Free Book 1 - The Silver spike by Glen Cook

it. “Oh, shit, that bastard
is hot.” He came running, crying, and shoved his hand into
the last bucket of water. His palm was mostly red and beginning to
show patches of blister already.
    Fish took a shovel and scooped the spike out of the ashes.
“Look out, Timmy. I’m fixing to dump it in
there.”
    “My hand . . . ”
    “Ain’t good to do a bad burn that way. You head back
to camp. I got some salve there that’ll do you a whole lot
better.”
    Timmy pulled his hand out. Fish dumped the spike. The water
hissed and bubbled. Fish said, “You carry the bucket,
Smeds.”
    Just as Tully said, “We better make tracks. I think its
starting to wake up.”
    It was hard to tell against that sky, but it did look like there
were tiny flecks of blue out on the ends of the smallest surviving
twigs.
    “The spike ain’t conducting heat into the heartwood
anymore,” Fish said. “Scat,” he told the backs of
a lot of pumping legs and flailing elbows.
    Smeds looked back just before he plunged into the woods. Just as
the tree cut loose with a wild, undirected discharge. The flash
nearly blinded him. Ash flew in clouds. The pain and disappointment
and . . . sorrow?  . . . of
the tree touched him like a gentle, sad rain. He found tears
streaking his face and guilt in his heart.
    Old Man Fish puffed into camp one step ahead of Tully, who was
embarrassed because the old-timer had outrun him. Fish said,
“We got a lot of daylight left. I suggest we get the hell on
the road. Timmy, let me look at that hand.”
    Smeds looked over Fish’s shoulder. Timmy’s hand
looked awful. Fish didn’t like the look of it either. He
stared at it, grunted, frowned, studied it, grunted again.
“Salve won’t be good enough. I’m going to collect
up some herbs for a poultice. Thing must have been hotter than I
thought.”
    “Hurts like hell,” Timmy said, eyes still
watery.
    “Poultice will take care of that. Smeds. When you get that
spike out of the bucket don’t touch it. Dump it on that old
blanket. Then wrap it up. I don’t think anybody ought to
touch it.”
    “Why the hell not?” Tully asked.
    “Because it burned Timmy badder than it should have.
Because it’s a bad mojo thing and maybe we shouldn’t
ought to take any chances.”
    Smeds did it the way Fish said, after the old man went hunting
his herbs. After he dumped the bucket he moved the spike to a dry
part of the blanket with a stick. “Hey! Tully! Check this.
It’s still hot even after it was in that water.”
Passing his hand above it he could feel the heat from a foot
away.
    Tully tried it. He looked troubled. “You better wrap it up
good and tie it tight and put it right in the middle of your
pack.”
    “Eh?” Tully didn’t want to carry it himself?
Didn’t want it in his control every second? That was
disturbing.
    “You want to come give me a hand awhile here?” Tully
asked. “I can’t never get this pack together by
myself.”
    Smeds finished bundling the spike, went over, knowing from his
tone Tully had something he wanted to whisper.
    As they stuffed and rolled and tied, Tully murmured, “I
decided not to do it on the way back. We’re still going to
need them awhile. We’ll do it later, in the city
sometime.”
    Smeds nodded, not saying he wasn’t going to do it at all,
and was going to try his damnedest to see that Fish and Timmy and
he himself got fair shares of the payoff for the spike.
    He had a good idea what was going on inside Tully’s head.
Tully wasn’t going to be satisfied with the big hit
they’d made already. Tully was thinking Fish and Timmy made
good mules. They could haul their shares back. Once they got to
town he could take them away.
    Smeds had a suspicion Tully wasn’t going to be satisfied
with a two-way split, either.
     
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XX
    Our fire burned down till it wasn’t nothing but some
patches of red. Once in a while a little flame would shoot up and
prance around for a few seconds, then die. I stared up at