doing?” Torque asked.
“Waiting, looks like.”
The older man resumed moving, went on, and vanished among tenements beyond the ditch. Five minutes later another man came out to the bridge, talked to Exile a little, walked away with a bag.
“That tears it,” Torque said. “Time to bend over and kiss our asses good-bye.”
“He hasn’t got hold of it yet,” Raven growled. “We stick and see what turns up. Look here.” The older man was coming out to rejoin Exile.
They just stood there.
“Look!” Raven pointed.
The covert from which they watched was about ten feet higher than the bridge. Just enough of an elevation to reveal the head and shoulders of a man crossing the snow north of the bridge, behind a mound that would mask him from the men on the bridge. He carried two blue.bags.
Alarm horns tore the guts out of the quiet.
The men on the bridge took off.
Torque said, “We better get back...”
“Wait!” There was a nasty gleam in Raven’s eyes. “Exile will be busy with the Limper. We get that man to tell us where the spike is, maybe we can get to it first.”
LXXII
Smeds had gotten back to his starting point. He put the two bags into hiding with his pack, except for a couple of army blankets, a heavy coat, a knife, food, and a bottle of brandy. He stuffed, warmed his veins, listened to the horns. They were going berserk up there.
A noise from down the culvert shocked him. He listened closely, figured it had come from about where the corpse lay, and had been made by something a lot bigger than a rat.
He rose carefully, filled his coat pockets with food, laid his blankets in atop the treasure-and froze.
A man stood silhouetted in the nearer end of the culvert. One of those Rebels. Fish had been right. The bastards just wouldn’t let up.
The man was coming in.
Smeds lifted himself into the hole with his plunder. It was a tight fit and a pathetic attempt at concealment but he was counting on the man’s vision needing a long while to adjust from the brightness outside.
Absolutely.
The man was still moving tentatively when he came abreast of Smeds. Smeds reached out and cut his throat.
The man made an injured-rabbit noise and started thrashing around. Smeds climbed down and walked to the mouth of the culvert. He paid no attention to the noise made by someone stumbling toward him from behind. He looked out into the glare, his eyes smarting. He moved out carefully, ready for anything. And found himself alone.
The ditch bank was almost vertical there, faced with stone, twelve feet high, spotted with ice. A lot of snow had blown into the ditch. Smeds floundered through it.
An angry bellow from inside the culvert gave him added incentive to make sure of his hand and toe-holds as he climbed.
He heard the man come out as he rolled over the lip of the ditch. He got to his feet and waited.
An angry face rose above the brink. Smeds kicked as hard as he could, caught the man square in the center of the forehead. He pitched backward. Smeds stepped to the edge, looked down at the figure almost buried in the snow. He caressed the knife in his coat pocket, thought better of going down there because two women and several children had paused near the footbridge, watching. “I hope you freeze to death, you son of a bitch.” He kicked loose snow down, turned, and walked away.
He felt better than he had in a week and right then did not much give a damn what the future held.
LXXIII
Darling was foaming at the mouth when the alarm horns brayed. She had discovered Raven and Bear missing and was as thoroughly pissed off as I could imagine her getting. Whatever she had in mind, whatever she was making us get dressed up for, she had counted on having more bodies backing her.
Right then she had me and Silent and Bomanz and Stubby Torque. Paddlefoot Torque had died a half hour earlier. She stomped her feet and signed, “I do not need him. I survived without him before. Get moving. Get those horses ready.” She pulled a knee-length shirt of mail over her head, followed that with a white tabard. As she buckled on a very unfeminine sword she snarled and grimaced so nobody argued.
Bomanz helped us both mount up. Stubby Torque handed her a lance he’d jury-rigged from junk from around the stable. She had her banner tied to it, furled. If her wound bothered her she didn’t show it.
Silent finally got his balance enough to try arguing with the whirlwind. The whirlwind almost rode him down and there was nothing for him to do but jump onto his own animal and try to keep up.
Darling paused once, in the street outside. She looked at the sky, seemed pleased with what she saw. When I looked up all I saw was a gliding hawk, very high, or an eagle, higher still.
She took off. She hadn’t bothered to tell any of us what she was going to do, probably because she figured we would have tied her up to stop her.
She was right.
We kept busy now keeping up and sorting ourselves out so the two wizards were closest to her, able to guard her with their skills.
She headed in the direction the alarms said the threat lay. The madwoman.
The imperials had several minutes’ jump on us but we made most of that up. As we moved into that part of the city near the southeast wall we overtook hundreds of hurrying soldiers. Silent or Bomanz conjured an ugly sound
