by Glen Cook
“But you do see them do what they’re told when they know I mean what I say.”
“Most of the time.”
“Goblin and One-Eye need a little extra convincing once in a while. What’s it going to be? You going to be a soldier?”
“Do I have a choice, Croaker? You can be a bastard.”
“Of course you have a choice. You can go back with your men and be the Lady.”
The lieutenant was talking to his troops and the idea of going on south was proving less popular than he or I had thought it would. Most of the bunch started getting their horses together, facing north, before he finished talking.
He finally came over and presented us with six men who wanted to go on with us. He did not include himself with the group. Evidently his conscience had shown him a way around doing what he considered to be his duty minutes before.
I questioned the men briefly and they did seem interested in going on. So I brought them over the line and swore them all in, making a production of it for Lady’s sake. I do not recall doing anything particularly formal for anyone else before.
I gave the six to Otto and Hagop for dividing between them, and kept the one for me, and later entered their names into the Annals when we learned how they wanted to be known.
Lady remained content to be called Lady. It sounded like a name when heard by speakers of any language but one, anyway.
Crows watched the whole show from a nearby tree.
10
Shadowmasters
Though the sun stared in through a dozen vaulted windows there was darkness in that place where Darkness met.
A pool of molten stone simmered in the center of the vast floor. It cast bloody light upon four seated figures floating a few feet in the air. They faced one another over the pool, forming an equilateral triangle with a couple at its apex. Those two were leagued more often than not. They were allied now.
There had been war among the four for a long time, with nothing gained, one in relation to another. But at the moment there was an armistice.
Shadows slithered and swirled and pranced around them. Nothing could be seen of any of them except vague shapes. All four chose to conceal themselves within robes of black, behind black masks.
The smallest, one of the couple, broke a silence that had reigned an hour. “She has begun moving south. Those who served her and still bear her indelible mark are moving also. They have crossed the sea, and they come bearing mighty talismans. And their road is strewn with those who would join their destinies to that black standard. Including some whose power we would be foolish not to beware.”
One angle of the triangle made a sound of contempt. The other asked, “And what of the one in the north?”
“The Great One remains secure. The lesser one who lay in the shade of the prisoning tree does so no longer. It has been resurrected and given new form. It comes south too, but it is so insane and vengeance-starved that it is not to be feared. A child could dispose of it.”
“Have we cause to fear that our presence here is known?”
“None. Even in Trogo Taglios only a few are convinced that we exist. Beyond the First Cataract we are but a rumor, and not that above the Second. But he who has made himself master in the great swamps may have sensed us stirring. It is possible he suspects there is more afoot than he knew.”
The reporter’s companion added, “They come. She comes. But harnessed to the pace of man and animal. We still have a year. Or more.”
The one snorted again, then spoke. “The swamps would be a very good place for them to die. Take care of it. You may impress the one who rules them with the majesty and terror of my Name.” He began to drift away.
The others stared hard. The anger in the place became palpable.
The other ceased his drift. “You know what sleeps so restlessly upon my southern border. I dare not relax my vigilance.”
“Unless to stab another of us in the back. I note that the threat becomes secondary whenever you care to try.”
“You have my pledge. Upon my Name. The peace will not be broken by me while those who bring danger from the north survive. You may speak of me as one with you when you extend your hands beyond the shadows. I cannot, I dare not, give you more.” He resumed his drift.
“So be it, then,” said the woman. The triangle rearranged itself so as to exclude him. “He spoke one truth, certainly. The swamps would be a very good place for them to die. If Fate does not take them in hand sooner.”
One of the others began to chuckle. The shadows scurried about, frantic, as growing laughter tormented them.
“A very good place for them to die.”
11
A March into Yesteryear
At first the names were echoes from my childhood. Kale. Fratter. Grey. Weeks. Some the Company had served, some had been its foes. The world changed and became warmer and the cities became more scattered. Their names faded to legend and memories from the Annals. Tire. Raxle. Slight. Nab and Nod. We passed beyond any map I had ever seen, to cities known to me only through the Annals and visited only by One-Eye previously. Boros. Teries. Viege. Ha-jah.
And still we headed south, still making the first long leg of our journey. Crows followed. We gathered another four recruits, professional caravan guards from a nomad tribe called the roi, who deserted to join us. I started a squad for Murgen. He was not thrilled. He was content being standard-bearer and had developed hopes of taking over the Annalist’s chores from me because I had so much to do as Captain and medic. I dared not discourage him. The only alternative substitute was One-Eye. He was not reliable.
And south some more, and still we were not back to One-Eye’s origin, the jungles of D’loc-Aloc.
One-Eye swore that never in his life, outside the Company, had he heard the name Khatovar. It had to lie far beyond the waist of the world.
There are limits to what frail flesh can endure.
Those long leagues were not easy. The black iron coach and Lady’s wagon drew the eye of bandits and princes and princes who were bandits. Most times Goblin and One-Eye bluffed us through. The rest of the time we forced them to back down with a little applied terror. There was one long stretch where the magic had gone away.
If those two had learned anything during their years with the Company, it was showmanship. When they conjured an illusion you could smell its bad breath from seventy feet away.
I wished they would refrain from wasting that flash upon one another.
I decided it was time we laid up for a few days. We needed to regain our youthful bounce.
One-Eye suggested, “There’s a place down the road called the Temple of Travellers’ Repose. They take in wanderers. They have for two thousand years. It would be a good place to lay up and do some research.”
“Research?”
“Two thousand years of travellers’ tales makes a hell of a library, Croaker. And a tale is the only donative they ever require.”
He had me. He grinned cockily. The old scoundrel knew me too well. Nothing else could have stilled my determination to reach Khatovar so thoroughly.
I passed the word. And gave One-Eye the fish-eye. “That means you’re going to do some honest work.”
“What?”
“Who do you think is going to translate?”
He groaned and rolled his eye. “When am I going to learn to keep my big damned mouth shut?”
* * *
The Temple was a lightly fortified monastery sprawled atop a low hill. It looked golden in the light of a late afternoon sun. The forest beyond and the fields before were as intense a dark green as ever I have seen. The place looked restful.
As we entered, a wave of well-being cleansed us. A feeling of I have come home washed over us. I looked at Lady. The things I felt glowed in her face, and touched my heart.
* * *
“I could retire here,” I told Lady two days into our stay. Clean for the first time in months, we stalked a garden never disturbed by conflicts more weighty
than the squabbles of sparrows.
She gave me a thin smile and did me the courtesy of saying nothing about the delusive nature of dreams.
The place had everything I thought I wanted. Comfort. Quiet. Isolation from the ills of the earth. Purpose. Challenging historical studies to soothe my lust to know what had gone on before.
Most of all, it provided a respite from responsibility. Each man added to the Company seemed to double my burden as I worried about keeping them fed, keeping them healthy, and out of trouble.
“Crows,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Everywhere we go there’re crows. Maybe I only started noticing them the past couple months. But everywhere we go I see crows. And I can’t shake the feeling they’re watching us.”
Lady gave me a puzzled look.
“Look. Right over there in that acacia tree. Two of them squatting there like black omens.”
She glanced at the tree, gave me another look. “I see a couple of doves.”
“But…” One of the crows launched itself, flapped away over the monastery wall. “That wasn’t any—”
“Croaker!” One-Eye charged through the garden, scattering the birds and squirrels, ignoring all propriety. “Hey! Croaker! Guess what I found! Copies of the Annals from when we came past here headed north!”
Well. And well. This tired old mind cannot find words adequate. Excitement? Certainly. Ecstasy? You’d better believe. The moment was almost sexually intense. My mind focused the way one’s does when an especially desirable woman suddenly seems attainable.
Several older volumes of the Annals had become lost or damaged during the years. There were some I’d never seen, and never had known a hope of seeing.
“Where?” I breathed.
“In the library. One of the monks thought you might be interested. When we were here heading north I don’t remember leaving them, but I wasn’t much interested in that kind of thing then. Me and Tom-Tom was too busy looking over our shoulders.”
“I might be interested,” I said. “I might.” My manners deserted me. I deserted Lady without so much as an “Excuse me.”
Maybe that obsession was not as powerful as I’d worked it up to be.
I felt like an ass when I realized what I had done.
* * *
Reading those copies required teamwork. They had been recorded in a language no longer used by anyone but the temple monks. None of them spoke any language I understood. So our reader translated into One-Eye’s native tongue, then One-Eye translated for me.
What filtered through was damned interesting.
They had the Book of Choe, which had been destroyed fifty years before I enlisted and only poorly reconstructed. And the Book of Te-Lare, known to me only through a cryptic reference in a later volume. The Book of Skete, previously unknown. They had a half dozen more, equally precious. But no Book of the Company. No First or Second Book of Odrick. Those were the legendary first three volumes of the Annals, containing our origin myths, referenced in later works but not mentioned as having been seen after the first century of the Company’s existence.
The Book of Te-Lare tells why.
There was a battle.
Always, there was a battle in any explanation.
Movement; a clash of arms; another punctuation mark in the long tale of the Black Company.
In this one the people who had hired our forebrethren had bolted at the first shock of the enemy’s charge. They had broken so fast they were gone before the Company realized what was happening. The outfit beat a fighting retreat into its fortified encampment. During the ensuing siege the enemy penetrated the camp several times. During one such penetration the volumes in question vanished. Both the Annalist and his understudy were slain. The Books could not be reconstructed from memory.
Oh, well. I was ahead of the game.
Books available charted our future almost to the edge of the maps owned by the monks, and those ran all the way to Here There Be Dragons. Another century and a half of a journey into our yesterdays. By the time we retraced our route that far I hoped we would stand at the heart of a map that encompassed our destination.
As soon as it was clear that we had struck gold I obtained writing materials and a virgin volume of the Annals. I could write as fast as One-Eye and the monk could translate.
Time fled. A monk brought candles. Then a hand settled on my shoulder. Lady said, “Do you want to take a break? I could do that for a while.”
For half a minute I just sat there turning red. That, after I practically ditched her outside. After I never even thought of her all day.
She told me, “I understand.”
Maybe she did. She had read the various Books of Croaker—or, as posterity might recall them, the Books of the North—several times.
* * *
With Murgen and Lady spelling me the translation went quickly. The only practical limit was One-Eye’s endurance.
It was not all one way. I had to trade my later Annals for their older ones. Lady sweetened the deal with a few hundred anecdotes about the dark empire of the north, but the monks never connected my Lady with the queen of darkness.
One-Eye is a tough old buzzard. He held up. Four days after he made his great discovery the job was done.
I let Murgen into the game but he did all right. And I had to beg/buy four blank journals in order to get everything transcribed.
* * *
Lady and I resumed our stroll about where we had broken it, but with me a little down.
“What’s the matter?” she chided, and to my astonishment wanted to know if it was a postcoital depression. Just the faintest of digs there, I think.
“No. I’ve just found out a ton about the Company’s history. But I didn’t learn anything that’s really new.”
She understood but she kept quiet and let me articulate my dissatisfaction.
“It’s told a hundred ways, poorly and well, according to the skill of the particular Annalist, but, except for the occasional interesting detail, it was the same old march, countermarch, fight, celebrate or run away, record the dead, and, sooner or later, get even with the sponsor for betraying us. Even at that place with the unpronounceable name, where the Company was in service for fifty-six years.”
“Gea-Xle.” She got her mouth around it like she had had practice.
“Yeah, there. Where the contract lasted so long the Company almost lost its identity, intermarrying with the population and all that, becoming a sort of hereditary bodyguard, with arms handed down from father to son. But as it always will, the essential moral destitution of those would-be princes made itself evident and somebody decided to cheat us. He got his throat cut and the Company moved on.”
“You certainly read selectively, Croaker.”
I looked at her. She was laughing at me quietly.
“Yeah, well.” I’d stated it pretty baldly. A prince did try to cheat our forebrethren and did get his throat cut. But the Company installed a new, friendly, beholden dynasty and did hang around a few years before that Captain got a wild hair and decided to go treasure hunting.
“You have no reservations about commanding a band of hired killers?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” I admitted, sliding past the trap nimbly. “But we never cheated a sponsor.” Not exactly. “Sooner or later, every sponsor cheated us.”
“Including yours truly?”
“One of your satraps beat you to it. But given time we would have become less than indispensable and you would have started looking around for a way to shaft us instead of doing the honorable thing and paying us off and simply terminating our commission.”
“That’s what I love about you, Croaker. Your unflagging faith in humanity.”
“Absolutely. Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent,” I grumped.
“You really know how to melt a woman, you know that, Croaker?”
“Huh?” I come armed with a whole arsenal of such brilliant repartee.
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“I came out here with some feebleminded notion of seducing you. For some reason I’m not in the mood to try anymore.”
Well. Some of them you screw up royal.
* * *
There was an observation catwalk along some parts of the monastery wall. I went up into the northeast corner, leaned on the adobe and stared back the way we had come. Busy feeling sorry for myself. Every couple hundred years that sort of thing leads to a productive insight.
The damned crows were thicker than ever. Must have been twenty of them now. I cursed them and, I swear, they mocked me. When I threw a loose piece of adobe they all jumped up and fled toward …
“Goblin!” I think he was out keeping an eye on me in case I got suicidal.
“Yeah?”
“Get One-Eye and Lady and come up here. Fast.” I turned and stared up the slope at the thing that had caught my eye.
It stopped moving but was unmistakably a human figure in robes so black looking at them was like looking at a rent in the fabric of existence. It carried something under its right arm, about the size of a hatbox, held in place by the natural fall of the limb. The crows swarmed around it, twenty or thirty of them, squabbling over the right to perch upon its shoulders. It was a good quarter mile from where I stood but I felt the gaze from its hooded, unseen face beating upon me like the heat from a furnace.
The crowd turned up with Goblin and One-Eye as quarrelsome as ever. Lady asked, “What is it?”
“Take a look out there.”
They looked. Goblin squeaked, “So?”
“So? What do you mean, so?”
“What’s so interesting about an old tree stump and a flock of birds?”
I looked. Damn! A stump … But as I stared there was an instant’s shimmer and I saw the black figure again. I shuddered.
“Croaker?” Lady asked. She was still mad at me but concerned even so.
“Nothing. My eyes were playing tricks on me. I thought I saw the damned thing moving. Forget it.”
They took me at my word, stomped off to whatever they had been doing. I watched them go and for another moment doubted my own senses.