Swords & Dark Magic (7 page)

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Elmo does have a way of communicating with errant infantrymen. “Why are you people in here, in this gloom and stink, when you could be sucking up fresh air and sunshine?”

I said, “This is our natural habitat, sir.” But the truth was, it had not occurred to anybody to take the game outside.

We gathered our cards and beer and shambled out to the street-front tables. One-Eye dealt. Talk dwelt on the hairstyles, or lack thereof, favored by Aloen ladies.

It was a grand day, cloudless, cool, air in motion but not briskly enough to disturb the game. The gallery settled in. Some just liked to watch. Some hoped a seat would open up. They joined the increasingly crude speculation, which slipped into the domain of one-upmanship.

I interjected, “How long have we been playing with these cards?” Some were so ragged you should not need to turn them over to know what they were. But my memory kept tricking me. The face sides never matched up.

Everybody looked at me funny. “Here comes something off the wall,” One-Eye forecast. “Spit it out, Croaker, so we can get back to stuff that matters.”

“I’m wondering if this deck hasn’t been around long enough to take on a life of its own.”

One-Eye opened his mouth to mock me, then his eyes glazed over as he considered the possibility. Likewise, Goblin. The pallid, ugly little man said, “Well, screw me! Croaker, you aren’t half as dumb as you look. The cards have developed a mind of their own. That would explain so much.”

The whole crew eyeballed One-Eye, nodding like somebody was conducting. One-Eye had insisted that the cards hated him for as long as anyone could remember.

He won again.

Three wins at one sitting should have tipped me off. Hell was on the prowl. But my mouth was off on another adventure.

“You know what? It’s been eighty-seven days since somebody tried to kill me.”

Elmo said, “Don’t give up hope.”

“Really. Think about it. Here we are, out in the damned street where anybody could take a crack. But nobody is even eyeballing us. And none of us are looking over our shoulders and whining about our ulcers.”

Play stopped. Seventeen eyes glared at me. Otto said, “Croaker, you jinx it, I’ll personally hold you down while somebody whittles on your favorite toy.”

Goblin said, “He’s right. We’ve been here three months. The only trouble we’ve seen is guys getting drunk and starting fights.”

With 640 men, you know the Company has a few shitheads whose idea of a good time is to drink too much, then get in an ass-kicking contest.

One-Eye opined, “What it is is, the Lady’s still got a boner for Croaker. So she stashed him someplace safe. The rest of us just live in his shadow. Watch the sky. Some night there’ll be a carpet up there, Herself coming out to knock boots with her special guy.”

“What’s
her
hairstyle like, Croaker?”

Special treatment? Sure. We spent a year following Whisper from one blistering trouble spot to the next, fighting damned near every day.

Special treatment? Yeah. The kind you get for being competent. Whatever your racket, you do a good job, the bosses pile more work on.

“You’ll be the first to know when I get a good look, Otto.” I did not plow on into the kind of crudities the others found entertaining. Which they took as confirming my unabated interest in the wickedest woman in the world.

A kid named Corey said, “Speaking of hairstyles, there’s one I wouldn’t mind checking out.”

Everybody turned to admire the young woman passing on the far side of the street. Pawnbroker congratulated Corey on his excellent taste.

She was sneaking up on twenty. She had pale red hair cut shorter than any I’d yet seen around Aloe. It fell only to her collar in back and not that far angling up the sides. She had bangs in front. I did not notice what she wore. Nothing unusual. She radiated such an intense sensuality that nothing else mattered.

Our sudden attention, heads turning like birds in a wheeling flock, startled her. She stared back for a second, trying for haughty. She failed to stick it. She took off speed-walking.

One-Eye picked up his cards. “That one is bald everywhere that matters.”

Corey asked, “You know her?” Like he had found new meaning to life. He had hope. He had a mission.

“Not specifically. She’s a temple girl.”

The cult of Occupoa engages in holy prostitution. I hear Occupoa has some dedicated and talented daughters.

Goblin wanted to know how One-Eye could tell.

“That’s the official hairstyle over there, runt.” From a guy smaller than Goblin.

“And you know that because?”

“Because I’ve decided to enjoy the best of everything during my last few months.”

We all stared. One-Eye is a notorious skinflint. And never has any money, anyway, because he is such a lousy tonk player. Not to mention that he is the next thing to immortal, having been with the Company well over a hundred years.

“What?” he demanded. “So maybe I poor-mouth more than what’s the actual case. That a crime?”

No. We all do that. It is a preemptive stroke against all those good buddies who are dry and want to mooch instead of dealing with Pawn.

Somebody observed, “A lot of guys were flush when we got here. We never got no chance to get rid of our spare change before.”

True. The Black Company has been good for Aloe’s economy. Maybe that was why nobody was trying to kill us.

Elmo said, “I’d better round up Kingpin before the Lieutenant puts my name on the shit list, too. Silent? You want my seat? Shit! Where the hell did he go?”

I had not noticed our third minor wizard leaving. Silent is spookier than ever, these days. He is practically a ghost.

You are with the Company long enough you develop extra senses. Like for danger. Somehow, you read cues unconsciously and, suddenly, you are alert and ready. We call that smelling danger. Then there is precognition having to do with something stirring at the command level. That one warns you that your ass is about to get dumped into the shit.

Seemed like it took about fourteen electric seconds for all six hundred and some men to sense that something was up. That life was about to change. That I might not make it to a hundred days without somebody trying to kill me.

The cards had stopped moving already when Hagop loped up from the direction of the compound. “Elmo. Croaker. Goblin. One-Eye. The Old Man wants you.”

One-Eye grumbled, “Goblin had to go open his big goddamn mouth.”

Two minutes earlier, Goblin had muttered, “Something’s up. There’s something in the wind.”

I kicked in, “Yeah. This is all his fault. Let’s pound his ass if it turns out we have to go flush some Rebels somewhere again.”

“Weak, Croaker.” Elmo shoved back from the table. “But I second that emotion. I’d almost forgotten how nice it is for garrison troopers.” He went on about clean clothing, ample beer, regular meals, and almost unlimited access to a soldier’s favorite way of wasting time and money.

We headed down the street, leaving the cards to the others, who were already speculating. I said, “Garrison duty is all that. The hardest work I’ve got to do is to weasel One-Eye into using his curative on guys who come in with the clap.”

One-Eye said, “I like garrison because of the financial opportunities.”

He would. Put him down anywhere and give him a week, he’ll be into some kind of black-market scam.

Hagop sidled close, whispered, “I need to talk to you, private.” He slipped me a folded piece of parchment maybe three and a half inches to a side. It was dirty and it smelled bad. One face had a small triangular tear where it had hung up on something. Hagop looked like he might panic when I opened it.

I stopped walking. The others did, too, wondering what was up. I whispered, “Where did you get this?”

The Company maintained a compound outside the city, on a heath blasted barren back when Whisper arrived to negotiate the treaties by which Aloe gained the perquisites of participation in the Lady’s empire. First among those was continued existence for Aloe and its dependent environs. The compound was nothing exciting. There was a curtain wall of dried mud brick. Everything inside was adobe, too, lightly plastered to resist the rain.

The compound was all brown. A man with a discerning eye might identify shades, but us barbarians only saw brown. Even so, I had a discerning enough eye to spot a new brown patch before Hagop pointed it out.

A flying carpet lay tucked into the shade on the eastern side of the headquarters building. My companions had equally discerning eyes but less troubled hearts.

We were part of a stream, now. Every officer and platoon sergeant had been summoned. Sometimes the Captain gets his butt hairs in a twist and pulls everybody in for an impromptu motivational speech. But there was one critical difference this time.

There was a flying carpet in the shade beside the HQ.

There are, at most, six of those in existence, and only six beings capable of using them.

We were blessed with the presence of one of the Taken.

The happy days were over. Hell had taken a nap but now it was wide awake and raring to go.

Nobody overlooked the carpet. No shoulders failed to slump.

I said, “You guys go ahead. I’ll catch up in a minute. Hagop. Show me.”

He headed for the shade. For the carpet. “I saw it here. I never seen a carpet up close before so I decided to check it out.” He walked me through his experience. One glance at the carpet reaffirmed what I already knew. This unkempt, poorly maintained mess belonged to the Limper.

“I found that folded thing right here.”

Right here would be the place where the Taken sat while the carpet was aloft. The carpet there was especially frayed, stretched, and loose.

Hagop’s finger indicated a fold of material torn away from the wooden frame underneath. “It was mostly covered. It was hung up on that brad.”

A small nail had worked loose maybe three-sixteenths of an inch. A wisp of parchment remained stuck to it. I removed that with my knife, careful to make no personal contact.

“I picked it up. Before I could even look at it the Captain came out and told me to go get you guys.”

“All right. Stay out of sight. We’ll talk later.” I was going to be last inside if I did not hustle.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“It could be bad. Scoot on into town. Don’t tell anybody about this.”

The mess hall was the nearest thing to an assembly hall we had. The cooks had been run off. The place reeked of unhappiness. Half the guys lived in town, now, including me. Some had women. A few even had common-law stepchildren they did not mind supporting.

Those guys would pray that carpet meant the Lady had sent somebody out with the payroll. Only, in Aloe, our pay came from gentle taxes on the people we protected. No need to fly it in from a thousand miles away.

The Captain did his trained-bear shuffle up to the half-ass stage. A creepy brown bundle of rags followed. It dragged one leg. The hall filled with a hard silence.

The Limper. The most absurdly nasty of the Taken. A dedicated enemy of the Black Company. We had screwed him over good back when he tried going against the Lady.

He was back in favor now. But so were we. He could not have his revenge just yet. But he was patient.

The Captain rumbled, “The tedium is about to end, gentlemen. We now know why the Lady put us here. We’re supposed to take out a Rebel captain called Tides Elba.”

I checked the spelling later. It was not a name we knew. He pronounced it “Teadace Elba.”

The Captain said that Tides Elba had enjoyed some successes west of us, but none of her victories had been big enough to catch our attention.

An interesting line of bullshit, some of which might be true.

The Limper climbed up with the Captain. That was a struggle. He had that bad leg and he was a runt—in stature. In wickedness and talent for sorcery he was the baddest of the bad. A reek of dread surrounded him. So did a reek of reek. On his best day, he smelled like he had been in a grave for a long time. He considered us from behind a brown leather mask.

Folks with weaker stomachs jostled for space in the back.

The Limper said nothing. He just wanted us to know he was around. Important to remember. And something foretelling interesting times.

The Captain told the Company commanders and platoon leaders to tell their men that we might be making movement soon. Pending investigatory work here in Aloe. They should settle their debts and personal issues. Ideally, they should shut down their Aloe lives and return to the compound.

We might see some desertions.

Elmo jabbed me in the ribs. “Pay attention.”

The Old Man dismissed everybody but me and the magic-users. He invoked me directly. “Croaker, stay with me.” The wizards he told to stick with the Limper.

The Captain herded me over to Admin. In theory, I owned a corner space there where I was supposed to work on these Annals. I did not often take advantage.

“Sit.” A command, not an invitation. I sat in one of two crude chairs facing the ragged table he uses as a bulwark against the world. “Limper is here. He hasn’t said so but we know that means we’re headed into the shit. He hasn’t said much of anything yet, actually. That may mean he doesn’t know anything himself, yet. He’s following orders, too.”

I nodded.

“This isn’t good, Croaker. This is the Limper. There’ll be more going on than what we see.”

There would be. I did my best to look like a bright child awaiting ineluctable wisdom from an honored elder.

“I’d tell you you’re full of shit but you don’t need the special memo. You know that taste in your mouth.”

He was going to come down on me for something?

“You been putting on a show of being as useless as the rest of these dicks. But when you’re supposedly off whoring or getting fucked up you’re usually really somewhere poking into the local history.”

“A man needs to have more than one hobby.”

“It’s not a hobby if you can’t help yourself.”

“I’m a bad man. I need to understand the past. It illuminates the present.”

The Captain nodded. He steepled his fingers in front of a square, strong, dimpled chin. “I got some illuminating for you to do.”