The Many Deaths of the Black Company

  I had the answer to the question I had addressed to Lady and Tobo.

  People panicked completely. Fireballs flew everywhere, caused far more carnage than mere starving mad shadows. One of those ripped through my Voroshk cloak. The cloak seemed to whine but pulled itself together around me. A shadow hit me. My apparel repelled it, a fact I did not fail to note despite the rising chaos. It also shed the next fireball that found me.

  I saw Lady hit several times, rapidly. I saw one of the Voroshk succumb to shadows.

  I tried to bellow into the madness, to calm them down, but the panic had them all. Even Howler and Lady caught it.

  But Shukrat did keep her wits about her. She crouched in a corner and let her cloak form a barrier impervious to fireballs and shadows alike.

  Men fought to get out the door. Howler loosed a spell that flashed so brightly it blinded everyone not in Voroshk protective clothing, including the little sorcerer himself. His effort did not avail. A moment later he screamed with more enthusiasm than ever he had before his cure.

  “Get out of my way!” Tobo bellowed. He hurled me aside. His father was inside that room.

  Before I regained my feet the tower was creaking under the psychic mass of Tobo’s unseen friends. Their battle with the invisible killers was brief but belated. And, probably, needless, because the fireballs ate shadows alive. Unknown Shadows as well as the traditional lurkers in darkness.

  I did not know if I wanted to get off the floor. It was very still in that other room now, except for Arkana crying. But I had to get up. We had to get moving. The rest of the palace was not silent anymore. An alarm had been sounded. People with sharp instruments would be coming to get us.

  * * *

  It was impossible to tell who was dead, who was dying, and who was only mildly injured. For a while it was too dark.

  I got Tobo to provide another light. Then I started getting the fallen moved back to the tower top. Arkana and Shukrat and Tobo’s hidden allies kept the Palace Guard at bay. I kept my emotions turned off while I lugged bodies. At the moment I could not afford to indulge.

  “How are we going to get these posts and the carpet out of here?” I demanded. Lady, both of the elder Voroshk, Howler, Murgen were all out of action. So were most of the commandos.

  “Shukrat and I can handle the carpet. You and Arkana will have to tow the posts.”

  “You hear that, new daughter?” Minutes earlier I had been about to slap the girl around to crack her shock. But she had solid stuff inside her. She was dragging the dead and injured now, calmer than most of the others.

  “I know. I’ll need something to use for tethers.”

  “Find it fast. I’ll lug bodies.”

  A crossbow bolt buzzed past without doing any harm. An instant later the section of wall whence it had come was shattered rock and boiling flame.

  Tobo was not in a kindly mood.

  I told Arkana, “You get those posts out of here right now. All but mine.” She had gotten some rope from aboard the carpet.

  Good girl, Arkana. She got busy. Like Shukrat, she focused on the task at hand.

  Funny, I thought, how the Company seemed to attract good women.

  The Palace Guards and a surprising number of Greys responded to the alarm. And they refused to be intimidated by Tobo’s violence and by Tobo’s half-seen friends. Brave men, they. There are always brave and honorable men amongst one’s enemies. Missiles filled the air. A few found targets.

  I began to wonder if this would not be a good time to reconsider my lifelong determination never to leave Company people behind.

  But I was incapable of leaving without my wife. And I needed the old Voroshk. Even if they were dead.

  106

  The Palace: View from a High Place

  Mogaba felt no elation as he watched the disaster unfold. In fact, he became more troubled. He could see that there would be survivors. Those people were still strong enough to hold off the Guards and Greys while they evacuated their casualites. That meant that, unless he enjoyed a gargantuan turn of luck and they were all killed by missiles before they could get away, he still faced a final battle.

  He had no tricks left in his bag.

  The shadows had not been completely effective. Which proved what he had suspected for some time. The enemy had a similar force at his disposal. And that force had responded in time to save some of the raiders.

  He watched crossbow bolts, arrows and even javelins bounce off the creatures in the great seething black cloaks. Only one of those people got hurt.

  A fireball’s flare, as the big carpet backed away from the parapet, gave just enough light for Mogaba to distinguish the Lifetaker armor.

  “Lady,” he murmured. Awed.

  That same flash must have reflected off his eyeballs or teeth, betraying him somehow. Because when he glanced at the post riders he found the one in the Widowmaker armor hurling straight at him, black cape expanding to shut out the sky.

  107

  Taglios: Soldiers Live

  I saw Mogaba behind the window. Rage devoured me. I drove straight at him, accelerating. And even as I did some tiny remnant of rationality wondered if what I had glimpsed was real, not my mind seeing what it wanted because I needed somebody else to hurt as much as I had begun to do.

  If the Mogaba I saw was my own creation it vanished before I smashed into the window glazing.

  The glass did not break. It did not yield at all. My post stopped dead. I did not. The post rebounded. I smacked into the glass. Then I bounced back. And fell. I had time for one very enthusiastic howl before I reached the end of my tether, then I was flailing around ten feet below my post.

  The post kept driving forward, kept rebounding. I tried to climb back up but could get nowhere with only one reliable hand. The motion of the post got me swinging like the weight on a pendulum. One end of each swing brought me into intimate contact with the Palace wall.

  The Voroshk cloak protected me well, but unconsciousness eventually came.

  * * *

  I was still dangling when I recovered. The ground was only a few yards below and moving slowly. I seemed to be flying along above the Rock Road, barely clearing the heads of travelers. I tried twisting so I could look up but could not manage. The tether was attached to me in the back, just above my waist. I did not have strength enough to twist around.

  I did have a bit of pain when I struggled.

  I lost consciousness again.

  * * *

  I was back in mankind’s natural state, on the ground, when I wakened again. A pointy hunk of chert was trying to gouge a hole through my back. Somebody said something in one of the dialects of Hsien, then repeated himself in bad Taglian. Arkana materialized overhead, face somber. “You going to live, Pop?”

  “All the aches and pain I’ve got, it’s a sure thing. What happened?”

  “You did something stupid.”

  “What else is new?” a second voice demanded. Sleepy’s face materialized opposite Arkana. “How soon you going to get off your back, part-time? I need some help. This disaster show you guys engineered is about to put us out of business.”

  “Be right with you, Boss. Soon as I get my leg bones unbraided and my feet hooked back onto my ankles.”

  The effort of trying to get up, because I wanted to find my wife, pushed me over into the darkness again.

  * * *

  Rain in my face wakened me the next time. My physical pains had turned to dull aches. They had gotten something into me. Cataloging, I decided I had a lot of bruises but nothing was broken or permanently damaged.

  Just when I started to make an effort to get up I floated upward. After a momentary panic I realized that I was on a litter, being moved in out of the rain. Being lifted onto the litter was what had interrupted my sleep, not those first few misty raindrops.

  I got a better grip this time. I remained rational when Sleepy turned up. “How’s my wife?” I asked, with only a small squeak in my voice.

 
“She’s still alive. But her situation isn’t good. Though it’s better than it would’ve been if she hadn’t been wearing the Voroshk outfit. I’d guess she might recover. If we can get Tobo to stay focused long enough to help.”

  I heard the unspecified offer of a job assignment in there somewhere. “What’s the kid’s problem?”

  “His father got killed. Where were you?”

  I grunted. “I was afraid of that.” Maybe I had tried to shut it out. It was going to hurt.

  Sleepy seemed to think we did not have time for pain.

  I had begun to trust her instincts.

  “You had it right, Croaker. Soldiers live. Only three people got out of that scrape unhurt. Tobo, Arkana and a very lucky soldier named Tam Do Linh. Howler, the First Father, Nashun the Researcher, Murgen and all the other soldiers, didn’t. The rest of you are hurt. Tobo feels guilty. He thinks he should’ve done more. He thinks he should’ve realized it was a trap.”

  “I understand. What about Shukrat?”

  “Bruises and abrasions and emotional distress. The Voroshk clothing took good care of her. It knew her so well it adapted faster than Lady’s could. As I understand it.”

  “Murgen could’ve worn Voroshk protection.” But he had refused. Damn him.

  There had not been much fight in him since Sahra’s disappearance.

  “I want you to straighten Tobo out. We need him back. We need the Unknown Shadows. If I was in Mogaba’s boots I’d have another attack force headed our way already.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “The man doesn’t wait around, Croaker. His gospel is, seize the initiative.”

  I could only make an ass of myself arguing with a woman who had fought the Great General more years than I had known him. Who had lived in Taglios for as many years as I had, much more recently. Evidently I was just another cranky old man raising a fuss for the attention. Except when she needed something. “Then we’d better arrange for it to get really dangerous for him personally if anything happens to any of us.”

  I felt stupid before I finished saying that. For Mogaba there was little chance life would ever be more dangerous than it was already.

  I had forgotten an early lesson. Try to reason like the enemy. Study him until you can think just like him. Until you can become him.

  Sleepy told me, “You need to find yourself an apprentice, too. If you’re going to keep getting involved in lethal stuff.” At your age was implied—until the Captain actually said, “You’re too long in the tooth to be out there right where it’s happening. It’s time you eased up and started passing your secrets along.”

  Sleepy went away, leaving me wondering. Who was I supposed to tap? I was inclined to pick her buttboy, Mihlos Sedona, except that the kid had one huge shortcoming. He was totally illiterate. And I did not have any inclination to put in all the hours needed to alter that condition.

  Then the man I maybe should have been thinking of turned up on his own, voluntarily.

  “Suvrin? What the hell’s gotten into you? You’re going to leave us most any day now.”

  “So perhaps I’ve had an epiphany. Maybe I need to learn the Annals because I’ve decided to face my destiny.”

  “Is that the fragrance of bullshit wafting on the breeze?” Being an old cynic I thought it was more likely that he thought this would somehow get him laid. But I did not suggest anything. I just accepted him, then groaned upon discovering that Sleepy’s wonderfully educated young man neither wrote nor read a single word of Taglian, which has been the language of these Annals for the last twenty-five years.

  Lady’s book was the last written in another language. And Murgen had translated and updated that, along with a couple of my own that had not really needed any polish.

  “Think you can learn to read and write Taglian?” I asked. “You might never need to do either.…”

  “Unless I want to read the Annals. The holy scriptures of the Black Company.”

  “Yeah. If I go, you’ll be on your own unless Sleepy makes time or Lady recovers.” I had had time enough now to put together an act of indifference. But I was not convincing anybody.

  Suvrin stared, waiting for the punchline.

  There was none, really, except that he ought to make an effort to see that I stayed healthy long enough for him to develop the needed skills.

  * * *

  Two days after Suvrin became my understudy Sleepy stage-managed a ceremony that formalized his appointment as Lieutenant of the Black Company and her heir-apparent.

  * * *

  We were outside that big, nameless hilltop stronghold which broods over the Rock Road approach to Taglios. A large plain had been leveled and prepared as a place where troops could camp or could practice the close-order skills necessary for success in battle. Or as a place where forces defending the city could engage an advancing enemy.

  No one bothered us there, other than small Vehdna cavalry bands made up of youths who wanted to show off their courage. But I advised both Sleepy and Suvrin against leaving the stronghold unvanquished behind us.

  Sleepy was no more interested in advice than ever before but these days she did pretend to listen. Her own approach to conquest had been a disaster mitigated only by the fact that a few of us had survived.

  108

  Taglios: Someone at the Door

  Upon reflection, after we beat back a relief sortie by troops from Taglios, the commander of the fortress offered to surrender on terms. He wanted paroles for himself and damned near everyone who ever bore arms in the three nearest counties. Which was not all that unreasonable, I thought, considering we were going to turn all this over to the Prahbrindrah Drah as soon as the deal closed and the Prince could get his ass up here from Ghoja.

  Even after all her years in the real world Sleepy retained some Vehdna notions about right and wrong that had nothing to do with the practicalities of the moment.

  “Even if this Lal Mindrat is the worst human monster since the Shadowmasters themselves, you have to consider what your moral rigidity can cost the rest of us,” I told Sleepy. Evidently Lal Mindrat had betrayed some of our allies during the Kiaulune wars. I had not heard of him before Sleepy started getting uppity so it could not have been a major betrayal.

  A good many friends of the Company had been turned by the Protector in those days. Soulcatcher had had the power and wealth.

  “Be flexible,” I advised. “But treacherous when absolutely necessary.”

  She understood. With some half-ass help from Tobo and his friends, and the appropriate promises of parole and safe passage, Sleepy got our enemies to evacuate the stronghold with no more violence than occurred when Lal Mindrat came out with his lifeguard.

  Thus the Captain finished her business with a minor traitor from her own era. For the time being.

  * * *

  Mogaba made our approach hell, at least for those of us who pulled the recon, picket and vanguard duties. Horsemen never stopped harassing our forward elements. The Voroshk girls and I went out whenever the enemy’s behavior became overly obnoxious.

  Eventually we reached the great South Gate of Taglios, something that had not existed in my time. These days a truly substantial wall stretched into the distance at either hand. The soldiers on the ramparts seemed much too small. The wall reared up like a vast cliff of limestone.

  “Wow!” I told Sleepy. “There’s been some changes made.” The entrance to the city was a fortress in itself, outside the wall but attached to it. I could not tell from the ground for sure but it looked like an equally formidable structure guarded the pass-through from within.

  Sleepy grunted. “Been a few since I was here. Methinks the Great General must have inveigled some appropriations out of the Protector somehow. They’ve added several feet to the height of the wall. And that barbican complex…” She shrugged.

  As I remembered city politics, public works were particularly vulnerable to graft and corrupt practices. “Somebody in the treasury offices must have been
blowing in the Protector’s ear.”

  Sleepy grunted again, uninterested in my opinion. She was watching Suvrin spread the troops out facing the city, offering battle. No response was expected. No response was what he got.

  I said, “They don’t have to be careful of anybody’s property, at least.” More than the immensity of the wall itself, I was awed by the existence of a thousand-foot-wide band of empty ground lapping the wall’s foot. What had it taken to get people moved off that ground? How did the state keep them off?

  “In a few months there’ll be grainfields and vegetable patches as far as you can see. That grid of pathways marks the boundaries of the patches. They started that back right after Sahra and I first came to the city.”

  “Tobo’s going to be a busy boy.”

  Sleepy examined our forces, left and right. They did not appear threatening against the backdrop of the wall. Nor did anyone atop that wall appear concerned.

  “He will. I expect him and the girls to hit hard, with everything they have, right from the start, so people in there will be stunned by the fury of it. Is he going to be able to do it?”

  “I can’t guarantee you his heart’ll be in it.”

  “What about you? Is your heart going to be in it?”

  I heaved a huge sigh.

  Sleepy asked, “How is she doing?”

  Another major sigh. “Honestly? I’m worried. She just lays there, midway between life and death. She gets no better; she gets no worse. I’m starting to wonder how much the Kina connection has to do with all that.”

  It took a major effort to let that out. Because of what the Captain might consider if she grasped all the implications. And she began to see some right away.

  I said, “If I can pull Tobo through his grief he may be able to find out if Kina’s gained any control.” I dreaded the possibility that the Dark Mother was setting my wife up as an alternate route of escape from her ancient prison. I could imagine a scenario wherein I struck the sleeping Goddess and freed Shivetya only to see the darkness return through the woman I love.