Chronicles of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  They quick got as nervous as me. “You sure it’s him?” Elmo asked.

  “No. Not yet. I got the hell out of there the minute I heard the name Raven. Let Bullock think he’s an old enemy I want to stick a knife in. He’s going to ask around for me while he’s doing his own business. Get me a description. See if Darling is with him. I’m probably off in the wild blue yonder, but I wanted you guys to know. In case.”

  “What if it is him?” Elmo said. “What do we do then?”

  “I don’t know. It could be big trouble. If Whisper had some reason to get interested, like because he hangs around with the Rebel refugees here. … Well, you know.”

  Goblin mused, “Seems Silent said Raven was going to run so far nobody would ever find him again.”

  “So maybe he thought he’d run far enough. This is damned near the end of the world.” Which, in part, was why I was so nervous. This was the kind of place I could picture Raven having gone to ground. As far from the Lady as you could get without learning to walk on water.

  “Seems to me,” Elmo said, “we ought to make sure before we panic. Then decide what to do. This might be the time to put our guys into the Buskin.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. I already got a plan in front of Whisper, for something else. Let’s tell her we’re going with that, and have the guys watch for Raven.”

  “Who?” Elmo asked. “Raven would recognize anybody who knows him.”

  “Not true. Use guys who joined up at Charm, Send Pawnbroker just to make sure. He’s not likely to remember the new guys. There were so many of them. If you want somebody reliable to run the thing, and back them up, use Goblin, Park him where he can stay out of sight but keep his hands on the reins.”

  “What do you think, Goblin?” he asked.

  Goblin smiled nervously. “Give me something to do, anyway. I’m going out of my skull up here. These people are weird.”

  Elmo chuckled. “Missing One-Eye?”

  “Almost.”

  “All right,” I said. “You’ll need a guide. That’ll have to be me. I don’t want Bullock getting his nose any deeper into this. But they think I’m one of his men down there. You’ll have to follow me from a distance. And try not to look like what you are. Don’t make it hard on yourselves.”

  Elmo stretched. “I’ll get Kingpin and Pawnbroker now. You take them down and show them a place. One can come back for the others. Go ahead and scope it out with Goblin.” He left.

  And so it went. Goblin and the six soldiers took rooms not far from the moneylender Krage’s headquarters. Up on the hill I pretended it was all for the cause.

  I waited.

  Juniper: Travel Plans

  Shed caught Asa trying to sneak out. “What the hell is this?”

  “I need to get out, Shed. I’m going crazy up there.”

  “Yeah? You want to know something, Asa? The Inquisitors are looking for you. Bullock himself was in here the other day, and he asked for you by name.” Shed was stretching the facts slightly. Bullock’s interest had not been intense. But it had to have something to do with the Catacombs. Bullock and his sidekick were in the Buskin almost every day, asking, asking, asking questions. He didn’t need Asa meeting Bullock face-to-face. Asa would either panic or crumble under questioning. Either way, Marron Shed would get into the heat damned fast. “Asa, if they catch you, we’re all dead.”

  “Why?”

  “You were spending those old coins. They’re looking for somebody with a lot of old money.”

  “Damn that Raven!”

  “What?”

  “He gave me the passage money. As my share. I’m rich. And now you tell me I can’t spend it without getting grabbed.”

  “He probably figured you’d hold off till the excitement died down. He’d be gone by then.”

  “Gone?”

  “He’s leaving as soon as the harbor opens.”

  “Where’s he headed?”

  “South somewhere. He won’t talk about it.”

  “So what do I do? Keep scrambling for a living? Damn it, Shed, that’s not fair.”

  “Look on the bright side, Asa. Nobody wants to kill you anymore.”

  “So? Now Bullock is after me. Maybe I could have made a deal with Krage. Bullock don’t deal. It ain’t fair! All my life. …”

  Shed did not listen. He sang the same song all too often.

  “What can I do, Shed?”

  “I don’t know. Stay holed up, I guess.” He had a glimmer of a notion. “How about you get out of Juniper for a while?”

  “Yeah. You might have something. That money would spend just fine somewhere else, wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve never traveled.”

  “Get Raven up here when he shows up.”

  “Asa. …”

  “Hey, Shed, come on. It won’t hurt to ask. All he can do is say no.”

  “Whatever you want, Asa. I hate to see you go.”

  “Sure you do, Shed. Sure you do.” As Shed ducked out the doorway, Asa called, “Wait a second.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh. … It’s kind of hard. I never did thank you.”

  “Thank me for what?”

  “You saved my life. You brought me back, didn’t you?”

  Shed shrugged, nodded. “No big thing, Asa.”

  “Sure it is, Shed. And I’ll remember it. I owe you the big one.”

  Shed went downstairs before he could be embarrassed further. He discovered that Raven had returned. The man was in one of his animated discussions with Darling. Arguing again. They had to be lovers. Damn it all. He waited till Raven noticed him watching. “Asa wants to see you. I think he wants to go with you when you leave.”

  Raven chuckled. “That would solve your problem, wouldn’t it?”

  Shed did not deny that he would be more comfortable with Asa out of Juniper, “What do you think?”

  “Not a bad idea, actually. Asa isn’t much, but I need men. I have a hold on him. And him being gone would help cover my backtrail.”

  “Take him with my blessing.”

  Raven started upstairs. Shed said, “Wait.” He didn’t know how to approach this, because he didn’t know if it was important. But he’d better tell Raven. “Bullock’s been hanging around the Buskin a lot lately. Him and a sidekick.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe he’s closer than we think. For one thing, he was in here looking for Asa. For another, he’s been asking about you.”

  Raven’s face went empty. “About me? How so?”

  “On the quiet. My cousin Wally’s wife Sal? Her brother is married to one of Bullock’s cousins. Anyway, Bullock still knows people down here, from before he got on the Custodians. He helps them out sometimes, so some of them tell him things he wants to know. …”

  “I get the picture. Get to the point.”

  “Bullock was asking about you. Who you are, where you come from, who your friends are—things like that.”

  “Why?”

  Shed could only shrug.

  “All right. Thanks. I’ll check it out.”

  Juniper: Blowing Smoke

  Goblin stood across the street, leaning against a building, staring intently. I frowned angrily. What the hell was he doing on the street? Bullock might recognize him and realize we were playing games.

  Obviously, he wanted to tell me something.

  Bullock was about to enter another of countless dives. I told him, “Got to see a man about a horse in the alley.”

  “Yeah.” He went inside. I slipped into the alley and made water. Goblin joined me there. “What is it?” I asked.

  “What it is, Croaker, is it’s him. Raven. Our Raven. Not only him, but Darling. She’s a barmaid in a place called the Iron Lily.”

  “Holy shit,” I murmured.

  “Raven lives there. They’re doing a show like they don’t know each other that well. But Raven looks out for her.”

  “Damnit! It had to be, didn’t it? What do we do now?”
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  “Maybe bend over and kiss our asses good-bye. The bastard could be smack in the middle of the body-selling racket. Everything we found could add up that way.”

  “How come you could find that when Bullock couldn’t?”

  “I got resources Bullock doesn’t.”

  I nodded. He did. Sometimes it’s handy, having a wizard around. Sometimes it’s not, if it’s one of those bitches up in Duretile. “Hurry it up,” I said. “He’ll wonder where I am.”

  “Raven has his own wagon and team. Keeps it way across town. Usually only takes it out late at night.” I nodded. We’d already determined that body-runners worked the night shift. “But. …” he said, “and you’re going to love this but, Croaker. He took it out in the daytime, once, a while back. Coincidentally, the day somebody hit the Catacombs.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “I looked that wagon over, Croaker. There was blood in it. Fairly fresh. I date it about when that moneylender and his pals disappeared.”

  “Oh boy. Shit. We’re in for it now. Better get. Going to have to think of a story for Bullock now.”

  “Later.”

  “Yeah.”

  At that moment I was ready to give up. Despair overwhelmed me. That damned fool Raven—I knew exactly what he was doing. Getting together a fat bunch of running money by selling bodies and plundering graves. His conscience wouldn’t bother him. In his part of the world, such things were of much less consequence. And he had a cause: Darling.

  I couldn’t get away from Bullock. I wanted desperately to run to Elmo, but I had to trudge hither and yon asking questions.

  I looked up the northern slope, at the black castle, and thought of it as the fortress Raven had built.

  I was going off the deep end. I told myself that. The evidence wasn’t yet conclusive … but it was. Enough. My employers did not wait on legal niceties or absolute evidence.

  Elmo was rattled, too. “We could kill him. No risk him giving anything away then.”

  “Really, Elmo!”

  “I didn’t mean it. But you know I’d do it if the choice got narrow enough.”

  “Yeah.” We all would. Or we’d try. Raven might not let us. He was the toughest son-of-a-bitch I’d ever known. “If you ask me, we ought to find him and just tell him to get the hell out of luniper.”

  Elmo gave me a disgusted look. “Haven’t you been paying attention? Right now the only way in or out is the one we took. The harbor is frozen. The passes are snowed in. You think we could get Whisper to fly some civilian out for us?”

  “Civilians. Goblin says Darling is still with him.”

  Elmo looked thoughtful. I started to say something else. He waved a hand for silence. I waited. He finally asked, “What would he do if he saw you? If he’s been hanging around with the Crater bunch?”

  I clicked my tongue. “Yeah. I didn’t think of that. Let me go check something.”

  I hunted Bullock up. “You or the Duke got somebody inside the Crater bunch?”

  He looked puzzled. “Maybe? Why?”

  “Let’s have a sit-down with them. An idea. It might help us break our thing here.”

  He looked at me a long moment. Maybe he was sharper than he pretended. “All right. Not that they would’ve learned much. The only reason they haven’t run our guys off is we don’t bother them. They just get together and talk about the old days. They don’t have any fight left.”

  “Let’s give it a look anyway. Maybe they’re less innocent than they look.”

  “Give me a half-hour.”

  I did. And when that time was up, he and I sat down with two secret policemen. He and I took turns asking questions, each coming from his own private slant.

  Neither knew Raven, at least not by that name. That was a relief. But there was something there, and Bullock sensed it immediately. He hung on till he had something to chew.

  “I’m going to my boss,” I told him. “She’ll want to know about this.” I had come up with a diversion. It seemed it would suit Bullock.

  He said, “I’ll take it up with Hargadon. Didn’t occur to me this might be foreigners. Political. That could be why the money didn’t show up. Maybe they’re selling bodies, too.”

  “Rebellions do take money,” I observed.

  We moved next evening, at Whisper’s insistence, over the objections of the Duke, but with the support of the chief Custodian. The Duke still did not want us seen. The Custodians didn’t give a damn. They just wanted to salvage their reputation.

  Elmo came slinking through the evening shadows. “Ready here?” he whispered.

  I glanced at the four men with me. “Ready.” Every Company man in Juniper was there, with the Duke’s secret police and a dozen of Bullock’s men. I’d thought his job silly, but even so had been astonished to discover how few men his office actually employed. All but one were there. The one was legitimately sick.

  Elmo made a sound like a cow mooing, repeated three times.

  The one-time Rebels were all together for their regular confab. I snickered, thinking of the surprise they were going to get. They thought they were safe from the Lady by fifteen hundred miles and seven years.

  It took less than a minute. No one was injured. They just looked at us dumbly, arms hanging slack. Then one even recognized us, and groaned, “The Black Company. In Juniper.”

  Then another: “It’s over. It’s the end. She’s really won.”

  They didn’t seem to care much. Some, in fact, looked relieved.

  We pulled it off so smoothly there was hardly any notice from the neighbors. The slickest raid I’d ever seen. We marched them up to Duretile, and Whisper and Feather went to work.

  I just hoped one of them wouldn’t know too much.

  I’d made a long bet, hoping Raven would not have told them who Darling was. If he had, I’d pulled the roof down instead of misdirecting attention.

  I did not hear from Whisper, so I guessed I’d won.

  Juniper: Fear

  Raven slammed through the door of the Lily. Shed looked up, startled. Raven leaned against the door frame, panting. He looked like he’d just stared his death in the face. Shed put his rag aside and hurried over, a stoneware bottle in hand.

  “What happened?”

  Raven stared over his shoulder, at Darling, who was waiting on Shed’s lone paying customer. He shook his head, took several deep breaths, shuddered.

  He was scared! By all that was holy, the man was terrified! Shed was aghast. What could have gotten him into this state? Even the black castle did not shake him.

  “Raven. Come over here and sit.” He took Raven’s arm. The man followed docilely. Shed caught Darling’s eye, signed for two mugs and another stoneware bottle.

  Darling took one look at Raven and forgot her customer. She was there with mugs and bottle in seconds, her fingers flashing at Raven.

  Raven did not see.

  “Raven!” Shed said in a sharp whisper. “Snap out of it, man! What the hell happened?”

  Raven’s eyes focused. He looked at Shed, at Darling, at the wine. He tossed off a mug in one gulp, slapped it down. Darling poured again.

  Her customer protested at being abandoned.

  “Get it yourself,” Shed told him.

  The man became abusive.

  “Go to hell, then,” Shed said. “Raven, talk. Are we in trouble?”

  “Uh No. Not we, Shed. Me.” He shuddered like a dog coming out of water, faced Darling. His fingers started talking.

  Shed caught most of it.

  Raven told her to pack. They had to run again.

  Darling wanted to know why.

  Because they’ve found us, Raven told her.

  Who? Darling asked.

  The Company. They’re here. In Juniper.

  Darling did not seem distressed. She denied the possibility.

  The Company? Shed thought. What the hell was this?

  They are here, Raven insisted. I went to the meeting. I was late. Lucky. I got there after it started.
The Duke’s men. The Custodians. And the Company. I saw Croaker and Elmo and Goblin. I heard them call each other by name. I heard them mention Whisper and Feather. The Company is in Juniper, and the Taken are with them. We have to go.

  Shed had no idea what in hell this was about. Who were these people? Why was Raven scared? “How you going to run anywhere, Raven? You can’t get out of town. The harbor’s still frozen.”

  Raven looked at him as if he were a heretic.

  “Settle down, Raven. Use your head. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I can tell you this. Right now you’re acting more like Marron Shed than like Raven. Old Shed is the guy who panics. Remember?”

  Raven managed a feeble grin. “You’re right. Yeah. Raven uses his brain.” He snickered sourly. “Thanks, Shed.”

  “What happened?”

  “Let’s just say the past came back. A past I didn’t expect to see again. Tell me about this sidekick you said Bullock’s been pulling around lately. Word I’ve heard, Bullock is a loner.”

  Shed described the man, though he could not recall him well. His attention had been on Bullock. Darling positioned herself so she could read his lips. She formed a word with hers.

  Raven nodded. “Croaker.”

  Shed shivered. The name sounded sinister when Raven translated it. “He some kind of hired killer?”

  Raven laughed softly. “No. Actually, he’s a physician. Halfway competent, too. But he has other talents. Like being crafty enough to come around looking for me in Bullock’s shadow. Who would pay attention to him? They’d be too worried about the damned Inquisitor.”

  Darling flashed signs. She went too fast for Shed, but he thought she was admonishing Raven, telling him Croaker was his friend and would not be hunting him. It was coincidence that their paths had crossed.

  “Not coincidence at all,” Raven countered, both aloud and by sign. “If they aren’t hunting me, why are they in Juniper? Why are two of the Taken here?”

  Again Darling responded too fast for Shed to catch everything. She seemed to be arguing that if someone called the Lady had gotten to this Croaker or another someone called Silent, Croaker would not be here.