The Return of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  He had no will and no identity so he could not and did not laugh as I floated down into the lake of pain.

  Hell has a name. Its name is Dejagore. But Dejagore is only Hell’s lesser face.

  From the greater Hell I escaped. One more time.

  No identity and no will.

  The wind blows but nothing moves in the place of glittering stone. Night falls. The wind dies. The plain yields up its heat as shadows waken. Moonlight settles upon the silence of stone.

  The plain runs east and west, north and south, without discernible bounds, viewed from within. Though its ends be uncertain it has a definite center. That is an epic structure built of the same stone as the pillars and plain.

  Within that fastness nothing moves, either, though at times mists of light shimmer as they leak over from beyond the gates of dream. Shadows linger in corners. And way down inside the core of the place, in the feeblest throb of the heart of darkness, there is life of a sort.

  37

  No will. No identity.

  Now no Smoke.

  Now just pain. So much Smoke drifted away. Now just slavery to the memories.

  Now at home in the house of pain.

  38

  There you are!

  So here we are again. You were missed.

  … faceless thing that, nevertheless, seems to be smiling, pleased with itself.

  It has been a night full of adventures. Has it not? And the fun continues. Look. There. The Black Company and their auxiliaries have begun making life especially unpleasant for Shadowlanders so bold as to have taken up residence inside Dejagore’s wall.

  See how they use the doppelgangers and imaginary soldiers to lure the southerners into deadly traps, to get them to betray themselves.

  Oh. And come back to the wall. This is a small thing but it could become the stuff of epics.

  The fighting has all shifted to the east side of the city. Hardly anybody is over there now. A few men to watch from the ramparts is all. And some unenthusiastic Shadowlander scouts down there in the darkness, not really paying attention. Otherwise how could they miss this spidery little figure rappelling down the outside of the wall?

  Why on earth would a two-hundred-year-old, fourth-rate sorcerer want to climb down a rope to go where very unfriendly little brown men might decide to dance on his head?

  The wounded stallion of mysterious sorcerous breed has stopped screaming. At last. It is dead. Green misty stuff still rises from its death wound. The wound still glows at its edges.

  Out there? Yes. Look at them. Two very devils they are, aren’t they, cloaked in their pink mists? They don’t seem to be coming to devour the city, though, do they?

  What is that? The Shadowlanders out there are scattering like the fox is in the henhouse. Their cries are filled with pure terror. Amongst them something dark moves swiftly. Look. It pulled a man down there. Didn’t it?

  There is so little light now that the focus of battle has shifted. The old man is as black as the heart of the night itself. Think any mortal eye will notice him sneaking around among the dead? Where is he headed? Shadowspinner’s dead horse?

  Who would expect that? It’s the act of a madman.

  The creeping darkness is moving toward the dead horse, too. See how its eyes flash red when the fires in the city flare up. Look at that fool, running toward it instead of away. There go his guts. Stupidity can be fatal.

  The little black man has vanished because he has stopped moving. There he is. He heard something. There he goes, trotting toward the dead stallion. He wants his spear back. And maybe that does make some crazy sense. He worked hard making it.

  He has stopped again, eye huge as he sniffs the night and catches an almost-forgotten odor. At the same moment the deadly darkness catches wind of him.

  A pantherine roar of triumph stills hearts all across the plain. The darkness begins moving faster and faster.

  The little black man grabs his spear and runs for the wall. Will he make it? Can two stubby, ancient legs carry him there fast enough to escape the death racing toward him?

  The thing is huge. And it is filled with joy.

  The little man reaches the rope. But he is still eighty feet down from safety. And he is old and winded. He whirls. His timing is perfect. The head of his spear reaches out just as the monster leaps. The beast twists in the air, evading the killing thrust but taking a cruel wound from its snout back through its left ear. It howls. Green mist boils off its redly-glowing wound. The beast loses all interest in the old man, who begins his long climb to the ramparts. That bizarrely carved spear is slung across his back now, held there by a mundane length of cotton string.

  No one notices. No one cares. The fighting has gone elsewhere.

  39

  The southerners seem to have just closed their eyes and shoved their heads into a beehive, don’t they?

  What? Why so reluctant? Come see. This is amusing.

  Everywhere you look the southerners are falling back. Sometimes they are running, sometimes just slinking away through the shadows before death overhauls them.

  Look there. Shadowspinner, the king enemy himself, all but crippled, paying no attention to anyone or anything but those two pink-limned archetypes come out of the hills to devour him.

  And Mogaba? Watch him be the master tactician. Watch him be the ultimate warrior exploiting the enemy’s every weakness—now that there is no chance to accomplish the deviltry that moved him earlier in the evening. See that? No southerner, however great his reputation, dares come near Mogaba. Even their great heroes are like novice children when he steps forward himself.

  He is way bigger than life, this Mogaba.

  He is the triumphant centerpiece of his own imagined saga.

  * * *

  Something has gone out of the southerners.

  They wanted to conquer. They knew they had to conquer because their master Shadowspinner would not tolerate anything less. He has a particular lack of understanding when it comes to failure. His followers are established solidly inside the city. Mild stubbornness will give them success.

  But they are on the run.

  Something has grabbed hold of them and convinced them that it is not possible for even their souls to survive if they stay inside Dejagore.

  40

  “You all right, Murgen?”

  I shook my head. I felt like a kid who had spun around about twenty times, intentionally trying to make himself dizzy before jumping into some silly competition.

  I was in an alley. Runt boy Goblin was beside me, looking extremely concerned. “I’m fine,” I told him.

  Then I fell to my knees, stuck my hands out to grab the alley walls so I would not spin around anymore. I insisted, “I’m all right.”

  “Of course you are. Candles. Keep an eye on this dork. He tries to take over, get deaf. He’s got too tender a heart.”

  I tried not to let my ego become engaged. Maybe I was too tender, too much a sucker. The world sure isn’t kind to the man who tries to be gentle and thoughtful.

  Its spin slowed down till I no longer had to hold on.

  A scuffle broke out behind us. Someone cursed in a nasal, liquid tongue. Somebody else growled, “This asshole is fast!”

  “Whoa whoa whoa!” I yelled. “Let the man alone! Let him come up here.”

  Candles didn’t knock me over the head or contradict me. The short, wide Nyueng Bao guy who had shown me to Ky Dam’s hideout marched up to me. The fingers of his right hand rubbed his right cheek. He seemed utterly astonished that somebody had laid a hand on him. His ego suffered again when he spoke in Nyueng Bao and I said, “Sorry, old-timer. No speakee. Gonna got to be Taglian or Groghor with me.” In Groghor, which my maternal grandmother spoke because Grandpa captured her from those people, I asked, “What’s happening?” I knew maybe twenty words in Groghor, but that was twenty more than anyone else within seven thousand miles.

  “The Speaker sends me to lead you to where the invader is most vulnerable. We hav
e watched closely and know.”

  “Thank you. We appreciate it. Lead on.” Shifting languages, I observed, “Marvellous how these guys suddenly talk the lingo when they want something.”

  Candles grunted.

  Goblin, who had sneaked forward for a look around, returned just in time to offer me directions to the same weak point the Nyueng Bao had in mind. The squat man seemed a little surprised we could find our butts with our hands, maybe even a touch disgruntled.

  “You got a name, short and wide?” I asked. “If you don’t have one you prefer I guarantee you these guys will hang one on you and I promise you won’t like it.”

  “Hear hear,” Goblin agreed, chuckling.

  “I am Doj. All Nyueng Bao call me Uncle Doj.”

  “All right, Uncle. You going up there with us? Or did you just come over to direct traffic?” Already Goblin was whispering instructions to the guys creeping up behind us. No doubt he had left a few soft spells of sleepiness or confusion amongst the southerners as he was scouting.

  Little discussion was needed. We would drive into their soft spot, kill anything that moved, split them in half, butcher anybody who didn’t run away, then we would back away before Mogaba began feeling too confident.

  “I will accompany you although that stretches the Speaker’s instructions to extremes. You Bone Warriors surprise us continually. I wish to watch you at your work.”

  I never considered killing people to be my profession but did not care to argue. “You speak Taglian very well, Uncle.”

  He smiled. “I am forgetful, though, Stone Soldier. I may not remember a word after tonight.” Unless the Speaker jogged his memory, I supposed.

  Uncle Doj did a great deal more than watch us hack and stab southerners. He turned into a one-man cyclone flailing around with a lightning sword. He was as sudden as the lightning but as graceful as a dancer. Each time he moved another Shadowlander fell.

  “Damn,” I told Goblin a while later. “Remind me not to get into a quarrel with that character.”

  “I’ll remind you to bring a crossbow and let him have it in the back from thirty feet is what I’ll do. After I put a deafness and a stupidity spell on him to even things up a little.”

  “Don’t be surprised if it’s me distracting you someday when One-Eye sneaks up and offers you a cactus suppository.”

  “Speaking of the runt. Tell me. Who’s being conspicuously absent without leave lately?”

  I sent messages to the various units suggesting that we had done our part to relieve Mogaba’s troops. We should all go back to our part of town, patch ourselves up, take naps, like that. I told the Nyueng Bao elder, “Uncle Doj, please inform the Speaker that the Black Company extends its gratitude and friendship. Tell him he is free to call upon that at any time. We will extend ourselves as much as possible.”

  The short, wide man bowed far enough that his movement had to mean something. I bowed back, almost as deeply. That must have been the right move because he smiled slightly, bowed shallowly for himself, hustled off.

  “Runs like a duck,” Candles observed.

  “I’m glad that duck was on our side, though.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “I’m glad that duck … Argh!” Candles had me by the throat.

  “Somebody help me shut him up.”

  That was just the start of what became a wild night of blowing off tensions. I got no chance to participate myself but I heard it was a banner night for the Jaicuri whores.

  41

  “Where the hell have you been?” I snarled at One-Eye. “The Company just fought through its nastiest episode in, oh, just days, and you were obviously absent every stinking second.” Not that his presence would have made any difference.

  One-Eye grinned. My displeasure did not bother him a bit. He had outlived or outstubborned a parade of snotnoses like me. “Shit, Kid, I had to get my Shadowmaster sticker back, didn’t I? I’ve got a lot of work in that thing.… What’s the matter?”

  “Huh?” For a moment I saw a little black louse scuttling across a grey landscape from a height unattainable anywhere in Dejagore, even atop the citadel, where Old Crew guys were not welcome anymore. “Never mind, runt. I’d like to kick your ass but it wouldn’t do any good now. So you were out there. What became of Widowmaker and Lifetaker?” While I was arranging a quieter life for our leader those two vanished without a trace.

  I wondered how Mogaba would write all this if he was keeping the Annals.

  “One-Eye?”

  “What?” Now he sounded irritated.

  “You want to answer me? What happened to Widowmaker and Lifetaker?”

  “You know something, Kid? I don’t have the faintest freaking idea. And I don’t care. I only had one thing on my mind. I wanted my spear back so I could use it next time that sucker ain’t looking. Then I had to worry about dodging a gang of raggedyass Shadowlanders who tried to jump me. They went away somewhere. All right?”

  And none of us could fathom that. Because they vanished just when the Shadowlander confidence was rockiest. Shadowspinner had his tail between his legs and his boys could have been broken.

  I grumbled, “If that was the Old Man and Lady they would’ve kept coming till they broke the whole show wide open. Wouldn’t they?”

  I glared at an albino crow perched not twenty feet away. Its head was cocked. It stared at me with malign intelligence.

  There were a lot of crows tonight.

  Other agendas were being pursued. I was just one pawn caught up in tides of intrigue. But if we were careful the Company need not get swept away.

  * * *

  Mogaba and the Nar and their Taglian troops stayed busy for days. Maybe the Shadowmasters decided to make Mogaba pay for his failure to fulfill his end of the implicit bargain.

  Which was just one more example of the way people down here go bugfuck when they are involved with the Black Company.

  It could make a guy nervous if he thought about everybody within a thousand miles seeming to wish he’d never been born.

  My guys enjoyed Mogaba’s situation. And he could not squawk about their attitudes. We gave him exactly what he asked. We saved his ass and set him up so all he had to do was chase a few Shadowlanders out of town.

  I had to see him almost every day at staff meetings. Again and again we showed ourselves to the soldiers, pretending to be brothers marching shoulder to shoulder against our evil foe.

  Not once was anybody fooled except maybe Mogaba.

  I never took it personal. I took a stance I believed the Annalists of the past would approve, just picturing Mogaba as not one of us.

  We are the Black Company. We have no friends. All others are the enemy, or at best not to be trusted. That relationship with the world does not require hatred or any other emotion. It requires wariness.

  Perhaps our refusal to remonstrate, or even to acknowledge Mogaba’s treachery, was the final straw, or perhaps the backbreaker was his awareness that even his Nar compatriots now believed the real Captain might still live. Whatever, the ultimate and perfect warrior drifted across a boundary from beyond which he could not return. And we did not discover the truth until we had paid in treasures of pain.

  * * *

  It took ten days for Dejagore to return to normal—if normal was our state before the great attack. Both sides had suffered terribly. I believed Shadowspinner would now just lick his wounds and let us get hungry for a while.

  42

  “Got something for you, Kid.”

  I started awake. “What…?” What happened? I don’t drift off that way.

  One-Eye had a big shit-eating grin on but it evaporated when he looked at me closer. He darted in, grabbed my chin, turned my head right and left. “You just have one of your spells?”

  “Spells?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Not exactly. I just had their word for the fact that I went spooky sometimes.

  “You’ve got a kind of psychic shimmer. Mayb
e I caught you just in time.”

  He and Goblin kept talking about doing experiments to find out what is happening but there never seemed to be time to actually do anything. “What do you have?”

  “The work parties broke into the old catacombs this morning.”

  “Longo told me.”

  “Everybody’s charging around in there, all excited.”

  “I can imagine. Find any treasure yet?”

  One-Eye looked put-upon. For such a blackhearted toad he can manage a truly impressive show of self-righteous injury.

  “I take it not.”

  “We found some books. A whole pile. All sealed up neat and everything. Looks like they’ve been there since the Shadowmasters first came.”

  “Makes sense since they always burned the books and the priests. You find any priests lurking down there?”

  “Not hardly. Look, I got to get back.” Before somebody grabbed a treasure out from under him, no doubt. “I got a couple guys lugging them books up for you.”

  “Gods forfend you should have lifted anything yourself.”

  “You got a serious attitude problem, Kid. I’m an old man.” One-Eye did a fade. He has that knack when he is about to find himself in an indefensible position.

  * * *

  A city seldom is buttoned up so tight that no news gets in from outside. Sometimes it seems almost mystical but the word does come through. In Dejagore rumor seldom brought in anything Mogaba wanted to hear.

  I was studying the discovered books, so intrigued I was letting duties slide. They were written in Jaicuri but the written form thereof is almost identical to written Taglian.

  Goblin stepped in. “You doing all right? No more dizziness?”

  “No. You guys worry too much.”

  “No, we don’t. Look, some new rumors are going around. There’s supposedly a relief column headed our way. Blade, of all people, is in charge.”