The Return of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  That did not sound quite like him. When he made deaf-mute signs as he finished I knew the speech was for other consumption even if it was factual.

  Croaker pushed a folded scrap of paper across. “Take care of that before we go. Make sure you don’t leave any evidence to tie it to us.”

  “What?” That did not sound good at all.

  “Be ready to move. If you really have to drag the in-laws along have them ready to go, too. I’ll send word.”

  “Your pets tell you anything I need to know?” Like I did not know that they were not his pets at all but spies or messengers from Soulcatcher.

  “Not lately. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be the first to know.”

  This was one of those points where the paranoia grabbed me. I could not be sure of the actual relationship between Croaker, Soulcatcher and those crows. I had to take him completely on faith at a time when my faith in everything was being tested severely on every hand.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Make sure you’ve got everything you need. It won’t be long.”

  * * *

  I opened the scrap of paper by the light of one of the few lamps illuminating the corridor between Croaker’s apartment and mine. I made no attempt to keep Thai Dei from seeing it. He is illiterate. Plus the note was written in the formal language of Juniper, as though to a bright six-year-old. Which was lucky for me since I have only a vague familiarity with the language, from documents dating back to the time the Company spent there, before I joined.

  Soulcatcher was dead in those days. I suppose that is why Croaker chose to use that language. It was one he felt she was unlikely to know.

  The message itself was simple. It instructed me to take the Annals I had recaptured from Soulcatcher, who had stolen them from where Smoke had had them hidden from us, and conceal them in the room where we had kept Smoke hidden.

  I wanted to go back and argue. I wanted to keep them with us. But I grasped his reasoning. Soulcatcher and everyone else with an interest in keeping us and those Annals apart would assume that we would keep them close till we could decipher them. Out there in the field we would not have time to worry about protecting them. So we might as well hide them in a place that, right now, only the Radisha knew existed.

  “Shit,” I said softly, in Taglian. No matter how many languages I learn I always find that word useful. It has pretty much the same meaning in every tongue.

  Thai Dei did not ask. Thai Dei almost never does.

  Behind me, more than the next lamp away, Croaker came out of his cell with a black blob perched on his shoulder. That meant he was going to see somebody native. He thought the crows intimidated the Taglians.

  I told Thai Dei, “This is something I have to handle myself. Go tell Uncle Doj and your mother that we’ll be leaving sometime during the night. The Captain has decided.”

  “You must accompany me partway. I cannot find my way in this great tomb.” He sounded like he meant it, too.

  Nyueng Bao keep their feelings well hidden but I saw no reason why someone who had grown up in a tropical swamp should feel at home inside an immense pile of stone. Especially since all his past experience with cities and big buildings had been negative in the extreme.

  I hurried to get him back into territory he knew well enough to walk alone. I had to get into Croaker’s cell fast, before he and his feathered friend returned. That is where we were keeping the books right now. We did not want anyone to know we had them—though Soulcatcher surely suspected if she was aware that they had been stolen from where she had hidden them.

  What a convoluted game.

  I felt my wrist to make sure I still wore the loop of string that was really an amulet One-Eye had given me so I would be immune to all the spells of confusion and misdirection around the chamber where we kept Smoke.

  Even before I collected the books—noting that Croaker had shooed all crows, closed the window and covered it with a curtain—I was thinking how best to conceal them once I had them where Croaker wanted them to go.

  It would not be long after we left that the Radisha would start wondering who was taking care of the wizard now. My bet was that she would start looking for him. She was stubborn enough to find her way to the room.

  Though she had shown little interest in Smoke lately she had never given up hope of bringing him back. If we enjoyed many successes against the Shadowmaster she would want his help even more.

  Everything we did seemed to have potentially unpleasant consequences.

  8

  When the Old Man decides to move he moves. It was still tomb-dark when I left the Palace and found him waiting with two of the giant black stallions that had come down from the north with the Black Company. Specially bred during the Lady’s heyday, with sorcery instilled into their very bones, they could run forever without getting tired and could outrace any mundane steed. And they were almost as smart as a really stupid human.

  Croaker grinned down at my in-laws. They were completely nonplussed by this development. How were they supposed to keep up?

  Kind of pissed me off, too. “I’ll handle it,” I said in Nyueng Bao. I handed Thai Dei my stuff, climbed the monster Croaker had brought for me. It had been a long time since I had ridden one but this one seemed to remember me. It tossed its head and snorted a greeting. “You too, big boy.” I took my stuff from Thai Dei.

  “Where’s the standard?” Croaker demanded.

  “In the wagon with One-Eye. Sleepy put it there before—”

  “You let it out of your control? You don’t ever let it out of your control.”

  “I was thinking about giving Sleepy the job.” Standardbearer was one of the hats I wore. And not one of my favorites. Now that I am Annalist I should be passing it on. Croaker has mentioned that himself on occasion. “Give me your stuff now,” I told Thai Dei once I had mine settled in front of me.

  Thai Dei’s eyes got big as he realized what I intended.

  I told Mother Gota and Uncle Doj, “Stay on the stone road all the way and you’ll catch up with the army. If you’re stopped show the soldiers your papers.” Another innovation of the Liberator. More and more people involved in the war effort were being given bits of paper telling who they were and who was responsible for them. Since hardly anybody was literate the effort did not seem worthwhile.

  Maybe. But the Old Man always has his reasons. Even when those are simply to confuse.

  Croaker realized what I was doing just as I extended my hand to help Thai Dei climb. He opened his mouth to raise hell. I said, “Don’t bother. It ain’t worth a fight.”

  Thai Dei looks like a skull with a thin layer of dark leather over it at the best of times. Now he looked as though he had just heard a death sentence pronounced. “It’ll be all right,” I told him, realizing he had never been on a horse. The Nyueng Bao have water buffalo and a few elephants. They do not ride those, except as children sometimes, helping with the plowing.

  He did not want to do it. He really did not. He looked at Uncle Doj. Doj said nothing. It was Thai Dei’s call.

  Croaker must have started looking smug or something. Thai Dei stared at him for a moment, shuddered all over, then extended his good hand. I pulled. Thai Dei was as hard and tough as they came but he weighed almost nothing.

  The horse gave me a look nearly as ugly as the one I had gotten from my boss. The fact that they are capable of a job does not make the beasts eager to do it.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Croaker said.

  “Go.”

  He headed out. The pace he set was savage. He rode like he could feel no pain. He grumbled and fussed at me to keep up. He grumbled even more after we collected a cavalry escort south of the city. The regular horses had no hope of matching the pace he wanted to set. He had to keep waiting for them to catch up. Usually he was well ahead, surrounded by crows. The birds came and went and when we exchanged words he always knew things like where Blade was, where our troops were, where there was resistance to the
Taglian advance and where there was none. He knew that Mogaba had sent cavalry north to blunt our advance.

  It was weird. The man just plain knew things he should not. Not without walking with the ghost. And One-Eye was still ahead of us, making much better time than I would have believed possible had we not been trying to catch him.

  Croaker got over his snit after the first day. He became social again. Headed for the Ghoja Ford, he asked, “You remember the first time we came here?”

  “I remember rain and mud and misery and a hundred Shadowlanders trying to kill us.”

  “Those were the days, Murgen.”

  “They were as close to hell as I want to get. And that’s said from the viewpoint of a man who’s been a whole lot closer.”

  He chuckled. “So thank me for this nice new road.”

  “Thank you for the nice new road.” The Taglians called it the Rock Road or Stone Road. The first time we traveled it, it had been nothing but a snake of mud.

  “You really think Sleepy is right for the standardbearer job?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. I’m not ready to give it up yet.”

  “This is the same Murgen who complained that he’s always the first guy into every scrape?”

  “I said I’ve been thinking. I find I’ve got some extra motivation.” Our other companions told me I was handling Sarie’s loss pretty well. I thought so myself.

  Croaker looked back at Thai Dei, who was clinging desperately to a swaybacked dapple mare we had picked up thirty miles back. He was handling his problem moderately well, too, for a guy who could use only one hand.

  Croaker told me, “Don’t let motivation get in the way of good sense. When all the rest is said and done we’re still the Black Company. We get the other guys to do the dying.”

  “I’m in control. I was a Black Company brother a lot longer than I was Sarie’s husband. I learned how to manage my emotions.”

  He did not seem convinced. And I understood. He was concerned not about me as I existed right now but as I would in a crunch. The survival of the whole Company might hinge on which way one man jumped when the shitstorm hit.

  The Captain glanced back. Despite their best efforts our escort had begun to string out. He paid no attention to them. He asked, “Learned anything about your in-laws?”

  “Again?” He never let up. And I did not have an answer for him. “How about ‘love is blind’?”

  “Murgen, you’re a damned fool if you really believe that. Maybe you ought to go back and reread the Books of Croaker.”

  He lost me there. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve got me a lady, too. Still alive, granted. We’ve got plenty tied up in each other. We made us a baby together. Any two fools can do that by accident, of course, but it’s usually a benchmark in a relationship. But what we have as man and woman, father and mother, doesn’t mean I trust Lady even a little in any but that one way. And she can’t trust me. It’s the way she’s made. It’s the life she lived.”

  “Sarie never had any ambitions, boss. Except maybe to get me to actually go into the farming I’m always talking about so I wouldn’t get skragged gloriously in some typically heroic military manner like falling off a horse and drowning while I was crossing a creek during the rainy season.”

  “Sahra never worried me, Murgen. What bothers me is this uncle who doesn’t act like any other Nyueng Bao I’ve ever seen.”

  “Hey, he’s one old guy who has a thing about swords. He’s a priest and his scripture is sharp steel. And he’s got a grudge. Just keep him pointed toward the Shadowmaster.”

  Croaker nodded grimly. “Time will tell.” He did grim very well.

  We crossed the great stone bridge Lady had ordered built at Ghoja. Crows filled the trees on the southern bank. They squabbled and carried on and seemed to find us highly amusing.

  I said, “I worry more about those things.”

  Croaker did not respond. He did order a halt to rest the animals. So many had gone south ahead of us that there were no well-rested remounts available. Amidst all the saluting and hasty turning out of an honor guard and whatnot, I stared southward and said, “That little clown is making damned good time.” I had asked already and had learned that One-Eye was still a day ahead.

  “We’ll catch him before we get to Dejagore.” Croaker eyed me as though he feared the city name would strike me with the impact of some terrible spell. I disappointed him. Thai Dei, who could follow the conversation because we were speaking Taglian, showed no reaction, either, though the siege had been as terrible for his people as for the Company. Nyueng Bao seldom betray any emotion in the presence of outsiders.

  I told Thai Dei, “Give your horse to the groom and let’s see if we can’t find something decent to eat.” Living on horseback is not a gourmet’s delight.

  For the same reason there were no fresh remounts, there were very few delicacies at the Ghoja fortress, but because we belonged to the Liberator’s party we were given a newly taken gamecock that was so full of juice and substance my stomach nearly rebelled at taking it in. After eating we got to stay inside, out of the cold, and get some sleep. I should have stuck to Croaker in case his talks with local commanders turned up anything that belonged in the Annals, but after a short interior debate I chose sleep instead. If he heard anything worthwhile the Old Man would tell me. If necessary I could come back with Smoke later.

  I dreamed but did not remember the dreams long enough to note them down. They were unpleasant but not overpowering or so terrible Thai Dei had to awaken me.

  We were back on the road before sunrise.

  We overtook One-Eye passing through the hills that surround Dejagore. When I first glimpsed his wagon and realized it had to be him I started to shudder and had to fight an urge to kick my mount into a faster pace. I wanted to get to Smoke.

  Maybe I had more of a problem than I wanted to admit.

  I did not show it enough to be noticed, though.

  One-Eye never slowed down a bit.

  There had been some changes since my days of hell in Dejagore—or Jaicur, as its natives called it, or Stormgard, as it was named while it was the seat of the deceased Shadowmaster Stormshadow. Poor witch, she had been totally unable to guard the Shadowlands against the storm of the Black Company.

  The plain outside the city had been drained of all water and cleared of wreckage and corpses, though I thought I could still smell death in the air. Prisoners of war from the Shadowlands still labored on the city walls and inside the city itself. Why seemed problematic. There were almost no Jaicuri left alive.

  “Interesting notion, planting the plain in grain,” I said, seeing what looked like winter wheat peeping through last year’s stubble.

  “One of Lady’s ideas,” Croaker replied. He still watched me as though he expected me to start foaming at the mouth any minute. “Anywhere there is a permanent garrison one of the responsibilities of the soldiers is to raise their own food.”

  When it came to the logistics of war Lady was more the expert than Croaker. Till we came to Taglios he was never part of anything bigger than the Company. Lady had managed the war-making instruments of a vast empire for decades.

  The Old Man simply left most of that stuff to Lady. He would rather lie back scheming his schemes and piling up the tools Lady could use.

  The crop notion was not new. Lady had done the same around most of her permanent installations in the north.

  You got to go with what works.

  Helps keep the neighbors more tractable, too, if you are not stealing their daughters and seed grain.

  “You sure you’re all right?” Croaker demanded.

  We were nearly at the foot of the ramp to the north barbican. One-Eye was no more than a hundred feet ahead now, perfectly aware of our presence, but not slowing down a bit. I guess I was starting to push ahead.

  “I’ve got it under control, Captain. I don’t fall off into the past anymore and I hardly ever wake up screaming. I ho
ld it down to a little shaking and sweating.”

  “Anything starts getting to you, I want to know. I expect to be here a while. You’re going to need to be able to take it.”

  “I won’t screw up,” I promised.

  9

  I did not wait long after Thai Dei and I took up quarters in one of the same buildings we had occupied during the siege. Reconstruction had not reached that part of town yet. Some of the old litter still lay around. “At least they got rid of all the bones,” I told Thai Dei.

  He grunted, looked around like he expected to see ghosts.

  “You be all right here?” I asked. Nyueng Bao do believe in ghosts and spirits and ancestors who follow you around nagging if you have not gotten them buried properly. A lot of Nyueng Bao pilgrims passed over here without benefit of the appropriate ceremonies.

  “I must be. I must have everything ready when Doj comes.”

  That was a major speech for Thai Dei.

  Uncle Doj was a priest of some sort. Presumably he would take this opportunity to complete what he had not had time to do four years ago.

  “You go ahead. I have things to do.” Far places to see. Pain to be given the slip, though I did not admit that directly even to myself.

  Thai Dei started to put his few possessions aside.

  “No. It’s more of that secret Company stuff that I’m expected to do alone.”

  Thai Dei grunted, almost pleased to have his time be his own.

  It always was his but he would not listen when I insisted he did not owe me. If it were not for me he would not have lost his sister and son.

  Arguing with a Nyueng Bao is like arguing with water buffalo. You cannot get through and after a while the Nyueng Bao loses interest in listening. Might as well save your energy.

  * * *

  “Wondered how long it would be,” One-Eye said when I tracked him down. He had brought the wagon into our old part of town but had not taken Smoke out. He had it backed into a tight alleyway where, I presumed, the wagon would vanish inside camouflaging spells as soon as he dealt with his team.