The Many Deaths of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  “Sit,” Sleepy said. Then she got straight to the point. “This is Aridatha Singh.” Beside me, Lady winced, recognizing the name and thinking of her trophies. “Aridatha commands the City Battalions in Taglios. He, the Great General and Ghopal Singh, who commands the Greys, form the triumvirate who’re running Taglios while the Protector is out of town. Aridatha tells me that he and they—the Protector’s top henchmen—have decided they need to get rid of her.”

  From one side, in back, Willow Swan grumbled, “Ghopal Singh is a general now? He was a damned sergeant when he worked for me.”

  Aridatha responded, “The Protector prides herself on her ability to recognize outstanding talent.”

  A joke of sorts had passed between the two. I guess you had to have been part of the situation to follow it.

  While we sat around with our mouths hanging open, looking intelligent, Sleepy told the outsider, “These people are here to offer their advice. That’s Croaker. He was the Liberator, once upon a time. That’s Lady. That’s Murgen. They’ve all led the Company at some time. The others you’ll recall from the last time we met.” She passed over Thai Dei, which lent him an air of mystery, nor did she introduce the Prahbrindrah Drah.

  I asked, “Did Mogaba send you?”

  “I volunteered. Because your Captain knew me. And because your Company has no personal grievance with me.”

  Lady stirred. She was willing to invent one.

  Sleepy said, “It would seem that there are limits even Mogaba refuses to exceed. And Soulcatcher has managed to discover them.”

  Aridatha said, “You have ancient grievances with the Great General.

  “I want you to know that he isn’t an evil man. He is an obsessed man, though his obsession has weathered away with age. He’s realized that history won’t record his name on the roll of great conquerers. There’s no longer time. He hasn’t entirely made his peace with that but he does see that it’s his own fault. Because of his untimely defection during the siege of Dejagore he has been forced to serve a procession of deranged and incompetent masters. But that’s of no moment now.

  “Between us, he, Ghopal, and I have concluded that Taglios should be spared any more torment by the Protector. She’s like a deadly rot. She’s destroying everything slowly. Even our religions and culture. And the only force able to put an end to that is the Black Company.”

  Murgen suggested, “You guys could whack her yourselves. She’s not immortal. And she trusts you. As much as she trusts anybody. That gets you close enough.…”

  “That plan was in place even before you people resurfaced. But she’s stayed away from the city since the beginning of that crisis. Her messages to the Great General all affirm her determination to keep after you until she’s accounted for every member of the Black Company personally. She was extremely put out because so many people who were supposed to be dead started turning up alive.”

  “Believe me, I know how exasperating that is,” Lady said. “For twenty years I chased the Deceiver Narayan Singh. The man had more lives than a cat.”

  Aridatha caught the past tense. “Has the living saint of the Deceivers passed to his reward, then?”

  “He got away from me through the only exit he had left.” Lady sounded extremely bitter. Like she thought Singh had beaten her by cheating blatantly. Her hatred of Narayan was stronger than I had suspected.

  “Then that’s one distraction that no longer needs concern us.”

  “Incorrect,” Sleepy said, reclaiming control. “The Daughter of Night is still out there. And Kina still hopes to bring on the Year of the Skulls. Whatever else happens, Kina and her followers still have to be managed. Tell my associates why we should trust anything you tell us, Aridatha.”

  “I am, of course, damned to walk in the shadow of a man I met only once in my life, after I was a grown man, and then for only a few minutes, several years ago, in your presence. That’s the legacy of the Deceivers. The cult destroys trust. My answer is, all men should be judged by one standard: their behavior. By the deeds they do. The gesture of good faith I have to make in this instance is, I think, generous.”

  Sleepy interrupted. “Aridatha has a brother who lives in Jaicur. Under an assumed name. This brother, real name Sugriva, is going to help us take the city. He’ll scout out the best gate for us to get at in the middle of the night. We’ll use it to prance in and take over before anyone can put up a fight.”

  I opened my mouth to argue but stopped before anything stupid came out. Sleepy’s mind was made up. All I could do was my best to make sure everything worked out right. “Soulcatcher has an army between here and there. One that outnumbers us, I hear.”

  “And one that’s little better than a rabble, according to Aridatha. Some of the poorer soldiers are armed only with hammers, pitchforks, sickles and such.”

  “A guy goes away for a few decades, everything turns to shit,” I said. “I had everybody tall enough to reach his mother’s hand armed up, once upon a time. What happened to all those weapons?”

  Riverwalker explained, “When the Protector took over, times got so bad that almost anybody with anything to sell sold it. Weapons were a glut on the market. The steel got forged into other things.”

  “And the Protector didn’t care,” Aridatha said. “The Great General finally gave up trying to make her see the point of maintaining arsenals in peacetime. I think it won’t be long now until she understands what he was talking about.”

  Sleepy told us, “It isn’t necessary to trust Aridatha or Mogaba to test Jaicur’s defenses. We’re expected to swing west toward the Naghir River. We’ll make a show of doing just that. But Blade, with the light cavalry, will split off the rear of the column and loop back around eastward. The hidden folk will find a route along which the horsemen can approach Jaicur unobserved. In the meantime, the main force will turn again and head for the Rock Road north of Jaicur. That ought to stir up an ant’s nest. And make Soulcatcher forget Jaicur completely for a few days.”

  Why had Sleepy bothered calling the rest of us in? She had it all worked out already. And pretty soundly, I thought.

  Tobo said, “We do have a more immediate problem than that, Sleepy. You brought General Singh in during the reanimation ceremony. And he’s been seen around camp. It’s inevitable that some of our outside visitors will be Soulcatcher’s creatures. And it’s possible one of them recognized him.”

  Sleepy admitted, “I didn’t think fast enough. I’m open to corrective suggestions.”

  “I’m already working on it. But I do want to warn you. I don’t think I can be a hundred percent successful in identifying them and cutting them off.”

  “Then you’d better consider what would be the best way to warn the other conspirators in Taglios, hadn’t you?”

  Aridatha said, “Ghopal and the Great General won’t be taken unawares. The Protector possesses no means of traveling faster than the rumor of her coming. When she heads for Taglios they’ll know before she gets there. And what she brings with her will betray her intentions.”

  I nodded. The reasoning seemed sound. And you did have to be really sneaky to outfox Mogaba. Soulcatcher was not sneaky these days. She had developed the habit of just bulling straight ahead because she was the biggest power around.

  * * *

  Sleepy elected to assume a stance which made it look like we were just going to sit and rest. But Tobo scouted the country north of Gharhawnes in ever greater detail, sometimes even going out in person, when he went flying with Shukrat.

  The two of them were getting very chummy.

  * * *

  In private I observed, “This is getting distinctly weird. We’re allies with Soulcatcher against our daughter and Kina. We’re allies with the traitor Mogaba against your sister. We’re allies with a demigod whose price for supporting us is that we murder him.”

  Lady chuckled weakly. “You did say it has a mythic ring.”

  “You know something? It’s got me scared.”

  She st
ared at nothing, waiting for me to explain.

  “Scared in a generalized way, not scared like when we’re in a fight. Scared of the shape the future might take.” I had a bad, bad feeling. Because on the surface everything looked just too marvelous for the Black Company.

  59

  With the Middle Army: When Guests Arrived

  The Goblin creature proved difficult to catch. What should have taken just a few days took two weeks and, in the end, necessitated Soulcatcher’s personal intervention—with, to her chagrin, considerable coaching from the shadowy cat thing she could never quite see and never quite ambush and bind to her own service.

  In the meantime she amused herself with the girl.

  The Daughter of Night was imprisoned in a cage inside Soulcatcher’s tent. That was the largest and most ostentatious tent in the midway camp. The girl had been stripped naked, then had been decorated with a variety of chains and charms. She would not be guarded by or even approached by anyone male. Soulcatcher knew only too well how men could be manipulated by the women of her blood.

  Though the girl did not seem interested in listening, Soulcatcher said, “To this day I’m not quite sure how you and that old man managed to get away from me. But I have some suspicions. And it won’t happen again. You’re far too important to your mother to be running around loose.” The voice Soulcatcher selected was annoyingly pedantic.

  The girl did not respond. She was alone in her own reality. This was not her first time as a prisoner of someone who planned to use her. She could be patient. Her moment would come. Someone would slip up. An impressionable guard would be assigned. Something. Somewhere, sometime, she would have an opportunity to deceive someone into loving her long enough to want to set her free.

  The girl’s continued indifference pricked Soulcatcher into trying to hurt her with news she had wanted to reserve. “He’s dead, you know. Your old man. Narayan Singh. He was strangled. They threw his body in a cesspit.”

  That blow did strike home. But after an initial flinch and a brief, black look the Daughter of Night lowered her eyes and settled back into her pose of patient indifference.

  Soulcatcher laughed. “Your freak Goddess has abandoned you.”

  To which the girl offered her only spoken response since her capture. “All their days are numbered.” Which was like a slap in Soulcatcher’s face. It was one of those slogans Black Company–inspired graffitists had used to taunt her for years.

  Soulcatcher snatched a whip, flailed away without doing the girl much harm. The cage itself prevented that.

  Someone shouted for Soulcatcher’s attention from outside the entrance to her tent. In that respect her soldiers were well-trained. They did not bother her with trivia.

  Responding, Soulcatcher found a gaggle of soldiers with a dead man on a crude litter. The corpse was twisted. Its features were severely distorted. Raindrops slid off the ruined face like tears. “You,” she said, picking a man. “Tell it.” A cavalryman covered with mud, he must have been on picket duty.

  “This man came up from the south. He gave the proper recognition signs. He told us that he was bringing you important news about traitors but wouldn’t say anything else.”

  “He arrived healthy? How did he get this way?”

  “Just before we got to camp he stood up in his stirrups and screamed. His horse reared and threw him. After he hit the ground he shuddered and twitched and made gurgling noises trying to scream. And then he died.”

  “Traitors?” No doubt there would be many of those to pay off before this played out. These situations brought them out from under every rock and bush.

  “That’s all he said, ma’am.”

  “Bring him inside. It’s possible I can still get a little something out of him. Be careful where you track your mud.” She stepped aside, even held the flap for the soldiers. Reluctantly, a few found courage enough to bring the body forward. Soulcatcher’s soldiers shared a common opinion that it was not good to catch the Protector’s eye. These stepped carefully, leaving as little mud and moisture as possible.

  In a merry young voice Soulcatcher observed, “You must all have mothers.”

  * * *

  Soulcatcher had the corpse partially stripped, disassembling its apparel thread by thread, when there was another disturbance outside the tent entrance. Irked, she responded, hoping this would be the news she had been awaiting so long: that Goblin had been captured at last.

  As she was about to open up she caught motion from the corner of her eye. She spun. For an instant she thought she glimpsed a tiny man, maybe eight inches tall, ducking down behind the corpse.

  The racket outside remained insistent.

  It was not the news she wanted. The soldiers there—they always came in groups—pushed one of their number forward. “A courier just came in, ma’am. The enemy is on the move again. Westward.”

  Mogaba had called it right, then. “When did this start?”

  “The courier will be with you in a minute, ma’am. With dispatches. He had some physical needs he couldn’t put off before he could see you. But the command staff insisted you get the main news immediately.”

  In a casual tone, Soulcatcher observed, “The drizzle seems to be letting up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Get that courier here as fast as possible.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  * * *

  The reports from the south did indeed have the rested Black Company forces moving westward but not on the track previously anticipated. Part of their journey would have to be made without the benefits of roads, over rough terrain.

  Soulcatcher said, “They must be striking for Balichore by the shortest route. Why? Can anyone tell me what’s special about Balichore?” Soulcatcher controlled a sprawling empire she knew only a little about.

  After an extended silence someone tentatively suggested, “That’s the farthest upriver heavy barge traffic travels. Cargos have to be portaged and loaded on smaller boats or onto wagons.”

  Someone else recalled, “There’s some kind of problem with rocks in the river. A whatchamacallit. Cataract. The Liberator once ordered a canal built around it but the project was abandoned.…”

  A couple of pokes in the ribs were necessary before the speaker recalled who was responsible for the neglect of public works in recent times.

  Soulcatcher did not respond, however. She concentrated on the transport idea.

  A large portion of the Company had barged up the Naghir River after fleeing Taglios five years ago. Could this new Captain be in a rut? Or was she thinking she could catch Taglios by surprise, from the river side, where there were no walls and no defensive works and the peoples of those poorer quarters tended toward nostalgic recollections of the Prahbrindrah Drah, the Radisha and even the Liberator.

  Soulcatcher asked, “Does anyone happen to know how long it takes to get a barge down the Naghir, through the delta channels, and upriver to Taglios?” She knew barges manned by veteran crews traveled day and night, unlike soldiers afoot or on horseback.

  Another disturbance at the entrance arose before anyone produced a reliable answer.

  The drizzle had ended, she discovered. Yet the men demanding attention were covered with mud. And they had brought her a present.

  “For me? And it’s not even my birthday.”

  Goblin was a present who looked way the worse for use. He was bound and gagged. His head and hands were wrapped in rags as well. His captors had been determined to take no chances.

  Soulcatcher gloated. “He stumbled into one of my traps, didn’t he?”

  “Yes he did, ma’am.”

  There were hundreds of those out there, taking many forms. Soulcatcher had begun to put them out as soon as it had become evident that the new, improved Goblin could evade the best efforts of her soldiers. “He’s still alive, isn’t he?” If he was dead her concern that he might have allowed himself to be caught would slide down her list of worries.

  “Your instructions
were perfectly clear, ma’am.”

  Soulcatcher memorized that man’s face. He was mocking her behind a mask of rectitude. She preferred open defiance. That she could crush without mystifying anyone. “Take the mask and gag off. Set him up over here.” The Daughter of Night, Soulcatcher noted, was interested enough to forget to hide her interest.

  She could not know the little wizard’s significance, could she?

  No. Impossible. The girl was just doing what she did whenever anything happened inside the tent. She paid attention because she might learn something useful.

  Soulcatcher waited until she judged that Goblin was sufficiently recovered. She told him, “Your former brothers really don’t like turncoats, do they?”

  Goblin stared at her with eyes colder, deeper and more remote than those of the Daughter of Night. He did not reply.

  She stepped closer. Her mask was just a foot from his face. She purred, “They came to me for help settling your account.”

  Goblin twitched but remained silent. He did try to look around.

  He smiled when he glimpsed the Daughter of Night.

  Soulcatcher said, “They told me all about it, little man. They told me what you are now. They expect me to just kill you because of what you did to my foot. They really just want you dead.” She rubbed her gloved hands together. “But I think I’m going to be a lot cruder.” She giggled.

  “All their days are numbered,” Goblin said in a whisper. The voice borrowing the taunt only vaguely resembled that of the man who had gone down into the earth to challenge the Dark Mother.

  “Some more closely than others.” Soulcatcher’s voice was old and emotionless. Her right hand lashed out, sliced across Goblin’s face. Blades a half inch long on the ends of her fingers destroyed his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He shrieked, at first as much in surprise as in pain.

  The Protector turned on the men who had brought the prisoner in. “Bring me another cage like the one the brat is in.” The cage did in fact exist already. Such had been her certainty that she would capture Goblin.