The Claw Of The Conciliator Read Free

more concerned about the safety of Terminus Est, which I had left hidden in our room at the inn, than about my own appearance or the durability of the lay clothes I had bought from a slopman. “You and your assistant have come to see us draw out the miscreant, I suppose? We’ll be at him as soon as Mesmin and Sebald bring the post. A battering ram is what we called it when we passed the word of what was intended, but I’m afraid the truth is that it’s nothing more than a tree trunk, and not a big one either—otherwise the village would have had to free too many men to handle it. Yet it should do the work. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of the case we had here eighteen years gone?”
    Jonas and I shook our heads.
    The alcalde threw out his chest, as politicians do whenever they see an opportunity to speak for more than a couple of sentences. “I recall it well enough, though I wasn’t more than a stripling. A woman. I’ve forgotten her name, but we called her Mother Pyrexia. The stones were put up on her, just like what you see here, for it’s largely the same ones doing it, and they did it in the same way. But it was the other end of summer, just at apple-picking time, and that I recall very well because of the people drinking new cider in the crowd, and myself with a fresh apple to eat while I watched.”
    “Next year when the corn was up, someone wanted to buy the house. Property becomes the property of the town, you know. That’s how we finance the work, the ones that do it take what they can find for their share, and the town takes the house and ground.”
    “To shorten a lengthy tale, we cut a ram and broke through the door in fine fashion, thinking to sweep up the old woman’s bones and turn the place over to the new owner.” The alcalde paused and laughed, throwing back his head. There was something ghostly in that laughter, possibly only because it blended with the noise of the crowd, and so seemed silent.
    I asked, “Wasn’t she dead?”
    “It depends on what you mean by that. I’ll say this—a woman sealed in the dark long enough can become something very strange, just like the strange things you find in rotten wood, back among the big trees. We’re miners, mostly, here in Saltus, and used to things found underground, but we took to our heels and came back with torches. It didn’t like the light, or the fire either.”
    Jonas touched me on the shoulder and pointed to a swirl in the crowd. A group of purposeful-looking men were shouldering their way down the street. None had helmets or body armor, but several carried narrow-headed piletes, and the rest had brass-bound staves. I was strongly reminded of the volunteer guards who had admitted Drotte, Roche, Eata, and me to the necropolis so long ago. Behind these armed men were four who carried the tree trunk the alcalde had mentioned, a rough log about two spans across and six cubits long.
    A collective indrawn breath greeted them; it was followed by louder talk and some good-natured cheering. The alcalde left us to take charge, directing the men with staves to clear a space about the door of the sealed house and using his authority, when Jonas and I pushed forward to get a better view, to make the crowd give way for us.
    I had supposed that when all the breakers-in were in position they would proceed without ceremony. In that, I had reckoned without the alcalde. At the last possible moment he mounted the doorstep of the sealed house, and waving his hat for silence, addressed the crowd.
    “Welcome visitors and fellow villagers! In the time it takes to draw breath thrice, you will see us smash this barrier and drag out the bandit Barnoch. Whether he be dead, or, as we have good reason to believe—for he hasn’t been in there that long—alive. You know what he has done. He has collaborated with the traitor Vodalus’s cultellarii, informing them of the arrivals and departures of those who might become their victims! All of you are thinking now,