Book 1 - The Silver spike Read Online Free

soldiers there was the tree itself,
that was supposed to be big mojo. Sorcery there great enough to
have survived the dark struggle that had hammered the guts out of
this killing ground.
    All right. It wasn’t going to be easy. He would have to
work for it harder than he’d ever worked for anything in his
life. And he would have to be careful. He would have to keep his
eyes open and his brain working. He wasn’t going to give the
Kimbro girls music lessons out here.
    That day and night they rested. Even Old Man Fish said he needed
it. Next morning Fish went to scout for a campsite. Tully said,
“You got blisters up to your butt, Smeds. You stay here. Take
care of them the way Fish said. You got to get in shape to move if
we got to move. Timmy, come on.”
    “Where you going?” Smeds asked.
    “Gonna try getting close to that town. See what we can
find out.” They went.
    Fish came back an hour later.
    “That was quick. Find a place?”
    “Not a very good one. River’s moved some since I was
up here. Bank’s two hundred yards over there. Not much room to run.
Let me look at them feet.”
    Smeds stuck them out. Fish squatted, grunted, touched a couple
of places. Smeds winced. “Bad?” he asked.
    “Seen worse. Not often. Got some trenchfoot getting
started, too. Others probably got a touch, too.” He looked
vacant for a moment. “My fault. I knew you was green and
Tully was as organized as a henhouse. Shoulda not let him get in
such a big hurry. You get in a hurry you always end up
paying.”
    “Decided what you’re going to do with your cut
yet?”
    “Nope. You get to my age you don’t go
looking that far ahead. Good chance you might not get there. One
day at a time, boy. I’m going to get some stuff for a
poultice.”
    Smeds watched the straight-backed, white-haired man fade into
the forest silently. He tried to blank his mind. He did not want to
be alone with his thoughts.
    Fish returned with a load of weeds. “Chop these into
little pieces and put them in this sack. Equal amounts of each
kind.” There were three kinds. “When the sack is
stuffed close it up and pound on it with this stick. Roll it over
once in a while. All the leaves got to get good and bruised.”
    “How long?”
    “Give it a thousand, twelve hundred whacks. Then dump it
in this pot. Put in a cup of water and stir it up.”
    “Then what?”
    “Then do another sack. And stir the pot every couple
minutes.” The old man faded into the woods without saying
where he was going.
    Smeds was pounding his third sack when Fish returned. He
sniffed. “Guess you can do a job right when you want.”
He settled, took the pot. “Good. That sack will be
enough.”
    He turned Smeds’s oldest shirt into bindings for his feet,
packed them with soggy, mangled leaves. A cool tingle began
soothing his pains.
    Fish made the others treat their feet, too. He did his own.
    Smeds leaned against his tree, troubled. He did not think he was
hard enough or bad enough to kill the old man.
    “There between sixty and eighty people still living over
there,” Tully said. “Mostly soldiers. But we heard them
talking like a big bunch would be leaving in a couple days.
Wouldn’t hurt to wait them out on that. We could finish up
our scouting.”
    Scouting the Barrowland started after sunset, by the light of a
quarter moon. The village was dark and silent. It looked a good
time to prowl the open ground.
    Out the four went in a loose line abreast barely in sight of one
another, Tully guiding on the tree. It was not much of a tree by
Smeds’s estimation. Right then it looked like a fat-trunked
silver-bark poplar sapling about fifteen feet tall. He could not
see anything remarkable there. Why the reputation?
    He reached a point where the angle was right, caught a glint of
moonlight off silver. It was real! And having gotten that one
glance, he began to feel the throbbing dark power of it, like it
was not metal at all but an icicle of pure hatred.
    He shuddered,