The Many Deaths of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  Uncle Doj had offered no promises to Narayan Singh.

  I wondered if Singh knew all that. Most of it, probably, though the subject never arose in his presence.

  I noted, also, that without plan or signal, my other companions had placed themselves so that we were surrounded by armed men. Only Swan seemed unsure of his role. “Settle and have some rice,” I told him.

  “I hate rice, Sleepy.”

  “We’re going places where there’ll be a little more variety. I hope. I’ve eaten rice till it’s coming out my ears, too.”

  Narayan opened the oilskins reverently, set them aside one by one, ready to be reused. The book he revealed was big and ugly but not much distinguished it from volumes I saw every day when I was Dorabee Dey Banerjae. Nothing branded it the most holy, most sacred text of the darkest cult in the world.

  Narayan opened it. The writing inside was completely inelegant, erratic, disorganized and sloppy. The Daughter of Night had begun inscribing it when she was four. As Narayan turned the pages I saw that the girl was a fast learner. Her hand improved rapidly. I saw, too, that she had written in the same script used to record the first volume of the Annals. Were both in the same language?

  Where was Master Santaraksita when I needed him?

  Out on the Naghir with Sahra and One-Eye. No doubt complaining about the accommodations and the lack of fine dining. Too bad, old man. I have the same problems here.

  “Satisfied that it’s genuine?” I asked.

  Narayan could not deny it.

  “So I’ve lived up to my half of the bargain. I have, in fact, made every effort to facilitate it. The game is back to you now.”

  “You have nothing to lose, Annalist. I still wonder how I would get away from here alive.”

  “I won’t do anything to keep you from leaving. If revenge is absolutely necessary, it’ll be that much sweeter down the road.” Narayan tried to read my true intentions. He was incapable of accepting anything at face value. “On the other hand, there’s no way you’ll go anywhere if you don’t produce the Key. And we’ll know if you try to pass off a substitute.” I looked at Doj.

  Narayan did the same. Then he settled into an attitude of prayer and sealed his eyes.

  Kina may have responded. The grove did turn icy cold. A sudden breeze brought a ghost of the odor from the place of the bones.

  Singh shuddered, opened his eyes. “I have to go into the temple. Alone.”

  “Wouldn’t be a back way out of there, would there?”

  Singh smiled softly. “Would it do me any good if there were?”

  “Not this time. Your only way out of here is not to be a Deceiver.”

  “So be it. There’ll be no Year of the Skulls if I don’t take a chance.”

  “Let him go,” I told Doj, who stood between Narayan and the temple. River and Runmust, I noted, now had bamboo in hand, in case the little man made a break.

  * * *

  “He’s been in there a long time,” River complained.

  “But he’s still there,” Doj assured us. “The Key must be well hidden.”

  Or not there anymore, I did not say. “What’re we looking at here?” I asked Doj. “I’m not clear on what this Key is. Is it another lance head?” The Lance of Passion had opened the plain to Croaker, then had ushered the Captured to their doom.

  “I’ve only heard it described. It’s a strangely shaped hammer. He’s about to come out.”

  Narayan appeared. He seemed changed, invigorated, frightened. Riverwalker gestured with his bamboo. Runmust raised his slowly. Singh knew what those poles could do. He had no chance if he tried to run now.

  He carried what looked like a cast-iron war hammer, old, rusty, and ugly, with the head all chipped and cracked. Narayan made it seem heavier than it looked.

  “Doj?” I asked. “What do you think?”

  “Fits the description, Annalist. Except for the head being all cracked.”

  Singh said, “I dropped it. It cracked when it hit the temple floor.”

  “Feel it, Doj. If there’s any power there, you ought to be able to tell.”

  Doj did as I said once Singh surrendered the hammer. The Nyueng Bao seemed startled by its weight. “This must be it, Annalist.”

  “Take your book and start running, Deceiver. Before temptation makes me forget my promises.”

  Narayan clutched the book but did not move. He stared at Suruvhija and the baby.

  Suruvhija was using a red silk scarf to dab spit-up off the infant’s chin.

  Fools! Idiots!

  54

  While we were getting ready to travel, one of Iqbal’s kids—the older boy—noticed a particularly deep flaw in the head of the hammer. The rest of us had been too busy congratulating ourselves and deciding what the Company would do once we brought the Captured forth from the plain. The boy got his father’s attention. Iqbal summoned Runmust and me.

  Being old folks, it took us a while to see what the boy meant. Us having bad eyes and all.

  “Looks like gold in there.”

  “That would explain the weight. Doj. Come here. You ever hear anything about this hammer being gold inside?”

  Iqbal began prying with a knife. A fragment of iron fell away.

  “No,” Doj said. “Don’t damage it any more.”

  “Everybody calm down. It’s still the Key. Doj, study it. Carefully. I don’t want all the years and all the crap we went through to go to waste now. What?” Weapons had begun to appear.

  “Look who’s here,” Swan said. “Where did those guys come from?”

  Slink and his band had arrived. I exchanged looks with Slink. He shrugged. “Gave us the slip.”

  “I’m not surprised. We screwed up here. He knew somebody was out there.” Suruvhija still had the red scarf draped over her shoulder. “Folks, we need to get traveling. We want to get across the bridge at Ghoja before the Protector starts looking for us.” From the beginning I had pretended that getting across that bridge would give us a running chance.

  I told Slink, “You guys did a great job at Semchi.”

  “Could’ve been better. If I’d thought about it, I’d’ve waited till they damaged the Bhodi Tree. Then we’d have been heroes instead of just bandits.”

  I shrugged. “Next time. Swan, tell that goat we’re going to eat it if it don’t start cooperating.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise we’ll get some real food when we get to Jaicur.”

  55

  Our crossing at Ghoja was another grand anticlimax.

  We all worked ourselves into a state of nerves before we reached the bottleneck. I sent Slink forward to scout and did not believe a word, emotionally, when he reported the only attention being paid anyone went to those few travelers who argued about paying a two-copper pais toll for use of the bridge. These tightwads were commended to the old ford downstream from the bridge. A ford that was impassable because this was the rainy season. Traffic was heavy. The soldiers assigned to watch the bridge were too busy loafing and playing cards to harass wayfarers.

  Some part of me was determined to expect the worst.

  Ghoja had grown into a small town serving those who traveled the Rock Road, which was one of the Black Company’s lasting legacies. The Captain had had the highway paved from Taglios to Jaicur during his preparations for invading the Shadowlands. Prisoners of war had provided the labor. More recently, Mogaba had used convicts to extend the road southwestward, adding tributaries, to connect the cities and territories newly taken under Taglian protection.

  Once we were safely over the Main, I began to ponder our next steps. I gathered everyone. “Is there any way we could forge a rescript ordering the garrison here to arrest Narayan if he crosses the bridge?”

  Doj told me, “You’re too optimistic. If he’s going south, he’s already ahead of us.”

  Swan added, “Not to mention that if he fell into the Protector’s hands, she’d find out everything he knows about you.”

&n
bsp; “The voice of an expert heard.”

  “I didn’t take the job voluntarily.”

  “All right. She could, yes. He knows where we’re headed. And why. And that we have the Key. But what does he know about the other bunch? If he doesn’t get caught, won’t he try to intercept them so he can do something about getting the Daughter of Night away from them?”

  No one found any cause to disagree.

  “I suggest we remind one another of that occasionally, so it gets said sometime when Murgen is around to hear it.” Sahra never promised to spare Narayan’s ragged old hide. Maybe she could ambush him and take back that unfinished first Book of the Dead.

  Swan pointed out, “That crow is still following us.”

  A small but lofty fortification overlooked the bridge and ford from the south bank. The bird was up top watching us. It had not moved since our crossing. Maybe it wanted to rest its bones, too.

  River whispered, “We still have one bamboo pole with crow-killing balls in it.”

  “Leave it alone. It doesn’t seem to mean any harm. For now, anyway.” I was sure it had tried to communicate several times. “We can take it out if anything changes.”

  * * *

  At Ghoja we heard nothing but the traditional grumbling about those in charge. Rumors concerning events in Taglios seemed so exaggerated that no one believed a tenth of anything they heard. Later, after we reached Jaicur and were taking it easy for a while, the temper of rumor began to change. It now carried a subtle vibration suggesting the great spider at the heart of the web had begun to stir. It would be a long time before any concrete news caught up but the general consensus was that we should get going right now and not dawdle along the way.

  Runmust discovered that a man answering Narayan’s description had been seen lurking in the vicinity of the shop operated by his now-pseudonymous offspring, Sugriva. “The man does have a weakness. Should we kill Sugriva while we’re here?”

  “He’s never done anything to us.”

  “His father did. It would be a reminder to him.”

  “He doesn’t need reminding. If Narayan is so dim that he thinks we’re done with him now, let him. Just let me be there to see the look on his face when we catch him again.”

  Narayan had stood out in Jaicur because the city was still very nearly a military encampment. People would remember us as well, if asked during the next few weeks.

  I roamed around looking for my childhood a few times but nothing that I remembered, people or places, good or evil, remained. That past survived nowhere but within my mind. Which was the one place I wished that it could die.

  56

  The practical rules of Company field operations resemble those obeyed by stage magicians. We would prefer our audience saw nothing at all but we do realize that invisibility is impractical. So we try to show the watcher something other than what he is looking for. Thus the goats and donkeys. And, south of Jaicur, all new looks and identities for everybody, with the enlarged party breaking up into two independently traveling “families,” plus a group of failed southern fortune-hunters dragging home in despair and defeat after having had their spirits crushed by the Taglian experience. There were quite a few men of the latter sort around. They had to be watched. Many were not above taking advantage of weaker parties if they thought they could manage it. The roads were not patrolled anymore. The Protector did not care if they were safe.

  Doj and Swan, Gota and I formed the advance party. We looked weak but that old man was worth four or five ordinary mortals. We had only one scrape. It was over in seconds. Several blood trails led off into the brush. Doj had chosen to leave no one dead.

  The land became less hospitable and rose steadily. In clear air it was possible to look ahead and catch the faintest glimpse of the peaks of the Dandha Presh, still many days’ journey south of us. The paved road ended alongside an abandoned work camp. “They must’ve run out of prisoners,” Swan observed. The camp had been stripped of everything portable.

  “What they ran out of is enemies Soulcatcher thought were worth an investment in a road. She could always find people she doesn’t like and use them up in an engineering project.” And she had done so on the western route, which was being followed by the rest of the Company. They would have paved footing all the way to Charandaprash. Their road, and the waterways serving it, had remained under construction until just a few years ago, when the Protector evidently decided the Kiaulune wars really were over, that it was not necessary to make life easy for the Great General and his men, and bullied the Radisha into no longer spending the money.

  I wondered what the Radisha’s perspective would be. I suspected she had believed she was in charge right up to the moment we disappeared her. Then she had begun getting an education, here amongst her faithful subjects.

  We reached Lake Tanji, which I love. The lake is a vast sprawl of icy indigo beauty. When I was a lot younger, we fought our deadliest encounter with the things that had given the Shadowmasters their names there. More than a decade later you could still see places where rock had melted. If you went exploring some of the narrow gulches scarring the hillsides, you could find clutches of human bones that had come back to the surface with time.

  “This is a place of dark memory,” Doj remarked. He had been here for that battle, too. And so had Gota, who had stopped complaining long enough to deal with her memories also.

  She really did have a lot of pain these days.

  The white crow streaked overhead. It dropped down the slope ahead, vanished into the ragged foliage of a tall mountain pine. We saw that bird almost every day now. There was no doubt it was following us. Swan swore that it had tried to strike up a conversation with him once when he was out in the brush relieving himself.

  When I asked what it wanted, he said, “Hey, I got the hell out of there, Sleepy. I’ve got problems enough. I don’t need to get known as a guy who gossips with birds, too.”

  “It might’ve had something interesting to say.”

  “Without a doubt. And if it really wants to tell somebody something badly enough, it’ll come talk to you.”

  Right now Swan looked down the slope and said, “It’s hiding from something.”

  “But not from us.” I looked back up the slope. The ground appeared untouched up there. There was no sign of other travelers. Below me, downhill, the meandering track appeared occasionally upon the slope and along the shore, both of which were deserted. This was no longer a popular route. “I could retire beside that lake,” I told Swan.

  “Must not be the best place or somebody would’ve beaten you to it.”

  He had a point. This country was far emptier now than it had been twenty years ago. Then there had been villages around the lake.

  “There you go,” Swan said, looking back.

  “What?” I looked. It took a moment. “Oh. The bird?”

  “Not just a bird. A crow. The regular kind of crow.”

  “Your eyes are better than mine. Ignore it. If we don’t pay it any special attention, it shouldn’t have any reason to concentrate on us.” My heartbeat was rising, though.

  Maybe it was just a feral crow and had nothing to do with Soulcatcher. Crows are not fastidious about their dining.

  Or maybe the Protector had, at last, begun looking for us outside of Taglios.

  White crow in hiding, black crow in the air, searching. What did it mean?

  Not much we could do about it, whatever. Though Uncle Doj had a calculating eye whenever he looked up at the black crow.

  It lost interest after a while. It went away. I told the others, “That shouldn’t be a problem. Crows are smart, for birds, but one by itself can’t remember a lot of instructions or carry much information back. If it is one of hers.” We had to assume that it was. Crows were much less common than they used to be. Those remaining always seemed to be under Soulcatcher’s control. Her control was probably why they were dying out.

  If this one was a scout for the Protector, it would be days y
et before it could report.

  Doj observed, “If it was suspicious, we can expect to have shadows around in a few days.”

  That would be Soulcatcher’s best means of scouting us. Shadows traveled faster than crows, could be given much more complex instructions and could bring back far more information. But could Soulcatcher control them so far away? The original Shadowmasters had had major difficulties managing their pets over long distances.

  We passed along the shores of Lake Tanji. Each of us seized an opportunity to bathe in the icy water. The old road then led us on to the Plain of Charandaprash, where the Black Company had won one of its greatest triumphs and the Great General had suffered his most humiliating defeat—through no fault of his own. Though a capricious history would not recall the blame due his cowardly master, Longshadow. Wreckage from that battle still lay scattered across the slopes. A small garrison watched over the approaches to the pass through the Dandha Presh. It showed no interest in clearing any mess or, even, in monitoring traffic. Nobody looked my group over. Nobody asked questions. We were assessed an unofficial toll and warned that the donkey might find the footing treacherous in the high pass because there was still ice on the rocks up there. We did learn that there had been heavier traffic than usual lately. That told me that Sahra’s group had encountered no insuperable difficulties and was ahead of us, as it should be, even with all the old men and reluctant companions.

  The mountains were far colder and more barren than the highlands we had crossed. I wondered how the Radisha was handling it, about her thoughts concerning the empire she had acquired, mostly thanks to the Company. Doubtless her eyes had been opened some.