The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company (Chronicles of the Black Company) (6 page)

They had not been able to find out who the Woman was, but they knew she was somebody. She had connections in the Prahbrindrah’s palace, right up at the top. Smoke worked for her. Fishwives didn’t have wizards on the payroll. Anyway, both of them acted like officials trying not to look official. Like they did not know how to be regular people.

The place they met was somebody’s house. Somebody important, but Willow had not yet figured who. The class lines and heirarchies did not make sense in Taglios. Everything was always screwed up by religious affiliation.

He entered the room where they waited, helped himself to a chair. Had to show them he wasn’t some boy to run and fetch at their beck. Cordy and Blade were more circumspect. Cordy winced as Willow said, “Blade says you guys want to kick it up ’bout Smoke’s nightmares. Maybe pipe dreams?”

“You have a very good idea why you interest us, Mr. Swan. Taglios and its dependencies have been pacifistic for centuries. War is a forgotten art. It’s been unnecessary. Our neighbors were equally traumatized by the passage—”

Willow asked Smoke, “She talking Taglian?”

“As you wish, Mr. Swan.” Willow caught a hint of mischief in the Woman’s eye. “When the Free Companies came through they kicked ass so damned bad that for three hundred years anybody who even looked at a sword got so scared he puked his guts up.”

“Yeah.” Swan chuckled. “That’s right. We can talk. Tell us.”

“We want help, Mr. Swan.”

Willow mused, “Let’s see, the way I hear, around seventy-five, a hundred years ago people finally started playing games. Archery shoots, whatnot. But never anything man-to-man. Then here come the Shadowmasters to take over Tragevec and Kiaulune and change the names to Shadowlight and Shadowcatch.”

“Kiaulune means Shadow Gate,” Smoke said. His voice was like his skin, splotched with oddities. Squeaks, sort of. They made Willow bristle. “Not much change. Yes. They came. And like Kina in the legend they set free the wicked knowledge. In this case, how to make war.”

“And right away they started carving them an empire and if they hadn’t had that trouble at Shadowcatch and hadn’t got so busy fighting each other they would’ve been here fifteen years ago. I know. I been asking around ever since you guys started hustling us.”

“And?”

“So for fifteen years you knew they was coming someday. And for fifteen years you ain’t done squat about it. Now when you all of a sudden know the day, you want to grab three guys off the street and con them into thinking they can work some kind of miracle. Sorry, sister. Willow Swan ain’t buying. There’s your conjure man. Get old Smoke to pull pigeons out of his hat.”

“We aren’t looking for miracles, Mr. Swan. The miracle has happened. Smoke dreamed it. We’re looking for time for the miracle to take effect.”

Willow snorted.

“We have a realistic appreciation of how desperate our situation is, Mr. Swan. We have had since the Shadowmasters appeared. We have
not
been playing ostrich. We have been doing what seems most practical, given the cultural context. We have encouraged the masses to accept the notion that it would be a great and glorious thing to repel the onslaught when it comes.”

“You sold them that much,” Blade said. “They ready to go die.”

“And that’s all they would do,” Swan said. “Die.”

“Why?” the Woman asked.

“No organization,” said Cordy. The thoughtful one. “But organization wouldn’t be possible. No one from any of the major cult families would take orders from somebody from another one.”

“Exactly. Religious conflicts make it impossible to raise an army. Three armies, maybe. But then the high priests might be tempted to use them to settle scores here at home.”

Blade snorted. “They ought to burn the temples and strangle the priests.”

“Sentiments my brother often expresses,” the Woman said. “Smoke and I feel they might follow outsiders of proven skill who aren’t beholden to any faction.”

“What? You going to make me a general?”

Cordy laughed. “Willow, if the gods thought half as much of you as you think of yourself, you’d be king of the world. You figure you’re the miracle Smoke saw in his dream? They’re not going to make you a general. Not really. Unless maybe for show, while they stall.”

“What?”

“Who’s the guy keeps saying he only spent two months in the army and never even learned to keep step?”

“Oh.” Willow thought for a minute. “I think I see.”

“Actually, you will be generals,” the Woman said. “And we’ll have to rely heavily on Mr. Mather’s practical experience. But Smoke will have the final say.”

“We have to buy time,” the wizard echoed. “A lot of time. Someday soon Moonshadow will send a combined force of five thousand to invade Taglios. We have to keep from being beaten. If there’s any way possible, we have to beat the force sent against us.”

“Nothing like wishing.”

“Are you willing to pay the price?” Cordy asked. Like he thought it could be done.

“The price will be paid,” the Woman said. “Whatever it may be.”

Willow looked at her till he could no longer keep his teeth clamped on the big question. “Just who the hell are you, lady? Making your promises and plans.”

“I am the Radisha Drah, Mr. Swan.”

“Holy shit,” Swan muttered. “The prince’s big sister.” The one some people said was the real boss bull in those parts. “I knew you was somebody, but…” He was rattled right down to his toenails. But he would not have been Willow Swan if he had not leaned back, folded his hands on his belly, put on a big grin, and asked, “What’s in it for us?”

8

Opal: Crows

Though the empire retained a surface appearance of cohesion, a failure of the old discipline snaked through the deeps beneath. When you wandered the streets of Opal you sensed the laxness. There was flip talk about the new crop of overlords. One-Eye spoke of an increase in black marketeering, a subject on which he had been expert for a century. I overheard talk of crimes committed that were not officially sanctioned.

Lady seemed unconcerned. “The empire is seeking normalcy. The wars are over. There’s no need for the strictures of the past.”

“You saying it’s time to relax?”

“Why not? You’d be the first to scream about what a price we paid for peace.”

“Yeah. But the comparative order, the enforcement of public safety laws … I admired that part.”

“You sweetheart, Croaker. You’re saying we weren’t all bad.”

She knew damned well I’d claimed that all along. “You know I don’t believe there’s any such thing as pure evil.”

“Yes there is. It’s festering up north in a silver spike your friends drove into the trunk of a sapling that’s the son of a god.”

“Even the Dominator may have had some redeeming quality sometime. Maybe he was good to his mother.”

“He probably ripped her heart out and ate it. Raw.”

I wanted to say something like, you married him, but did not need to give her further excuses to change her mind. She was pressed enough.

But I digress. I was remarking on the changes in the Lady’s world. What brought the whole thing home was having a dozen men drop in and ask if they could sign on with the Black Company. They were all veterans. Which meant there were men of military age at loose ends these days. During the war years there had been no extra bodies anywhere. If they were not with the grey boys or that lot they were with the White Rose.

I rejected six guys right away and accepted one, a man with his front teeth done up in gold inlays. Goblin and One-Eye, self-appointed name givers, dubbed him Sparkle.

Of the other five there were three I liked and two I did not and could find no sound reasons for going either way with any of them. I lied and told them they were all in and should report aboard
The Dark Wings
in time for our departure. Then I conferred with Goblin. He said he would make sure that the two I did not like would miss our departure.

*   *   *

I first noticed the crows then, consciously. I attached no special significance, just wondered why everywhere we went there seemed to be crows.

*   *   *

One-Eye wanted a private chat. “You nosed around that place where your girlfriend is staying?”

“Not to speak of.” I had given up arguing about whether or not Lady was my girlfriend.

“You ought to.”

“It’s a little late. I take it you have. What’s your beef?”

“It isn’t something you can pin down like sticking a nail through a frog, Croaker. Kind of hard to get a good look around there, anyway, what with she brought a whole damned army along. An army that I think she figures on dragging along wherever we go.”

“She won’t. Maybe she rules this end of the world, but she don’t run the Black Company. Nobody runs with this outfit who don’t answer to me and only to me.”

One-Eye clapped. “That was good, Croaker. I could almost hear the Captain talking. You even got to standing the way he did, like a big old bear about to jump on something.”

I was not original, but I didn’t think I was that transparent a borrower, either. “So what’s your point, One-Eye? Why has she got you spooked?”

“Not spooked, Croaker. Just feeling cautious. It’s her baggage. She’s dragging along enough stuff to fill a wagon.”

“Women get that way.”

“Ain’t women’s stuff. Not unless she wears magical lacies. You’d know that better than me.”

“Magical?”

“Whatever that stuff is, it’s got a charge on it. A pretty hefty one.”

“What am I supposed to do about it?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought you ought to know.”

“If it’s magical it’s your department. Keep an eye out”—I snickered—“and let me know if you find anything useful.”

“Your sense of humor has gone to hell, Croaker.”

“I know. Must be the company I keep. My mother warned me about guys like you. Scat. Go help Goblin give those two guys the runs, or something. And stay out of trouble. Or I’ll take you across the water in a nice bouncy rowboat we’ll pull along behind the ship.”

It takes some doing for a black man to get green around the gills. One-Eye managed it.

The threat worked. He even kept Goblin from getting into mischief.

*   *   *

Though not in keeping with the time sequence, I hereby make notation of four new members of the Company. They are: Sparkle, Big Bucket (I don’t know why; he came with the name), Red Rudy, and Candles. Candles came with his name, too. There is a long story to tell how he got it. It does not make sense and is not especially interesting. Being the new guys they mostly stayed quiet, stayed out of the way, did the scut work, and worked on learning what we were all about. Lieutenant Murgen was happy to have somebody around he outranked.

9

Across the Screaming Sea

Our black iron coaches roared through Opal’s streets, flooding the dawn with fear and thunder. Goblin outdid himself. This time the black stallions breathed smoke and fire, and flames sprang up where their hooves struck, fading only after we were long gone. Citizens stayed under cover.

One-Eye lolled beside me, restrained by protective cords. Lady sat opposite us, hands folded in her lap. The lurching of the coach bothered her not at all.

Her coach and mine parted ways. Hers headed for the north gate, bound toward the Tower. All the city—we hoped—would believe her to be in that coach. It would disappear somewhere in uninhabited country. The coachmen, handsomely bribed, should head west, to make new lives in the distant cities on the ocean coast. The trail, we hoped, would be a dead one before anyone became concerned.

Lady wore clothing that made her look like a doxy, the legate’s momentary fancy.

She travelled like a courtesan. The coach was jammed with her stuff and One-Eye reported that a load had been delivered to
The Dark Wings
already, with a wagon to carry it.

One-Eye was limp because he had been drugged.

Faced by a sea voyage, he became balky. He always does. Old in knowing One-Eye’s ways, Goblin had been prepared. Knockout drops in his morning brandy did the trick.

Through wakening streets we thundered, down to the waterfront, amidst the confusion of arriving stevedores. Onto the massive naval dock we rolled, to its very end, and up a broad gangway. Hooves drummed on deck timbers. Finally, we halted.

I stepped down from the coach. The ship’s captain met me with all the appropriate honors and dignities—and a furious scowl on behalf of his savaged deck. I looked around. The four new men were there. I nodded. The captain shouted. Hands began casting off. Others began helping my men unharness and unsaddle horses. I noticed a crow perched on the masthead.

Small tugs manned by convict oarsmen pulled
The Dark Wings
off the pier. Her own sweeps came out. Drums pounded the beat. She turned her bows seaward. In an hour we were well down the channel, running with the tide, the ship’s great black sail bellied with an offshore breeze. The device thereon was unchanged since our northward journey, though Soulcatcher had been destroyed by the Lady herself soon after the Battle at Charm. The crow kept its perch.

*   *   *

It was the best season for crossing the Sea of Torments. Even One-Eye admitted it was a swift and easy passage. We raised the Beryl light on the third morning and entered the harbor with the afternoon tide.

The advent of
The Dark Wings
had all the impact I expected and feared.

The last time that monster put in at Beryl the city’s last free, homegrown tyrant had died. His successor, chosen by Soulcatcher, became an imperial puppet. And
his
successors were imperial governors.

Local imperial functionaries swarmed onto the pier as the quinquirireme warped in. “Termites,” Goblin called them. “Tax farmers and pen-pushers. Little things that live under rocks and shy from the light of honest employment.”

Somewhere in his background was a cause for a big hatred of tax collectors. I understand in an intellectual sort of way. I mean there is no lower human life-form—with the possible exception of pimps—than that which revels in its state-derived power to humiliate, extort, and generate misery. I am left with a disgust for my species. But with Goblin it can become a flaming passion, with him trying to work everybody up to go out and treat a few tax people to grotesque excruciations and deaths.