Chronicles of the Black Company

  A small indigo shape clambered up the wall and scuttled to the rear, skirting the base of the pyramid. It ran all the way to the Tower. The Howler. I frowned, puzzled. Had he been relieved?

  Our center became the focus of battle, Catcher struggling valiantly to keep his line.

  I heard sounds, glanced over, saw that the Captain had come up on the Lady’s far side. He was mounted. I looked back. A number of horses had been brought up. I stared down that long steep slope at the narrowness of the third level, and my heart sank. She was not planning a cavalry charge, was she?

  Feather and Journey were big medicine, but not medicine big enough. They stiffened resistance only till the Rebel ramps arrived.

  The level went. Slower than I expected, but it went. No more than a thousand men escaped. I looked at the Lady. Her face remained ice, yet I felt she was not displeased.

  Whisper poured arrows into the mass below. Guards fired ballistae point blank.

  A shadow crept over the pyramid. I looked up. The Howler’s carpet drifted out over the foe. Men crouched along its edges, dropping balls the size of heads. Those plummeted into the Rebel mass without visible effect. The carpet crawled toward the enemy camp, raining those pointless objects.

  It took the Rebel an hour to establish solid bridgeheads upon the third level, and another hour to bring up enough men to press the attack. Whisper, Feather, Journey, and Catcher mauled them mercilessly. Oncoming troops clambered over drifts of their comrades to reach the top.

  The Howler carried his ball-dropping to the Rebel camp. I doubted there was anyone out there. They were all in the pie-slice, awaiting their turns at us.

  The false White Rose sat her horse out about the second trench, glowing, surrounded by the new Rebel council. They remained frozen, acting only when one of the Taken used their powers. They had done nothing about the Howler, though. Apparently there was nothing they could do.

  I checked the Captain, who had been up to something.… He was lining horsemen up across the front of the pyramid. We were going to attack down that slope! What idiocy!

  A voice inside told me, My faithful need not fear. I faced the Lady. She looked at me coolly, regally. I turned back to the battle.

  It would not be long. Our troops had put aside their bows and abandoned the heavy weapons. They were bracing themselves. On the plain the whole horde was in motion. But a vaguely slowed, indecisive motion, it seemed. This was the moment when they should have run headlong, swamping us, roaring into the Tower before the gate could be closed.…

  The Howler came roaring back from the enemy camp, moving a dozen times faster than any horse could run. I watched the big carpet pass over, even now unable to restrain my awe. For an instant it masked the comet, then passed on, toward the Tower. A strange howl wafted down, unlike any Howler cry I had heard before. The carpet dipped slightly, tried to slow, ploughed into the Tower a few feet below its top.

  “My god,” I murmured, watching the thing crumple, watching men tumble down the five hundred foot fall. “My god.” Then the Howler died or lost consciousness. The carpet itself began to fail.

  I shifted my gaze to the Lady, who had been watching too. Her expression did not change in the slightest. Softly, in a voice only I heard, she said, “You will use the bow.”

  I shuddered. And for a second images flashed through my mind, a hundred of them too quickly for any to be caught. I seemed to be drawing the bow.…

  She was angry. Angry with a rage so great I shook just contemplating it, even knowing it was not directed at me. Its object was not hard to determine. The Howler’s demise was not caused by enemy action. There was but one Taken likely to be responsible. Soulcatcher. Our former mentor. The one who had used us in so many schemes.

  The Lady murmured something. I am not sure I heard it right. Sounded like, “I gave her every chance.”

  I whispered, “We weren’t part of it.”

  “Come.” She kneed her animal. It went over the edge. I threw one despairing look at the Captain and followed.

  She went down that slope with the speed that Feather had shown. My mount seemed determined to keep pace.

  We plunged toward an island of screaming men. It centered on a fountain of lime thread which boiled up and spread on the wind, taking Rebel and friend alike. The Lady did not swerve.

  Soulcatcher was in flight already. Friend and enemy were eager to get out of his way. Death surrounded him. He ran at Journey, leapt, knocked him off his horse, bestrode the animal himself, leapt it down to the second level, ploughed through the enemy there, descended to the plain, and roared away.

  The Lady followed the path he blazed, dark hair streaming. I stayed in her wake, utterly baffled yet unable to change what I was doing. We reached the plain three hundred yards behind Soulcatcher. The Lady spurred her mount. Mine kept pace. I was sure one or both animals would stumble over abandoned equipment or bodies. Yet they, and Catcher’s beast too, were as sure-footed as horses on a track.

  Catcher sped directly to the enemy encampment, and through. We followed. In the open country beyond we began to gain. Those beasts, all three, were as tireless as machines. Miles rolled away. We gained fifty yards with every one. I clutched my bow and clung to the nightmare. I’ve never been religious, but that was a time when I was tempted to pray.

  She was as implacable as death, my Lady. I pitied Soulcatcher when she caught him.

  Soulcatcher raced along a road winding through one of the valleys west of Charm. We were near the place where we had rested on a hilltop, and encountered lime thread. I recalled what we had ridden through, back at Charm. A fountain of the stuff, and it hadn’t touched us.

  What was happening back there? Was this some scheme to leave our people at the Rebel’s mercy? It had become clear, toward the end, that the Lady’s strategy involved maximum destruction. That she wanted only a small minority of either side to survive. She was cleaning house. She had but one enemy left among the Taken. Soulcatcher. Catcher, who had been almost good to me. Who had saved my life at least once, at the Stair of Tear, when Stormbringer would have slain Raven and me. Catcher, who was the only Taken to speak to me as a man, to tell me a bit about the old days, to respond to my insatiable curiosities.…

  What the devil was I doing here, in a hellride with the Lady, hunting a thing that could gobble me up without blinking?

  Catcher turned the flank of a hill and when, seconds later, we rounded the same impediment, had disappeared. The Lady slowed for a moment, head turning slowly, then yanked her reins, swung toward woods that swept down to the edge of the road. She halted when she reached the first trees. My beast stopped beside hers.

  The Lady threw herself off her mount. I did the same without thinking. By the time I gained my feet her animal was collapsing and mine was dead, standing on stiff legs. Both had fist-sized black burns upon their throats.

  The Lady pointed, started forward. Crouching, arrow across bow, I joined her. I went carefully, soundlessly, sliding through the brush like a fox.

  She stopped, crouched, pointed. I looked along her arm. Flicker, flicker, two seconds of rapid images. They stopped. I saw a figure perhaps fifty feet distant, back to us, kneeling, doing something swiftly. No time for the moral questions I had debated riding out. That creature had made several attempts on my life. My arrow was in the air before I realized what I was doing.

  It smacked into the head of the figure. The figure pitched forward. I gaped a second, then released a long breath. So easy.…

  The Lady took three quick steps forward, frowning. There was a rapid rustle to our right. Something rattled brush. She whirled and ran for open country, slapping my arm as she passed.

  In seconds we were on the road. Another arrow lay across my bow. Her arm rose, pointing.… A squarish shape slid out of the woods fifty yards away. A figure aboard made a throwing motion our way. I staggered under the impact of the blow from no visible source. Spiderwebs seemed drawn across my eyes, blurring my vision. Vaguely, I sensed the Lady
making a gesture. The webs disappeared. I felt whole. She pointed as the carpet began to rise and move away.

  I drew and loosed, with no hope my arrow would strike a moving target at that range.

  It did not, but only because the carpet jerked violently downward and to one side while the arrow was in the air. My shaft ripped past inches behind the carpet rider’s head.

  The Lady did something. The air hummed. From nowhere came a giant dragonfly like the one I had seen in the Forest of Cloud. It streaked toward the carpet, hit. The carpet spun, flipped, jerked around. Its rider fell free, plummeted with a despairing cry. I loosed another shaft the instant the man hit earth. He twitched a moment, lay still. And we were upon him.

  The Lady ripped the black morion off our victim. And cursed. Softly, steadily, she cursed like a senior sergeant.

  “What?” I finally asked. The man was dead enough to satisfy me.

  “It’s not her.” She whirled, faced the wood. Her face blanked for several seconds. Then she faced the drifting carpet. She jerked her head at the wood. “Go see if that’s a woman. See if the horse is there.” She began making come-hither gestures at Catcher’s carpet.

  I went, mind aboil. Catcher was a woman, eh? Crafty, too. All prepared to be chased here, by the Lady herself.

  Fear grew as I slipped through the wood, slow, silent. Catcher had played a game on everyone, and far more shrewdly than even the Lady had anticipated. What next, then? There had been so many attempts on my life.… Might this not be the moment to end whatever threat I represented?

  Nothing happened, though. Except that I crept up to the corpse in the wood, ripped off a black morion, and found a handsome youth inside. Fear, anger, and frustration overwhelmed me. I kicked him. Some good, abusing dead meat.

  The fit did not last. I began looking around the camp where the substitutes had waited. They had been there a while, and been prepared to stay a while longer. They had supplies for a month.

  A large bundle caught my eye. I cut the cords binding it, peeped inside. Papers. A bale that must have weighed eighty pounds. Curiosity grabbed me.

  I looked around hastily, saw nothing threatening, probed a little deeper. And immediately realized what I had. These were part of the hoard we had unearthed in the Forest of Cloud.

  What were they doing here? I’d thought Catcher had turned them over to the Lady. Eh! Plot and counterplot. Maybe he had delivered some. And maybe he kept back others he thought would be useful later. Maybe we had been so close on his heels he had not had time to collect them.…

  Maybe he would be back. I looked around again, frightened once more.

  Nothing stirred.

  Where was he?

  She, I reminded myself. Catcher was one of the shes.

  I looked around, hunting evidence of the Taken’s departure, soon discovered hoofprints leading deeper into the wood. A few paces beyond the camp they reached a narrow trail. I crouched, looking down an aisle of forest, through golden motes floating in shafts of sunlight. I tried to work myself up to go on.

  Come, a voice said in my mind. Come.

  The Lady. Relieved not to have to follow that trail, I turned back. “It was a man,” I said as I approached the Lady.

  “I thought so.” She had the carpet under one hand, floating two feet off the earth. “Get aboard.”

  I swallowed, did as I was told. It was like climbing aboard a boat from deep water. I almost fell off twice. As she followed me aboard, I told her, “He—she—stayed on the horse and went on down the trail through the woods.”

  “What direction?”

  “South.”

  The carpet rose swiftly. The dead horses dwindled beneath us. We began to drift over the wood. My stomach felt like I had drunk several gallons of wine the night before.

  The Lady cursed softly under her breath. Finally, in a louder voice, she said, “The bitch. She ran a game on us all. My husband included.”

  I said nothing. I was debating whether or not to mention the papers. She would be interested. But so was I, and if I mentioned them now I’d never get a chance to poke through them.

  “I’ll bet that was what she was doing. Getting rid of the other Taken by pretending to be part of their plot. Then it would have been me. Then she would just leave the Dominator in the ground. She would have it all, and be able to keep him restrained. He can’t break out without help.” She was thinking aloud more than speaking to me. “And I missed the evidence. Or ignored it. It was right there all the time. Cunning bitch. She’ll burn for that.”

  We began to fall. I nearly lost what little my stomach contained. We fell into a valley deeper than most in the area, though the hills to either hand stood no more than two hundred feet high. We slowed.

  “Arrow,” she said. I had forgotten to ready another.

  We drifted down the valley a mile or so, then upslope till we floated beside an outcrop of sedimentary rock. There we hovered, nudging the stone. There was a brisk cold wind. My hands grew numb. We were far from the Tower, into country where winter held full sway. I shivered continuously.

  The only warning was a soft, “Hang on.”

  The carpet shot forward. A quarter mile distant was a figure lying low on the neck of a racing horse. The Lady dropped till we hurtled along just two feet off the ground.

  Catcher saw us. She threw up a hand in a warding gesture. We were upon her. I released my shaft.

  The carpet slammed up against me as the Lady pulled it upward, trying to clear horse and rider. She did not pull up enough. Impact made the carpet lurch. Frame members cracked, broke. We spun. I hung on desperately while sky and earth wheeled about me. There was another shock as we hit ground, more spinning as we went over and over. I threw myself clear.

  I was on my feet in an instant, wobbling, slapping another arrow across my bow. Catcher’s horse was down with a broken leg. Catcher was beside her, on hands and knees, stunned. A silver arrowhead protruded from her waist, indicting me.

  I loosed my shaft. And another, and another, recalling the terrible vitality the Limper had shown in the Forest of Cloud, after Raven had felled him with an arrow bearing the power of his true name. Still in fear, I drew my sword once my final arrow was gone. I charged. I do not know how I retained the weapon through everything that had happened. I reached Catcher, raised the blade high, swung with a vicious two-handed stroke. It was the most fearful, violent blow I have ever struck. Soulcatcher’s head rolled away. The morion’s face guard popped open. A woman’s face stared at me with accusing eyes. A woman almost identical in appearance to the one with whom I had come.

  Catcher’s eyes focused upon me. Her lips tried to form words. I stood there frozen, wondering what the hell it all meant. And life faded from Catcher before I caught the message she tried to impart.

  I would return to that moment ten thousand times, trying to read those dying lips.

  The Lady crept up beside me, dragging one leg. Habit forced me to turn, kneel.… “It’s broken,” she said. “Never mind. It can wait.” Her breathing was shallow, rapid. For a moment I thought it was the pain. Then I saw she was looking at the head. She began to giggle.

  I looked at that face so like her own, then at her. She rested a hand on my shoulder, allowing me to take some of her weight. I rose carefully, slid an arm around her. “Never did like that bitch,” she said. “Even when we were children. …” She glanced at me warily, shut up. The life left her face. She became the ice lady once more.

  If ever there was some weird love spark within me, as my brothers accused, it flickered its last. I saw plainly what the Rebel wanted to destroy—that part of the movement which was true White Rose, not puppet to the monster who had created this woman and now wanted her destroyed so it could bring its own breed of terror back to the world. At that moment I’d gladly have deposited her head beside her sister’s.

  Second time, if Catcher could be believed. Second sister. This deserved no allegiance.

  There are limits to one’s luck, one’s
power, to how much one dares resist. I hadn’t the nerve to follow through on my impulse. Later, maybe. The Captain had made a mistake, taking service with Soulcatcher. Was my unique position adequate to argue him out of that service on grounds that our commission ended with Catcher’s death?

  I doubted it. It would take a battle, to say the least. Especially if, as I suspected, he had helped the Syndic along in Beryl. The Company’s existence did not appear to be in absolute jeopardy, assuming we survived the battle. He would not countenance another betrayal. In the conflict of moralities he would find that the greater evil.

  Was there a Company now? The battle of Charm had not ended because the Lady and I had absented ourselves. Who knew what had happened while we were haring after a renegade Taken?

  I glanced at the sun, was astonished to discover that only a little over an hour had passed.

  The Lady recalled Charm too. “The carpet, physician,” she said. “We’d better get back.”

  I helped her hobble to the remnant of Catcher’s carpet. It was half a ruin, but she believed it would function. I deposited her, collected the bow she had given me, sat in front of her. She whispered. Creaking, the carpet rose. It provided a very unstable seat.

  I sat with eyes closed, debating myself, as she circled the site of Catcher’s fall. I could not get my feelings straight. I did not believe in evil as an active force, only as a matter of viewpoint, yet I had seen enough to make me question my philosophy. If the Lady were not evil incarnate, then she was as close as made no difference.

  We began limping toward the Tower. When I opened my eyes I could see that great dark block tilting on the horizon, gradually swelling. I did not want to go back.

  We passed over the rocky ground west of Charm, a hundred feet up, barely creeping along. The Lady had to concentrate totally to keep the carpet aloft. I was terrified the thing would go down there, or gasp its last over the Rebel army. I leaned forward, studying the jumble, trying to pick a place to crash.