Taglian marauders began picking off foragers and small raiding parties, suddenly, everywhere. The invaders suffered a thousand casualties before they understood. Cordy Mather engineered that phase, claiming to emulate his military idols, the Black Company. When the invaders responded with larger foraging parties he countered by leading them into traps and ambushes. At his peak he twice suckered entire companies into densely built and specially prepared towns that he burned down around them. The third time he tried that, though, the invaders did not take the bait. His overconfident Taglians got whipped. Wounded, he went back to Taglios to contemplate the fickleness of fate.
Willow, meantime, was marching around the eastern Taglian territories with Smoke and twenty-five hundred volunteers, keeping close to the enemy commander, trying to look like a menace that would become nemesis the moment the invaders made a mistake. Smoke had no intention of fighting, and was so stubborn even Willow was tempted to grumble.
Smoke claimed he was waiting for something to happen. He wouldn’t say what.
Blade got stuck down south, in the territories yielded without a fight, along the Main River. He was supposed to get the locals together and keep any messengers from going back and forth. It was an easy job. There were no bridges across the river and only four places where it could be forded. The Shadowmasters must have been preoccupied. Their suspicions were not aroused. Or maybe they just assumed no news was good news.
What Smoke was waiting for happened.
* * *
Like Blade said, Taglios was hag-ridden by its priests. Three major religions existed there, not in harmony. Each had its splinters, factions, and subcults that feuded among themselves when they weren’t feuding with the others. Taglian culture centered upon religious differences and the efforts of the priests to get ahead of each other. A lot of lower-class people weren’t signed up with anybody. Especially out in the country. Likewise the ruling family, who did not dare get religion if they wanted to stay in charge.
Old Smoke was waiting for one of the boss priests to get the idea he could make a name for himself and his tribe by getting out and busting the heads of the invaders nobody else would fight. “Purely a cynical political maneuver,” Smoke told Willow. “The Prahbrindrah’s waited a long time to show someone what can happen if they don’t do things his way.”
He showed them.
One of the priests got the bright idea. He conned about fifteen thousand guys into thinking they could handle experienced professionals, heads up. He led the mob out to look for the invaders. They didn’t have any trouble finding them. The Shadowmasters’ commander thought this was what he was waiting for, too. The Shadowmasters’ other conquests had all been settled by one big brawl.
Willow and Smoke and a few others stood on top of a hill where both sides could see them and spent an afternoon watching two thousand men massacre fifteen thousand. The Taglians that got away did so mostly because the invaders were too tired to chase them.
“Now we’ll fight,” Smoke said. So Willow moved his force up and poked till the invaders got aggravated and came after him. He ran till they stopped. Then he poked again. And ran again. And so forth. He got the notion from a poorly remembered version of a time when the Black Company ran for a thousand miles and led their enemies into a trap where they died almost to a man, thinking they had it won almost to the end.
Maybe these guys heard the same story. Anyway, they didn’t want to be led. First time they balked they just camped and wouldn’t move. So Willow talked it over with Smoke and Smoke rounded up some volunteers from the countryside and started building a wall around the invaders.
Next time the invaders just turned and marched off toward Taglios, which is what they should have done at the start, instead of trying to get rich. So Willow jumped on them from behind and kept making a nuisance of himself till he convinced the enemy commander that he had to be gotten rid of or there just wouldn’t be any rest.
He told Smoke, “I don’t know squat about strategy or tactics or anything, but I figure I only got to work on one guy, really. The head guy over there. I get him to do what I want, he brings everybody else with him. And I know how to aggravate a guy till he’ll fight me.”
Which is what he did.
The Shadowmasters’ general finally chased him into a town that had been getting ready all along. It was a bigger version of Cordy’s game. Only this time there wasn’t going to be a fire. All the people had been got out and about twelve thousand volunteers put in their place. While Willow and Smoke were running the invaders around, those guys were building a wall.
Willow ran into the town and thumbed his nose. He did everything he could to get the enemy chief mad. The man did not get mad fast, though. He surrounded the town, then got every man he had in Taglian territory that could still walk. Then he attacked.
It was a nasty brawl. The invaders had it bad because in the tight streets they could not take advantage of better discipline. They always had guys shooting arrows at them off the rooftops. They always had guys with spears jumping out of doors and alleys. But they were better soldiers. They killed a lot of Taglians before they realized they were in a box, with about six times as many Taglians after them as they expected. By then it was too late for them to get out. But they took a lot of Taglians with them.
* * *
When it was over Willow went back to Taglios. Blade came home too, and they opened the tavern back up and celebrated for a couple weeks. Meantime, the Shadowmasters figured out what happened and got thoroughly pissed. They made all kinds of threats. The prince, the Prahbrindrah Drah, basically thumbed his nose and told them to put it where the sun don’t shine.
Willow, Cordy, and Blade got a month off, then it was time for the next part, which was to take a long trip north with the Radisha Drah and Smoke. Willow didn’t figure this part was going to be a lot of fun, but nobody could figure a better way to work it.
17
Gea-Xle
I got them all up and decked out in their second best. Murgen had the standard out. There was a nice breeze to stretch it. Those great black horses stamped and champed, eager to get on down the road. Their passion communicated itself to their lesser cousins.
The gear was packed and loaded. There was no reason to hold movement—except that rattling conviction that the event would be something more than a ride into a city.
“You in a dramatic mood, Croaker?” Goblin asked. “Feel like showing off?”
I did and he knew it. I wanted to spit defiance in the face of my premonition. “What have you got in mind?”
Instead of answering directly, he told One-Eye, “When we get down there and come over that saddleback where they can get their first good look at us, you do a couple of thunders and a Trumpet of Doom. I’ll do a Riding Through the Fire. That ought to let them know the Black Company is back in town.”
I glanced at Lady. She seemed partly amused, partly patronizing.
For a moment One-Eye looked like he wanted to squabble. He swallowed it and nodded curtly. “Let’s do it if we’re going to do it, Croaker.”
“Move out,” I ordered. I did not know what they had in mind, but they could get flashy when they wanted.
They took the point together, Murgen a dozen yards behind with the standard. The rest fell into the usual file, with me and Lady side by side leading our share of pack animals. I recall eyeing the gleaming bare backs of the Geek and the Freak and reflecting that we had us some real infantry now.
The beginning of it was tight twists and turns on a steep, narrow path, but after a mile the way widened till it was almost a road. We passed several cottages evidently belonging to herdsmen, not nearly as poor and primitive as one would suspect.
Up we went into the backside of the saddle Goblin mentioned, and the show started. It was almost exactly what he prescribed.
One-Eye clapped his hands a couple of times and the results were sky-shaking crashes. Then he set them to his cheeks and let fly a trumpet call just as loud.
Meantime, Goblin did something that filled the saddleback with a dense black smoke that turned into ferocious-looking but harmless flames. We rode through. I fought down a temptation to order a gallop and tell the wizards to have the horses breathe fire and kick up lightnings. I wanted a showy announcement of the Company’s return, but not the appearance of a declaration of war.
“That ought to impress somebody,” I said, looking back at the men riding out of the flames, the ordinary horses prancing and shying.
“If it doesn’t scare hell out of them. You should be more careful how much you give away, Croaker.”
“I feel daring and incautious this morning.” Which was maybe the wrong thing to say after my failure of daring and lack of incaution the night before. But she let it pass.
“They’re talking about us up there.” She indicated the pair of stocky watchtowers flanking the road, three hundred yards ahead. There was no way to avoid riding between them, through a narrow passage filled with the shadow of death. Up top, heliographs chatted tower to tower and presumably with the city as well.
“Hope they’re saying something nice, like hurray, the boys are back in town.” We were close enough so I could make out the men up there. They did not look like guys getting ready for a fight. A couple sat on the merlons with their legs dangling outside. One that I took to be an officer stood in a crenel with one foot up on a merlon, leaning on his knee, watching casually.
“About the way I’d do it if I had me a really sneaky trap set,” I grumped.
“Not everyone in the world has the serpentine sort of mind you do, Croaker.”
“Oh yeah? I’m plain simple compared to some I could name.”
She gave me one of her sharp old-time Lady-on-fire withering looks.
One-Eye was not there to say it himself, so I said it for him. “That snake’s probably got more smarts than you do, Croaker. The only trouble he goes hunting is breakfast.”
We were close to the one tower now, with Goblin and One-Eye and Murgen already past. I raised my hat in a friendly salute.
The officer reached down beside him, picked up something, tossed it down. It came tumbling toward me. I snatched it out of the air. “What an athlete! Maybe I’ll go for two out of three.”
I looked at what I caught.
It was a black stick about an inch and a quarter in diameter and fifteen inches long, carved from some heavy wood, decorated all over with ugly what-is-its. “I’ll be damned.”
“No doubt. What is it?”
“An officer’s baton. I’ve never seen one before. But they’re mentioned all through the Annals, up through the fall of Sham, which was some sort of mysterious lost city up on the plateau we just crossed.” I lifted the baton in a second salute to the man above.
“The Company was there?”
“It’s where it ended up after it left Gea-Xle. The Captain didn’t find his silver mountain. He did find Sham. The Annals are pretty confused. The people of Sham are supposed to have been a lost race of whites. It seems that about three days after the Company found Sham, so did the ancestors of the Geek and the Freak. They got themselves worked up into some kind of religious frenzy and jumped all over the city. The first horde to get there killed damned near everybody, including most of the Company officers, before the Company finished killing them. The guys who survived headed north because there was another mob closing in from the south, keeping them from heading back this way. These batons aren’t mentioned after that.”
To which her only response was, “They knew you were coming, Croaker.”
“Yeah.” It was a mystery. I do not like mysteries. But it was only one of a herd and the bellies of most of them would never come floating up where I could give them the eyeball.
There were two guys waiting down the road from the watchtowers, a third of a mile from the city wall. The surrounding countryside was pretty barren for so close to a city. I guess the ground was poor. Farther north and south there was plenty of green. One of the two guys gave Goblin an old Company standard. There was no doubt what it was, though I did not recognize any of the honors. It was damned ragged, as you would expect of something as old as it had to be.
What the hell was going on here?
One-Eye tried talking to those guys but it was like starting a conversation with a stone. They faced their mounts around and got out front. I gave One-Eye a nod when he looked back to see if we should follow.
A twelve-man honor guard presented arms as we passed through the gate. But nobody else greeted us. Silence ran with us as we moved through the streets, people stopping to stare at the pale-faced strangers. Lady got half the attention.
She deserved it. She looked damned good. Very damned good. Black and tight both became her. She had the body to pull it off.
Our guides led us to a barracks and stable. The barracks part had been maintained but not used for a long time. It seemed we were supposed to make ourselves at home. All right.
Our guides did a fade while we were checking the place out.
“Well,” Goblin said. “Bring on the dancing girls.”
* * *
There were no dancing girls. There was not a lot of anything else either, unless you count apparent indifference. I had everybody stick tight the rest of the day, but nothing happened. We had been shelved and forgotten. Next morning I turned loose our two most recent recruits, along with One-Eye and Wheezer, on a mission meant to find a barge that would take us down the river.
“You just sent the fox to get a new latch for the chicken coop,” Goblin protested. “You should’ve sent me along to keep him honest.”
Otto busted out laughing.
I grinned but kept the rest inside. “You aren’t brown enough to get by out there, little buddy.”
“Oh, horse hockey. You bothered to look outside since we got here? There’s white folks around, Fearless Leader.”
Hagop said, “He’s right, Croaker. Ain’t a lot of them, but I seen a few.”
“Where the hell did they come from?” I muttered, going to the door. Sparkle and Candles got out of my way. They were there to ambush any surprise unwanted guests. I went outside and leaned against the whitewashed wall, chewed a piece of horse sorrel I plucked from the edge of the street.
Yeah. The boys were right. There were a pair of whites, an old man and a twenty-fivish woman, skulking down the way. They made a production of being indifferent to me while everyone else gawked.
“Goblin. Get your tail out here.”
He stumped outside, sulky. “Yeah?”
“Take a discreet look down there. You see an old man and a younger woman?”
“White?”
“Yes.”
“I see them. So what?”
“Ever seen them before?”
“At my age everybody looks like somebody I’ve seen before. But we’ve never been in this part of the world. So maybe they look like somebody we seen somewhere else. She does, anyway.”
“Hunh. Other way around for me. Something about the way he moves rings alarms.”
Goblin plucked his own horse sorrel. I watched. When I looked back the odd couple were gone. Headed our way were three black guys who looked like trouble on the hoof. “Gods. I didn’t know they made them that big.”
Goblin muttered, stared past them. He wore a puzzled frown. He cocked his head like he was having trouble hearing.
The three big guys marched up, stopped. One started talking. I did not understand a word. “No spikee, pal. Try another lingo.”
He did. I did not get any of that, either. He shrugged and checked his buddies. One of them tried a clicky tongue.
“You lose again, guys.”
The biggest broke into a ferocious dance of frustration. His buddies gabbled. And Goblin wandered away on me without a fare-thee-well Croaker. I caught a glimpse of his back as he scooted into a passage between buildings.
Meantime, my new friends decided I was deaf or stupid. They yelled at me, slowly. Which brought Sparkle and Candles
outside, followed by the others. The three big guys cussed each other some more and decided to go away.
“What was that all about?” Hagop asked.
“You got me.”
Goblin came trooping back wearing a big smug frog grin.
“I’m amazed,” I said. “I figured I was going to lose a week while I hunted down the local hoosegow and sold my soul to dig you out.”
He put on a show of being hurt. He squeaked, “I thought I saw your girlfriend sneaking off. I just went to check.”
“Judging by your smugness, you did see her.”
“Sure did. And I saw her meet up with your old man and his fluff.”
“Yeah? Let’s go inside and give it a think.”
I checked around in there just to make sure Goblin was not seeing things. Lady was gone, sure enough.
What the hell?
* * *
One-Eye and his crew came strutting in late that afternoon. One-Eye smirked like a cat with feathers in his whiskers. Geek and Freak lugged a big closed basket between them. Wheezer hacked and chewed and smiled like there was big mischief afoot and he maybe had a big hand in it.
Goblin jumped up from a nap with a squawk of protest before One-Eye got started. “You get right on back out that door with that whatever-it-is, Buzzard Breath. Before I turn that spider’s nest you call a brain into toys for tumblebugs.”
One-Eye did not give him a look. “Check this out, Croaker. You ain’t going to believe what I found.”
The boys set the basket down and popped the lid.
“I probably won’t,” I agreed. I snuck up on that basket, expecting a gross of cobras, or something such. What I saw was a pint-sized ringer for Goblin.… Better say demitasse-sized, since Goblin is not much more than a half-pint himself. “What the hell is it? Where’d it come from?”
One-Eye stared at Goblin. “I been asking myself that for years.” He had the biggest “Gotcha!” grin I ever saw.