The brigands were new to the trade. Only one was mounted, aboard a nag that might not last another month. The rest were kids armed with rusty knives and farm tools.
The barefoot boy on horseback gobbled a stanza of “Stand and deliver!” in the local dialect. Another waved a sharp-ended stick and pranced. The rest approved with less enthusiasm.
A brown something materialized beside the rider’s ear. He squealed. The thing looked like a monkey with too many legs, each tipped with a claw like a pruning knife. It had too many yellow eyes, too.
Hiding in the goat cart was that nasty toad of a wizard, Goblin, who loved crafting revolting illusions.
Whittle disarmed six youngsters, injuring two. The boy on the horse galloped off, squalling.
Ranging ahead, I caught up first—and saw nothing to elevate my esteem for humanity.
Whittle had left the captives with Rusty and Robin. Rusty was a waste of meat, a coward, a bully, a shirker, and a scrounge. Only Robin liked him. Everybody thought somebody ought to put Rusty down.
Whittle left Rusty in charge because he wanted to be rid of dead weight. He lacked the imagination to see a potential problem in leaving Rusty self-supervised.
Rusty had a bandit bent over a boulder. Both had their trousers down. Rusty was having no joy. Little Rusty was not interested. Robin sprawled nearby, aching in body and soul, tangled up with a couple of bound, gagged, and extremely agitated male captives. He had tried to interfere. He met my eye, gasped, “Croaker! Please! Help her.”
I spurred my mount.
Rusty stayed lucky. A low branch ambushed me as my valiant steed lunged forward. Over her tail I went.
Pants held up left-handed, Rusty gave me a case of boot rash while letting the world know that he had had it with my holier-than-thou, candy-ass whining. “Croaker, grow a set! Act like a godsdamned real soldier.”
Hoofbeats approached.
Rusty went white behind his freckles.
His victim moaned and tried to crawl away.
Darling and the sorcerer Silent dismounted. Silent fixed Rusty with a venomous glare. Rusty saved the excuses. He always had some but knew they would be wasted today. Darling always knew the smell of bullshit. Rusty would fool himself before he fooled her.
Darling’s sad disdain was palpable. Rusty wilted. Darling was no longer younger, was never pretty and never available, was ice hard outside but suffered from a soft heart. We all love her. And her good regard is precious even to the worst of us.
Was Rusty smart enough to realize how lucky he was, having Darling show up before anyone else? Even in a situation so similar to her own first brush with the Company, back in another age? Death had stalked him for months already. Only Hell’s luck and Darling’s grace had kept him on the weather side of the grass this long.
Silent’s evil eyes said he would happily give Rusty a painful nudge along the downward road, were Darling not there to stay him. His sorcery will not work around Darling. No sorcery will. The Lady herself would have no recourse but mind and muscle in Darling’s presence.
Darling set me on the girl. I brushed auburn hair aside. The kid was pretty under the grunge. I saw no physical damage. Darling tapped her own forehead, belly, and signed. Silent shrugged. He could not tell from inside the magical null.
Darling feared the girl might be pregnant, not thanks to Rusty, who had suffered another of his life’s numerous disappointments.
She had me check Robin and the male prisoners next.
Robin would heal. That idiot kid was more worried about Rusty than about himself. Some friendships just never make sense.
Rusty now had his arms wrapped around his knees, his head tucked. He rocked slowly, knowing he was well and truly screwed—and probably did not understand why.
No captive was smart enough to speak a language any of us knew. Talking loud or slow did not help.
More Company men arrived. Rusty rocked faster.
His behavior had not been extreme. Rape was weather. War weather. And good men do not join the Company. His big problem was, he was “that asshole Rusty” that everybody loved to hate.
Darling held Robin’s hand briefly. The kid took that as a divine dispensation. Then she made a round of the prisoners. One boy met her eye stubbornly, not defiant but definitely determined. He kept an eye on the pretty girl always.
They would be siblings. Maybe twins. They were of a size and looked enough alike.
His glances toward Rusty were not kind.
Rusty rocked.
Robin moved the bandit girl without touching her, distancing her from the scene of her embarrassment. I stayed close. She was scared but neither defiant nor resigned. She observed, calculated, abided her time.
Then she groaned, clutched herself as though kicked in the gut, and puked.
Darling had come close enough to touch her.
Bandit girl was not knocked up despite having run with an all-male gang.
Sporadically, randomly, unpredictably, I am intuitive. She was a witch. A menarche-onset wild talent who did not yet understand what she was. She would not respond to Darling so violently, otherwise.
Wild talents seldom prosper. They scare the mud out of people. Evil sorcerers begin as local nuisances who grow to become regional afflictions. The worst then begin raising wicked armies and putting up dark towers. So why not burn them before they set the earth to shaking?
Me, I reckon any pretty young sociopath can create chaos without injecting magic into the mix.
Darling flurried signs at Silent, telling him to teach and protect the girl and make her keep her distance. When the girl hurt because Darling was close Darling hurt because the girl was close. Darling had me spread the word that the girl was not to be touched even if she sprinted through camp bare-ass begging for male attention.
The girl and her friends became not quite prisoners who were not quite guests. Silent sloughed their care and feeding off onto Robin. The girl seemed comfortable with him.
Rusty got busy being an invisible man. He stayed far away from the girl.
Some of our tagalong refugees spoke a dialect related to that of the bandits. Darling offered the bandits an opportunity to participate in our great adventure. They would be expected to pull their weight, of course.
They owed us for several meals before they fully understood the peril they had put themselves into. Our one-time employer, now our great enemy, the near-goddess the Lady, was a traveler’s tale in these parts. Her hunting dog sorceress, the Taken Whisper, was a complete unknown. Too late the newcomers learned that our pursuers were determined to convert us all into acres of feasts for ravens, flies, and scavengers.
The girl’s name was Chasing Midnight. She was scary smart. She picked up enough language to get by in just a week. Though officially Silent’s problem, she stuck to Robin till she learned that I was educated enough to be Company physician and Annalist. Literacy is sorcery itself in the hinterland. Plus, smelly old Croaker looked easy prey for pretty girl manipulation.
She definitely had an unconscious talent, proven by her having run untouched with that gang of boys. It explained Rusty’s disappointment, too. Males who got close could not sustain an interest.
Darling had a similar aura.
Midnight’s twin brother was Chasing Moonlight, not so bright but loyal to a lethal fault. She was twelve minutes older. Their story was familiar. Bad weather, pests, poor crops, relentless tax collectors. Many of us played a turn in a similar drama once upon a time.
“They fear me,” Midnight complained. She was underfoot all the time, now, two weeks on. She meant the refugees traveling with us.
“They think you’re a witch. They lost everything because of a witch.”
“Stupid thinking.”
“Never any shortage of stupid, girl.”
She muttered something in her own language, which I was having trouble picking up. She was no help, of course. As long as only she and her boys spoke the tongue, they could share secrets. She was
their leader now.
The cavalier who ran from Goblin’s devil was an older brother, now first on her contemptibles list. He had wakened her keep-off-me talent. His fierce cowardice was sugar on the biscuit. She only hinted at the ugly. I did not pursue it. That is not done in this tribe.
I did press her on her personal habits. I want clean, neat, healthy people around me. She considered the pressure absurdist humor. “Why bother? You do not expect to escape your Whispering Doom.” She meant Whisper, who certainly planned to be our doom.
“The Company has faith in Darling.”
“The black man that does not talk. He is dangerous?”
“Only if you’re a threat to Darling.”
“Not I.”
I shrugged. She could be the Lady’s plant. The old terror would not scruple against using a child. “He’s our strongest wizard.” She had not yet met Goblin or One-Eye. One-Eye had been missing for more than a month. “Just don’t make him worry about Darling.”
Moonlight and pals rolled up. They were FNGs with attitude now. No longer hungry, they objected to having to do shit jobs just because they were new. They wanted Midnight to wiggle her ass and get them easier jobs.
People. Saints and philosophers tell us to love them. No doubt anchorites who never suffered the everyday mob. I seldom see anyone actually deserving of brotherly love.
But I have been here in the Company most of my adult life.
I do hope that karma is the keystone of the universe—even if I have to come back as a banana slug myself.
Nerves frayed. This was the Company on the long run, a flight already years in duration. We had luck out the wazoo, every day, like it was going out of style, and most of it was bad. Which we expected.
Only . . . Whisper’s scouts faded away, which made no sense. They ought to be pressing harder than ever, to repay the hurt we had done them not so long ago. But they lost interest instead. Or they lost the trail.
Our flight slowed. Some days we moved only a mile or three. Other days we did not move at all.
The villages we skirted became less bristly. We paid for supplies rather than make new enemies. Some villages adopted the less repugnant of our female hangers-on. I did not mind. I would not miss having all those children underfoot.
My apprentices were exasperating. They were competing to see who was laziest.
“One of you is going back to the ranks at the end of the week.” That got their attention. “Midnight, who is showing some actual interest, will take his place.”
She had overtaken them in the last month. She did not evade fatigue details. She worked hard, wanted to learn, never complained. And she was killer cute, a skill with which no boy can compete.
I looked Joro in the eye, he being the most useless. “Since Moonlight and his gang left us there are openings in human-waste management.” Of which I was lord and arbiter. I do not get my own paws dirty. I do decide who does.
Midnight’s friends had vanished one night, several back. Nobody missed their whining. Only Midnight’s feelings were hurt. I wondered why they had not taken her along.
I wondered to Darling, the Lieutenant, Silent, and Elmo. Elmo and the Lieutenant did not care. Darling would see no evil till it bit her. Cynical Silent figured Midnight was behind the desertion even though she stuck with us herself.
By being helpful and pliable she became increasingly suspect to Silent. His reasoning was impossible to follow.
Then One-Eye turned up, which complicated things considerably.
“The Lady called them off,” One-Eye reported. “For their own safety.” He was tired and hungry. The rest of us thought he needed a bath, something he would not undertake voluntarily. “Two Taken were killed when Whisper attacked that castle. She and the other Taken got hurt, too, but our luck held. She didn’t die. She’s almost dead, but we’ll eventually see her back with the last ounce of mercy boiled out. Her troops, after fighting us and suffering what I’ve been putting them through, are used up.”
He meant their fighting spirit was gone, not that their number had been exhausted. There is never any shortage of men willing to take the Lady’s coin. She is a reliable paymaster—who purchases your soul and conscience as well as your time.
So with the surviving Imperial sorcerers concentrating on staying above ground, our less potent wizards could serve their minions misery in epic portions.
“You shoulda been with me,” One-Eye told Silent. “I ain’t never had so much fun since . . . Since before buzzkill Croaker signed up! Mice in a barrel!” He grinned, flashing terrible teeth, trying to flirt with Midnight, who had come along to get a look at a living legend. Said legend was older than dirt, often hard to distinguish from dirt, and when not engaged in criminal activities, about as ambitious as dirt. It was a certainty that he had lined his pockets somehow during his independent venture.
He held a cherished position on every brother’s shit list but never soared up where he might be at risk like Rusty. He did occasionally make himself useful. He could do amazing things if the notion took him.
Midnight hunched deeper into my shadow, pressed her fists against my back like she was terrified and needed protection. All contrived. She was raw but definitely an actress, all the world her stage.
Nothing like a hundred-and-some-year-old, shriveled-up little black wizard making eyes at a pubescent girl to get the boys sneering.
One-Eye was calculating himself, of course. His world is a stage, too, his life performance art.
He gave the remnants of his disgusting old black hat a quarter turn, winked again. “I’m in love. You want to sell me that one, Croaker?”
Midnight’s squeak might have indicated real concern.
Darling signed almost too fast to follow. Had One-Eye not been as dark and wrinkled as a worn out-boot, he might have turned pale.
Ages have flown since the Company rescued child Darling from some Rebel Rustys when she was years younger than Midnight now. Many who were with us then have gone on to darker worlds. But Darling remembers. Darling does not suffer anyone making light of horrors she endured herself.
She was grimly uncomfortable, anyway, with so many sorcerers so close by.
Midnight was uncomfortable, herself, but stubbornly insisted on slaking her curiosity.
One-Eye said, “Here’s the story. The Lady told them to back off, rest up, and get healthy. She’ll keep the Eye on us. She’ll send new Taken if Whisper can’t get healthy. She’ll come out here herself if she has to.” He winked at me, pumped his left thumb between the first two fingers of that hand.
I was once a captive in the Tower, while the Company was in the Lady’s service. She turned me loose eventually. I have been taunted about being the old horror’s bed buddy ever since.
Customers awaited me at the clinic. “Twiller, my man, tell me, how does a guy get the clap in the middle of a godsdamn desert?”
True desert it was not, just dry scrubland that went on and on and on.
“Never mind. I know. You got it from some woman who got it from Swain who got it from some other woman who got it from you the last time you had it.”
Twiller had the grace to look sheepish. His behavior would not change, though. He was still that young, and none too bright.
Robin was my other customer. His ailment was one no physician has ever cured. Sometimes Midnight seemed interested back. Her stay-off-me aura weakened when he was around.
The kid was the gentle soul that Rusty could never be, which did not serve him well with a girl. He needed more push.
Midnight mused, “The old black man did not tell us everything.”
“No.” I had seen the tells. One-Eye was shifty. If a potential score was out there we might hear nothing solid till the fallout set in. If it touched on the safety of the Company, though, he would be whispering with Darling and the Lieutenant now.
I asked, “You know anything about what’s ahead of us?” I had a suspicion about why the Lady had leashed her hounds.
&
nbsp; “We approach the bounds of fable already.”
We had covered little more than a hundred miles since her ambush. With no pressure on we slowed despite a consensus that we ought to grab all the separation we could.
“You can’t be that ignorant. The bounds of fable sounds like something somebody avoiding the subject would blat. Meaning somebody had something she didn’t want to talk about. But that wouldn’t make sense. She’d be strutting into the shit storm with the rest of us.”
“I know fairy tales. Only fairy tales. I never heard of anybody who ever actually saw the Village of Hungry Ghosts.” She paused. I said nothing. The vacuum moved her to fill it. “My da would say that was because nobody who did ever came back.”
Her words for Village of Hungry Ghosts were unfamiliar, but the concept was not. I had encountered it long ago, while we served the Lady in the east reaches of the Empire.
Hungry ghosts are not regular spooks, the spirits of dead folks that cannot move on. Legend described hungry ghosts as being more like vampire phantoms. They would possess the living and consume them slowly from within. They would never move on to heaven or hell or wherever because their earthly business was never done. They would migrate from host to host till something somehow annihilated them.
Where did they come from? The stories do not explain. Like monkeys and crows, they are. Likely an ancient sorcerer was involved, or a cruel, mischievous dawn-time god.
Great communal sorcery was required to effect a migration from a dying body to a fresh one, at least in the hungry ghost stories I had heard.
I told Midnight. She shrugged. She had nothing to add. My information fit with what she knew.
I left her to Robin, went to talk it over with those in charge.
Fantastic as a village of hungry ghosts seemed, the behavior of our enemies made more sense in that context.
We should expect an occasional Imperial nudge intended to keep us hopping toward disaster.
Operation Arcana Page 26
