The Return of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  Clete said, “We brought fifty in this batch. We hope we can come up with twenty reliables out of those. Everything goes right, we’ll start work on some really big stuff. Boy, will the Tals be surprised.”

  I could imagine what these new fireballs would do to men’s bodies. But I suspected that scything through legions was not their purpose. And my suspicion was confirmed next afternoon.

  Lady herself came to inspect the twenty-six pieces the brothers had found acceptable.

  The woman seemed emotionally drained, yet did show a bounce that said part of her life was going well. She and the Old Man were finding free moments to be something other than Captain and Lieutenant.

  I was pleased for them.

  “Excellent,” she said, after she watched every accepted tube smite Overlook’s wall at least once. “What about the crow-specific light arms?”

  “You see any crows?” Longo asked. “We got a picket line out. They don’t even get close.”

  “Good. Prime all of these things with full loads. I’m going to try my own experiment.”

  Hagop told me, “We’re in the chips. We done come up with six more than we even hoped. And half the others are good enough we can use them up close, a mile or less. We’ll kick us some ass, big time.” The whole gang were as thrilled as kids with new toys. And Lady was the worst. She bounced around like she was fifteen again.

  The troops shuffled the tables around, began packing tools and loading wagons.

  Loftus, Longinus and Otto kept chuckling about something.

  I glanced around. I did not like the portents. Even Lady had the look. The look that always showed up on One-Eye and/or Goblin when they were going to pull a stunt the rest of us might regret.

  “Just hang on here, everybody!” I yelled, trying to be the responsible one. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but—” This was my fief.

  A bunch of them, including Lady, the brothers, Otto and Hagop, all got behind the tables. They started wisecracking as they sighted down the lengths of fully loaded heavyweight poles.

  “Don’t even think about it!” I growled.

  My in-laws hovered behind me, silently, not understanding anything being said but clear on the fact that yesterday and today added up to something significant. Something beyond the obvious.

  “Don’t do it!” I begged.

  Twenty-two bamboo tubes discharged within seconds of one another. The villains all watched the orange fireballs streak north-northwest, straight into the area where that storm of crows had exploded in my imagination.

  It was not my imagination this time.

  Catcher’s hideout had to be more than ten miles away. It did not take the fireballs ten seconds to get there. Maybe not five. I was too shaken to be a good judge of time’s passage.

  Fire and smoke and shit flew half a mile high.

  Now the whole gang went bugfuck. Every one of them—Lady, too—put fireballs into the air in streams of four and five. The distant woods began to boil. Even from so far away I could make out gigantic trees being hurled a thousand feet into the air.

  I recalled some trees there being twice as thick as I was tall. They twisted through the sky like scythes of fire.

  A firestorm took life below. It hurled flames and smoke heavenward like an angry volcano.

  It was a day when a lot of crows died.

  I am sure it was a day when Soulcatcher found not one reason to laugh.

  88

  There is a lot of ritual in human affairs.

  The Old Man started me doing sermons from the Annals, the way he had himself in ancient times. He was a firm believer in every man knowing his exact place in our long history. And then most of the older hands were stuck with teaching Taglian to anyone who did not speak it already. Croaker wanted every brother to have a language in common with every other. Sometimes it seemed we had as many native tongues as we had men to speak them. I recalled no instance in the Annals when the Company had become as polyglot as it was now.

  Another burden I bore was keeping in shape by hoofing it across to headquarters for staff meetings every few days.

  * * *

  A wonderful aroma wakened me. I shoved my head out of our oft-improved bunker. “What’re you cooking?” I asked Thai Dei.

  “Uncle Doj killed a wild pig last night. There will be roast pork today.”

  “I hope I can keep it down.”

  “It won’t be ready for hours yet. You told me to remind you of your staff meeting this morning.”

  “Shit.” It was supposed to be important, too. I did not dare be late. “Better save me some.” I dragged my ass out and made what morning preparations I could. None of us were the sort who spent hours trimming our beards or prettying our hair or taking baths. But you do have to splash a little water in your face sometimes and you do have to get the crud out of your teeth just so you feel like keeping on.

  I wondered what would become of our teeth if we did not get One-Eye back. Those tiny little spells he put on them, to protect them, had to be renewed every two years. And we had battalions of new men still lacking their initial exposures.

  Thai Dei did not save me diddly. He took the pig off the fire and followed me. There is just no ditching the man.

  I was still not riding. Sleepy had not brought my mount back. Sleepy had not come home yet himself, though he had had ample time. He had disappeared while crossing the mountains. No search through the ghostworld nor on site had produced a trace. I feared the worst.

  Two sleek crows followed me, gliding from bush to rock to ruin. Otherwise there was no evidence to indicate that Soulcatcher remained alive or was interested in us anymore, despite the vandalism of her home. She was biding her time.

  You could say that about the woman. She was crazy but never impatient. Her temper did not control her.

  Lady said she had escaped the barrage only because she had taken Howler’s carpet north so she could conspire with the Radisha.

  I had orders not to look for Soulcatcher. I had orders to run whenever I sensed her presence. The same with Kina. Smoke was next to useless now. I had become too valuable a resource to risk.

  Right.

  I glanced back before we started up the far slope. Uncle Doj was trailing us, as he did so often. His step suggested he was ready for anything. One hand rested on Ash Wand always.

  Thai Dei and I had resumed training with him, want to or not. He would not explain what was going on inside his head. He just kept whacking away, forcing us to defend ourselves or enjoy painful bruises.

  He despaired of my ever reaching what he considered minimal proficiency with a sword. He did not understand the difference between a lone wolf warrior and a soldier who is part of a team of mutually supporting fighters. Or he pretended not to understand.

  He expected trouble, no doubt about that. But it was too much trouble to explain.

  I have been running with Croaker long enough that I should be used to that.

  I reminded Thai Dei, “We’re mushrooms.”

  “Huh?”

  “Kept in the dark? Fed a diet of horseshit?” You would think that he would remember. But he was not interested in trying. Like most Nyueng Bao attached to the Company. “Never mind.”

  Uncle Doj tried to invite himself into the meeting. A couple of hard-eyed guards stepped into his path. He chose to go hang around with the other Nyueng Bao. He never did that before. He seemed to be looking for JoJo, One-Eye’s erstwhile bodyguard. JoJo was never a gregarious sort, even among other Nyueng Bao.

  I ducked inside the Old Man’s dugout.

  A whole herd of people had gathered in there. They were waiting for me, apparently.

  “Let’s get started,” Croaker said. “First, intelligence received. The rumor is true. Mogaba definitely did sign on with the Radisha. He’s started putting together a force somewhere south of Dejagore. The reports didn’t explain where but did say his men have begun evicting the locals from the best croplands so they can support themselves. The leade
rship in Taglios hasn’t decided exactly what to do yet. There’s actually a lot of sentiment for forgetting us altogether.”

  The Captain did not reveal his sources. Some of that came from me and Lady, dreaming and walking the ghost when Smoke was not completely useless. He added, “It seems Mogaba will enjoy the support of several small auxiliary units raised by religious sects with a grudge against us or our friends.”

  Blade chuckled.

  89

  Silence stretched. I found a battered mug left over from Kiaulune’s glory days, helped myself to tea from a pot steeping beside Croaker’s crude hearth. The stuff was more bitter than medicine. That explained why it was still there. I pretended to enjoy it.

  “Clete,” Croaker said. “What’s the agricultural situation?” Only in the Black Company would a siege engineer be in charge of farming.

  Cletus said, “Nothing new to report. Exceptional crops threatening to mature earlier than the locals predicted. We could do worse than to establish ourselves here.” Cletus and his brothers centered a faction interested in settling down. They felt their new weapons could discourage our most determined enemies. They made no strong representations, though.

  The Company had slogged through hell for an age. Now we possessed a rich province and a fine fortress and our only serious enemies were hundreds of miles away and probably disinclined to come after us anytime soon.

  I did not listen to the editorializing following a suggestion that the gods loved us because our crops were doing so well. I paid no attention till Longinus started telling us why we no longer needed to be afraid of anyone.

  “If the Radisha really traded away half her power so she could keep her position that means the priests are really in charge. I don’t see them, no matter how much they fear us or hate Blade, ever saddling themselves with another real army. The cost and the threat to their power…”

  I had heard it all before. The priests would not let the Radisha come after us.

  I did not believe it. He was whistling in the dark. But I was a ghostwalker. I could go anywhere and see anything. I had to work harder to mislead myself.

  “You’re wrong, Longo,” I said. “We’ll have company here eventually. Probably way sooner than any of us would like.” I even had the Old Man’s attention, suddenly.

  “I had a dream.” Most everyone knew that I had visions. The mechanics and reliability remained my secret. To avoid troubling people who might worry about me, I blamed it all on the kinds of seizures I had been having since the siege.

  Lady clucked her tongue, an irksome habit she did not know she had acquired. She and Croaker were turning into everybody’s grandparents. The inner circle needed young blood bad. She asked, “Could you tell us about your dream, Murgen? Or do we have to wait for the book?” She was annoyed with me because I had begun making new revisions to her volume of the Annals. Some of our latest class of enlistees had been around back then. Not all of them recalled events the same as she did.

  “The high point, like the boss said, is that our old pal Mogaba isn’t unemployed anymore.”

  A general susurrus. Had they thought that the Old Man was joking?

  “I don’t get much from my dreams. I have no control over them. I get knocked back in time sometimes but I can’t go whenever I want to find out why something happened after we find out that it did happen. I have to wait for news from our friends on the scene just like everybody else.” We do have friends up north who supply us with reliable intelligence. I check up on them whenever I can.

  We did not use Smoke much anymore. He wanted to wake up. He was not really in a coma now, anyway. Lady had to struggle to make him useful. She took advantage of the resulting opportunities herself.

  I continued, “But Soulcatcher must have been in touch with Mogaba at some point. She recommended him to the Radisha. Bet you the Woman took him on mostly because she didn’t want to get Catcher pissed off at her. Mogaba’s already promising the priests that he’ll catch Blade and Lady for them.” There had been huge bounties on those two from the moment the Radisha turned on the Company.

  Mogaba never let failure dent his confidence.

  Blade volunteered, “I could go hit them back first. It would be fun to pick them off and watch the live ones squirm…”

  “No.” Croaker was in no mood for flights of fancy. “I know who’d pick off who if you went dancing with Mogaba. Sindawe. Talk to me about this.”

  “I’m hearing this for the first time. I need to think about it, Captain.”

  “Think out loud.”

  “Mogaba is alone.” By which Sindawe meant that Mogaba had no Nar adherents anymore. Those who had gone with him when he left the Company were dead. “His sanity will be more strained than ever. He may become obsessed with destroying you, personally, because you took away his birthright.”

  Croaker grunted, unsurprised. “Murgen. How long before he can get into our hair? It took four years for us to get where we could make it here still in good enough shape to starve. And we wouldn’t be as happy as we are now if the Radisha had fooled us and stayed faithful. We didn’t lose as many men fighting as I expected and a lot fewer to disease.”

  He let slide the fact that we had come during the off season, when, normally, moving an army is next to impossible.

  “Speaking of numbers,” Bucket said. “That last bunch who wanted to go home are long gone.”

  Lady stated the obvious. “Mogaba won’t have to train the way we did. He can round up men we’ve already trained for him.”

  The Old Man asked me, “What does the Radisha want from Mogaba?”

  “The priests think he should just maintain control of the territories we overran. Some of them are real excited about their chances to make a killing down there. But the Woman just wants to keep us south of the mountains.” I chuckled. “His job will be the same as it was when he worked for Longshadow. Only he’ll plug the bottle from the other end.”

  “Mogaba will come someday,” Isi observed. “As Sindawe said.”

  Croaker grunted again.

  Bucket said, “If he don’t bring half a shitload of timber, kites, and tons of bamboo, and comes in the summer…”

  Longo cracked, “He could have peasants carry his supplies up, then eat the peasants.”

  Sindawe, Ochiba and Isi glared.

  Croaker said, “Stick to business. There’re changes happening in Taglios. Thanks to Murgen’s spells we know about some of them.”

  Everybody waited for him to say something more. He did not. Finally, Lady remarked, “Soulcatcher is still a problem.”

  Definitely. She had not responded to Lady’s barrage. Yet. I was not supposed to look for her but I did know she was still around. She was shielding herself with illusions and moving a lot. I had every confidence that she had lost no interest in causing us misery.

  No one ever mentioned the child. I knew she had survived and had been rescued, not by the Kina to whom she wept her appeals but by Catcher, to the accompaniment of merry taunts. Lady and Croaker had hardened their hearts. Which was understandable. They had had scarcely more contact with her than some unknown child born the same day at the far end of the world.

  I would not say anything. I was supposed to avoid Catcher until I received specific orders otherwise. The Old Man’s tolerance for my improvisations had been exhausted.

  Sleepy’s loss remained unforgiven.

  Croaker asked, “What about your mother-in-law, Murgen? What about Goblin and One-Eye?”

  What could I say? “They’re still missing.” That could not be blamed on me. Not yet. He might find a way.

  Our last contact with any of them had come when some of Goblin’s rangers had arrived with the Prahbrindrah Drah in manacles, Lisa Bowalk snarling in a cage on a cart, and no word at all about what Goblin was doing or why he was doing it. I did not think his desertion was part of the Old Man’s master plan. I refused to believe that Croaker could plan that far ahead. The pasty-faced little wizard was out there somewhere,
playing out his own scheme.

  I did not get many chances to look for him anymore. The dreams did not come as often now. If they did I visited Sarie first. Sarie and my son, that absolutely beautiful drooling lump she nicknamed Tobo because she did not want to pick a real name without me there to talk it over and find out face-to-face what his name would be and why.

  She was determined to join me, though by now even the most remote parts of the swamp had heard about the falling-out between the Radisha and the Black Company. That would put Sahra at greater risk if she left the temple. Almost all the Nyueng Bao who had left their swamps in recent times have been associated with the Company somehow.

  Sarie’s keepers were alert. They expected her to try something now she was no longer the size of a small house. Clever woman, she was using guerrilla tactics while she regained her strength. Every day in every way she made the priestly population more miserable. That was easy. She just imitated her mother. When the time came they would, probably, lack enthusiasm for the task of her recapture.

  Croaker stared at Lady. He was waiting for her to say something else about her sister. The others did the same. Catcher weighed on all our minds. Her luck never stopped running strong. Her grudge list kept getting longer. Though there was no way we could hurt our cause any more. She could not do worse than kill us, could she?

  Hell, we all take on a death sentence when we join the Company.

  Lady said, “Several soldiers have gone missing the last couple of nights. Some probably deserted. But not all of them.” She waved. Isi and Ochiba, already cued, brought a bundle to the front of the crowd. They dropped it on the dirt floor.

  I did not remind the Old Man that we could enjoy real floors and real furniture if he would just move into Overlook.

  Lady said, “This may be a little ripe.”

  Oh-oh.

  Isi and Ochiba spun the dead man out of his wrappings. He did not stink as bad as I expected. He was shriveled like an old mummy. His mouth was open in a scream that would never end. He seemed to have suffered a lot of bruises before he died.