Even the wicker man had physical limits. And periods of lucidity. At Roses, after the city's punishment, in a moment of rationality, he decided that neither he nor his soldiers could survive the present pace. Indeed, losses among his followers came more often from hardship than from enemy action.
He camped below the ruined city several days, recuperating, till wholesale desertions by plunder-laden troopers informed him that his soldiers were sufficiently rested.
Five thousand men followed him in his march toward Charm.
The Tower was sealed. They recognized him in there. They did not want him inside. They named him rebel, traitor, madman, scum, and worse. They mocked him. She was absent, but her lackeys remained faithful and defiant and insufficiently afraid.
They set worms of power snaking over stone already adamantine with spells set during the Tower's construction: writhing maggots of pastel green, pink, blue, that scurried to any point of attack to absorb the sorcerous energy applied from without. The wizards within the Tower were not as great as their attacker, but they had the advantage of being able to work from behind defenses erected by one who had been greater than he.
The wicker man spewed his fury till exhaustion overcame him. And the best of his efforts only left scars little more than stains on the face of the Tower.
They taunted and mocked him, those fools in there, but after a few days they tired of the game. Irked by his persistence, they began throwing things back at him. Things that burned.
He got back out of range.
His troops no longer believed him when he claimed that the Lady had lost her power. If she had, why were her captains so stubborn?
It must be true that she was not in the Tower. If she was not, then she might return anytime, summoned to its aid. In that instance it would not be smart to be found in the wicker man's camp.
His army began to evaporate. Whole companies vanished. Fewer than two thousand remained when the wicker man's sorceries finally breeched the Tower gate. They went inside without enthusiasm and found their pessimism justified. Most died in the Tower's traps before their master could stamp in behind them.
He fared little better.
He plunged back outside, rolled on the ground to extinguish the flames gnawing his body. Stones rained from the battlements, threatened to crush him. But he escaped, and quickly enough to prevent the defection of his few hundred remaining men.
Toadkiller Dog did not participate. And he did not hang around after that humiliation. Cursing every step, the wicker man followed him.
The Tower's defenders used their sorcery to keep their laughter hanging around him for days.
The cities between Charm and the sea paid, and Opal doubly. The wicker man's vengeance was so thorough he had to wait in the ruins six days before an incautious sea captain put in to investigate the disaster.
The wicker man's rage fed upon his frustration. The very fates seemed to conspire to thwart his revenge. For all his frenzied and indefatigable effort he was gaining no ground—except in the realm of madness, and that he did not recognize.
In Beryl he encountered wizardry almost the equal of that he had faced at the Tower. The city's defenders put up a ferocious fight rather than bend the knee to him.
His fury, his insanity, then, cowed even Toadkiller Dog.
XIX
Tully sat on a log and scratched and stared in the general direction of the tree. Smeds didn't think he was seeing anything. He was feeling sorry for himself again. Or still. "Shit," he muttered. And, "The hell with it."
"What?"
"I said the hell with it. I've had it. We're going home."
"Listen to this. What happened to the fancy houses and fancy horses and fancy women and being set for life?"
"Screw it. We been out here all damned spring and half the summer and we ain't got nowhere. I'm going to be a North Side bum all my life. I just got a big head for a while and thought I could get above myself."
Smeds looked out at the tree. Timmy Locan was out there throwing sticks, a mindless exercise that never bored him. He was tempting fate today, getting closer than ever before, policing up sticks that had flown wide before and chucking them onto the pile around the tree. That was less work than gleaning the woods for deadwood. The nearby forest was stripped as clean as parkland.
Smeds thought it looked like they could set the fire any day now. In places the woodpile was fifteen feet high and you couldn't see the tree at all.
What was Tully up to? This whining and giving up fit in with his behavior since their dip in the river, but the timing was suspect. "We'll be ready to do the burn any day aow. Why not wait till then?"
"Screw it. It ain't going to work and you know it. Or if you don't you're fooling yourself."
"You want to go home, go ahead. I'm going to stick it out and see what happens."
"I said we're going home. All of us."
Right, Smeds thought. Tully was cranking up for a little screw your buddy. "What you want to bet you come up outvoted three to one, cousin? You want to go, go. Ain't nobody going to stop you."
Tully tried a little bluster, coming on like he thought he was some kind of general.
"Stuff it, Tully. I ain't no genius, but just how dumb do you think I am?"
Tully waited a little too long to say, "Huh? What do you mean?"
"That night you went chickenshit and run off to the river on us. I got to thinking about how you done that to me before. You ain't going to pull it on me this time, Tully. You ain't taking off with the spike and leaving old Smeds standing there with his thumb up his butt."
Tully started protesting his innocence of having entertained any such thoughts. Smeds watched Timmy Locan throw sticks. He ignored Tully. After a while he watched Fish approach from the direction of the town. The old man was carrying something over his shoulder. Smeds couldn't make out what it was. He hoped it was another of those dwarf deer like the old man had got a couple weeks back. That had been some good eating.
Timmy spotted Fish. He lost interest in his sticks, wandered over.
It wasn't a deer Fish had, it was some kind of bundle that clanked when he dropped it in front of the log. He said, "Smell's gone over there. Thought I'd poke around." He opened his bundle, which he had folded from a ragged blanket. "Those guys didn't take time out to loot when they went through over there."
Smeds gaped. There were pounds and pounds of coins, some of them even gold. There were rings and bracelets and earrings and broaches and necklaces and some of them boasted jewels. He'd never seen so much wealth in one place.
Fish said, "There's probably a lot more. I just picked up what was easy to find and quit when I had as much as I could carry."
Smeds looked at Tully. "And you wanted to cut out because the whole thing was a big bust."
Tully looked at the pile, awed. Then his expression became suspicious and Smeds knew he was wondering if Fish had hidden the best stuff where he could pick it up later. Typical Tully Stahl thinking, and stupid.
If Fish had wanted to hold out he would have just hidden the stuff and not said anything. Nobody would have known the difference. Nobody was interested in that town. Nobody even wanted to think about what happened there.
"What's this?" Fish asked, glancing from Tully to Smeds.
Smeds said, "He was whining about how the whole thing was a big damned bust and he was sick of it and wanted us to go home. But look here. Even if we don't have no luck with the tree we made out like bandits. I could live pretty good for a good long time on a share of this."
Fish looked from Tully to Smeds and back again. He said, "I see." And maybe he did. That old man wasn't anybody's fool. He said, "Timmy, you got a good eye for this kind of thing. Why don't you separate that out into equal lots?"