The Return of the Black Company

by Cook, Glen

  And that keyed a serious question. Since while I am in this time I can remember the future occasionally how come I never remember the trips to the past that I am going to make?

  And how could they watch me that closely? I never noticed them. And I try to stay alert. You never know when a Deceiver might pop out of a shadow swinging his strangling scarf.

  “So what did you get?”

  “We didn’t see a thing.”

  “I am on the job now, though,” One-Eye said, preening.

  “Now that really inspires me with confidence.”

  “Everybody’s got to be a wiseass anymore,” One-Eye complained. “I remember when young people respected their elders.”

  “That was in the days when they didn’t get a chance to know the old folks very well.”

  “I have work to do,” Croaker said. “One-Eye, stick with Murgen when you can. Keep talking about Dejagore and what’s been happening to him. There’ll be clues there somewhere. Maybe we don’t recognize them yet. If we keep at it something will pop.” He left before I could say anything.

  Something had passed between Croaker and One-Eye about and beyond me. And maybe we all had cause to be concerned. This time I could not remember much about where I was. Things seemed to be new, first time, yet some shaking, terrified little creature way back in the night warrens of my mind insisted I was still reliving yesterdays and the worst of those were yet to come.

  One-Eye said, “I think we’ll just take you home now, Kid. Your wife will have the cure for what ails you.”

  She might. She was a miracle. Even One-Eye, who seems incapable of offering respect to anyone, treated her and spoke to and of her, as though he considered her an honored lady.

  She is, of course. But it is nice to have others confirm that.

  “Now that’s the first thing you’ve said that I wanted to hear. Lead on, brother.” I didn’t know the way.

  I cast a backward glance at Smoke and the covered Deceiver. What in the hell?

  31

  My in-laws make very little effort to improve anyone’s opinion of Nyueng Bao. Mother Gota, in particular, is a major pain in the ass. The old battleaxe barely tolerates even me and that only because the alternative is to lose her daughter entirely. She is very nasty toward the Old Man.

  Still, Sarie and I rated enough for Croaker to insist we swap quarters when her folks showed up last month, in town slumming from their glamorous swamps. But they won’t make it back to paradise if Mother Gota doesn’t control her lip in the street.

  The Old Man never reacts to her constant complaints. He told me, “I’ve had thirty years of Goblin and One-Eye. One crabby old woman hurting from gout and arthritis is nothing. You did say she’s only here for a few weeks, didn’t you?”

  Right. I did say that. I wondered how those words would taste with soy sauce. Or maybe a lot of curry.

  Now that Lady is in the south most of the time, emptying her cornucopia of rage onto the Shadowlands, Croaker has no need for a large apartment. Our old space was little more than a monk’s cell. There is just room enough for him, Lady when she visits, and a cradle that was given to Lady by a man named Ram who later died trying to protect her and her baby from Narayan Singh. Ram made that cradle himself. Most likely he died because, like almost every man who spends much time around Lady, he fell for the wrong woman.

  Croaker gave me his apartment, all right, but it came with limitations. I could not turn it into the new home of the Nyueng Bao. Sahra and Thai Dei belonged. Mother Gota and Uncle Doj were welcome for visits. And not one freeloading cousin or nephew more.

  People who accuse the Captain of using his position to feather his nest ought to take a close look at the nest. The Liberator, Mr. By Golly Military Despot of all the Taglians and their many conquests and dependencies, lives just the way he did back when he was only the Company physician and Annalist.

  Also, he moved me to provide me adequate work space. He sets great store by these Annals.

  My books are not coming out so good. I don’t always get stuff down the best way. In his time, when he was on the mark, Croaker was really good. I can’t help comparing my stuff to his.

  When he tried to be Captain and Annalist at the same time his work suffered. And Lady’s writing strikes me as too direct, too curt, and sometimes mildly self-indulgent. Neither was honest all the time and neither considered trying to be consistent with the other, with their predecessors, or even with their own earlier selves. If you read either one closely and you spot some of their slips, neither will admit any screwup. If Croaker says that it is eight hundred miles from Taglios to Shadowcatch and Lady calls it four hundred, who is correct? Both say they are. Lady says the discrepancy is because they grew up in different places and times where different weights and measures were in use.

  What about character? They for sure see with different eyes there. You will never catch Croaker portraying a Willow Swan who is not bitching about something. Lady makes Swan energetic and rattle-mouthed and a lot more mellow. And the difference could be that both Croaker and Lady know Swan’s interest in Lady is not brotherly.

  And consider how they saw Smoke. You wouldn’t think that they were writing about the same animal, they looked at that traitor so differently. Then there is Mogaba. And Blade. Both blackhearted traitors, too. There is nothing in Croaker’s Annals because he was no longer writing when Blade deserted but in daily life, constantly, he shows you that he hates Blade with a blue-assed passion, on no rational basis. Meantime, he seems almost willing to forgive Mogaba. Lady sees those two the other way around. She would broil Mogaba right in the same pot with Narayan and probably let Blade go.

  Blade was another case like Ram and Swan.

  I guess you don’t need to agree on everything to be lovers.

  They wrote differently, too. Croaker mostly kept his Annals as he went along, then went back later to fill in after he heard from other sources. He tended to fictionalize his secondary viewpoints, too, so his Annals are not always absolutely straightforward history.

  Lady wrote her entire book after the fact, from memory, while she was laid up waiting to have her baby. Her alternate viewpoint material is mainly secondhand hearsay. I am replacing her more dubious stuff with material I consider more accurate while I am in the process of putting all the confused stuff into a uniform format.

  Lady is not always pleased with my efforts, he understated.

  My major fault is getting trapped in elaborate digressions. I have trouble leaving things out. I spent some time with the official historians at Taglios’s royal library and those guys assured me that the real keys to history are the details. Like the entire course of history can veer sharply because one man gets dinged by a random arrow during a minor skirmish.

  My writing room is fifteen feet by twenty-two. That gives me space for all my references, for copies of the old Annals, and for a large trestle table where I work on several projects at once. And there is an acre of floor space left for Thai Dei and Uncle Doj.

  While I write and study and revise he and Thai Dei clack away with wooden practice swords or squeal and kick and bounce off the walls. Whenever one of them lands in my space I toss him back. They are amazingly good at what they do—they ought to be with all that practice—but I think they are more likely to hurt each other than any seriously large person, like our Old Crew guys.

  I like this job. It beats the hell out of being standardbearer—though I am stuck with that, too, still. The standardbearer is always the first guy into a scrape and he always has one hand tied up keeping a bigass pole from falling over.

  I worry about not catching details the way Croaker did. And I envy him his naturally sardonic tone. He claims he did good only because he had the time. In those days the Black Company was just a raggedyass gang sneaking around the edge of things and there wasn’t much going on. Nowadays we are in the deep shit all the time. I don’t like that. Neither does the Captain.

  I cannot imagine a man less pleased about
having the power that has fallen into his lap, mostly by default. He keeps it and uses it only because he doesn’t believe anyone else will take the Company where he is convinced that it has to go.

  I managed to get along for several hours without falling down a well into the past. I wasn’t feeling badly. Sarie was in an excellent mood despite all her mother could do to ruin our day. I was lost in my work, as comfortable with existence as ever I get.

  Somebody came to the door.

  Sarie showed the Captain into the apartment. Uncle Doj and Thai Dei continued clacking away. Croaker watched for a minute. “Unusual,” he said. He did not sound impressed.

  “It’s not military,” I told him. “It’s fencing for loners. Nyueng Bao are big on lone-wolf heroes.” Not so the Old Man. His belief that you need brothers to guard your back amounts to a religious conviction.

  Nyueng Bao fencing technique consists of brief but intense flurries of attack and defense separated by inactive periods during which the fighters freeze in odd stances, shifting almost imperceptibly as they try to anticipate one another.

  Uncle Doj is very good.

  “I’ll grant you, they’re graceful, Murgen. Almost like hutsch dancers.”

  By marrying into Sarie’s clan I bought into Nyueng Bao fighting styles. No choice, really. Uncle Doj insisted. I am not terribly interested but I go along to keep the peace. And it is good exercise. “It’s all stylized, Captain. Every stance and stroke has its name.” Which I consider a weakness. Any fighter that set in his ways ought to be easy meat for an innovator.

  On the other hand, I did see Uncle Doj deal with real enemies at Dejagore.

  I changed languages. “Uncle, will you permit my Captain to meet Ash Wand?” They had taken the measure of one another long enough.

  Ash Wand is Uncle Doj’s sword. He calls it his soul. He treats it better than he would any mistress.

  Uncle Doj disengaged from Thai Dei, bowed slightly, departed. In moments he was back with a monster sword. It was three feet long. He drew it carefully, presented it to Croaker lying along his left forearm, where the steel would not contact moist or oily skin. He bowed slightly as he did so.

  He wanted us to believe he spoke no Taglian. A vain pretense. I knew him back when he was fluent.

  Croaker knew something about Nyueng Bao customs. He accepted Ash Wand with proper care and courtesy, as though deeply honored.

  Uncle Doj ate that up.

  Croaker grasped the two-hand hilt clumsily. On purpose, I suspect. Uncle Doj darted in to demonstrate the proper grip, the way he does with me during every training session. That old boy is spry. He has ten years on Croaker but moves more easily than I do. And he possesses remarkable patience.

  “Fine balance,” the Captain said in Taglian. It would not surprise me to learn that he had picked up Nyueng Bao, though. He has an easy way with languages. “But this had better be superior steel.” Because the blade was thin and narrow.

  I told him, “He says it’s four hundred years old and will cut plate armor. I guarantee it cuts people just fine. I saw him use it more than once.”

  “During the siege.” Croaker studied the blade near the sword’s hilt.

  “Yes.”

  “Hallmark of Dinh Luc Doc.”

  Eyes suddenly narrow, usually stolid expression shoved aside by surprise, Uncle Doj reclaimed his lover quickly. That Croaker might know something about Nyueng Bao swordsmiths apparently troubled him. Croaker might not be nearly as stupid as foreigners were supposed to be.

  Uncle Doj harvested one of his feeble crops of hair, drew it across Ash Wand’s edge with predictable results. Croaker observed, “A man could get cut and never know it.”

  “It happens,” I told him. “You wanted something?”

  Sarie brought tea. The Old Man accepted even though he doesn’t like tea. He watched me watch her, amused. Whenever Sahra is in a room I have trouble paying attention to anything else. She gets more beautiful every time I see her. I cannot believe my luck. I keep being scared that I will wake up.

  Cold shivers.

  “You have a definite prize there, Murgen.” Croaker had told me so before. He approved of Sarie. It was her family that troubled him. “How come you married the whole kaboodle?” For that he shifted to Forsberger. None of the others spoke that northern tongue.

  “You had to be there.” Which is really all you can say about Dejagore. The Nyueng Bao and Old Crew became alloyed by the living nightmare.

  Mother Gota materialized. All four feet ten inches of bile. She glared at the Captain. “Aha! The great man himself!” Her Taglian is an abomination but she refuses to believe that. Those who fail to understand her do so on purpose, to mock her.

  She circled Croaker, walking her bowlegged walk. Nearly as wide as she is tall, without being really fat, ugly, waddling that waddle, she looked like a miniature troll. And her own people call her The Troll behind her back. And she has the personality. She could test the patience of a stone.

  Thai Dei and Sahra were very late children. I pray my wife will not come to resemble her mother later, in character or physically. Like her grandmother would be fine, though.

  Cold in here.

  “Why so hard you push my Sahra’s man, ho, Mr. So High and Mighty Liberator?” She hawked and spat to one side, the meaning of that no different to Nyueng Bao than anyone else. She rattled faster and faster. The faster she yakked the faster she waddled. “You think maybe he slave be? Warrior not? No time for grandmother to make of me, him always away to do for you?” She hawked and blank spat again.

  She was a grandmother all right. But none were mine and none were alive anymore. I didn’t remind her. No need attracting her attention.

  An hour earlier she had climbed all over me because I was a no good bonehead lackwit layabout who wasted all his time reading and writing. Hardly the sort of thing a grown man does with his time.

  Nothing ever satisfies Mother Gota.

  Croaker says that is because she hurts all the time.

  He pretended he could not fathom her broken Taglian. “Yes, it really is lovely weather. For this time of year. The agricultural specialists tell me we will make two crops this year. Do you think you’ll be able to double harvest your rice?”

  Hawk and spit, then a lapse into ferocious Nyueng Bao liberally spiced with imaginative epithets, not all of them native to her birth tongue. Mother Gota hates being humored or ignored more than she hates everything else.

  Somebody pounded on my door. Sarie was busy doing something somewhere that kept her from being close enough to her mother to become embarrassed. I went. I found One-Eye stinking up the hallway. The little wizard asked, “How you doing, Kid? Here.” He shoved a smelly, ragged, grubby bundle of papers into my hands. “The Old Man here?”

  “What kind of sorcerer are you if you don’t know the answer to that?”

  “A lazy sorcerer.”

  I stepped aside. “What’s this mess?” I lifted the bundle.

  “Them papers you been after me about. My notes and Annals.” He ambled over to the Captain.

  I stared down at the mess in my hands. Some of the papers were moldy. Some were waterstained. That was One-Eye. Four years late. I hoped the little rat did not hang around. He would shed lice and fleas. He takes a bath only if he gets drunk and falls in a canal. And that damned hat … I am going to burn it someday.

  One-Eye whispered to the Captain. The Captain whispered back. Mother Gota tried to eavesdrop. They changed to a language she did not know. She sucked in a bushel of air and went to work.

  One-Eye stopped talking and stared at her. This was their first encounter, close up and personal.

  He grinned.

  She did not faze him. He was two hundred years old. He had had obnoxious down to a fine art generations before Mother Gota was born. He gave her a thumbs up, sidled over to me grinning like a kid who had stubbed his toe on the pot at the end of the rainbow. In Taglian he asked, “Want to make a formal introduction here, Kid? I love
her! She’s great! Everything I’ve ever heard. She’s perfect. Give us a kiss here, lover.”

  Maybe it was because Mother Gota was the only woman in Taglios shorter than him.

  That was the only time I ever saw my mother-in-law at a loss for words.

  Thai Dei and Uncle Doj seemed taken aback, too.

  One-Eye stalked Mother Gota around the room. Finally, she fled.

  “Perfect!” One-Eye crowed. “She’s absolutely perfect! The woman of my dreams. Are you ready, Captain?”

  Was he high on something?

  “Yeah.” Croaker separated himself from his barely tasted tea. “Murgen, I want you to come with us. It’s time to teach you some new tricks.”

  I started to shake my head. I don’t know why. Sarie slipped her arm around me. She was back now, avoiding her mother by being where I was. She felt my reluctance, squeezed my arm. She looked up at me with those gorgeous almond eyes, asking why I was troubled.

  “I don’t know.” I figured we were going to interrogate the red-hand Deceiver. That was not work I would enjoy.

  Uncle Doj astonished me by asking, “May I accompany you, husband of my niece?”

  “Why?” I blurted.

  “I wish to inform my curiosity about what it is you people do.” He spoke to me slowly, as though to an idiot. I do suffer from a severe birth defect, by his thinking. I was not born Nyueng Bao.

  At least he does not call me Bone Warrior and Stone Soldier anymore.

  I never did figure that out.

  I translated for the Old Man. He didn’t bat an eye. “Sure, Murgen. Why not? But let’s get going before we all die of old age.”

  What the hell? This was the guy who was sure the Nyueng Bao were up to no good.

  I looked at the mass of paper One-Eye passed off on me. It smelled of mildew. I would try to make something of it later. If anything could be made of it. Knowing One-Eye it could well be written in a language he no longer remembered.