Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (16 page)

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 unenthusiastic
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 stories 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 chattering 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
Tallios. “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?”

“Way back. Me and Cordy bugged out of Roses maybe a year after you guys were in
there after that Rebel general, Raker. I wasn’t much more than a kid. We sort of
drifted from one thing to another, headed south. First thing you know, we was
across the Sea of Torments. Then we got into some trouble with the imperials, so
we had to get out of the empire. Then we just kept drifting, a little bit this
year, a little bit that. We hooked up with Blade. Next thing you know, here we
are down here. What’re you guys doing here?”

“Going home.” That was all I needed to tell him.

He knew plenty about us if he had come to us knowing Taglios was on our
itinerary but not our final destination.

I said, “In a military outfit it’s not acceptable behavior for just anybody to
walk up and start shooting the shit with the commander any time they feel like
it. I try to keep this outfit looking military. It intimidates the yokels.”

“Yeah. Gotcha. Channels, and all that. Right.” He went away.

His Taglios was a long way off. I figured we had time to sort his bunch out. So
why press?

We returned to the river and sailed down to the Second Cataract. Faster traffic
had carried the word that the boys were back. Idon, a bizarre strip of a town,

was a ghost city. We saw not a dozen souls there. Once again we had come to a
place where the Black Company was remembered. That made me uncomfortable.

What had our forebrethren done down here? The Annals went on about the Pastel
Wars but did not recall the sort of excesses that would terrify the descendants
of the survivors forever.

Below Idon, while we waited to find a bargemaster with guts enough to take us
south, I had Murgen plant the standard. Mogaba, as serious as ever, got a ditch
dug and our encampment lightly fortified. I swiped a boat and crossed the river
and climbed the hills to the ruins of Cho’n Delor. I spent a day roaming that
haunted memorial to a dead god, alone except for crows, always wondering about
the sort of men who had gone before me.

I suspected and feared that they had been men very much like me. Men caught in
the rhythm and motion and pace, unable to wriggle free.

The Annalist who recorded the epic struggle that took place while the Company
was in service to the Paingod had written a lot of words, sometimes going into
too great a detail about daily minutiae, but he had had very little to say about
the men with whom he had served.

Most had left their mark only when he recorded their passing.

I have been accused of the same. It has been said that too often when I bother
to mention someone in particular it is only as a name of the slain. And maybe
there’s truth in that. Or maybe that’s getting it backward. There is always pain
in writing about those who have perished before me. Even when I mention them
only in passing. These are my brethren, my family. Now, almost, my children.

These Annals are their memorial. And my catharsis. But even as a child I was a
master at damping and concealing my emotions.

But I was speaking of ruins, the spoor of battle.

The Pastel Wars must have been a struggle as bitter as that we had endured in
the north, confined to a smaller territory. The scars were still grim. They
might take a thousand years to heal.

Twice during that outing I thought I glimpsed the mobile stump I had seen from
the wall of the Temple of Travellers’ Repose. I tried getting closer, for a
better look, but it always disappeared on me.