Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (7 page)

I joined Lady, who gave me a nasty look. I pasted on my sweetest smile and said,

“Look here. I’m over on the other side of the line. You got a problem,

Lieutenant?”

He bobbed his head. He was more in awe of my rank and title, unearned though
they were, than he was of the woman who was supposed to be his boss. And that
was because he believed he owed her certain duties even she could not overrule.

“The Company has openings for a few good men with military experience,” I said.

“Now that we’re out of the empire and don’t have to have the imperial
permission, we’re actively recruiting.”

He caught on real fast, skipped across beside me, gave Lady a big grin.

“There is one thing,” I said. “You come over here and do it, you’re going to
have to take the oath to the Company, same as anybody else. Meaning you can’t
pledge yourself to any higher loyalty.”

Lady gave him a nasty-sweet smile. He stepped back across, figuring he’d better
do some serious thinking before he committed himself.

I told Lady, “That goes for everybody. I would not presume before. But if you
come out of the empire and continue to ride with us it will be under the same
conditions accepted by everyone else.”

Such a look she gave me. “But I’m just a woman . . . ”

“Not a precedent, friend. It didn’t happen often. The world don’t have much room
for female adventurers. But women have marched with the Company.” Turning to the
lieutenant, I said, “And if you sign on, your oath will be taken as genuine.

First time you get an order and look to her for advice on yes or no, out you go.

Alone in a foreign land.” It was one of my more assertive days.

Lady muttered some very unladylike sniggen snaggen riddly rodden racklesnatzes
under her breath, then told the lieutenant, “Go talk it over with your men.” The
moment he was out of hearing she demanded, “Does this mean we stop being
friends? If I take your damned oath?”

“Do you reckon I stopped being friends with the others when they elected me
Captain?”

“I admit I don’t hear a lot of ‘yes sir,’ ‘no sir,’ ‘your worship sir.’ ”

“But you do see them do what they’re told when they know I mean what I say.”

“Most of the time.”

“Goblin and One-Eye need a little extra convincing once in a while. What’s it
going to be? You going to be a soldier?”

“Do I have a choice, Croaker? You can be a bastard.”

“Of course you have a choice. You can go back with your men and be the Lady.”

The lieutenant was talking to his troops and the idea of going on south was
proving less popular than he or I had thought it would. Most of the bunch
started getting their horses together, facing north, before he finished talking.

He finally came over and presented us with six men who wanted to go on with us.

He did not include himself with the group. Evidently his conscience had shown
him a way around doing what he considered to be his duty minutes before.

I questioned the men briefly and they did seem interested in going on. So I
brought them over the line and swore them all in, making a production of it for
Lady’s sake. I do not recall doing anything particularly formal for anyone else
before.

I gave the six to Otto and Hagop for dividing between them, and kept the one for
me, and later entered their names into the Annals when we learned how they
wanted to be known.

Lady remained content to be called Lady. It sounded like a name when heard by
speakers of any language but one, anyway.

Crows watched the whole show from a nearby tree.

Though the sun stared in through a dozen vaulted windows there was darkness in
that place where Darkness met.

A pool of molten stone simmered in the center of the vast floor. It cast bloody
light upon four seated figures floating a few feet in the air. They faced one
another over the pool, forming an equilateral triangle with a couple at its
apex. Those two were leagued more often than not. They were allied now.

There had been war among the four for a long time, with nothing gained, one in
relation to another. But at the moment there was an armistice.

Shadows slithered and swirled and pranced around them. Nothing could be seen of
any of them except vague shapes. All four chose to conceal themselves within
robes of black, behind black masks.

The smallest, one of the couple, broke a silence that had reigned an hour. “She
has begun moving south. Those who served her and still bear her indelible mark
are moving also. They have crossed the sea, and they come bearing mighty
talismans. And their road is strewn with those who would join their destinies to
that black standard. Including some whose power we would be foolish not to
beware.”

One angle of the triangle made a sound of contempt.

The other asked, “And what of the one in the north?”

“The Great One remains secure. The lesser one who lay in the shade of the
prisoning tree does so no longer. It has been resurrected and given new form. It
comes south too, but it is so insane and vengeance-starved that it is not to be
feared. A child could dispose of it.”

“Have we cause to fear that our presence here is known?”

“None. Even in Trogo Taglios only a few are convinced that we exist. Beyond the
First Cataract we are but a rumor, and not that above the Second. But he who has
made himself master in the great swamps may have sensed us stirring. It is
possible he suspects there is more afoot than he knew.”

The reporter’s companion added, “They come. She comes. But harnessed to the pace
of man and animal. We still have a year. Or more.”

The one snorted again, then spoke. “The swamps would be a very good place for
them to die. Take care of it. You may impress the one who rules them with the
majesty and terror of my Name.” He began to drift away.

The others stared hard. The anger in the place became palpable.

The other ceased his drift. “You know what sleeps so restlessly upon my southern
border. I dare not relax my vigilance.”

“Unless to stab another of us in the back. I note that the threat becomes
secondary whenever you care to try.”

“You have my pledge. Upon my Name. The peace will not be broken by me while
those who bring danger from the north survive. You may speak of me as one with
you when you extend your hands beyond the shadows. I cannot, I dare not, give
you more.” He resumed his drift.

“So be it, then,” said the woman. The triangle rearranged itself so as to
exclude him. “He spoke one truth, certainly. The swamps would be a very good
place for them to die. If Fate does not take them in hand sooner.”

One of the others began to chuckle. The shadows scurried about, frantic, as
growing laughter tormented them.

“A very good place for them to die.”

At first the names were echoes from my childhood. Kale. Fratter. Grey. Weeks.

Some the Company had served, some had been its foes. The world changed and
became warmer and the cities became more scattered. Their names faded to legend
and memories from the Annals. Tire. Raxle. Slight. Nab and Nod. We passed beyond
any map I had ever seen, to cities known to me only through the Annals and
visited only by One-Eye previously. Boros. Teries. Viege. Ha-jah.

And still we headed south, still making the first long leg of our journey. Crows
followed. We gathered another four recruits, professional caravan guards from a
nomad tribe called the roi, who deserted to join us. I started a squad for
Murgen. He was not thrilled. He was content being standard bearer and had
developed hopes of taking over the Annalist’s chores from me because I had so
much to do as Captain and medic. I dared not discourage him. The only
alternative substitute was One-Eye. He was not reliable.

And south some more, and still we were not back to One-Eye’s origin, the jungles
of D’loc Aloc.

One-Eye swore that never in his life, outside the Company, had he heard the name
Khatovar. It had to lie far beyond the waist of the world.

There are limits to what frail flesh can endure.

Those long leagues were not easy. The black iron coach and Lady’s wagon drew the
eye of bandits and princes and princes who were bandits. Most times Goblin and
One-Eye bluffed us through. The rest of the time we forced them to back down
with a little applied terror. There was one long stretch where the magic had
gone away.

If those two had learned anything during their years with the Company, it was
showmanship. When they conjured an illusion you could smell its bad breath from
seventy feet away.

I wished they would refrain from wasting that flash upon one another.

I decided it was time we laid up for a few days. We needed to regain our
youthful bounce.

One-Eye suggested, “There’s a place down the road called the Temple of
Travellers’ Repose. They take in wanderers. They have for two thousand years. It
would be a good place to lay up and do some research.”

“Research?”

“Two thousand years of travellers’ tales makes a hell of a library, Croaker. And
a tale is the only donative they ever require.”

He had me. He grinned cockily. The old scoundrel knew me too well. Nothing else
could have stilled my determination to reach Khatovar so thoroughly.

I passed the word. And gave One-Eye the fish-eye. “That means you’re going to do
some honest work.”

“What?”

“Who do you think is going to translate?”

He groaned and rolled his eye. “When am I going to learn to keep my big damned
mouth shut?”

The Temple was a lightly fortified monastery sprawled atop a low hill. It looked
golden in the light of a late afternoon sun. The forest beyond and the fields
before were as intense a dark green as ever I have seen. The place looked
restful.

As we entered, a wave of well-being cleansed us. A feeling of I have come home
washed over us. I looked at Lady. The things I felt glowed in her face, and
touched my heart.

“I could retire here,” I told Lady two days into our stay. Clean for the first
time in months, we stalked a garden never disturbed by conflicts more weighty
than the squabbles of sparrows.

She gave me a thin smile and did me the courtesy of saying nothing about the
delusive nature of dreams.

The place had everything I thought I wanted. Comfort. Quiet. Isolation from the
ills of the earth. Purpose. Challenging historical studies to soothe my lust to
know what had gone on before.

Most of all, it provided a respite from responsibility. Each man added to the
Company seemed to double my burden as I worried about keeping them fed, keeping
them healthy, and out of trouble.

“Crows,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Everywhere we go there’re crows. Maybe I only started noticing them the past
couple months. But everywhere we go I see crows. And I can’t shake the feeling
they’re watching us.”

Lady gave me a puzzled look.

“Look. Right over there in that acacia tree. Two of them squatting there like
black omens.”

She glanced at the tree, gave me another look. “I see a couple of doves.”

“But . . . ” One of the crows launched itself, flapped away over the monastery
wall. “That wasn’t any—”

“Croaker!” One-Eye charged through the garden, scattering the birds and
squirrels, ignoring all propriety. “Hey! Croaker! Guess what I found! Copies of
the Annals from when we came past here headed north!”

Well. And well. This tired old mind cannot find words adequate. Excitement?

Certainly. Ecstasy? You’d better believe. The moment was almost sexually
intense. My mind focused the way one’s does when an especially desirable woman
suddenly seems attainable.

Several older volumes of the Annals had become lost or damaged during the years.

There were some I’d never seen, and never had known a hope of seeing.

“Where?” I breathed.

“In the library. One of the monks thought you might be interested. When we were
here heading north I don’t remember leaving them, but I wasn’t much interested
in that kind of thing then. Me and Tom-Tom was too busy looking over our
shoulders.”

“I might be interested,” I said. “I might.” My manners deserted me. I deserted
Lady without so much as an “Excuse me.”

Maybe that obsession was not as powerful as I’d worked it up to be.

I felt like an ass when I realized what I had done.

Reading those copies required teamwork. They had been recorded in a language no
longer used by anyone but the temple monks. None of them spoke any language I
understood. So our reader translated into One-Eye’s native tongue, then One-Eye
translated for me.

What filtered through was damned interesting.

They had the Book of Choe, which had been destroyed fifty years before I
enlisted and only poorly reconstructed. And the Book of Te-Lare, known to me
only through a cryptic reference in a later volume. The Book of Skete,

previously unknown. They had a half dozen more, equally precious. But no Book of
the Company. No First or Second Book of Odrick. Those were the legendary first
three volumes of the Annals, containing our origin myths, referenced in later
works but not mentioned as having been seen after the first century of the
Company’s existence.

The Book of Te-Lare tells why.

There was a battle.

Always, there was a battle in any explanation.

Movement; a clash of arms; another punctuation mark in the long tale of the
Black Company.

In this one the people who had hired our forebrethren had bolted at the first
shock of the enemy’s charge. They had broken so fast they were gone before the
Company realized what was happening. The outfit beat a fighting retreat into its
fortified encampment. During the ensuing siege the enemy penetrated the camp
several times. During one such penetration the volumes in question vanished.