Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (31 page)

They had some competent sergeants on the other side. They began bringing up
water and cutting paths through the coals with trenching tools. They began
getting their men into ragged formations, behind their shields, safer from
arrows and javelins. I signalled again. The wheeled ballistae opened up.

Daring the enemy’s worst, Mogaba and Ochiba rode back and forth in front of
their men, exhorting them to stand fast, to maintain the integrity of their
line.

My role was cruel, now. I could do nothing but sit there with the breeze playing
around me, being symbolic. They got aisles cleared through the charcoal and
rushed through. A lot got dead for their trouble. The ballistae ran out of
missiles and withdrew, but arrows and javelins continued to rain on those coming
up from the ford, taking a terrible toll.

More and more pressure all along the line. But the legions did not bend, and
gave as good as they got. Their lungs were not burned raw by sulphur gasses.

Over half the enemy had crossed the river. A third of those had fallen. The
captains in the fortress remained indecisive.

The Shadowmasters’ troops kept coming across. A furious desperation began to
animate them. Eighty percent over. Ninety percent. The Taglians began to give a
step here and there. I remained frozen, an iron symbol. “Frogface,” I muttered
into my helmet, “I need you now.”

The imp materialized, perched on my mount’s neck. “What you need, chief?” I
filled him up with orders I wanted relayed to Murgen, to Otto and Hagpp, to
Sindawe, to damned near everybody I could think of. Some ordered next steps of
the plan, some involved innovations.

The morning had been remarkably crow-free. Now that changed. Two monsters,

damned near as big as chickens, settled on my shoulders. They were nobody’s
imagination. I felt their weight. Others saw them. Lady turned to look at them.

A flock passed over the battlefield, circled the fortress, settled into the
trees along the riverbank.

The enemy infantry was across. Their train was getting organized to follow.

Thousands of the Shadowmasters’ men were down. I doubted they had the advantage
of numbers anymore. But experience had begun to tell. My Taglians were giving
ground. I felt the first flutters of panic nipping at their formations.

Frogface materialized. “Couple wagons with ballista shafts came in, chief.”

“Get them up to the engines. Then tell Otto and Hagop it’s time.”

Maybe seven hundred horsemen had straggled in from Numa by then. They were dead
tired. But they were in place and ready.

They did what they were supposed to do. They stumbled up out of the cover of the
creek. They sliced through the chaos behind the enemy line like the fabled hot
knife through butter. Soft butter. Then they came back across the hillside,

cutting at the back of the enemy line. Like scythes felling wheat.

Murgen came over the hill behind me, displaying the Black Company standard
boldly. Sindawe’s bunch were behind him. Murgen halted between Lady and me, a
few steps back.

The artillery began feeling for the range to the fortress. Goblin and One-Eye
and maybe even Shifter had been at work, using little charms to decompose the
mortar between stones.

“It’s going to work,” I muttered. “I think we’re going to do it.”

The cavalry sortie did it. They did not get sorted out for another charge before
men began running for the ford. The second charge bogged down in the sheer mass
of fleeing men. Mogaba, I love you.

The men he had trained did not break formation and charge. He and Ochiba hustled
up and down their lines, getting the ranks dressed and the injured out of the
way. Ballista shafts were knocking stones out of the fortress wall. The captains
up top gawked. A few of feeble courage abandoned the battlements.

I raised my sword and pointed. The drums started. I began walking my mount
forward. Lady kept pace, as did Murgen and the standard. One-Eye and Goblin
worked up a more terrible glamor around us. My two crows shrieked. They could be
heard above the tumult. The enemy train was all crowded up the other side of the
ford. Now the teamsters fled, leaving them blocking the retreat of their
comrades.

We had them in a bottle, the cork was in, and most of them had their backs to
us. The grim work began.

I continued my slow advance. People stayed away from me and Lady and the
standard. Archers on the battlements tried dropping me, but somebody had put
some pretty good spells on my armor. Nothing got through, though for a while it
was like being in a barrel somebody was whacking with a hammer.

Enemy soldiers began jumping in the river and swimming for it.

The ballistae had a good range, all their shafts striking in a small area. The
watchtower creaked and grumbled. Then rumbled. A big chunk fell out, and soon
the whole tower collapsed, taking parts of the fortress wall with it.

I pushed into the river, across the ford, and on up between wagons. The standard
and Sindawe’s men followed. The only enemies I saw were heeling and toeing it
south.

Amazing. I never struck a blow myself.

It was almost workaday stuff for Sindawe’s bunch to begin clearing the wagons,

for some to worm through behind Murgen and cover him while he planted the
standard on the fortress wall.

Fighting continued on the north bank but the thing had been decided. It was over
and won and I did not believe it. It had been close to being too easy. I had not
used all the arrows in my quiver.

Though chaos continued around me I took out my map case to check out what lay to
the south.

Rage and panic contended in the fountained hall at Shadowlight. Moonshadow
mewled dire prophecies. Stormshadow raged. One maintained a silence as deep as
that within a buried coffin. And one was not there at all, though a Voice spoke
for him, dark and mocking.

“I said a million men might not be enough.”

“Silence, worm!” Stormshadow snarled.

“They have obliterated your invincible armies, children. They have forced
bridgeheads everywhere. What will you do now, whimpering dogs? Your provinces
are a prostrate and naked woman. A two-hundred-mile jaunt behind the Lance of
Passion and they will be hammering at the gates of Stormgard. What will you do,

what will you do, what will you do? Oh, woe, what hast befallen thee?” Insane
laughter rolled out of that black absence in the air.

Stormshadow snarled, “You haven’t been a whole hell of a lot of help, have you?

You and your games. Trying to catch Dorotea Senjak? How well did you do? Eh?

What would you have done with their Captain? Did you have a bargain in mind?

Some deal to trade us for the power they bring? Did you think you could use them
to close the Gate? If you did you’re the greatest fool of all.”

“Whine, children. Moan and wail. They are upon you. Maybe if you beg I’ll save
you yet again.”

Moonshadow snapped, “Bold chatter from one without the ability to save himself.

Yes. In the traditions of their Company they caught us off balance. They did
what is for them old routine: the impossible. But the fighting along the Main
was just one move in the game. Only a pawn has vanished from the board. If they
come south, every step will carry them a step nearer their dooms.”

Laughter.

The silent one broke his fast of words. “There are three of us, in the fullness
of our power. But two great ones dog the path of the Black Company. And they
have little interest in furthering its goals. And she is a cripple, feeble as a
mouse.”

More laughter. “Once upon a time someone named the true name of Dorotea Senjak.

So now she is the Lady no more. She has no more powers than a talented child.

But do you believe she lost her memory when she lost those powers? You do not.

Or you would not accuse me as you have. Perhaps she will grow frightened enough
or desperate enough to confide in the great one who changes.”

No retort. That was the dread that haunted them all.

Moonshadow said, “The reports are confused. Still, a great disaster has befallen
our army. But we are dealing with the Black Company. The chance has always
existed. We have prepared for it. We will regain our composure. We will deal
with them. But there is a mystery from the fighting at Ghoja. Two dire figures
were seen there, great dark beings on giant steeds that breathed fire. Beings
immune to the bite of darts. The names Widowmaker and Lifetaker have been
breathed by those who stood with the Black Company.”

This was news to the others. Stormshadow said, “We must learn more about this.

It may explain their luck.”

The hole in the air: “You must act if you do not want to be devoured. I suggest
you put aside terror, eschew squabbling, and cease the dispensation of
accusation. I suggest you think of a way to go for the jugular.”

No one replied.

“Perhaps I will contribute myself when next fate tries to take its cut.”

“Well,” Stormshadow mused. “The fear has at last penetrated as far as Overlook.”

The bickering resumed, but without heart. Four minds rotated toward thwarting
that doom from the north.

Tired is not quite so important when you have just beaten the odds. You’ve got
energy to celebrate.

I did not want a celebration. Enemy soldiers were still trying to get away. I
wanted my men to get on with what we had to do while they still thought they
were supermen. I had my staff together before the chaos started sorting itself
out.

“Otto. Hagop. Come morning you head east along the river and break up the force
guarding the prisoners building this levee system. Big Bucket, Candles, you guys
get this side of the ford cleaned up. Look through these wagons and see what
we’ve got. Mogaba, get the battlefield cleaned up. Collect weapons. One-Eye, get
our casualties moved back to Vejagedhya. I’ll help when I get time. Don’t let
those Taglian butchers do anything stupid.” We had a dozen volunteer physicians
along. Their ideas of medicine were pretty primitive.

“Lady. What do we know about this Dejagore?” Dejagore was the nearest big city
south of the Main, two hundred miles down the road. “Besides the fact that it’s
a walled city?”

“A Shadowmaster makes his headquarters there.”

“Which one?”

“Moonshadow, I think. No. Stormshadow.”

“That’s it?”

“If you’d take prisoners you might find out something from them.”

I raised an eyebrow. She prodding me about excesses? “Keep that in mind, Otto.

Bring those prisoners when you catch up.”

“All fifty thousand?”

“As many as don’t run away. I’m hoping some will be mad enough to help us out.

The rest we can use for labor.”

Mogaba asked, “You’re going to invade the Shadowlands?”

He knew I was. He wanted a formal declaration. “Yes. They supposedly only have
fifty thousand men under arms. We just creamed a third. I don’t think they can
get another mob as big together in time if we go at them as hard as we can, as
fast as we can.”

“Audacity,” he said.

“Yeah. Keep hitting them and don’t give them a chance to get their feet under
them again.”

Lady chided, “They’re sorcerers, Croaker. What happens when they come out
themselves?”

“Then Shifter will have to kick in. Don’t worry about the mules, just load the
wagons. We’ve worked on sorcerers before.”

Nobody argued. Maybe they should have. But we all felt that fate had handed us
an opportunity and we would be idiots to waste it. I figured too that since we
had not expected to survive the first contest, we were out nothing by pressing
onward.

“I wonder how beloved these Shadowmasters are to their subjects. Can we expect
local support?”

No comment. We would find out the hard way.

Talk went on and on. Eventually I left it to help with the medical work,

patching and sewing while issuing orders through a procession of messengers. I
got me two hours sleep that night.

The cavalry was heading out east and Mogaba’s legion had begun its southward
advance when Lady joined me. “Shifter has been scouting. He says you can detect
an almost visible change as news of the battle spreads. The mass of people are
excited. Those who collaborate with the Shadowmasters are confused and
frightened. They’ll probably panic and run when they hear we’re coming.”

“Good. Even great.” In ten days we would find out for sure how much impact Ghoja
had had. I meant to advance on Dejagore at twenty miles a day. The roads south
of the Main were dry. How lovely that must have been for them.

Jahamaraj Jah had gotten his survivors into position in time and set a series of
clever ambushes. His mob scrubbed two thousand fugitives from Ghoja.

He was not pleased with my invasion plans. He was even less pleased when I
drafted his followers and distributed them as replacements for men we had lost.

But he did not argue much.

We encountered no resistance. In territories formerly belonging to Taglios we
received warm welcomes in villages still occupied by their original inhabitants.

The natives were cooler farther south but not inimical. They thought we were too
good to be true.

We encountered our first enemy patrols six days south of Ghoja. They avoided
contact. I told everybody to look professional and mean.

Otto and Hagop caught up, dragging along thirty thousand people from the levee
project. I looked them over. They had not been treated well. There were some
very angry, bitter men among them. Hagop said they were all willing to help
defeat the Shadowmasters.

“Damn me,” I said. “A year and a half ago there were seven of us. Now we’re a
horde. Pick out the ones in the best shape. Arm them with captured weapons. Add
them to the legions so every fourth man in Mogaba’s and Ochiba’s is a new one.