Free The Silver spike by Glen Cook Page A

the
stars. Most were ones I’d known all my life, but they had
moved to funny parts of the night. The constellations were all
askew.
    It was a good night for shooting stars. I’d spotted seven
already.
    “Uncomfortable?” Raven asked. He was watching the
sky, too.
    He startled me. He hadn’t said anything since back around
lunchtime. We didn’t talk much anymore.
    “Scared.” I had lost track of time. I had no idea
how far we’d come or where we were, except that it was one
goddamned long ways from home and down in the south.
    “And wondering what the hell you’re doing here, no
doubt.”
    “No. I think I got a handle on that. My trouble is I
don’t like having to sneak everywhere, like a thief. I might
get treated like one.”
    I did not add that I did not like being in places where the only
person who could understand me was him. If something happened to
him . . .  That was what scared me the
most.
    It was too awful to think about.
    I said, “But it’s too late to turn back.”
    “Some say it’s never too late.”
    So he was thinking about his kids again, now he was plenty safe
from the risk of actually having to deal with them. Also, maybe, he
was having second thoughts about our ride into the unknown.
    Opaque as they were to me, and maybe even to him, powerful
emotions were driving him. They had Darling’s name hung all
over them, though he never mentioned her. One monster of a guilt
was perched on his shoulders, flapping and squawking and pecking at
his eyes and ears. Somehow he was going to silence that beast by
catching his pal Croaker and passing the word about what happened
in the Barrowland.
    It didn’t make no sense to me. But people never do, a
whole lot.
    Maybe the determination was starting to wear thin. It was one
thing to take off after a guy expecting to catch him in a few weeks
and a few hundred miles and something else to be on the track still
after months and months and thousands of miles. People aren’t
built to take that without any letup. The road can blunt the most
iron will.
    He let the edges of it show when he said, “Croaker’s
been gaining on us again. He doesn’t have to be as careful as
we do. We have to speed it up somehow. Else we’re going to
chase him all the way to the edge of the world and still never
catch him.”
    Hell. He was talking to himself, not to me. Trying to find some
enthusiasm he had misplaced somewhere back up the road. There
wasn’t no way we were going to kick up the pace any. Not
without giving up any thought of watching out for trouble from the
people in the countries we were going through.
    We were pushing so hard now we were killing ourselves
slowly.
    I glimpsed something off to the north. “There. Did you see
that? That’s what I was telling you about the other day.
Lightning from a clear sky.”
    He missed it. “Maybe it’s storming up
there.”
    “Just keep an eye peeled.”
    We watched a series of flashes so dim their source had to be way
over the horizon. Usually that kind of lightning lights up or
silhouettes the tops of clouds.
    “There isn’t one cloud,” Raven said.
“And we haven’t seen one for weeks. And I’d bet
we won’t see any as long as we’re crossing this
steppe.” He watched another flash go. He shivered. “I
don’t like it, Case. I don’t like it at all.”
    “Yeah? What’s up?”
    “I don’t know. Not exactly. But I got that tingle
again, that bad feeling I got in Oar, that set me off on this
crusade.”
    “The thing from the Barrowland?”
    He shrugged. “Maybe. But that wouldn’t make sense.
If it was really who I thought it was, he ought to be busy taking
over the empire and making himself safe from a few loose Taken who
might still be hanging around.”
    I’d had some time now to do some thinking about what might
have moved in the Barrowland and could have had so much impact on
Raven. There was only one answer that fit, though it didn’t
seem likely. They had burned his body and scattered the