The Return of the Black Company

by Cook, Glen

  She seemed to think I was either the spirit of her mother, Hong Tray, or of her grandfather, Cao Khi, spoken of as a necromancer in family oral histories Sarie had related to me. When he got mentioned at all it was with mild embarrassment. We all have those crooked limbs in our family trees. A necromancer who could raise his own shade would make for a particularly gnarly branch.

  I did not pay much attention. I wanted to see if they had done something with Uncle Doj. They must have collected him and gone to work getting him healed up.

  I could not find Uncle. I did find a crude sign scratched on a weathered fragment of board, in charcoal, in One-Eye’s crude lettering. KID. IT IS A TRAP.

  Oh, my.

  I wanted to shake the little shit awake and ask him what that meant. I tried. Maybe I gave him bad dreams. He did groan and toss. But he did not do anything else. I raged.

  What if it was true?

  How could it be? And who?

  Catcher? Was that why she seemed happy? Or Kina? Did the goddess not want us running loose in the world, threatening to bring on the Year of the Skulls? But she had interceded before to make sure we stayed in the game.

  But was it not Kina who had filled the minds of an entire nation with an overwhelming, irrational fear of the Company?

  I was confused. I tried to shake One-Eye again. I had no more luck this time. Still raging, I zipped outside and started southward. And ran into a wall of death stench so powerful I reeled away.

  Kina. Up very close.

  I caught glimpses of slick ebony skin, a chest with lots of breasts, half a dozen arms paddling the air like the legs of an overturned bug. I got an indistinct impression that she was trying to pull herself through the veil between my ghostworld and hers. She seemed driven to deliver an important message. Or maybe she just wanted to jump over and gobble me up.

  I did not learn which. I could not stay there. She brought too much fear with her. I fled. No plan. No thought at all. I just went, fast and frenzied.

  I found myself in the mountains north of Kiaulune, running away from the plain with my back toward an unseen destination. From out here the stars of the Noose were invisible. No stars could be seen at all. The overcast masked them. I turned to see where I was headed. The sparkle of campfires away to my left caught my attention. I directed my flight that way. Whoever was over there would be human. I needed to be close to something human.

  They were the bunch Croaker had sent after my horse. I recognized many of the restless men. Fear was an animate presence in their camp, and a big one. I got in among them, tried to draw warmth and comfort while I steeled myself for another attempt to get back to my flesh. Nobody sensed my presence.

  Once I felt ready I left the circle of light and headed southward slowly, trying hard to sense Kina before Kina sensed me. Would she try to ambush me again?

  Who knows? I ran into Uncle Doj first.

  Actually, he ran into me. He was making no more sound than I as he scouted the camp. Pretty good for an old boy who ought still to be laid up with his wounds.

  I decided to find out what he was up to. It was a good excuse not to fly into the teeth of the demon right now.

  Maybe she would be more attractive if she would get rid of the necklaces of severed penises and baby skulls.

  Uncle drifted along the edge of the camp, close enough to see anything that happened, far enough away to avoid notice by sentries unless he made a racket falling into a hole. In minutes it was evident that he just wanted to see what was happening, that the camp was not his real interest. He continued on into the night, still creeping northward.

  I followed.

  He dug something out of his pouch. It gave off a tiny light, less than that of a firefly. He consulted it frequently. I tried to get close enough to see what it was but he kept his back toward me however I maneuvered. He seemed to sense a watcher without being conscious of the fact.

  Darkness closed in as the camp fell behind. But we were not alone out there. Time and again I felt Kina’s presence, though never very close. For a goddess she did not seem especially omniscient. Or maybe she was not looking for me.

  If she was in the mountains she could not block my way back to my body. But I was not scared now. And Uncle had begun moving faster, determined to get somewhere quickly. What would make him come out here in his condition?

  It became evident soon enough. He wanted to take advantage of the fact that Soulcatcher was preoccupied.

  He found what Croaker’s searchers had not, probably because of what he carried in his hand. The hiding place was not obvious because a veil of illusion surrounded it.

  The first hint was the snort of a large animal. A moment later I recognized my horse. And he recognized me although I was invisible and he had not seen me for almost a year.

  The beast had more talent than Uncle Doj did. Doj thought the animal was excited to see him.

  Uncle was more attuned to the waking world than I was, though. Ash Wand leapt into his hand as he reacted to something else before I sensed anything. I caught nothing but a flicker of darkness in the dark. I thought shadow but felt none of the coldness that indicated their proximity.

  We were not the only ones out there.

  I flitted around trying to find the lurker.

  I found Sleepy instead. And the Daughter of Night. They were chained to a tree, each by an ankle, with ten feet of slack. They had no fire. They did have a keg of water that was nearly empty and a stash of hard bread that was down to the crumbs. Catcher had planned to be back sooner. Sleepy was awake but seemed drugged. The child was too small to break away. There was evidence Sleepy had not been able to pull himself together well enough to try.

  I heard a choking sound behind me. Metal rattled on stone. A large object crashed through brush.

  I found Doj on his knees, Ash Wand two feet from his fingers. His left hand was at his throat, clawing at a piece of black cloth. He was lucky. Few men ever survived such attacks.

  All it took was a lifetime of training to hone the reflexes.

  There was a Strangler in the darkness. And I could do nothing to help.

  Doj’s left hand dropped to the ground. With his right he reached for Ash Wand. His wounds forced him to stay put but once he had his sword back nobody would end his tale prematurely.

  I went to see if I could keep Sleepy’s luck from turning worse than it already was. I found him alert and frightened but unharmed. He was ready to fight. He was alone.

  The Daughter of Night was gone.

  I scouted around. Child and Deceiver had gotten away clean. I felt no need to hunt them down. Not now. But the task would rise to the top of several to-do lists real soon.

  I had a notion this was not part of Soulcatcher’s plan. Maybe the lady had been deceived. Kina was slow but she kept on plugging.

  For the little it was worth I decided to hang around till Uncle gathered his wits and Sleepy regained his peace of mind. Sleepy recovered first. As soon as he felt safe he decided to take a leak. He did not know that Uncle and I were around.

  Well. So Catcher knew what she was doing when she played Sleepy as a slim girl pretending to be a guy. Interesting. Sleepy did a great job fooling everybody.

  I needed to have a talk with Bucket. He had to know something, somehow.

  I caught a whiff of Kina. She was close and getting closer.

  Sleepy jumped up, yanked up her pants, looked around wildly. She sensed the goddess, too. She concentrated visibly, turned slowly, tried to identify the bearing of the source of her discomfort. But the presence faded fast. Kina had no more interest here.

  Sleepy stopped turning when she faced me. She jumped. Her chin thrust forward slightly the way people do sometimes when they see something unexpected. She squinted. “Murgen? Are you a ghost or something? Are you dead?”

  I tried saying no, but she could not hear me so I shook my head.

  “So the rumors were true. You really can leave your body.”

  I nodded, too amazed to wond
er how the kid could take it so calmly. One thing people can always do is surprise you.

  If Sleepy could see me that meant I could communicate over a distance. Even if he could not hear me. As long as he remembered the deaf and dumb sign he was supposed to have learned. But, as I recalled, he had had trouble catching on.… She, Murgen. She.

  I had not gotten used to the idea the first time it came around.

  I started using finger speech without the slightest idea of what Sleepy could follow. I might be just some shimmering blob of ectoplasm that smelled like Murgen.

  No point. As I started Uncle Doj arrived, drawn by Sleepy’s voice. His movements were a painful shuffle. “Be calm, young one,” he said. “You remember me. I am of the Standardbearer’s family. I have been looking for you.” Doj was about as alert as any human being could be. He should have been able to hear me breathing. “You called out to the Standardbearer. Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trapped. A man came. He took the child who was here with me. I was afraid. The Standardbearer is my friend and mentor.”

  Glib, that kid. And thoroughly loaded up with a healthy dose of Company suspicion.

  And I was thoroughly loaded up with a healthy burden of news they needed out on the plain. I had to go. Sleepy would be all right with Doj. I made the sign for horse. After three tries Sleepy nodded. I hoped that was a response.

  Doj asked, “You were a captive of she who flies the crows?” He said that last part in Nyueng Bao, as though it was a name like the Thousand Voices, but Sleepy understood anyway. Sharp kid. Must have picked it up following me around.

  “Yes.”

  “Did she leave anything behind? Where did she hide when she was here?” Doj cut Sleepy loose but it was obvious Sleepy’s liberty was not his real concern. His behavior confirmed my notion that there had been a clash between Catcher and the Nyueng Bao.

  I began to drift away. Sleepy said, “There’s a cave. Over there. But we weren’t here very long.” She whistled a peculiar four note melody. My horse snorted in reply. He could not come, of course, because he was a captive himself.

  I headed for the plain.

  106

  Kina was looking for me. Or for something. Whatever direction I went I sensed her before long, though she never closed in. But if I was not her object, what was?

  I fought off the urge to run to Sarie, telling myself to wait the demon out. But the logical side of my mind, logically, told me that Kina had been waiting for ages. She would not get impatient in one night.

  But why would she want to find me?

  I needed to get back to my flesh. The goddess was less a terror when I was not amongst the ghosts.

  I wished Thai Dei would waken me. When somebody did that it seemed my spirit did not have to traverse the distance between.

  I sneaked around to the camp in front of the Shadowgate. Gods, what squalor! Successful conquerers ought to live better.

  One-Eye was stirring. So was Gota. Another terrible breakfast was about to be committed.

  It was light out. I was still ghostwalking. I had not done so during daylight since we lost Smoke. I had begun to think that I could not do it during the day.

  Got to get back up there, I thought. They need to know. They would not wait around for me. They would not carry me anywhere, either. I was no prisoner.

  One-Eye seemed to sense something. He became nervous, snippy. Which was not much of a change, really. Then Goblin sat up and threatened to turn One-Eye into a lizard if he did not quit his bitching. Goblin had not aged well during the campaign and One-Eye did not fail to mention that fact, probably for the thousandth time. The bickering started. Mother Gota was not shy about offering an occasional opinion of her own. One-Eye found time amidst his endless verbal feud to cuss the rest of us for not having hung around till he turned up again before we went up the mountain. “They had to know I’d be back. They know I couldn’t stay away. They went just to spite me. It’s that fucking woman. Or the kid. They think they’re punishing me. They got another think coming. I’m tempted just to walk out on them. That’d show them. They’d miss me if I was gone.”

  That was One-Eye all wrapped up in one quintessential wad of contradictory nonsense.

  His heart would have been broken had he known just how little he had been missed by most of us. Of course, we had not run into many situations where having him around might have been useful. One-Eye—and his pal Goblin—was not much use during peacetime.

  Suddenly, I realized we were surrounded by the stench of Kina. It had grown so slowly it had not intruded on my awareness. I squirted through the Shadowgate moaning because I might have missed learning something interesting. When One-Eye got to running his mouth he seldom shut up till he emptied his entire head.

  I streaked down the southward road as fast as I could. Which did not seem very swift by daylight. Maybe I was slower with the sun shining. In fact, as the sun rose higher I grew more sluggish. And more easily distracted.

  I noticed that every circle showed hints of gates for east and west roads. I became entangled in the puzzle of why they should exist, of what sort of tangle that would make of the face of the plain. If there was only one gate from outside and only one destination to be sought … The stones? The pillars. Of course.

  The side roads could be used to reach individual stones. Though why anyone would want to do so remained a mystery.

  It struck me, suddenly, that I had been in the same place a long time, wandering through the wilderness of my own thoughts.

  * * *

  I sat up. I looked around wildly. “Where is Narayan Singh?” I demanded. I was alone except for Thai Dei. There was no evidence the circle had been visited by anyone else. Where was all the trash?

  “You woke up,” Thai Dei said. People really sound stupid when they are caught off guard and state the obvious.

  “Where is everybody?”

  “You would not wake up. They left without you.” Which meant without him. “The Liberator said he would collect you on the way back. He seemed troubled.”

  “I don’t blame him. I’m troubled. Help me up here.”

  My knees were wobbly. That did not last, though.

  “Food?” I croaked. Walking the ghostworld alone was less demanding than doing it with Smoke but still it drained me.

  “They took everything. Almost. I was able to steal a small amount.”

  His small amount was actually a fair amount by Nyueng Bao standards. Those people thrived on two grains of rice and a rotten fishhead a day. He said, “They were generous with water.” He held up two canteens, explained, “It rained while you were sleeping.”

  “What?” I muttered around a mouthful. “When?” I had not been conscious of the weather where I was.

  “It rained. The water seemed to run into the circle and pool here. Without harming the protective barriers. Will we wait here?” He sounded hopeful.

  “No. I need to see the Captain right away.”

  Thai Dei grunted one of his expressive grunts. He found me lacking in wisdom.

  We two could cover ground faster than the gang up ahead. After a couple hours we could make out a small group in the distance. I asked, “What the hell are they doing?” Thai Dei’s eyes were better than mine.

  “They appear to be handing things from man to man.”

  They were, indeed. We saw that when we got closer. One man stood astride something. He accepted an unhappy goat from a man nearer us on the road and passed it to a man beyond him. That goat appeared to be the last thing needing to be passed over. The man on our side hopped across while the fellow on the far side helped the man standing astraddle.

  I hollered and waved. Somebody hollered and waved back but nobody waited up.

  “Fucker is big,” I said, meaning the fortress. Now we were close it seemed to swell with every step. It was built of a blackish basaltic stone darker than the surrounding plain. It was in a bad state of repair. “It wasn’t immune to the earthquakes.”
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  Thai Dei grunted. He was nervous again.

  “There’s what they were crossing.” It was a crack in the plain. It extended both directions as far as I could see. Nowhere did it appear to be very wide though it was narrowest where our guys had crossed. It was about three feet wide there. They had even taken the carts and wagons over.

  Farther away part of the fortress wall had collapsed and poured into the gap. The stone looked freshly fallen so I presumed this was the collapse we had witnessed. There were a couple of older falls evident, too. At a guess I would say the oldest occurred the day we felt the quake all the way off in Taglios.

  Thai Dei and I were too old to run except when we had to. But we wasted no time. We hopped the crack before the goat guys moved out of sight around the curve of the wall. One was Sparkle, another Wheezer. Wheezer would be getting a lot of shit details for a while.

  I huffed and puffed and hurried on. My pack seemed to be putting on weight. I panted, “It feel like we’ve gained some altitude since we’ve been up here?”

  Thai Dei offered an affirmative grunt. He said nothing else. He was puffing himself.

  I looked back. It did seem I could see more plain from here than I had seen from back up the road.

  Thai Dei wondered, “Have the earthquakes broken the road’s protection?” He must have been worrying for a while.

  I thought as we walked. “Couldn’t have. The shadows would have gotten us.” There was still road surface underfoot but it was not as clear here. I wondered if the entire fortress was encased in protection and, if so, how elastic that could be. I was still alive but it seemed unlikely the fortress could fall down again and again without overstressing the barrier somewhere.

  Once across the crack we were soon under the wall’s loom. I ran my fingers over the dark stone. “Huh?” It was crumbly. “That look like sandstone to you?”

  Thai Dei grunted negatively, followed that with an interrogative noise. “Seems like a lot of little tiny crystals. Like salt. But it is not sandstone.”