Book 1 - The Silver spike Read Online Free PDF Page A

there
and . . . ”
    Fish yanked a stick out of their woodpile. It was a yard long
and two inches in diameter. He sailed it off through the woods.
“Take a while, but it’ll pile up. Then in with a torch
or two. Whoosh. Up in flames. Fire burns out, we go pick up our
spike.”
    Smeds sneered. “You forgot the soldiers.”
    “Nope. But you’re right. Got to come up with a
diversion.”
    Tully said, “That’s the best idea yet. We’ll
go with it till somebody thinks up something better.”
    Smeds grunted. “It’ll beat sitting on our asses,
that’s for sure.” He was used to the woods now. There
was no adventure left in this. Not that there had been a lot
before. He was bored.
    They started pitching sticks immediately. The three younger men
made it a game, betting from their shares. Sticks began to
accumulate.
    The tree did not like the game. Sometimes it sniped back.
    They thought Smeds was crazy, sneaking out every couple nights
to watch the monster dig. “You got more balls than
brains,” Tully told him.
    “Better than sitting around.”
    It was not that dangerous. He just had to keep down. The beast
never noticed a low profile. But if you got up and showed it a
silhouette, look out!
    The monster’s labor was slow, but it worked as though
obsessed. The nights came and went, came and went.
    In time it unearthed what it sought.
    Smeds Stahl was watching the night it came up with a grisly
trophy, a horror, a human head.
    That head had been too long in too many graves, and too often
injured. The monster closed its jaws on ragged remnants of hair,
lifted the gruesome object. Dodging bolts from the tree, it carried
the head to a backwater in the nearby river.
    Smeds tagged along behind. Carefully. Very carefully.
    The beast laved the head with care and tenderness. The tree
crackled and sputtered, unable to project its power that far.
    Once the head was clean, the giant hound limped back the way it
had come. Smeds stole along behind, amazing himself with his
daring. The beast circled the dead dragon, which more than ever
appeared to be an odd feature of the terrain. It stepped over a bit
of tattered leather and stone almost invisible in the soggy earth,
not noticing. Smeds spotted it, though. He picked it up and
pocketed it without thinking.
    On the other side of the dragon the tree continued to crackle
and fuss, frustrated.
    When Smeds pocketed that old fetish it twitched, proclaiming to
anyone properly attuned the fact that it had been disturbed.
    Smeds halted in a shadow, freezing. Moonlight had fallen upon
that horrible head. He saw it clearly.
    Its eyes were open. A grotesque smile stretched its ruined
mouth.
    It was alive.
    Smeds almost lost sphincter control.
     
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VIII
    Oar is the city nearest the old battleground and burying place
called the Barrowland. The alarm cried by the fetish there touched
two residents.
    One was an old, old man living incognito because he had
contrived to stage his apparent death during the struggle that had
devastated the Barrowland. The alarm struck him as he sat guzzling
in a workingman’s tavern with new cronies who thought him an
astrologer. When it hit him he knew a moment of panic. Then, tears
streaming, he rushed into the street.
    A questioning babble arose behind him. When his comrades came
out to learn what was wrong he had vanished.
     
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IX
    It was another of those damned days. Oar was a troubled city.
There were scattered disturbances, conflict between Rebel and
imperial partisans, and a lot of private crimes were getting
committed under the guise of politics. My boss was talking about
shutting up his city house and moving out to a place he owned near
Deal. If he did that I’d have to decide whether or not to go
along. I wanted to talk it over with Raven,
but . . . 
    He was passed out when I got there.
    “Over a goddamned woman you never even had,” I
grumbled, and kicked a tin plate across the room. The son of a
bitch hadn’t bothered to