Book 1 - The Silver spike by Glen Cook Page B

with old butcheries and destructions. But
the disaster had not been complete. Nearer the city there were
people in the fields, and more and more as the miles passed, backs
bowed with the weight of tragedies old and new.
    Man is born to sorrow and
despair . . . Smeds shuddered his way out of
that. Him wallowing in philosophical bullshit?
    They crested a rise, saw the city. The wall was covered with
scaffolding. Despite the late hour, men were rebuilding it.
Soldiers in gray supervised. Imperials.
    “Gray boys,” Tully grumbled. “Here comes
trouble.”
    “I doubt it,” Fish said.
    “How come?”
    “There’d be more of them if they were looking for
trouble. They’re just making sure the repairs get done
right.”
    Tully harumphed and scowled and muttered to himself but did not
argue. He had overlooked the obvious. Imperials were sticklers for
getting things done right, obsessive about keeping military works
in repair.
    The only delay was occasioned by the construction, not by the
soldiers. Tully was not pleased. He was sick of Fish looking
smarter than him. Smeds was afraid he would start improvising,
trying to do something about that. Something stupid, probably.
    “Holy shit,” Smeds said, soft as a prayer, half a
dozen times, as they walked through the city. Buildings were being
demolished, rehabilitated, or built where old structures had been
razed. “They really tore the old town a new
asshole.”
    Which left him uncomfortable. There were people he wanted to
see. Were they still alive, even?
    Wonderstruck, Tully said, “I never seen so many soldiers.
Least not since I was a kid.” They were everywhere, helping
with reconstruction, supervising, policing, billeted in tents
pitched where buildings had been razed. Was the whole damned city
inundated with troops?
    Smeds saw standards, uniforms, and unit emblems he’d never
seen before. “Something going on here,” he said.
“We better be careful.” He indicated a hanged man
dangling from a roof tree three stories up.
    “Martial law,” Fish said. “Means the wise guys
are upset. You’re right, Smeds. We walk real careful till we
find out what’s going on and why.”
    They headed for the place Tully stayed first, it being closest.
It was not there anymore. Tully was not distressed.
“I’ll just stay with you till I get set,” he told
Smeds.
    But Smeds had not paid any rent, so they had thrown his junk
into the street for scavengers—after cashing in his empties
and stealing what they wanted for themselves—then had let
the room to people dispossessed by the disaster. Fish’s place
had gone the way of Tully’s. The old man was not surprised.
He said nothing. He did look a little more gaunt and haggard and
slumped.
    “So maybe we can all stuff in at my old lady’s
place,” Timmy said. He was jittery. Smeds figured it was his
hand. “Just for tonight. My old man, he don’t like
anybody I hang around with.”
    Timmy’s parents owned the place they lived, though they
were as poor as anybody else on the North Side. Smeds had heard
they got it as a payoff from the gray boys for informing back in
the days when there was still a lot of Rebel activity in Oar. Timmy
would not say. Maybe it was true.
    Who cared anymore? They’d probably been on the right side.
The imperials were more honest, and better governors, if you were
at a social level where who was in charge made any difference.
    Smeds did not give a rat’s ass who ran things as long as
they left him alone. Most people felt that way.
    “Timmy! Timmy Locan!”
    They stopped, waited while an older woman overhauled them. As
she waddled up, Timmy said, “Mrs. Cisco. How are
you?”
    “We thought you were dead with the rest of them, Timmy.
Forty thousand people they killed that
night. . . . ”
    “I was out of the city, Mrs. Cisco. I just got
back.”
    “You haven’t been home yet?”
    People jostled them in the narrow street. It was three-quarters
dark but there were so many soldiers