Free Book 1 - The Silver spike by Glen Cook Page B

ashes. But
they hadn’t been able to find his head.
    “If it’s the Limper we really might have trouble.
Nothing he ever did made a whole lot of sense. Not to us mortals.
He was always crazy as a loon.”
    He gave me a surprised look, then a soft smile. “No
sawdust between your ears, is there, kid? All right. Put those
brains to work trying to figure out why even a crazy wizard would
be chasing us around the world. On the thousand-to-one that really
is him raising a fuss up there.”
    I laid back and started watching for shooting stars again. I
counted six more, not really thinking about the Limper because that
wasn’t an idea worth taking serious. Limper didn’t have
no love for Raven, but he sure didn’t have a grudge big
enough to go chasing him, neither. Crazy or not.
    “Between a rock and a hard place.” It sort of just
slipped out.
    “What?”
    “Tighten up the buckles on your ego, brother Corvus. It
ain’t us he’s after. If it’s him.”
    “Eh?” His eyes tightened up into a suspicious
squint. That made his cold, hawkish face look more predatory than
ever. I had to go use that family name.
    “He’s after the same thing we are. The Black
Company.”
    “That don’t make sense either, Case.”
    “Hell it don’t. It’s the only way you can get
it to make any sense at all. You’re just not thinking about
the world the way one of the Taken would. You got a pretty
screwed-up eye, but you still think people is people. Them Taken
don’t and never did. To them people are just tools and
slaves, live junk to use and throw away. Except for the one that
was so powerful she made them her slaves. And she’s riding
with your buddy Croaker, far as we know. Right?”
    The idea sank in. He turned it over, looked at the sharp edges,
grunting and shaking like a dog shitting peach seeds. After a
while, he said, “She’s lost her powers but she
hasn’t lost what she knew. And that was knowledge enough to
conquer half a world and tame the Ten Who Were Taken. She’d
be one big prize for any wizard who could lay hands on
her.”
    “There you go.” I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
It took me a while.
     
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XXI
    The old man sat quietly. When he moved at all he did so slowly
and carefully. His status was ambiguous. He had chased these people
across a continent, damned near killing himself, and for what?
    For nothing, that’s what. For nothing.
    They were lunatics. They ought to be locked up for their own
protection.
    The woman watched him from about twenty feet to his left. She
was a blue-eyed, stringy-haired blonde about five feet six inches
tall, in her middle twenties. She had a square jaw, a too broad,
lumpy bottom, and a goofy manner that made you wonder if anybody
was home behind those watery eyes. And for all that, there was
something strongly sensual there.
    She was deaf and mute. She could communicate only via sign
language.
    She was in charge. She was Darling, the White Rose, the one who
had put an end to the Lady’s dark dominion.
    How the hell could that be? It didn’t add up.
    Off to his right was a man who watched him with the warmth of a
snake. He was tall, lean, dusky, hard as a stone with less sense of
humor. These days he dressed in black, which had to be a statement
of some sort, but who could tell what? He would not talk. He flat
refused. Which is why they called him Silent.
    He was a wizard himself. The tools of his trade lay scattered
around him. As though he expected their unwilling guest to try
something.
    Silent’s eyes were as black as jet, hard as diamonds, and
friendly as death.
    Damn it! A man made one mistake and four hundred years later
they still wouldn’t let him live it down.
    There were three more of them around somewhere, brothers with
the surname Torque who seemed to have no given names. They went by
absurdities like Paddlefoot, Donkey Dick, and Brother Bear, except
that Donkey Dick became Stubby when Darling was in listening
distance, even though she