The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company (Chronicles of the Black Company) (3 page)

“Why worry? How long can it last? Those priest characters are starting to smolder now. They’re going to start looking for some excuse to shut us down. Worry about finding another racket as sweet, not about making more beer faster. What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

“You got a grim look all of a sudden.”

“The blackbird of doom just walked in the front door.”

Willow twisted so he could see that end of the room. Sure enough, Blade had come home. Tall, lean, ebony, head shaved to a polish, muscles rippling with the slightest movement, he looked like some kind of gleaming statue. He looked around without approval. Then he strode to Willow’s table, took a seat. The girls gave him the eye. He was as exotic as Willow Swan.

“Come to collect your share and tell us how lousy we are, corrupting these children?” Willow asked.

Blade shook his head. “That old spook Smoke’s having dreams again. The Woman wants you.”

“Shit.” Swan dropped his feet to the floor. Here was the fly in the ointment. The Woman wouldn’t leave them alone. “What is it this time? What’s he doing? Hemp?”

“He’s a wizard. He don’t need to do nothing to get obnoxious.”

“Shit,” Swan said again. “What do you think, we just do a fade-out here? Sell the rest of Cordy’s rat piss and head back up the river?”

A big, slow grin spread across Blade’s face. “Too late, boy. You been chosen. You can’t run fast enough. That Smoke, he might be a joke if he was to open shop up where you came from, but around here he’s the bad boss spook pusher. You try to head out, you’re going to find your toes tied in knots.”

“That the official word?”

“They didn’t say it that way. That’s what they meant.”

“So what did he dream this time? Why drag us in?”

“Shadowmasters. More Shadowmasters. Been a big meet at Shadowcatch, he says. They’re going to stop talking and start doing. He says Moonshadow got the call. Says we’ll be seeing them in Taglian territory real soon now.”

“Big deal. Been trying to sell us that since the day we got here, practically.”

Blade’s face lost all its humor. “It was different this time, man. There’s scared and scared, you know what I mean? And Smoke and the Woman was the second kind this time. And it ain’t just Shadowmasters they got on the brain now. Said to tell you the Black Company is coming. Said you’d know what that means.”

Swan grunted as if hit in the stomach. He stood, drained the beer Cordy had brought, looked around as if unable to believe what he saw. “Damned-foolest thing I ever heard, Blade. The Black Company? Coming here?”

“Said that’s what’s got the Shadowmasters riled, Willow. Said they’re rattled good. This’s the last free country north of them, under the river. And you know what’s on the other side of Shadowcatch.”

“I don’t believe it. You know how far they’d have to come?”

“About as far as you and Cordy.” Blade had joined Willow and Cordwood Mather two thousand miles into their journey south.

“Yeah. You tell me, Blade. Who in the hell besides you and me and Cordy would be crazy enough to travel that far without any reason?”

“They got a reason. According to Smoke.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. You go up there like the Woman says. Maybe she’ll tell you.”

“I’ll go. We’ll all go. Just to stall. And first chance we get we’re going to get the hell out of Taglios. If they got the Shadowmasters stirred up down there, and the Black Company coming in, I don’t want to be anywhere around.”

Blade leaned back so one of the girls could wiggle in closer. His expression was questioning.

Swan said, “I seen what those bastards could do back home. I saw Roses caught between them and … Hell. Just take my word for it, Blade. Big mojo, and all bad. If they’re coming for real, and we’re still around when they show, you might end up wishing we’d let those crocs go ahead and snack on you.”

Blade never had been too clear on why he had been thrown to the crocodiles. And Willow was none too clear on why he had talked Cordy into dragging him out and taking him along. Though Blade had been a right enough guy since. He’d paid back the debt.

“I think you ought to help them, Swan,” Blade said. “I like this town. I like the people. Only thing wrong with them is they don’t have sense enough to burn all the temples down.”

“Damnit, Blade, I ain’t the guy can help.”

“You and Cordy are the only ones around who know anything about soldiering.”

“I was in the army for two months. I never even learned how to keep in step. And Cordy don’t have the stomach for it anymore. All he wants is to forget that part of his life.”

Cordy had overheard most of what had been said. He came over. “I’m not that bad off, Willow. I don’t object to soldiering when the cause is right. I just was with the wrong bunch up there. I’m with Blade. I like Taglios. I like the people. I’m willing to do what I can to see they don’t get worked over by the Shadowmasters.”

“You heard what he said? The Black Company?”

“I heard. I also heard him say they want to talk about it. I think we ought to go find out what’s going on before we run our mouths and say what we’re not going to do.”

“All right. I’m going to change. Hold the fort, and all that, Blade. Keep your mitts off the one in the red. I got first dibs.” He stalked off.

Cordy Mather grinned. “You’re catching on how to handle Willow, Blade.”

“If this’s going down the way I think, he don’t need handling. He’ll be the guy out front when they try to stop the Shadowmasters. You could roast him in coals and he’d never admit it, but he’s got a thing for Taglios.”

Cordy Mather chuckled. “You’re right. He’s finally found him a home. And no one is going to move him out. Not the Shadowmasters
or
the Black Company.”

“They as bad as he lets on?”

“Worse. Lots worse. You take all the legends you ever heard back home, and everything you heard tell around here, and anything you can imagine, and double it, and maybe you’re getting close. They’re mean and they’re tough and they’re good. And maybe the worst thing about them is that they’re tricky like you can’t imagine tricky. They’ve been around four, five hundred years, and no outfit lasts that long without being so damned nasty even the gods don’t screw with them.”

“Mothers, hide your babies,” Blade said. “Smoke had him a dream.”

Cordy’s face darkened. “Yeah. I’ve heard tell wizards maybe make things come true by dreaming them first. Maybe we ought to cut Smoke’s throat.”

Willow was back. He said, “Maybe we ought to find out what’s going on before we do anything.”

Cordy chuckled. Blade grinned. Then they began shooing the marks out of the tavern—each making sure an appointment was understood by one or more of the young ladies.

4

The Dark Tower

I piddled around another five days before working myself up to a little after-breakfast skull session. I introduced the subject in a golden-tongued blurt: “Our next stopover will be the Tower.”

“What?”

“Are you crazy, Croaker?”

“Knew we should have kept an eye on him after the sun went down.” Knowing glances Lady’s way. She stayed out of it.

“I thought
she
was going with
us
. Not the other way around.”

Only Murgen did not snap up a membership in the bitch-of-the-minute club. Good lad, that Murgen.

Lady, of course, already knew a stopover was needed.

“I’m serious, guys,” I said.

If I wanted to be serious, One-Eye would be, too. “Why?” he asked.

I sort of shrank. “To pick up the Annals I left behind at Queen’s Bridge.” We got caught good, there. Only because we were the best, and desperate, and sneaky, had we been able to crack the imperial encirclement. At the cost of half the Company. There were more important concerns at the time than books.

“I thought you already got them.”

“I asked for them and was told I could have them. But we were busy at the time. Remember? The Dominator? The Limper? Toadkiller Dog? All that lot? There wasn’t any chance to actually lay hands on them.”

Lady supported me with a nod. Getting really into the spirit, there.

Goblin pasted on his most ferocious face. Made him look like a saber-toothed toad. “Then you knew about this clean back before we ever left the Barrowland.”

I admitted that that was true.

“You goatfu—lover. I bet you’ve spent all this time concocting some half-assed off-the-wall plan that’s guaranteed to get us all killed.”

I confessed that that was mostly true, too. “We’re going to ride up there like we own the Tower. You’re going to make the garrison think Lady is still number one.”

One-Eye snorted, stomped off to the horses. Goblin got up and stared down at me. And stared some more. And sneered. “We’re just going to strut in and snatch them, eh? Like the Old Man used to say, audacity and more audacity.” He did not ask his real question.

Lady answered it for him, anyway. “I gave my word.”

Goblin did not mouth the next question, either. No one did. And Lady left it hanging.

It would be easy for her to job us. She could keep her word and have us for breakfast afterward. If she wanted.

My plan (sic), boiled down, depended entirely on my trust in her. It was a trust my comrades did not share.

But they do, however foolishly, trust
me
.

*   *   *

The Tower at Charm is the largest single construction in the world, a featureless black cube five hundred feet to the dimension. It was the first project undertaken by the Lady and the Taken after their return from the grave, so many lifetimes ago. From the Tower the Taken had marched forth, and raised their armies, and conquered half the world. Its shadow still fell upon half the earth, for few knew that the heart and blood of the empire had been sacrificed to buy victory over a power older and darker still.

There is but one ground-level entrance to the Tower. The road leading to it runs as straight as a geometrician’s dream. It passes through parklike grounds that only someone who had been there could believe was the site of history’s bloodiest battle.

I had been there. I remembered.

Goblin and One-Eye and Hagop and Otto remembered, too. Most of all, One-Eye remembered. It was on this plain that he destroyed the monster that had murdered his brother.

I recalled the crash and tumult, the screams and terrors, the horrors wrought by wizards at war, and not for the first time I wondered, “Did they really all die here? They went so easily.”

“Who you talking about?” One-Eye demanded. He did not need to concentrate on keeping Lady englamored.

“The Taken. Sometimes I think about how hard it was to get rid of the Limper. Then I wonder how so many Taken could have gone down so easy, a whole bunch in a couple days, almost never where I could see it. So sometimes I get to suspecting there was maybe some faking and two or three are still around somewhere.”

Goblin squeaked, “But they had six different plots going, Croaker. They was all backstabbing each other.”

“But I only
saw
a couple of them check out. None of you guys
saw
the others go. You heard about it. Maybe there was one more plot behind all the other plots. Maybe…”

Lady gave me an odd, almost speculative look, like maybe she had not thought much about it herself and did not like the ideas I stirred now.

“They died dead enough for me, Croaker,” One-Eye said. “I saw plenty of bodies. Look over there. Their graves are marked.”

“That don’t mean there’s anybody in them. Raven died on us twice. Turn around and there he was again. On the hoof.”

Lady said, “You have my permission to dig them up if you like, Croaker.”

A glance showed me she was chiding me gently. Maybe even teasing. “That’s all right. Maybe someday when I’m good and bored and got nothing better to do than look at rotten corpses.”

“Gah!” Murgen said. “Can’t you guys talk about something else?” Which was a mistake.

Otto laughed. Hagop started humming. To his tune Otto sang, “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the ants play the bagpipes on your snout.” Goblin and One-Eye joined in. Murgen threatened to ride over and puke on somebody.

We were distracting ourselves from the dark promise looming ahead.

One-Eye stopped singing to say, “None of the Taken were the sort who could lie low all these years, Croaker. If any survived we would have seen the fireworks. Me and Goblin would have heard something, anyway.”

“I guess you’re right.” But I did not feel reassured. Maybe some part of me just did not want the Taken to be all dead.

We were approaching the incline that led up to the doorway into the Tower. For the first time the structure betrayed signs of life. Men clad as brightly as peacocks appeared on the high battlements. A handful came out of the gateway, hastily preparing a ceremonial in greeting to their mistress. One-Eye hooted derisively when he saw their apparel.

He would not have dared last time he was there.

I leaned over and whispered, “Be careful. She designed the uniforms on them guys.”

I hoped they wanted to greet the Lady, hoped they had nothing more sinister in mind. That depended on what news they had had from the north. Sometimes evil rumors travel swifter than the wind.

“Audacity, guys,” I said. “Always audacity. Be bold. Be arrogant. Keep them reeling.” I looked at that dark entrance and reflected aloud, “They know me here.”

“That’s what scares me,” Goblin squeaked. Then he cackled.

The Tower filled more and more of the world. Murgen, who’d never seen it before, surrendered to openmouthed awe. Otto and Hagop pretended that that stone pile did not impress them. Goblin and One-Eye became too busy to pay much attention. Lady could not be impressed. She had built the place when she was someone both greater and smaller than the person she was now.

I became totally involved in creating the persona I wanted to project. I recognized the colonel in charge of the welcoming party. We had crossed paths when my fortunes had led me into the Tower before. Our feelings toward one another were ambiguous at best.