“You go back if you want,” I snapped, with a savagery that surprised me. “I’m staying till I find…”
I could not see him, but I suspected he was grinning through his misery. He said, “Maybe we shouldn’t split up. That much more trouble getting everybody back together.”
Riding through the night in unfamiliar territory is not one of the smarter things I’ve done. Especially with a horde out there that wanted to do me harm. But the gods take care of fools, I guess.
Our mounts stopped. Their ears pricked. After a moment mine made a sound. A moment later still that sound was repeated from our left quarter. Without being urged the animals turned that way.
We found Sindawe and the man he’d brought in a crude bough shelter, their mounts hanging around outside. Both were injured, Sindawe the worst. We talked briefly while I did some stitching and patching and bandaging. Lady had ordered them to disappear. Goblin had covered for them while the pursuit went on off to the southeast. They had planned to head north in the morning.
I told them where to meet up, then got back into my saddle.
I was dead on my butt, barely able to stay upright, but something made me go on. Something I did not want to examine too closely lest I have to mock myself for my sentiment.
I got no arguments, though I think Mather was getting a little unsure of my sanity. I heard him whispering with Murgen, and Murgen telling him to can it.
I took the lead and gave my horse his head, telling him to find Lady’s mount. I’d never determined how intelligent the beasts were, but it seemed worth a try. And the animal went walking, though his pace was a little slow to suit me.
I don’t know how long the ride went on. There was no way to estimate time. After a while I began drifting off and coming awake with a start, then drifting off again. Near as I could tell, the others were doing the same thing. I could have raised hell with them and me both, but that would have been unreasonable. Reasonable men would have been in a warm room, back at that village, snoring.
I was about half awake when the crest of a hill half a mile ahead burst into flames. It was like an explosion. One moment darkness, the next several acres ablaze and men and animals scattering, burning, too. The smell of sorcery was so strong I could detect it.
“Go, horse!”
There was light enough for it to risk a trot.
A minute later I was moving over ground dotted by smoldering, twitching bodies. Little brown men. One hell of a lot of little brown men.
The flaming trees illuminated a racing silhouette, a gigantic wolf with a smaller wolf astride, clinging with paws and claws. “What the hell is that?” Mather demanded.
Murgen guessed, “That Shifter, Croaker?”
“Maybe. Probably. We know he’s around somewhere. Lady!” I yelled it at the burning trees. The fire was dying in the drizzle.
A sound that might have been an answer slithered through the crackling.
“Where are you?”
“Here.”
Something moved amidst an outcrop of small rocks. I jumped down. “Goblin! Where the hell are you?”
No Goblin. Just Lady. And now not enough light to see how badly she was hurt. And hurt she was, no doubt about that. A fool damned thing to do, and me a physician who ought to know better, but I sat down and pulled her into my lap and held her, rocking her like a baby.
The mind goes.
From the minute you sign on with the Company you’re doing things that make no sense, drills and practices and rehearsals, so that when the crunch comes you’ll do the right thing automatically, without thought. The mind goes. I was without thought of anything but loss. I did not do the right thing.
I was lucky. I had companions whose brains had not turned to mud.
They got together enough burnable wood to get a fire started, got me my gear, and with a little judicious yelling got me to stop fussing and start doing.
She wasn’t as bad off as she’d seemed in the dark. A few cuts, a lot of bruises, maybe a concussion to account for her grogginess. The old battlefield reflexes took over. I became a military physician. Again.
Murgen joined me after a while. “I found her horse. No sign of Goblin, though. How is she?”
“Better than she looks. Banged around some but nothing critical. She’ll hurt all over for a while.”
About then her eyelids fluttered, she looked up at me, and recognized me. She threw herself at me, wrapped her arms around me, and started crying.
Shadid said something. Murgen chuckled. “Yeah. Let’s see if we can find Goblin.” Cordy Mather was a beat slow, but he got it and went away, too.
She settled down quickly. She was who she was, and was not in the habit of yielding to her emotions. She peeled herself off me. “Excuse me, Croaker.”
“Nothing to excuse. You had a close call.”
“What happened?”
“I was going to ask you.”
“They had me. They had me dead, Croaker. I thought we’d given them the slip, but they knew right where we were. They split us apart and ran me up here, and there must have been a dozen of them sneaking around, jumping in on me and jumping away. They were trying to capture me, not kill me. Guess I should be glad. Otherwise, I’d be dead. But there’s some time missing. I don’t remember you showing up and running them off.”
“I didn’t. Near as I can tell, Shifter saved you.” I told her about the sudden fire and the wolf.
“Maybe. I didn’t know he was around.”
“Where’s Goblin?”
“I don’t know. We split about a mile from here. He tried to baffle them with illusions. We must have killed a hundred of those men today, Croaker. I never saw anybody so inept. But they never stopped coming. When we tried to outrun them there were always more in ambush no matter which way we went. If we tried to fight they always outnumbered us and two more turned up for every one we killed. It was a nightmare. They always knew where we were.” She snuggled in close again. “There had to be some kind of sorcery involved. I was never so scared.”
“It’s all right now. It’s over.” It was the best I could think to say. Now that my nerves were settled I was intensely aware of her as a woman.
What appeared to be lightning flashed to the east, several miles away. But there had been no lightning running with this petty drizzle. I heard Shadid and Murgen and Mather yelling at each other, then the sounds of their mounts moving away. “That’s got to be Goblin,” I said, and started to get up.
She tightened her grip, held me down. “They can handle it, Croaker.”
I looked down. It did not take much light to show me what was in her face. “Yeah. I guess they can.” After a moment’s hesitation, I did what she wanted.
As the breathing got heavier I broke away and said, “You’re not in any shape for—”
“Shut up, Croaker.”
I shut up, and paid attention to business.
28
Back to Scouting
The pinhead gods had other ideas.
I am not a swift worker, and Lady had her natural reluctances—and all of a sudden the sky opened up like somebody chopped open the bellies of the clouds. The downpour was heavy and cold and came with just a breath or two of chill wind for warning. I’d have thought I was already wet enough not to mind more, but …
We’d hardly stopped scrambling around trying to find some shelter when Murgen and the others came out of the night. Murgen said, “It was Goblin, all right, but he was gone when we got there.” He assumed I knew what he was talking about. “Croaker, I know us Black Company types is tough he-men and neither rain nor snow nor little brown geeks is supposed to stop us from doing any damned thing we want, but I’m burned out on this rain. I guess I got what you call conditioned at the Barrowland. I can’t handle too much of it. I get the collywobbles.”
I was burned out on it, too. Especially now it was coming down serious. But … “What about Goblin?”
“What about him? I’ll make you a bet, Croaker. Th
at little dork is all right. Goddamned well better off than we are. Eh?”
This is where command really gets you. When you make a choice that feels like you’re taking the easy way out. When you think you are taking convenience over obligation. “Right, then. Let’s see if we can’t find our way back to town.” I let go Lady’s hand. We got ourselves in better array. Those guys pretended not to notice. I supposed the troops back in Taglios would know before sunrise, somehow. Rumor works that way.
Damn, I wished I was guilty as suspected.
We reached the village as the world began to turn grey. Even those fabulous mounts of ours were worn out. We boothorned them into a stable meant for half a dozen normal animals and went clumping inside. I was sure the owner would be thrilled to death to see his clientele expanded again and looking like they’d just spent the night rolling around in the mud.
The old boy wasn’t around. Instead, a pudgy little woman appeared from the kitchen, looked at us like she thought the barbarians had invaded, then saw Lady.
Lady looked just as rough as the rest of us. Just as mean. But there was no mistaking her for a guy. The old gal rushed her and babbled in Taglian and reached up to pat her back and I didn’t need Cordy to tell me she was doing an “Oh, you poor dear” routine. We followed them back into the kitchen.
And there was friend Goblin, leaning back with his feet up on a log in front of a fire, sipping something from a huge mug.
“Get the little bastard!” Murgen said, and started after him.
Goblin bounced up and squeaked, “Croaker!”
“Where you been, runt? Sitting here drinking toddies while we’re out stomping in the mud trying to save your butt from the baddies, eh?”
Murgen got him cornered. “Hey! No! I just got here myself.”
“Where’s your horse? The stable was one short when we put ours in.”
“It’s pretty miserable out there. I left it out back and came straight inside.”
“It’s not miserable for a horse? Murgen, throw him out and don’t let him back inside till he takes care of his horse.”
Not that we had done all that decent a job ourselves. But we’d at least gotten them in out of the wet.
“Cordy, when the old gal finishes fussing over Lady ask her how far it is to the Main.”
“The Main? You’re not still—”
“I’m still. As soon as I get some chow inside me and a couple hours of sleep. It’s what I came down for and it’s what I’m going to do. Your pals have been running a game on us, whatever their reasons, and I don’t like it. If I can take the Company on without getting drafted into somebody’s fight, I’m going to do it.”
He sort of smiled. “All right. If you have to see for yourself, see for yourself. But be careful.”
Goblin came in, looking sheepish and conciliatory and wet. “Where are you going now, Croaker?”
“Where we were going in the first place. The river.”
“Maybe I can save you the trouble.”
“I doubt it. But let’s hear it. You find out something while you were adventuring on your own?”
His eyes narrowed.
“Sorry. It wasn’t one of my all-time best nights.”
“You’re having a lot of not-so-good times in recent years, Croaker. Being Captain gives you a sour stomach.”
“Yeah.”
We exchanged stares. I won the lookdown. He said, “After Lady and I split up I only got about half a mile before I realized them brown guys weren’t being fooled. I knew I did a good job with the illusion. If they didn’t all come after me, then they had some mojo of their own somewhere. I already suspected they did on account of how they stuck all the time even when we outran them. So I figured if I couldn’t get back to Lady I’d do the next best thing and go after whoever was controlling and guiding them. When I started sniffing around for it it was damned easy to find. And they gave me no trouble. I guess they figured if I would go away from Lady they’d leave me alone. Only a few stuck with me. I turned on them and uncorked a few specials I was saving for the next time One-Eye got out of line, and after they all stopped kicking I buzzed over there and sneaked up and there was this hilltop that had been sort of hollowed out, like a bowl, and down in the bowl there was these six guys all facing a little fire. Only there was something weird. You couldn’t see them right. It was like you was looking at them through a fog. Only the fog was black. Sort of. Lots of little shadows, I’d guess you’d call them. Some of them no bigger than a mouse’s shadow. All buzzing around like bees.”
He was talking as fast as his mouth would go, yet I knew he was having trouble telling what he had seen. That words for what he wanted to convey did not exist, at least in any languages us mundanes would understand.
“I think they were seeing what we were doing in the flames, then sending those shadows out to tell their boys what to do to us and how to get into our way.”
“Hunh?”
“Maybe you were lucky, not dealing with them so much in the daytime.”
“Right.” I figured I’d had troubles enough chasing a walking tree stump around the countryside. “See any crows while you were at it?”
He looked at me funny. “Yeah. As a matter of fact. See, I was laying there in the mud looking at these guys, trying to figure what I had in the trick bag that I could smack them with, and all of a sudden there’s about twenty crows swooping around. The whole thing blew up like it was raining naptha instead of water. Cooked those brown guys good. Only those crows maybe weren’t crows. You know what I mean?”
“Not till you tell me.”
“I only saw them for a second, but it seemed like I could see right through them.”
“You always do,” I muttered, and he looked at me weird again. “So you figure any of the brown guys who’re still out there are wandering around lost now? Like puppies without their masters?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I figure they’re as smart as you or me. Well, as smart as you, anyway. They just don’t have their advantage anymore.”
The old woman was still fussing over Lady. She had taken her somewhere to get bathed and patched up. As if she needed patching.
“How does this save me a trip to the Main?”
“I’m not finished yet, Your Grand Impatience. Right after the blowup here came one of the guys I thought I’d finished, tracking me down, all on his lonesome, and he’s stumbling around holding his head like something got ripped out. I grabbed him. And I grabbed a couple loose shadows that were hanging around and I slapped one of them around a little and sent it off to tell One-Eye I needed to borrow his little beast. I taught another shadow how to make a guy talk and when the little monster showed up we asked the brown guy a few hundred questions.”
“Frogface is here?”
“He went back. Mogaba’s got them working their butts off up there.”
“Good for him. You asked questions. You got answers?”
“Not that made much sense. These little brown guys come from a berg called Shadowcatch. Specifically, out of some kind of superfortress called Overlook. Their boss is one of the Shadowmasters. Longshadow, they call him. He gave the shadows to the six guys that was in the bowl place. These were just wimpy little shadows not good for much but carrying messages. They supposedly got bad ones they can turn loose, too.”
“We’re having some fun now, aren’t we? You find out what’s going on?”
“This Longshadow is up to something. He’s in with the whole bunch trying to keep the Company away—the brown guys didn’t know why they’re worried—but he’s running a game on his own, too. The impression I got was he wanted them to capture you and Lady and have you dragged down to his castle, where he was going to make some kind of deal, maybe. And that’s about it.”
I had five hundred questions and I started asking them, but Goblin didn’t have the answers. The man he had interrogated hadn’t had them. Most of the questions had occurred to him.
He asked, “So, are you going down
to the Main?”
“You haven’t changed my mind. Neither have those brown runts. If they don’t have their mojo men anymore, they won’t give me much trouble. Will they?”
Goblin groaned. “Probably not.”
“So what’s the matter?”
“You think I’m going to let you ride out there without some kind of cover? I’m groaning about the state of my butt.” He grinned his big frog grin. I grinned back.
* * *
According to our hosts it was a four-hour ride to the Ghoja ford, the nearest and best crossing over the Main. Swan said there were four along an eighty-mile stretch of the Main: Theri, Numa, Ghoja, and Vehdna-Bota. Theri being the farthest upriver. Above Theri the Main coursed through rugged canyons too steep and bleak for military operations—though Goblin said our little brown friends had come that way, to evade the attention of the other Shadowmasters. They had lost a third of their number making the journey.
Vehdna-Bota lay nearest the sea and was useful only during the driest months of the year. The eighty miles of river between Vehdna-Bota and the sea were always impassable. Both Vehdna-Bota and Theri fords took their names from Taglian villages that had been abandoned when the Shadowmasters had invaded last year. They remained empty.
Numa and Ghoja were villages below the Main, formerly Taglian, now occupied. Ghoja appeared to be the critical crossing, and Swan, Mather, and Blade had all seen it. They told me what they could. I asked about the other fords and made an amusing discovery. Each was unfamiliar with at least one. Ha!
“Me and Goblin will scout the Ghoja crossing. Murgen, you and Cordy check out Vehdna-Bota. Shadid, you and Swan go to Numa. Sindawe, you and Blade check out Theri.” I was sending each of the three into strange country.
Cordy laughed. Swan scowled. And Blade … Well, I wonder if you could get a reaction out of Blade by sticking his feet in a fire.
We split up. Lady, Otto, Hagop, and Sindawe’s man all stayed behind to recuperate. Goblin rode beside me but did not say much after he hoped the weather would not go sour again. He did not sound like he expected the drizzle to hold off.