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out. "I've done what I can. All we can do is wait. And hope."
Smeds asked, "What's going on out there? With the soldiers."
"They're rounding up Rebels. They're going to execute a big bunch in the
morning. That ought to set off the explosion that will break the city wide
open."
"What if it don't?" Tully asked.
"Then we're screwed. Sooner or later they'll get us. Process of elimination.'
Fish stole a sip of Smeds's beer. "Cheer up. They're between us and the
cholera. Maybe it'll get them before they get us."
"Shit!"
"We ought to get some sleep."
"You kidding?"
"We ought to try. We ought, at least, to get out of sight. Out of sight, out
of mind, as they say."
Smeds fell asleep in about two minutes.
He was not sure what wakened him. The sun was up. So were Tully and Fish. Up
and out of there. Something made him start shivering. He went to the common
room. It was empty.
It hit him as he crossed to the door.
The silence.
The morning was as still as the grave. But for his footsteps he would have
feared he was deaf. The door groaned as he opened it.
Everyone stood in the street, looking toward the center of Oar, waiting for
something.
The wait was short.
Smeds felt it in the earth before it reached his ears, a monster vibration
pursued by an avalanche of rage, a roar almost like a blow.
Fish told him, "They started the executions. I was afraid they would chicken
out."
The roar grew louder, rolled closer, as an entire city, in a moment, decided
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that it had had enough of tyranny and oppression.
The wave came into the street outside the Skull and Crossbones. The people
reeled with it.
Then mothers began herding children inside. Men began moving toward city
center, in a rage for death, few of them armed because the repeated searches
by the grays had turned up most of the privately held weapons. They had
confiscated everything but the personal knife.
Smeds decided he must be getting old and cynical. He hadn't the slightest urge
to get involved.
Neither did Fish. Tully twitched for a moment, then stood fast.
Many of the men in the street did the same. The rage was like the cholera. Not
everyone had it yet. But both would claim many more before they subsided.
Fish got Smeds and Tully inside the Skull and Cross-bones and sat them down.
"We don't move. We let the rumors come to us. If they turn favorable enough
we'll head for the wall whenever it looks like we've got a chance to get out.
Smeds, go put yourself a pack together. Stuff you'll need to travel."
Tully whispered, "What about the spike?"
"It can take care of itself."
"Where the hell is it, anyway?"
"Smeds, go pack. I don't know, Tully. I don't want to know. All I care is,
Smeds found a place so good nobody else has found it."
Smeds felt Tully's angry stare as he moved away.
The first flurry of rumors spoke more eloquently of human savagery than it did
of human nobility.
Despite knowing the mob was in an ugly mood, the regiment handling the
executions had been caught off balance by the violence of the outburst
following the first execution. They were swamped by the responding fury. Eight
hundred died before panicky reinforcements, in no good order, arrived. Several
thousand civilians and several hundred more soldiers died before it broke up.
The fleeing citizens took a fair supply of arms with them.
Small-to-medium-sized riots bubbled up all over Oar, anywhere the grays
appeared weak.
A mob tried to storm the Civil Palace. They were driven off but they left
several fires burning, the worst of which raged out of control for hours.
A huge mob attacked the regiment that had moved in to beef up protection of
the South Gate. Many captured weapons surfaced there. The mob overwhelmed the
regiment but failed to flush the gate guards and failed to take the top of the
wall. Archers posted there soon dispersed them.
Fish did not let Tully or Smeds go out once.
Come nightfall the situation grew both more chaotic and more sinister. The
hard-pressed soldiers began to lose discipline, to indulge in indiscriminate
slaughter. Youths got out and set fires, vandalized, looted. Individuals
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pursued private feuds. And the world's densest population of wizards decided
to become involved. Decided to gang up and eliminate their toughest
competitor.
They rallied a mob and went after Gossamer and Spider-silk. This time the
attackers broke through. They exterminated the bodyguard force. One of the
twins was injured, maybe killed. The entire center of the city seemed to be
afire. And total madness spread with the news. It got so it seemed everyone in
the city was trying to murder someone else.
The crowd of wizards turned on one another.
Chaos had not trespassed much in the neighborhood of the Skull and Crossbones
earlier. But now it came creeping in with a crash and a clash and a scream.
Smeds said, "We got to get out of here."
Fish surprised him by agreeing. "You're right. Before it gets impossible.
Let's grab our stuff."
Tully was too worn out to do anything but go along.
The other hangers-on watched them dully as they slipped out. Half an hour
later, without serious misadventure, they had established themselves in the
dark murk of a partly collapsed basement barely a hundred yards from the place
where Timmy Locan had died.
The madness had no hunger for that part of Oar already gnawed to the bone by
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