Chronicles of the Black Company

  A hand closed on my shoulder. “Time, Croaker.” The Captain himself was doing the wakeup calls.

  “Yeah. I’m awake.” I had not slept well.

  “Catcher is ready to go.”

  It was still dark out. “Time?”

  “Almost four. He wants to be gone before first light.”

  “Oh.”

  “Croaker? Be careful out there. I want you back,”

  “Sure, Captain. You know I don’t take chances. Captain? Why me and Raven, anyway?” Maybe he would tell me now.

  “He says the Lady calls it a reward.”

  “No shit? Some reward.” I felt around for my boots as he moved to the door. “Captain? Thanks.”

  “Sure.” He knew I meant thanks for caring.

  Raven stuck his head in as I was lacing my jerkin. “Ready?”

  “One minute. Cold out there?”

  “Nippy.”

  “Take a coat?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt. Mail shirt?” He touched my chest.

  “Yeah.” I pulled my coat on, picked up the bow I was taking, bounced it on my palm. For an instant Goblin’s amulet lay cool on my breastbone. I hoped it would work.

  Raven cracked a smile. “Me too.”

  I grinned back. “Let’s go get them.”

  Soulcatcher was waiting on the court where we had practiced our archery. He was limned by light from the company mess. The bakers were hard at work already. Catcher stood at a stiff parade rest, a bundle under his left arm. He stared toward the Forest of Cloud. He wore only leathers and morion. Unlike some of the Taken, he seldom carries weapons. He prefers relying on his thau-maturgic skills.

  He was talking to himself. Weird stuff. “Want to see him go down. Been waiting four hundred years.” “We can’t get that close. He’ll smell us coming.” “Put aside all Power.” “Oh! That’s too risky!” A whole chorus of voices got into the act. It got really spooky when two of them talked at once.

  Raven and I exchanged glances. He shrugged. Catcher did not faze him. But, then, he grew up in the Lady’s dominions. He has seen all the Taken. Soulcatcher is supposedly one of the least bizarre.

  We listened for a few minutes. It did not get any saner out. Finally, Raven growled, “Lord? We’re ready.” He sounded a little shaky.

  I was beyond speech myself. All I could think of was a bow, an arrow, and a job I was expected to do. I rehearsed the draw, release, and flight of my shaft over and over again. Unconsciously, I rubbed Goblin’s gift. I would catch myself doing that often.

  Soulcatcher shuddered like a wet dog, drew himself together. Without looking at us, he gestured, said, “Come,” and started walking.

  Raven turned. He yelled, “Darling, you get back in there like I told you. Go on now”

  “How is she supposed to hear you?” I asked, looking back at the child watching from a shadowed doorway.

  “She won’t. But the Captain will. Go on now.” He gestured violently. The Captain appeared momentarily. Darling vanished. We followed Soulcatcher. Raven muttered to himself. He worried about the child.

  Soulcatcher set a brisk pace, out of the compound, out of Lords itself, across fields, never looking back. He led us to a large woodlot several bowshots from the wall, to a glade at the lot’s heart. There, on the bank of a creek, lay a ragged carpet stretched on a crude wooden frame about a foot high and six feet by eight. Soulcatcher said something. The carpet twitched, wriggled a little, stretched itself taut.

  “Raven, you sit here.” Catcher indicated the right hand corner nearest us. “Croaker, over here.” He indicated the left corner.

  Raven placed a foot on the carpet gingerly, seemed surprised that the works did not collapse.

  “Sit down.” Soulcatcher placed him just so, with his legs crossed and his weapons lying beside him near the carpet’s edge. He did the same with me. I was suprised to find the carpet rigid. It was like sitting on a tabletop. “It’s imperative that you don’t move around,” Catcher said, wriggling himself into position ahead of us, centered a foot forward of the carpet’s midline. “If we don’t stay balanced, we fall off. Understand?”

  I did not, but I agreed with Raven when he said yes.

  “Ready?”

  Raven said yes again. I guess he knew what was happening. I was taken by surprise.

  Soulcatcher laid his hands out palms upward beside him, said a few strange words, raised his hands slowly. I gasped, leaned. The ground was receding.

  “Sit still!” Raven snarled. “You trying to kill us?”

  The ground was only six feet down. Then. I straightened up and went rigid. But I did turn my head enough to check a movement in the brush.

  Yes. Darling. With her mouth an O of amazement. I faced forward, gripped my bow so tightly I thought I would crush handprints into it. I wished I dared finger my amulet. “Raven, did you make arrangements for Darling? In case, you know.…”

  “The Captain will look out for her.”

  “I forgot to fix it with somebody for the Annals.”

  “Don’t be so optimistic,” he said sarcastically. I shivered uncontrollably.

  Soulcatcher did something. We started gliding over the treetops. Chill air whispered past us. I glanced over the side. We were a good five stories high and climbing.

  The stars twisted overhead as Catcher changed course. The wind rose till we seemed to be flying into the face of a gale. I leaned farther and farther forward, afraid it would push me off. There was nothing behind me but several hundred feet and an abrupt stop. My fingers ached from gripping my bow.

  I have learned one thing, I told myself. How Catcher manages to show up so fast when he is always so far from the action when we get in touch.

  It was a silent journey. Catcher stayed busy doing whatever it was he did to make his steed fly. Raven closed in on himself. So did I, I was scared silly. My stomach was in revolt. I do not know about Raven.

  The stars began to fade. The eastern horizon lightened. The earth materialized below us. I chanced a look. We were over the Forest of Cloud. A little more light. Catcher grunted, considered the east, then the distances ahead. He seemed to listen for a moment, then nodded.

  The carpet raised its nose. We climbed. The earth rocked and dwindled till it looked like a map. The air became ever more chill. My stomach remained rebellious.

  Way off to our left I glimpsed a black scar on the forest. It was the encampment we had overrun. Then we entered a cloud and Catcher slowed our rush.

  “We’ll drift a while,” he said. “We’re thirty miles south of the Limper. He’s riding away from us. We’re overtaking him fast. When we’re almost up to where he might detect me, we’ll go down.” He used the businesslike female voice.

  I started to say something. He snapped, “Be quiet, Croaker. Don’t distract me.”

  We stayed in that cloud, unseen and unable to see, for two hours. Then Catcher said, “Time to go down. Grip the frame members and don’t let go. It may be a little unsettling.”

  The bottom fell out. We went down like a stone dropped from a cliff. The carpet began to rotate slowly, so the forest seemed to turn below us. Then it began to slide back and forth like a feather falling. Each time it tilted my way I thought I would tumble over the side.

  A good scream might have helped, but you could not do that in front of characters like Raven and Soulcatcher.

  The forest kept getting closer. Soon I could distinguish individual trees … when I dared to look. We were going to die. I knew we were going to smash right down through the forest canopy fifty feet into the earth.

  Catcher said something. I did not catch it. He was talking to his carpet anyway. The rocking and spinning gradually stopped. Our descent slowed. The carpet nosed down slightly and began to glide forward. Eventually Catcher took us below treetop level, into the aisle over a river. We scooted along a dozen feet above the water, with Soulcatcher laughing as birds scattered in panic.

  He brought us to earth in a glen beside the river. “Off and stre
tch,” he told us. After we had loosened up, he said, “The Limper is four miles north of us. He’s reached the meeting place. You’ll go on from here without me. He’ll detect me if I get any closer. I want your badges. He can detect those too.”

  Raven nodded, surrendered his badge, strung his bow, nocked an arrow, pulled back, relaxed. I did the same. It settled my nerves.

  I was so grateful to be on the ground I could have kissed it.

  “The bole on the big oak.” Raven pointed across the river. He let fly. His shaft struck a few inches off center. I took a deep, relaxing breath, followed suit. My shaft struck an inch nearer center, “Should have bet me that time,” he remarked. To Catcher, “We’re ready.”

  I added, “We’ll need more specific directions.”

  “Follow the river bank. There are plenty of game trails. The going shouldn’t be hard. No need to hurry anyway. Whisper shouldn’t be there for hours yet.”

  “The river heads west,” I observed.

  “It loops back. Follow it for three miles, then turn a point west of north and go straight through the woods.” Catcher crouched and cleared the leaves and twigs off some bare earth, used a stick to sketch a map. “If you reach this bend, you’ve gone too far.”

  Then Catcher froze. For a long minute he listened to something only he could hear. Then he resumed, “The Lady says you’ll know you’re close when you reach a grove of huge evergreens. It was the holy place of a people who died out before the Domination. The Limper is waiting at the center of the grove.”

  “Good enough,” Raven said.

  I asked, “You’ll wait here?”

  “Have no fear, Croaker.”

  I took another of my relaxing breaths. “Let’s go, Raven.”

  “One second, Croaker,” Soulcatcher said. He retrieved something from his bundle. It proved to be an arrow. “Use this.”

  I eyed it uncertainly, then placed it in my quiver.

  Raven insisted on leading. I did not argue. I was a city boy before I joined the Company. I cannot become comfortable with forests. Especially not woods the size of the Forest of Cloud. Too much quiet. Too much solitude. Too easy to get lost. For the first two miles I worried more about finding my way back than I did about the coming encounter. I spent a lot of time memorizing landmarks.

  Raven did not speak for an hour. I was busy thinking myself. I did not mind.

  He raised a hand. I stopped. “Far enough, I think,” he said. “We go that way now.”

  “Uhm.”

  “Let’s rest.” He settled on a huge tree root, his back against a trunk. “Awful quiet today, Croaker.”

  “Things on my mind.”

  “Yeah,” He smiled. “Like what kind of reward we’re set up for?”

  “Among other things.” I drew out the arrow Catcher had given me. “You see this?”

  “A blunt head?” He felt it. “Soft, almost. What the hell?”

  “Exactly. Means I’m not supposed to kill her.”

  There was no question of who would let fly at whom. The Limper was Raven’s all the way.

  “Maybe. But I’m not going to get killed trying to take her alive,”

  “Me either. That’s what’s bothering me. Along with about ten other things, like why the Lady really picked you and me, and why she wants Whisper alive.… Oh, the hell with it. It’ll give me ulcers.”

  “Ready?”

  “I guess.”

  We left the riverbank. The going became more difficult, but soon we crossed a low ridgeline and reached the edge of the evergreens. Not much grew beneath them. Very little sunlight leaked through their boughs. Raven paused to urinate. “Won’t be any chance later,” he explained.

  He was right. You do not want that sort of problem when you are in ambush a stone’s throw from an unfriendly Taken.

  I was getting shaky. Raven laid a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll be okay,” he promised. But he did not believe it himself. His hand was shaky too.

  I reached inside my jerkin and touched Goblin’s amulet. It helped.

  Raven raised an eyebrow. I nodded. We resumed walking. I chewed a strip of jerky, which burned off nervous energy. We did not speak again.

  There were ruins among the trees. Raven examined the glyphs incised in the stones. He shrugged. They meant nothing to him.

  Then we came to the big trees, the grandfathers of those through which we had been passing. They towered hundreds of feet high and had trunks as thick as the spans of two men’s arms. Here and there, the sun thrust swords of light down through the boughs. The air was thick with resin smells. The silence was overwhelming. We moved one step at a time, making sure our footfalls sent no warnings ahead.

  My nervousness peaked out, began to fade. It was too late to run, too late to change my mind. My brain cancelled all emotion. Usually that only happened when I was forced to treat casualties while people were killing one another all around me.

  Raven signalled a halt. I nodded. I had heard it too. A horse snorting. Raven gestured for me to stay put. He eased to our left, keeping low, and disappeared behind a tree about fifty feet away.

  He reappeared in a minute, beckoned. I joined him. He led me to a spot from which I could look into an open area. The Limper and his horse were there.

  The clearing was maybe seventy feet long by fifty wide. A tumble of crumbling stone stood at its center. The Limper sat on one fallen rock and leaned against another. He seemed to be sleeping. One corner of the clearing was occupied by the trunk of a fallen giant that had not been down long. It showed very little weathering.

  Raven tapped the back of my hand, pointed. He wanted to move on,

  I did not like moving now that we had the Limper in sight. Each step meant another chance to alert the Taken to his peril. But Raven was right. The sun was dropping in front of us. The longer we stayed put, the worse the light would become. Eventually, it would be in our eyes.

  We moved with exaggerated care. Of course. One mistake and we were dead. When Raven glanced back I saw sweat on his temples.

  He stopped, pointed, smiled. I crept up beside him. He pointed again.

  Another fallen tree lay ahead. This one was about four feet in diameter. It looked perfect for our purpose. It was big enough to hide us, low enough to let fly over. We found a spot providing a clean aisle of fire to the heart of the clearing.

  The light was good, too. Several spears broke through the canopy and illuminated most of the clearing. There was a little haze in the air, pollen perhaps, which made the beams stand out. I studied the clearing for several minutes, imprinting it on my mind. Then I sat behind the log and pretended I was a rock. Raven took the watch.

  It seemed weeks passed before anything happened.

  Raven tapped my shoulder. I looked up. He made a walking motion with two fingers. The Limper was up and prowling. I rose carefully, watched.

  The Limper circled the pile of stones a few times, bad leg dragging, then sat down again. He picked up a twig and broke it into small pieces, tossing each at some target only he could see. When the twig was gone, he scooped up a handful of small cones and threw them lazily. Portrait of a man killing time.

  I wondered why he had come on horseback. He could get places fast when he wanted. I supposed because he had been close by. Then I worried that some of his troops might show up.

  He got up and walked around again, collecting cones and chucking them at the fallen behemoth across the clearing. Damned, but I wished we could take him then, and have done.

  The Limper’s mount’s head jerked up. The animal whickered. Raven and I sank down, crushed ourselves into the shadows and needles beneath our trunk. A crackling tension radiated from the clearing.

  A moment later I heard hooves crunching needles. I held my breath. From the corner of my eye I caught flickers of a white horse moving among the trees. Whisper? Would she see us?

  Yes and no. Thank whatever gods there are, yes and no. She passed within fifty feet without noticing us.

  The Limp
er called something. Whisper replied in a melodious voice that did not at all fit the wide, hard, homely woman I had seen pass. She sounded seventeen and gorgeous, looked forty-five and like she had been around the world three times.

  Raven prodded me gently.

  I rose about as fast as a flower blooms, scared they would hear my sinews crackle. We peeped over the fallen tree. Whisper dismounted and took one of the Limper’s hands in both of hers.

  The situation could not have been more perfect. We were in shadow, they were fixed in a shaft of sunlight. Golden dust sparkled around them. And they were restricting one another by holding hands.

  It had to be now. We both knew it, both bent our bows. We both had additional arrows gripped against our weapons, ready to be snapped to our strings. “Now,” Raven said.

  My nerves did not bother me till my arrow was in the air. Then I went cold and shaky.

  Raven’s shaft went in under the Limper’s left arm. The Taken made a sound like a rat getting stomped. He arched away from Whisper.

  My shaft smashed against Whisper’s temple. She was wearing a leather helmet, but I was confident the impact would down her. She spun away from the Limper.

  Raven sped a second arrow, I fumbled mine. I dropped my bow and vaulted over the log. Raven’s third arrow whistled past me.

  Whisper was on her knees when I arrived. I kicked her in the head, whirled to face the Limper. Raven’s arrows had struck home, but even his special shaft had not ended the Taken’s story. He was trying to growl out a spell through a throat filled with blood. I kicked him too.

  Then Raven was there with me. I spun back to Whisper.

  That bitch was as tough as her reputation. Woozy as she was, she was trying to get up, trying to draw her sword, trying to mouth a spell. I scrambled her brains again, got rid of her blade. “I didn’t bring any cord,” I gasped. “You bring any cord, Raven?”

  “No.” He just stood there staring at the Limper. The Taken’s battered leather mask had slipped sideways. He was trying to straighten it so he could see who we were.

  “How the hell am I going to tie her up?”

  “Better worry about gagging her first.” Raven helped the Limper with his mask, smiling that incredibly cruel smile he gets when he is about to cut a special throat.