She looked at Smoke. "Did you notice anyone?"
"No. But I wasn't watching. It seemed unnecessary."
"Hey. Smoke. You always watch," Willow said. "This here's your basic unfriendly old world. You better always be on the lookout when you're travelling. There's bad guys out here. Believe it or not, not everybody's as polite as you Taglians."
Swan returned to the bow. "That dolt wizard never even noticed the brownies. The guy's got lard for brains."
Blade took out a knife and whetstone and went to work. "Better sharpen up. Edge might dull down before the old boy wakes up and sees we're under attack."
It was a three-hundred-mile passage to the Second Cataract, where the river scampered nervously between dark and brooding hills, as though too wary to stay in one place long. On the right bank the haunted ruins of Cho'n Delor stared down on the flood, reminding Willow of a heap of old skulls. No traffic had passed along the right bank since the fall of the Paingod. Even animals shunned the area.
On the hilltops beyond the left bank were the ruins of the Triplet Cities, Odd the First, Odd the Second, and Odd the Third. Stories Cordy had heard coming south said they had sacrificed themselves to bring the Paingod down.
Now people lived only along a narrow strip beside the Cataract, in a walled city one street wide and ten miles long, perpetually nervous about ghosts from the wars that were. They called their bizarre city Idon, and had the weirdest bunch of quirks anyone ever saw. Travellers stayed in Idon only as long as absolutely necessary. Likewise, many of the people of Idon themselves.
Passing through, keeping his eyes open while pretending to be gawking at the weirdos, Willow noticed little brown guys skulking everywhere. "Hey. Smoke. You eagle-eyed bastard. You see them now?"
"What?"
"He don't," Blade said. "Better sharpen me a couple more knives."
"Pay attention, old man. They're all over like roaches." Actually, Willow had seen only eight or nine. But that was plenty enough. Especially if they had the Shadowmasters behind them.
They had somebody behind them. They made that clear soon after the Radisha found a boat for the trip to Thresh and the Third Cataract.
They got around a bend in the river, where it flowed through country that looked like it was left over from the war between the Triplet Cities and Cho'n Delor, and here came two fast boats loaded down with little brown guys rowing like the winner of the race got to become immortal.
The crew the Radisha had hired took maybe twenty seconds to decide it wasn't their squabble. They dived overboard and headed for the bank.
"You see them now, Smoke?" Willow asked, starting to ready his weapons. "I hope you're half the wizard you think you are." There were at least twenty brown men in each boat.
Smoke's jaw went high speed as he chomped whatever he chewed all the time. He did nothing till the boats began creeping up to either side. Then he stuck out both hands toward one, closed his eyes and wriggled his fingers.
All the nails and pegs holding the boat together flew around like swarming swallows, pattered into the water.
Brown men hollered and gurgled. It didn't look like many of them knew how to swim.
Smoke took a moment to catch his breath, then turned on the other boat. The brown men there were turning already, heading for shore.
Smoke took that boat apart, too. Then he gave Willow one dark look and went back to his seat in the shadow of the sail. He smirked forever afterward whenever he heard Willow bitching about having to work ship.
"At least we know he's the real thing now," Willow grumbled to himself.
The situation in Thresh was exactly what Willow had predicted. The river was closed to the north. Pirates. The Radisha could find no one willing to hazard the long run north to Gea-Xle, which is where she was determined to go, to wait. Nothing she offered would get anybody to risk the journey. Not even her companions, whom she urged to steal a boat.
She was furious. You would have thought the hinges of the world would lock up if she didn't get to Gea-Xle.
She did not get.
For months they hung around Thresh, staying out of the way of little brown guys, hearing rumors that the merchants of Gea-Xle had gotten desperate enough to try doing something about the river pirates. Thresh was a snake's nest of gloom. Without trade upriver it would wither. Any hope that the northerners would break through seemed absurd. Everyone who tried died.
One morning Smoke came to breakfast looking thoughtful. "I had a dream," he announced.
"Oh, wonderful," Willow snapped. "I been sitting around here for months now just praying you'd have another one of your nightmares. What do we do this time? Storm the Shadowlands?"
Smoke ignored him. He had been doing that a lot, communicating through the Radisha. It was the only way he could deal with Swan without getting violent. He told the woman, "They've departed Gea-Xle. A whole convoy."
"Can they break through?"
Smoke shrugged. "There's a power as mighty and cruel as the Shadowmasters in the swamps. Maybe greater than the Shadowmasters. I haven't been able to find it in my dreams."
Willow muttered, "I hope the brownies aren't smoking something, too. They figure we're going to connect up they might get more ambitious."
"They don't know why we're here, Swan. I poked around. I found out that much. They just want you and me and Cordy. Would have done it to us in Taglios if they caught us there."
"Comes to the same thing. How long before that convoy gets here?"
The Radisha said, "Smoke? How long?"
The wizard responded with all the steely certitude of his breed. He shrugged.
The lead boat was spotted by somebody fishing upriver. The news reached Thresh a few hours before the barge. Willow and his group went down to the piers with half the city to wait for it. People howled and cheered until those aboard began disembarking. Then a deep, dread silence fell.
The Radisha grabbed Smoke's shoulder in a grip obviously painful. "These are your saviors? Old man, I'm about out of patience with you... "
Chapter Twenty-one: THRESH
We broke the boom. We headed for the trading city Thresh, which lies above the Third Cataract. It was a quiet river going down. There might have been no other human beings in the world outside of us on the barge, But the wreckage that kept pace was a screaming reminder that we were not alone, that we belonged to a bleak and bloody-minded species. I was not fit company for man or beast, as they say.
One-Eye joined me where I stood under the battered croc head Goblin had mounted in the bows. "Be there in a little bit, Croaker."
I dipped into my trick bag of repartee and countered with an unenthusiastic grunt.
"Me and the runt been trying to get a feel for the place up ahead."
I cracked him up with another grunt. That was his job.
"Don't got a good feel to it." We watched another small fishing boat hoist anchor and raise sail and skitter south with the news of our coming. "Not a real danger feel. Not an all-bad feel. Just not a right feel. Like there's something going on."
He sounded puzzled around the edges. "You figure it's something that might concern us, send your pet to find out what. That's what you bought him for. Isn't it?"
He smirked.
The current in a lazy turn of the river held us close to the right bank. Two solemn crows watched our progress from a lone dead tree. Gnarled and ugly, the tree made me think of nooses and hanged men.
"Now why didn't I think of that, Croaker? Here I just sent him into town to check on the quiff situation."
Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Croaker.