The Return of the Black Company (64 page)

Croaker said, “Let’s go have a chat with my esteemed paramour. Where is she, Murgen?”

I told him.

“Let’s go.” But he had to stop and pick up his Widowmaker costume. Which allowed me time to borrow Thai Dei’s grey mare and get a head start. Croaker frowned but did not ask when he caught up. Thai Dei insisted on coming along even though he had to jog now.

He did not keep up.

Neither did I, of course.

If Lady and the Old Man indulged in a head-butting contest it was over before I got there. Maybe I could take Smoke back to look their meeting over. When I got there they were looking up at the tall white wall and deciding how best to exploit the situation.

Lady was saying, “I fear our supply of bamboo poles is growing too small. It’s certain that Longshadow will send shadows against us at least once.” She spoke Taglian. She did not care who heard what she said. And plenty of ears were nearby including Blade, Willow Swan and the Nar generals Ochiba and Sindawe, none of whom enjoyed my complete trust. Crows were, as always, plentiful, too.

They were turning the ruins of Kiaulune into a major rookery. Good eating there, I suppose, with the cold weather preserving the corpses of the Shadowmaster’s subjects.

Almost everyone threw rocks at the birds. They had become adept at dodging. I suspected resignation would set in eventually and the only time we would enjoy any privacy would be when Lady used one of the spells she had developed for frightening the birds away.

A ripple of astonished disturbance passed through the circling birds. No one else noticed. But I was alert for it because I had been wondering if One-Eye was going to watch.

If anyone else figured this out … You can do nothing in this world without leaving some mark, somehow. If someone else knows what sort of trace you will leave …

One of the crystal tower tops received so many fireballs that it began to ring. The sound started as a soft hum and rapidly swelled to a raging shriek. The tower top exploded in a cloud of smoke and dust and spinning shards that melted holes in the snow and earth wherever they fell. The event so startled everyone that it distracted even Lady for a moment.

In that brief moment Longshadow counterattacked.

The boots of an invisible giant a thousand feet tall began stomping and kicking the men atop Overlook’s wall and those trying to join them. In the moments it took Lady to overcome her surprise and respond, every ladder got stripped away and the bands holding the secured section of wall got scattered. Many fell to their deaths.

Lady stopped the stomping but all efforts to reestablish a ladder link to the men up top failed. Longshadow was fully into the game.

Croaker stayed and watched for the rest of the day. I stayed with him. Nothing much happened.

*   *   *

We walked back. Croaker said, “Overall, that may have been a net gain.”

“We still have people inside. If we can preserve them.”

“We shall make every effort.”

His mind was racing. Something had happened outside whatever playscript he had written and he was trying to incorporate it as a positive. He had no attention left over for little questions like why I was using Thai Dei’s horse while my brother-in-law was hoofing it.

Which reminded me that I needed to check up on Sleepy. The weather and the war had not gone the way I had expected here so his life might not have been comfortable lately, either.

The wind rose dramatically during our walk. Pellets of ice came as precursors of the storm. “I’ve got a feeling this is going to be a bad one.”

Croaker grunted. “Pity she didn’t pull it off this morning. We could be inside and warm.”

“At least it ought to be about the last big one of the winter.”

“That reminds me. How are we doing finding seed grain?”

47

The storm lingered a long time. A couple times I almost became lost just getting from my shelter to One-Eye’s wagon or Croaker’s shelter. The blizzard brought air so cold we had to move Smoke into Croaker’s place to keep him from freezing. The soldiers suffered badly, though mostly through their own failure to provide themselves with adequate shelter. Captives had warned them that winter here would be much harsher than any they had ever known.

Once again I got to know the joys of sharing quarters with Mother Gota.

Thai Dei insisted she had to get in out of the weather and I have been developing a soft streak as I get older. I allowed it.

She behaved uncharacteristically for Ky Gota. She kept her own counsel most of the time. She stayed out of the way. She helped Thai Dei dig out cold earth and carry it away so we would have more room. She did not say a disparaging word about all the time I spent writing. She worked hard, though I never had been able to criticize her on that account, ever.

She made me nervous. She was almost human. Though she made very little effort to be pleasant or friendly.

The Captain, though, was sharing space with One-Eye and Smoke for the duration. He was much less happy than I was. And I was not happy because I was getting almost no chance to travel with Smoke. When I did stumble over there they would not let me go ghostwalking long enough to do more than check something specific, which was always something on a list they had prepared but claimed not to have had time to check for themselves.

Croaker did not ghostwalk much but he did not let the blizzard and its aftermath keep him from working on other stuff.

Over there in Overlook, Longshadow and Howler were putting in hours as long as ours. And when he was not with his ally Howler, the Shadowmaster had his head together with Narayan.

Singh seemed to have perked up now that he had an almost friend. The Daughter of Night seemed content to ignore everybody and live entirely within herself.

Fighting continued inside the fortress. I almost had to envy our guys who were trapped in there. They were scared all the time but they were warm and most of the time they had enough to eat.

Fresh snow fell every three days. Harsh winds never stopped blowing. I began to worry about the wood we needed to keep going. The snow was so deep it was almost impossible to get around. Nobody knew how to make snowshoes. Probably only three or four Old Crew guys besides me knew what snowshoes were.

I thought it was a great time for Longshadow to send out some of his pet shadows but he failed to grab the advantage. He was not confident that Howler could withstand Lady by himself, nor, I suspect, did he want to turn his back on his partner for long.

*   *   *

The dreams intensified. They diversified as well. I went to the plain of death and the caves of ice—and I went to the Nyueng Bao delta swamps to see Sahra and into the hills and mountains behind us where I caught glimpses of Goblin and Mogaba in huddled hiding places trying to wait out the weather.

Those dreams all seemed very real.

Even more real seemed my dreams of Soulcatcher, whose lonesome misery was epic. The place she had chosen to hole up seemed to pull snow and wind both, till the former was deeper than she was tall.

The first two times I suffered these dreams I took them passively. The third night my own presence there seemed so real that I tried tinkering with reality.

The dream did not change but my place within it did.

I experimented much more next night.

The morning afterward, after a not entirely inedible breakfast prepared by Mother Gota, I slogged through the snow to visit the Captain.

“Had to get away?” he asked.

“They’re not being bad. The old woman’s even fixing food that’s palatable. If you’re not real picky.”

“What’s up? Where’s your shadow?”

“I guess he didn’t want to deal with the snow.” The snow was the first thing I had seen that made Thai Dei want to back down. This winter was his first extensive experience with the white stuff.

“None of us do. Anything from the old guy?”

“In this weather? You’re kidding.” He was still sure that Uncle Doj was up to something. Maybe I ought to dream about him. “What I wanted you to know is, my dreams are getting really strange.” I explained.

“Is it your imagination or are you really going out?”

“It feels like being out there with Smoke. Almost. I don’t have any feeling of control. So far.”

Croaker grunted. He looked thoughtful, seeing some possibilities. I saw a few myself.

“What I thought was, I could make a quick circuit with Smoke to see how closely reality conforms to what I dreamed.” I had little trouble accepting the possibility because I had been experiencing such unusual dreams for so long.

“Do it. Without wasting any time.”

“What’s your hurry? This snow isn’t going anywhere for a while.”

Croaker grunted again.

He was turning into a genuine old fart.

*   *   *

The flight with Smoke showed me nothing I had not seen in my dreams. It did not show me Soulcatcher. Smoke still refused to get close. But I passed high overhead and saw that she was indeed caught in a side canyon where the snow was extremely deep.

48

The weather changed eventually. The snow melted. We came out of our shelters like a bunch of groundhogs. So did the rest of the world. But most everyone was interested in recovering, not in getting into fights.

Fighting did continue inside Overlook, though mostly Longshadow’s soldiers were satisfied to keep Lady’s troops bottled up. Those men were in no hurry to get themselves killed now they were cut off from the outside. They had control of stores enough for a long time and complete confidence that Lady would make every effort to relieve them.

She would. I used Smoke to look in on some of her planning. She had expected any men who got inside to be cut off for a while. She had chosen shock units and commanders she believed would be able to handle the hardship.

*   *   *

The Prince’s division was fighting in the ruins of Kiaulune and in the hills north of us, where Mogaba persisted in harassing the shit out of us. Lady’s division held the ground between the city and Overlook. One of the Captain’s divisions was around the other side, astride the road to the Shadowgate. The other remained in reserve.

Spring was a real threat on the horizon.

I asked Croaker, “You think the Prahbrindrah Drah is maybe going to get tired of getting the honors in all these fights?”

He gave me a startled look. “Am I that obvious?”

“About what?” I looked around. Only Thai Dei was close enough to hear anything.

“You just … It could be his division is the most incompetent.”

“And least reliable?”

“This army will suffer a lot of casualties before we get to Khatovar, Murgen. Correct me if I’m wrong. It seems to me it would be in the Company’s interest if most of those happened outside our own ranks.”

“Uhm?”

“I trust my Old Division. A lot of those men want to join the Company. Most of them would fight the Prince if I gave the order.”

Lately a lot of Taglians wanted to join the Company. I think most of the applications were genuine. Guys who take the oath always stick. They never take the oath lightly.

The oath is always administered in secret. Recent recruits have been asked to keep their new allegiances to themselves. No one outside the Company had any idea how strong we really were. Some people inside were getting the mushroom treatment, too, if their name was something like Lady.

The Old Man was turning paranoia into a fine art.

“I understand that. What I’m wondering is, how come Lady is getting the hurt, too?” If something did not end up on the Prince’s back usually it went to her.

Croaker’s shrug told me he was not quite sure himself. “I guess I don’t want her in any position where she has to deal with too much temptation.”

“And the New Division?”

“I wouldn’t ask them to face off with the Prince. They probably won’t ever be ready to take our side in a civil scrimmage.” He looked me in the eye. This campaign had elevated him to a new level of hardness. This was like trading looks with Kina.

I did not look away.

Croaker explained, “I’ll deliver on
my
promises.”

He meant that our employers would not deliver. The Radisha, especially, was determined to screw us. The Prince had been out here long enough to become one of the gang.

We never did get a chance to work our magic on his sister.

I said, “I spend a lot of time wishing I’d stayed a farm boy.”

“You still having trouble with the nightmares?”

“Every night. But it’s not like it’s a direct attack. I always work my way through and use the opportunity to scout around. Sure as hell ain’t pleasant, though, I’ll tell you that.” Kina, or somebody or something who wanted me to think she was Kina, was in my dreams all the time. My own conviction was that it
was
Kina, not Catcher. She was still trying to promise me Sahra back.

I wished she would do something about the odor.

“She trying to work Lady, too?”

“Probably.” Almost certainly. “Or maybe Lady is working her.”

“Uhm.” He was not listening. He was concentrating on Overlook now. Fireballs had begun zipping around over there.

Several fireballs flashed in the ruins of Kiaulune, too. The people Mogaba had in there were stubborn. The man really could find good soldiers and could motivate them. The Prahbrindrah Drah had begun razing parts of the ruined city, building by building, salvaging burnables where he could.

It was still cold. At the moment there were eight inches of snow on the ground, atop a couple of inches of hard-packed sleet. This was spring? How many more storms would we have to endure before the weather gave up delivering unpleasant surprises? Longshadow’s surviving crystal turrets sure looked comfy. I wondered why he had not bothered us much lately.

I checked the smoke rising from Kiaulune. I hoped the Prince would save a few nice places where us special folks could hole up in comfort after he rooted out the last partisans.

I was tired of living like a badger.

“What’s going on in there?” Croaker asked, indicating Overlook.

“Nothing’s changed. I don’t understand Longshadow. Not even a little. It’s like he’s determined to destroy himself. He’s in some kind of emotional slough where he just can’t exercise any initiative. You’ve been there, I expect. I have, I know. You know what needs doing but you just can’t move. It doesn’t seem like it’s worth the effort. It’s the same sort of paralysis that came over Smoke those last few weeks before he got knocked into his coma.”