The Return of the Black Company

by Cook, Glen

  The Kina hypothesis was attractive but I had a nit to pick. If the Mother of Deceptions was determined to bring on the Year of the Skulls why would she keep the Company away? Did she see the Shadowmasters as tools better suited to achieving the necessary level of destruction?

  I shrugged, told Thai Dei, “I guess we’re just not wanted here.”

  “What the hell?” Croaker barked.

  The shapechanger had begun trying to get to Uncle Doj. Uncle poked her with his swordtip till she settled down.

  “Dream for me, Murgen,” Croaker said as I started down the hill. “Right now I’m feeling blind and vulnerable. I need to know what’s going on out there.”

  93

  There was something going around. Everyone we ran into crossing to our camp wanted to know what was going on. It was not a matter of rampant rumor. Nobody had heard anything outrageous. But every man had developed an unfocused case of nerves. I felt it myself. Everything seemed portentous, though of what no one could say. As I entered the squalid village that had sprung up below the Shadowgate I noted that most of my men were seeing to their arms and equipment, just in case. I made a mental note to take advantage of their nerves and begin whipping them into more presentable shape.

  It was time to take some raggedy-ass volunteers and begin molding them into brothers.

  Counting soldiers and officials and camp followers at least a hundred thousand Taglians had been involved in Croaker’s last crusade against the Shadowmaster. I have not dwelled on it but death did claim most of those folks, some in the fighting, more by way of disease and accident and hardship. Disease and hardship and Taglians probably accounted for even greater numbers of Shadowlanders. The conflict generated a human disaster far greater than the worst of the earthquakes shaking the region.

  Disease remains a problem. Always.

  The point is, there has not been a lot of fun and glory down here. The few thousand men who remain with us, many of them permanently crippled in some way, are real nervous sorts. They find signs and portents in everything.

  Like most who stumble into the mercenary life they were men their society did not cherish. Maybe they had no families to rejoin. Maybe they had things turned a little sideways inside their heads. Maybe they were criminals or fugitives from enemies or wives or debt collectors. It takes a great deal to bring order and discipline to men of that sort. The Company’s concept of itself as home and family had worked pretty well the past few generations but during that time the outfit never got bigger than a few hundred men. Never had it been so big that each man did not know every other.

  I realized that I, for one, despite all pretense to the contrary, had not been doing everything I could to pull the family together. I had let a lack of outside pressure lull me into relaxing.

  Paranoia is a must. The more so when times seem fat and favorable.

  The guys were nervous now. It was time to work them a little harder.

  * * *

  “A reading from the First Book of Croaker,” I told the force assembled. I was a bit bemused. There must have been six hundred of them. Even the worst of the halt and lame had come. “In those days the Company was in service to the Syndics of Beryl.…” It should be a good reading. Unless Otto and Hagop came over those times would be safely in the past, yet would still be close enough that the men would know that veterans of those events were still amongst them. They would know that there were forces ranged against us that their predecessors first encountered then. The very emblem on their badges had been chosen by the Company then. It was an easy connection to the past, comprehensible, with current relevance. It was a doorway through which they could be led to accept the belief that they were part of something that has survived everything for over four hundred years.

  I got no cheers. I did get passionate enough to make even the most cynical member of my audience suspect that there might be something to what I said.

  I made my speech and did my reading from the roof of my bunker. Sleepy sat beside the doorway throughout, showing all the ambition of a protective gargoyle. I wondered if some forced exercise might not help bring him back.

  * * *

  The uproar of Bucket arguing with Thai Dei wakened me. “What the hell is going on?” I yelled.

  “Get your ass out here, Murgen!”

  I slithered across the rocky floor and into a brilliant night.

  I did not need to have anything pointed out. The fireworks were self-explanatory.

  Lady’s weapons plant was burning. Fireballs began to fly. It got worse fast. Fires started in the forest, in the ruins of Kiaulune and amongst the shanties of the camps across the way. A few fireballs even reached my neighborhood, though my guys were heads-up enough to dodge them.

  I said, “No way I’m going over there.”

  “Somebody ain’t afraid,” Bucket said. A glimmer betrayed Uncle Doj loping away, Ash Wand in hand, colorful reflections setting its edge aglitter.

  “Thai Dei!” I barked. “What the hell is he doing?”

  “I do not know.”

  The excitement across the way grew so loud we could make out a general roar of people shouting.

  “Shit and double shit,” somebody said. “Can you believe that?”

  I reiterated, “I’m not going over there.”

  The fireworks continued. Random balls arced across the night. Sometimes a pole would discharge rapidly, hurling a stream of fiery dots into the darkness. Lady’s factory was mostly underground but the earth did not confine the devastation.

  For a few minutes the night got lost in the glare.

  Back behind me the standard dusk-to-dawn fog of darkness crowding the Shadowgate rippled away uphill, clinging to the deepest washes and gullies. The shadows did not like what was happening.

  Neither did I. Again I observed, “I’m not going over there.”

  Some wiseass remarked, “Any of you other guys think Murgen maybe ain’t going over there?”

  Shithead.

  I held out a few hours. I even got some sleep.

  94

  The ground still burned.

  The earth had collapsed into Lady’s factory, evidently while so much fireball material was ablaze that the dirt itself could not resist ignition. The burning soil glowed various colors. Little flames pranced close to the ground, randomly, like those on the surface of burning sulfur. A smell of sulfur did hang in the air but it was a memory of fireballs past.

  There was just enough light to get around by. Consequently the disaster’s aftermath was more impressive visually.

  Hundreds of soldiers and scores of hastily recruited Shadowlanders carried water in any container available. Water killed these fires not by smothering them but by cooling them down.

  A column of steam towered thousands of feet above us.

  “I think I’m about to get pissed off.”

  I glanced back. The Old Man had come up beside me. “This didn’t do us much good,” I agreed.

  “It’s maybe not as bad as it looks except for we lost so many of the people who made the poles. The battle-ready pieces were stored somewhere else. Lady didn’t want to keep all her peas in one pod.”

  “Smart girl. Was it an accident?”

  “No. The survivors say the lamps down there started going out, then people started screaming. The way they describe that makes me sure shadows got in. Right behind those came something or somebody who couldn’t be seen very well. She strolled through the confusion setting off the reactions that caused the blowup.”

  “Soulcatcher?”

  “That’s my bet. She’s really starting to get up my nose.”

  I grunted. Starting? Just now? Then he was more patient than I believed possible.

  Somebody yelled my name. I made out a crowd gathering downhill. “My public calls,” I grumbled. “I wonder what gruesome surprise they have for me this time.” “Gruesome” was a weak word to describe what lay scattered around the collapsed area. Mangled, partial, dismembered and thoroughly cooked
corpses abounded. Most were not soldiers. Lady’s workers had gotten a running start but that had not been good enough for most. “Where’s Lady?” I asked as Croaker followed me.

  “Trying to get a fix on Catcher. Hoping we can slap back while she’s still tired and feeling smug.”

  “Waste of time.”

  “Probably. You do any dreaming last night?”

  “No. I tossed and turned and tried to talk myself out of coming over here.”

  “I would’ve sent for you eventually.”

  I saw why in a moment.

  He had spotted the body first.

  Uncle Doj lay sprawled on his back amidst the crowd. One shoulder had been burned by a fireball. A second fireball had burned part of his hair away. Much of what remained had been bleached white. His face was contorted. His right eye was wrinkled shut and buried beneath a crust of dried blood. His left eye was open. It stared at the sky. Ash Wand lay across his chest. He still gripped it with both hands. Its perpetually sharp blade was discolored as though it had been used to stir a fire, as though the temper had been burned out. Uncle Doj’s clothing looked as though somebody had sprinkled him with small coals after he went down.

  A small white feather was stuck in the blood on his cheek.

  He shuddered. A sound like a giant fart came out of him. Thai Dei, who had been standing beside me, staring dumbstruck, dove forward.

  Croaker snapped, “You men get back. Give us room. Murgen, bring my medical kit and I’ll do what I can.”

  I took off. To my amazement Thai Dei bounced up and followed me. He did bark orders at other Nyueng Bao as we went, though. Uncle would be watched over by his own kind.

  I dove into Croaker’s shelter, found his bag and popped back up into the gathering light. I asked Thai Dei, “Could you tell anything from looking at Uncle?”

  “He went into the mangrove alone.” Which was Nyueng Bao idiom. It derived from the story of an incautious hunter who chased a wild pig into a mangrove stand and ran into a tiger when he got there.

  I dropped Croaker’s bag beside him. He grunted acknowledgment, then growled at the Nyueng Bao pressing in around us. Not ten minutes had passed but it seemed every Nyueng Bao following the Old Crew had come to see what was happening. Thai Dei whispered angrily at several. The gist seemed to be that they were shirking their duties by straying from those they were supposed to protect. So strong was the Nyueng Bao concept of debt that the whole bunch scattered immediately.

  The Nyueng Bao said little. What they did say I understood perfectly. But I learned nothing.

  Thai Dei knelt beside Uncle, on his left side. The Old Man knelt opposite him. Croaker gave Thai Dei a wet cloth. “Here. Sponge the crud off his face so I can see how much real damage there is.” There was light enough now to see the dried blood and oozings crusted on Uncle’s face.

  While we were gone Croaker had accumulated several buckets of water and had opened Uncle Doj’s clothing. He concentrated on the damaged shoulder, which still trickled blood. Doj’s scalp wound had cauterized itself, evidently.

  Uncle shuddered again. He could see because he looked up at Thai Dei, recognized him, tried to raise his arm, barely got hold of Thai Dei’s right elbow. He whispered, “The Thousand Voices. Watch for the Thousand Voices.”

  “Rest, Uncle,” Thai Dei replied.

  “You must … I have little time left. The Thousand Voices is among us. I struck her down, thinking to reclaim the Key, but my blow was not lethal.” That seemed to amaze him.

  Croaker glared at me, silently willing me to listen carefully because it was obvious Uncle was saying something important. I nodded, not only listening and remembering but watching Doj’s lips to make sure he was saying what I thought I was hearing.

  Most of the Nyueng Bao had gone back to their charges. But JoJo had no one to protect anymore. His man had gotten away. He stayed. He stepped forward. “Uncle! Your tongue betrays you.”

  At least that is what he wanted to say. The instant his mouth opened Croaker made signs to Otto and Hagop, who hovered like angels looking for unbelievers to smite. They wrapped JoJo up, clamped hands over his mouth, carried him away, and managed the whole abduction so slickly that nobody paid any attention.

  Uncle Doj thought he was dying. He was trying to stick Thai Dei with some obligation. “Find her before she recovers. Kill her while she is vulnerable. Burn her flesh. Scatter her ashes. Scatter them to the winds.”

  Thai Dei did not want the obligation. “I am not the one, Uncle. I have a mission already. Rest. Hold your tongue.” He knew I was listening.

  Uncle’s eye shifted my way. He knew I was listening, too, now. But he was convinced he saw Death peering over my shoulder. He kept on talking.

  What he said made sense. If you assumed that “the Thousand Voices” was Soulcatcher. That was a good nickname for her—particularly where she had not bothered to introduce herself.

  Unfortunately, Uncle and Thai Dei did not make illuminating, “As you know” expository speeches to one another so I could only fill the chasms by guesswork. I did get the impression that this Thousand Voices had stolen something from the Nyueng Bao. Uncle called it the Key. Key to what did not come up. Thai Dei had no need to have it explained.

  A quest to recover the item might explain why Uncle had been dogging the Company. It might explain his disappearances, both overnight or for as long as after Charandaprash. I suspected I might have been exposed to earlier hints but had been too dense to catch or record them.

  Uncle Doj was getting weaker. For a man as strong physically and mentally as he was that hinted that he might be right about having very little time left. I yielded to temptation and gave pettiness a loose rein. I dropped to my haunches, as near Nyueng Bao style as I could manage. “Is there anything you want me to tell Sahra when she gets here?”

  His one eye fixed on mine. He winced as Thai Dei peeled a big hunk of scab off his other eye but his gaze did not waver.

  “I’ve known for a long time. I also know we have a son. And I can find no forgiveness in my heart.”

  Croaker said, “He’s got more wounds than I thought. This arm is broken. His leg might be, too.”

  I said, “He ran into Catcher. Probably when she was making her getaway. He might have cut her up some.”

  “That would explain the sword. Also him still being in relatively good health. What’s the chatter?” We were, of course, muttering in Jewel Cities dialect.

  “He’s sure he’s dying. He’s trying to pass some kind of obligation on to Thai Dei. Thai Dei doesn’t want it. I think Catcher visited the swamp between the time when we broke the siege of Dejagore and when my in-laws moved in with me in Taglios. She snatched something really important to the Nyueng Bao—something apparently considered an object of power in their religion, like a holy relic—and Uncle’s quest is to steal it back.”

  “He ain’t ready to check out yet,” Croaker told me. “It looks worse than it is. Half this mess isn’t his blood. He’ll be all right if we can beat the infection. But you don’t have to clue him. Let him talk.”

  I shifted to Nyueng Bao. “Thai Dei, my Captain expresses a regret that your people have not dealt with us frankly. However, in honor of Sahra, and because I asked for it as family, he will do what he can to ease Uncle Doj’s passage back to the cao gnum..” Cao gnum could be either a place or a state of being that could be described as the universe’s central depository of souls. I was not sure which because the Nyueng Bao did not discuss their religious beliefs. Whatever, cao gnum was where souls waited to return to the world if they had not accumulated enough good karma to get off the Wheel of Life. The Gunni call their similar place Swegah, which for them can be several places at once, including Heaven and Hell, with the soul on standby getting doses of each according to the tally sheet that has been kept of his good deeds and bad.

  My comments strained Thai Dei’s honor and loyalty. He was angry with me. “Too much disrespect, my brother.”

  I said, “So explai
n why I should treat him better than some pain-in-the-ass second cousin.”

  “Ignorance is your shield,” Thai Dei advised me. “Grant me a boon.”

  “Ask away.”

  “Say nothing more.”

  I had begun to suspect that I had run my mouth too much already so I had no problem granting his wish. “You got it.”

  Uncle muttered to Thai Dei several times during the next quarter hour. That was pure delirium. Nothing he said illuminated the situation any better. Then he passed into unconsciousness because Croaker had given him something for his pain. I did not reassure Thai Dei about him waking up. Let him be astounded by the Old Man’s medical magic. Let him feel even more obligation than he already did.

  Once Uncle was out and unable to fight us we set his bones and cleansed his wounds. Not much flesh had to be abraded. The fireballs had done a great job of cauterization.

  Uncle was going to sport some major scars from now on, though.

  He might never have complete use of the right side of his body again, either. His right arm was broken in three places. One break was a compound fracture. His right shinbone was broken as well, six inches below the knee.

  It never occurred to Thai Dei to ask why he was helping set the bones of a man who was about to die.

  He was in another world. He was communing with his soul, with the thing that made him Thai Dei.

  After a while, he said, “I argued against it when they sent Sahra away. My voice was too small to carry any weight.” He did not look at me when he spoke. His body language told me it was not something he would discuss again, ever.

  95

  The following morning I talked cautiously to several Gunni about Nyueng Bao mythology. They were no help. I ran into a slough of contempt. If the Gunni had possessed any grasp of the concept they would have labeled the Nyueng Bao heretics. They did not. Taglian society was too completely pluralistic religiously. Nobody I spoke to had any idea what the Key might be. I suspected it might not be a religious relic even though I had overheard enough to understand that it had been one of the major treasures kept hidden at the temple where Sahra was confined.