Chronicles of the Black Company

  Women paraded toward the spring. There would be a flow all day, unless we interrupted. They had no water source inside the wall.

  My stomach sank. Our infiltrators had started uphill. “Stand ready,” the Lieutenant said.

  “Loosen up,” I suggested. Exercise helps dissipate nervous energy.

  No matter how long you soldier, fear always swells as combat nears. There is always the dread that the numbers will catch up. One-Eye enters every action sure the fates have checked his name off their list.

  The infiltrators exchanged falsetto greetings with the townswomen. They arrived at the gate undiscovered. It was guarded by a single militiaman, a cobbler busy hammering brass nails into the heel of a boot. His halberd was ten feet away.

  Goblin scampered back outside. He clapped his hands overhead. A crack reverberated across the countryside. His arms fell level with his shoulders, palms up. A rainbow arced between his hands.

  “Always has to ham it up,” One-Eye grumbled. Goblin did a jig.

  The patrol swept forward. The women at the spring screamed and scattered. Wolves jumping into a sheepfold, I thought. We ran hard. My pack hammered my kidneys. After two hundred yards I was stumbling over my bow. Younger men began passing me.

  I reached the gate unable to whip a grandmother. Lucky for me, the grandmas were goofing off. The men swept through the town. There was no resistance.

  We who were to tackle Feather and Journey hastened to the tiny citadel. That was no better defended. The Lieutenant and I followed One-Eye, Silent, and Goblin inside.

  We encountered no resistance below the top level. There, incredibly, the newlyweds were still entangled in sleep. One-Eye brushed their guards aside with a terrifying illusion. Goblin and Silent shattered the door to the lovenest.

  We stormed inside. Even sleepy, baffled, and frightened, they were feisty. They bruised several of us good before we got gags into their mouths and bonds onto their wrists.

  The Lieutenant told them, “We’re supposed to bring you back alive. That don’t mean we can’t hurt you some. Come quiet, do what you’re told, and you’ll be all right.” I halfway expected him to sneer, twirl the end of his mustache, and punctuate with evil laughter. He was clowning, assuming the villain’s role the Rebel insists we play.

  Feather and Journey would give us all the trouble they could. They knew the Lady hadn’t sent us to bring them round for tea.

  Halfway back to friendly territory. On our bellies on a hilltop, studying an enemy encampment. “Big,” I said. “Twenty-five, thirty thousand men.” It was one of six such camps on an arc bending north and west of Charm.

  “They sit on their hands much longer, they’re in trouble,” the Lieutenant said.

  They should have attacked immediately after the Stair of Tear, But the loss of Harden, Sidle, Moth, and Linger had set lesser captains to squabbling over supreme command. The Rebel offensive had stalled. The Lady had regained her balance.

  Her patrols-in-force now harassed Rebel foragers, exterminated collaborators, scouted, destroyed everything the enemy might find useful. Despite vastly superior numbers, the Rebel’s stance was becoming defensive. Every day in camp sapped his psychological momentum.

  Two months ago our morale was lower than a snake’s butt. Now it was on the rebound. If we made it back it would soar. Our coup would stun the Rebel movement.

  If we made it back.

  We lay motionless upon steep lichened limestone and dead leaves. The creek below chuckled at our predicament Shadows of naked trees stippled us. Low-grade spells by One-Eye and his cohorts further camouflaged us. The smell of fear and of sweaty horses taunted my nostrils. From the road above came the voices of Rebel cavalrymen. I could not understand their tongue. They were arguing, though.

  Scattered with undisturbed leaves and twigs, the road had looked unpa-trolled. Weariness had overcome our caution. We had decided to follow it. Then we had rounded a turn and found ourselves facing a Rebel patrol across the meadowed valley into which the creek below flowed.

  They were cursing our disappearance. Several dismounted and urinated down the bank.…

  Feather started thrashing.

  Damn! I screamed inside. Damn! Damn! I knew it!

  The Rebels yammered and lined the edge of the road.

  I smacked the woman’s temple. Goblin clipped her from the other side. Quick-thinking Silent wove nets of spell with tentacle-limber fingers dancing close to his chest.

  A ragged bush shivered. A fat old badger waddle-ran down the bank and crossed the creek, vanishing into a dense stand of poplars.

  Cursing, the Rebels threw rocks. They clattered like dropped stoneware as they skipped off boulders in the streambed. The soldiers stamped around telling one another we had to be nearby. We could not have gotten much farther on foot. Logic might undo the best efforts of our wizards.

  I was scared with a knee-knocking, hand-shaking, gut-emptying kind of fear. It had built steadily, through too many narrow escapes. Superstition told me my odds were getting too long.

  So much for that earlier gust of refreshed morale. The unreasoning fear betrayed it for the illusion it was. Beneath its patina I retained the defeatist attitude brought down from the Stair of Tear. My war was over and lost. All I wanted to do was run.

  Journey showed signs of getting frisky too. My glare was fierce. He subsided.

  A breeze stirred the dead leaves. The sweat on my body chilled. My fear cooled somewhat.

  The patrol remounted. Still fussing, they rode on up the road. I watched them come into sight where the way curled eastward with the canyon. They wore scarlet tabards over good link mail. Their helmets and arms were of excellent quality. The Rebel was getting prosperous. They had started out as a rabble armed with tools.

  “We could have taken them,” someone said.

  “Stupid!” the Lieutenant snapped. “Right now they aren’t sure who they saw. If we fought, they would know.”

  We did not need the Rebel getting a line on us this close to home. There was no room for maneuvering.

  The man who had spoken was one of the stragglers we had accumulated during the long retreat. “Brother, you better learn one thing if you want to stick with us. You fight when there ain’t no other choice. Some of us would have gotten hurt too, you know.”

  He grunted.

  “They’re out of sight,” the Lieutenant said. “Let’s move.” He took the point, headed for the rugged hills beyond the meadow. I groaned. More crosscountry.

  My every muscle ached already. Exhaustion threatened to betray me. Man was not meant for endless dawn to dusk marching with sixty pounds on his back.

  “Damned fast thinking back there,” I told Silent.

  He accepted praise with a shrug, saying nothing. As always.

  A cry from the rear. “They’re coming back.”

  We sprawled on the flank of a grassy hill. The Tower rose above the horizon due south. That basaltic cube was intimidating even from ten miles away and implausible in its setting. Emotion demanded a surround of fiery waste, or at best a land perpetually locked in winter. Instead, this country was a vast green pasture, gentle hills with small farms dotting their southern hips. Trees lined the deep, slow brooks snaking between.

  Nearer the Tower the land became less pastoral, but never reflected the gloom Rebel propagandists placed around the Lady’s stronghold. No brimstone and barren, broken plains. No bizarre, evil creatures strutting over scattered human bones. No dark clouds ever rolling and grumbling in the sky.

  The Lieutenant said, “No patrols in sight. Croaker, One-Eye, do your stuff.”

  I strung my bow. Goblin brought three prepared arrows. Each had a maleable blue ball at its head. One-Eye sprinkled one with grey dust, passed it to me. I aimed at the sun, let fly.

  Blue fire too bright to view flared and sank into the valley below. Then a second, and a third. The fireballs dropped in a neat column, appearing to drift down more than fall.

  “Now we wait,” Goblin sque
aked, and threw himself down in the tall grass.

  “And hope our friends arrive first.” Any nearby Rebel surely would investigate the signal. Yet we had to call for help. We could not penetrate the Rebel cordon unnoticed.

  “Get down!” the Lieutenant snapped. The grass was tall enough to conceal a supine figure. “Third squad, take the watch.”

  Men grumbled and claimed it was another squad’s turn. But they took sentinel positions with that minimal, obligatory complaint. Their mood was bright. Hadn’t we lost those fools back in the hills? What could stop us now?

  I made a pillow of my pack and watched cumulus mountains drift over in stately legions. It was a gorgeous, crisp, springlike day.

  My gaze dropped to the Tower. My mood darkened. The pace would pick up. The capture of Feather and Journey would spur the Rebel into action. Surrender secrets those two would. There was no way to hide or lie when the Lady asked a question.

  I heard a rustle, turned my head, found myself eye to eye with a snake. It wore a human face. I started to yell—then recognized that silly grin.

  One-Eye. His ugly mug in miniature, but with both eyes and no floppy hat on top. The snake snickered, winked, slithered across my chest.

  “Here they go again,“ I murmured, and sat up to watch.

  There was a sudden, violent thrashing in the grass. Farther on, Goblin popped up wearing a shit-eating grin. The grass rustled. Animals the size of rabbits trooped past me, carrying chunks of snake in bloody needle teeth. Homemade mongooses, I guessed.

  Goblin had anticipated One-Eye again.

  One-Eye let out a howl and jumped up cursing. His hat spun around. Smoke poured out of his nostrils. When he yelled, fire roared in his mouth.

  Goblin capered like a cannibal just before they dish up the long pig. He described circles with his forefingers. Rings of pale orange glimmered in the air. He flipped them at One-Eye. They settled around the little black man. Goblin barked like a seal. The hoops tightened.

  One-Eye made weird noises and negated the rings. He made throwing motions with both hands. Brown balls streaked toward Goblin. They exploded, yielding clouds of butterflies that went for Goblin’s eyes. Goblin did a backflip, scampered through the grass like a mouse fleeing an owl, popped up with a counters pell.

  The air sprouted flowers. Each bloom had a mouth. Each mouth boasted walruslike tusks. The flowers skewered butterfly wings with their tusks, then complacently munched butterfly bodies. Goblin fell over giggling.

  One-Eye cussed a literal blue streak, a cerulean banner trailing from his lips. Argent lettering proclaimed his opinion of Goblin.

  “Knock it off!” the Lieutenant thundered belatedly. “We don’t need you attracting attention.”

  “Too late, Lieutenant,” somebody said. “Look down there.”

  Soldiers were headed our way. Soldiers wearing red, with the White Rose emblazoned on their tabards. We dropped into the grass like ground squirrels into their holes.

  Chatter ran across the hillside. Most threatened One-Eye with dire dooms. A minority included Goblin for having shared in the betraying fireworks.

  Trumpets sounded. The Rebel dispersed for an assault on our hill.

  * * *

  The air whined in torment. A shadow flashed over the hilltop, rippling across windblown grass. “Taken,” I murmured, and popped up for the instant needed to spot a flying carpet banking into the valley. “Soulcatcher?” I couldn’t be sure. At that distance it could have been any of several Taken.

  The carpet dove into massed arrow fire. Lime fog enveloped it, trailed behind it, for a moment recalled the comet which overhung the world. The lime haze scattered resolved into threadlike snippets. A few filaments caught the breeze and drifted our way.

  I glanced up. The comet hung on the horizon like a ghost of a god’s scimitar. It had been in the sky so long we scarcely noticed it now. I wondered if the Rebel had become equally indifferent. For him it was one of the great portents of impending victory.

  Men screamed. The carpet had passed along the Rebel line and now drifted like down on the wind just beyond bowshot. The lime-colored thread was so scattered it was barely visible. The screams came from men who had suffered its touch. Grisly green wounds opened wherever there was contact.

  Some thread seemed determined to come our way.

  The Lieutenant saw it. “Let’s move out, men. Just in case.” He pointed across the wind. The thread would have to drift sideways to catch us.

  We hustled maybe three hundred yards. Writhing, the thread crawled on air, coming our way. It was after us. The Taken watched intently, ignoring the Rebel.

  “That bastard wants to kill us!” I exploded. Terror turned my legs to gelatin. Why would one of the Taken want us to become victims of an accident?

  If that was Catcher,… But Catcher was our mentor. Our boss. We wore his badges. He wouldn’t.…

  The carpet snapped into motion so violently its rider almost tumbled off. It hurtled toward the nearest wood, vanished. The thread lost volition and drifted down, disappearing in the grass.

  “What the devil?”

  “Holy Hell!”

  I whirled. A vast shadow moved toward us, expanding, as a gigantic carpet descended. Faces peeped over its edges. We froze, bristling with ready weapons.

  “The Howler,” I said, and had my guess confirmed by a cry like that of a wolf challenging the moon.

  The carpet grounded. “Get aboard, you idiots. Come on. Move it.”

  I laughed, tension draining away. That was the Captain. He danced like a nervous bear along the near edge of the carpet. Others of our brethren accompanied him. I threw my pack aboard, accepted a hand up. “Raven. You showed up in the nick this time.”

  “You’ll wish we’d let you take your chances.”

  “Eh?”

  “Captain will tell you.”

  The last man scrambled aboard. The Captain gave Feather and Journey the hard eye, then marched around getting the men evenly distributed. At the rear of the carpet, unmoving, shunned, sat a child-sized figure concealed in layers of indigo gauze. It howled at random intervals.

  I shuddered. “What are you talking about?”

  “Captain will tell you,” he repeated.

  “Sure. How’s Darling?”

  “Doing all right.” Lots of words in our Raven.

  The Captain settled beside me. “Bad news, Croaker,” he said.

  “Yeah?” I reached for my vaunted sarcasm. “Give it to me straight. I can take it.”

  “Tough guy,” Raven observed.

  “That’s me. Eat nails for breakfast. Whip wildcats with my bare hands.”

  The Captain shook his head. “Hang on to that sense of humor. The Lady wants to see you. Personally.”

  My stomach dropped to the ground, which was a couple hundred feet down. “Oh, shit,” I whispered. “Oh, damn.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You’d know better than I do.”

  My mind hurtled around like a herd of mice fleeing a cat. In seconds I was soaked with sweat.

  Raven observed, “Can’t be as bad as it sounds. She was almost polite.”

  The Captain nodded. “It was a request.”

  “Sure it was.”

  Raven said, “If she had a grudge you’d just disappear.”

  I did not feel reassured.

  “One too many romances,” the Captain chided. “Now she’s in love with you too.”

  They never forget, never let up. It had been months since I had written one of those romances. “What’s it about?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  Silence reigned the rest of the way. They sat beside me and tried to reassure me with traditional Company solidarity. As we came in on our encampment, though, the Captain did say, “She told us to bring our strength up to the thousand mark. We can enlist volunteers from the lot we brought out of the north.”

  “Good news, good news.” That was cause for jubilation. For the
first time in two centuries we were going to grow. Plenty of stragglers would be eager to exchange their oaths to the Taken for oaths to the Company. We were in high favor. We had mana. And, being mercenaries, we got more leeway than anyone else in the Lady’s service.

  I could not get excited, though. Not with the Lady waiting.

  The carpet grounded. Brethren crowded around, anxious to see how we had done. Lies and jocular threats flew.

  The Captain said, “You stay aboard, Croaker. Goblin, Silent, One-Eye, you too.” He indicated the prisoners. “Deliver the merchandise.”

  As the men slid over the side, Darling came bouncing out of the mob. Raven hollered at her, but of course she could not hear. She scrambled aboard, carrying the doll Raven had carved. It was dressed neatly in clothing of superb miniature detail. She handed it to me and started flashing finger language.

  Raven hollered again. I tried to interrupt, but Darling was intent on telling me about the doll’s wardrobe. Some might have thought her retarded, to be so excited about such things at her age. She was not. She had a mind like a razor. She knew what she was doing when she boarded the carpet. She was stealing a chance to fly.

  “Honey,” I said, both aloud and with signs, “You’ve got to get off. We’re going.…”

  Raven yelled in outrage as the Howler lifted off. One-Eye, Goblin, and Silent all glared at him. He howled. The carpet continued to rise.

  “Sit down,” I told Darling. She did so, not far from Feather. She forgot the doll, wanted to know about our adventure. I told her. It kept me occupied. She spent more time looking over the side than paying attention to me, yet she missed nothing. When I finished she looked at Feather and Journey with adult pity. She was unconcerned about my appointment with the Lady, though she did give me a reassuring hug good-bye.

  The Howler’s carpet drifted away from the Tower top. I waved a feeble farewell. Darling blew me a kiss. Goblin patted his breast. I touched the amulet he had given me in Lords. Small comfort, that.

  Imperial Guards strapped Journey and Feather onto litters. “What about me?” I asked shakily.

  A captain told me, “You’re supposed to wait here.” He stayed when the others left. He tried to make small talk, but I wasn’t in the mood.