The Return of the Black Company

by Cook, Glen

  Three ugly beast masks inclined slightly toward the surface of the road. At least I think they were masks. I hope they were. Anybody that ugly for real should not have been allowed to climb out of the cradle.

  They folded their hands before them. They began to withdraw. They did so without moving their feet.

  Weird.

  They flickered into nonexistence as they dwindled into the distance.

  I stalked the perimeter of the circle. The shadows began to return. My pet matched my movements, always pressing against the barrier. I sensed a great hunger there.

  I was surprised to find four roads leading out of the circle, matching the primary arms of the compass rose.

  How come the east and west arms were not visible in the waking world?

  The Shapechanger’s roar reached into the ghostworld. Goats and bullocks protested. The men on watch, already scared shitless from watching shadows search for a break in the barrier, cursed all the beasts. Some went to beat the panther. Somebody yelled, “What the fuck is that?” and pointed toward the standard. The lack of light made it unclear. I drifted that way swiftly.

  A white crow perched on the crosspiece, apparently sleeping. Which brought up a hundred questions immediately.

  Was there another me up there watching from a time yet to come? Was the bird Kina’s creature? Or Soulcatcher’s? How had it gotten here, by night, from the world beyond the Shadowgate? I had seen huge shadows circling above … but I saw no such thing when I looked at the moon now. In fact, that untimely moon was no longer there. What I did see was a fingernail clipping of moon just beginning to rise.

  More questions.

  The panther roared again, this time in startled pain. They were paying her back for scaring the animals.

  I drifted past where Croaker and Lady had made their beds. He was snoring. She was wide awake. She sensed my passage somehow. Her gaze followed me inaccurately. I lost her after a few yards. I wriggled between the cages. Longshadow was awake, too. He was sobbing quietly and shaking. I do not think there was anything left of the once dreadful, insane sorcerer.

  Howler was awake, too. I realized, belatedly, that he had not been making much noise lately.

  As I watched he tried to get off one of his ferocious yowls but nothing came out.

  What had Lady done to him?

  Soulcatcher was the one I really wanted to examine. And she too was awake when I found her. She was still bundled and gagged to a point that would have driven me over the edge, but she seemed as madly merry as at her best moments. She sensed me as easily as her sister had. Her eyes tracked me. They seemed to laugh, filled with secret knowledge. In fact, I got the distinct feeling that if she wanted to badly enough she could slide out of her flesh and chase me around.

  No. But she wanted me to think she could do that. She was messing around with me even in her present circumstances.

  That troubled me not nearly so much as her confidence did. She was not at all afraid or even worried.

  That had to be passed on to the Captain and Lieutenant.

  I drifted near the boundary, wondering if I ought to go see Sarie or engage in any of the hundred tasks I pursued when I walked the ghostworld. I did not really want to do anything but sleep. My personal shadow splashed itself against the barrier. There was some emotion there. But I could not tell if the thing wanted to talk to me or to eat me. It made me feel the way I might have, had I acknowledged the existence of a beggar who then refused to let me get away.

  I passed a nervous Nyueng Bao prowling on catlike feet, his sword ready. The swamp men were more troubled by our quest than were the few Taglians accompanying us, despite their traditional burden of fear of Khatovar.

  Sleeplessness was a common problem. I paused to eavesdrop on the murmurs of Blade, Mather and Willow Swan. No sedition surfaced there, though. Swan, being Willow Swan, was telling ghost stories. I wish I could talk about the man more. He was a character.

  The Prahbrindrah Drah was awake as well, among them but evidently not with them. He contributed nothing.

  I drifted near the crow. It sensed me. It cawed softly once, opened one reddish eye momentarily, resumed napping. But it cawed again sharply when I considered testing the barrier’s ability to contain me.

  Without knowing how I got the message, I understood that it insisted I go roaming only by flying above the plain.

  The wings were there, available, but I did not choose to don them. I continued around the camp. No ghosts watched me from any of the roads. The east and west ways were growing tenuous while the route back north remained solid, unthreatening, even inviting. My shadow companion could not reach me there, either. The roads were protected, too.

  I raced northward. I am not sure what I meant to do, though I had some notion of visiting Sarie one more time.

  Long before I managed that I got yanked back to my flesh.

  I did find something else to intrigue me, though, right in front of the Shadowgate, before I went.

  103

  Croaker was obnoxiously bright and cheerful next morning. Lady wore a secretive smile. They must have invented some kind of privacy for a few minutes. “Why’re you so grim?” Croaker demanded.

  “Didn’t sleep for shit.”

  “Nervous?” Half the guys were complaining about not having gotten any sleep.

  “Ghostwalking.”

  “Ah. And you saw something interesting or you wouldn’t be in a foul temper now.”

  I talked about everything but the white crow. I underscored my belief that Catcher was in too good spirits for anybody in her situation. “She’s up to something.”

  “She was born scheming,” Lady said. “She was manipulating people before she could talk. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You eaten?” Croaker asked.

  I nodded.

  “Then let’s get them up and headed out.”

  “Hang on while I provide you with one final taste of good cheer from my midnight walkabout. Those people we saw running toward my camp when we were climbing the hill yesterday? Guess who. You say anybody but Goblin, One-Eye and Gota, you’re wrong. I can’t go back in time to find out but I think it’s a safe bet they wanted to catch us before we came up here.”

  Croaker lost his smile. “You overhear anything?”

  “A lot of snoring. They were asleep. Goblin did mumble something but it wasn’t in any language I understand.”

  “The road is open,” Lady observed. “You could go collect them.”

  “Hardly practical,” Croaker said. “Even if one of us rode back the rest would have to stay here waiting. Half our supplies would get used just sitting.”

  “We could all go back.”

  Neither the Old Man nor I responded but nothing needed saying. She did not mean that, anyway. She was just listing options.

  There was light enough to see the standing stones nearest us. The characters on them started to shine. They had not shone during the night. I wondered how they managed with so little light.

  “I’m worried,” I told Croaker.

  “So am I. But we have to make choices. You think we ought to cancel the expedition because the prodigals crawled out of their holes?” He asked Lady. “Do you?”

  “No. They’ll be there when we get back.”

  I hoped her confidence was justified. Us being gone was an opportunity for all sorts of mischief to happen back up the road.

  “Let’s move them out,” Croaker said. “Grab your pole and hike, Standardbearer.”

  When I went and tried lifting the standard it came up as though it never had been stuck.

  * * *

  That place up ahead never seemed to get any closer. I hate open country because of that. You can travel for days with the scenery never changing.

  Croaker’s mood darkened with time. He grew more impatient to get on. In the afternoon, when he spelled me carrying the standard, he began to pull ahead. After a while I asked Lady, “You figure you better slow him down?”

 
“What?” She had not noticed, so deep was she into her own interior world.

  “Him.” I pointed.

  She urged her mount forward.

  I kept trudging. Maybe I even slowed down a little. There was no drive to rush forward once the standard was out of hand. In fact, the world behind me grew more and more attractive as time passed, the sky darkened and the plain changed not at all. The only color anywhere was inside our party—unless you counted the gold characters on the pillars.

  Lady caught the Old Man. I did not overhear their exchange. I suspect she was a bit sharp. He looked back at me, now understanding how come I zoomed ahead before.

  He kept watching till I caught up. “You want to take this thing back now?”

  “I still haven’t got the kinks out from carrying it before. You just got to concentrate.”

  He grunted. And the next circle we hit turned out to be our campground for the night.

  Soon after we settled the men began going to the southern roadhead to study the fortress ahead. And fortress it surely was, partially fallen. Speculation centered on whether or not we would reach it the next day and whether the Old Man would turn back if we did not. There was no reason to be optimistic about that. This close to his goal the Old Man would push on and worry about hunger when the time came.

  This time we lighted the communal fires, enjoyed a warm meal. We all needed the morale boost.

  There would be fresh meat from now on because we could not feed and water animals doing no useful work.

  It is a tough world for livestock.

  I asked Thai Dei, “There anything in mythology anywhere that might tell us something about that place up ahead?”

  “No. At least in no way we would recognize.”

  “You sure? Your buddies seem real uncomfortable with it.”

  “They are uncomfortable with everything, this plain in particular. They can see this is a place that should not be. That this is not natural.”

  “No shit.”

  “It would take an entire nation a thousand years to build something this vast. No monument so huge can be a good thing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Only a very great evil could remain so single of purpose, so uncaring of cost, as to create something so ultimately useless. Consider the evil of the sorcerer Longshadow. He invested a generation in his fortress. It is nothing in comparison to this plain.”

  He had a point.

  I stepped over to the barrier and stared at the countless sparkling standing stones.

  A swarm of sudden shadows flickered over our encampment. I jumped. So did everybody else. The flock of crows wheeled, crossed the sun again, flew on to the north. All but one.

  The birds were strangely silent. Not one caw trailed behind them.

  The straggler settled atop a column almost directly in line with the fortress ahead. He stalked around, stretched his wings, settled down to watch us.

  Pthwan! A fireball streaked toward the crow. It missed. It had not come from a dedicated crow-killer.

  I leapt, grabbed Wheezer’s shoulder, nearly spun him ass over appetite. But I did not get there in time to keep him from loosing another ball.

  This one clipped the top of the pillar where the crow perched. It ricocheted slightly left and upward after taking a bite of stone, then caught the squawking, flapping bird squarely. Black feathers exploded.

  The earth shook.

  This was a big one. I went down. Most of the others did, too. Animals bleated and bellowed. Nyueng Bao yammered at one another. The plain seemed to shimmer and wobble around us.

  Lady strode up, balance perfect, to all appearances completely unperturbed. But she kicked old Wheezer so hard he flipped over. “You idiot. You may have just killed us all.” She slammed her hands onto her hips, studied the injured pillar. She did not look like a woman who was convinced that she was about to die. Suddenly, she turned and shouted, “Get those animals under control! Whatever you do, don’t let them run out of the circle.”

  A bullock became supper because he was determined to run for it. People took Lady’s orders literally.

  The plain heaved one more time, then a stillness gathered. For several seconds there were no sounds and nothing moved.

  “Look,” somebody said, murdering the silence.

  Part of the distant fortress appeared to be sliding down. In time a remote rumble reached us, long after a cloud obscured the place.

  Wheezer coughed. “Shit. Did I do that?”

  104

  Lady was all business. She snapped orders. Men scurried off in search of her shopping list of apparently unrelated items.

  I strolled around the perimeter while waiting to learn what she was doing. Other than the settling dust in the distance this site was identical to the last. When I got to the road leading south I found a place to set the standard waiting. I took advantage.

  I went back to Lady and watched over her shoulder while she concocted a rusty-colored dust that swirled in a small, lazy wind-witch in front of her. She considered it for a moment, then sent it splashing against the invisible barrier protecting us from the plain. It behaved like a liquid then. It ran down the barrier, defining it clearly.

  It also defined, as clearly as imminent death, the holes Wheezer’s fireballs had opened. And the sun was charging the horizon.

  Wheezer garnered some black looks. His hacking got worse but nobody offered any sympathy.

  Lady kept everybody too busy to turn ugly.

  The flock of crows returned for a second pass, this time laughing all the way. They circled once, then fled northward for good.

  Lady’s way of dealing with the deadly holes was not dramatic. She employed no great gaudy sorceries. She took Wheezer’s ragged leather jacket away from him, cut chunks out of it, wadded them up and plugged the holes. Then she used some minor spell to cement them there.

  Even she did not seem sure that her fix was a good answer. She snagged Wheezer’s shoulder and dragged him to a particular spot facing the damaged barrier. “Right here. And don’t move. All night. If anything gets through your screams will warn the rest of us.” Bam! She slammed him down.

  Not a good idea to get her mad at you.

  As I moved back to where Thai Dei had settled I overheard murmured prayers from men who seldom behaved as though gods were anything but nuisances.

  There is that about the Company. You see little evidence of religion. For most of us all spirituality resides in a blade. Uncle Doj was right about that. But his approach was just too damned mystical.

  Maybe the Lance of Passion was once a tutelary but time has taken that away. Any information would be in the Annals hidden back in Taglios.

  We are not really a godless bunch. We are just the sort who ignore the gods—probably in the unconscious hope that the gods will not notice us.

  Obviously, in Kina’s case, that was not working. It had not worked even before we knew she existed. Half the guys did not believe in Kina even now. That they did not, did not matter. Kina believed in us.

  Fresh meat did improve morale dramatically. But darkness coming crushed it right down again. I did not face the night with any eagerness myself. I told Thai Dei, “I just realized something, brother.”

  He grunted.

  “Almost all the important events in my life happen at night. I was even born right about midnight.”

  Thai Dei grunted again but this time looked at me with some curiosity and maybe a little surprise.

  “What? That part of Hong Tray’s prophecy or something?”

  “No. But it may say something about your ruling stars.”

  Oh, boy. They let astrology guide them, too? How come I never heard of this before? “I’ve had a bad day. I’m going to turn in.” Maybe I would get a chance to see my Sarie tonight.

  105

  Stars. I saw some of those. After I fell asleep and went out of myself and passed through the same murky world as the previous night, I found myself right there in the circle
on the plain, my personal shadow oozing around on the protective barrier while scores of its buddies tried to get through the holes Wheezer had blasted. The old fellow sat where Lady had parked him, staring and shaking.

  The stars I saw hung above the loom of the crumbling fortress. They formed the constellation that had been the subject of some discussion with Mother Gota a while back. The complete constellation. I wondered why I had not noticed them the night before. I wondered why I noticed them tonight. The sky was supposed to be heavily overcast.

  A lot of seeing and thinking seemed to be very selective lately. That probably deserved some reflection itself.

  There seemed to be a glimmer of light down south. Or maybe it was just a star caught between crennels on a battlement. Whatever, it went away. And when I went to the southern roadhead, thinking of charging ahead, I found the way blocked not only by the ghosts I had seen previously but by vaguely perceived scores more hanging back behind them. They were much stronger this time. They would not go away when I commanded them. Not right away. They made gestures and probably tried to mouth words behind their ugly masks. I was confident they were trying to communicate. What was not clear.

  A warning, perhaps.

  I did not go down the southern road.

  I toddled round the perimeter. The east and west roads were open. Daring me, I ran down each a short way. They remained real enough but I did not want them to fade away while I was out there. I went back to the gang, then headed north. I would go see what was happening in the world.

  There was a lot of sleeping going on around Overlook. Even quite a few sentries were snoozing. I made mental notes where I recognized faces.

  I found Goblin and One-Eye snoring in my own bunker below the Shadowgate. Gota was awake but had her eyes closed as she murmured over a prayer shawl vaguely resembling those some Gunni cults used. But she held hers folded in her lap and ran the tip of her fingers over it lightly, as though reading something by touch. She muttered continuously in Nyueng Bao but I could not follow her even when I got up close.

  She jumped, looked around wildly, apparently sensing me. There are elements of ancestor worship connected with Nyueng Bao beliefs. Ghosts are certainly very real to them. Gota started asking the air questions.