"Timmy, I want you should go get drunk, have a good time, but do some serious thinking and get your mind made up. Whatever you want to do, I'll back you up, but you got to remember it affects all of us. And keep an eye on Tully. Tully ain't a guy you want to turn your back on when he's nervous."
"I'm not stupid, Smeds. Tully ain't a guy I'd turn my back on when he wasn't nervous. He ever tries anything cute he's got a nasty surprise coming."
Interesting.
Smeds figured he had some deciding to do himself. Like, with the town up to the gutters in gray boys and their bosses about to find out the spike was gone from the Barrowland, was it time to hit the road and get lost someplace they'd never think to look? Was it time to do something with the spike so it would be safer than it was in his pack back at the Skull and Crossbones? He'd already had a cute idea how to handle that. An idea that might turn into a kind of life insurance if he went ahead and did it before he told the others what he had done.
Damn, he hated it when things got complicated.
There was a hell of a row with Tully when they all got together. Tully seemed a little shorter on sense every day.
"You think you're some goddamned kind of immortal?" Smeds demanded. "You think you're untouchable? There's the goddamned grays out there, Tully. They decide to get excited, they'll take you apart one piece at a time. Then they'll give the pieces to Gossamer and Spidersilk to put back together so they can make you tell them what they want to know. And whatever you tell them then, it won't be enough. Or do you think you're some kind of hero that would hold out against the kind of people that learned to ask questions in the Tower?"
"They got to find me before they can ask me anything, Smeds."
"I think we're finally getting somewhere. That's what I've been saying for the last ten minutes."
"The hell. You've been jacking your jaw about running off to some ass-wipe place like Lords.…"
"You really think you could stay out of their way here? Once they knew what they were looking for?"
"How they gonna… ?"
"How the hell should I know? What I do know is, these ain't no half-moron bozos from the North Side. These are people from Charm. They eat guys like us for snacks. The best way to stay out of their way is not to be around where they're at."
"We ain't going nowhere, Smeds." Tully was turning plain stubborn.
"You want to stand around waiting for the hammer to hit you between the eyes that's fine with me. But I ain't getting killed because you got ego problems. Selling that spike off and getting rich would be nice, but not nice enough to die for or go to the rack for. All these heavies turning up here before we even start trying to find a buyer, I'm tempted to let it go to the first bidder just to get out from under."
The argument raged on, bitterly, inconclusively, with Fish and Timmy refereeing. Smeds was as angry with himself as he was with Tully. He had a nasty suspicion he was just blowing a lot of hot air, that he would not be able to walk out on his cousin if it came to a decision. Tully was not much, but he was family.
XXIX
Toadkiller Dog lay in the shade of an acacia tree gnawing on a shinbone that had belonged to one of the wicker man's soldiers.
Only a dozen of those had survived that grisly night when they had taken the monastery. Half of those had died since. When the breeze blew from the north the stench of death was overpowering.
Only two of the witch doctors had gotten through alive. Barely. Till they recovered, he and the wicker man were in little better shape than they had been in the beginning, back in the Barrowland.
Toadkiller Dog kept one eye on the mantas gliding overhead and around the monastery, eternally probing for soft spots in the shell of magic shielding the place. Bolts ripped through any they found. Only one in a hundred did any damage, but that was enough to guarantee eventual destruction.
The wicker man's triumph over the windwhale had given a respite of two hours. Then another windwhale had appeared and had resumed the struggle. There were four of them out there now, at the points of the compass, and they were determined to avenge their fallen brother.
Toadkiller Dog rose, bones creaking and aching, and zigzagged his way between dangerous spots to the low, thin wall that surrounded the remains of the monastery. He limped badly. His wicker leg had gone in the conflagration that had come when the Limper's firedrake had turned back upon him.
He consoled himself with the knowledge that the Limper was worse off than he was. The Limper had no body at all.
But he was working on that.
How the hell had they managed that turnaround?
Toadkiller Dog rose on his hind legs, rested his paw and chin on top of the wall.
The picture was worse, as he had expected. The talking stones were so numerous they formed a circumvallation. Groves of the walking trees stood wherever the ground was moist, feasting. They had to endure eternal drought on the Plain of Fear.
How long before they moved in and began demolishing the wall with their swift-growing roots?
Squadrons of reverse centaurs galloped among the shadows of gliding mantas, practicing charges and massed javelin tosses.
That weird horde would come someday. And there would be no turning them back while the Limper had no body.
They would have come already had they known how helpless were the besieged. That was the only smart thing the Limper had done, getting himself out of sight and lying low, so those creatures out there did not know where he stood. He was counting on the White Rose to think he was trying to lure her into a trap by pretending to be powerless.
The Limper needed time. He would do anything, would sacrifice anyone, to buy that time.
Toadkiller Dog turned away and limped toward the half-demolished main structure of the monastic complex. A frightened sentry watched him pass.
They knew they were doomed, that they had become rich beyond their hopes but at the cost of selling their souls to death. They would not live to enjoy a copper's worth of their stolen fortunes.
It was too late now, even to find hope in desertion.
One man had tried. They had him out there. Sometimes they made him scream just to remind everybody they were irked enough to take no prisoners.
Toadkiller Dog squeezed through the tight halls and down steep, narrow stairs to the deep cellar the Limper had taken for his lair. Down there he was safe from the monster boulders and whatnot the windwhales dropped when the urge took them.
The Limper had set up in a room that was large and as damp and moldy as might be expected. But the light there was as bright as artificial sources could make it. The sculptors needed that light to do their work properly.
The bodiless head of the Limper sat on a shelf overlooking the work in progress. Two armed guards and one of the witch doctors watched, too. The actual work was being done by three of the dozen priests who had survived the massacre of the monastery's inmates.
They had no idea what their reward would be if they did a good job. They labored under the illusion that they would be allowed to resume the monastery's work when they finished and their guests departed.
In the southwest corner, the highest of the enclosure, there was a small spring. The monastery drew its water from this. Below the spring, kept moist by its runoff, lay a bed of some of the finest potter's clay in the world. The monks had been using it for ages. The Limper had been delighted when he had learned of the deposit.
The sculptors had the new body roughed in to the Limper's satisfaction. It would be the body he'd always wished he'd had, not the stunted, crippled thing he'd had to endure when he'd had a body of his own. With the head on it this would stand six and a half feet tall and the body itself would fit what the Limper imagined was every maiden's dream.