Chronicles of the Black Company

  “Not a lot.” He showed me a hat filled with odds and ends.

  “Take what you need to cover the damages.”

  “You guys will need it more than me.”

  “You’re out a wagon and a team, not to mention the dogs. Take what you need. I can always rob somebody I don’t like.” No one knew that I had filched Shed’s purse. Its weight had surprised me. It would be my secret reserve. “Take a couple horses, too.”

  He shook his head. “I’m not getting caught with somebody else’s animals after the dust settles and the Prince starts looking for scapegoats.” He selected a few silver coins. “I got what I wanted.”

  “Okay. You’d better hide in the woods for a while. The Lady will come here. She’s nastier than the Limper.”

  “Will do.”

  “Hagop. If you’re not going to dig, go get the horses ready. Move!” I beckoned Silent. He and I dragged the Limper to a shade tree out front. Silent tossed a rope over a limb. I forced the eyes of the serpents down the Taken’s throat. We hoisted him up. He turned slowly in the chill moonlight. I rubbed my hands together and considered him. “Took a while, guy, but somebody finally got you.” For ten years I had wanted to see him go down. He had been the most inhuman of the Taken.

  Asa came to me. “All buried, Croaker.”

  “Good. Thanks for the help.” I started toward the barn.

  “Can I go with you guys?”

  I laughed.

  “Please, Croaker? Don’t leave me here where. …”

  “I don’t give a damn, Asa. But don’t expect me to look out for you. And don’t try any slick tricks. I’d as soon kill you as look at you.”

  “Thanks, Croaker.” He raced ahead, hastily saddled another horse. One-Eye looked at me and shook his head.

  “Mount up, men. Let’s go find Raven.”

  Though we pushed hard, we were not twenty miles south of the inn when something hit my mind like a fighter’s fist. A golden cloud materialized, radiating anger. “You have exhausted my patience, physician.”

  “You exhausted mine a long time ago.”

  “You’ll rue this murder.”

  “I’ll exult in it. It’s the first decent thing I’ve done this side of the Sea of Torments. Go find your castle eggs. Leave me alone. We’re even.”

  “Oh, no. You will hear from me again. As soon as I close the last door on my husband.”

  “Don’t press your luck, old witch. I’m ready to get out of the game. Push and I’ll learn TelleKurre.”

  That caught her from the blind side.

  “Ask Whisper what she lost in the Forest of Cloud and hoped to recover in Meadenvil. Then reflect upon what an angry Croaker could do with it if he knew where to find it.”

  There was a vertiginous moment as she withdrew.

  I found my companions looking at me weirdly. “Just saying good-bye to my girl,” I told them.

  We lost Asa in Shaker. We took a day off there, to prepare for the next leg, and when it came time to leave, Asa was not to be seen. Nobody bothered looking for him. On Shed’s behalf I left him with a wish for luck. Judging from his past, he probably had it, and all bad.

  My farewell to the Lady did not take. Three months to the day after the Limper’s fall, as we were resting prior to hazarding the last range of hills between us and Chimney, the golden cloud visited me again. This time the Lady was less belligerent. In fact, she seemed mildly amused.

  “Greetings, physician. I thought you might want to know, for the sake of your Annals, that the threat of the black castle no longer exists. Every seed has been located and destroyed.” More amusement. “There is no way my husband can rise short of exhumation. He is cut off, totally incapable of communicating with his sympathizers. A permanent army occupies the Barrowland.”

  I could think of nothing to say. It was no less than I had expected, and had hoped she would accomplish, for she was the lesser evil, and, I suspect, remained possessed of a spark that had not committed itself to the darkness. She had shown restraint on several occasions when she could have indulged her cruelty. Maybe if she felt unchallenged, she would drift toward the light rather than farther toward the shadow.

  “I interviewed Whisper. With the Eye. Stand clear, Croaker.”

  Never before had she called me by name. I sat up and took notice. There was no amusement in her now.

  “Stand clear?”

  “Of those papers. Of the girl.”

  “Girl? What girl?”

  “Don’t come the innocent. I know. You left a wider trail than you thought. And even dead men answer questions for one who knows how they must be asked. Such of your Company as remained when I returned to Juniper told most of the story. If you wish to live out your days in peace, kill her. If you don’t, I will. Along with anyone near her.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Amusement again, but a hard sort. A malignant sort. “Keep your Annals, physician. I will be in touch. I will keep you apprised of the advance of the empire.”

  Puzzled, I asked, “Why?”

  “Because it amuses me. Behave yourself.” She faded away.

  We went down into Chimney, tired men three-quarters dead. We found the Lieutenant and the ship and—Lo!—Darling, who was living aboard with the Company. The Lieutenant had taken employment with the private constabulary of a mercantile factor. He added our names to the roll as soon as we recuperated.

  We did not find Raven. Raven had evaded reconciliation or confrontation with his old comrades by cheating his way out.

  Fate is a fickle bitch who dotes on irony. After all he had been through, all he had done, all he had survived, the very morning the Lieutenant arrived he slipped on a wet marble diving platform in a public bath, split his head open, fell into the pool, and drowned.

  I refused to believe it. It could not be true, after what he had pulled up north. I dug around. I poked. I pried. But there were scores of people who had seen the body. The most reliable witness of all, Darling, was absolutely convinced. In the end, I had to give in. This time no one would hear my doubts.

  The Lieutenant himself claimed to have seen and recognized the corpse as the flames of a pyre had risen about it the morning of his arrival. It was there he had encountered Darling and had brought her back into the keeping of the Black Company.

  What could I say? If Darling believed, it must be true. Raven could never lie to her.

  Nineteen days after our arrival in Chimney, there was another arrival, which explained the Lady’s nebulous remark about interviewing only those she could find when she returned to Juniper.

  Elmo rode into town with seventy men, many brethren from the old days, whom he had spirited out of Juniper while all the Taken were absent but Journey, and Journey was in such a state of confusion due to conflicting orders from the Lady that he let slip the true state of affairs in Meadenvil. He followed me down the coast.

  So, in two years, the Black Company had crossed the breadth of the world, from the nethermost east to the farthest west, close to four thousand miles, and in the process had come near destruction, and had found a new purpose, a new life. We were now the champions of the White Rose, a bedraggled joke of a nucleus for the force legend destined to bring the Lady down.

  I did not believe a word of that. But Raven had told Darling what she was, and she, at least, was ready to play her part.

  We could but try.

  I hoisted a glass of wine in the master’s cabin. Elmo, Silent, One-Eye, Goblin, the Lieutenant and Darling raised theirs. Above, men prepared to cast off. Elmo had brought the Company treasure chest. We had no need to work. I proposed my toast. “To the twenty-nine years.”

  Twenty-nine years. According to legend it would be that long before the Great Comet returned and fortune would smile upon the White Rose.

  They responded, “The twenty-nine years.”

  I thought I detected the faintest hint of gold in the corner of my eye, felt the faintest hint of amusement.

&
nbsp; THE WHITE

  ROSE

  For Nancy Edwards, just because

  The Plain of Fear

  The still desert air had a lenselike quality. The riders seemed frozen in time, moving without drawing closer. We took turns counting. I could not get the same number twice running.

  A breath of a breeze whined in the coral, stirred the leaves of Old Father Tree. They tinkled off one another with the song of wind chimes. To the north, the glimmer of change lightning limned the horizon like the far clash of warring gods.

  A foot crunched sand. I turned. Silent gawked at a talking menhir. It had appeared in the past few seconds, startling him. Sneaky rocks. Like to play games.

  “There are strangers on the Plain,” it said.

  I jumped. It chuckled. Menhirs have the most malevolent laughs this side of fairy stories. Snarling, I ducked into its shadow. “Hot out here already.” And: “That’s One-Eye and Goblin, back from Tanner.”

  It was right and I was wrong. I was too narrowly focused. The patrol had been away a month longer than planned. We were worried. Lately the Lady’s troops have been more active along the bounds of the Plain of Fear.

  Another chuckle from the block of stone.

  It towered over me, thirteen feet tall. A middle-sized one. Those over fifteen feet seldom move.

  The riders were closer, yet seemed no nearer. Blame nerves. Times are desperate for the Black Company. We cannot afford casualties. Any man lost would be a friend of many years. I counted again. Seemed right this time. But there was a riderless mount. … I shivered despite the heat.

  They were on the downtrail leading to a creek three hundred yards from where we watched, concealed within a great reef. The walking trees beside the ford stirred, though the breeze had failed.

  The riders urged their mounts to hurry. The animals were tired. They were reluctant, though they knew they were almost home. Into the creek. Water splashing. I grinned, pounded Silent’s back. They were all there. Every man, and another.

  Silent shed his customary cool, returned a smile. Elmo slipped out of the coral and went to meet our brethren. Otto, Silent, and I hurried after him.

  Behind us, the morning sun was a great seething ball of blood.

  Men piled off horses, grinning. But they looked bad. Goblin and One-Eye worst of all. But they had come back to territory where their wizards’ powers were useless. This near Darling they are no greater than the rest of us.

  I glanced back. Darling had come to the head of the tunnel, stood like a phantom in its shadow, all in white.

  Men hugged men; then old habit took charge. Everybody pretended it was just another day. “Rough out there?” I asked One-Eye. I considered the man accompanying them. He was not familiar.

  “Yes.” The dried-up little black man was more diminished than first I had thought.

  “You all right?”

  “Took an arrow.” He rubbed his side. “Flesh wound.”

  From behind One-Eye, Goblin squeaked, “They almost got us. Been chasing us a month. We couldn’t shake them.”

  “Let’s get you down in the Hole,” I told One-Eye.

  “Not infected. I cleared it.”

  “I still want a look.” He has been my assistant since I enlisted as Company physician. His judgment is sound. Yet health is my responsibility, ultimately.

  “They were waiting for us, Croaker.” Darling was gone from the mouth of the tunnel, back to the stomach of our subterranean fastness. The sun remained bloody in the east, legacy of the change storm’s passing. Something big drifted across its face. Windwhale?

  “Ambush?” I glanced back at the patrol.

  “Not us specifically. For trouble. They were on the ball.” The patrol had had a double mission: to contact our sympathizers in Tanner to find out if the Lady’s people were coming alive after a long hiatus, and to raid the garrison there in order to prove we could hurt an empire that bestrides half a world.

  As we passed it the menhir said, “There are strangers on the Plain, Croaker.”

  Why do these things happen to me? The big stones talk to me more than to anyone else.

  Twice a charm? I paid attention. For a menhir to repeat itself meant it considered its message critical. “The men hunting you?” I asked One-Eye.

  He shrugged. “They wouldn’t give up.”

  “What’s happening out there?” Hiding on the Plain, I might as well be buried alive.

  One-Eye’s face remained unreadable. “Corder will tell it.”

  “Corder? That the guy you brought in?” I knew the name though not the man. One of our best informants.

  “Yeah.”

  “No good news, eh?”

  “No.”

  We slipped into the tunnel which leads down to our warren, our stinking, moldering, damp, tight little rabbit-hole fortress. It is disgusting, but it is the heart and soul of the New White Rose Rebellion. The New Hope, as it is whispered among the captive nations. The Joke Hope to those of us who live here. It is as bad as any rat-infested dungeon—though a man can leave. If he does not mind a venture into a world where all the might of an empire is turned upon him.

  The Plain of Fear

  Corder was our eyes and ears in Tanner. He had contacts everywhere. His work against the Lady goes back decades. He is one of the few who escaped her wrath at Charm, where she obliterated the Rebel of old. In great part, the Company was responsible. In those days we were her strong right arm. We piloted her enemies into the trap.

  A quarter million men died at Charm. Never was there a battle so vast or grim, nor an outcome so definitive. Even the Dominator’s bloody failure in the Old Forest consumed but half as many lives.

  Fate compelled us to switch sides—once there was no one left to help us in our fight.

  One-Eye’s wound was as clean as he claimed. I cut him loose, ambled off to my quarters. Word was, Darling wanted the patrol rested before she accepted its report. I shivered with premonition, afraid to hear their tidings.

  An old, tired man. That is what I am. What became of the old fire, drive, ambition? There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronizing wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.

  Old infests my quarters. My great project. Eighty pounds of ancient documents, captured from the general Whisper when we served the Lady and Whisper the Rebel, They are supposed to contain the key to breaking the Lady and the Taken. I have had them six years. And in six years I have found nothing. So much failure. Depressing. Nowadays, more often than not I merely shuffle them, then turn to these Annals.

  Since our escape from Juniper they have been little more than a personal journal. The remnant of the Company generates little excitement. What outside news we get is so slim and unreliable I seldom bother recording it. Moreover, since her victory over her husband in Juniper, the Lady seems to be in stasis even more than we, running on inertia.

  Appearances deceive, of course. And the Lady’s essence is illusion.

  “Croaker.”

  I looked up from a page of Old TelleKurre already studied a hundred times. Goblin stood in the doorway. He looked like an old toad. “Yeah?”

  “Something happening up top. Grab a sword.”

  I grabbed my bow and a leather cuirass. I am too ancient for hand-to-hand, I’d rather stand off and plink if I have to fight at all. I considered the bow as I followed Goblin. It had been given me by the Lady herself, during the battle at Charm. Oh, the memories. With it I helped slay Soulcatcher, the Taken who brought the Company into the Lady’s service. Those days now seemed almost prehistoric.

  We galloped into sunlight. Others came out with us, dispersed amidst cactus and coral. The rider coming down the trail—the only path in here—would not see us.

  He rode alone, on a moth-eaten mule. He was not armed. “All this for an old man on a mule?” I asked. Men scooted through coral and between cacti, making one hell of a racket. The old-timer had
to know we were there. “We’d better work on getting out here more quietly.”

  “Yeah.”

  Startled, I whirled. Elmo was behind me, one hand shading his eyes. He looked as old and tired as I felt. Each day something reminds me that none of us are young anymore. Hell, none of us were young when we came north, over the Sea of Torments. “We need new blood, Elmo.”

  He sneered.

  Yes. We will be a lot older before this is done. If we last. For we are buying time. Decades, hopefully.

  The rider crossed the creek, stopped. He raised his hands. Men materialized, weapons held negligently. One old man alone, at the heart of Darling’s null, presented no danger.

  Elmo, Goblin, and I strolled down. As we went I asked Goblin, “You and One-Eye have fun while you were gone?” They have been feuding for ages. But here, where Darling’s presence forbids it, they cannot play sorcerous tricks.

  Goblin grinned. When he grins, his mouth spreads from ear to ear. “I loosened him up.”

  We reached the rider. “Tell me later.”

  Goblin giggled, a squeaking noise like water bubbling in a teakettle. “Yeah.”

  “Who are you?” Elmo asked the mule rider.

  “Tokens.”

  That was not a name. It was a password for a courier from the far west. We had not heard it for a long time. Western messengers had to reach the Plain through the Lady’s most tamed provinces.

  “Yeah?” Elmo said. “How about that? Want to step down?”

  The old man eased off his mount, presented his bona fides. Elmo found them acceptable. Then he announced, “I’ve got twenty pounds of stuff here.” He tapped a case behind his saddle. “Every damn town added to the load.”

  “Make the whole trip yourself?” I asked.

  “Every foot from Oar.”

  “Oar? That’s. …”

  More than a thousand miles. I hadn’t known we had anyone up there. But there is a lot I do not know about the organization Darling has assembled. I spend my time trying to get those damned papers to tell me something that may not be there.

  The old man looked at me as though subjecting my soul to an accounting. “You the physician? Croaker?”