The Return of the Black Company

by Cook, Glen

  “When are we going to move on? Or are we not going to?”

  “Not till we have our crops in. Unless we’re under really heavy pressure. Five months minimum. Enjoy the rest.”

  Enjoy the rest. Like I enjoyed all that loafing around when we were bottled up inside Dejagore. He missed all that because he could not turn down the chance to go off and play games with Soulcatcher.

  “When you went after Catcher the other day.… Was there a plan? Did you really expect to accomplish anything?” I retained doubts about the depth of their antagonism even now.

  “Check with my dearly beloved. That was her scheme. You’ll probably see it again. She’s got the notion that if she keeps harassing Soulcatcher, Catcher won’t be able to concentrate on giving us grief.”

  “Now there’s an idea. Jab sticks into a nest of vipers so they don’t have time to come hunt you down. Why not whack on hornets’ nests and hibernating bears while we’re at it?”

  “Find One-Eye or go work on the Annals. I’ve got all the bitching I can handle right here at home.”

  “You ought to get some sleep,” I said, heading out. “You’re way too crabby.”

  * * *

  There is color. There is life of a sort. There is light. Without light there can be no darkness.

  There is death. The husks of a hundred crows surround the listing throne.

  Death will find a way. Darkness will find a way inside.

  Darkness always comes.

  The thing on the throne sits wide-eyed, blind. Its orbs show no pupils. They are half-fried egg-white blanks, yet the creature does seem to see. Certainly it is aware. Grimacing in agony, its face turns as it tracks each venturesome spy from the world. It concentrates its will on each newcomer, wanting it to land. A twinge of evil humor stirs its features whenever a weak bird fails to carry out its instructions.

  The earth quivers.

  The throne slides a foot, tilts another inch. Alarm underscores the refreshed pain on the face of the sleeper.

  The crack in the earth opens wider. The color wafting up brightens. A breeze whispers out of the bowels of the earth. It is colder than the heart of a starving spider. It carries a black vapor.

  The throne jerks another inch.

  Death will find a way.

  Even the gods must pass.

  86

  Things went too well for too long. Summer was an idyll. It never got too hot. The rains were perfect for the crops we planted. We were threatened with the sort of harvest for which peasants pray. We made sure the peasants we encountered understood that the wonderful weather was all our fault. Our foragers had liberated draft animals enough to support us if we traveled light, leaving the heavy equipment that had followed us down from friendly territory. There were even a few sheep for those not bound by Gunni strictures against eating flesh.

  The old saw is true. An army does travel on its stomach. What we accomplished by projecting the Taglian will the distance we did was a tribute to Croaker’s planning, preparation and devotion. And psychosis. And, of course, it was founded on the four years given us by Longshadow’s utter failure to interfere. Poor boy. Should have listened to Mogaba. He would not be living in a kennel. Not that he could be faulted for having been deceived by the Mother of Deceivers when Kina could spin webs of deception to warp the eyesight of gods as great as she.

  We had not yet fattened up from the winter but we were getting set to take the next leap already.

  Neither Soulcatcher nor Mogaba, neither lost Taglian loyalists nor the local population seemed further inclined to make our lives miserable. We were getting along with the latter fairly well, now.

  After—apparently at Lady’s insistence—finally sending recon forces to winkle out the secrets of Overlook, the Old Man had discovered that the fortress contained several treasures. Half became the Company treasury, something we have not had for a generation. All pledged brothers received equal shares of the rest. Eventually, Croaker ordered a market established where locals could bring anything they cared to sell.

  Results were disappointing at first. But once we demonstrated that we would not rob or murder anybody trade picked up. Peasants are resilient. They are realists. These did not see how our yoke could weigh heavier than Longshadow’s. They had no problems with old or imagined myths of the Black Company despite existing so much closer to Khatovar.

  They did not know the name Khatovar, as such, either. Nor were they concerned about Kina, under any of her names. Their Kina was a creator as well as a destroyer, fierce but no unhallowed queen of darkness. The Year of the Skulls was no terror to them. They could imagine no future more grim than their past.

  Nobody hailed us as liberators, however. We were but the shadow that displaced the darkness.

  I wandered the market occasionally, accompanied by Thai Dei and an interpreter. Thai Dei objected. He was sure my curiosity would get me killed. He was not shy about advising me that curiosity was a lethal curse.

  Uncle Doj usually tagged along. Despite pretenses to the contrary, a lot of strain had developed between us. I could not forgive Sarie’s absence, though I controlled my urge to bring my knowledge into the open. What I did to irritate him was ask every southerner I interviewed about the constellation called the Noose.

  But nobody knew it.

  Except for the devastation that was Kiaulune it would have seemed a good world.

  I enjoyed myself, except for missing Sarie. And I saw her in my dreams. There were fewer demands on me lately, though I was in charge at the Shadowgate. Red Rudy and Bucket did most of the real work there, showing me the ropes as they went. Nobody said so but I was getting educated in case I ever had to take over. I did not remind anybody that I managed the Old Crew tolerably during our ordeal in Dejagore. I did not remind them that we had a Lieutenant and she was a whole lot more experienced and hard-edged than me. Anytime you say anything you just get more work piled on.

  87

  I looked downslope one morning and saw a young army headed my way, twenty-five men and as many jackasses, loaded down with packs and bamboo. I told Thai Dei, “I don’t like the looks of this. That’s Loftus, Longinus and Cletus all at the same time.” Not to mention Otto and Hagop, whom I had not seen for a while. “When them three all clot up together you can bet something is up.”

  Thai Dei looked at me like he wondered if I really thought he was dim enough to think they were off for a picnic. He remembered the brothers from Dejagore and probably understood their obsessions better than I did.

  Something was in the wind, though.

  I went down to meet them.

  “Hey!” Clete hollered, waving. “It’s the hermit prince.”

  “What’re you guys up to?”

  “We heard you set up your own kingdom over here. We come to see its wonders.”

  “Looks like you’re here to invade me. What is all this shit?” I couched the question in the language of the Jewel Cities.

  “Field trials for a new toy. We been playing with it in the cellars of the castle.”

  “Hnh?” Could there be a real reason that the Old Man still kept most of Overlook off limits? “I hope it’s good to eat.”

  Longo snickered. “This wouldn’t be too tasty, Murgen. But it’ll be fun to dish out.”

  Thai Dei scowled. Left out again. Too bad. He was with the Company but not of the Company. As I lived with Nyueng Bao without being Nyueng Bao.

  “The way you guys are grinning I got to figure, whatever it is, it’s got a lot of gears and levers and does something entirely decorative with a reliability quotient of ten percent.”

  “O ye of weak faith. Clete, you ever seen a sourball as negative as this guy?”

  “He just don’t understand engineering.”

  “I understand engineering fine. I don’t understand engineers. What’re we doing?”

  “Field tests,” Clete reminded me. “We applied a little engineering to Lady’s fireball flingers.”

  “Range, accuracy, power,
Murgen,” Loftus enthused. “Velocity. All areas where we thought there was room for improvement.”

  Absolutely. The fireball throwers would do a man a lot of damage but you practically had to stick him with your pole to make sure you hit him.

  All this foreign yammer brought Uncle Doj around to poke his nose in. Which did him no good. But he would figure it out quickly enough.

  Longo said, “You got a nice field of fire here, Murgen.” He waved toward the mountains. Miles of nothing lay between us and the evergreen forest. His arm swung around to indicate Overlook. “And a nice measured range down that way.” Men were out there setting some kind of survey stakes already.

  Guys up close started working double-time, dragging stuff off the pack animals. Cletus grabbed a bamboo pole. “Your basic bamboo. The kind Lady turned out until we brought our thoughts to the table.”

  Clete popped off a few fireballs in the general direction of a couple of gossiping crows. The crows laughed. The fireballs wobbled into the distance, ran out of momentum, drifted to the ground, faded away. “Can’t hit shit. Except shadows. Unless you walk right up to what you want to burn.”

  Longo interjected, “We made her believe that since soldiers would be using the bamboo to work other targets—whether she liked that or not—they ought to be able to hit whatever they’re aiming at.”

  Loftus said, “She’s spent time around soldiers. She understands how they think.”

  I sneered. “She’s been screwing one for five years. She ought to have a clue.”

  Clete grabbed a bamboo pole with black bands around it. “This’s a cute little number.” He nodded to his brothers. They picked up similar poles. Each brother pointed his in the general direction of a crow. Clete said, “Do it.”

  They cranked. Fireballs flew. Black feathers exploded, floated around smoldering. More fireballs darted out. It did not seem to matter whether the guys aimed well or not. The fireballs hunted their targets down however desperately they darted and dodged. Just the way they had hunted down shadows.

  Clete leaned on his pole. “That ought to take care of the spy problem.” His brothers remained alert. Longo picked off a clever little devil trying to sneak off at low altitude, whipping between boulders in turns so tight it lost wing feathers every time.

  A ball of violet fire closed in at four times the crow’s best speed.

  Poof!

  “Now there’s a trick I can appreciate,” I said.

  Likewise Thai Dei and Uncle Doj and the guys of the thin desperate line at the Shadowgate. Jaws dropped. Rudy swore, “Fugginay! I want me one a them mudsuckers.”

  I asked, “You got a special problem with crows?”

  Rudy asked, “It only kills crows?”

  Cletus averred, “I suppose we could set them to knock down most anything. But the more targets you want to specify the more complicated your logistics is gonna get.”

  “That’s not why you’re here,” I guessed.

  “That was just to clear the area.”

  Longo said, “We wanted something guys like us could appreciate.”

  Loftus added, “Considering that we’re not likely to bring in a lot of recruits anytime soon, while Taglios can come up with as many as they want.”

  There was a growing faction up north, these days, who wanted Taglios to pretend that the Company had gone its way. We were headed for Khatovar when we came to Taglios. There was nothing to keep us from going there, now. If everybody held real still and stayed real quiet we might lose interest and head on down the road.

  While I talked to the engineers Otto and Hagop erected several trestle tables. These acquired decorative vises and tool collection place settings. Racks rose behind the tables. Their companions began stacking bamboo tubes in those. “Big bastards,” I said. Some were fifteen feet long. Some were four inches in diameter.

  Clete said, “Big and brutal. Careful where you point that damned thing!” A soldier was trying to get a bead on a crow speeding south. He was not worried about people dumb enough to get between him and his target. “What we wanted most was increased accuracy and velocity. A little extra oomph at the other end would be a nice plus, too. Hagop.”

  Hagop took a twelve-footer with a three-inch bore, striped red, locked it into a vise. He sighted down its length. He tapped gently with a hammer, shifting his aim slightly. “That boulder out there that looks like One-Eye’s hat.” He armed a complicated bamboo spring mechanism.

  I did not think the boulder looked much like a hat. It was a good four hundred yards away. Three soldiers with standard bamboo launched a dozen fireballs before one got lucky and painted a lime glow along one edge.

  “Usual problem. When you finally do get a hit you don’t do much damage. Unless it’s people. Go ahead, Hagop.”

  Hagop triggered his pole. There was a frying-bacon sound. An intense orange ball crossed to the boulder too fast for me to follow. It hit dead center. A lance of fire blew out of the rock for fifteen seconds. I felt the heat.

  The boulder shifted position slightly, pointing its tail of fire farther downhill.

  The fireball popped out the other side of the rock like a pimple’s core squirting.

  “Shit!” said I. “And double shit! That fucker must be ten feet thick!”

  Clete said, “A three-inch ball will run at least fifteen feet into the kind of stone we have around here. Hagop, see the silver character that looks like the rune for Fate?” He pointed at Overlook. There were thousands of characters on the wall. I did not understand which one he meant. Neither did Hagop.

  “Tallest line of characters. Middle of the target. Looks like a flagpole trailing two pennons to the right, next to something like a three-tined pitchfork.”

  “All right.”

  I found it, too.

  “Go ahead. Snipe away when you’re ready.”

  I protested, “That’s over three thousand yards! Closer to four. He’ll be lucky to hit the wall.”

  “Ready.”

  “Do it.”

  Bacon fried. An orange ball left the bamboo pole. It took less than three seconds to reach Overlook. I would not have been able to follow it had I not been standing behind Hagop. A flash lit up the whole countryside when the fireball hit the spells protecting the wall. It struck right where Hagop aimed it. The target rune appeared slightly discolored once the glare waned.

  “Oh, my!” said I. Thai Dei and Uncle Doj yammered at one another. They had no need to understand our quacking to see the potential.

  “We figure a ball will run out at least fourteen miles before it loses all its momentum,” Clete said. “By then it won’t have much more energy than a regular ball and won’t be much good for anything but killing shadows and general destruction anymore.” He patted the tube Hagop had used. “This was our prototype. It’s sighted in. We got to do all these others now. Which is why we come up here.”

  Hagop and Otto replaced that pole with another not yet marked. Otto gave the back end a half twist. A complete, tray-like section came off. Two guys from Lady’s factory packed the tray with something that looked like potter’s clay, then seated a big black rubber marble in that. Hagop put the tray back into his toy, fiddled with the triggering mechanism, asked the engineer brothers, “You guys satisfied with the way this thing is laid?”

  All three squatted. They bickered. Hammers tapped. They argued. Then they, Otto, Hagop and the factory people all assumed particular positions and stared at Overlook.

  Bacon crackled. An orange fireball hit the air. A thousand yards out it began to drift to the left, then downward. It hit ground short of the wall. Fire gouted into the air for fifteen seconds. So did bits of stone and sod.

  All seven observers began combining observations on a chart. Bickering steadily. They took the tray off the pole and peered through. More notes went onto the chart. That eventually passed into the hands of a specialist who used some of the arcane tools to machine the interior of the pole.

  The brothers moved to another pole. The
ir accomplices had a dozen set up for testing. They repeated the process over and over. Some poles put their fireballs on target first try. Some missed badly. The worst got discarded right away. No sense wasting time on those. There was still a need for less accurate shadowslappers.

  Once a pole went through its rework it got tested for consistency. An alphabet of arcane marks in various paints went on to tell the soldiers what quirks the weapon retained.

  Otto seldom says much but during his lunch break he observed, “Lady’s really got the power back, now.”

  Hardly anyone even suspected the truth. Those who did were not prepared to believe it.

  “How many of them things you going to work?” My guys had stopped getting any work done. They were hanging around watching the fireworks like a bunch of big kids.

  Clete said, “We brought fifty in this batch. We hope we can come up with twenty reliables out of those. Everything goes right, we’ll start work on some really big stuff. Boy, will the Tals be surprised.”

  I could imagine what these new fireballs would do to men’s bodies. But I suspected that scything through legions was not their purpose. And my suspicion was confirmed next afternoon.

  Lady herself came to inspect the twenty-six pieces the brothers had found acceptable.

  The woman seemed emotionally drained, yet did show a bounce that said part of her life was going well. She and the Old Man were finding free moments to be something other than Captain and Lieutenant.

  I was pleased for them.

  “Excellent,” she said, after she watched every accepted tube smite Overlook’s wall at least once. “What about the crow-specific light arms?”

  “You see any crows?” Longo asked. “We got a picket line out. They don’t even get close.”

  “Good. Prime all of these things with full loads. I’m going to try my own experiment.”

  Hagop told me, “We’re in the chips. We done come up with six more than we even hoped. And half the others are good enough we can use them up close, a mile or less. We’ll kick us some ass, big time.” The whole gang were as thrilled as kids with new toys. And Lady was the worst. She bounced around like she was fifteen again.