The Return of the Black Company

by Cook, Glen

  Some Jaicuri women, naturally, inevitably, did what they had to do to survive.

  Doing my part, I hacked on ropes but kept turning to check that light and the webs forming inside it.

  Goblin howled, creased by a nearly spent arrow. The cut, on his cheek, was trivial. Arrows have little energy by the time they reach us. He was outraged because fate dared show him the back of her hand at all.

  He danced around. Words of power virtually dripped from his mouth in pastel colors. He waved his arms. He foamed at the mouth. He jumped up and down, shrieked, flapped his arms.

  His doppelgangers all did the same. It was quite a show.

  In all likelihood the gymnastics and yelling had nothing to do with results eventually achieved but I don’t mind showmanship as long as he produces. Croaker was right. Showmanship is the biggest part of the game.

  Everything hemp within three hundred yards burst into flame. That was a happy eventuality where our relationship with our attackers was concerned but not something likely to wring cries of joy from anyone else, either. Temporary defense works began to fall apart. Our artillery pieces flared and died. They had included lots of rope. Some guys use rope for belts. Some wear sandals made of rope. Hemp is a commonplace everywhere. Some fools like One-Eye even smoke it.

  Cletus bellowed, “Goddamn you, Goblin, I’m gonna chop your ass into cat food.” The rest of us just pulled our pants up and amused ourselves by dropping masonry bits mined from our cellars onto the cursing tangle of limbs wriggling at the foot of the wall.

  One-Eye ignored all that, though he took a moment to smirk at the side effects embarrassing Goblin. Then he began to stare at the glow rising from the enemy camp. And began to stutter.

  “Come on, shithead,” I growled. “You’ve played with this stuff for ages. What have we got here?” Not that I wanted to know. That web of shadow woven into the light was now obvious to all but the blind.

  “Maybe we might ought to head for the cellar,” One-Eye suggested. “I promise you, me and the runt ain’t gonna do nothing with that. Bet you even Longshadow would be bugeyed if he was here to see it. The man put a lot of work in, getting that ready. It’s going to get real unhealthy around here real soon.”

  Without investing a quarter of the study time Goblin agreed. “If we seal the doors and use the white candles we can hold out till sunrise.”

  “This some kind of shadow magic, then?”

  “Some kind,” Goblin agreed. “Don’t ask me to look so close I catch its attention.”

  “Heaven forbid you should actually take a risk. Can either of you come up with a more practical suggestion?”

  “More practical?” One-Eye sputtered.

  “We’re fighting a battle here.”

  Goblin said, “We could retire from the soldiering racket. Or we could surrender. Or we could offer to change sides.”

  “Maybe we could offer up a half-pint human sacrifice to one of Geek and Freak’s bloodthirsty gods.”

  “You know what I really miss about Croaker, Murgen?”

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me whether I want to hear it or not.”

  “Damned straight you are. I miss his sense of humor.”

  “Wait a minute. His sense of humor? Are you shitting me? What sense of humor? The man…”

  “He knew none of us were going to get out of this world alive, Murgen. He never took himself completely serious.”

  “Are you talking about the guy who used to be the Old Man? Croaker? Company Annalist and chief bonesetter in his spare time? Some kind of comedian?”

  While we bickered the rest of the world bustled along with its business. Which meant our situation deteriorated by the minute. A human weakness, as old as time, arguing while the house burns down around you.

  One-Eye interjected, “You gents go ahead and debate if you want. I’m going to invite the boys downstairs, treat them to a beer and take a turn or two at tonk.” He stabbed a crooked black finger earthward.

  The gleaming dust with cruel web inside began to arc up over the city. It just might grow enough to net us all.

  A vast stillness set in.

  Inside the city and out, friend and foe, people of a dozen races and religions all focused upon that shadow web.

  Shadowspinner, of course, was totally involved in creating his deadly artifact.

  The Shadowlander assault lost impetus as the Shadowmaster’s soldiers decided to hunker down and let their boss make their jobs easier.

  23

  The web of darkness would span all Dejagore soon. “One-Eye. Goblin. You guys have any new ideas?”

  “Get religion?” Goblin suggested. “Since you won’t let us go den up?”

  One-Eye mused, “You might amble over and see if Mogaba will change his mind about letting us operate his engines.” The Taglian crews were ineffective. “We might be able to distract Spinner.”

  “You did take shadows into account when you spelled the entrances to the underground?” I knew. They had. That was always our biggest concern. But I had to reassure myself. You keep checking on Goblin and One-Eye.

  Small groups were returning after long, dangerous journeys through the night, searching for rope that had survived.

  “Yeah. For what that’s worth. You ready to go down and start starving yet?”

  Bad signs followed ill omens. The situation was grim indeed if One-Eye and Goblin could spare no time to quarrel.

  A sudden susurrus swept the city and the plain beyond.

  A blazing diamond of light rose out of the Shadowlander camp. It spun slowly. A core of darkness centered it. From that, blackness pulsed out into the all-spanning web it anchored.

  Nobody was looking at the hills when the pinkish light returned. No one noticed until it flared so brilliantly that it rivalled the brightness here at hand.

  It burned behind two bizarre mounted figures. It cast their hideous shadows upon the night itself. Crow shadows circled them. Two huge ravens perched upon the shoulders of the larger figure.

  Nobody breathed for a while. Not even Shadowspinner, I’d bet. And I was sure he had no more idea what was happening than I did.

  The pink flare faded. A cable of pink reached toward Dejagore, like a snake probing, stretching. As one end neared us the nether end broke loose. That whipped our way too fast for the eye to follow and in an instant screamed into Shadowspinner’s bright diamond. Sun-brilliant flash splashed out of that sorcerous construct’s far side like suddenly-flung barrels of burning oil.

  Immediately the dark web overhead began to shrink back into the remnants of the diamond.

  The air vibrated with the Shadowmaster’s anger.

  “Goblin! One-Eye! Talk to me, boys. Tell me what the hell just happened.”

  Goblin couldn’t talk. One-Eye burbled, “I ain’t got the faintest fucking idea, Kid. But we’re downwind of one seriously pissed-off Shadowmaster who’s probably going to blame you and me for his ulcers.”

  A tremor disturbed the night, more psychic than physical. I am magically deaf and dumb and blind, except for perceived effects, but I felt it.

  One-Eye was right.

  The pink light was gone. I saw no more sign of those bizarre riders. Who were they? What? How?

  I didn’t get a chance to ask.

  Little brown fellows carrying torches so they could see where they were running burst out of the Shadowlander camp. That could not bode well for me, my pals, or anyone else inside the wall.

  “Poor Spinner,” I cracked. “You got to feel for the man.”

  “Huh?” Sparkle was the only man close enough to hear.

  “Don’t you hate it when some no-brain vandalizes a work of art?”

  Sparkle didn’t get it. He shook his head, grabbed a javelin and threw it down at a short person with a torch.

  He missed.

  Around where those Shadowlanders had gained a foothold on the wall, and on the earthen approach ramps, a big racket began to develop. The Shadowmaster, piqued, had told his
boys to get back to work. And don’t be so damned gentle anymore.

  “Hey, Bubba-do,” I shouted at a soldier, “who’s got tonight in the pool?”

  There is the Black Company for you. We’ve got a pool on what night the city will fall. I guess the winner gets to die with a smile on his ugly mug.

  24

  Goblin and One-Eye had chosen to stay close to me. The real Goblin and One-Eye. I checked every few minutes to make sure. Their attention was on the hills, not the excitement across town or any of their own schemes. Strange lights moved out there.

  A band of southerners sent out earlier returned at a gallop, half their number missing. They flew as though devils worse than their boss were after them. They dared ride the way they did only because Stormshadow had been obsessive when she leveled the plain and because there was light from the city.

  Fires were burning. Only a few so far, but fires.

  Sparkle told me, “They’re pulling out down below.”

  I leaned over and looked. Nobody tried to pick me off. Maybe they thought I was another ghost.

  Sure enough, the Shadowlanders were going, leaving us all those wonderful grapnels without ropes, for us to dump on our “maybe we can use these someday” pile.

  One-Eye said, “Guess we can put up our swords and go back to our tonk games now.”

  Overlooking the fact that Dejagore was being invaded elsewhere, I observed, “This is the second time you’ve come out with that silliness. What moron is going to play with you? Can’t be anybody that dumb still alive.” One-Eye cheats at cards. And he cheats badly. He gets caught every time. Nobody will play with him.

  “Hey, Murgen. Listen. I’ve reformed. Really. Never again will I dishonor my talent to.…”

  Why listen? He’s said it all before, countless times. The first thing we do after we swear a recruit into the Company is warn him not to play cards with One-Eye.

  A party of Shadowlanders withdrawn from my sector headed for the hills. They all had torches. It looked like the Shadowmaster himself might be driving them.

  “Cletus! Longinus! You guys far enough along that you can drop a barrage on that crowd?” The brothers were repairing their engines as fast as they could. Two were ready, cocked and loaded. Not much of a barrage.

  One-Eye asked, “Why do that?”

  “Why not? We might get lucky. And can we piss off Shadowspinner more than he already is? He’s already vowed to kill us all.”

  The ballistas thumped. The shafts they hurled did not hit the Shadowmaster. Distractedly, he replied with a spear of energy that dissolved several cubic yards of wall far from any of my guys.

  The racket from across town kept getting louder. Some seemed closer than the far wall.

  “They’re inside,” Sparkle said.

  “A lot of them,” Bucket agreed. “This could get to be a big cleanup job.” I liked that positive thinking.

  I shrugged. Mogaba liked to keep the cleanups for himself and the Nar and their Taglians.

  Fine with me. Mogaba can eat all the pain he can swallow.

  I really wanted to take a nap. This long day just kept getting longer. Oh, well. Soon enough I would get to sleep forever.

  A short while later I got word that small groups of southerners were in the streets murdering anybody they could catch.

  “Sir?”

  “Sleepy. What’s up, youngster?” Sleepy was a Taglian Shadar we swore into the Company just before I decided to take up this pen. He always looked like he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He also looked like he was about fourteen years old, which was possible. He was paranoid in the extreme, apparently for good reason. He was a good-looking youth. And pretty boys are fair game amongst Taglian men of all three major religious groups. The Stranglers use their more attractive sons to lure victims to their deaths.

  Different land, different customs. You may not like them but you do have to live with them. Sleepy liked our ways better than his own.

  “Sir,” he said, “the Nar aren’t trying to keep the southerners from heading this way. They don’t bother them at all anymore after they get through and off the wall as long as they don’t head into Mogaba’s barracks area.”

  “Is that deliberate?” Bucket asked.

  Someone muttered, “Now ask a stupid question.”

  “What do you think?” One-Eye snapped. “This is the last straw. If that bigheaded, self-important dick shows his face around here…”

  “Save it, One-Eye.” This was hard to accept. But I could see Mogaba being capable of channeling the enemy our way so as to resolve questions of precedence inside the Company. His morality would allow him to picture it as a brilliant solution to several problems. “Instead of standing around bitching about it how about we do some thinking? Best way to fix Mogaba would be to shove his plan up his ass, no grease.”

  While the others tried to manage that difficult exercise—thinking—I questioned Sleepy more closely. Unfortunately, he could not add much but the general routes the southerners were using to push deeper into the city.

  You couldn’t blame the Shadowlanders. Most soldiers of most times jump at the chance to go where resistance is weakest.

  Maybe we could use that to pull some into some sort of killing pocket.

  I even got a chuckle out of my predicament. “I bet Croaker would have seen this coming a month ago, as paranoid as he was about supposed friends and allies.”

  A nearby crow squawked agreement.

  I should have considered the possibility. I really should have. Far-fetched is not the same as impossible. I should have had something planned.

  One-Eye became as serious as he ever gets. “You know what this means? If the kid is right?”

  “The Company is at war with itself?”

  The little guy waved that off like it was just another annoying gnat of reality. “Suppose Mogaba is giving them a golden bridge so they can get rid of us for him? They still have to get through the pilgrims to reach us.”

  I didn’t need to think long to see what he meant. “That asshole. He’s going to make them kill Shadowlanders in self-defense. He’s going to use them up killing his enemies for him.”

  “Maybe he’s a bigger snake than anybody thought,” Bucket growled. “It’s for sure he’s changed a lot since Gea-Xle.”

  “This ain’t right,” I muttered, although swords would enter the fight on our side—whether or not they wanted to. Other than a few small skirmishes with lost invaders during past attacks the worst that had happened to the Nyueng Bao was that their pilgrimage had gotten them trapped in the middle of somebody else’s war. From the first clash of steel they had worked hard to maintain their neutrality.

  Shadowspinner has his spies in the city. He would know the Nyueng Bao had no interest in antagonizing him.

  “What do you think they’ll do?” Goblin asked. “The Nyueng Bao, I mean.” His voice sounded odd. How much beer had he put away?

  “How the hell would I know? Depends on how they see things. If they think Mogaba dragged them into it on purpose it might get unhealthy to belong to the Company. Mogaba could see this as a chance to squish us into a crack between a rock and a hard place. I’d better go see their Speaker and let him know what’s happening. Bucket. Make up a twenty-men patrol and go looking for southerners. See if Sleepy is right. One-Eye, go with him. Spot for him and cover our guys. Sparkle, you watch things here. Send Sleepy after me if it gets too much to handle.”

  Nobody argued. When things get tight the guys do become less fractious.

  I descended the stairway to the street.

  25

  I played the game the way I thought the Nyueng Bao would want. Ever since childhood I have suspected you get along better if you respect people’s ways and wishes regardless of your apparent relative strengths.

  That doesn’t mean you let people walk on you. It doesn’t mean you eat their pain for them. You need to demand respect for yourself, too.

  Dejagore’s byways are close and fe
tid. Typical of a fortified city. I went to an obscure intersection where—under normal circumstances—I could expect to be seen by Nyueng Bao watchers. They are a cautious people. They watch all the time. I announced, “I would see the Speaker. Harm is headed his way. I would have him know what I know.”

  I didn’t see anybody. I didn’t hear anybody. I expected nothing else. Someone who strolled into my territory would see and hear nothing, either, but death would be nearby.

  The only sounds came from fighting several blocks away.

  I waited.

  Suddenly, in that instant when my attention finally wandered, Ky Dam’s son materialized. He made no more noise than a tiptoeing moth. He was a wide, short man of indeterminate age. He carried an unusually long sword but it remained sheathed across his back. He stared at me hard. I stared back. It cost me nothing. He grunted, indicated that I should follow.

  We walked no more than eighty yards. He indicated a doorway. “Keep smiling,” I told him. I couldn’t resist. He was always around somewhere, watching. I never saw him smile. I pushed the door inward.

  Curtains hung two feet inside. Very weak light slipped through a rent. I closed the door carefully once I understood that I would be entering alone, before I parted the curtains. Wouldn’t do to let light splash into the street.

  The place turned out to be about as pleasant as you can get in a city.

  The Speaker sat on a mat on a dirty floor near the one candle offering light. There were about a dozen people visible, of all ages and sexes. I saw four children, all small, six adults of an age to be their parents, and one old woman of granny age who glowered like she had a special bunk in Hell reserved for me even though she’d never seen me before. I saw nobody who could pass as her husband. Maybe he was the guy outside. Then there was a woman as old as Ky Dam, a fragile flower time-diminished to little more than skin-covered sticks, though an agile intelligence still burned in her eyes. You would get nothing past this woman.

  Of material things I saw little but the clothing the people wore, a few ragged blankets, a couple of clay cups and a pot maybe used for cooking. And more swords nearly as long and fine as that carried by the Speaker’s son.