The Return of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  I grinned in the darkness. That would leave us with just one story to go. Then I grumbled, “I hope that damned Sleepy is on time.”

  Though barely eighteen Sleepy is a four-year veteran of the Company. He went through the fire of Dejagore with us. He still has a tendency to be late and a little irresponsible but, hell, he is still awful young.

  Youth made him the best man to be driving a wagon around Taglios in the middle of the night if you did not want to attract attention. A Vehdna Taglian, he could pass as an apprentice easily. He could not be expected to know what he was doing. Apprentices do what they are told. Their masters seldom feel obliged to explain to them.

  The kid would have no clue what he was up to tonight. If he arrived on time he would not guess his part for years. He was supposed to wander off before the wagon acquired its mysterious burden.

  One-Eye would take over after we loaded Smoke. He would explain, if he found himself in a position where that became necessary, that the corpse back there was Goblin. No one would know the difference. Smoke had not been seen at all for four years and seldom publicly before that. And Goblin had not been around for a while because the Old Man sent him off on a mission weeks ago.

  Anybody running into One-Eye would know who he was right away. He is the most recognizable member of the Company. His ugly old black hat gives him away even in the dark. It is so damned filthy it glows.

  I exaggerate only slightly.

  People would believe One-Eye because everyone in Taglios knows the nasty little runt runs with a toad-faced little white wizard called Goblin.

  The trick would be to distract them from Smoke’s skin color. Or One-Eye could put a glamor on him and make him actually look enough like Goblin to deceive the Taglian eye.

  Eventually somebody would discover that Smoke no longer was in the Palace. Probably later. By accident. When somebody stumbled through the network of confusion spells surrounding the room where Smoke had lain hidden for years.

  “Somebody” would be the Radisha Drah. She and Uncle Doj are the only people besides me and Croaker and One-Eye who know Smoke is still alive, if unutterably lost in the land of coma.

  He is more useful now than he ever was when he was conscious and the secret court wizard.

  Smoke had been as thoroughly craven as it is possible for a human to be.

  We reached the landing. One-Eye damned near dropped his end of the litter. He was in a hurry to take a break. “Let me know when you’re ready,” I told him.

  “You don’t got to go smart-assing me, Kid.” He muttered a few words in a dead tongue, which was totally unnecessary and entirely for show. He could have said the same thing in Taglian and have achieved the same result. Which was that a globe of shimmering swamp gas materialized above his ugly hat.

  “Did I say anything?”

  “You don’t got to talk, Kid. You’re grinning like a shiteating dog.” But he was puffing too hard to keep it up. “Old fart’s heavier than he looks, isn’t he?”

  He was. Maybe because he was all lard after four years asleep, getting his sustenance as soup and gravy and any other sludge I can spoon down him.

  He is a mess to take care of. I would let him croak if he was not so damned useful.

  The Company wastes no love on this man.

  Maybe I like him better unconscious than conscious, though we never butted heads personally. I have heard so many horror stories about his cowardice that I cannot say much in his favor at all. Well, he was a modestly effective fire marshal when he was awake. Fire is an enemy Taglios knows far more intimately than any remote Shadowmaster.

  If he had not been such a chickenshit and gone over to Longshadow he would not be in the sad shape he is now.

  * * *

  For reasons unclear even to One-Eye, Smoke’s comatose spirit is anchored to his flesh very loosely. Making a connection with his ka, which is what they might call it around here, is easy. It takes instructions well. I can connect with him, detach from my flesh and ride him almost anywhere, to see almost anything. Which is why he is so special to us today. Which is why it is so critical to keep everything about him under wraps.

  If we succeed in this dark war, victory will come largely because we can “walk with the ghost.”

  “I’m ready to go,” One-Eye said.

  “You come back fast for an old fart.”

  “You keep running your jaw, Kid, you’re never gonna get a chance to find out what it’s like to be old enough to deserve respect but not to get none from pups like you.”

  “Don’t go picking on me because Goblin ran out on you.”

  “Where the hell is that stunted mouse turd, anyway?”

  I knew. Or thought I knew. I walk with the ghost. One-Eye did not need to know, though, so I did not clue him in. “Lift the damned litter, limberdick.”

  “I just know you’re going to enjoy life as a polecat, Kid.”

  We hoisted the litter. Smoke made a gurgling sound. Foamy spit dribbled from the corner of his mouth. “Hustle up. I need to get his mouth cleaned out before he drowns himself.”

  One-Eye saved his breath. We clumped down the stairs. Smoke began making strangling noises. I kicked the door open and went through without looking outside first. We got into the street.

  “Put him down,” I snapped. “Then cover us while I take care of him.” Who knew what might be watching? Taglian nights conceal countless curious eyes. Everyone wants to know what the Black Company is doing. We take it as a given that some of those are people we do not even know yet.

  Paranoia is a way of life.

  I knelt beside the litter, tipped it a little and turned Smoke’s head. It flopped like he had no bones in his neck. Smoke gurgled and hacked some more.

  “Hush,” One-Eye said.

  I looked up. A tall Shadar watchman was headed our way, carrying a lantern. One of the Old Man’s innovations, the nighttime foot patrols have crippled enemy espionage efforts. Now our creativity was about to turn around on us.

  The turbaned soldier walked past so close his grey pants actually brushed me. But he sensed nothing.

  One-Eye is no master sorcerer but he does a hell of a job when he concentrates.

  Smoke made that noise again.

  The Shadar stopped, looked back. His eyes widened. They were about all that could be seen between his turban and his massive beard. I do not know what he saw but he touched his forehead and swept his fingers in a quick half circle ending over his heart. That was a ward against evil common to all the peoples of Taglios.

  He moved on hurriedly.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Never mind,” One-Eye said. “Let’s get him loaded.” The wagon was waiting right where Sleepy was supposed to leave it. “He’s going to report something. He’ll have his whole family here in a few minutes.”

  The watchmen were equipped with whistles. Our man remembered his and started tooting as One-Eye lifted his end of the litter. In seconds another whistle answered.

  “He’s going to keep that shit up?” One-Eye asked.

  “I’ll lay him on his side. The phlegm should drain off. But you’re the guy who knows the medical stuff. If he’s coming down with pneumonia you better start working on him now.”

  “Go teach granny to suck eggs, Kid. Just shove the little bastard in the wagon, then get your ass back through that door.”

  “Shit. I think I forgot to wedge it open.”

  “I’d call you a dumb shit but you keep ragging me about stating the obvious. Unh!” He swung his end of the litter into the bed of the wagon. Good boy Sleepy had remembered to leave the tailgate down, exactly as he had been instructed. “I remembered for you.”

  “You were the last one out anyway.” Damn, would I be glad when Goblin came back and One-Eye could get back to feuding with him. I shoved my end of the litter.

  One-Eye was scrambling up to the driver’s seat already. “Don’t forget to get that gate up.”

  I twisted Smoke’s shoulders so his
mouth would drain, raised the tailgate and dropped the oak pins into their slots. “You check on him as soon as you’re clear.”

  “Shut up and get out of here.”

  Whistles were shrieking all around us now. Sounded like every watchman on duty was closing in.

  Their interest was going to attract that of others. I ran for the postern door. Steel tires began to rattle on cobblestones behind me.

  One-Eye was going to get a chance to test our cover story.

  3

  It is a long trail from that postern to the apartment I call home. On the way I stopped by Croaker’s cell to let him know what had happened while we were getting Smoke out of the house. He asked, “You see anything besides the Shadar?”

  “No. But the uproar is going to attract attention. If they hear that One-Eye was involved people interested in us will start poking around. They’ll be sure something was going on even if One-Eye sells his story to the watchmen.”

  Croaker grunted. He stared at the papers he had been trying to read. He was bone-tired. “Nothing we can do about it now. Go get some sleep. We’re going ourselves in a day or two.”

  “Uhn.” I did not look forward to traveling, especially during wintertime. “I’m not really looking forward to this.”

  “Hey. I’m older and fatter than you are.”

  “But you’ll be going toward something. Lady is down there.”

  He grunted unenthusiastically. Any more you had to wonder about his commitment to his woman. Ever since the trouble with Blade.… None of my business. “Good night, Murgen.”

  “Yeah. Same to you, chief.” He did not want to be civil, that was fine with me.

  I headed for my apartment, though there was nothing for me there but a bed that would give me no rest. With Sarie gone the place was a wasteland of the heart.

  I closed the door behind me, looked around like maybe she would jump out laughing and tell me it was all a bad joke. But the joke was not over yet. Mother Gota still had not finished cleaning up the mess left by the Strangler raid. And, pushy though she was, she had not touched anything in my work area, where I was still sorting the burned remains of several of these Annals.

  I must have gone drifting with my thoughts. Suddenly I was aware that I was not alone. I got a knife out in half a heartbeat.

  I was not in trouble. The three people staring at me belonged by family right. They were my in-laws, Sarie’s brother Thai Dei with his arm in a sling, Uncle Doj and Mother Gota. Of the three only the old woman ever said much. And nothing she said was ever anything I wanted to hear. She could find the bad side of anything and complain about it forever.

  “What?” I asked.

  Uncle Doj countered, “Did you drift away again?” He sounded troubled. “When did you go? Dejagore?”

  “It wasn’t that. That hasn’t happened for a while.” All three continued to stare at me like I had something hanging out of my nose. “What?”

  Uncle Doj said, “There is something different about you.”

  “Shit. Goddamned right there is. I lost a wife that meant more to me than—” I clamped down on the rage.

  I turned toward the door.

  No good. Smoke was in a wagon headed south.

  They continued to stare at me.

  It was like this every time I came back after going out without letting Thai Dei tag along. They did not like me getting out of their sight.

  That and their stares gave me a little shiver of the sort of feeling Croaker got every time he looked at one of the Nyueng Bao.

  Sarie being gone left a vacuum bigger than the one that emptied my heart. She had been the soul that made this weird bunch work.

  Uncle Doj asked, “Do you wish to walk the Path of the Sword?”

  The Path of the Sword, the complex of ritualized exercises associated with his two-handed longsword style of fighting could become almost as restful and free of pain as was walking with the ghost. Although Uncle Doj has been teaching me since I became part of the family, it is still difficult for me to get into the sort of trance the Path requires.

  “Not now. Not tonight. I’m tired. Every one of my muscles aches.” Yet another way I was going to miss Sarie. That green-eyed angel had been an artist at massaging out the accumulated tensions of the day.

  We were speaking Nyueng Bao, which I use fairly well. Now Mother Gota demanded, “What you doing, you, you hide from your own?” in her abominable Taglian. She refuses to believe she does not speak the language like a native.

  “Work.” Even without the Old Man’s paranoia I would have kept Smoke to myself. Hell, I’m taking a huge risk just mentioning him in these pages even though I’m scribbling them in a language hardly anyone down here even speaks, let alone reads.

  Soulcatcher is out there somewhere. Our precautions against her discovering Smoke are more elaborate than those keeping the Radisha and the Shadowmaster away.

  Catcher was in the Palace not long ago. She stole those Annals that Smoke hid before his disaster. I am pretty sure she did not notice Smoke himself. The network of confusion spells around him is supposedly extremely subtle on its fringes, so that even a player as powerful as Soulcatcher would not notice the misdirection unless she was really focused on finding something like it.

  I told them, “I just talked to the Captain. He said the headquarters group will leave tomorrow or the next day. You’re still determined to go?”

  Uncle Doj nodded. He did not seem emotional when he reminded me, “We too have a debt to repay.”

  The few material possessions the three shared were packed and piled by the apartment door already. They had been ready to go for days. I was the one who needed to focus and finalize my preparations. I had lied to Croaker when I had said I was ready to travel.

  “I’m going to bed now. Don’t wake me up for anything but the end of the world.”

  4

  Sleep is not an escape from pain. In sleep there are dreams. In sleep I go places more horrible than those I walk when I am awake.

  In dreams I still go back to Dejagore, to the death and disease, the murder and the cannibalism and the darkness. In dreams Sarie still lives, whatever the horror of the place she walks.

  That night my dreams did not restore me to the wonder of Sarie’s company.

  I remember only one. It came first as a shadow, an all-enveloping malice full of playful cruelty, as though I was sinking into the soul of a spider that enjoyed tormenting its victims. The malice did not take note of me. I passed through to its other side. And there the dream wrenched sideways, twisted, and took on life, though it was a life entirely of black and white and greys.

  I was in a place of despair and death. The sky was lead. Bodies rotted around me. The stench was strong enough to drive the buzzards away. The sick vegetation was coated with what looked like thick grasshopper spit. Only one thing moved, a distant flock of mocking crows.

  Even amidst my horror and revulsion I felt that the scene was familiar. I tried to hang on to that thought, to pursue it, to sustain my sanity by ferreting out why I would know a place I had never been. I stumbled and tripped across a plain of bones. Pyramids of skulls were my milemarks.

  My foot slipped on a baby’s skull that spun and went rattling off to the side. I fell. And fell. And then I was in another place.

  I am here. I am the dream. I am the way to life.

  Sarie was there.

  She smiled at me, then she was gone, but I clung to her smile as the only thing capable of letting me keep my head above the waters of a sea of insanity.

  I was in that other place. It was a place of golden caverns where old men sat beside the way, frozen in time, alive but unable to move so much as an eyelash. Their insanity slashed the air like a million dueling razors. Some were covered with glittering webs of ice, as though a million fairy silkworms had spun them into cocoons of delicate threads of frozen water. An enchanted forest of icicles hung from the cavern roof.

  I tried to dash forward, past the old men, to get out
of that place. I ran as you run in dreams, slowly going nowhere.

  And then the horror worsened as I realized that I knew some of those mad old men.

  I ran harder, into the treacly resistance of animate evil laughter.

  * * *

  I swung wildly at whoever was touching me, flung my hand under my pillow to recover the dagger hidden there. A powerful blow slammed my wrist as it came into the light. A strong voice snapped, “Murgen.”

  I focused. Uncle Doj stood over me. He looked grave, troubled. Thai Dei stood near the foot of my bed, where he could take me from behind if I jumped up at Doj. Mother Gota stood in the doorway, agitated.

  Uncle Doj said, “You were screaming in a language none of us knows. We found you wrestling with the darkness when we arrived.”

  “I was having a nightmare.”

  “I know.”

  “Hunh?”

  “That was obvious.”

  “Sarie was there.”

  For one instant Mother Gota’s face became a mask of rage. She muttered something softly and too quickly for me to follow, but I did catch the name Hong Tray and the word “witch.” Sahra’s grandmother Hong, long dead, was the only reason her family had accepted our relationship. Hong Tray had given her blessing.

  Ky Dam, Sahra’s grandfather, also gone now, had claimed his wife possessed the second sight. Perhaps. I had seen her forecasts work out during the siege of Dejagore. Mostly they had been very sybilline, very vague, though.

  I had heard Sarie described as a witch, too, on one occasion.

  “What is that smell?” I asked. The shakes had left me. Already I could recall details of the nightmare only through determined effort. “There a dead mouse in here?”

  Uncle Doj frowned. “This was not one of your journeys through time?”

  “No. It was more like a trip to hell.”

  “Do you wish to walk the Path of the Sword?” The Path was Doj’s religion, his main reason for being, it sometimes seemed.

  “Not right away. I want to get this down while I still remember it all. It might be important. Some of it seemed familiar.” I swung my feet to the floor, aware that I was still being scrutinized intently.