“You think they might give us some trouble?”
“What would you do if you was them?”
“Right. I better go nag on Smoke.” Smoke could be the hole card. Smoke claimed the Shadowmasters didn’t know about him. Or if they did, they had no good estimate of his competence.
Smoke and the Radisha had made themselves comfortable in the shade of the sail and were watching the river go by. The river was something worth seeing, Willow would admit. Even here it was half a mile wide. “Smoke, old buddy, we maybe got us a problem.”
The wizard stopped chewing on something he had had in his mouth all morning. He peered at Willow with narrowed eyes. Willow’s style was getting to him.
“Back in Dadiz there was these little brown guys about so high, skinny and wrinkly, that was watching us. I asked Cordy and Blade. They seen them, too.”
Smoke looked at the woman. She looked at Willow. “Not someone you made an enemy of coming south?”
Willow laughed. “Hey. I don’t have no enemies. No. There’s nobody like these guys anywhere between Roses and Taglios. I never saw anybody like them before. I figure that means it’s not me they’re interested in.”
She looked at Smoke. “Did you notice anyone?”
“No. But I wasn’t watching. It seemed unnecessary.”
“Hey. Smoke. You always watch,” Willow said. “This here’s your basic unfriendly old world. You better always be on the lookout when you’re travelling. There’s bad guys out here. Believe it or not, not everybody’s as polite as you Taglians.”
Swan returned to the bow. “That dolt wizard never even noticed the brownies. The guy’s got lard for brains.”
Blade took out a knife and whetstone and went to work. “Better sharpen up. Edge might dull down before the old boy wakes up and sees we’re under attack.”
It was a three-hundred-mile passage to the Second Cataract, where the river scampered nervously between dark and brooding hills, as though too wary to stay in one place long. On the right bank the haunted ruins of Cho’n Delor stared down on the flood, reminding Willow of a heap of old skulls. No traffic had passed along the right bank since the fall of the Paingod. Even animals shunned the area.
On the hilltops beyond the left bank were the ruins of the Triplet Cities, Odd the First, Odd the Second, and Odd the Third. Stories Cordy had heard coming south said they had sacrificed themselves to bring the Paingod down.
Now people lived only along a narrow strip beside the Cataract, in a walled city one street wide and ten miles long, perpetually nervous about ghosts from the wars that were. They called their bizarre city Idon, and had the weirdest bunch of quirks anyone ever saw. Travellers stayed in Idon only as long as absolutely necessary. Likewise, many of the people of Idon themselves.
Passing through, keeping his eyes open while pretending to be gawking at the weirdos, Willow noticed little brown guys skulking everywhere. “Hey. Smoke. You eagle-eyed bastard. You see them now?”
“What?”
“He don’t,” Blade said. “Better sharpen me a couple more knives.”
“Pay attention, old man. They’re all over like roaches.” Actually, Willow had seen only eight or nine. But that was plenty enough. Especially if they had the Shadowmasters behind them.
They had somebody behind them. They made that clear soon after the Radisha found a boat for the trip to Thresh and the Third Cataract.
They got around a bend in the river, where it flowed through country that looked like it was left over from the war between the Triplet Cities and Cho’n Delor, and here came two fast boats loaded down with little brown guys rowing like the winner of the race got to become immortal.
The crew the Radisha had hired took maybe twenty seconds to decide it wasn’t their squabble. They dived overboard and headed for the bank.
“You see them now, Smoke?” Willow asked, starting to ready his weapons. “I hope you’re half the wizard you think you are.” There were at least twenty brown men in each boat.
Smoke’s jaw went high speed as he chomped whatever he chewed all the time. He did nothing till the boats began creeping up to either side. Then he stuck out both hands toward one, closed his eyes and wriggled his fingers.
All the nails and pegs holding the boat together flew around like swarming swallows, pattered into the water.
Brown men hollered and gurgled. It didn’t look like many of them knew how to swim.
Smoke took a moment to catch his breath, then turned on the other boat. The brown men there were turning already, heading for shore.
Smoke took that boat apart, too. Then he gave Willow one dark look and went back to his seat in the shadow of the sail. He smirked forever afterward whenever he heard Willow bitching about having to work ship.
“At least we know he’s the real thing now,” Willow grumbled to himself.
The situation in Thresh was exactly what Willow had predicted. The river was closed to the north. Pirates. The Radisha could find no one willing to hazard the long run north to Gea-Xle, which is where she was determined to go, to wait. Nothing she offered would get anybody to risk the journey. Not even her companions, whom she urged to steal a boat.
She was furious. You would have thought the hinges of the world would lock up if she didn’t get to Gea-Xle.
She did not get.
For months they hung around Thresh, staying out of the way of little brown guys, hearing rumors that the merchants of Gea-Xle had gotten desperate enough to try doing something about the river pirates. Thresh was a snake’s nest of gloom. Without trade upriver it would wither. Any hope that the northerners would break through seemed absurd. Everyone who tried died.
One morning Smoke came to breakfast looking thoughtful. “I had a dream,” he announced.
“Oh, wonderful,” Willow snapped. “I been sitting around here for months now just praying you’d have another one of your nightmares. What do we do this time? Storm the Shadowlands?”
Smoke ignored him. He had been doing that a lot, communicating through the Radisha. It was the only way he could deal with Swan without getting violent. He told the woman, “They’ve departed Gea-Xle. A whole convoy.”
“Can they break through?”
Smoke shrugged. “There’s a power as mighty and cruel as the Shadowmasters in the swamps. Maybe greater than the Shadowmasters. I haven’t been able to find it in my dreams.”
Willow muttered, “I hope the brownies aren’t smoking something, too. They figure we’re going to connect up they might get more ambitious.”
“They don’t know why we’re here, Swan. I poked around. I found out that much. They just want you and me and Cordy. Would have done it to us in Taglios if they caught us there.”
“Comes to the same thing. How long before that convoy gets here?”
The Radisha said, “Smoke? How long?”
The wizard responded with all the steely certitude of his breed. He shrugged.
The lead boat was spotted by somebody fishing upriver. The news reached Tresh a few hours before the barge. Willow and his group went down to the piers with half the city to wait for it. People howled and cheered until those aboard began disembarking. Then a deep, dread silence fell.
The Radisha grabbed Smoke’s shoulder in a grip obviously painful. “These are your saviors? Old man, I’m about out of patience with you...”
Chapter Twenty-One
Thresh
We broke the boom. We headed for the trading city Thresh, which lies above the Third Cataract. It was a quiet river going down. There might have been no other human beings in the world outside of us on the barge, But the wreckage that kept pace was a screaming reminder that we were not alone, that we belonged to a bleak and bloody-minded species. I was not fit company for man or beast, as they say.
One-Eye joined me where I stood under the battered croc head Goblin had mounted in the bows. “Be there in a little bit, Croaker.”
I dipped into my trick bag of repartee and countered with an unenthusia
stic grunt.
“Me and the runt been trying to get a feel for the place up ahead.”
I cracked him up with another grunt. That was his job.
“Don’t got a good feel to it.” We watched another small fishing boat hoist anchor and raise sail and skitter south with the news of our coming. “Not a real danger feel. Not an all-bad feel. Just not a right feel. Like there’s something going on.”
He sounded puzzled around the edges. “You figure it’s something that might concern us, send your pet to find out what. That’s what you bought him for. Isn’t it?”
He smirked.
The current in a lazy turn of the river held us close to the right bank. Two solemn crows watched our progress from a lone dead tree. Gnarled and ugly, the tree made me think of nooses and hanged men.
“Now why didn’t I think of that, Croaker? Here I just sent him into town to check on the quiff situation.”
Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Croaker.
The imp came back with a disturbing report. There were people in Thresh waiting for us. Specifically us, the Black Company.
How the hell did everybody know we were coming?
The waterfront was mobbed when we warped in, though nobody really believed we had come from Gea-Xle. I guess they figured we spontaneously generated on the river up around the bend. I kept everyone aboard and mostly out of sight till the rest of the convoy arrived.
It came through untouched. Its guards and crews were simmering with stones of the devastation they had found in our wake. Rejoicing spread through Thresh. The blockade had been strangling the city.
I watched the good citizens from behind a mantlet. Here and there I noted hard-eyed little brown men who seemed less than enchanted with our advent.
“Those the guys you were talking about?” I asked One-Eye.
He gave them the fish-eye, then shook his head. “Ours should be over that way. There they are. Weird.”
I saw what he meant. A man with long blond hair. What the hell was he doing down here? “Keep an eye on them.”
I collected Mogaba and Goblin and a couple of the guys who looked like they ate babies for breakfast and went into conference with the bosses of the convoy. They surprised me. They not only did not argue about paying the balance of our fee, they tossed in a bonus on account of every barge got through. Then I got my key people together and told them, “Let’s get off-loaded and hit the road. This place gives me the creeps.”
Goblin and One-Eye complained. Naturally. They wanted to stay and party.
They came around when the iron coach and the great black horses and the Company standard hit the wharfside road. The joy went out of the grand celebration almost immediately. I’d figured it would.
Blank faces watched the unforgotten standard pass.
Thresh had been on the other side when the Company was in service in Goes. Our forebrethren had kicked their butts good. So good they recalled the Company this long after the fact, though Goes itself no longer existed.
We paused in an open market toward the south edge of Thresh. Mogaba had a couple of his lieutenants dicker for supplies. Goblin went stomping around in a squeaking rage because One-Eye had set Frogface to following him, aping his every word and move. The imp was trudging behind him at the moment, looking deep in thought. Otto and Hagop and Candles were trying to thrash out the details of a pool that would pay off big to the guy who guessed closest to when Goblin would come up with a definitive counterstroke. The trouble was a definition of what could be considered definitive.
One-Eye observed proceedings with a benign, smug smile, certain he had attained ascendancy at last. The Nar stood around looking grimly military and still a little baffled because the rest of us had less rigid, absolute standards. They had not been disappointed in us on the river.
One-Eye ambled over. “Them people are giving us the eye again. Got them all picked out now. Four men and a woman.”
“Round them up and bring them over. We’ll see what’s on their minds. Where’s Wheezer?”
One-Eye pointed, then did a fade. As I approached Wheezer I noted that a dozen of my men had disappeared. One-Eye wasn’t going to take any chances.
I told Wheezer to tell Mogaba we weren’t stocking up for a six-month campaign. We just wanted enough stuff for a meal or two getting past the Cataract. We yakked it back and forth, Mogaba struggling with the Jewel Cities dialect he had begun to pick up already. He was a sharp, smart man. I liked him. He was flexible enough to understand that our two versions of the Company could have arisen easily over two hundred years. He worked at being nonjudgmental.
So did I.
“Hey, Croaker. Here you go.” Here came One-Eye, grinning like a possum, bringing in his catch. The three younger men, two of whom were whites, seemed baffled. The woman looked angry. The old man looked like he was daydreaming.
I eyeballed the white men, again wondering how the hell they had gotten here. “They got anything to say for themselves?”
Mogaba drifted over. He looked at the black man thoughtfully.
About then the woman had plenty to say. The darker haired white man wilted slightly but the other just grinned. I said, “Let’s check them on languages. Between us we’ve got most of them they speak up north.”
Frogface popped up. “Try them out on Rosean, chief. I got a hunch.” Then he rattled something at the old man. The guy jumped about a foot off the ground. Frogface chortled. The old man stared like he was seeing a ghost.
Before I could ask what verbal stunt he’d pulled, the blond man asked, “You the captain of this outfit?” He spoke Rosean. I understood him, but my Rosean was rusty. I hadn’t used it in a long time.
“Yeah. You got any other languages you use?”
He had. He tried a couple. His Forsberger was not good, but my Rosean was worse. He asked, “What the hell happened to you guys?” He regretted saying it immediately.
I looked at One-Eye. He shrugged. I asked, “What do you mean?”
“Uh... coming down the river. You done the impossible. Ain’t nobody gotten through in a couple years. Me and Cordy and Blade, we were about the last ones.”
“Just lucky.”
He frowned. He had heard the stories spread by the boatmen.
Mogaba said something to one of his lieutenants. They looked the black man, Blade, over good. The Geek and the Freak, who had confessed to being brothers and having the real names Claw-of-the-Lion and Heart-of-the-Lion, also moved in to look him over. He wasn’t pleased. I asked Heart, “Is there something special about that guy?”
“Maybe, Captain. Maybe. Tell you later.”
“Right.” Back to Forsberger. “You’ve been watching us. We want to know why.”
He had an answer all ready. “My buddies and me, we been hired to take the broad and the old boy down the river. We was kind of hoping we could hook on with you guys as far as Taglios. For the extra protection, you know what I mean?” He looked at Murgen and the standard. “I seen that somewhere before.”
“Roses. Who are you?” How stupid did I look? Maybe I needed to check a mirror.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I’m Swan. Willow Swan.” He stuck out a hand. I didn’t take it. “This here’s my buddy Cordy Mather. Cordwood. Don’t ask. Even he don’t know why. And this’s Blade. We been doing what you might call freelancing, up and down the river. Taking advantage of being exotic. You know how it is. You guys been about everywhere.”
He was rattled. You couldn’t have tortured it out of him, maybe, but he was scared half to death. He kept looking at the standard and the coach and the horses and the Nar and shuddering.
He was a lot of things, maybe, that he was not going to admit. A liar was the biggest. I thought it might be
interesting, even entertaining, to have him and his bunch along. So I gave him what he wanted. “All right. Tag along. As long as you pull your weight and remember who’s in charge.”
He broke out in smiles. “Great. You got it, chief.” He started chat
tering at his pals. The old man said something sharp that shut him up.
I asked Frogface, “He give anything away there?”
“Nah. He just said, ’I did it!,’ chief. And went to bragging on his golden tongue.”
“Swan. Where the hell is this Taglios? I don’t have a Taglios on my maps.”
“Let me see.”
Half an hour later I knew his Taglios was a place my best map named Troko Tallies. “Trogo Taglios,” Swan told me. “There’s this monster city, Taglios, that surrounds an older one that was called Trogo. The official name is Trogo Taglios but nobody ever calls it anything but Taglios anymore. It’s a nice place. You’ll like it.”
“I hope so.”
One-Eye said, “He’s going to try to sell you something, Croaker.”
I grinned. “We’ll have some fun with him while he tries. Watch them. Be friendly with them. Find out whatever you can. Where’s Lady gotten off to now?”
I was too fussed. She wasn’t far off. She was standing aside, inspecting our new acquisitions from another angle. I beckoned her. “What do you think?” I asked when she joined me. Swan’s eyes popped when he got a good look at her. He was in love.
“Not much. Watch the woman. She’s in charge. And she’s used to getting her own way.”
“Aren’t you all?”
“Cynic.”
“That’s me. To the bone. And you’re the one made me that way, love.”
She gave me a funny look, forced a smile.
I wondered if we’d ever recover that moment on that hillside so many miles to the north.
We were just coming back to the river, after having walked past the Third Cataract, when Willow joined me as I walked my horse. He eyed the big black nervously and got around where I would be between it and him. He asked, “Are you guys really the Black Company?”
“The one and only. The evil, mean, rude, crude, nasty, and sometimes even unpleasant Black Company. You never spent any time in the military, did you?”
“As little as I could. Man, last I heard there was a thousand of you guys. What happened?”
“Times got hard up north. A year ago we were down to seven men. How long ago did you leave the empire?”
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