Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (34 page)

“Shifter.”

“I know. I’m wondering if it was him last time.”

“What’re you talking about?” Lady asked.

I said, “Murgen, let’s plant that standard up where the world can see it when
the sun comes up.”

“Right.”

We stalked into the citadel, Lady trying to find out what had passed between me
and One-Eye. I developed a hearing problem. One-Eye took the lead. We climbed
dark stairs where the footing was treacherous because of blood and bodies. There
was no more fighting going on above us.

Ominous.

The last fighters of both sides were in a chamber a couple stories from the top.

All dead. “Sorcery here,” Goblin muttered.

“We go up,” One-Eye snapped.

“I know.”

Total agreement between them. For once.

I drew my sword. There was no flame in it, and no color to my costume now.

Goblin and One-Eye had other things on their minds.

We caught up with Shifter and the Shadowmaster in the parapet of the tower.

Shifter had assumed human form. He had the Shadowmaster at bay. It was a tiny
thing in black, almost impossible to take seriously as a danger. There was no
sign of Shifter’s sidekick. I told Goblin, “There’s one missing. Keep an eye
out.”

“Got you.” He knew what was going on. He was as serious as ever I’ve seen him.

Shifter started moving in on the Shadowmaster. It had nowhere to retreat. I
gestured Lady to move out to his right. I went left. I’m not sure what One-Eye
was doing.

I glanced toward the camp south of the city. The rain had stopped while we were
inside the tower. The camp was plainly visible by its own lights. I got the
impression they knew something was wrong over here but they were not about to
come find out what.

They were nice and close. Put artillery on the wall and life could get miserable
for them.

The Shadowmaster backed up against the merlons edging the parapet, apparently
able to do nothing. Why were they impotent? This one was who? Stormshadow?

Shifter was close enough to touch, now. One hand darted out and ripped the black
robing off the Shadowmaster.

I gawked. I heard Lady’s gasp from fifteen feet away.

One-Eye said it. “I’ll go to hell. Stormbringer! But she’s supposed to be dead.”

Stormbringer. Another of the original Ten Who Were Taken. Another one who was
supposed to have perished in the Battle at Charm, after murdering the Hanged Man
and . . . and Shifter!

Aha! I said to me, said I. Aha! A settlement of scores. Shifter knew all the
time. Shifter had been out to get Stormbringer from the start.

And where one mysteriously surviving Taken was in business for herself, might
there not be more? Like about three more?

“What the hell? They all still around but the Hanged Man, Limper, and
Soulcatcher?” I’d seen those three go down myself.

Lady stood there shaking her head.

Were even those three gone? I had killed Limper myself once, and he had come
back . . .

Chills got me again.

When they were Shadowmasters they were anonymous creeps who had only
standard-issue cause to do me grief. But the Taken . . . Some of them had very
special and personal cause to hate the Company.

This moment of revelation had turned it into a whole different kind of war.

I have no idea what passed between Shifter and Bringer, but it left the air
crackling with electric hatred.

Stormbringer seemed powerless. Why? A few minutes ago she had been bringing in
that monster of a storm to whip on us. Shifter was no greater power than she.

Unless, somehow, he had come upon that bane of all the Taken, a True Name.

I looked at Lady.

She knew it. She knew all their True Names. She had not lost her knowledge when
she had lost her powers.

Power. I had not thought about what I’d had here, almost under my thumb, all
this time. What she knew was worth the ransoms of a hundred princes. The secrets
locked in her head could enslave or deliver empires.

If you knew she had them.

Some folks knew.

She had a lot more guts than I’d realized, coming out of the Tower and empire
with me.

I had to do some rethinking and strategic reorientation. These Shadowmasters,

Shifter, the Howler, they all knew what I’d just realized. She was damned lucky
she hadn’t been snatched already and squeezed dry.

Shifter laid his huge ugly hands on Stormbringer. And only then did she begin to
resist. With sudden, startling violence she did something that hurled Shifter
all the way across the parapet. He lay there for a moment, eyes glassy.

Bringer made a break.

I came around with a swordstroke I brought in from the moon, right into her
belly. It did not mark her but it stopped her in her tracks. Lady hacked at her
overhand. She rolled away from the stroke. I whacked her again. But she got up
and started heading out again. And her fingers were dancing. Sparks played
between them.

Oh, shit.

One-Eye tripped her. Lady and I hacked at her again, without much effect. Then
Murgen let her have it with the spearhead on the lance that bore the Company
standard.

She howled like one of the damned.

What the hell?

She started moving again. But now Shifter was back. He had taken the form of the
forvalaka, the black were-leopard almost impossible to kill or injure. He jumped
on Stormbringer and started tearing her apart.

She gave damned near as good as she got. We backed away, stayed away, gave them
room.

I don’t know what Shifter did or when. Or if he did anything at all. One-Eye
might have imagined it all. But sometime during the thing the little black man
sidled up and whispered, “He did it, Croaker. It was him that killed Tom-Tom.”

That was a long time ago. I had almost no feelings about it anymore. But One-Eye
had not forgotten nor forgiven. That was his brother . . .

“What you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Something. I got to do something.”

“What’ll that do to the rest of us? We won’t have an angel anymore.”

“Ain’t gonna have one anyway, Croaker. He’s done got what he wanted right there.

Shifter or no Shifter you’re on your own soon as he finishes her off.”

He was right. And chances were damned good Shifter would stop being Lady’s
faithful old dog, too. If there was any getting him, this was the time.

The combatants went on for maybe fifteen minutes, shredding each other. I got
the impression things were not going as easy as Shifter had hoped. Bringer was
putting up a damned good fight.

But he won. Sort of. She stopped resisting. He lay panting, unable to move.

She’d locked her limbs around him. He bled from a hundred small wounds. He
cursed softly, and I thought I heard him damning someone for helping her, heard
him threatening to get someone next.

“You got any special use for him now?” I asked Lady. “I don’t know how much you
knew. I don’t care now. But you better think about what he’s going to have on
his mind now he don’t need you and me for a stalking horse anymore.”

She shook her head slowly.

Something slid over the edge of the parapet behind her. Another, smaller
forvalaka. I thought we were in big trouble, but Shifter’s apprentice made a
tactical error. She began to shift forms. She finished just in time to shriek
“No!” at One-Eye.

One-Eye had made him a club out of something, and with two quick and heroic
swings he bashed Stormbringer and Shapeshifter into complete unconsciousness.

They had weakened one another that much.

Shifter’s companion flew at him.

Murgen tripped her by tangling her feet with the head of the lance he carried.

He cut her. Blood got all over the standard. She screamed like she was trapped
in Hell’s agony.

I recognized her, then. She had done a lot of yelling the last time I’d seen
her, so long ago.

Sometime during the excitement a whole herd of crows had gathered on the
merlons, out of the way. They started laughing.

Everybody jumped on the woman before she could do anything. Goblin did some kind
of swift magical bind that left her unable to do anything but wiggle her eyes.

One-Eye looked at me and said, “You got any suture with you, Croaker? I got a
needle but I don’t think I got enough thread.”

What? “Some.” I always carried some medical odds and ends.

“Gimme.”

I gave him.

He whacked Shifter and Bringer again. “Just to make sure they’re out. They don’t
got no special powers when they’re out.”

He squatted down and started sewing their mouths shut. He finished Shifter,

said, “Get him stripped. Whack him if he stirs.”

What the hell?

It got gruesome, then more gruesome. “What the hell you doing?” I demanded.

The crows were having a party.

“Sewing all the holes shut. So the devils don’t get out.”

“What?” Maybe it made sense to him. It didn’t to me.

“Old trick for getting rid of evil witch doctors back home.” When he finished
with the orifices he sewed fingers and toes together. “Put them in a sack with a
hundred pounds of rocks and throw them in the river.”

Lady said, “You’ll have to burn them. And grind what’s left into powder and
scatter the powder on the wind.”

One-Eye looked at her for ten seconds. “You mean I done all this work for
nothing?”

“No. It’ll help. You don’t want them getting excited while you’re roasting
them.”

I gave her a startled look. That was not like her. I turned to Murgen. “You want
to get that standard up?”

One-Eye stirred Shifter’s apprentice with a toe. “What about this one? Think I
should take care of her, too?”

“She hasn’t done anything.” I squatted beside her. “I remember you now, darling.

It took me a while because we didn’t see that much of you in Juniper. You
weren’t very nice to my buddy Marron Shed.” I looked at Lady. “What were you
figuring on making out of her?”

She did not answer.

“Be that way. We’ll talk later.” I looked at the apprentice. “Lisa Daela Bowalk.

You hear me name your name, the way these others did?” Crows chuckled to one
another. “I’m going to give you a break. That you probably don’t deserve.

Murgen, find some place to lock this one up. We’ll turn her loose when we’re
ready to move out. Goblin, you help One-Eye with whatever he’s got to do.” I
looked at the Company standard, bloodstained once again, flying defiantly again.

“You”—pointing at One-Eye—“take care of it right. Unless you want two more of
them after us the way Limper was.”

He gulped air. “Yeah.”

“Lady, I told you. Tonight in Stormgard. Let’s go find someplace.”

Something was wrong with me. I felt mildly depressed, vaguely let down, once
again victim of an anticlimax, of a hollow victory. Why? Two great wickednesses
were about to be removed from the face of the earth. Luck had marched with the
Company once more. We had added more impossible triumphs to our roll of
victories.

We were two hundred miles nearer our destination than we’d had any right to
hope. There was no obvious reason to expect much trouble from those troops
locked up in that camp south of the city. Their Shadowmaster captain was
wounded. The people of Stormgard, for the most part, were accepting us as
liberators.

What was to be bothered about?

Tonight in Stormgard.

Tonight in Stormgard was something, though somehow tainted with that lack of
satisfaction that haunted me increasingly. I slept well past dawn. A bugle
wakened me. The first thing I saw when I cracked my lids was a big black bastard
of a crow eyeballing Lady and me. I threw something at it.

Another bugle call. I stumbled to a window. Then streaked to another. “Lady. Get
up. We got trouble.”

Trouble snaked out of the southern hills in the form of another enemy army.

Mogaba had our boys getting into formation already. Over on the south wall
Cletus and his brothers had the artillery harassing the encampment, but their
engines could not keep that mob from getting ready for a fight. The people of
the city poured from their houses, headed for the walls to watch.

Crows were everywhere.

Lady took a look, snapped, “Let’s get dressed,” and started helping me with my
costume. I helped with hers.

I said of mine, “This thing is starting to smell.”

“You may not have to wear it much longer.”

“Eh?”

“That bunch coming out of the hills has to be just about everybody they’ve got
left under arms. Break them and the war is over.”

“Sure. Except for three Shadowmasters who might not see it that way.”

I stepped to the window, shaded my eyes. I thought I could detect a black dot
floating among the soldiers. “We don’t have anybody on our side now. Maybe I
shouldn’t have been so hasty with Shifter.”

“You did the right thing. He’d fulfilled his agenda. He might even have joined
the others against us. He had no grudge against them.”

“Did you know who they were?”

“I never suspected. Honest. Not till a day or two ago. Then it seemed too
unlikely to mention.”

“Let’s get at it.”

She kissed me, and it was a kiss with oomph behind it. We’d come a long way . .

. She put her helmet on and turned into the grim dark thing called Lifetaker. I
did my magic trick and turned into Widowmaker. The scurrying rats who people
Stormgard—I guessed we should change the name back when the dust settled—stared
at us in fear and awe as we strode through the streets.

Mogaba met us. He’d brought our horses. We mounted up. I asked, “How bad does it
look?”

“Can’t tell yet. With two battles under our belts and two victories I’d say
we’re the more tempered force. But there’ll be a lot of them and I don’t think
you have any more tricks up your sleeves.”