by Glen Cook
Snake hiss. Thump!
I gawked at the arrow quivering in the tree three inches from my fingers and only started to get myself down when it struck me that the shaft had not been meant to stick me in the brisket.
Head, shaft, and fletching, that bolt was as black as a priest’s heart. The shaft itself had an enameled look. An inch behind the head was a wrap of white. I levered the arrow out of the tree and held the message close enough to read.
It is not yet time, Croaker.
The language and alphabet were those of the Jewel Cities.
Interesting. “Right. Not yet time.” I peeled the paper off, crumpled it into a ball, tossed it at the wood. I looked for some sign of the archer. There was none. Of course.
I shoved the arrow into my quiver, swung onto my saddle, turned the horse and rode about a step. A shadow ran past, of a crow flying up to have a look at the seven little brown men waiting for me atop the hill. “You guys never give up, do you?”
I got back down, behind the horse, took out my bow, strung it, drew an arrow—the arrow just collected—and started angling across the hillside, staying behind my mount. The little brown guys turned their toy horses and moved with me.
When I had a nice range I jumped out and let fly at the nearest. He saw it coming and tried to dodge, only he did himself more harm than good. I meant to put the shaft into his pony’s neck. It slammed in through his knee, getting him and the animal both. The pony threw him and took off, dragging him from a stirrup.
I mounted up fast, took off through the gap. Those little horses did not move fast enough to close it.
So we were off, them pounding after me at a pace to kill their animals in an hour, my beast barely cantering and, I think, having a good time. I can’t recall any other horse I’ve ridden looking back to check the pursuit and adjusting its pace to remain tantalizingly close.
I had no idea who the brown guys were but there had to be a bunch of them the way they kept turning up. I considered working on this bunch, taking them out one by one, decided discretion was the better part. If need be I could bring the Company down and forage for them.
I wondered what became of Lady and Goblin and the others. I doubted they had come to any harm, what with our advantage in mounts, but …
We were separated and there was no point spending the remaining daylight looking for them. I would get back to the road, turn north, find a town and someplace dry.
The drizzle irritated me more than the fact that I was being hunted.
But that stretch of forest bothered me more than the rain. That was a mystery that scared the crap out of me.
The crows and walking stump were real. No doubt of that anymore. And the stump knew me by name.
Maybe I ought to bring the Company down and go after whatever hid there.
The road was one of those wonders that turns to mud hip deep if somebody spits on it. There were no fences in this part of the world, so I just rode beside it. I came to a village almost immediately.
Call it a stroke of fate, or timing. Timing. My life runs on weird timing. There were riders coming into town from the north. They looked even more bedraggled than I felt. They were not little brown men but I gave them the suspicious eye anyway and looked for places to duck. They were carrying more lethal hardware than I was, and I had enough to outfit a platoon.
“Yo! Croaker!”
Hell. That was Murgen. I got a little closer and saw that the other three were Willow Swan, Cordy Mather, and Blade.
What the hell were they doing down here?
26
Overlook
The one who had withdrawn everything but moral support did not give up his right to complain and criticize.
The gathering of the Shadowmasters took place in the heights of a soaring tower in that one’s new capitol fortress, Overlook, which lay two miles south of Shadowcatch. It was a strange, dark fortress, more vast than some cities. It had thick walls a hundred feet high. Every vertical surface was sheathed in plates of burnished brass or iron. Ugly silver lettering in an alphabet known only to a few damascened those plates, proclaiming fearful banes.
The Shadowmasters assembled in a room not at all in keeping with their penchant for darkness. The sun burned through a skylight and through walls of crystal. The three shrank from the glare, though they were clad in their darkest apparel. Their host floated near the southern wall, seldom withdrawing his gaze from the distance. His preoccupation was obsessive.
Out there, many miles away but visible from that great height, lay a vast flat expanse. It shimmered. It was as white as the corpse of an old dead sea. The visitors thought his fear and fixation dangerously obsessive. If it was not feigned. If it was not the fulcrum of an obscure and deadly strategem. But it was impossible not to be impressed by the magnitude of the defenses he had raised.
The fortress had been seventeen years in the building and was not yet more than two-thirds completed.
The small one, the female, asked, “It’s quiet out there now?” She spoke the language that was emblazoned upon the fortress walls.
“It’s always quiet during the day. But come the night … Come the night…” Fear and hatred blackened the air.
He blamed them for his dire circumstances. They had mined the shadows and had awakened the terror, then they had left him to face the consequences alone.
He turned. “You have failed. You have failed and failed and failed. The Radisha went north without inconvenience. They sailed through the swamps like vengeance itself, so easily she never had to lift a finger. They go where they will and do what they will, without peril, so blithely sure they don’t even notice your meddling. And now they and she are on your marches, conjuring mischief there. So you come to me.”
“Who could have suspected they would have a Great One as companion? That one was supposed to have perished.”
“Fool! Was he not a master of change and illusion? You should have known he was there waiting for them. How could such a one hide?”
“Did you know he was there and fail to inform us?” the female mocked.
He whirled back to the window. He did not answer. He said, “They are on your marches now. Will you deal with them this time?”
“They are but fifty mortal men.”
“With her. And the Great One.”
“And we are four. And we have armies. Soon the rivers will go down. Ten thousand men will cross the Main and obliterate the very Name of the Black Company.”
A sound came from the one at the window, a hissing that grew up to become cold, mocking laughter. “They will? That has been tried numberless times. Numberless. But they endure. For four hundred years they have endured. Ten thousand men? You joke. A million might not suffice. The empire in the north could not exterminate them.”
The three exchanged glances. Here was madness. Obsession and madness. When the threat from the north was expunged perhaps this one ought to follow it.
“Come here,” he said. “Look down there. Where that ghost of an old road winds through the valley up toward the brilliance.” Something turned and coiled there, a blackness deeper than that of their apparel. “You see that?”
“What is it?”
“My shadow trap. They come through the gateway you breached, the great old strong ones. Not the toys you drew into your services, these. I could loose them. I might if you fail again.”
The three stirred. He had to go for certain.
He laughed, reading their thoughts. “And the key to that trap is my Name, my brethren. If I perish the trap collapses and the gateway stands open to the world.” He laughed again.
The male who spoke the least when they gathered spat angrily and made to depart. After hesitating the other two followed. There was nothing more to be said.
Mad laughter pursued them down the endless spiral of the stairs.
The woman observed, “Maybe he can’t be conquered. But while he persists in facing south he offers us no peril. Let us ignore him henceforth.”
“Three against two, then,” her companion grumbled. The other, in the lead, grunted.
“But there is one in the swamps, whose debt of anger might be manipulated if we grow desperate. And we have gold. Always there are tools to be found in the ranks of the enemy when gold is allowed to speak. Not so?” She laughed. Her laughter was almost as crazy as that peeling out above.
27
Night Strife
I gave Murgen my dirtiest look as he rode up. He understood it. We would talk later. For the moment he said, “You told me to keep an eye on them.”
Swan reached me a moment later. “Gods, you guys move fast. I’m shot.” He made an obscene gesture at the sky. “We leave five minutes after you and find out you had time to take a couple of breaks and still stay ahead of us.” He shook his head. “Bunch of iron men. Told you I wasn’t cut out for this crap, Cordy.”
“Where is everybody?” Murgen asked.
“I don’t know. We got ambushed. We got separated.”
Mather, Swan, and Blade exchanged glances. Swan asked, “Little brown guys? All wrinkly?”
“You know them?”
“We had a run-in with them when we were headed north. Man, I got me a brainstorm. We going to jaw, let’s do it out of the rain. My lumbago is killing me.”
“Lumbago?” Mather asked. “When did you come up with lumbago?”
“When I forgot my hat and it started raining on my head. Blade, you was in this place last year. They got like an inn, or something?”
Blade didn’t say anything, just turned his horse and headed out. He was an odd one for sure. But Swan thought he was an all-right guy, and I liked Swan as much as I could like anybody who worked for somebody who was trying to play games with me.
I was about to follow up last, with Murgen, when Murgen said, “Hold up. Somebody’s coming.” He pointed.
I looked into the drizzle to the south and saw three shapes, riders coming in. Their mounts were tall enough that they could be nothing but Lady’s gifts. Swan cursed the delay but we waited.
The three were Hagop, Otto, and the roi Shadid. Shadid looked ragged. And Hagop and Otto were wounded. “Damn you two. Can’t you take a crap without getting hurt?” In the thirty or so years I had known them it seemed they had come up wounded about three times a year. And survived everything. I’d begun to suspect they were immortal and the blood was the price they paid.
“They piled an ambush on top of the ambush, Croaker,” Hagop said. “They ran us down that valley right into another gang on horseback.”
My stomach tightened. “And?”
He put on a feeble grin. “I figure they’re sorry they did. We cut them up bad.”
“Where are the others?”
“I don’t know. We scattered. Lady said for Shadid to ride back up here with us and wait. She led them off.”
“All right. Blade. Why don’t you show us where to roost?”
Murgen looked at me with a question unspoken. I told him, “Yeah. We’ll get them settled. Then we’ll go.”
The place Blade took us wasn’t really an inn, just a big house where the owner made a bit taking in travellers. He was not thrilled to see us, though like everybody else in this end of the world he seemed to know who we were. The color of our coin brightened his day and livened his smile. Still, I think he let us in mainly because he thought we would get rowdy if he didn’t.
I got Otto and Hagop sewed up and bandaged and generally settled into a routine they knew all too well. Meanwhile, the householder brought food, for which Swan expressed our sincere gratitude.
Murgen said, “It’s going to be getting dark, Croaker.”
“I know. Swan, we’re going out to find the others. Got a spare horse if you want to ride along.”
“You kidding? Go out in that muck when I don’t have to? Hell. All right. I guess.” He started levering himself out of his chair.
“Sit down, Willow,” Mather said. “I’ll go. I’m in better shape than you are.”
Swan said, “You talked me into it, you smooth-talking son of a bitch. I don’t know how you do it, you golden-tongued bastard. You can get anything you want out of me. Be careful.”
“Ready?” Mather asked me. He stifled a small smile.
“Yeah.”
We went out and climbed onto the horses, who were beginning to look a little put-upon. I led out, but Shadid soon slipped past, suggesting he lead since he knew whence they had come. The day was getting on. The light was feeble. It was about as dreary as it could get. More to distract myself than because I cared, I told Murgen, “Better explain what’s going on.”
“Cordy can tell you better than me. I just stuck with them.”
The roi was not setting a blistering pace. I fought down the growls breeding in my gut. It kept telling me she was a big girl and she’d been taking care of herself since before I was born. But the man in me kept saying that’s your woman, you got to take care of her.
Sure.
“Cordy? I know you guys don’t work for me and you got your own priorities, but…”
“Nothing to cover up, Captain. Word came that some of you guys was going to ride out. That boggled the Woman. She figured you all to make a break for the Main in a mob and learn about the Shadowmasters the hard way. Instead, you went to scout it. She didn’t think you were that smart.”
“We’re talking about the old broad you guys brought down the river, right. The Radisha?”
“Yeah. We call her the Woman. Blade hung it on her before we knew who she was.”
“And she knew we were heading out before we went. Interesting. This is a wondrous time of my life, Mr. Mather. For the last year everybody in the world has known what I was going to do before I did. It’s enough to make a guy nervous.”
We passed some trees. In one I spied this incredibly bedraggled crow. I laughed, and hoped aloud he was as miserable as me. The others eyed me uncertainly. I wondered if I shouldn’t start cultivating a new image. Work it up slowly. All the world dreads a madman. If I played it right …
“Hey, Cordy, old travelling buddy. You sure you don’t know anything about those little brown guys?”
“All I know is they tried to ice us when we was headed north. Nobody ever saw anybody like them before. They figure to be out of the Shadowlands.”
“Why are the Shadowmasters paranoid about us?” I did not expect an answer. I did not get one. “Cordy, you guys really serious about winning it for the Prahbrindrah?”
“I am. For Taglios. I found something there I never found anywhere else. Willow too, though you could roast him and never get it out of him. I don’t know about Blade. I guess he’s in because we’re in. He’s got one and a half friends in the world and nothing else to live for. He’s just going on.”
“One and a half?”
“Willow he’s got. I’m the half. We pulled him out when somebody threw him to the crocodiles. He stuck because he owed us a life. After what we’ve been through since then if you was keeping accounts you couldn’t figure who owes who what anymore. I can’t tell you about the real Blade. He never lets you see that.”
“What are we into? Or is that something you figure you shouldn’t tell me?”
“What?”
“There’s more going on than your Woman and the Prahbrindrah trying to get us to keep the Shadowmasters out. Otherwise they’d make a straight deal instead of trying to con us.”
We travelled a mile while he thought. He finally said, “I don’t know for sure. I think they’re doing the way they are because of the way the Black Company did Taglios before.”
“I thought so. And we don’t know what our forebrethren did. And no one will tell us. It’s like one giant conspiracy where everybody in Taglios won’t tell us anything. In a city that big you’d think I’d find one guy with an axe to grind.”
“You’d find platoons if you looked in the right place. All them priests spend their lives looking to cut each others’ throats.”
He had given
me something there. I wasn’t sure what. “I’ll keep it in mind. I don’t know if I can handle priests, though.”
“They’re like any other guys if you get your bluff in.”
The gloom closed in tighter as the day advanced. I was so soaked I no longer paid that much attention. We hit a stretch where we had to go single file. Cordy and Murgen dropped back. “I picked up a few things I’ll tell you about later,” Murgen said before he went.
I moved up behind the roi to ask how much farther. It was just the misery of the day, but I felt like I’d been travelling for weeks.
Something whipped across our path so suddenly that that unflappable mount of Shadid’s reared and whinnied. He shouted, “What the hell was that?” in his native tongue. I understood because I’d learned a few words when I was a kid.
I caught only a glimpse. It looked like a monster grey wolf with a deformed pup clinging to its back. It vanished before my eye could track it.
Do wolves do that? Carry their young on their backs?
I laughed almost hysterically. Why worry about that when I ought to be wondering if there was such a thing as a wolf the size of a pony?
Murgen and Cordy caught up and wanted to know what had happened. I said I didn’t know because I was no longer sure I had seen what I had seen.
But the wonder lay back there in the shadows of my mind, ripening.
Shadid stopped two miles past the place where we’d been ambushed originally. It was getting hard to see. He peered around, trying to read landmarks. He grunted, moved out to his left, off the road. I spied signs suggesting this was the way he had come with Otto and Hagop.
After another half mile the ground dropped into a small valley where a narrow creek ran. Rocks stuck up seemingly at random. Likewise, trees grew in scatters. It was now so dark I could not see more than twenty feet.
We started finding bodies.
A lot of little brown men had died for their cause. Whatever that was.
