"You ask me, she's too damned lenient. Gives them too many chances. Shithead here, the famous profiteer, he's done used up two of his shots now. First time he got paraded through the streets with a sign around his neck and got a week on the labor gang. This time he gets thirty lashes and two weeks. Because he's got all that shit between his ears and ain't going to learn dick about how he can't get away with it, next time they're going to drag him over to Mayfield Square and stick a spear up his butt and let him sit on it till he rots."
The corporal took a long drink from his refilled bucket, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, grinned. "Brigadier says let the punishment fit the crime." He took another long drink, looked at the landlord. "You ready to go do it, asshole?"
As he was about to follow the landlord into the street, the corporal paused. "I reckon you boys will be fair to your host, here, and treat his place right. 'Less you're looking for careers in construction." He grinned again and went.
"God damn!" Tully said.
"Yeah," Smeds agreed.
Fish said, "I have a feeling we're not going to be comfortable in this new Oar."
"Not for long," Smeds said. "But sufficient unto the day. Right now I need to get drunk, get laid, get a night's sleep somewheres besides on the ground."
"Not necessarily in that order," Tully said.
Timmy put on a strained smile. "A bath wouldn't hurt anything, either."
"Let's get doing what we got to do."
XXIV
We come over this hill after what seemed like forever without seeing people and there across a valley was this walled place that covered maybe a hundred acres. The wall wasn't much. It was maybe eight or ten feet high and no thicker than the kind of stone walls cotters put around their sheepfolds.
"Looks like a religious retreat," Raven said. "No banners or soldiers or anything."
He was right. We'd seen places with the same look before, but never so big. "Looks old."
"Yes. It has a feel to it, too. Peaceful. Let's go look."
"Don't look like a place Croaker would pass up, eh?"
"No. He has a bad case of the curiosities. Let's hope he hung around long enough to let us gain some ground."
We went over and found out our guesses were right. Raven got his wish. The place was a monastery called the Temple of Traveler's Repose and was a kind of warehouse for knowledge. It had been sitting there soaking it up for a couple thousand years.
We found out the guys we were chasing had stayed long enough to teach one of the monks a little Jewel Cities dialect. In fact, they'd only left that very morning.
Raven got all excited. He wanted to head right on out and the hell with the sun was going to hit the horizon in another hour. I wanted to hit him over the head and slow him down. That monastery looked like a damned good place to take a day off and get human again.
"Look here, Case," he cajoled, "they'll be making camp by now, right? Traveling with a wagon and a coach the best they could've done is twenty-five miles. Right? We go all night we can grab off twenty of that, easy." He learned that about the wagon and coach from the priest.
"And then we die. You maybe never need a rest, but I need a rest and the horses need a rest and this looks like the perfect place to do it. Hell, look at the name."
He made exasperated noises. After all this time I still didn't understand that catching Croaker was the most important thing in the world. He was so damned tired himself his thinking was as screwy as a possum's.
He wasn't the only one running shy of a full load. That priest came down with both feet solid on Raven's side.
Raven grinned when he said, "He claims the omens are so bad they aren't letting anybody onto the grounds. They're even chasing people out."
I had enough of the lingo, learned from Raven, to have gotten part of that. Also something about "the bad storm coming down from the north." I saw I wasn't going to win this round neither, so I said the hell with it and added a few comments that would have disappointed my old potato-digging mother. I went and shared my misery with the horses. They understood me.
Raven worked a deal for some supplies and we headed out. I wondered how much farther to the edge of the world. We'd already come farther than I'd ever believed possible.
We didn't talk much. Not because I had the sulks. I'd given up on them and went fatalistic a long time ago. I think Raven was brooding about that bit I'd caught that he hadn't mentioned. A bad storm coming down from the north.
In the Jewel Cities lingo "bad" can mean a couple three different things. Including "evil."
There was barely any light left when we came to a strip of woods. "Going to have to walk this part," Raven said. "That priest said the road through is good enough, but it's going to be hard to follow in the dark."
I grunted. I wasn't thinking about the woods. My mind was on the funny-looking hills on the other side. I'd never seen anything like them. They were all steep-sided, smoothly rounded, covered with a tawny dry grass and nothing else. They looked like the humped backs of giant animals snoozing with their legs tucked up underneath them and their heads turned around behind them, out of sight.
They were very dry, those hills. The light to see them hadn't never been good, but I was sure I'd seen a few black burn scars before it got too dark to see anything.
The woods were bone-dry, too. The trees were mostly some kind of scruffy oak with small, brittle leaves that had points almost as sharp as holly leaves. They were a sort of blue-gray color instead of the deep green of oaks in the north.
A feeble excuse for a creek dribbled through the heart of the wood. We watered ourselves and the horses and took time out for a snack. I was too tired to waste energy talking, except to say, "I don't think I got what it takes for another fifteen miles. Uphill."
Half a minute later he surprised me by saying. "Don't know if I got what it takes, either. Only so far you can go on willpower."
"Hip bothering you?"
"Yes."
"Might ought to have it looked at."
"Good job for Croaker, since he done it. Let's see how much we got left."
We managed about six more miles, the last couple up the dry grass hills, before we sort of collapsed by silent agreement. Raven said, "This time we'll give it an hour before we hit it again."
He was stubborn, that bastard.
We hadn't been there five minutes before I spotted evidence of that bad storm from the north. "Raven."
He looked. He didn't have nothing to say. He just sighed and helped me watch the lightning.
There wasn't a cloud between us and the stars.
XXV
Toadkiller Dog, carrying the wicker man, eased over a ridge line, halted. He shivered.
For leagues now they had sensed the presence of that place over there, an aura ever increasing in intensity and its ability to irritate. If they were sons of the shadow this was a fastness of the enemy, a citadel of light. There were few such places left.
They had to be expunged when found.
"Strange magic," the wicker man whispered. "I don't like it." He glanced at the northern sky. The creatures of the tree god were up there somewhere, just beyond sight.
This was not a good place to be, sandwiched between them and that place.