Bleak Seasons

by Glen Cook

  What the devil?

  There was a big piece of slate in One-Eye’s office. Upon it, in Forsberger, were chalked what appeared to be production targets. Fifty thousand bottles. Three million arrows. Five hundred thousand javelins. Ten thousand cavalry lances. Ten thousand sabers. Eight thousand saddles. One hundred fifty thousand infantry short swords.

  Some of those numbers were absurd and there was no way any could be reached by One-Eye’s arsenal alone. But production took place all over the Taglian territories, most often in one-man blacksmith shops. One-Eye’s main job was to keep track. Which looked to me a lot like letting the fox do bedcheck at the chicken house.

  The list also included animals and wagons and lumber by the hundred barge loads, much of which I did understand. But five thousand box kites, ready for assembly, twelve feet by three feet? Each with one thousand feet of string? One hundred thousand yards of silk in bolts six feet tall?

  He was not going to get that one.

  I went roving to see what else was being readied for Mogaba and his friends.

  I saw training camps where commando teams prepared for every imaginable terrain and mission. Down south, Lady pursued her own programs, creating forces prepared to operate offensively on the sorcerous battlefield.

  She had scoured the Taglian territories for every person possessed of even the slightest magical talent and had schooled them just enough to make them useful in a program I could not fathom no matter how I poked at it. As Longshadow had noted, she was stripping the Taglian territories of bamboo. That got cut into several standard lengths and had red-hot rods run through to burn out the joints. Lady had the resulting tubes packed with little spongy colored marbles created by her squads of hedge wizards.

  Another game of baffle the Shadowmaster? Half of what we were doing was smoke and mirrors meant to confuse the opposition and make them waste resources or commit them in the wrong places. But I was more confused than Longshadow could possibly be.

  Lady slept less than did the Captain. Croaker seldom slept more than five hours a night. If sheer drive could conquer Mogaba and the Shadowmaster we were surefire winners.

  Both Lady and the Old Man hide so much inside themselves that even after all these years I have no sure grasp of how they think. They share a strong love but seldom demonstrate it.

  They want to recover their daughter and avenge themselves upon the Deceivers but never speak of the child publicly. Croaker is determined to lead the Company back to mysterious Khatovar, to unearth its origins, but does not talk about that at all anymore.

  On the surface it would seem those two live only for the war.

  I drifted back to One-Eye’s factory. I was reluctant to leave Smoke. I knew if I delayed much longer I would return to find my body exhausted, starved, and extremely thirsty. The smart way to use Smoke was to take short journeys mixed with lots of times out for snacks and drinks. But that was hard to recall out there, especially when there was so much pain waiting back in my own slice of reality.

  This time I discovered a room I had overlooked earlier. In it Vehdna workers moved lazily amongst a dozen ceramic tubs. Some carried buckets from which they scooped fluid into the tubs a cup at a time. The fluid came from a vat a man kept stirring when he was not adding water or some white powder.

  I saw little remarkable about those tubs. The solution got added at one end. At the other end fluid trickled down a glass tube into a large earthenware jug. Once filled each jug got stopped and carried carefully to storage on shelves well out of the way. Unlike wines, they were shelved upright. Curiously, the lamps in the room burned unusually bright.

  I studied one tub, noted that small bubbles kept rising at the end where the workers added the fluid. At the far end, well below the surface, were dozens of short rods caked with a silvery white substance. On the floor of the tub were several handleless glass cups. Using ceramic tools a gloved worker moved a cup under a rod, scraped stuff off into the cup. Once that settled he used wooden tongs to lift the cup from the tub. He carried it with considerable care but, nevertheless, managed to stumble.

  The stuff off the rod blazed fiercely when exposed to the air.

  I had to get back to my flesh. I had to eat. Soon enough I would have to pack because real soon all of us would be headed south. The war’s next stage was gathering momentum.

  91

  Otto and Hagop were back, after innumerable frustrating delays on the last river leg, which should have been the easiest part of their journey. They were concealed in the same Shadar waterfront warehouse that I had used to hold the captives from the Grove of Doom. One-Eye collected me from my quarters. He and I and my brown shadow headed for the river. The Old Man beat us there. He could drop everything when he really wanted. “You all right, Murgen?”

  “I’m handling it.”

  “He’s spending too much time with Smoke,” One-Eye said. “That don’t sound healthy. Would you look at these guys?” He meant Otto and Hagop, though the others of their expedition were confined to the warehouse, too, and were not enthusiastic about being kept away from their families. It had been almost three years.

  Neither Otto nor Hagop looked much different. I told Hagop, “I’d almost given up on you guys.” We shook hands. I shook with Otto, too. “I thought your luck finally ran out.”

  “We came close, Murgen. We used up a lot.”

  “So,” the Old Man said. “What took so long?”

  “Actually, there ain’t that much to tell.” Hagop looked at Croaker oddly, as though to make sure he was talking to the real Old Man. Croaker was in his Shadar disguise. “We went, we did what we could, we came back.” Like a fourteen-thousand-mile round trip was routine? In the Company we do not brag about the big stuff. “We didn’t do a lot of sightseeing.”

  While Hagop talked Otto made a circuit of the doors and windows. He asked, “We need to worry about spies?”

  “This is Taglios,” Croaker replied. By which he meant that everyone is always watching everyone else, looking for an edge.

  “We figured you guys would have then all squared away by now.”

  “That’s a lot of squaring. Shadowlander spies, yeah, they aren’t a problem. Lady and Goblin and One-Eye took care of them.”

  I said, “We still have the priesthoods.”

  “And we’ve had a little Deceiver trouble lately.”

  Something in my face warned Hagop against pursuing that. Not now. “How goes the war, then?”

  “Slowly,” Croaker told him. “We can talk about that later. You do us any good up there?”

  “Not much, to be honest.”

  “Damn!”

  “We did get a bunch of stuff for the Annals. Murgen, you might want to work it in. It’s stuff about what other people were doing that will help make better sense of what we did. I figure you could work it in between stuff that Croaker wrote. That way them that comes after us can see both sides. Huhm?”

  “Maybe you ought to take over.” Sourly.

  “Learn me how to read and write. I’m too old for this other shit.”

  “Might do that,” I glanced at Croaker. “Long as you don’t edit me.”

  The Old Man grinned.

  Hagop chuckled. “The gods forfend, Murgen. Not me. Hey. I found out all about what happened after we left up there, too. You wouldn’t believe the excitement. The Limper came back one more time. Don’t worry. It’s all settled now. The empire is boring these days.”

  “Sounds like I wish I was back home.”

  Croaker asked, “Did you actually get into the Tower?”

  “We spent six months there. Mainly getting the runaround at first.”

  “And?”

  “We finally convinced them that Lady was getting her powers back. They got cooperative then. Folks in the Tower these days like not having her around.”

  “Gee. That’ll break her heart,” I said.

  Hagop grinned. “Yeah. They won’t send us any help. Say they don’t want to make any new enemies. I think
it’s mostly because they don’t want Lady getting nostalgic for her good old days and heading back north.”

  Croaker said, “We figured that. There’s nothing in this for them but keeping Lady away. What did you get?”

  “They opened their records. Lent us translators. Even opened graves when we asked.”

  “They would have an interest in who was buried there themselves.”

  “Damned if they didn’t. They had to change their linens after we told them who all turned up alive down here. See, they had a major scare when the Limper came back and damned near took them apart.”

  I said, “That guy had a bigger boner for us than Soulcatcher does.” No way did we need to add the Limper to our list of enemies. “What about my turnip seeds?”

  Hagop said, “They made sure of Limper this time. Absolutely sure. I got your seeds. Turnips and parsnips and even some seed potatoes if they haven’t spoiled.”

  Croaker said, “They would make sure of Limper.” He watched Otto prowl. Otto was restless, uncomfortable. “So they let you poke around and even gave you some help with it. What did you learn?” That had been the point. To see if they knew anything way up north that we could use here.

  “Not much. It don’t seem likely that Longshadow was ever one of the Taken.”

  I was confident of that. I was sure he would have betrayed himself to Howler by now if they had been allies in the past. “Those potatoes. Did you get the little kind like I...”

  Hagop glowered at me, told the Old Man, “There is the remotest chance that he could be the Faceless Man, Moonbiter, or Nightcrawler although everybody up there was sure those three really did bite the dust. It was just that we couldn’t come up with any bodies.”

  “How about one of the later Taken?” Croaker mused.

  “Five actually survived. Journey, Whisper, Blister, Creeper and Learned. But Lady stripped all five of their powers. In front of witnesses.”

  “But Lady has been getting her powers back,” I argued.

  “A point. On the other hand, we know the exact day when the Shadowmasters appeared. Even the hour, I gather. All the later Taken were still in business up north. In fact, most of them weren’t even Taken yet.”

  I traded glances with the Old Man. He began pacing. He said, “When Soulcatcher held me captive she told me one of the Shadowmasters who died at Dejagore wasn’t ever one of the Taken.”

  I added, “Neither was Shadowspinner.”

  Hagop said, “All they could tell us, really, was that they didn’t have a clue if Longshadow used to be one of the old mob. The written record supported them.”

  Croaker kept pacing, narrowly avoided a collision with Otto, but stayed well away from the cluster of unhappy Taglians awaiting his blessing upon their desires to go home. After all this time could they recognize him through his Shadar disguise? Probably.

  I was sure he was thinking that this war with the Shadowmasters was no ordinary struggle, that the stakes went far beyond simple survival. He said, “We’ve taken three of the bastards down. But Longshadow is the worst. He is the craziest. He’s working on Overlook day and night...”

  “Still?”

  “Still. The poor idiot is a living testimonial to the fact that everything takes longer and costs more. Even magic can’t get you around that. But he’s a lot closer to being finished than he was when you left. And if he does get done before we get him we can bend over and kiss our butts goodbye. It’ll be the end of the world. His plan is to pull his hole in behind him and loose the dogs of hell then come out later and collect up the pieces of whatever is left.”

  I grumbled, “I’ve heard this one before.” I never took it entirely serious despite the characters involved. But it did sound like Croaker believed Longshadow was capable of doing it. Maybe his adventures with Smoke had shown him something I had missed so far.

  So the end of the world was imminent, either at the hands of Kina and her Deceivers or at those of Longshadow. Either way, only the Black Company could prevent the tragedy.

  Yeah. Sure.

  I wanted to tell Croaker, old buddy, we’re only the Black Company. We’re just a gang of misfits who can’t make it in life except as hired swords. Sure, we got ourselves into an asskicking contest with some bizarro creeps now but there ain’t nobody going to care in a hundred years. We are entangled in an affair of honor because of promises we made and stuff like the Stranglers snatching your kid. But don’t try to sell anybody on saving the world.

  I was scared the Old Man might be developing a case of the big head, like Longshadow, Mogaba, the Howler, Kina, all the devils of our time. One of the Annalist’s duties is to remind the Captain that he is not a demigod. But I was out of practice. Hell, I could not deflate Uncle Doj when he got going.

  “I need an edge, Hagop,” Croaker said. “I need it bad. Tell me you found something. Anything.”

  “I found Murgen’s turnip seeds.”

  “Damnit...”

  “The best suggestion they had was that we might try to trace the survivors of the Circle of Eighteen.” Well. That was interesting.

  Croaker stopped pacing. He looked at me as though I might be able to tell him something. I saw his focus fade. He was remembering the Battle at Charm.

  The Circle of Eighteen raised huge rebel armies to pull Lady down. The culminating battle at Charm had been the bloodiest in recorded history.

  The Circle did not win.

  Croaker said, “We killed Harden and Raker. Lady turned Whisper to Taken. That accounts for three.”

  “A lot more just got lost when we whipped them,” I observed. My “we” drew smiles from Otto, Hagop and the Old Man. I was maybe twelve at the time and had not yet even heard of the Black Company.

  Hagop said, “We were too damned thorough back then, boss. We went out looking for and flat could not find any Rebel veterans to interrogate. We couldn’t even find names for seven of the Eighteen. But there were people at the Tower who were junior officers then who claimed they had witnessed the deaths of all of the Eighteen except one called Trinket, those who became Taken, and one of the ones whose names we couldn’t find out.”

  “Trinket.” Croaker resumed pacing. He mused, “I remember Trinket. But just the name. We were at the Stair of Tear. We got word that Trinket was surrounded. In the east. We were busy with Harden. I don’t know if I even mentioned it in the Annals.”

  Ha! A chance to show off. “You did. One sentence. That’s it, though. You said Whisper had taken Rust and Trinket was surrounded.”

  “Whisper. Yes. She’d been Taken only a little while.” He had been there to help set up the Taking. “That’s one for Lady. She would know if there was anything between those two.”

  “Trinket was female,” Hagop told us. “What’s Longshadow?”

  Croaker frowned.

  I said, “He never gets all the way naked but I’m pretty sure Longshadow is a he. Physically.”

  The Old Man offered me a daggers look. Damn! But the Taglians were way off in a corner sulking. None of them caught my slip. Hagop was not on the list of three, either, though. I hastened to amend myself. “But Smoke is the only one who ever saw him in the flesh. And he ain’t talking.”

  “He still alive?” Hagop asked.

  “Barely,” Croaker said. “We keep him alive. Men have come back from comas before. That’s it, Hagop? All that time and travel. That’s all you got me?”

  “That’s the way she goes sometimes, boss.” He grinned. “Oh. I almost forgot. They did give me a coffin full of papers and stuff that night have belonged to some of the people who maybe could have turned into Longshadow if he was ever one of the Eighteen. The stuff is all packaged and labeled in case some wizard decides he wants to use them.”

  Croaker’s face lit up like a bonfire. “You shithead.” Grinning, he yelled, “Otto, send them guys home, why don’t you? Bonharj, the rest of you, what the hell are you doing hanging around here? Your people want to see you.” He told me, “Guess we ought to ship that s
tuff down to Lady. She’ll know what to do with it.”

  Otto hustled the Taglians out of the warehouse. They seemed baffled by the Liberator’s sudden generosity. Me too.

  Hagop said, “Now how about you guys telling what’s been happening?”

  I said, “A whole lot. But nothing big and dramatic. We keep nibbling them to death.”

  “Is Mogaba really the head honcho of Longshadow’s army?”

  “Absolutely. He’s one kickass sonofabitch, too, only Longshadow won’t let him run loose. He has to mess with us secondhand, mostly, letting Blade do his dirty work.”

  “Huh? Blade? Like in Blade of Blade and Mather and Swan?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” I glanced at the Old Man, whose expression had gone stony. “Yeah. Blade defected while you were gone.”

  “Let’s get back to the Palace, Murgen,” Croaker said. “We have work to do.”

  92

  Croaker did not say much as we walked, though he did snarl at people who dared stare at the Shadar and his white-devil companion. We northerners are so few that even after years few of the commoners have yet seen any of us. And, of course, we have done very little to dispel our evil reputation.

  Some intellectuals inside the priesthoods have argued that the friendship of today’s Black Company is as deadly to Taglios as was the enmity of its remote forbears.

  Their complaint may have merit.

  We were coming up to the Palace. Croaker kept grumbling to himself, mostly because so little had come of the expedition. That had been his pet and his expectations had run away with him. He asked, “How long are your in-laws going to hang around?”

  I was not going to make him happy. “For the duration. They want their slice of Narayan Singh.” The Old Man still distrusted Uncle Doj.

  “They know about Smoke?”

  “Of course not! Damnit...!”

  “Keep it that way. You find his library again yet?”

  I had mentioned having stumbled onto that. “Not yet.” Fact was, I had made no more than a token effort. I had too much else on my mind.

  “Try a little harder.” He knew. “Don’t spend so much time with Smoke. And I think it might be useful to look at those old Annals before we head south.”