[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]heads of Prince and Mayor for getting her into this situation. Where the hell was Sun Wolf when you
needed him anyway? He was the one who knew about magic, not her.
"We got it!" yelled someone Dogbreath, she thought "We got it, Hawk, we'll save you!"
She didn't dare turn her head until the last second, when her mercenary pals Dogbreath and Penpusher
crossed the line of her vision hauling one of the wheeled water-butts from which they watered the mules.
She yelled "Don't& !" too late as they levered the thing over, three hundred gallons spewing forth over
the wight&
& which rose in a heaving column of animate liquid and poured over her in a wave.
She sprang sideways, coughing, drowning, water forcing itself into her nose, her mouth. Water surged
around her, slowing her steps, dragging her back, water that shrieked in her ears and blinded her eyes
and ripped and tore at her hands.
Battlesow yanked her out of the maelstrom by main force and dragged her in the direction of the pyre, a
riptide heaving and pulling at their feet, slowing them while the cresting, thrashing waterspout pursued
them through the camp. Coughing, Starhawk gasped, "Don't let anybody else help me! I know what I'm
doing!"
Back at the convent I'd have been doing pennance till Yule for a lie like that.
The pyre lay ahead of them. Teryne and a group of the mercenaries grouped around it, men and women
dangerously quiet, muttering. Like Battlesow, they were perfectly willing to face war and weapons but
not the vileness of black magic in the dark. Too many had seen the heads and faces of the dead the wight
had absorbed, and rumor was running fast. Barely abletobreathe and half-blinded by spray, Starhawk
saw on the pyre the thing she had sent Teryne to get, a burlap sack containing what appeared to be a
collection of rags and sticks. The unfired wood glittered in the orange glare of the flaming brand in
Terynes hand, and the smell of Blue Ruin, the cheap mere gin manufactured by Bron the quartermaster
and his wife Opium, almost drowned the charnel stink of the wight. Starhawk wondered what the hell
Bron had charged them for the gin. Knowing Bron or more specifically knowing Opium she was
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
certain it hadn't been free.
The drag on her feet increased and she felt the spattering of spray on the back of her neck, heard the
rattling, metallic roar in her ears. She stumbled, the pressure of the water incredibly strong, dropped her
useless sword to yank from her belt the two brown fragments of tooth, closing them tight in her fist
against the cold suction. "Torch it!" she yelled, and Teryne thrust the fire into the pyre's wood.
The alcohol-soaked tinder caught in a searing explosion of white heat, and in that second, Starhawk
flung the teeth. The waterspout roared over her, throwing her to the soaked mud. A second explosion as
the water struck the superhot flame, and billowing steam, scalding, flame-colored itself in the glare.
Printed incandescent on her eyes, Starhawk had a vision of the sorry little sack on top of the pyre being
consumed.
Then there was only a mush of coals and embers, white scarves of steam floating sullen over the charred
jumble of wood.
The sack was gone.
The wight was gone.
Starhawk got to her feet, covered with mud as if she'd been dipped in it and soaked to the skin. Her
knees shook and she reached out, holding Butcher's arm for support. Elia, soaked also all of them
were wet as if they'd just been dragged up from the bottom of the sea started to ask something, but
Starhawk caught her eye and shook her head.
On the edge of the crowd of mercenaries, Prince Chare and Mayor Cornmonger stood staring at the
steam-wreathed pyre, the sodden ashes in disbelief.
Starhawk wiped the goop from her eyes, and said, "Take a warning, pals." She fished in the pouch at
her belt, and brought up the last brown-and-white fragment: a dog's footbone, she guessed it was when
she'd found it in the muddy farmyard. But at that distance, in the iron dark and flickering torchlight of
pre-dawn, it looked sufficiently like the wight's teeth to pass for one. Her heart hammered so loudly she
was sure Cornmonger and Chare must hear it. She turned the bone in her fingers, holding it up, molding
her face into the expression of cold and enigmatic arrogance Sun Wolf assumed when he was bluffing,
and hoped to hell they bought the story. "Take a warning, and sign those Articles. Because I can bring
her out of that pyre, as easy as I sent her in, in a form you don't want to know about."
To her enormous surprise, they both signed. Elia and Councillor Toth made sure they signed all six
copies of the Articles, and took them away the moment the sealing-wax was set to send them to various
allies, so that neither side could repudiate without severe repercussions. Then Chare went back to what
was left of his tent to begin arrangements for paying off the mercenaries and to order his servants to clean
up the mess, and Cornmonger headed for to the walls of Horran to let the people know that the siege
was over. If they hadn't won all of their independence, at least they wouldn't be sacked, or return to the
absolute rule against which they'd rebelled.
Dawn was coming up, gray and thin above the hills.
Starhawk sat down on a wagon-tongue and started to scrape the mud off her face and hair.
"Sorry about the water." Dogbreath brought her a bucket. "You sure that thing's not gonna be back?"
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"Pretty sure." Starhawk upended it over her head she was past any consideration of delicacy. She
wondered if the stink would ever come out of her hair. "She got her teeth that's why she went into the
pyre and once she was there she incorporated what Teryne had brought from the city tombs. That's
what she's been wanting all this time."
"What was it?" Butcher came over, wringing out the tail of her shirt. "Teryne dug around the public
catacombs for half an hour looking for it."
"The bones of Gillimer Cornmonger," said Starhawk. "Brannis Cornmonger's father the man who
seduced and betrayed her fifty-five years ago. That's what she wanted, all those years. To have him all to
herself. And now she does. Once the flesh and the will were at rest, the wight had no more power."
"And you learned that from reading Sun Wolfs magic books?" asked Battlesow wonderingly.
Starhawk looked off across the jumble of burned-out farmhouses and trampled fields, to where the small
train of mayor and councillors and their bodyguard had reached the city gates. Cindery light showed the
guards coming in from the siege machinery. Somewhere over the camp someone set up a faint cheer,
answered, still more faintly, from the cheering in the city behind its walls.
"It was just a guess," she said. "I learned that from the people who live in those cities I used to help
destroy." She unbuckled the spiked guards from her arms and neck. "It's not magic, and it's not in books.
It's not even logical. It's just what people do and are, and need to make them happy."
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkajaszek.htw.pl
