The Many Deaths of the Black Company

  “That might work.”

  Singh drifted away. I watched him, suddenly suspicious. He could not be unaware of his own natural anonymity. Therefore he must be trying to create a predisposed pattern of thought inside my mind.

  I wished I could just cut his throat. I did not like what he did to my thinking. I could easily become obsessed with concerns about what he was really doing. But we needed him. We could not collect the Key without him. Even Uncle Doj did not know exactly what we were seeking. He had never actually seen, or even known about, the Key before it was stolen. I hoped he would recognize it if he saw it.

  I might spend a little time thinking how we could get around my having given him such solid guarantees that he was willing to travel with us and trust us not to murder the Daughter of Night while they were separated.

  The cavalry finished clattering past. They had paid us no heed, since we had not insisted on getting in their way. Behind them a few hundred yards came the first battalion of infantry, as neat, clean and impressive as Mogaba could keep them while on the march. I received several offers of temporary marriage but otherwise the soldiers were indifferent to our presence. The Third Territorial was a well-disciplined, professional division, an extension of Mogaba’s will and character, nothing like the gangs of ragged outcasts that constituted the Company.

  We were a military nil anyway. We could not get together and fight our weight in lepers today, let alone deal with formations like the Third Territorial. Croaker’s heart would be broken when we dragged him out of the ground.

  My optimism began to fade. With the soldiers hogging the road, we traveled much slower. The landmarks showing the way to the Grove of Doom were in sight but still hours away. The cart and the animals could not be pushed on muddy ground.

  I began to watch for a place to sit out the rain, though I did not recall any good site from previous visits to the area. Uncle Doj was no help when I asked. He told me, “There is no significant cover closer than the grove.”

  “Someone should go scout that.”

  “You have reason for concern?”

  “We’re dealing with Deceivers.” I did not mention that Slink and the band from Semchi were supposed to meet us there. Doj did not need to know. And Slink might have gotten slowed down if he had to duck around Mogaba’s army and patrols.

  “I’ll go. When I can leave without arousing curiosity.”

  “Take Swan. He’s the most likely to give us away.” The Radisha was a risk, too, though thus far she had shown no inclination to yell for help. But Riverwalker was close enough to grab her by the throat if she even took a deep breath.

  She was not stupid. If she intended to betray us, she meant to wait till she could manage it with some chance of surviving the attempt.

  Uncle Doj and Willow Swan managed to drift away without attracting attention, though Uncle had to go without Ash Wand. I joined River and the Radisha. I noted, “This country is a lot more developed than it used to be.” When I was young, most of the land between Taglios and Ghoja was deserted. Villages were small and poor and supported themselves on minimal tracts of land. There were no independent farms in those days. Now the latter seemed to be everywhere, founded by confident and independence-minded veterans or by refugees from the tortured lands that once lay prostrate under the heels of the Shadowmasters. Many of the new farms crowded right up to the road right-of-way. They made getting off the road difficult at times.

  The force moving north numbered about ten thousand, men enough to occupy miles and miles of roadway even without the train and camp followers coming on behind. Soon it was obvious we would not reach the Grove of Doom before the rains came and might not get there before nightfall.

  Given any choice at all, I did not want to be anywhere near the place after dark. I had gone in there by night once before, ages ago, as part of a Company raid meant to capture Narayan and the Daughter of Night. We murdered a lot of their friends but those two had gotten away. I remembered only the fear and the cold and the way the grove seemed to have a soul of its own that was more alien than the soul of a spider. Murgen once said that being in that place at night was as bad as walking through one of Kina’s dreams. Though of this world, it had a powerful otherworldly taint.

  I tried to ask Narayan about it. Why had his predecessors chosen that particular grove as their most holy place? How had it been different from other groves of those times, when humanity’s impact on the face of the earth had been so much less?

  “Why do you wish to know, Annalist?” Singh was suspicious of my interest.

  “Because I’m naturally curious. Aren’t you ever curious about how things came to be and why people do the things they do?”

  “I serve the goddess.”

  I waited. Evidently he deemed that an adequate explanation. Being somewhat religious myself, I could encompass it even though I did not find it satisfying.

  I offered a snort of disgust. Narayan responded with a smirk. “She is real,” he said.

  “She is the darkness.”

  “You see her handiwork around you every day.”

  Not true. “Untrue, little man. But if she ever gets loose, I think we will.” This discussion had become terribly uncomfortable suddenly. It put me in the position of admitting the existence of a god other than my god, which my religion insisted was impossible. “There is no God but God.”

  Narayan smirked.

  Mogaba did the one good thing he had ever done for me. By turning up in person he saved me the rigorous and embarrassing mental gymnastics necessary to reconfigure Kina as a fallen angel thrown down into the pit. I knew it could be done. Elements of Kina myth could be hammered into conformity with the tenets of the only true religion, given a quick coat of blackwash, and I would have completed a course of religious acrobatics elegant enough to spark the pride of my childhood teachers.

  Mogaba and his staff traveled three quarters of the way toward the rear of the column. The Great General was mounted, which was a surprise. He was never a rider before. The greater surprise, though, was the nature of his steed.

  It was one of the sorcerously bred black stallions the Company had brought down from the north. I had thought they were all dead. I had not seen one since the Kiaulune wars. This one not only was not dead, it was in outstanding health. Despite its age. It also appeared bored by the business of travel.

  “Don’t gape,” Riverwalker told me. “People get curious about why other people are curious.”

  “I think we can afford to stare some. Mogaba will feel like he deserves it.” Mogaba looked every bit the Great General and mighty warrior. He was tall and perfectly proportioned, well-muscled, well-clad, well-groomed. But for the dust of silver in his hair, he looked little older than he had been when first I saw him, right after the Company captured Jaicur from Stormshadow. He had had no hair then, having preferred to shave his head. He seemed in a good humor, not a condition I had associated with him in the past, when all his schemes had come to frustration as the Captain just seemed to bumble around and do the one thing that would undo all his efforts.

  As the Great General came abreast, his mount suddenly snorted and tossed its head, then shied slightly, as though it had stirred up a snake. Mogaba cursed, although he was never in any danger of losing his seat.

  Laughter dropped out of the sky. And a white crow fell right behind it, alighting precariously atop the pole carried by the Great General’s personal standardbearer.

  Cursing still, Mogaba failed to note that his steed turned its head to watch me as I passed.

  The darned thing winked.

  I had been recognized. The beast must be the very one I had ridden so long ago, for so many hundreds of miles.

  I began to get nervous.

  Someone amongst Mogaba’s personal guard launched an arrow at the crow. It missed. It fell not far from Runmust, who shouted angrily before he thought. Now the Great General vented his spleen upon the archer.

  The horse continued to watch me. I fought an
urge to run. Maybe I could get through this yet.…

  The white crow squawked something that might have been words but were just racket to me. Mogaba’s mount jumped enough to freshen the well of vituperation. It faced forward and began to trot. The ultimate effect was to divert attention from us southbound scrubs.

  Everybody but Iqbal’s Suruvhija stared at the ground and walked a little faster. Soon we were past the worst danger. I drifted over beside Swan, who was still so nervous he stuttered when he tried to crack a joke about pigeons coming to roost on the Great General while he was still alive.

  Laughter passed overhead. The crow, up high, was almost indistinguishable against the gathering clouds. I wished I had someone along who could advise me about that thing.

  For a generation, crows have not been good omens for the Company. But this one seemed to have done us a favor.

  Could it be Murgen from another time?

  Murgen would be watching, I was sure, but that crow had no way to communicate. So maybe so.…

  If so, this encounter would have been an adventure for him, too, what with him knowing that if we got caught, his chances for resurrection plummeted to zero.

  50

  The passages of the Great General held us up long enough that we could not leave the road unremarked until after the rains began falling hard enough to conceal our movements from everyone except someone extremely close by. We left the road unnoticed then. Our travel formation collapsed into a miserable pack. Only Narayan Singh showed real eagerness to get to the grove. And he did not hurry. Not often long on empathy, I found myself pitying Iqbal’s children.

  Swan pointed out, “It’d be to Singh’s advantage to get us there just after night falls.”

  “Darkness always comes.”

  “Uhn?”

  “A Deceiver aphorism. Darkness is their time. And darkness always comes.”

  “You don’t seem particularly bothered.” He was hard to hear. The rainfall was that heavy.

  “I’m bothered, buddy. I’ve been here before. It isn’t what you’d call a good place.” I could not state that fact with sufficient emphasis. The Grove of Doom was the heart of darkness, a spawning ground for all hopelessness and despair. It gnawed at your soul. Unless you were a believer, apparently. It never seemed to trouble those for whom it was a holy place.

  “Places are natural, Sleepy. People are good and evil.”

  “You’ll change your mind after you get there.”

  “I got a sneaking suspicion I’m gonna drown first. Do we got to be out in this?”

  “You find a roof, I’ll be glad to get under it.” Big thunder had begun fencing with swords of lightning. There would be hail before long. I wished I had a better hat. Maybe one of those huge woven-bamboo things Nyueng Bao farmers wear in the rice paddies.

  I could just make out Riverwalker and the Radisha. I followed them hoping they were following someone they could see. I hoped we did not have anyone get disoriented and lost. Not tonight. I hoped the guys from Semchi were where they were supposed to be.

  Iqbal appeared in the gloom as the hail began to fall. He bent over to try to ease the sting of the missiles. I did the same. It did not help much.

  Iqbal shouted, “Left, down the hill. There’s a stand of little evergreens. Better than nothing at all.”

  Swan and I dashed that way. The hailstones kept getting bigger and more numerous as the thunder got louder and the lightning closer. But the air was cooling down.

  There is a bright side to everything.

  I slipped, fell, rolled, found the trees the hard way, by sliding in amongst them. Uncle Doj and Gota, River and the Radisha were in there already. Iqbal was an optimist. I would not have called those darned things trees. They were bushes suffering from overweening ambition. Not a one was ten feet tall and you had to get down on your belly in the damp and needles to enjoy their shelter. But their branches did break the fall of the hailstones, which rattled and roared through the foliage. I started to ask about the animals but then heard the goats bleating.

  I felt a little guilty. I do not like animals much. I had been shirking my share of their caretaking.

  Hailstones dribbled down through the branches and rolled in from outside. Swan picked up a huge example, brushed it off, showed it to me, grinned and popped it into his mouth.

  “This is the life,” I said. “When you’re with the Black Company, every day is a paradise on earth.”

  Swan said, “This would be a superb recruiting tool.”

  As those things always do, the storm went away. We crawled out and counted heads and discovered that not even Narayan Singh had gone missing. The living saint of the Stranglers did not want to leave us behind. That book really was important to him.

  The rain dwindled to a drizzle. We clambered out of the muck, many communing bluntly with their preferred gods while we formed up. We did not spread out much now, except for Uncle Doj, who managed to disappear into a landscape with almost no cover.

  Over the next hour we ran into several landmarks I recognized from Croaker’s and Murgen’s Annals. I kept an eye out for Slink and his companions. I did not see them. I hoped that was a good omen rather than a bad.

  The later it got, the more peachy it seemed to Narayan Singh. I was afraid he would curse us all by betraying a genuine smile. I considered mentioning his children’s names just to let him know he was weighing on my mind.

  * * *

  My divination skills were flawless. It was dusk when we reached the grove. We were all miserable. The baby would not stop crying. I was developing a blister from walking in wet boots. With the possible exception of Narayan, not a soul amongst us remained mission-oriented. Everybody just wanted to drop somewhere while somebody else got a fire going so we could dry out and get something to eat.

  Narayan insisted that we press on to the Deceiver temple in the heart of the grove. “It’ll be dry there,” he promised.

  His proposal aroused no enthusiasm. Though we were barely inside its boundary, the smell of the Grove surrounded us. It was not a pleasant odor. I wondered how much worse it was back in the heyday of the Deceivers, when they murdered people there often and in some numbers.

  The place possessed strong psychic character, an eerieness, a creepiness. Gunni would blame that on Kina because this was one of the places where a fragment of her dismembered body had fallen, or something such. Despite the fact that Kina was also supposed to be bound in enchanted sleep somewhere on or under or beyond the plain of glittering stone. Gunni do not have ghosts. We Vehdna do. Nyueng Bao do. For me, the grove was haunted by the souls of all the victims who died there for Kina’s pleasure or glory or whatever reason Stranglers kill.

  Had I mentioned it, Narayan or one of the more devout Gunni would have brought up the matter of rakshasas, those malignant demons, those evil night-rangers jealous of men and gods alike. Rakshasas might pretend to be the spirit of someone who had passed on, merely as a tool for tormenting the living.

  Uncle Doj said, “Like it or not, Narayan is right. We should move into the best shelter available. We would be no less safe there than here. And we would be free of this pestilential drizzle.” The rain just would not go away.

  I considered him. He was old and worn out and had less reason to want to move on than any of us younger folks. He must have a reason to want to go on. He must know something.

  Doj always did. Getting him to share it was the big trick.

  I was in charge. Time for an unpopular decision. “We’ll go ahead.”

  Grumble grumble grumble.

  The temple projected a presence more powerful than that of the Grove. I had no trouble locating it without being able to see it. Walking close behind, Swan asked me, “How come you never tore this place down when you were on top?”

  I did not understand his question. Narayan, just ahead of me, overheard it and did understand. “They tried. More than once. We rebuilt it when no one was watching.” He launched a rambling rant about how his goddess h
ad watched over the builders. It sounded like a recruiting speech. He kept it up until Runmust swatted him with a bamboo pole.

  It was one of those poles, too, though Narayan did not know. The grove was a very dark place, perfect for an ambush by shadows. Runmust was not going to go quietly.

  I could not help wondering what evils Soulcatcher was up to now that she had complete freedom to work her will upon Taglios.

  I hoped the people who stayed behind completed their missions, particularly those tasked to penetrate the Palace again. Jaul Barundandi had to be recruited and brought in too deep to run before his rage subsided sufficiently for reason to reassert itself.

  51

  The baby continued to cry, burrowing into her mother’s breast without looking for nourishment. The noise worried everyone. Anyone who wished to visit misfortune upon us would have no trouble tracking us. We would be unlikely to hear them sneaking up, because of the crying and the sound of drizzle falling from branch to branch in the waterlogged trees. River and the Company Singhs kept their hands on their weapons. Uncle Doj had recovered Ash Wand and was keeping it handy despite the risk of rust.

  The animals were as thrilled as the infant was. The goats bleated and dragged their feet. The donkeys kept getting stubborn, but Mother Gota knew a trick or three for getting balky beasts of burden moving. A considerable ration of pain was involved.

  The rain never ended.

  Narayan Singh took the lead. He knew the way. He was home.