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

by Glen Cook

  Smeds went down hard but caught hold of a heel and managed to hang on. He snaked forward, stabbing at the man’s calf, his target invisible in the darkness. The man squealed like an injured rabbit.

  Smeds was so startled he let go. Then he realized he was letting his man get away. He got up and charged ahead, smashed into the man.

  “Please! I won’t tell anyone! I swear!”

  Pain slashed along Smeds’s ribs on this left side.

  He flailed away with his knife, hitting anything he could. The physician tried to scream and fight back and run away all at the same time. Smeds held on with one hand, kept hacking with the other. The physician pulled him out into a street.

  Smeds kept hacking.

  The physician collapsed.

  Fish arrived. “Shit, Smeds. Shit.”

  “Got him.”

  “You sure he didn’t get you, too?”

  Smeds looked at himself. He was covered with blood. Some of it was his own.

  Somebody yelled up the street. People had begun coming to stoops and windows.

  Fish bent, slashed the physician’s throat, said, “We’ve got to get out of here. There’ll be soldiers here in a minute.” He looked at the dead man’s hand. “Unh. A mess. He touched you with that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Come on.” Fish offered him a hand. “You make it?”

  “I’m all right for now.”

  Fish headed back into the alley.

  Smeds began feeling it as soon as the excitement began to go out of him. He knew he would not be able to get away if a chase developed.

  Instead of making for the Skull and Crossbones Fish headed into the West End.

  “Where we going?” Smeds asked.

  “Reservoir. Get you cleaned up. We take you home looking like that the gray boys are going to be around to ask what happened before you can get your boots off.”

  38

  I don’t know what I expected to see when we got to Opal. Maybe nothing changed from my last time there. I sure wasn’t ready for the mess we found. I gaped incredulously as we glided over the ruins, where a few survivors scurried around like frightened mice. I went and told Darling, “Don’t look to me like there’s much chance we’ll find the people you want.”

  Odds never bothered Darling.

  Raven and Silent now had especially black feelings for me. I’d had the gall to tell Darling who she had to find if she wanted to force Raven to face his past. Neither of them wanted that to happen.

  Both of them was so busy thinking about themselves they didn’t have time to wonder what Darling really thought or felt about anything.

  We crossed most of the city. Up north we spied several large, neatly arranged camps. The tents were too numerous to be all army, but they showed us that the imperials were there, responding to the destruction of the city in a quick, orderly fashion. Below, soldiers and civilians were at work leveling way for the new. Though they stopped to gawk, these people did not run away.

  Darling ordered us to watch for the standard of the military commander. She figured that was the place to start since the city was obviously under martial law. I couldn’t figure why she thought she’d get any cooperation, though.

  I asked, “What do you feel about old Raven these days?” I was real careful to keep my hands hid from him and Silent both.

  I figured she wouldn’t understand what I meant. I was wrong. She signed, “Once I had a child’s love for a man who saved me and nurtured me and risked everything to protect me when, long before I could believe it myself, he recognized the role I would play in the struggle with the darkness. That child was like a very little girl in some ways. She was going to marry Daddy when she grew up, and it never occurred to her that things might not turn out that way till she tried to pursue it, and to press it.

  “I was never really a girl, or a woman, or a human being to Raven, Case. Even though he did awful things for me. I was a symbol, an expiation, and when I insisted on becoming a person he did the only thing he could do to keep on serving the symbol and not have to deal with a flesh-and-blood woman.”

  “That is kind of how I always thought it was,” I signed.

  “Many men admire Raven. He fears nothing concrete. He takes no crap from anyone. People who mess with him get hurt, and the hell with the consequences. But those are the only dimensions he has. They are the only dimensions he permits himself. How can I remain emotionally entangled with a man who will not allow himself emotions, however much he did for me in other ways? I appreciate him, I honor him, I may even revere him. But that is all anymore. He cannot change that with some demonstration, like a boy hanging by his knees from a branch to impress a girl.”

  I grinned because I had a gut feeling that’s exactly what Raven had in mind.

  Poor sucker. There just wasn’t nothing left for him to win. But he wasn’t the kind to accept that even if she told him to his face, point-blank.

  I wanted to sneak in one or two about Silent, too, but I didn’t get a chance. The military headquarters got spotted and the windwhale dropped down and moved up to it, anchored itself in place by dropping tentacles to grab rocks and trees. Its presence overhead was disconcerting to those in the camp.

  I like that word, disconcerting. I got it from Bomanz. Such a sly way to say they were having shit hemorrhages down there.

  There was a big hoorah, all kinds of whoop and holler and carrying on, when a bunch of Plain critters ganged up on the scar-faced stone and threw it over the side, almost into the lap of the command staff down there.

  Them old boys were pretty shook. I wondered how much more excited they would get if they knew the White Rose her own self was right over their heads. But they wasn’t going to try nothing, no matter what they knew. Who’d want to duke it out with four pissed-off windwhales, which is what they would get if they wasn’t polite.

  Scarstone popped back up. He talked. Silent translated for Darling. I didn’t hear anything. The Torque boys had let me know I was supposed to stay back, so I stayed back. Darling made a bunch of signs that I guess the stone could see somehow. It went away. After a while it came back.

  After four rounds of that it didn’t go away anymore. But the windwhale stayed where it was, so I guessed a deal had been struck.

  I went to try to talk it over with Raven. But he was in about as foul a mood as I ever saw, and anyway he had pegged me for some kind of traitor, so I gave it up and went off to shoot the shit with the Torques and the talking buzzard and a couple other Plain creatures that wasn’t too shy.

  * * *

  Darling goes after something she usually gets what she wants. This time she got it just before noon next day.

  A hoorah broke out downstairs. Darling sent Scarstone to check it out. It came back and reported. She got up and walked over to Raven, who watched her like she was the hangman coming. She signed at him. He got up and followed her, again with the eagerness of a man headed for the gallows.

  I knew him well enough to see the signs. He was putting himself into a role. I tagged along, wondering what it would be. Most everybody else moved closer, too.

  Two young people around twenty came puffing up over the side of the windwhale.

  So the impossible was possible, the improbable a sure thing. Unless the army down there figured they could placate Darling with a couple of ringers.

  The boy looked like Raven twenty years younger. Same dark hair and coloration, same determined face not yet hardened into grimness.

  I was only a step behind when Raven got his first look at them. He cursed softly, muttered, “She looks like her mother.”

  It was plain they had not been told they were here for a family reunion. They were just puzzled and scared. Mostly scared. And more so as the mob closed in around them. They did not recognize Raven.

  They did recognize Darling. And that scared them even more.

  Everybody waited for somebody else to say something.

  Raven whispered, “Do something,
Case.” Desperately. “I’m lost.”

  “Me? Hell, I don’t even speak the lingo that good.”

  “Case, help me out. Try to get this moving. I don’t know what to do.”

  All right. I thought of a couple of suggestions for him, but I was never a guy who kicked crippled dogs. I went to work in my feeble Jewel Cities dialect. “You have no idea why you were brought here, do you?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Relax. You ain’t in no danger. We just want to ask about your ancestors. Especially your parents.”

  The boy rattled something.

  “You’ll have to talk slower, please.”

  The girl said, “He said our parents are dead. We’ve been on our own since we were children.”

  Raven winced. I figured the voice must be like that of his wife, too.

  Silent translated for Darling, who really gave them the eye. Seeing they was Raven’s kids, I didn’t figure it was so amazing they pulled through.

  “What do you know about your parents?”

  The girl took on the answering chores. Maybe she thought her brother was too excitable. “Very little.” She told me pretty much what I had been able to find out for myself when we were headed south. She did know that her mother had not been a nice person. “We’ve managed to live her down. Last year we won a judgment that took some of our father’s properties from her family and returned them to us. We expect to win more such judgments.”

  That was something, anyway. The girl had conjured up no special regard for the woman who had brought her into the world.

  The boy said, “I don’t remember my mother at all. After our births I think she had as little to do with us as she could. I remember nurses. She probably got what she deserved.”

  “And your father?”

  “I have vague memories of a very distant man who wasn’t home much but who did visit when he was. Probably out of obligation and for appearance’ sake.”

  “Do you have any special feeling about him now?”

  “Why should we?” the girl asked. “We never really knew him, and he’s been dead for fifteen years.”

  I faced Darling, signed, “Is there any point going on?”

  She signed, “Yes. Not for their sake. For his.”

  I asked Raven, “You got anything to put in?”

  No. He didn’t. I could see him thinking maybe he was going to slide out of this after all.

  It wasn’t going to be that easy. Darling had me tell them that their father had not died, that he had been harried into exile by their mother’s confederates. She had me hit the high spots of their years together.

  They had had time to get over being scared. Now they were getting suspicious. The boy demanded, “What the hell is going on? How come these questions about our old man? He’s history. We don’t care. If he was to walk up right now and introduce himself I’d say so what. He’d be just another guy.”

  I signed to Darling, “You going to keep pushing it?” and asked Raven, in Forsberger, “You want to call his bluff?”

  Negatives all around. Bunch of wimps. So Raven was going to slide out. I told his kids, “Your father was very important in the life of the White Rose. He was a stand-in parent to her for years and she knew how it pained him to be in exile. She stopped here because she wanted to try to give back something of what she’d had and you couldn’t.”

  Neither Raven nor Darling liked me saying that.

  I think the girl figured it out about then. She got real carefully interested in Raven. But she didn’t say anything to her brother.

  I got Darling to agree this was enough and our guests ought to be turned loose. She wasn’t satisfied with the way things turned out. What the hell can you do with women? You can give them exactly what they ask for and they’ll cuss you because that ain’t what they really want.

  Just before the girl went over the side she turned and told me, “If my father was alive today he wouldn’t have to fear that he would be unwelcome in his daughter’s house.” Then she went.

  All right. There was an open door if ever I seen one.

  We took off the second the girl hit ground. Darling wanted to get far away before word she was there got to somebody who could do something about it. We lit out northeast, like we was headed for the Plain of Fear.

  39

  Every day more people came into Oar, and nobody left. A pigeon could not get out. Several had died trying.

  Some elements of the population were growing restless. There were more fights than usual. More people ended up on the labor gangs. The searches went on and on and on. There was not a building in Oar that had not been tossed at least twice, not a citizen who had not been rousted. There were rumors of big tension in high places. Brigadier Wildbrand did not think she owed Gossamer and Spidersilk anything and resented having her Nightstalkers used as bullies for their personal benefit. They were elite troops, not political gangsters.

  The nature of the people entering the city changed with time. Fewer were farmers or traders. More and more were dire characters with no obvious trade.

  The news about the silver spike was spreading.

  Smeds did not like it. It meant big trouble. How did Gossamer and Spidersilk expect to control all those witches and wizards, some of whom might be much more potent than they suspected? And the bullies they brought with them?

  Chaos threatened.

  Smeds understood the strategy. The twins meant to up the heat and pressure till the spike popped to the surface. If it came up in hands other than their own they were confident they could take it away.

  Could they?

  Every witch and wizard in town knew that, too. But they had come hunting anyway.

  Only Tully was pleased. He thought the situation perfect for the auction he wanted to run. “We got to get the word out,” he told the others, over supper.

  “Keep your voice down,” Fish said. “Anybody in here could be a spy. And we don’t get any word out. You heard of anybody offering to buy anything?”

  “No,” Tully admitted. “But that’s because—”

  “Because most of them know they can be outbid. You notice the twins aren’t offering anything. They figure they can get what they want by divine right, or something.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “You have no grasp of the situation, Tully. Let me offer you a challenge.…”

  “I’m fed up with your shit, Fish.”

  “Indulge me in an experiment. If I’m wrong I’ll shout it from the rooftops. If I’m right, you win anyway.”

  “Yeah? Let’s hear it.”

  Sucked him up again, Smeds thought. His opinion of his cousin declined by the hour.

  “Here’s two coppers. Go find a kid somewhere away from here. One who don’t know you. Pay him to go to the Toad and Rose and tell the bullies there that the wizard Nathan is looking to hire a couple men to help him sneak out of the city tomorrow morning.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  Smeds said, “Gods, Tully, couldn’t you just once do something without arguing about it first?”

  Fish said, “The experiment will be more instructive if it simply unfolds, explaining itself as it goes.”

  “Why should I do that asshole Nathan any favors?”

  Smeds stood up. “I’ll do it. Otherwise we’ll be here till the middle of next week.”

  “I want Tully to do it. I want him to see that there can be a direct connection between his saying something and what happens in the real world.”

  “You’re putting me down again, ain’tcha?”

  “Tully,” Smeds said, “shut the fuck up or I’m going to brain you. Pick up the goddamned money, hit the goddamned street, find a kid, and pay him to deliver the goddamned message. Now.”

  Tully went. Smeds had gotten pretty intense.

  “He’s going to get us all killed,” Timmy said as soon as he was gone.

  “How’s your hand coming?” Smeds asked.

  “Real good. Don’t try to distra
ct me, Smeds.”

  “Easy, Timmy,” Fish said. “I think there’s a chance this trick will get through to him.”

  “Want to bet?”

  “No.”

  Smeds would not have taken the bet either.

  * * *

  The wizard Nathan and his four men had rented rooms just up the street from the Skull and Crossbones. The grays came there shortly before dawn. They found five dead men and two rooms torn to shreds. They sealed the area, searched it again, asked a lot of questions. Fish made sure they all got a good look at the mess. He asked Tully, “You starting to catch on?”

  “Who would do something like that, man? Why?”

  “Nathan was a wizard. If he was going to sneak, that meant he’d found the spike and wanted to make a run for it.”

  “But he wasn’t going to leave town.”

  “No. He wasn’t, Tully. But you said he was.”

  Tully started to be Tully and argue, but he bit down on it and thought for a moment before he said, “Oh.”

  “Next time you say something without thinking first or checking to see who’s listening, that could be us all carved up.”

  Smeds said, “You maybe went too far to make your point, Fish.”

  “Why?”

  “This ain’t over yet. Those soldiers didn’t find anything but a mess. They’re going to figure whoever made the mess got the spike.”

  “Yeah. And maybe everybody else will think so, too. Maybe even the guys who actually did it. The next few days ought to be interesting. And part of the ongoing lesson.”

  “What’re you blathering now?” Tully demanded.

  “That was a big gang in that place, eh? Five pro thugs and a sorcerer. Nobody would try to take them alone. I figure there was at least three guys did it. Probably more. Unless they’re a bunch that really trust each other they’re going to have trouble. Every one of them is going to know he didn’t get the spike, but he isn’t going to be sure about the others.”

  Tully said, “Oh,” again, and after a while, “This shit is getting scary. I never thought it would get this hairy.”