Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (12 page)

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 “Gottcha!” grin I ever saw.

Goblin howled like a leopardess in heat, started making mystical passes. His
fingers raked furrows of fire out of the air.

Even I ignored him. “What is it?”

“It’s an imp, Croaker. An honest-to-god imp. Don’t you know an imp when you see
one?”

“No. Where’d it come from?” I was not sure I wanted to know, knowing One-Eye.

“Heading down to the river we come on this little bunch of shops around an
outdoor bazaar where they got all kinds of neat stuff for wizards,

fortune-tellers, spirit talkers, Ouija workers, and such. And right there in the
window of this dinky hole-in-the-wall shop, just begging for a new home, was
this little guy. I couldn’t resist. Say hello to the Captain, Frogface.”

The imp piped, “Hello to the Captain, Frogface.” It giggled just like Goblin, in
a higher voice.

“Jump on out of there, bitty buddy,” One-Eye said. The imp popped into the air
as if shot up. One-Eye chortled. He caught it by a foot and stood there with it
dangling head down like a toddler with a doll. He eyeballed Goblin, who was
positively apoplectic, so fussed he could not go on with the magical funny
business he had started.

One-Eye dropped the imp. It flipped and landed on its feet, sped across and
stared up at Goblin like a young bastard having a sudden epiphany about the
identity of its sire. It did cartwheels back to One-Eye, said, “I’m going to
like it here with you guys.”

I snagged One-Eye by the collar and lifted him off the floor. “What about the
damned boat?” I shook him a little. “I sent you out to hire a goddamned boat,

not to buy talking knick-knacks.” It was one of those flashes of rage that last
about three seconds, rare for me but usually strong enough to let me make an ass
of myself.

My father had them a lot. When I was little I would hide under the table for the
minute or so they took to pass.

I set One-Eye down. Looking amazed, he told me, “I found one, all right? Pulls
out day after tomorrow, at first light. I couldn’t get an exclusive charter
because we couldn’t afford anything big enough to haul us and the animals and
coaches if that was all the barge would be carrying. I ended up making a deal.”

The imp Frogface was behind Wheezer, clinging to and peeking around his leg like
a frightened child—though I got the feeling it was laughing at us. “All right. I
apologize for blowing up. Tell me about the deal.”

“This is only good to what they call the Third Cataract, understand. That’s a
place eight hundred sixty miles down that a boat can’t get past. There’s about
an eight-mile portage, then you have to hire passage again.”

“To the Second Cataract, no doubt.”

“Sure. Anyway, we can get the long first leg free, with food and fodder
provided, if we serve as guards on this commercial barge.”

“Ah. Guards. What do they need guards for? And why so many?”

“Pirates.”

“I see. Meaning we’d end up fighting even if we did pay for our passage.”

“Probably.”

“Did you get a good look at the boat? Is it defensible?”

“Yeah. We could turn it into a floating fort in a couple days. It’s the biggest
damned barge I ever seen.”

A tinkle of alarm began nagging in the back of my thoughts. “We’ll give it
another look in the morning. All of us. The deal sounds too good to be true,

which probably means it is.”

“I figured. That was one of the reasons I bought Frogface. I can send him
sneaking around to check things out.” He grinned and glanced at Goblin, who had
gone into a corner to plot and pout. “Also, with Frogface along we don’t have to
waste no coin on guides and interpreters. He can do all that for us.”

That sent my eyebrows up. “Really?”

“That’s right. See? I do do something useful once in a while.”

“You’re threatening to. You say the imp is ready to use?”

“As ready as he can be.”

“Come on outside where it’s private. I got about ten jobs for it.”

I took the outfit to the waterfront before the sun got its rump over the hills
beyond the river. The city remained somnolent, except for traffic headed the way
we were. The nearer the river the worse it got. And the waterfront was a
frenzied hive.

There were crows.

“Looks like they’ve been at it all night,” I said. “Which one is it, One-Eye?”

“That big one over there.”

I headed the direction he pointed. The barge was a monster, all right. It was a
giant wooden shoe of a thing meant mainly to drift with the current. Travel
would be slow on a fat, sluggish river like this. “It looks new.”

We moved in an island of silence and stares. I tried to read the faces of the
laborers we passed. I saw little but a slight wariness. I noted a few armed men,

as big as my visitors of yesterday, boarding some of the lesser barges. I eyed
the stevedores marching aboard our craft. “Why the lumber, do you suppose?”

“My idea,” One-Eye said. “It’s to build mantlets. The only protection from
missile fire they had was wicker screens. I’m surprised they listened and went
to the bother and expense. Maybe they took me up on all my suggestions. We’re
set if they did.”

“I’m not surprised.” I was now sure that not only had our arrival been foreseen,

it had been calculated into the schemes of an entire city. That pirate
infestation was more than a nuisance. These folks meant to hammer it down using
a band of expendable adventurers.

I did not understand why they thought they had to run a game on us. That was our
trade. And we had to go down that river anyway.

Maybe it was the way the society worked. Maybe they could not believe the truth.

With Frogface’s help it took about six minutes to straighten out the bargemaster
and the committee of bigwigs waiting with him. I wrangled the promise of a huge
fee on top of our passage. “We go to work as soon as we see the money,” I told
them. Lo. It appeared almost magically.

One-Eye told me, “You could have held them up.”

“They’re desperate,” I agreed. “Must be something they have to get through.

Let’s get to work.”

“Don’t you want to know what?”

“It doesn’t matter. We’re going anyway.”

“Maybe. But I’ll have Frogface look around.”

“Whatever.” I toured the main deck. Otto and Hagop tagged along. We talked
upgraded defensibility. “We need a better idea of what we’re up against. We want
to be prepared for pirate tactics. For example, we might set up engines behind
the mantlets if they attack from small boats.”

I paused along the wharf side rail. It was obvious a convoy would follow our
barge, which as obviously had been constructed to lead the way. Never would they
get it back upriver. It had only enough oars to keep it pointed the right
direction.

There were crows over the chaos. I ignored them. I had begun to suspect I was
obsessed.

Then I spied an island of emptiness against a warehouse wall. People avoided it
without noting what they were doing. A vague shape stood in shadow. Crows
fluttered up and down.

I felt like someone was staring at me. Was it my imagination? No one else saw
the damned crows. “Time I found out what the hell is going on. One-Eye! I need
to borrow your new pet.”

I told Frogface to go over and take a gander. He went. And in a minute he was
back, giving me a funny look. “What was I supposed to see, Captain?”

“What did you see?”

“Nothing.”

I looked over there. Nothing was what I saw now. But then I spotted the three
big guys who had tried to talk to me yesterday. They had a bunch of cousins with
them, getting in the way. They were watching our barge. I presumed they were
interested in us still. “Got a translating job for you, runt.”