The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company (Chronicles of the Black Company) (35 page)

The boys at the west gate slid out and hit the camp from behind and got over the wall easily. They went to work on the wounded and camp guards and whoever else got in their way, but their success did not affect the bigger show. The men from the camp just kept after the rest of us.

I had to do something.

“Let’s get this thing planted somehow,” I told Murgen. I looked out across the chaos before I dismounted. I could not see Lady anywhere. My heart crawled into my throat.

The earth of that mound was soft and moist. Grunting and straining, the two of us were able to force the butt of the lance in deep enough that it would stand by itself, rocking whenever the Shadowmaster had a wriggling, screaming fit.

The attack from the flank made progress against the prisoners. Some of the fainthearted ran for the nearest city gate, joining fellows who had not bothered to come out. Ochiba tried to extend and rotate part of his line to face the onslaught, with limited success. Sindawe’s less disciplined outfit had begun to disintegrate in their eagerness to hasten the demise of the enemies they faced. They were unaware of the threat from the right. Only Mogaba had maintained discipline and unit integrity. If I’d had half a brain, I’d have flip-flopped his legion with Ochiba’s before we started this. Out where he was now he wasn’t much use. Killing off the entire enemy right wing, sure, but not keeping everything else from falling apart.

I had a bad feeling it was going sour.

“I don’t know what to do, Murgen.”

“I don’t think there’s anything you
can
do now, Croaker. Except cross your fingers and play it out.”

Fireworks spewed over in Ochiba’s area. For a while they were so ferocious I thought they might halt the coming collapse there. Goblin and One-Eye were on the job. But the crippled Shadowmaster managed to quiet them down.

What could I throw at him? What could I do? Nothing. I didn’t have anything else to send in.

I did not want to watch.

A solitary crow settled onto the writhing Shadowmaster impaled on the standard lance. It looked at him, at me, at the fighting, and made a sound like an amused chuckle. Then it began pecking at the Shadowmaster’s mask, trying to get at his eyes.

I ignored the bird.

Men began to scurry past. They were from Sindawe’s legion, mostly prisoners who had been enrolled the past few days. I yelled at them and cursed them and called them cowards and ordered them to turn around and form up. Mostly, they did.

Hagop and Otto attacked the men facing Ochiba, probably hoping to ease the pressure so he could go ahead and deal with the threat from the camp. But the attack from behind impelled the enemy forward. While Otto and Hagop’s bunch were having a great time the men they were butchering cracked Ochiba’s line and ran into the armed prisoners from the side.

Ochiba’s legion tried to hold, even so, but they looked like they were in bad trouble. Sindawe’s men thought they were about to run and decided to beat them in a footrace. Or something. They collapsed.

Mogaba had begun rotating his axis of attack to support Sindawe from the flank. But when he finished there was nothing to support.

In moments his legion was the only island of order in a sea of chaos. The enemy were no more organized than my people were. The thing was a grand mess, the world’s largest brawl.

More of my people ran for the city gates. Some just ran. I stood there under the standard, cussing and yelling and waving my sword and shedding a couple of quarts of tears. And, gods help me, some of the fools heard and listened and started trying to form up with the men I’d organized already, facing around, pushing back into it in tight little detachments.

Guts. From the beginning they had told me those Taglians had guts.

More and more, me and Murgen built us a human wall around the standard. More and more, the enemy concentrated on Mogaba, whose legion refused to break. The Shadowmasters’ men heaped their dead around him. He did not see us, it seemed. Despite all resistance he moved toward the city.

I guess Murgen and I got three thousand men together before fate decided it was time to take another bite.

A big mob of the enemy rushed us. I assumed my pose, with my sword up, beside the standard. I did not have much show left me. If Goblin and One-Eye were alive at all they were too busy covering their own asses.

It looked like we would drive them off easily. Our line was locked together solidly. They were just a howling mob.

Then the arrow came out of nowhere and hit me square in the chest and knocked me right off my horse.

41

Lady

It wasn’t always best to be old and wise in the ways of battlefields, Lady thought. She saw what was coming, clearly, long before anybody else did. Briefly, after Murgen skewered the Shadowmaster, she had hopes it would turn, but the advent of the troops from the encampment caused a shift in momentum that could not be reversed.

Croaker should not have attacked. He should have waited as long as it took, made them come to him, not been so concerned about the Shadowmasters. If he had allowed the new army from the south to come forward and get in the way of the men from the encampment, he could have then hurled his elephants in without risk to his right. But it was too late to weep about might-have-beens. It was time to try rooting out a miracle.

One Shadowmaster was out and the other was crippled. If only she had a tenth, even a hundredth, of the power she had lost. If only she’d had time to nurture and channel the little bit that had begun coming back to her.

If only. If only. All life was if only.

Where was that damned imp of One-Eye’s? It could turn this around. There was nobody on the other side to keep it from going through those men like a scythe, at least for long enough.

But Frogface was nowhere to be seen. One-Eye and Goblin were working as a team, doing their little bit to stem the tide. Frogface was not with them. They seemed too busy to be curious about that.

The imp’s absence was too important to be accident or oversight.
Why
? at this critical juncture?

No time. No time to brood about it and slither down through all the shadows and try to find the meaning of the imp’s presences and absences, which had been bothering her so long. Only time to realize, with certainty, that the creature had been planted upon One-Eye and wasn’t his to command at all.

By whom?

Not the Shadowmasters. The Shadowmasters would have used the imp directly. Not Shifter. He’d had no need. Not the Howler. He would have gotten his revenge.

What else was loose in the world?

A crow flapped past. It cawed in a way that made her think it was laughing.

Croaker and his crows. He had been muttering about crows for a year. And then they had started turning up around him any time anything big happened.

She glanced at the mound where Croaker and Murgen had set the standard. Croaker had a pair of crows perched on his shoulders. A flock circled above him. He made a dramatic figure there in his Widowmaker disguise, with the doombirds wheeling around him, waving his fiery sword, trying to rally his crumbling legions.

While the mind pursued one clatch of enemies the body dealt with another. She wielded her weapons with a dancer’s grace and the deadliness of a demigoddess. At first there had been an exhilaration, realizing she was approaching a state she had not achieved in ages, except by the path of its tantric cousin, last night. And then she went over into the perfect calm, the mystic separation of Self and flesh that actually melded into a greater, more illuminated and deadly whole.

There was no fear in that state, nor any other emotion. It was like being in the deepest meditation, where the Self wandered a field of glimmering insights, yet the flesh performed its deadly tasks with a precision and perfection that left the dead mounded about her and her terrible mount.

The enemy wrestled with one another to stay away from her. Her allies fought to get into the safety of the vacuum surrounding her. Though the right wing had begun to collapse, one stubborn rock formed.

The Self reflected on memories of illuminations won during the night from a pair of bodies, sweating, straining together, on her absolute amazement during and after. Her life had been one of absolute self-control. Yet time and again the flesh had gone beyond any hope of control. At her age.

And she looked at Croaker again, now harried by his enemies.

And the shadow crept into the killing perfection and showed her why she had denied herself for so long.

She thought of loss.

And loss mattered.

Mattering intruded upon the Self, distracting it. It wanted to take control of the flesh, to force things to transpire according to its desires.

She started forcing her way toward Croaker, the knot of men around her moving with her. But the enemy could sense that she was no longer the terrible thing she had been, that she was now vulnerable. They pressed in. One by one, her companions fell.

Then she saw the arrow strike Croaker and drop him at the foot of the standard. She shrieked and spurred her mount over friend and foe alike.

Her pain, and her rage, only carried her into a mass of enemies who attacked from every direction. She cut some, but others dragged her off her rearing steed and harried the beast away. She fought with skill and desperation against poorly trained opponents, but the ineptness of her enemies was not enough. She heaped bodies, but they drove her down to her knees.…

A wave of chaos swept over that fight within the battle, men fleeing, men pursuing, and when it passed all that could be seen of her was one arm protruding from a pile of corpses.

42

That Stump

Lying mostly on my back, clinging to the haft of the lance with my left hand, the standard flapping and the Shadowmaster flopping overhead. I don’t think the arrow hit anything vital. But the son of a bitch went through my breastplate and me, too. I think there are a couple inches sticking out in back.

What the hell happened to the spells protecting me?

I never been hit this bad before.

Coupla crows up with the Shadowmaster. Amusing themselves, trying to get his eyes. Four or five prowling around down here, not bothering me. Act like they’re standing guard.

Bunch showed up a while ago, when some enemy troops came after the standard. Piled all over them till they went away.

Ah, that damned arrow hurts! Can I get a hand around there and break the shaft? Pull the sucker back out after the head is gone?

Better not. The shaft might be keeping the bleeding from getting too bad inside. Seen that happen.

What’s going on? Can’t move enough to look around. Hurts too much. All I can see from here is the plain, covered with bodies. Elephants, horses, some men in white, a lot more not. I think we took a lot of them with us. I think if the formations had just held up we’d have kicked their asses.

Can’t hear. Total silence. Me? What was that? Silence of stone? Where did I hear that?

Tired. So damned tired. Want to lay down and sleep. Can’t. The arrow. Probably be too weak soon, though. Thirsty. But not thirsty like with a belly wound, thank the gods. Never wanted to die with a gut wound. Ha. Never wanted to die.

Keep thinking about sepsis. What if the bowman put garlic or feces on his arrowheads? Blood poisoning. Gangrene. Smell like you’re six days dead when you’re still breathing. Can’t amputate my chest.

Shame and guilt. Brought the Company to this. Didn’t want to be the last Captain. Guess none of them did. Shouldn’t have fought today. Sure shouldn’t have charged. Thought the illusions and elephants would be enough, though. Came close, too.

Know what I should have done, now. Stayed up in the hills where they couldn’t see me and let them come to me. Could have sneaked around and used the old Company trickery on them there. Show the standard in one direction and attack from another. But I had to come down here after them.

Feel like a fool lying here in my underwear and a breastplate. Wonder if it did any damn good for Murgen to put that Widowmaker suit on and go try to turn the tide? Mogaba will have his cojones for abandoning the standard.

But I’m here. Still holding the sucker up.

Maybe somebody will come before I pass out. Getting so even somebody from the other side would look good. Damned arrow. Finish it off. Get it over.

Something moving.… Just my damned horse. Having lunch. Turning grass into horse hockey. Just another day in the life for him. Go fetch me a bucket of beer, you bastard. You’re supposed to be so damned intelligent, why can’t you get a dying man a last beer?

How can the world be so damned quiet and bright and cheerful-looking when so many men just died here? Look at that mess. Right down there, fifty dead guys in a patch of wildflowers. Going to smell the stink for forty miles in a couple days.

How come this is taking so long? Am I going to be one of those guys who makes a career out of croaking?

Something out there. Something moving. Way out. Crows circling.… My old friend the stump, crossing the plain of the dead on a holiday stroll. Stepping light, though. In a good mood. What was that before? Not yet time? Crows? This critter Death? I been looking my own death in the eye all the way down here?

Carrying something. Yeah, a box. About a foot by a foot by a foot. Remember noticing that before but not paying much attention. Never heard of Death carrying a box. Usually a sword or a scythe.

Whatever the hell it is, it’s here to see me. Headed straight for me. Hang in there, Croaker. Maybe there’s new hope for the dead.

Geek up on the lance getting all bent out of shape. I don’t think he’s happy about developments.

Getting closer now. Definitely no walking stump. A people, or something walking on two legs, very short. Funny. Always looked bigger from a distance. Close enough now we ought to be eyeball to eyeball, if I could see any eyes inside that hood. It’s like there’s nothing in there at all.

Kneeling. Empty hood, yes, inches away. Damned box right beside me.