Smeds saw three men and a woman. She was not much to look at and too old to be interesting anyway. But she looked tough. She carried weapons like a man.

As a bunch they looked as hard and tough as any Smeds had seen. But what made them stand out was the zoo they carried with them.

The woman had a live ferret draped around her neck and chipmunks peeking out of her pockets. The tall, dark, and darkly clad man who walked to her right carried an unhooded falcon on his left shoulder. The three men behind them-Smeds thought they might be brothers-carried a bunch of monkeys and one big snake.

Smeds asked, "You going to arrest them? They're lugging enough illegal hardware to start their own war."

"And give you boys a show? Eh? My mama's stupid babies never lived to make corporal." Even so, he stuck his fingers in this mouth and whistled. When those people looked he beckoned.

The tall man looked over with tight eyes for a moment, made a slight gesture at the man with the snake. That one came over. The snake looked them over like it was sizing them up for dinner. It gave Smeds the creeps.

The corporal said, "Just a friendly word of advice, pal. The city is under martial law. Ain't n.o.body supposed to tote a blade over eight inches long. 'Less he's wearing gray."

The snake man went back and told the tall man, who looked at the corporal hard for a moment, then nodded.

"You see that?" Smeds said. "That G.o.dd.a.m.ned monkey gave us the finger."

The corporal said, "I seen that tall guy somewhere before. Down the length of a sword. Hunh! Well. Bucket's empty. Save my chair while I walk my lizard and get me a refill." He went inside.

"What you think of that bunch?" Smeds asked Fish.

"I've seen the tall one before, too. In the same circ.u.mstances as the corporal. A long time ago. No problem remembering where or when, either, since I was only ever in one battle."

That just puzzled Smeds. He asked, "You figure they're here after the dingus, too?" He could ask because by now everyone in town had a good idea what was going on.

"They're here for it, yes. They'll help make the game interesting."

"What're you yapping about, Fish?"

"Don't mind me, boy. Just an old man maundering. Ha! I thought so. Isn't there anymore, is it?"

Down the street the animals people had stopped in front of a place Timmy said used to be a butcher shop but these days was just another dump filled up with squatters. The tall man glanced back as though he had heard Fish. Then the whole bunch moved on, indifferent to stares.

The corporal came back out with his full pail and bladder empty. "I ought to give this s.h.i.t up. Bothers my stomach." He took a drink. "Where were we?"

Fish said, "I was just going to ask you when they're going to unb.u.t.ton the gates. Going to start getting hungry in here now the fanners won't bring anything in."

"They don't consult me on policy, Pop. But I'll tell you something. I don't think those two b.i.t.c.hes give a rat's a.s.s if everybody in Oar starves. They ain't going to go hungry."

Smeds was tired of listening to the corporal. "Going to get me something to drink." He went inside and had a beer drawn, wondered how long the supply would last. And how much more patience the people of Oar had. A while, for sure. Not that many were hurting yet. But if circ.u.mstances did not change a big blowup was inevitable.

Timmy Locan came in, got him a beer, stood beside Smeds awhile without saying anything, then suggested, "Let's go for a walk when we finish these."

"All right. I need the exercise."

When they were well away from the Skull and Crossbones, pa.s.sing through a construction area where they were unlikely to be overheard, Smeds asked, "Well? What's up?"

"You remember that doc that looked at my hand when we first came back?"

"Yeah." More than a twinge of guilt. He and Fish had not told the others what they had done. Tully was so indifferent he had not noticed that the physician and wizard were no longer among the living. Timmy had noticed, though, and Smeds supposed he had some definite suspicions about two such coincidental and convenient murders. "What about him?"

"It looks like he got whatever it was that I had and pa.s.sed it around to everybody who came to see him. And they pa.s.sed it on, too. Not like the plague or probably everybody would have it by now. But there's a couple hundred people got it already. The ones that have had it the longest... Well, they're worse off than I was. Yesterday a woman who had it killed herself. This morning a guy whose whole arm had gone black killed four of his kids who had it before he killed himself."

"That's awful. That's really gruesome. But it isn't anything we can do anything about."

"I know that. But the thing is, see, the grays have gotten interested. They're grilling everybody with the black stuff. From the questions they're asking you can tell they think there's a connection with the spike. They're trying real hard to find out about everybody who's had it and done something about it, like me."

"I don't think you need to worry, Timmy. They can't trace it back to you."

"Yeah? Those b.i.t.c.hes are serious, Smeds. What happens after they find out all the trails lead back to that doc, who turned up among the dead right after the stuff started spreading? They're going to figure he had a fatal accident on account of somebody he treated didn't want to be remembered. And they already know the only way to treat the stuff is to cut off whatever it's eating on. So pretty soon the word goes out to the grays to grab amputees. Especially guys with missing hands."

"Maybe you got a point. Maybe we better see what Fish thinks."

Fish agreed with Timmy. There was no reason to think Gossamer and Spidersilk would not go so far are to order the arrest of all amputees. They were determined.

Fish did some heavy thinking. "I reckon it's time to blow some smoke."

"What do you mean?" Smeds asked.

"This situation-the whole city sealed up like a bottle-can't go on forever. There'll be a blowup. When that comes we break loose with everybody else. Till then we buy time by getting them off on a wild-goose chase, or by taking advantage of the potential for chaos they've created."

Smeds was bewildered. He grew more so when Fish said, "Get rid of whatever you've got that's silver. Get gold or copper or jewels or whatever, but get rid of your silver. Smeds, you pa.s.s the word to Tully and don't let him give you any s.h.i.t."

"What's going on?"

"Just do it."

So they did. Even Tully, who had become reasonably serious and responsive since Fish's demonstration of the deadly power of the loose word.

XLII.

We arrived in the Barrowland by sliding down ropes with our possessions strapped on our backs. A few Plain creatures joined us. More would after we set up a safe camp. The boss menhir wanted a couple of his flint-hearted buddies there to keep an ear on us. The better to maintain quick communication, he said. Right.

The better to make sure things got done the tree G.o.d's way.

"Back where we got started," Raven said as soon as we had our feet on the ground. He'd been getting more fit to live with since Opal. He was almost back to being the old boy I'd known when I first met him.

"Back in the cold and wet," I grumped. It had been the tag end of winter when we'd left. It was sneaking up on winter again now. The leaves had fallen. We could get snow anytime. "Let's don't fool around, eh? Let's do what we got to and get out."

Raven chuckled. "How you going to keep them on the farm after they've seen the big city?"

"A little less ruckus, please," Bomanz said. "We don't yet know there aren't any imperials around."

He was halfway right. We hadn't yet seen that with our own eyes, but the Plain creatures had scouted and reported nothing bigger than a rabbit within five miles. I could trust them on that.

Bomanz had to do some wizard stuff before he was satisfied. Then he let us set up housekeeping and start a fire.

We dragged out with morning twilight and ate some G.o.d-awful cold yuck. Then we split up.

I got the town and military compound because I knew them best. Raven took the woods. Bomanz got the Barrowland itself. Near as I could tell he wasn't going to do anything but stand in the middle and take a nap.

The Plain creatures were supposed to do anything they wanted and clue us if they found anything.

I needed to do only a rough once-over to see what had happened in town. There wasn't nothing but bones left. Poking around wasn't as bad as it could have been. I did everything I could think of to find out something useful, then I went back to camp. Bomanz was just about where I'd left him, eyes still closed, but taking little tippy-toe baby steps.

At least he was moving.

Raven came back. "You done already?"

"Yep."

"Find anything?"

"A whole lot of bones. Enough to build an army of skeletons."

"Got you down, eh?"

"I knew all them guys."

"Yeah." He didn't say anything else, just waited. He can be an all-right guy when he isn't busy feeling sorry for himself.

"I figure the Limper and Toadkiller Dog did the killing. But there was somebody else there after them. Somebody went through like a mother picking a baby's nits. There ain't nothing left there that's even remotely valuable."

Raven though about that. "Nothing at all?"

"Picked as clean as the bones."

"That might be an angle to follow up in Oar. Though they would have taken only what they could carry, and that would be the kind of thing that isn't going to make a splash. Unless they did something gaudy. Which if they had they would be in the hands of the imperials already."

Bomanz joined us. He puttered around making tea while Raven told us he'd found two campsites probably used by the guys we were after, but nothing that would help us.

"If there ever was anything here the imperials got to it first."

"And if they had," Bomanz said, "they would have the spike by now."

We'd gotten reports from Oar through the stones. The news was not encouraging. It looked like a couple of imperial bigwigs were out to grab the spike and go into the empire business for themselves.

"You learn anything?" Raven asked.

Bomanz said, "Not much. There were four of them. Probably. They got away with what they did because most of the time the sapling was preoccupied with Toadkiller Dog and did not perceive them as a threat. It thought they were throwing sticks at it as a gesture of defiance."

"Sticks?" I asked.

"They threw sticks at the tree until it was almost buried. Then they set the pile on fire."

Raven muttered, "You don't have to be brilliant to be a G.o.d."

I said, "We got them now."

"What?" That Bomanz never did figure out you could be joking.

"All we got to do is look for four guys with splinters in their fingers."

Bomanz scowled. Raven chuckled. He asked, "Do we know anything about these men at all?"

Bomanz grumbled, "We don't even know they were men."

"Great."

Raven said, "Since we can't get anywhere with who, why not work on when? Can we pin down any dates? Even approximately? Then work back from them to whose movements fit?"

That sounded pretty feeble to me and I said so. "Even if Oar hadn't been attacked and half the people killed and the other half kept crazy ever since..."

"Forget I brought it up. Well, wizard, is it worth us hanging around here? Or should we go down to Oar and try to smoke them out?"

"Tentatively-pending reports from our allies from the Plain-I'd say we're wasting our time here."

The weirder side of the outfit didn't come up with anything either. At sundown we clambered back aboard our smelly airborne steed planning on having breakfast in Oar.

I was looking forward to my first decent meal in months.

XLIII.

Smeds was amazed. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d Fish sure could stir some s.h.i.t.

There was a rumor got started that this silversmith down on Sedar Row-where all the silversmiths and goldsmiths and such were located-had had a guy bring in a giant silver nail and pay him a hundred obols to turn it into a chalice and keep his mouth shut about it. Only this smith had got to celebrating his good fortune last night and had had too much to drink and had bragged to some of his cronies after swearing them to secrecy.

Today a man's life was worthless if he had anything to do with the metalworking or jewelry trades. Those who were out after the spike were getting desperate. They were stumbling over each other and causing a lot of damage in the process. Mostly to one another.

The grays were late getting into the game but when they did they did not fool around, they came with a vengeance, sweeping through the city confiscating every piece of silver they found on the a.s.sumption the spike could have been turned into anything by now. They tried giving claim chits but people were having none of that. They had been robbed by the military before.

There was resistance. There was localized rioting. People and soldiers were hurt and killed. But there were too many soldiers and even now most people were not angry enough to rebel.

"Pretty sneaky, Fish," Smeds told the old man, walking down a street where he felt safe talking. "Mean sneaky."

"It worked. That don't mean I'm proud of it."

"It worked all right. But for how long?"

"I figure three, four days. Maybe five if I feed the rumor a couple of new angles. Plus however long it takes Gossamer and Spidersilk to decided the spike isn't in any of the silver the soldiers are collecting up. So we'll be all right for maybe a week. Unless one of the free-lancers stumbles onto us somehow. But in the long run we're still had. They'll get us one way or another. Unless this backward siege breaks. Let even ten people get out of this city and get away and you've opened the whole world up to the search. Because if there's a successful breakout the man who has the spike is sure to be one of the first people gone."