Chronicles of the Black Company

  We were two thousand feet up, five miles from Horse, well ahead of the Taken. I could see traces of dust raised by Darling’s army. Again I shouted, “What for?”

  The bottom fell out.

  The Lady had extinguished the spells which made the carpet go. “That’s why. You’ll fly the boat when we hit the null.”

  What the hell?

  She gave me a half dozen shots at getting the hang of it, and I did see the theory, before she whipped toward the Rebel army.

  We circled once, at screaming speed, well outside the null. I was astounded at what Darling had put together. About fifty windwhales, including some monsters over a thousand feet long. Mantas by the hundred. A vast wedge of walking trees. Battalions of human soldiers. Menhirs by the hundred, flickering around the walking trees, shielding them. Thousands of things that leaped and hopped and glided and flopped and flew. So gruesome and wondrous a sight.

  On the westward leg of our circle I spied the imperial force, two thousand men in a phalanx on the foreslope of a ridge a mile ahead of the Rebel. A joke, them standing against Darling.

  A few bold mantas cruised the edge of the null, sniping with bolts that fell short or just missed. I judged Darling herself to be aboard a windwhale about a thousand feet up. She had grown stronger, for her null’s diameter had expanded since my departure from the Plain. All that bewildering Rebel array marched within its protection.

  The Lady had called us pathfinders. Our carpet was not equipped like the others, but I did not know what she meant. Till she did it.

  We climbed straight up. Little black balls trailing streamers of red or blue smoke scattered behind us, shoveled overboard hastily by the old sergeant. Must have been three hundred. The smoke balls scattered, hovered just feet short of the null. So. Markers by which the Taken could navigate.

  And here they came. Way up, the smaller surrounding the W formation of bigs.

  The men on the bigs began releasing the giant pots. Down, down, down went a score. We followed, sliding along outside the smudge pots. As they plummeted, the flowerpots turned pole-downward. Mantas and whales slid out of their way.

  When the pole hit ground it drove a plunger. The paraffin seals burst. Liquid squirted. The plunger hit a striker. The fluid ignited. Gouts of fire. And when that fire reached something inside the pots, they exploded. Shards cut down men and monsters.

  I watched the blooming of those flowers of fire, aghast. Above, the Taken wheeled for a second pass. There was no magic in this. The null was useless.

  The second fall drew lightning from whales and mantas. Their first few successes cured them, though, for the pots they hit exploded in the air, Mantas went down. One whale was in grave trouble till others maneuvered overhead and sprayed it with ballast water.

  The Taken made a third pass, again dropping pots. They would hammer Darling’s troops into slime unless she did something.

  She went up after the Taken.

  The smoke pots slid around the flanks of the null, outlining it completely.

  The Lady climbed at shrieking speed.

  The W of bigs went away. The smaller carpets took on more altitude. The Lady brought us into position behind Whisper and the Limper. Clearly, she had anticipated Darling’s response.

  My emotions were mixed, to say the least.

  Whisper’s carpet tipped its nose downward. Limper followed. Then the Lady. Others of the Taken followed us.

  Whisper dove toward one especially monstrous windwhale. Faster and faster she flew. Three hundred yards from the null two thirty-foot spears ripped away from her carpet, impelled by sorcery. When they hit the null they continued on in a normal ballistic trajectory.

  Whisper made no effort to avoid the null. Into it she plunged, the man in her second seat guiding the carpet’s fall with those fish fins.

  Whisper’s spears struck near the windwhale’s head. Both burst into flames.

  Fire is anathema to those monsters, for the gas that lifts them is violently explosive.

  The Limper trailed Whisper with élan. He loosed two spears outside the null and another two inside, just dropped as his second-seat man took the carpet within inches of the windwhale.

  Only one lance failed to strike home.

  The whale had five fires burning upon its back.

  Storms of lightning crackled round Whisper and Limper.

  Then we hit the null. Our buoying spells failed. Panic snatched at me. Up to me?…

  We were headed for the burning whale. I jerked and banged and kicked levers.

  “Not so violently!” the Lady yelled. “Smoothly. Gently.”

  I got it in hand as the whale roared upward past us.

  Lightning crackled. We passed between two smaller whales. They missed us. The Lady discharged her little ballista. Its bolt struck one of those monsters. What the hell was the point? I wondered. That was not a bee sting to one of them.

  But that quarrel had a wire attached, running off a reel.…

  Wham!

  I was blinded momentarily. My hair crackled. Direct hit from a manta bolt. … We’re dead, I thought.

  The metal cage surrounding us absorbed the lightning’s energy and passed it along the unwinding wire.

  A manta was on our tail, only yards behind. The sergeant ripped off a shaft. It took our pursuer under the wing. The beast began to slide and flutter like a one-winged butterfly.

  “Watch where we’re going!” the Lady yelled. I turned around. A windwhale back rushed toward us. Fledgling mantas scurried in panic. Rebel bowmen threw up a barrage of arrows.

  I hit and yanked every damned lever and pedal, and pissed my pants. Maybe that did it. We scraped the thing’s flank, but did not crash.

  Now the damned carpet began spinning and tumbling. Earth, sky, wind-whales swirled around us. In one glimpse, way up, I saw a windwhale’s side explode, saw the monster fold in the middle, raining gobbets of fire. Two more whales trailed smoke … but it was a picture there and gone in a moment. I could find none of it when the carpet again rolled to where I could see the sky.

  We began our plunge from high enough that I had time to calm down. I fiddled with levers and pedals, got some of the wild spin off.…

  Then it did not matter. We were out of the null and it was the Lady’s craft again.

  I looked back to see how the sergeant was. He gave me a dirty look, shook his head pityingly

  The look the Lady gave me was not encouraging either.

  We climbed and moved westward. The Taken assembled, observed the results of their attack.

  Only the one windwhale was destroyed. The other two managed to get under friends who doused them with ballast water. Even so, the survivors were demoralized. They had done the Taken no injury at all.

  Still, they came on.

  This time the Taken dropped to the surface and attacked from below, building speed from several miles away, then curving up through the null. I maneuvered between whales with a more delicate hand but still fell dangerously near the ground.

  “What are we doing this for?” I yelled. We were not attacking; we were just following Whisper and Limper.

  “For the hell of it. For the sheer hell of it. And so you can write about it.”

  “I’ll fake it.”

  She laughed.

  We went high and circled.

  Darling took the whales back down. That second pass slew two more. Down low the Taken could not throw themselves all the way through the null. None but Limper, that is. He played the daredevil. He backed off five miles and built a tremendous velocity before hitting the null.

  He made that pass while the bigs were dropping the last of their pots.

  I’ve never heard Darling called stupid. She did not do the stupid thing this time.

  Despite all the flash and excitement, it was clear that she could, if she wanted, press on to Horse. The Taken had expended most of their munitions. Limper and the bigs were headed back to rearm. The others circled.… Horse was Darling’s if she was w
illing to pay the price.

  She decided it was too dear.

  Wise choice. My guess is, it would have cost her half her force. And wind-whales are too rare to give up for a prize so insignificant.

  She turned back.

  The Lady broke away and let her go, though she could have maintained the attacks almost indefinitely.

  We touched down. I scrambled over the side even before the Lady and in a calculated, melodramatic gesture, kissed the ground. She laughed.

  She had had a great time.

  “You let them go.”

  “I made my point.”

  “Shell shift tactics.”

  “Of course she will. But for the moment the hammer is in my hand. By not using it I’ve told her something. She’ll have thought it over by the time we get there.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You didn’t do badly for a novice. Go get drunk or something. And stay out of Limper’s way.”

  “Yeah.”

  What I did was go to the quarters assigned me and try to stop shaking.

  Homecoming

  The Lady and I entered the Plain of Fear twelve days after the aerial skirmish near Horse. We traveled on horseback, on second-grade nags, along the old trade trail the denizens of the Plain respect with free passage most of the time. Clad in castoffs, for the trail, the Lady was no longer a beauty. No kick-out-of-bed dog, but no eye-catcher.

  We entered the Plain aware that by a pessimistic estimate, we had about three months before the Great Tragic River opened the Great Barrow.

  The menhirs noted our presence immediately. I sensed them out there, observing. I had to point it out. For this venture the Lady had schooled herself to eschew anything but the most direct and raw sensory input. She would train herself to mortal ways during our ride so she would make no mistake once we reached the Hole.

  The woman has guts.

  I guess anyone willing to play heads-up power games with the Dominator has to have them,

  I ignored the lurking menhirs and concentrated on explaining the ways of the Plain, revealing the thousand little traps that, at the least, might betray the Lady. It was what a man would do on bringing a newcomer to the land. It would not seem unusual.

  Three days into the Plain we narrowly missed being caught in a change storm. She was awed. “What was that?” she asked.

  I explained the best I could. Along with all the speculations. She, of course, had heard it all before. But seeing is believing, as they say.

  Not long after that we came on the first of the coral reefs, which meant we were in the deep Plain, among the great strangenesses. “What name will you use?” I asked. “I better get used to it.”

  “I think Ardath.” She grinned.

  “You have a cruel sense of humor.”

  “Perhaps.”

  I do believe she was having fun at pretending to be ordinary. Like some great lord’s lady slumming. She even took her turns at the cook fire. To my stomach’s despair.

  I wondered what the menhirs made of our relationship. No matter the pretense, there was a brittleness, a formality, that was hard to overcome. And the best we could fake was a partnership, which I am certain they found strange. When did man and woman travel together thus, without sharing bedroll and such?

  The question of pursuing verisimilitude that far never arose. And just as well. My panic, my terror, at the suggestion would have been such that nothing else would have arisen.

  Ten miles from the Hole we breasted a hill and encountered a menhir. It stood beside the way, twenty feet of weird stone, doing nothing. The Lady asked in touristy fashion, “Is that one of the talking stones?”

  “Yep. Hi, rock. I’m home.”

  Old rock didn’t have anything to say. We passed on. When I looked back it was gone.

  Little had changed. As we crested the last ridge, though, we saw a forest of walking trees crowding the creek. A stand of menhirs both living and dead guarded the crossing. The backwards camel-centaurs gamboled among them. Old Father Tree stood by himself, tinkling, though there was not a breath of wind. Up high, a single buzzardlike avian snared against shattered clouds, watching. One or another of its kind had followed us for days. Of a human presence there was no sign. What did Darling do with her army? She could not pack those men into the Hole.

  For a moment I was frightened that I had returned to an untenanted keep. Then, as we splashed across the creek, Elmo and Silent stepped out of the coral.

  I dove off my animal and gathered them into a monster hug. They returned it, and in best Black Company tradition did not ask a single question.

  “Goddamn,” I said. “Goddamn, it’s good to see you. I heard you guys was wiped out out west somewhere.”

  Elmo looked at the Lady with just the slightest hint of curiosity.

  “Oh. Elmo. Silent. This is Ardath.”

  She smiled, “So pleased to meet you. Croaker has said so much about you.”

  I had not said a word. But she had read the Annals. She dismounted and offered her hand. Each took it, baffled, for only Darling, in their experience, expected treatment as an equal.

  “Well, let’s go down,” I said. “Let’s go down. I’ve got a thousand things to report.”

  “Yeah?” Elmo said. And that said a lot, for he looked up our backtrail as he said it.

  Some people who had gone away with me had not come back.

  “I don’t know. We had half the Taken after us. We got separated. I couldn’t find them again. But I never heard anything about them being captured. Let’s go down. See Darling. I’ve got incredible news. And get me something to eat. We’ve been eating each other’s cooking forever, and she’s a worse cook than I am.”

  “Guck,” Elmo said, and slapped me across the back. “And you lived?”

  “I’m one tough old buzzard, Elmo. You ought to know. Shit, man, I.…” I realized I was chattering like a wacko. I grinned.

  Silent signed, “Welcome home, Croaker. Welcome home.”

  “Come,” I told the Lady as we reached the entrance to the Hole, and took her hand. “It’ll seem like the pit till your eyes get used to it. And brace yourself for the smell.”

  Gods, the stench! Gag a maggot.

  All kinds of excitement down below. It faded into studied indifference as we passed, then resumed behind us. Silent led straight to the conference room. Elmo split off to order us up something to eat.

  As we entered I realized that I still held the Lady’s hand. She gave me half a smile, in which there was a hell of a lot of nervousness. Talk about strutting into the dragon’s lair. Bold old Croaker gave her hand a squeeze.

  Darling looked ragged. So did the Lieutenant. A dozen others were there, few of whom I knew. They must have come aboard after the imperials evacuated the perimeter of the Plain.

  Darling hugged me for a long time. So long I became flustered. We are not touchy people, she and I. She finally backed off and gave the Lady a look in which there was a hint of jealousy.

  I signed, “This is Ardath. She will help me translate. She knows the old languages well.”

  Darling nodded. She asked no questions. So much was I trusted.

  The food arrived. Elmo dragged in a table and chairs and shooed out everyone but myself, the Lieutenant, himself, Silent, and the Lady. He might have sent her away, too, but remained unsure of her standing with me.

  We ate, and as we did I related my tale in snatches, when my hands and mouth were not full. There were some rough moments, especially when I told Darling that Raven was alive.

  In retrospect I think it was harder on me than on her. I was afraid she would get all excited and hysterical. She did nothing of the sort.

  First, she flat refused to believe me. And I could understand that, for till he disappeared Raven had been the cornerstone of her universe emotionally. She could not see him not including her in his biggest lie ever just so he could slip away to go poke around the Barrowland. That made no sense to her. Raven never lied to her before.

>   Made no sense to me, either. But then, as I have noted before, I suspected there was more in the shadows than anyone was admitting. I sniffed the faintest whiff that maybe Raven was running from instead of to.

  Darling’s denials did not last long. She is not one to disdain truth indefinitely only because it is unpleasant. She handled the pain far better than I anticipated, and that suggested maybe she had had a chance to bleed off some of the worst in the past.

  Still, Raven’s present circumstances did nothing for Darling’s emotional health, already doing poorly after her defeat at Horse. That harbinger of grander defeats to come. Already she suspected she might have to face the imperials without benefit of the information I had been sent to acquire.

  I conjured universal despair when I announced my failure and added, “I have it on high authority that what we sought isn’t in those papers anyway. Though I can’t be sure till Ardath and I finish what we have here.” I did sketch what I learned from Raven’s documents before losing them.

  I did not lie outright. That would not be forgiven later, when the truth came out. As inevitably it must. I just overlooked a few details. I even admitted having been captured, questioned, and imprisoned.

  “What the hell are you doing here, then?” Elmo demanded. “How come you’re even alive?”

  “They turned us loose, Ardath and me. After that business you had near Horse. That was a message. I’m supposed to deliver another.”

  “Such as?”

  “Unless you’re blind and stupid, you’ll have noticed that you’re not under attack. The Lady has ordered all operations against the Rebellion ceased.”

  “Why?”

  “You haven’t been paying attention. Because the Dominator is stirring.”

  “Come on, Croaker. We finished that business in Juniper.”

  “I went to the Barrowland. I saw for myself, Lieutenant. That thing is going to break loose. One of its creatures is out already, maybe dogging One-Eye and them. I’m convinced. The Dominator is a step from breaking out, and not harassed like in Juniper.” I turned to the Lady. “Ardath. What was that I figured? I lost track of how long we’ve been in the Plain. It was about ninety days when we came in.”