No.
A giant pot followed the wood, sloshing, settled amidst the pyre. A big lid followed. It just hung around in the air, waiting.
The black riders got in on the fun down below. Everybody and everything was trying to cut the Limper up or tear him apart. I asked Torque, “You got an onion we can toss in?”
Brigadier Wildbrand said, “That’s the spirit.” She winked when I looked at her.
The spirit? I didn’t have no spirit left. This wasn’t even my fight, when I thought about it. And my hip was hurting so bad I expected to fall off everything in a minute.
The Limper bit the hoof off the thing that had one in his mouth, spit it out, let out a howl like the world’s death scream. Bodies and pieces of body flew. Only Toadkiller Dog hung on. He and the Limper rolled around growling and screaming while the others tried to get back into it.
Exile assessed the damage. He looked at me. “He’s too strong for us. It wasn’t a great hope, anyway. Will you contribute?”
I signed to Darling, “He wants help.”
She nodded, fixed on the action. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she made a complicated series of hand gestures. The eagle plunged off her shoulder, went flapping off and up.
I saw what Exile meant about Limper being too strong. One of the monsters was doing the foot-in-mouth trick to keep his sorceries silent. Toadkiller Dog was on his back, hanging on with all four limbs, his jaws still locked on the Limper’s head, which he had almost completely turned around. But the others could not keep his limbs pinned. He used those to devastating effect.
The shadow of the windwhale grew more and more deep. It was coming down. Already I could smell it.
It dropped tentacles into the fray, grabbed Limper without any care to avoid getting anyone or anything else. Toadkiller Dog was in that mess, a couple other monsters, and a couple of human beings too squished to scream. A windwhale has the strength to snap five-hundred-year-old royal oaks. The Limper did not. The windwhale tore the whole mess into bitty pieces and dumped it into the giant pot.
Something to be said for brute strength sometimes.
The pot lid slammed down. Clasps clanked. The pyre roared to life.
I wondered how the Limper would get out of this one. He’d survived the worst so many times before.
I looked at Exile. “What about the silver spike?”
He was not happy.
“You couldn’t take the Limper, you can’t take us.”
He checked the windwhales, the talking stones, the walking trees, the centaurs and manias, said, “You have a point. On the other hand, why surrender a tool you can use to knock the empire down? I have good soldiers here. The chances of battle look no worse than those of not fighting.”
I couldn’t answer that. I took it to Darling. Everyone in sight was watching, waiting for a clue to their next move.
Tension was not down a bit because the Limper was out of the game.
I signed. Darling had me hold the standard so she would have both hands free to answer. I felt funny doing that, like I was making a commitment to a cause I still did not truly support. She signed at me for a long time.
I told Exile, “The spike will not be used at all, by anyone, whatever the cost. A place has been prepared by the tree god, in the abyss between universes, where only a power greater and more evil can retrieve it.” Which meant, I guess, that anybody bad enough to get the damned thing back would be bad enough not to need it in the first place.
Exile looked around, shrugged, said, “That’s good enough for me. We planned to isolate it, too, but our method would have been less certain.”
A flash and crash trampled his last word.
Bomanz had stirred himself. Up the way, Gossamer took a couple drunken steps and walked right off the rampart. The old wizard said, “She disagreed with the decision.”
Exile stared at Spidersilk, frozen in midmotion. She relaxed slowly, lowered her gaze, after a minute went to check on her sister.
I checked Bomanz. The old boy looked real pleased with himself.
Speaking of old men. Where the hell was that guy who’d been following Exile around?
Gone. And I never noticed him go.
That old bastard was half-spook.
LXXIV
Raven came to slowly, shaky and disoriented. Memory of a flashing boot and savage impact. Realization that he had a ferocious headache. That his hip had begun to ache. That he was so cold he had begun to feel warm in his extremities.
A moment of panic. He tried to thrash around, found his limbs only vaguely cooperative. Worse panic before the onset of reason.
He wriggled his way out of the snow, got to his feet carefully. He felt himself over, scraped frozen blood off his face. The bastard had got him good. Almost had to admire those guys, the way they were hanging in there against the whole world.
Painfully, he dragged himself out of the ditch, stood on wobbly legs looking around, the old hip wound gnawing. Things had changed. There were monsters in the sky and witch fires flaring in the distance.
The Limper had come. Darling would be in the middle of it. And he wasn’t there.
She would think he had run out again.
Raven reached the center of excitement in time to witness Gossamer’s fall. Everyone seemed to relax after the incident. The Limper must not be a threat right now.
The crowd came down off the wall. Soldiers brought horses for Exile and Brigadier Wildbrand. A platoon of Nightstalkers fell in around them and they started moving north. Raven wondered what the hell was happening. It looked like Darling and Exile had cut a deal.
He could not catch them now, wobbly as he was.
The twins had their heads together. They threw dark looks after the departing company. They radiated a stench of wickedness about to break loose.
Better stick with them.
LXXV
When the monsters began sliding across the sky Smeds suffered an attack of caution. Able to think of nowhere else to run, he headed back to the ditch.
The guy he had kicked was still there, twitching once in a while. He backed off and watched, waiting to see what the guy would do. After a while the guy woke up, dragged himself out, and tottered off. Good. Now he had a place to wait for Fish. He went over and around and entered the culvert from the northern end, passed through, and sat down to wait.
Fish showed up a forever later, standing over there on the footbridge. He didn’t have the other blue bag. Damn. Smeds whistled just loud enough to carry to Fish, waved cautiously.
“What happened?” he asked when Fish arrived. “Where’s the other bag?”
Fish explained.
Smeds told his story.
Fish said, “We need to get out of here, then. Let’s get the stuff. We might be able to get out one of the breaches if there’s any more excitement. With the spike up for grabs we can count on that.”
They got the blue bags, which they rubbed up with dirt, and Smeds’s pack, and headed for the area where
