The Many Deaths of the Black Company

  The child was a lighthearted thing, without a care or concern. Chances were she did not recall what she had eaten for breakfast. She did not remember Narayan but went off to find someone who might.

  “Where was she when I was young enough to get married?” Swan grumbled. “She’ll be pretty when she’s older and she doesn’t have a brain in her head to complicate things.”

  “Buy her. Bring her along. Raise her up right.”

  “I’m not as pretty as I used to be.”

  I tried to think of someone who was. Not even Sahra qualified.

  I waited. Swan muttered. Doj and Gota wandered around, Uncle swapping tales and Mother examining the wares for sale. Except for the produce, those were feeble. She did acquire a scrawny chicken. The one positive of our travel team was that there were no Gunni or Shadar to complicate mealtime. Only Gota, who kept trying to do the cooking. Maybe I could murder the chicken in her sleep and get it roasted before she woke up.

  The girl brought a very old man. He was no help, either. He seemed interested only in telling me what he thought I wanted to hear. But it did seem possible that Narayan had come through the pass some time before we had.

  I hoped Murgen was on the job and had alerted the others to the possibilities.

  Doj and Gota headed on down the road before I finished with the locals, surprised that my command of the language was adequate to the task. Evidently Gota was tired of riding. The donkey certainly could use the break.

  “Is that a pet?” the small girl asked.

  “It’s a donkey,” I said, really astonished that I had been having so little trouble communicating. They had donkeys down here, did they not?

  “I know that. I meant the bird.”

  “Huh! Well.” The white crow was perched on the donkey’s pack. It winked. It laughed. It said, “Sister, sister,” and flapped into the air, then glided on down the mountain.

  Swan said, “I was just thinking I found an upside to this trip. It’s not raining down here.”

  “Maybe I’ll see if they’ll let me have the child. In exchange for your strong back.”

  “We’re getting a little too domestic here, Goodwife … Sleepy? Didn’t you ever have a real name?”

  “Anyanyadir, the Lost Princess of Jaicur. But even now my wicked stepmother has discovered that I still live and has summoned the princes of the rakshasas to bargain with them for my murder. Hey! I’m kidding. I’m Sleepy. And you’ve known me practically since I started being Sleepy, off and on. So just let it be.”

  59

  Once we cleared the mountains, it was no long journey to the site of Kiaulune. Incredible destruction had been wrought there during the Shadowmaster wars, then during the Kiaulune wars between the Radisha and those who chose to keep faith with the Black Company. A pity most of the wreckage had been cleared away even before Soulcatcher decided she could declare victory and go north to claim her new place as Protector of All the Taglias. The Radisha should have seen it at its worst, to understand what she had wrought by betraying her contract with the Company. But the worst now existed only in the memories of survivors. The once-clamorous valley now boasted a sizable town and a checkerboard of new farms peopled by a mixture of natives, former prisoners of war and deserters from every conceivable faction. Peace had broken out and was being enthusiastically exploited on the presumption that it could not possibly last.

  The transition from the old Kiaulune, once called Shadowcatch, and the new, simply called the New Town, saw one thing remain unchanged. Over there on the far slope of the valley, miles and miles away, beyond the crumbled, brush-strewn ruins of once-mighty Overlook, where the land quickly changed from rich green to almost barren brown, was the dreaded thing called the Shadowgate. It did not stand out but I felt its call. I told my companions, “We have to be careful not to get in a hurry now. Haste could be deadly.”

  The Shadowgate was not just the only way we could get up onto the plain to go free the Captured, it was also the only portal through which the shadows imprisoned up there could escape and begin treating the whole world the way their cousins had the destitute of Taglios. And that gate was in tender shape. The Shadowmasters had injured and weakened it badly when gaining access to the shadows they enslaved.

  “We’re in complete agreement on that,” Uncle Doj replied. “All the lore emphasizes the need for caution.”

  There had been some disagreement between us lately. He had resumed his romance with the idea of the Company Annalist becoming his understudy in the peculiar role he played among the Nyueng Bao. The Company Annalist who had no great interest in the job but Doj was one of those people who just have grave difficulties getting their minds around the concept “No!”

  “That’s new,” I said, indicating a small structure a quarter mile below the Shadowgate, beside the road. “And I don’t like its looks.” It was hard to tell from so far but the structure looked like a small fortification built of stone salvaged from the rubble of Overlook.

  Doj grunted. “A potential complication.”

  Swan observed, “We keep standing around looking like spies, somebody’s going to get unpleasant with us.”

  A point not without substance, although those in charge seemed awfully lax. It was obvious that trouble had not visited in a while. Quite probably not since the Black Company left. “Somebody—probably named me, because I’m the only one here who looks like what she says she is—will have to go scout around.” The original plan had been for everybody to camp in the barrens not far downhill from where that new structure now stood.

  I was troubled. Someone should have been watching for us to come out of the mountains. I hoped that was just Sahra’s oversight. She had been married to the Company for an age but never did learn to think like a soldier. If nobody offered good advice, or she chose to ignore the advice she was given because, like many civilians, she could not grasp why all the little horsepuckey things have to be done, she might not have thought it important to watch for us.

  I prayed it was as simple as that.

  Nobody demanded that I give them the role of scout. Poor me. More sore feet while the rest of them loafed around in the shade of young pines.

  The white crow materialized minutes after I turned the knee of a hill and the others were out of sight. It swooped at me and squawked. It swooped at me again. I tried to swat it like it was some huge, really annoying bug. It laughed and came back, now squawking what sounded like words.

  I got it. Finally. The bird wanted me to follow it. “Lead on, fell harbinger, never forgetting that I’m not Gunni and therefore hobbled by no holy ban against eating meat.” I had enjoyed, if that is the proper word, crow stew several times during the lowest lows of my military career.

  The crow had only my interests at heart. It led me straight to a large tent village on a hillside overlooking the near outskirts of the New Town. Our people had to be only some of the refugees housed there but Sahra’s hand was obvious everywhere. The layout was neat and orderly and clean. Exactly as the Captain’s rules insisted, though those are honored mainly in the breech when he is not around.

  I suffered an immediate conflict. Charge ahead to see everyone I had missed for months? Or run back and collect my traveling companions? Once I started grabbing, it might be hours before—

  My choice got made for me. Tobo spotted me.

  My first warning was a shout. “Sleepy!” A mass of churning arms and legs charged in from the left and collected me in a totally unexpected hug.

  I wriggled loose. “You’ve grown.” A lot. He was taller than me now. And his voice had deepened. “You won’t be able to be Shiki anymore. The great men of Taglios will be brokenhearted.”

  “Goblin says it’s time I start breaking the girls’ hearts, anyway.” There was not much doubt that he would have the power to do that. He was going to be a handsome man who had no lack of confidence.

  Uncharacteristically, I slipped an arm around his waist and walked down toward where other familiar faces had
begun to appear. “How was your journey?”

  “Mostly kind of fun, except when they made me study, which was about all the time. Sri Surendranath is worse than Goblin but he says I could be a scholar. So Mother always backs them up whenever anybody wants to make me study. But we got to see a lot of neat things. There was this temple in Praiphurbed that was completely covered with carvings of people doing it all different ways—oh, I’m sorry.” He reddened.

  Tobo had a mental image of me as a sort of chaste nun. And most of my adult life would not contradict that view. But I am not against interpersonal adventures, I am just not interested myself. Probably because, Swan insists, I have not yet run into the man whose animal presence completely overwhelms my intellectual reluctance. Swan being a leading authority in his own mind.

  He keeps volunteering. Who knows? Maybe someday I will become curious enough to experiment, just to find out if I can be touched without running away to my place to hide.

  Now the others were wishing me welcome with a sincerity that set another place inside me, a small, warm place, all aglow. My comrades. My brothers. All kinds of rattle and chatter inundated me. Now we were going to do something. Now we were going to get somewhere. Now we were going to kick some ass if we had to. Sleepy was here to figure it all out and tell everybody where and when to stick the knife.

  “God knows all the secrets and all the jokes,” I said, “and I wish He’d share the secret of the joke that explains why He created such a scruffy bunch of hired killers.” I used a little finger to get rid of a tear before anybody realized that it was not raining. “You guys look pretty fat for having been on the road so long.”

  Somebody said, “Shit, we been here waiting for you for a whole fuckin’ month. Some of us. The slowest ones got here last week.”

  “How’s One-Eye doing?” I asked as Sahra wriggled through the throng.

  “He’s fucked up,” a voice volunteered. “How’d you know…?”

  I exchanged hugs with Sahra. She said, “We were starting to worry.” A question clung to the edge of her statement.

  “Tobo. Your grandmother and Uncle Doj are waiting in the woods back up the road. Run up and tell them to come on down.”

  “Where’re the rest?” somebody demanded.

  “Swan is with them. The rest are behind us somewhere. We broke up into three groups after we reached the highlands. There were crows around. We didn’t want to give them anything obvious to watch.”

  “We did the same thing after we left the barges,” Sahra told me. “Did you see many crows? We saw only a few. They might not have been the Protector’s.”

  “The white one keeps turning up.”

  “We saw it, too. Are you hungry?”

  “You kidding? I’ve been eating your mother’s cooking since we left Jaicur.” I looked around. People were watching who were not Black Company. They might only be refugees, too, but the enthusiasm of my reception was sure to cause talk.

  Sahra laughed. It sounded more like the laughter of relief than that of good humor. “How is Mother?”

  “I think there’s something wrong, Sahra. She’s stopped being nasty, bitter old Ky Gota. Most of the time she’s lost inside herself. And those times when she is completely aware, she almost has manners.”

  “In here.” Sahra lifted a tent flap. It was the largest tent in the encampment. “And Uncle Doj?”

  “A step slower but still Uncle Doj. He wants me to turn Nyueng Bao and be his apprentice. Like I have a lot of free time being Murgen’s apprentice. He says it’s just because he doesn’t have anybody else to pass his responsibilities on to. Whatever they are. He seems to think I should sign on before he tells me what for.”

  “Did you get the Key?”

  “We did. Uncle Doj has it in his pack. But Singh got away. Not unexpectedly. Did he turn up here? We picked up rumors along the way that gave me the idea that he was ahead of us and gaining ground. You do still have the girl?”

  Sahra nodded. “But she’s a handful. I think bringing her south again put her in closer touch with Kina. Common sense tells me we should break our promise and kill her.” She settled on a cushion. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m completely worn out. Keeping these people under control when there’s so little for them to do … it’s a miracle that we haven’t had any major incidents.… I bought a farm.”

  “You what?”

  “I bought a farm. Not far from the Shadowgate. They tell me the soil is lousy, but it’s a place where most of the men can stay out of sight and keep out of trouble and even stay busy building housing or working the ground so we’ll eventually be self-supporting. Half the gang is over there now. Most of these guys here would be, too, except that Murgen said you were going to arrive today. You made good time. We didn’t expect you for several more hours.”

  “Does that mean you’re all caught up on what’s going on in the world outside?”

  “I have a particularly talented husband who doesn’t always share everything with me. And I don’t always share him with the others. And we both probably shouldn’t be that way. There’re a thousand things we need to talk about, Sleepy. I don’t know where to start. So why not just with, how are you?”

  60

  The brotherhood had to begin moving.

  Goblin burst into the tent uninvited and gasped out the news that Murgen said my feted arrival had caught the eyes of official informants and had aroused the suspicions of the local authorities. Those folks had been disinclined to investigate the refugee camp before only due to a complete lack of ambition. I sent Kendo and a dozen men to secure the southern end of the pass through the Dandha Presh, both to guarantee a favorable welcome for those coming down behind me and to help keep anyone from strolling off northward with news about where we were. I sent several small teams off to capture senior officers and officials before they could become organized. There was no real, fixed, solid governmental structure here because the Protector favored the rule of limited anarchy.

  It was obvious that these former Shadowlands, despite their proximity to the glittering plain, were no more than an afterthought to the powers in Taglios. The troubles in the region had been settled with a vengeance. The Great General had won the reputation he had desired. There were few troops and no officials of any renown here now. It looked like a safe, remote province suitable for rusticating human embarrassments deemed not worth exterminating.

  Even so, regionwide, there were many more of them than there were of us and we were out of battle practice ourselves. Brains, speed and ferocity would have to sustain us till we gathered the whole clan and completed preparations to follow the road up the south side of the valley.

  “So, now you’ve had your power fix and you’ve got time to talk, how the hell are you, Sleepy?” Goblin asked. He looked exhausted.

  “Worn to the bone from traveling but still full of vinegar. It’s nice to talk to somebody where I don’t have to lean over backwards to look them in the eye.”

  “Walk in the goddamn door talking that shit. I knew there was a reason I didn’t miss you.”

  “You say the sweetest things. How’s One-Eye?”

  “Getting better. Having Gota here will hurry it up. But he’s never going to be completely right. He’s going to be slow and shaky and have spells where he’ll have trouble remembering what he’s doing. And he’ll always have trouble communicating, especially when he’s excited.”

  I nodded, took a deep breath, said, “And it’s going to happen again, isn’t it?”

  “It could. It often does. It doesn’t have to, though.” He rubbed his forehead. “Headache. I need some sleep. You can drive yourself crazy trying to deal with something like this.”

  “If you need sleep, you’d better get it now. Things are starting to happen. We’ll need you fresh when it gets exciting.”

  “I knew there was another reason I didn’t miss you. You haven’t been here long enough to blow your nose and already people and things are flying all over, getting ready to beat e
ach other in the head.”

  “It’s my perky personality. Think I should visit One-Eye?”

  “Up to you. But he’ll be heartbroken if you don’t. He’s probably already all bent out of shape because you came and saw me first.”

  I asked how to find One-Eye and left Goblin. I noted that refugees not associated with the Company were sneaking out of the camp. There were signs of excitement over in the New Town, too.

  Gota, Doj and Swan were nearing the camp from the uphill side. Tobo larked around them like an excited pup. I wondered where Swan would stand once the real excitement started. He would stay neutral as long as he could, probably.

  “You look better than I expected,” I told One-Eye, who was actually doing something when I ducked into his tent. “That spear? I thought you lost it ages ago.” The weapon in question was an elaborately carved and decorated artifact of extreme magical potency that he had begun crafting back during the siege of Jaicur. Its designated target then had been the Shadowmaster Shadowspinner. Later, he had continued improving it so he could use it against Longshadow. That spear was so darkly beautiful that it seemed a sin to use it just to kill someone.

  One-Eye took his time collecting himself. He looked up at me. There was less of him than there was when last I had seen him, and even then he had been just a shell of the One-Eye I remembered from when I was young.

  “No.”

  Just that one word. None of the usual creative invective or accusations and insults. He did not want to embarrass himself. The results of the stroke were more crippling emotionally than physically. He had been master of his surroundings for two hundred years, far beyond the dreams of men, but now he could not count on being able to speak a complete, coherent sentence.

  “I’m here. I’ve got the Key. And things have begun to happen already.”

  One-Eye nodded slowly. I hope he understood. There had been a woman in Jaicur, she was a hundred nineteen when she died, they said. In all my years I never saw her do anything but sit in a chair and drool. She understood nothing anyone said to her. She had to be changed like a baby. She had to be fed like a baby. I did not want that to happen to One-Eye. He was old and cantankerous and a major pain more often than not, but he was a fixture of my universe. He was my brother.