Free The Book of Silence by Lawrence Watt-Evans Page A

anything more important than goats, and those only for food for his mount.
    This raised his spirits so much that even the battlefields and soldiers he passed on his way north did not dissipate his good cheer. He moved on past Sland and along the mountains until he came within sight of the towers of Ur-Dormulk, where he turned east and circled around the city. He had traveled this far by night, but from here on, the population was thin and the land inhospitable; the war would therefore not be much in evidence. Furthermore, beyond Ur-Dormulk, overmen were no longer totally unknown; the Yprian caravans had been crossing these lands occasionally for most of the past three years, and the people were accustomed to them. Householders would not attack Garth on sight simply because of his species.
    He could, if he chose, travel by day and use the highway to Skelleth openly.
    Switching his schedule all at once, however, was not particularly convenient; instead, he lengthened each leg of it, riding on into the morning until he was too weary to want to go farther, then sleeping on past sunset until he awoke naturally and fully rested. He did, however, follow the high road; the plains were still muddy from melted snow and spring rain.
    He finally came within sight of Skelleth around noon, but he had been awake since midnight, so that as far as he was concerned it was late in the day and he was ready to rest. He had bought a goat for Koros the previous morning and eaten well himself, at a small farm he had passed, but he had had nothing since save for a handful of dried fruit and salted beef; his provisions were beginning to run low. He was tired and hungry and looking forward to cold ale and hot food at the King’s Inn, followed by a soft bed in the house he had rebuilt for himself from the ruins at the edge of town.
    The prospect of a good rest, and his lingering good mood, put a smile on his face. He glanced down at the clockwork gull he kept on the saddle before him; he had not cared to pack it away where it might be damaged by bumping against his other belongings. It gleamed golden in the thin, dreary light that seeped through the thick clouds overhead. The weather had been good throughout his trip, but he knew that could not last much longer; indeed, the sky looked very much as if there would be rain before nightfall.
    When he glanced up from the metal bird, Garth noticed that something or someone stood outside the town wall, beside the highway he rode upon. His smile faded. The last time he had ridden up this highway someone had been waiting upon it, an overman named Thord; he had been posted there as part of an inept siege laid by Garth’s chief wife Kyrith, and it had been that siege which had led to the sacking of Skelleth. Garth did not much care to be reminded of that.
    He wondered whom or what he was seeing; the distance was such that he could not yet make the figure out. He hoped that, whatever it was, it was not the harbinger of more trouble.
    The thing stood about the height of an overman, Garth judged, or perhaps an unusually tall human, but the shape seemed slightly wrong. He rode on.
    When he had drawn somewhat nearer, he saw that it was, indeed, an overman, or something very much like one, but slumped forward, and with something projecting upward at the back of its neck.
    Another of the warbeast’s long strides allowed Garth to determine that the overman, if such it truly was, was hanging from a post or stake, apparently lifeless.
    Garth was confused; he had no idea what this thing could signify, what overman could be there, or why. He did not like it. The figure was utterly lifeless, and Garth wondered whether perhaps it was an effigy of himself, put there by some enemy, a townsman, perhaps, who had never forgiven him his part in Skelleth’s destruction.
    The other possibility, that it was a real overman’s corpse hung up as a warning of some kind, was much less appealing.
    He rode closer and began