The Many Deaths of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  “Uh…” He wriggled but not hard. Just enough to satisfy his self-image.

  We spent the remainder of the day together. Suvrin made the transitions from grudging prisoner to nervous accomplice to helpful ally. He was easily led, overresponding to modest praise and expressions of gratitude. My guess was that he had not had many nice things said to him during his young life. And he was scared to death that I would demolish him the instant he did fail to cooperate.

  We sent the rest of the soldiers home as soon as our men stripped the New Town armory. Most of the weapons stored there looked like they had been picked up off old battlefields and treated with contempt ever since by the armorer whose work I had so much admired earlier.

  I found the man and drafted him. He was a prima donna, a master with an artist’s attitude. I figured One-Eye could tame him.

  Suvrin accompanied me when I went across to the farm Sahra had acquired. Poor leader though he was, Suvrin really was in charge of all the armed forces in the Kiaulune region. Which said very little for the quality of his men or for the wisdom and commitment of his superiors. But I decided to keep him handy. He was useful as a symbol, if nothing else.

  When I went across I insisted that everyone else make the move, too. I wanted everyone not out on picket duty or patrol in one place so we could respond quickly, in strength, to any threat.

  I told Suvrin, “I’ve neutralized the whole province except for that little fort below the Shadowgate. Right?” That stronghold had sealed its gate. The men inside would not respond to the messenger I sent.

  Suvrin nodded. He was having second thoughts, too late.

  “Will they leave if you tell them to go?”

  “No. They’re foreigners. Left by the Great General to keep the road to the Shadowgate closed.”

  “How many?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Good soldiers?”

  Embarrassed, “Much better than mine.” Which might only mean that they could march in step.

  “Tell me about their fort. How are they set for water and provisions?”

  The fat man hemmed and hawed.

  “Suvrin, Suvrin. You have to think about this.”

  “Uh…”

  “You can’t get in any deeper than you already are. You can only do your best to get back out. Too many people have seen you cooperating already. I’m sorry, buddy. You’re stuck.” I fought sliding into the character of Vajra the Naga, seductive as it was. It was so blessedly useful.

  Suvrin made a sound suspiciously like a whimper.

  “Courage, Cousin Suvrin. We live with it every day. All you can do is put on a death’s-head grin and tug on their beards and yank out their tail feathers. Here we go. This looks like the place.” A poorly built structure had loomed out of the darkness. Light leaked out through the roof and walls both. I wondered why they bothered. Maybe it was still under construction. I could make out the vague shapes of tents beyond it.

  Something stirred on the rooftree as I pulled the door hanging aside so Suvrin could enter. The white crow. A soft chuckle came from the bird. “Sister, sister. Taglios begins to waken.” The thing took wing. I watched it fade in the light of a rising fragment of moon. That had been pretty clear.

  I shrugged and went inside. I could worry about the white crow next week, once I finally got a chance to go to bed. “Are any of you guys aware that we’re at war? That under similar circumstances every army since the dawn of time has put out sentries to watch for people sneaking up?”

  Several dozen faces watched me blandly. Goblin asked, “You didn’t see anybody?”

  “There’s nothing out there to see, old man.”

  “Ah. And you got here alive, too.” Which remark left me to understand that there were dire traps out there, held in abeyance only by the alert decision-making of sentries I not only overlooked but whose presence I never suspected.

  “All I can say to that is, somebody must have taken a bath sometime since the turn of the century.” The same could not be said for most of the crowd inside that shelter. Which might be the reason the roof and walls were so porous. “This is my new friend, Suvrin. He was the captain of the local garrison. I blew in his ear and he decided he wanted to help us so we would go away before the Protector shows up and makes life tough for everybody.”

  Somebody in back said, “You could blow in mine and—ow! What the fuck you hit me for, Willow?”

  Vajra the Naga said, “Knock it off. Swan, keep your hands to yourself. Vigan, I don’t want to hear your mouth again. You should know better. What’ve you guys done to get ready to knock over that tower over by the Shadowgate?”

  Nobody said a word.

  “You guys obviously did something while you were waiting around.” I gestured at our surroundings. “You managed to build a house. Badly. Or a barracks. But you didn’t do anything else? There’re no scouts out? No planning got done? No preparations got made? Was there something going on that I haven’t heard about yet?”

  Goblin sidled up. In an uncharacteristic tone he murmured, “Don’t press these issues. Now isn’t the time. Just tell people what to do and send them out to do it.”

  I trust the little wizard’s wisdom occasionally. “Sit down. Here’s what we’ll do. Dig out whatever fireball launchers we have left. Vigan, pick ten men. Carry the heaviest launcher yourself. The others can carry lighter ones. If there aren’t enough to go around, bring bows. We’ll go take care of this right now. Vigan, choose your team.”

  The man who had made the mistake of irritating me rose. In a surly tone he named his helpers. Chances were all of them had irritated him sometime recently. It rolls downhill.

  In the few minutes it took Vigan to get ready, I had the others tell me things they thought I ought to know.

  63

  I had the men encircle the little fort. We carried torches and made no effort to sneak. Per instructions, Vigan carried the heaviest piece of bamboo. It had an interior diameter of three inches. He told me, “There’s supposed to be only a couple, three balls left in this one.”

  “That ought to be enough. Right here should be fine.” A good archer with a strong bow might cause us trouble but those were exceedingly rare in modern Taglian armies. Mogaba was a warrior. He believed real men got in close, where they could get splattered with each other’s blood when they fought. It was a blind spot we had exploited more than once during the Kiaulune wars and would exploit again until he figured it out.

  Goblin shuffled into position behind us. Tobo did, too. They said nothing, which must have been a trial for the boy. He talked in his sleep.

  “What do I do?” Vigan asked.

  “Let them have one. Through the stonework right above the gate.” Louder, I said, “Stand fast. Nobody do anything until I tell you.”

  The first two times Vigan turned his hand release crank, nothing happened.

  “Is it empty?” I asked.

  “It’s not supposed to be.”

  Goblin advised, “Try again, then. It’s been over ten years since it was used. Maybe it just needs to be loosened up.”

  I mused, “I’ll bet nobody’s bothered to keep the mechanism clean. And you folks wondered why I wanted to hire an armorer. Go ahead. Crank it again. Carefully, so you don’t lose your aim.”

  Whack! Crackle-crackle-crackle-sizzle! into the distance. The fireball ripped right through the little fortification’s two outside walls and whatever lay between them. Stone steamed and ran. The scarlet ball wobbled through the air for several miles more, gave up the last of its momentum, gradually darkened as it drifted to earth beyond the ruins of Overlook.

  “Move to the left a few yards, drop your aiming point five feet, then do it again.”

  Vigan was having fun now. There was a bounce to his step as he moved to his new position. This time it took only one extra turn of the crank to get the fireball launched.

  A blistering, lime-colored ball ripped through the fortification. It hit something significant inside. It had almos
t no energy left when it appeared on the far side.

  A gout of steam blew out the top of the tower. “Must’ve gotten a water barrel,” I said. Water and the fireballs made a wicked combination resulting in storms of superheated steam. “Suvrin, where are you?” Two fireballs should have gotten their attention inside, should have gotten the survivors to thinking. Now I could begin placing my shots. “Suvrin! Have you ever been inside that rockpile?”

  The fat man came forward reluctantly. When he was close by me, his face was in the light. The garrison inside would remember him. He wanted to lie to me, too, I could see. But he did not have the courage. “Yes.”

  “What’s the layout? It doesn’t look like it could be that complicated.”

  “It isn’t. Animals and storage on the ground floor. They can pile up stuff behind the gate so you can’t knock it in. They live on the second floor. It’s just one big room. There’s a stove for cooking and pallets for sleeping and racks of weapons and that’s about it.”

  “And the roof is basically just a fighting platform, right? Wait a minute, Vigan. Don’t spend any more fireballs than we have to. Let them think for a while now. Maybe they’ll give up. They know I didn’t hurt Suvrin’s men. Tobo, circle around and tell all the men that if they have to launch a fireball, we need it to go through the second level. Preferably low. They’ll probably get down on the floor when death starts coming through.”

  “Can I shoot one of those things, Sleepy?”

  “Get the message out first.” I watched him scoot off. He did not expose himself unnecessarily. Faces could be seen occasionally behind the archers’ embrasures over yonder. A couple of arrows had come out and fallen harmlessly. I told Goblin, “If anybody had been paying attention, we’d have the place mapped down to the last cot and table and we’d know exactly where to aim every fireball to get the best effect.”

  “You’re absolutely right again. Just as you always are. Be quiet for a second. There’s something going on here. Those men aren’t as scared as they should be.”

  As he spoke, I glimpsed a face peeking over the parapet. A moment later the white crow plummeted out of the night. It knocked the leather helmet off the soldier.

  I yelled, “Everybody wake up! They’re about to pull something!”

  Goblin had started muttering already. He was doing something odd with his fingers.

  Men jumped up atop the little fort. Each had something in hand, ready to throw. A half-dozen fireballs squirted their way without my approval. One grenadier went down but not before he launched his missile.

  Glass, I saw. Same type One-Eye had used to make firebombs, years ago. We still had a few of those, too. But throwing firebombs at us out here would be pointless. We were too far away to be reached.

  “Aim low!” I yelled. “Shadows coming!” That was not a shout that had been heard for an age but it was one the veterans remembered and could respond to without ever thinking.

  Goblin was already wobbling across the slope in as near a sprint as his old bones could manage, still muttering and wiggling his fingers. Pink sparks leaped between his fingers and slithered around amongst his few remaining hairs. He grabbed a skinny little bamboo pole from one of the men. It had been painted with black stripes, meaning that its dedicated purpose was use against shadows.

  Fireballs flew. Some peppered the fortress. Some dove after the shadows that spilled out of the breaking glass containers. Suvrin began whimpering behind me. I told him, “Don’t run. They’ll get you for sure. They love a fleeing victim.”

  There was a lot of screaming inside the fortress. Fireballs streaking through had found human targets. In their way, the fireballs were almost as bad as the killing shadows.

  One of my men began shrieking when a shadow found him. But he was the only one. Goblin’s spell helped some. The quick use of fireballs helped more.

  Goblin began loosing fireballs from the pole he had snagged but sent them racing northward instead of toward the stubborn little fort. He quit after only a few tries. He came back to me. “They’ve done their job, those brave boys in there. They got their warning away.” He was as sour as a lemon slice under the tongue.

  “So I take it Soulcatcher didn’t die when she hit the water.” I had heard the news from Taglios only up to the part where the Protector’s carpet had fallen apart in midair, with her streaking along four hundred feet above the river. The break coming at that point had not been because anyone was trying to make things particularly dramatic, it was just because there was too much going on to have a lot of time left for catching up. Especially where Murgen was concerned. Murgen seemed to be employed full time easing Sahra’s frights and concerns.

  “She was one of the Ten Who Were Taken, Sleepy. Those people don’t hurt easy. Hell, she survived having her head cut off. She carried it around in a box for about fifteen years.”

  I grunted. Sometimes it was hard to remember that Soulcatcher was much more than just an unpleasant, distant senior official. “They likely to have any more surprises in there?” I meant the question for Suvrin but Goblin answered.

  “If they did, they would’ve used them. You thinking about going in after them?”

  “Oh, heck no! Somebody might get hurt. Somebody besides them. Suvrin, go over there and tell them if they surrender in the next half hour, I’ll let them go. If they don’t, I’ll kill them all before the hour is up.”

  The fat man started to protest. Vigan poked his behind with the tip of a dagger. I told Suvrin, “If they do anything to you, I’ll avenge you.”

  “That’s a big weight off my heart.”

  Goblin asked, “How are you going to avenge anybody? Considering you’re not going to go in there after them.”

  “That’s what we have wizards for. This looks like a wonderful opportunity for you to give Tobo some on-the-job training.”

  “Am I surprised? Not hardly. For a hundred years it’s been, ‘What do we do now?’ ‘I don’t know. Let’s let Goblin handle it.’ I oughta just take a hike and let you figure it out for yourself.”

  “I’m tired. I’m going to sit down here and rest my eyes until Suvrin gets back.”

  I heard Goblin tell Vigan to put another heavyweight fireball into the corner of the fortification, along the length of the wall so all its energy would be spent devouring the pale limestone. There was a solid thump! swiftly followed by the smell of superheated limestone. As I drifted away, Goblin muttered something about burning them out.

  64

  The surface of the river was not friendly when Soulcatcher hit it but neither was the impact like hitting stone from the same altitude. Her fall had been long enough to allow her time to prepare for the landing.

  Even so, the collision was brutal enough to extract her consciousness temporarily. But she had prepared for that, too, between curses. When consciousness returned she was drifting downriver with the flood, head above the surface. It being the rainy season, the river was high and the current brisk. It took a great effort to complete the swim to the south bank. By the time she crawled out of the flood and collapsed, she was a half-dozen miles downstream from where she had gone in, which was outside the city proper, in a domain best known for its jackals, of both the two- and four-legged varieties. It was said that leopards still hunted there at night, the occasional crocodile could be found along the shore, and it was not that many years since a tiger had come visiting from down the river.

  The Protector experienced no difficulties with any mad or hungry thing. A hundred crows perched around her, standing guard. Others flapped about in the darkness until squadrons of bats had gathered. Birds and bats together discouraged the scavengers and predators till Soulcatcher awakened and in a fit of pique, sent an entire band of jackals racing away with their pelts aflame.

  She stumbled toward home, regaining strength slowly, muttering about growing old and less resilient. A tremor entered the voice she chose to inveigh against the predations of time.

  Eventually she reached the home of a
moneylender, where she commandeered transportation back to the Palace. She arrived there somewhat after the breakfast hour in a temper so foul that the entire staff made a point of becoming invisible. Only the Great General came to inquire after her well-being. And he went away when she started snarling and snapping.

  Though she reveled in her paranoia, Soulcatcher did not suspect that her accident had been anything else until she examined her remaining carpet preparatory to another effort to fly off to entertain the Nyueng Bao. Then she discovered that the light wooden-frame members on which the carpet was stretched had been weakened by strategic saw cuts.

  The who and probable why became clear within seconds. She sent out a summons to Jaul Barundandi and his associates.

  Surprise. Barundandi was nowhere to be found. He had been called out of the Palace for a family emergency, he had said, just moments after her return. So the Greys reported when told to investigate.

  “What an amazing coincidence. Find him. Find the men he worked with regularly. We have a great deal to discuss.”

  Greys scattered. One bold captain, however, remained behind to report, “Rumor in the city says the Bhodi intend to resume their self-immolations. They want the Radisha to come out and address their concerns personally.”

  The news did not improve Soulcatcher’s temper. “Ask them if they would like me to donate the naphtha they need. I’m feeling particularly charitable today. Also ask them if they can hold off starting long enough for the carpenters to put up grandstands so more of the Radisha’s good subjects can enjoy the entertainment. I don’t care what those lunatics do. Get out of here! Find that Barundandi slug!” The voice she used was informed with a potent lunacy.

  * * *

  Jaul Barundandi’s luck was mixed. He managed to avoid the attentions of the bats and crows and shadows the Protector released when the Greys had no immediate success in locating him, but an informer eventually betrayed him when the reward for his capture grew large enough. The lie was that he had attacked and severely wounded the Radisha, that only the Protector’s swift intercession with her most powerful sorcery had saved the Princess’s life. The Radisha’s situation remained grave.