“I have some money,” Shed volunteered. “Quite a bit. It’s back where I was staying.”
I eyeballed him. “You don’t have to go. You’re not part of this.”
“Yes, I am.”
“For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been trying to run away....”
“Got something to fight for now, Croaker. What they did to Juniper. I can’t let that go.”
“Me, too,” Asa said. “I still got most of the money Raven gave me after we raided the Catacombs.”
I polled the others silently. They did not respond. It was up to me. “All right. Get it. But don’t dawdle. I want to pull out as soon as I can.”
“I can catch you one the road,” Shed said. “I don’t see why Asa can’t too.” He rose. Shyly, he extended a hand. I hesitated only a moment.
“Welcome to the Black Company, Shed.”
Asa did not make the same offer.
“Think they’ll come back?” One-Eye asked after they left.
“What do you think?”
“Nope. I hope you know what you’re doing, Croaker. They could get the Taken after us if they get caught.”
“Yeah. They could.” I was counting on it, in fact. A vicious notion had come to me. “Let’s have another round here. Be our last for a long time.”
Chapter Forty-Seven: THE INN: ON THE RUN
Very much to my amazement, Shed overtook us ten miles south of Meadenvil. And he was not alone.
“Holy shit!” I heard One-Eye yell from the rear, and: “Croaker, come and look at this.”
I turned back. And there was Shed. With a bedraggled Bullock. Shed said, “I promised to get him out if I could. Had to bribe some people, but it wasn’t that hard. It’s every man for himself up there right now.”
I looked at Bullock. He looked at me. “Well?” I said.
“Shed gave me the word, Croaker. I guess I’m in with you guys. If you’ll take me. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Damn. Asa shows up, I’ll lose my faith in human nature. Also blow an idea I have. Okay, Bullock. What the hell. Just remember we’re not in Juniper. None of us. We’re on the run from the Taken. And we don’t have time to fuss over who did what to whom. You want a fight, save it for them.”
“You’re the boss. Just give me a shot at evening things up.” He followed me back to the head of the column. “Not much difference between your Lady and somebody like Krage, is there?”
“Matter of proportion,” I said. “Maybe you’ll get your shot sooner than you think.”
Silent and Otto came trotting out of the darkness. “You did good,” I said. “Dogs never barked.” I had sent Silent because he handled animals well.
“They’re all back out of the woods and tucked in their beds,” Otto reported.
“Good. Let’s move in. Quietly. And I don’t want anybody hurt. Understand? One-Eye?”
“I hear you.”
“Goblin. Pawnbroker. Shed. You watch the horses. I’ll signal with a lantern.”
Occupying the inn was easier than planning it. We caught everyone asleep because Silent had fuddled their dogs. The innkeeper wakened puffing and blowing and terrified. I took him downstairs while One-Eye watched everybody else, including some northbound travelers who represented a complication, but who caused no trouble.
“Sit,” I told the fat man. “You have tea or beer in the morning?”
“Tea,” he croaked.
“It’s making. So. We’re back. We didn’t expect to be, but circumstances dictated an overland trip. I want to use your place a couple days. You and me need to make an accommodation.”
Hagop brought out tea so strong it reeked. The fat man drained a mug the size of that from which he drank his beer.
“I don’t want to hurt anybody,” I continued, after taking a sip myself. “And I’ll pay my way. But if you want it that way, you’ll have to cooperate.”
He grunted.
“I don’t want anybody to know we’re here. That means no customers leave. People who come through have to see things looking normal. You get my drift?”
He was smarter than he looked. “You’re waiting for somebody.” None of the men had figured that out, I don’t think.
“Yes. Somebody who will do unto you as you expect me to, just for being here. Unless my ambush works.” I had a crazy idea. It would die if Asa turned up.
I think he believed me when I claimed no wicked plans for his family. Now. He asked, “That the same somebody who kicked up the ruckus in the city yesterday?” “News travels fast.” “Bad news does.”
“Yes. The same somebody. They killed about twenty of my people. Busted the city up pretty good, too.”
“I heard. Like I said, bad news travels fast. My brother was one of the people they killed. He was in the Prince’s guard. A sergeant. Only one of us ever amounted to anything. He was killed by something that ate him, I beared. Sorcerer sicced it on him.”
“Yeah. He’s a bad one. Nastier than my friend who can’t talk.” I did not know who would come after us. I was counting on someone doing so, with Asa to point the way. I also figured the pursuit would develop quickly. Asa would tell them the Lady was on her way to Meadenvil.
The fat man eyed me cautiously. Hatred smouldered behind his eyes. I tried to direct it. “I’m going to kill him.”
“All right. Slow? Like my brother?” “I don’t think so. If it isn’t fast and sneaky, he wins. Or she. There’s two of them, actually. I don’t know which one will come.” I figured we could buy a lot of time if we could take out one of the Taken. The Lady would be damned busy with black castles for a while with only two pairs of hands to help her. Also, I had an emotional debt to pay, and a message to make clear.
“Let me send the wife and kids away,” he said. “I’ll stand in with you.”
I let my gaze flick to Silent. He nodded slightly. “All right. What about your guests?” “I know them. They’ll sit tight.” “Good. Go take care of your part.” He left. Then I had it out with Silent and the others. I had not been elected to command. I was running on momentum as senior officer present. It got angry for a while. But I won my point. Fear is a wonderful motivator. It moved Goblin and
One-Eye like nothing I’ve ever seen. Moved the men, too. They set up every gimmick they could imagine. Booby traps. Hiding places prepared from which an attack could be carried out, each glossed with a concealing spell. Weapons prepared with fanatical attention.
The Taken are not invulnerable. They’re just hard to reach, and more so when they’re ready for trouble. Whoever came would be.
Silent went into the woods with the fat man’s family. He returned with a hawk that he tamed in record time, and cast it aloft to patrol the road between Meadenvil and the inn. We would be forewarned.
The landlord prepared dishes tainted with poison, though I advised him that the Taken seldom eat. He petitioned Silent for advice concerning his dogs. He had a whole pack of savage mastiffs and wanted them in on the action. Silent found them a spot in the plan. We did everything we could, and then settled in to wait. When my shift came, I took my turn getting some rest.
She came. Almost the moment my eyes closed, it seemed. I was in a panic for a moment, trying to banish my location and plan from my mind. But what was the point? She had found me already. The thing to conceal was the ambush.
“Have you reconsidered?” she asked. “You cannot outrun me. I want you, physician.”
“That why you sent Whisper and the Limper? To return us to the fold? They killed half our men, lost most of theirs, wrecked the city, and didn’t make a single friend. Is that how you win us back?”
She had not been party to that, of course. Pawnbroker had said the Taken were acting on their own. I wanted her angry and distracted. I wanted to know her reaction.
She said, “They’re supposed to be headed back to the Barrowland.”
“Sure they are. They just go off on their own any time they feel like it, to settle grudges ten years old.
”
“Do they know where you are?”
“Not yet.” I now had the feeling she could not locate me precisely. “I’m outside the city, lying low.”
“Where?”
I let an image seep through. “Near the place where the new castle is growing. It was the nearest place we could put up.” I figured a strong thread of truth was in order. Anyway, I wanted her to find the gift I meant to leave.
“Stay where you are. Do not attract attention. I will be there soon.” “Thought so.”
“Do not test my patience, physician. You amuse me, but you are not invulnerable. I am short of temper these days. Whisper and Limper have pressed their luck one time too many.”
The door of the room opened. One-Eye said, “Who you talking to, Croaker?”
I shuddered. He stood on the far side of the glow without seeing it. I was awake. I replied, “My girlfriend,” and giggled.
An instant later I endured a moment of intense vertigo. Something parted from me, leaving a flavor both of amusement and irritation. I recovered, found One-Eye kneeling, frowning. “What’s the matter?” he demanded.
I shook my head. “Head feels like it’s on backwards. Shouldn’t have had that beer. What’s up?”
He scowled suspiciously. “Silent’s hawk came in. They’re coming. Come on downstairs. We need to redo the plan.” “They?”
“The Limper and nine men. That’s what I mean, we need to redo. Right now the odds look too good for the other side.”
“Yeah.” Those would be Company men. The inn wouldn’t fool them. Inns are the axes of life in the hinterlands. The Captain used them frequently to draw the Rebel.
Silent did not have much to add, except that we had only as long as it would take our pursuers to cover six miles.
“Hey!” The old comes-the-dawn. Suddenly I knew why the Taken had come to Meadenvil. “You got a wagon and team?” I asked the innkeeper. I still did not know his name.
“Yeah. Use it to haul supplies down from Meadenvil, from the miller’s, from the brewer’s. Why?”
“Because the Taken are looking for those papers I’ve been on about.” I had to reveal their provenance.
“The same ones we dug up in the Forest of Cloud?” One-Eye asked.
“Yes. Look. Soulcatcher told me they have the Limper’s true name in them. They also include the wizard Bomanz’s secret papers, where the Lady’s true name is supposedly encoded.”
“Wow!” Goblin said.
“Right.”
One-Eye demanded, “What’s that got to do with us?”
“The Limper wants his name back. Suppose he sees a bunch of guys and a wagon light out of here? What’s he going to figure? Asa gave him bum dope about them being with Raven. Asa doesn’t know everything we’ve been up to.”
Silent interjected, in sign, “Asa is with the Limper.”
“Fine. He did what I wanted. Okay. The Limper figures that’s us making a run for it with the papers. ‘Specially if we let a few pieces go fluttering around.”
“I get it,” One-Eye said. “Only we don’t have enough men to work it. Only Bullock and the landlord that Asa don’t know about.”
Goblin said, “I think you better stop talking and start doing. They’re getting closer.”
I called the fat man. “Your friends from the South have to do us a favor. Tell them it’s their only chance of getting out of this alive.”
Chapter Forty-Eight: THE INN: AMBUSH
The four southerners were shaking and sweating. They did not know what was going on, did not like what they saw. But they had become convinced that cooperation was their only hope. “Goblin!” I shouted upstairs. “Can you see them yet?”
“Almost time. Count to fifty, then turn it loose.”
I counted. Slowly, forcing myself to keep the pace down. I was as scared as the southerners.
“Now!”
Goblin came boiling downstairs. We all roared out to the barn, where the animals and wagon were waiting, whooped out of there, stormed into the road, and went howling off south like eight men very nearly taken by surprise. Behind us the Limper’s party halted momentarily, talked it over, then came after us. I noted that the Limper was setting the pace. Good. His men were not eager to tangle with their old buddies.
I brought up the rear, behind Goblin and One-Eye and the wagon. One-Eye was driving. Goblin kept his mount right beside the wagon.
We roared into a rising curve where the road began climbing a wooded hill south of the inn. The innkeeper said the forest went on for miles. He had gone ahead with Silent and Bullock and the men the southerners were pretending to be.
“Yo!” someone shouted back. A scrap of red cloth whipped past. One-Eye stood up on the wagon, clinging to the traces as he edged over. Goblin swung in close. One-Eye jumped.
For a moment I did not think he would make it. Goblin almost missed. One-Eye’s feet trailed in the dust. Then he scrambled up, lay on his stomach behind his friend. He glared back at me, daring me to grin.
I grinned anyway.
The wagon hit the timber prepared, flung up, twisted. Horses screamed, fought, could not hold it. Wagon and team went thrashing off the road, crashed against trees, the animals screaming in pain and terror while the vehicle disintegrated. The men who had upset the wagon vanished immediately.
I spurred my mount forward, past Goblin and One-Eye and Pawnbroker, yelled at the southerners, gave them the sign to go on, keep riding, get the hell away.
A quarter mile father on I swung onto the track the fat man had told me about, got down into the woods far enough not to be seen, halted long enough for One-Eye to get himself seated. Then we moved on hurriedly, headed for the inn.
Above us, Limper and his bunch came pounding up to where the wrecked wagon lay, the animals still crying their distress.
It started.
Cries. Shrieks. Men dying. Hiss and howl of spells. I didn’t think Silent stood a chance, but he had volunteered. The wagon was supposed to distract the limper long enough for the massed attack to reach him.
The clangor was still going on, muted by distance, when we reached open country. “Can’t be going all wrong,” I shouted. “Been going on a while.”
I did not feel as optimistic as I pretended. I did not want it to go on. I’d wanted them to hit quick, hurt the Limper, and fade away, doing enough damage to make him retreat to the inn to lick his wounds.
We hustled the animals into the barn and headed for our hiding places. I muttered, “You know, we wouldn’t be in
this spot if Raven had killed him when he had a chance.” Way back, when I had helped capture Whisper, when she was trying to bring Limper over to her side, Raven had had a fantastic opportunity to finish him off. He had not been able, though he had had grievances against the Taken. His mercy had come back to haunt us all.
Pawnbroker went into the pig shed, where we had installed a crude, light ballista built as part of our earlier plan. Goblin cast a weak spell that made him seem like just another hog. I wanted him to stay out of it if possible. I doubted the ballista would get used.
Goblin and I raced upstairs to watch the road and the ridgeline to the east. Once he broke off, which he had not done when he was supposed to, Silent would fake in the direction taken by the southerners, retreat through the wood to that ridge, watch what happened at the inn. It was my hope that some of the Limper’s men would keep after the southerners. I hadn’t told those guys that. I hoped they had sense enough to keep running.
“Ho!” Goblin said. “There’s Silent. He made it.”
The men appeared briefly. I could not tell who was who. “Only three of them,” I muttered. That meant four had not made it. “Damn!”
“It had to work,” Goblin said. “Else they wouldn’t be up there.”
I did not feel reassured. I hadn’t had many shots at field command. I hadn’t learned to deal with the feelings that come when you know men have been killed trying to carry out your orders.
“H
ere they come.”
Riders left the woods, coming up the Shaker Road amidst lengthening shadows. “I make it six men,” I said. “No. Seven. They must not have gone after those guys.”
“Looks like they’re all hurt.”
“Element of surprise. The Limper with them? Can you tell?”
“No. That one.... That’s Asa. Hell, that’s old Shed on the third horse, and the innkeeper next to last.”
A slight positive, then. They were half as strong as they had been. I’d lost only two of seven committed.
“What do we do if the Limper ain’t with them?” Goblin asked.
“Take what comes to us.” Silent had vanished off the far ridge.
“There he is, Croaker. In front of the innkeeper. Looks like he’s unconscious.”
That was too much to hope. Yet it did indeed look like the Taken was out. “Let’s get downstairs.”
I watched through a cracked shutter as they turned into the yard. The only member of the group uninjured was Asa. His hands were bound to his saddle, his feet to his stirrups. One of the injured men dismounted, released Asa, held a knife on him while he helped the others. A variety of injuries were evident. Shed looked like he shouldn’t be alive at all. The innkeeper was in better shape. Just seemed to have been knocked around a lot.
They made Asa and the fat man get the Limper off his animal. I nearly gave myself away then. The Taken was missing most of his right arm. He had several additional wounds. But, of course, he would recover if he remained protected by his allies. The Taken are tough.
Asa and the fat man started toward the door. Limper sagged like a wet rope. The man who had covered Asa pushed the door open.
The Limper wakened. “No!” he squeaked. “Trap!”
Asa and the innkeeper dropped him. Asa began heeling and toeing it, eyes closed. The innkeeper whistled shrilly. His dogs came raging out of the barn.
Goblin and One-Eye cut loose. I jumped out and went for the Limper as he tried to gain his feet.
My blade bit into the Limper’s shoulder above the stump of his right arm. His remaining fist came up and brushed me across the belly.
The air exploded out of me. I nearly passed out. I settled to the ground, heaving my guts out, only vaguely aware of my surroundings.