The Silver spike by Glen Cook

later. He had been up to the Barrowland for the
last big battle, where he got his. All I can say is, there
wasn’t no one anywhere in this wide world who shed a tear
when he went down. Of all the Taken he was the craziest and
nastiest.
    Anyway, he was the boss in Opal and him and his cronies was
gutting the province, stealing the coppers off dead men’s
eyes. A certain Baronet Corvo, whose family had become allied with
the empire when it first came into the area, went off on an
assignment somewhere. While he was gone his old lady got to messing
around with the Limper’s gang. To the point where she helped
rob the baronet’s family of most of its honors and titles and
all its properties. She helped frame some uncles and cousins and
brothers so they could be executed and their properties
confiscated.
    I couldn’t find out much about her. The marriage was
arranged and there never was any love in it. I got the impression
it was set up to end a feud that had been going on for a hundred
years. It didn’t work.
    She cleaned out and killed off Raven’s family. Then he
killed her and her whole gang except for the Limper himself. Maybe
he could have gotten everything back if he had wanted. The Limper
never was in good with the Lady. But Raven found Darling, the White
Rose, who became the Lady’s mortal
enemy . . . 
    Not a bad job of finding out, if I do say so myself. Even if I
couldn’t find out one thing about Raven’s kids. I only
run into two people who remembered there was kids. They
didn’t know what happened to them.
    Nobody cared but me, it seemed.
    We sold the horses. They didn’t bring enough. They was
pretty ragged after the beating they took coming south. Raven had a
bad hangover and wasn’t in no mood to argue. But I was
getting brave in my old age.
    I asked him, “What’s the point in us chasing Croaker
halfway across the world? Especially when the last time you ran
into him he put an arrow into you? Say we do catch him. If he
don’t finish the job, if he even listens, what’s he
going to do about whatever happened up north?”
    I got to admit I was plenty skeptical about what he claimed
maybe happened up there. Even if he did study a little black
sorcery way back when.
    I guess you could call it nagging. I said, “I figure you
got a lot more important business right here in Opal.”
    He gave me an ugly look. “I don’t much care what you
think about that, Case. Mind your own business.”
    “It is my business. It’s me getting dragged halfway
across the world and maybe ending up getting killed someplace I
never heard of because you got problems inside your
head.”
    “You aren’t a slave, Case. There’s no one
holding a knife to your throat.”
    I couldn’t say I owe you, man, but you wouldn’t
understand nothing about that. You taught me to read and write and
believe I had a little value as human being before you went off the
end. So I said, “If I drop out, who’s going to clean
you up when you puke all over yourself? Who’s going to drag
you out after you start a fight in some tavern and get your ass
stomped?”
    He’d done that last night and if I hadn’t showed up
when I did he maybe would’ve gotten himself killed.
    This guy who was riding off to save the world.
    He was in a rotten mood. His head ached with the hangover. His
hip hurt. His body ached from the beating. But he could not find a
way to answer me even in that humor. He just said, “I’m
going to do what I’m going to do, Case, right or wrong.
I’d like to have you along. If you can’t make it, no
hard feelings.”
    “What the hell else I got to do with my life? I got
nothing to tie me down.”
    “Then why do you keep bitching?”
    “Sometimes I like to have what I’m doing make some
kind of sense.”
    We got on the boat, which was a grain ship crossing over in
ballast to collect a cargo, and we were off to a part of the world
even Raven hadn’t seen before. And before we got to the other
side we was both