Chronicles of the Black Company

  Needless to say, all the whoop and holler drew an audience. Laughter ripped out of us old hands, long familiar with this endless duel. It spread to the others once they realized this was not sorcery run amok.

  Goblin’s red-bottomed ghosts sprouted roots and refused to be tumbled. They grew into huge, drooling-mawed carnivorous plants fit to inhabit the crudest jungle of nightmare. Clickety-clackety-crunch, all across the slope, carapaces broke between closing vegetable jaws. That spine-shaking, tooth-grinding feeling you get when you crunch a big cockroach slithered across the slopes, magnified a thousand times, birthing a plague of shudders. For a moment even One-Eye remained motionless.

  I glanced around. The Captain had come to watch. He betrayed a satisfied smile. It was a precious gem, that smile, rarer than roc’s eggs. His companions, regular officers and Guards captains, appeared baffled.

  Someone took up position beside me, at an intimate, comradely distance. I glanced sideways, found myself shoulder to shoulder with Soulcatcher. Or elbow to shoulder. The Taken does not stand very tall.

  “Amusing, yes?” he said in one of his thousand voices.

  I nodded nervously.

  One-Eye shuddered all over, jumped high in the air again, wailed and howled, then went down kicking and flopping like a man with the falling sickness.

  The surviving beetles rushed together, zip-zap, clickety-clack, into two seething piles, clacking their mandibles angrily, scraping against one another chitinously. Brown smog wriggled from the piles in thick ropes, twisted and joined, became a curtain concealing the frenzied bugs. The smoke contracted into globules which bounced, bounding higher after each contact with the earth. Then they did not come down, but rather drifted on the breeze, sprouting what grew into gnarly digits.

  What we had here were replicas of One-Eye’s horny paws a hundred times life size. Those hands went weed-plucking through Goblin’s monster garden, ripping his plants up by the roots, knotting their stems together in elegant, complicated sailor’s knots, forming an ever-elongating braid.

  “They do have more talent than one would suspect,” Soulcatcher observed. “But so wasted on frivolity.”

  “I don’t know.” I gestured. The show was having an invigorating effect on morale. Feeling a breath of that boldness which animates me at odd moments, I suggested, “This is a sorcery they can appreciate, unlike the oppressive, bitter wizardries of the Taken.”

  Catcher’s black morion faced me for a few seconds, I imagined fires burning behind the narrow eyeslits. Then a girlish giggle slipped forth. “You’re right. We’re so filled with doom and gloom and brooding and terror we infect whole armies. One soon forgets the emotional panorama of life.”

  How odd, I thought. This was a Taken with a chink in its armor, a Soulcatcher drawing aside one of the veils concealing its secret being. The Annalist in me caught the scent of a tale and began to bay.

  Catcher sidestepped me as though reading my thoughts. “You had a visitation last night?”

  The Annalist-hound’s voice died in midcry. “I had a strange dream. About the Lady.”

  Catcher chuckled, a deep, bass rumble. That constant changing of voices can rattle the most stolid of men. It put me on the defensive. His very comrade-liness, too, disturbed me.

  “I think she favors you, Croaker. Some little thing about you has captured her imagination, just as she has caught yours. What did she have to say?”

  Something way back told me to be careful. Catcher’s query was warm and offhand, yet there was a hidden intensity there which said that the question was not at all casual.

  “Just reassurances,” I replied. “Something about the Stair of Tear not being all that critical in her scheme. But it was only a dream.”

  “Of course.” He seemed satisfied. “Only a dream.” But the voice was the female one he used when he was most serious.

  The men were oohing and ahing. I turned to check the progress of the contest.

  Goblin’s skein of pitcher-plants had transmogrified into a huge airborne man-of-war jellyfish. The brown hands were entangled in its tentacles, trying to tear themselves free. And over the cliff face, observing, floated a giant pink face, bearded, surrounded by tangled orange hair. One eye was halt” closed, sleepily, by a livid scar. I frowned, baffled. “What’s that?” I knew it was not any doing of Goblin’s or One-Eye’s, and wondered if Silent had joined the game, just to show them up.

  Soulcatcher made a sound that was a creditable imitation of a bird’s dying squawk. “Harden,” he said, and whirled to face the Captain, bellowing, “To arms. They come.”

  In seconds men were flying toward their positions. The last hints of the struggle between Goblin and One-Eye became misty tatters floating on the wind, drifting toward the leering Harden face, giving it a loathsome case of acne where they touched. A cute fillip, I thought, but don’t try to take him heads up, boys. He won’t play games.

  The answer to our scramble was a lot of horn-blowing from below, and a grumble of drums which echoed in the canyons like distant thunder.

  The Rebel poked at us all day, but it was obvious that he was not serious, that he was just prodding the hornets’ nest to see what would happen. He was well aware of the difficulty of storming the Stair.

  All of which portended Harden having something nasty up his sleeve.

  Overall, though, the skirmishes boosted morale. The men began to believe there was a chance they could hold.

  Though the comet swam among the stars, and a galaxy of campfires speckled the Stair below, the night gave the lie to my feeling that the Stair was the heart of war, I sat on an outcrop overlooking the enemy, knees up under my chin, musing on the latest news from the east. Whisper was besieging Frost now, after having finished Trinket’s army and having defeated Moth and Sidle among the talking menhirs of the Plain of Fear. The east looked a worse disaster for the Rebel than was the north for us.

  It could get worse here. Moth and Sidle and Linger had joined Harden. Others of the Eighteen were down there, as yet unidentified. Our enemies did smell blood.

  I have never seen the northern auroras, though I am told we would have gotten glimpses had we held Oar and Deal long enough to have wintered there. The tales I have heard about those gentle, gaudy lights make me think they are the only thing to compare with what took shape over the canyons, as the Rebel campfires dwindled. Long, long, thin banners of tenuous light twisted up toward the stars, shimmering, undulating like seaweed in a gentle current. Soft pinks and greens, yellows and blues, beautiful hues. A phrase leapt into my mind. An ancient name. The Pastel Wars.

  The Company fought in the Pastel Wars, long, long ago. I tried to recall what the Annals said about those conflicts. It would not all come to the fore, but I remembered enough to become frightened. I hurried toward the officers’ compound, seeking Soulcatcher.

  I found him, and told him what I remembered, and he thanked me for my concern, but said he was familiar with both the Pastel Wars and the Rebel cabal sending up these lights. We had no worries. This attack had been anticipated and the Hanged Man was here to abort it.

  “Take yourself a seat somewhere, Croaker. Goblin and One-Eye put on their show. Now it’s the turn of the Ten.” He oozed a confidence both strong and malignant, so that I supposed the Rebel had fallen into some Taken trap.

  I did as he suggested, venturing back out to my lonely watchpost. Along the way I passed through a camp aroused by the growing spectacle, A murmur of fear ran hither and yon, rising and falling like the mutter of distant surf.

  The colored streamers were stronger now, and there was a frenetic jerkiness to their movements which suggested a thwarted will. Maybe Catcher was right. Maybe this would come to nothing but a flashy show for the troops.

  I resumed my perch. The canyon bottom no longer twinkled. It was a sea of ink down there, not at all softened by the glow of the writhing streamers. But if nothing could be seen, plenty could be heard. The acoustics of the land were remarkable.

  Harden
was on the move. Only the advance of his entire army could generate so much metallic rattle and tinkle.

  Harden and his henchmen were confident too.

  A soft green light banner floated up into the night, fluttering lazily, like a streamer of tissue in an updraft. It faded as it rose, and disintegrated into dying sparks high overhead.

  What snipped it loose? I wondered. Harden or the Hanged Man? Did this bode good or ill?

  It was a subtle contest, almost impossible to follow. It was like watching superior fencers duel. You could not follow everything unless you were an expert yourself. Goblin and One-Eye had gone at it like a couple of barbarians with broadswords, comparatively speaking.

  Little by little, the colorful aurora died. That had to be the doing of the Hanged Man. The unanchored light banners did us no harm.

  The racket below got closer.

  Where was Stormbringer? We had not heard from him for a while. This seemed an ideal time to gift the Rebel with miserable weather.

  Catcher, too, seemed to be lying down on the job. In all the time we have been in service to the Lady we have not seen him do anything really dramatic. Was he less mighty than his reputation, or, perhaps, saving himself for some extremity only he foresaw?

  Something new was happening below. The canyon walls had begun to glow in stripes and spots, a deep, deep red that was barely noticeable at first. The red became brighter. Only after patches began to drip and ooze did I notice the hot draft riding up the cliff face.

  “Great gods,” I murmured, stricken. Here was a deed worthy of my expectations of the Taken.

  Stone began to grumble and roar as molten rock ran away and left mountainsides undermined. There were cries from below, the cries of the hopeless who see doom coming and can do nothing to stay or evade it. Harden’s men were being cooked and crushed.

  They were in the witch’s cauldron for sure, but something made me uneasy anyway. There seemed to be too little yelling for a force the size of Harden’s.

  In spots the rock became so hot it caught fire. The canyon expelled a furious updraft. The wind howled over the hammering of falling rocks. The light grew bright enough to betray Rebel units climbing the switchbacks.

  Too few, I thought.… A lonely figure on another outcrop caught my eye. One of the Taken, though in the shifting, uncertain light I could not be certain which. It was nodding to itself as it observed the enemy’s travails.

  The redness, the melting, the collapsing and burning spread till the whole panorama was veined with red and poked with bubbling pools.

  A drop of moisture hit my cheek. I looked up, startled, and a second fat drop smacked the bridge of my nose.

  The stars had vanished. The spongy bellies of fat grey clouds raced overhead, almost low enough to touch, garishly tinted by the hellscape below.

  The bellies of the clouds opened over the canyon. Caught on the edge of the downpour, I was nearly beaten to my knees. Out there it was more savage.

  Rain hit molten rock. The roar of steam was deafening. Particolored, it stormed toward the sky. The fringe I caught, as I turned to run, was hot enough to redden patches of skin.

  Those poor Rebel fools, I thought. Steamed like lobsters.…

  I had been dissatisfied because I had seen little spectacular from the Taken? Not anymore. I had trouble keeping my supper down as I reflected on the cold, cruel calculation that had gone into the planning of this.

  I suffered one of those crises of conscience familiar to every mercenary, and which few outside the profession understand. My job is to defeat my employer’s enemies. Usually any way I can. And heaven knows the Company has served some blackhearted villains. But there was something wrong about what was happening below. In retrospect, I think we all felt it. Perhaps it sprang from a misguided sense of solidarity with fellow soldiers dying without an opportunity to defend themselves.

  We do have a sense of honor in the Company.

  The roar of downpour and steam faded. I ventured back to my vantage point. Except for small patches, the canyon was dark. I looked for the Taken I had seen earlier. He was gone.

  Above, the comet came out from behind the last clouds, marring the night like a tiny, mocking smile. It had a distinct bend in its tail. Over on the saw-toothed horizon, a moon took a cautious peek at the tortured land.

  Horns blared in that direction, their tinny voices distinctly edged with panic. They gave way to a distant muddled sound of fighting, an uproar which swelled rapidly. The fighting sounded heavy and confused. I started toward my makeshift hospital, confident there would be work for me soon. For some reason I was not particularly startled or upset.

  Messengers dashed past me, zipping around purposefully. The Captain had done that much with those stragglers. He had restored their senses of order and discipline.

  Something whooshed overhead. A seated man riding a dark rectangle swooped through the moonlight, banking toward the uproar. Soulcatcher on his flying carpet.

  A bright violet shell flared around him. His carpet rocked violently, slid sideways for a dozen yards. The light faded, shrank in upon him and vanished, leaving me with spots before my eyes. I shrugged, tramped on up the hill.

  The early casualties beat me to the hospital. In a way, I was pleased. That indicated efficiency and retention of cool heads under fire. The Captain had worked wonders.

  The clatter of companies moving through the darkness confirmed my suspicion that this was more than a nuisance attack by men who seldom dared the dark. (The night belongs to the Lady.) Somehow, we had been flanked.

  “About damned time you showed your ugly face,” One-Eye growled. “Over there. Surgery. I had them start setting up lights.”

  I washed and got to it. The Lady’s people joined me, and pitched in heroically, and for the first time since we had taken the commission I felt I was doing the wounded some good.

  But they just kept pouring in. The clangor continued to rise. Soon it was evident that the Rebel’s canyon thrust had been but a feint. All that showy drama had been to little purpose.

  Dawn was coloring the sky when I glanced up and found a tattered Soulcatcher facing me. He looked like he had been roasted over a slow fire, and basted in something bluish, greenish, and nasty. He exuded a smoky aroma.

  “Start loading your wagons, Croaker,” he said in his businesslike female voice. “The Captain is sending you a dozen helpers.”

  All the transport, including that come up from the south, was parked above my open-air hospital. I glanced that way. A tall, lean, crooked-necked individual was harrassing the teamsters into hitching up. “The battle going sour?” I asked. “Caught you by surprise, didn’t they?”

  Catcher ignored the latter remark. “We have achieved most of our goals. Only one task remains unfulfilled.” The voice he chose was deep, sonorous, slow, a speechmaker’s voice. “The fighting may go either way. It’s too soon to tell. Your Captain has given this rabble backbone. But lest defeat catch you up, get your charges moving.”

  A few wagons were creaking down toward us already. I shrugged, passed the word, found the next man who needed my attention. While I worked, I asked Catcher, “If the thing is in the balance, shouldn’t you be over there pounding on the Rebel?”

  “I’m doing the Lady’s bidding, Croaker. Our goals are almost met. Linger and Moth are no more. Sidle is grievously injured. Shifter has accomplished his deceit. There is naught left but to deprive the Rebel of their general.”

  I was confused. Divergent thoughts found their ways to my tongue and betrayed themselves. “But shouldn’t we try to break them here?” And, “This northern campaign has been hard on the Circle. First Raker, then Whisper. Now Linger and Moth.”

  “With Sidle and Harden to go. Yes. They beat us again and again, and each time it costs them the heart of their strength.” He gazed downhill, toward a small company coming our way. Raven was in the lead. Catcher faced the wagon park. The Hanged Man stopped gesturing and struck a pose: man listening.

  Sudde
nly, Soulcatcher resumed talking. “Whisper has breached the walls of Frost. Nightcrawler has negotiated the treacherous menhirs on the Plain of Fear, and approaches the suburbs of Thud. The Faceless is on the Plain now, moving toward Barns. They say Parcel committed suicide last night at Ade, to avoid capture by Bonegnasher. Things aren’t the disaster they seem, Croaker.”

  The hell they aren’t, I thought. That’s the east. This is here. I could not get excited about victories a quarter of the world away. Here we were getting stomped, and if the Rebel broke through to Charm, nothing that happened in the east would matter.

  Raven halted his group and approached me alone. “What do you want them to do?”

  I assumed the Captain had sent him, so was sure the Captain had ordered the withdrawal. He would not play games for Catcher. “Put the ones we’ve treated into the wagons.” The teamsters were arraying themselves in a nice line. “Send a dozen or so walking wounded with each wagon. Me and One-Eye and the rest will keep cutting and sewing. What?”

  He had a look in his eye. I did not like it. He glanced at Soulcatcher. So did I.

  “I haven’t told him yet,” Catcher said.

  “Told me what?” I knew I would not like it when I heard it. They had that nervous smell about them. It screamed bad news.

  Raven smiled. Not a happy smile, but a sort of gruesome rictus. “You and me, we’ve been drafted again, Croaker.”

  “What? Come on! Not again!” I still got the shakes thinking about helping do in the Limper and Whisper

  “You have the practical experience,” Catcher said.

  I kept shaking my head.

  Raven growled, “I have to go, so do you, Croaker. Besides, you’ll want to get it in the Annals, how you took out more of the Eighteen than any of the Taken.”

  “Crap. What am I? A bounty hunter? No. I’m a physician. The Annals and fighting are incidental.”

  Raven told Catcher, “This is the man the Captain had to drag off the line when we were crossing the Windy Country.” His eyes were narrow, his cheeks taut. He did not want to go either. He was displacing his resentment by chiding me.