The Return of the Black Company

by Cook, Glen

  The stories had to be really bad down here.

  The cavalrymen were made of sterner stuff. They continued fighting. They were veterans. And Longshadow probably had them convinced we were going to roast their wives and rape their babies, then turn the rest of them into dog food and shoe leather.

  But we scattered them. Before the soldiers could get carried away chasing them, the Old Man headed south again, declaring, “We have bridges to capture and chokepoints to clear.”

  A few men did not heed the recall. I asked, “What about them?”

  “They have a chance to serve as a valuable object lesson. Those that survive can catch up.” He was feeling hard.

  He did not think about arranging care and protection for the wounded. That was not something he had overlooked ever before.

  It might be that there were no Company brothers among the wounded even though we had nearly a dozen with us.

  That consideration often seemed to lie at the root of his decisions, yet never so blatantly that outsiders were conscious of it. I hoped he would keep it low-key. We had troubles enough.

  * * *

  I had seen Shadowcatch a hundred times in Smoke’s dreams. I had spent cumulative days prowling Overlook. I thought I knew the city and the fortress about as well as anyone who lived there. But I was not prepared for a reality unfiltered by Smoke’s thoughtless mind.

  The remains of Kiaulune were plain hell. Famine and disease had claimed almost everyone who had not been killed by the earthquake. Longshadow, taking unwanted advice, had tried to help. Too late. But he had allowed refugees to establish themselves in the shadow of Overlook and had been making provision to care for them. In turn, those people were replacing the lost workers who had been building Overlook before the earthquake.

  Very little work had gotten done since the disaster. Even Longshadow had been forced to stipulate that survival demands superseded his desire to complete his invulnerable fastness.

  There were no children. Some arrangement had been made to care for them elsewhere. A clever step, uncharacteristic of the Shadowmaster. That idea had to have originated with someone else. In fact, I could think of no one in Longshadow’s coterie to whom such a thing would occur.

  It looked as though the little construction effort put out lately had been directed principally at providing housing.

  This would not keep up once the pressure was off. To Longshadow all the people of the Shadowlands were his to use and dispose of as he saw fit. He just wanted to keep them alive long enough to be used.

  “Hell really is leaking into the world,” Croaker observed. He stared at the bleak, stinking, unwalled remains of Kiaulune. He paid no attention to the gleaming magnificence beyond the city.

  I did. “We’re too damned close here, boss. We don’t have Lady to cover us.”

  That did not seem to trouble him. The only time he paid Overlook any attention was when he paused once to glare and say, “You didn’t get it done in time, did you, you son of a bitch?”

  From the limited point of view of someone seeing the fortress with mundane eyes the place seemed immeasurably huge. Mostly the towering walls had been constructed of a grey-white stone but in places blocks of different colors had been worked in, along with silver, copper and gold, to scrawl the whole with cabalistic patterns.

  What forces had Longshadow gathered to defend those ramparts since last I walked with the ghost? Did it matter? Could any army scale those incredible walls if the construction scaffolding was cast down?

  Most of that was still in place.

  Croaker mused, “You may be right. I shouldn’t rub their noses in the fact that I’m out here personally.” He turned a little more and looked past Overlook, at the escarpment in the distance. “Have you ever gotten up there?”

  I looked around. No one was there to hear. Not even a crow. “No. I can get about halfway across the space between Overlook and a place on the road where there’s a landslide that seems to be what they call the Shadowgate around here. Not much to look at. But that’s all the farther Smoke will go.”

  “I’ve never done better. Let’s get out of here.”

  We withdrew and pitched camp north of Kiaulune. The soldiers were not comfortable there. None of them wanted to set up housekeeping so close to the last and craziest Shadowmaster.

  I tended to agree.

  Croaker said, “You could be right. I’d feel better myself if Smoke was down here and you could do some scouting.” Then he grinned. “But I do believe that we have a guardian angel better than Lady looking out for us.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Catcher. She’s as goofy as a squirrel with three nuts but she’s predictable. You been able to get close to her?” Like he was sure I would try.

  “Not really. Smoke won’t go.”

  “You have to remember how determined she is to use me to get even with Lady for having kept her from getting even before. That means she has to take care of me.”

  “Oh.” Dumb me. I had not thought about how he could be using Catcher. “You’re willing to bet your life on Catcher?”

  “Hell no. She’s still Soulcatcher. She could get interested in something else and just walk out on everything here.”

  “But she does have a score to settle with Longshadow, too.”

  “That she does.” He grinned. He was pleased about the way things were going.

  I was worried about Soulcatcher. She seldom did anything overt but in her own mind she would be one of the major players. Eventually she would do something dramatic.

  Was there anything Croaker had not foreseen and made part of his plan? He did not think so, I am sure.

  I did not agree. Because I had rock-hard evidence that he was not ready for everything. There is no way he could have anticipated me starting to have the same sort of nightmares as Lady—though I am just as certain that he did expect hers to continue.

  Here near Kiaulune my nightmares were powerful and frequent. I could not take a nap without a visit to the cavern of the old men. Frequently I went to the plain of bones and corpses. On occasion I slipped off to the land of myth. Or so I interpreted it. It was a vast grey place where gods and devils met in divine battle and the most ferocious thing on the field was a gleaming black monster whose footfalls shook the earth, whose claws rent and tore, whose fangs …

  The hideous cold place with the slimy old men was there every time, though. Every time. It was repellent in the extreme, yet attractive. Each time, as I walked the cold shadows, I found another familiar face among the old men.

  I thought I had it handled. I really did. But that was because I did not think Kina would bother being subtle with a dim candle like me. I ignored the fact that she was the goddess of Deceivers. And forgot that Lady had told me that all that appeared to be Kina did not have to be Kina.

  The dead place came to smell sweeter. It became more relaxing, safer, more comfortable, just as walking with the ghost had become comforting. I had a suspicion my enjoyment of that comfort was one reason the Old Man brought me down here ahead of everyone. He wanted me to go cold turkey.

  I wanted to tell him I had it handled because I believed I did. But as we lay there in the hills waiting for the rest of the army to trudge up the road I spent a lot of cold days and colder nights huddled by a fire, spooking out Thai Dei, fiddling with my notes and napping. A lot. Because when I slept I could go away from the center, where the pain remained in a hard little core that would not die. Sometimes I even seemed to fly the way I had with Smoke, though not far, nor to anywhere interesting. I was the opposite of Lady, who fought her dreams all the way.

  It was a gentle seduction. Kina gradually replaced Smoke.

  I noticed that the Captain watched me sidelong in the mornings, warily, when I arose reluctantly. Thai Dei did not say anything but he seemed worried.

  39

  The men were singing around the campfires even though it had snowed. Morale was up. We were finding enough to eat. We had halfway decent shelter. Th
e enemy was making no attempt to discomfit us. Lead elements of the main force were in the province and scattering in a wide arc around Kiaulune, settling in to await the final phase of the campaign. But even when the mob is sitting around, playing tonk, somebody has to do something to keep things moving. The Old Man reached into his trick bag and pulled the straw with my name on it.

  I think he rigged the draw.

  I got the job of taking a patrol north to meet a quartermaster crew inbound to begin surveys for camp layouts once we got serious about besieging Overlook. They were bringing in some prisoners Lady thought the Captain would find interesting.

  Three times outbound we had brushes with partisans. We had another coming back. The tension was draining. I was exhausted. Still not a hundred percent despite his protests to the contrary, Thai Dei was used up, too. “Message from your honey,” I told the Old Man, tossing him a leather packet that was heavy enough to have a couple bricks inside. “Clete and his brothers are with this bunch. They’re already talking about building a ramp to get over Overlook’s wall.”

  “Fat chance. You all right?”

  “Dead tired. We ran into partisans again. Mogaba’s changing his style.”

  He gave me a hard look but told me, “Get some rest. The guys have found a house I want you to look over tomorrow. You might grab Clete and them and have them tell you how much work the place needs.”

  I grunted. I had a nice place now, dug out of the side of a hill, a real blanket hanging in front to keep out the wind and contain the warmth of my fire. Our fire. My brother-in-law holed up there with me. We were turning the place into a manor house in our spare time. Compared to anything we had had since leaving Dejagore.

  Between us we had just about enough energy left to grunt at one another over some hard bread while we got the fire built up, then collapsed into piles of rags we had harvested from the ruins of Kiaulune.

  I fell asleep wondering how bad the guerrilla problem could get. This time of year we could starve them into submission simply by keeping a lot of foragers out. But if they survived the winter we would have big trouble with them in the spring, when we would have to plant our own crops, then would have to work and protect them through the harvest.

  I did not worry about it long. Sleep jumped up and grabbed me. And the dreams were waiting for me.

  This time it started with the dead waste, the expanse of corpses and bones, but it was not quite the night land it had been before. The stench was absent. The corpses looked like corpses in paintings, pale, with little blood showing. There was none of the corruption that finds us after we have lain in the sun for a few days. There were no flies, no maggots, no ants, no scavengers tearing at the bodies.

  This time some of the corpses opened their eyes as I passed. A few looked vaguely like people I knew long ago. My grandmother. An uncle I had liked. Childhood friends and a couple friends from early days in the Company, now long dead. Most of those seemed to smile at me.

  Then I encountered the face that I should have expected, the one the whole series of dreams must have been choreographed to throw at me. Yes, I should have expected it but it did take me completely by surprise. “Sahra?”

  “Murgen.” Her response was no more than the stir of a faint breeze. A ghost’s whisper. As you would expect. As I would expect, anyway, being naïve about such things.

  I saw the trap instantly. Kina was going to offer me back my dead. What she had taken away she would ransom. At that moment I did not care. Of course.

  I could get my Sarie back.

  I had my Sarie for as long as it took for my emotions to become totally engaged. Then I was in a dark, cold, terrible place I was meant to believe was where Sarie went when I was not there to pull her into the light.

  Not real subtle.

  I guess Kina never needed subtlety.

  The gimmick tore me right up. But …

  The outside influence quickened my reason as well as my emotions. I realized Kina was playing to a native audience, as though I was Taglian or from one of Taglios’s cousin states, where the religions are closely related. She could not encompass the fact that I had not been raised up steeped in southern mythologies. Even this touching of me in my dreams did not convince me that she was divine. Her scheme was something Lady could have pulled off at the peak of her powers, something her dead husband could have managed from his grave.

  I did not let her set the hook, sweetly baited as it was.

  So she grabbed the pain of my soul and dragged it naked and screaming through the briars.

  I wakened with Thai Dei shaking me violently. I yelled, “Take it easy, man! What’s wrong?”

  “You were screaming in your sleep. You were talking to the Mother of Night.”

  I remembered. “What did I say?”

  Thai Dei shook his head. Lying. He had understood. And what he had heard had upset him.

  I put my mind and face in order, dragged my dead ass over to the Captain’s place.

  Something was wrong with that man. I mean, I have pretty spartan tastes myself but I can think of a few luxuries I would demand if I were dictator to a vast empire, a powerful warlord, Captain of the Black Company, and there were people around who would be just thrilled to make me more comfortable. But he was living in a half tent, half lean-to thing, partly a sod hut, just like the meanest groom. It kept him out of the wind. His only claim to status was that he did not share.

  He did not have sentries hulking around him despite our presence deep in enemy territory, despite our suspicion that a few dedicated Stranglers still lurked within our ranks.

  Maybe he did not believe he needed guards because an old dead tree loomed above his shelter. That almost always boasted a crew of bickering crows.

  I let myself in. “You’re counting on Catcher’s obsession way too much, boss.” Though I had had the feeling that I was being examined closely as I approached. Maybe Croaker had cause to feel confident.

  He was asleep. He had left a lamp burning. I turned it up a bit, went to work trying to wake him. He came around but he was not pleased. Seldom did he get a chance to sleep as much as he wanted. “This better be good, Murgen.”

  “I don’t know if it is or not but I do have a point,” I assured him. “I’ll try to get through it fast.” I told him about the dream. And about the dreams that had gone before it.

  “Lady told me you might be vulnerable. Not knowing about Smoke, though, she didn’t see how you could be.”

  “I’m sure there’s a reason,” I said. “I think I know what she’s trying to do. What I can’t figure is why.”

  “That tells me you really haven’t thought it through.”

  “What?”

  “You know exactly why but you’re too lazy to figure it out for yourself.”

  “Bullshit.” But I capped my temper. I sensed that I was about to enjoy one of his lectures.

  “You’re of interest because you’re the standardbearer, Murgen. You’ve spent the last several years backfilling new material into my Annals and Lady’s so you know them pretty well. By now you ought to suspect that there’s something special about the standard.”

  “The Lance of Passion?”

  “According to the Shadowmasters. We don’t know what that means. Maybe the answer is in those old Annals you squirreled away at the Palace. Whatever, it’s clear that some people would like to lay hands on the standard.”

  “Including Kina. That what you’re saying?”

  “Evidently. You studied the Kina myth while you were trapped in Dejagore. Weren’t the standards of the Free Companies of Khatovar supposed to be the pizzles of demons or something?”

  That led to an exchange of crude speculations about why Kina wanted the standard, a couple of chuckles, then the Captain said, “You did the right thing, letting me know. We’ve all got these things going on inside us. We’re keeping them locked up and secret and we’re getting used. I think. Look, hang in there. Stay aware. One-Eye will be here tomorrow or the next day. You
talk to him—then you do exactly what he tells you. Understand?”

  “I got it. But what do I do about it?”

  “Gut it out.”

  “Gut it out. Right.”

  “On your way back to your den take a look at Kiaulune and ask yourself if you’re the first guy in this world who ever lost somebody he loved.”

  Oh-oh. He was getting impatient with my refusal to heal.

  “Right. Good night.” I wished. It was more like hell night for a while. Every time I slipped off I fell right into the plain of death. Not once did I get to the cavern of the old men. As soon as it got bad I awakened, usually on my own but twice with help from Thai Dei. Poor guy. No telling what he really thought about me after four years of watching me go through these bizarre behaviors.

  Finally, apparently baffled by my lack of receptivity, Kina abandoned me—trailing more than a hint of exasperated threat behind her.

  And when it was over I was not quite sure the whole thing had not been some monster entirely of my own imagining.

  I slept. I awakened. I crawled out of my shelter. As another privileged character I could have gotten by without sharing, too, if I had wanted. In fact, as Annalist, I rated a tent of the sort used for small conferences, a veritable canvas palace where I could spread out and work.

  I rated it but I would never see it.

  The standard stood outside. It did not look like something that ought to excite the envy of a blacksmith, let alone great powers. It was nothing but one rusty old spearhead atop a long wooden shaft. Five feet down from the head there was a crosspiece four feet long tied to the shaft. From that hung the black banner bearing the device we had adopted in the north, the silver skull exhaling golden flames that originated as Soulcatcher’s personal seal. The skull was not human because it had exaggerated canine teeth. No lower jaw was present. One eye socket was scarlet. In some representations that was the right eye, in some the left. I have been assured there is significance to that but nobody ever told me what. It may have had something to do with Soulcatcher’s changeable nature.

  Every Company man wore a silver badge bearing a similar design. We have them made where we can. Some we take off our own dead. Some men are carrying three or four as part of Croaker’s thing about returning to Khatovar. In fact, I think Otto and Hagop have several dozen of them they brought down from the north.