The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company (Chronicles of the Black Company)

by Glen Cook

  A salvo of twelve ballistae shafts ripped overhead and spattered around the Shadowmaster. They were well aimed. Four actually struck him. They encountered protective sorceries but battered him around. Very sluggish, the Shadowmaster. Keeping himself alive seemed to be his limit.

  A second salvo hit him an instant before the elephants reached his men. The ballistae had been laid even more carefully.

  I gave the signal that sent my front four thousand men, and the cavalry, howling forward.

  The remainder of the men formed a normal front, then advanced.

  The carnage was incredible.

  We drove them back and back and back, but there were so damned many of them we never really broke them. When they did flee the majority made it into the camp. None got back into Stormgard. The city had closed its gates on them. They dragged their Shadowmaster champion with them. I would not have bothered. He had been useless as tits on a boar hog.

  Of course, one of the second flight of ballistae shafts had gotten through his protection. I suppose that distracted him.

  His ineffectuality had to be Shifter’s doing.

  They left maybe five thousand men behind. The warlord side of me was disappointed. I’d hoped to do more damage. I was not going to storm the camp to do it, though. I backed the men off, set men to police up our casualties, placed cavalry to meet anyone coming out of camp or city, then got on with business.

  I planted my right wing yards from the road we had followed down to Stormgard, just out of bowshot of the barbican at the gate it entered. My line ran at right angles to the road. I let the men relax.

  My levee builders got to work putting their training to use. On the far side of the road they began digging a trench. It started a bowshot from the wall and ran to the foot of the hills. It would be wide and deep and would shield my flank.

  The workers carried the earth to the road and began building a ramp. Others began building mantlets to protect the ramp builders as they approached the wall.

  That many men can move a lot of earth. The defenders saw we would have a ramp right up to the wall in just a few days. They were not pleased. But they had no means to stop us.

  Men scurried like ants. The former prisoners had scores to even and went at it like they wanted blood by sundown.

  By mid-afternoon they were taking the city end of the trench downward, deep, and toward the wall, not hiding the fact that they were mining, aiming to go under as well as over. And they had begun breaking ground for a trench on my left flank as well.

  In three days my army would be protected by a pair of deep trenches that would funnel my attack up the ramp and over the wall. There would be no stopping us.

  They had to do something in there.

  I hoped to do something to them before they thought of something to do to me.

  Late afternoon. The sky began clouding over. Lightning frolicked behind the hills to the south. Not a good sign. A storm would be tougher on my guys than on theirs.

  Even so, despite the cold wind and scattered sprinkles moving in, the builders only broke for a spartan supper before setting out lanterns and building bonfires so they could continue after dark. I posted pickets so there would be no surprises, began rotating my troops out of position for food and rest.

  Some day. All I’d had to do was sit in one place and look elegant and give orders I’d already worked out in my head.

  And think about what last night had meant, in its highly anticlimactic fashion.

  It had been a night of nights of nights, but it had not lived up to the anticipation. Had even been, in a well-we’ve-finally-gotten-around-to-it way, something of a disappointment.

  Not that I would trade it in or take it back. Never.

  Someday, when I’m old and retired and have nothing better to do than philosophize, I’m going to sit down for a year and figure out why it’s always better in the anticipation than in the consummation.

  I sent Frogface flitting around checking the enemy’s mood. That was black. They wanted no more fighting after duking it out with elephants.

  Stormgard’s walls were not heavily patrolled. Most of the male population had marched out in the morning and not made it back. But Frogface reported no great distress around the central citadel, where another Shadowmaster was in residence. In fact, he thought he sensed confidence in the eventual outcome.

  The storm marched north. And it was a bitch kitty. I gathered my captains. “We got a mean storm coming. Might make what we’re going to try tricky, but we’re going to do it anyway. Be even less expected. Goblin. One-Eye. Get the dust off your old reliable snooze spell.”

  They eyed me suspiciously. Goblin muttered, “Here it comes. Some damnfool reason for not getting any sleep again tonight.”

  One-Eye told him, “I’m going to use that spell on him one of these first days.” Louder, “Right, Croaker. What’s up?”

  “Us. Up and over those walls and open the gate after you put the sentries to sleep.”

  Even Lady was surprised. “You’re going to waste all that work on that ramp?”

  “I never intended to use it. I wanted them convinced I was committed to a certain course.”

  Mogaba smiled. I suspected he’d figured it out ahead of time.

  “It won’t work,” Goblin muttered.

  I gave him a look. “The men working the trenches at the city end are armed. I promised them first crack at getting even. We get the gates open all we have to do is lean back and watch.”

  “Won’t work. You’re forgetting that Shadowmaster in there. You think you’re going to sneak up on him?”

  “Yes. Our guardian angel will make sure.”

  “Shifter? I’d trust him as far as I can throw a pregnant elephant.”

  “I say anything about trusting him? He wants us for a stalking horse for some scheme. He’s got to keep us healthy. Right?”

  “Your mind is going, Croaker,” One-Eye said. “You been hanging around Lady too long.”

  She kept a blank face on. That might not have been a compliment.

  “Mogaba, I’ll need a dozen of the Nar. After Goblin and One-Eye put the sentries to sleep Frogface will climb the wall with a rope and anchor it. Your boys will go up and take the barbican from the rear and open the gate.”

  He nodded. “How soon?”

  “Anytime. One-Eye. Send Frogface scouting. I want to know what that Shadowmaster is doing. If he’s watching us we won’t go.”

  We moved an hour later. It went like operations go in textbooks. Like it was ordained by the gods. In another hour every one of the freed prisoners, except those we had enrolled in the legions, was inside the city. They reached the citadel and broke in before resistance developed.

  They raged through Stormgard, ignoring the rain and thunder and lightning, venting a lot of rage, probably mostly in directions askew.

  Me in my Widowmaker suit stalked through the open gates fifteen minutes after the mob rush. Lifetaker rode beside me. The locals cowered away from us, though some seemed to be welcoming their liberators. Halfway to the citadel Lady said, “You even fooled me this time. When you said tonight in Stormgard.…”

  A gust and ferocious fusillade of rain silenced her. Lightning cut loose in a sudden vicious duel. By the flashes I witnessed the passage of a pair of panthers that I would have missed otherwise. Chills not of the rain crawled my spine. I had seen that bigger one before, in another embattled city, when I was young.

  They were headed toward the citadel, too.

  I asked, “What are they up to?” My confidence was less than complete. There were no crows out in this storm. I realized I had come to count them my good luck.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Better check it.” I increased my pace.

  There were a lot of dead men around the entrance to the citadel. Most were my laborers. Sounds of fighting still echoed inside. Grinning guards saluted me clumsily. I asked, “Where’s the Shadowmaster?”

  “I hear she’s in the big tower. U
p high. Her men are fighting like crazy. But she isn’t helping them.”

  Thunder and lightning went mad for a full minute. Bolts smashed at the city. Had the god of thunder gone crazy? But for the torrential rainfall a hundred fires might have started.

  I pitied the legions, out there on guard. Maybe Mogaba would bring them in out of it.

  The storm died into an almost normal rain after that last insane fit, with only a few lightweight flashes.

  I looked up the one tower that loomed over the rest of the citadel—and, déjà vu, in a flash spied a cat shape scaling its face.

  “Damn me!”

  The thunder had left me unable to hear the horses coming. I looked back. One-Eye, Goblin, and Murgen, still flaunting the Company standard. One-Eye was staring up at the tower. His face was not pleasant to behold.

  He was flashing on the same memory. “Forvalaka, Croaker.”

  “Shifter.”

  “I know. I’m wondering if it was him last time.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Lady asked.

  I said, “Murgen, let’s plant that standard up where the world can see it when the sun comes up.”

  “Right.”

  We stalked into the citadel, Lady trying to find out what had passed between me and One-Eye. I developed a hearing problem. One-Eye took the lead. We climbed dark stairs where the footing was treacherous because of blood and bodies. There was no more fighting going on above us.

  Ominous.

  The last fighters of both sides were in a chamber a couple stories from the top. All dead. “Sorcery here,” Goblin muttered.

  “We go up,” One-Eye snapped.

  “I know.”

  Total agreement between them. For once.

  I drew my sword. There was no flame in it, and no color to my costume now. Goblin and One-Eye had other things on their minds.

  We caught up with Shifter and the Shadowmaster in the parapet of the tower. Shifter had assumed human form. He had the Shadowmaster at bay. It was a tiny thing in black, almost impossible to take seriously as a danger. There was no sign of Shifter’s sidekick. I told Goblin, “There’s one missing. Keep an eye out.”

  “Got you.” He knew what was going on. He was as serious as ever I’ve seen him.

  Shifter started moving in on the Shadowmaster. It had nowhere to retreat. I gestured Lady to move out to his right. I went left. I’m not sure what One-Eye was doing.

  I glanced toward the camp south of the city. The rain had stopped while we were inside the tower. The camp was plainly visible by its own lights. I got the impression they knew something was wrong over here but they were not about to come find out what.

  They were nice and close. Put artillery on the wall and life could get miserable for them.

  The Shadowmaster backed up against the merlons edging the parapet, apparently able to do nothing. Why were they impotent? This one was who? Stormshadow?

  Shifter was close enough to touch, now. One hand darted out and ripped the black robing off the Shadowmaster.

  I gawked. I heard Lady’s gasp from fifteen feet away.

  One-Eye said it. “I’ll go to hell. Stormbringer! But she’s supposed to be dead.”

  Stormbringer. Another of the original Ten Who Were Taken. Another one who was supposed to have perished in the Battle at Charm, after murdering the Hanged Man and … and Shifter!

  Aha! I said to me, said I. Aha! A settlement of scores. Shifter knew all the time. Shifter had been out to get Stormbringer from the start.

  And where one mysteriously surviving Taken was in business for herself, might there not be more? Like about three more?

  “What the hell? They all still around but the Hanged Man, Limper, and Soulcatcher?” I’d seen those three go down myself.

  Lady stood there shaking her head.

  Were even those three gone? I had killed Limper myself once, and he had come back.…

  Chills got me again.

  When they were Shadowmasters they were anonymous creeps who had only standard-issue cause to do me grief. But the Taken … Some of them had very special and personal cause to hate the Company.

  This moment of revelation had turned it into a whole different kind of war.

  I have no idea what passed between Shifter and Bringer, but it left the air crackling with electric hatred.

  Stormbringer seemed powerless. Why? A few minutes ago she had been bringing in that monster of a storm to whip on us. Shifter was no greater power than she. Unless, somehow, he had come upon that bane of all the Taken, a True Name.

  I looked at Lady.

  She knew it. She knew all their True Names. She had not lost her knowledge when she had lost her powers.

  Power. I had not thought about what I’d had here, almost under my thumb, all this time. What she knew was worth the ransoms of a hundred princes. The secrets locked in her head could enslave or deliver empires.

  If you knew she had them.

  Some folks knew.

  She had a lot more guts than I’d realized, coming out of the Tower and empire with me.

  I had to do some rethinking and strategic reorientation. These Shadowmasters, Shifter, the Howler, they all knew what I’d just realized. She was damned lucky she hadn’t been snatched already and squeezed dry.

  Shifter laid his huge ugly hands on Stormbringer. And only then did she begin to resist. With sudden, startling violence she did something that hurled Shifter all the way across the parapet. He lay there for a moment, eyes glassy.

  Bringer made a break.

  I came around with a swordstroke I brought in from the moon, right into her belly. It did not mark her but it stopped her in her tracks. Lady hacked at her overhand. She rolled away from the stroke. I whacked her again. But she got up and started heading out again. And her fingers were dancing. Sparks played between them.

  Oh, shit.

  One-Eye tripped her. Lady and I hacked at her again, without much effect. Then Murgen let her have it with the spearhead on the lance that bore the Company standard.

  She howled like one of the damned.

  What the hell?

  She started moving again. But now Shifter was back. He had taken the form of the forvalaka, the black were-leopard almost impossible to kill or injure. He jumped on Stormbringer and started tearing her apart.

  She gave damned near as good as she got. We backed away, stayed away, gave them room.

  I don’t know what Shifter did or when. Or if he did anything at all. One-Eye might have imagined it all. But sometime during the thing the little black man sidled up and whispered, “He did it, Croaker. It was him that killed Tom-Tom.”

  That was a long time ago. I had almost no feelings about it anymore. But One-Eye had not forgotten nor forgiven. That was his brother.…

  “What you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Something. I got to do something.”

  “What’ll that do to the rest of us? We won’t have an angel anymore.”

  “Ain’t gonna have one anyway, Croaker. He’s done got what he wanted right there. Shifter or no Shifter you’re on your own soon as he finishes her off.”

  He was right. And chances were damned good Shifter would stop being Lady’s faithful old dog, too. If there was any getting him, this was the time.

  The combatants went on for maybe fifteen minutes, shredding each other. I got the impression things were not going as easy as Shifter had hoped. Bringer was putting up a damned good fight.

  But he won. Sort of. She stopped resisting. He lay panting, unable to move. She’d locked her limbs around him. He bled from a hundred small wounds. He cursed softly, and I thought I heard him damning someone for helping her, heard him threatening to get someone next.

  “You got any special use for him now?” I asked Lady. “I don’t know how much you knew. I don’t care now. But you better think about what he’s going to have on his mind now he don’t need you and me for a stalking horse anymore.”

  She shook her head slowly.
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br />   Something slid over the edge of the parapet behind her. Another, smaller forvalaka. I thought we were in big trouble, but Shifter’s apprentice made a tactical error. She began to shift forms. She finished just in time to shriek “No!” at One-Eye.

  One-Eye had made him a club out of something, and with two quick and heroic swings he bashed Stormbringer and Shapeshifter into complete unconsciousness. They had weakened one another that much.

  Shifter’s companion flew at him.

  Murgen tripped her by tangling her feet with the head of the lance he carried. He cut her. Blood got all over the standard. She screamed like she was trapped in Hell’s agony.

  I recognized her, then. She had done a lot of yelling the last time I’d seen her, so long ago.

  Sometime during the excitement a whole herd of crows had gathered on the merlons, out of the way. They started laughing.

  Everybody jumped on the woman before she could do anything. Goblin did some kind of swift magical bind that left her unable to do anything but wiggle her eyes.

  One-Eye looked at me and said, “You got any suture with you, Croaker? I got a needle but I don’t think I got enough thread.”

  What? “Some.” I always carried some medical odds and ends.

  “Gimme.”

  I gave him.

  He whacked Shifter and Bringer again. “Just to make sure they’re out. They don’t got no special powers when they’re out.”

  He squatted down and started sewing their mouths shut. He finished Shifter, said, “Get him stripped. Whack him if he stirs.”

  What the hell?

  It got gruesome, then more gruesome. “What the hell you doing?” I demanded.

  The crows were having a party.

  “Sewing all the holes shut. So the devils don’t get out.”

  “What?” Maybe it made sense to him. It didn’t to me.

  “Old trick for getting rid of evil witch doctors back home.” When he finished with the orifices he sewed fingers and toes together. “Put them in a sack with a hundred pounds of rocks and throw them in the river.”

  Lady said, “You’ll have to burn them. And grind what’s left into powder and scatter the powder on the wind.”