The Return of the Black Company (22 page)

Mogaba replied. “They spy. Before long they will undertake selected assassinations. The enemy shows no awareness of that program. If their assassinations succeed the results will be of more value that anything but a decisive encounter on the battlefield.”

Mogaba invited comment from Singh with his glance but Narayan held his tongue.

Mogaba said, “Unfortunately, the intelligence the Deceivers gather grows less reliable with each report. The enemy have enjoyed considerable success in their efforts to eliminate the cult.”

Still no one else spoke.

Mogaba continued, “Lady and Croaker have become very aggressive against spies. I believe that indicates a major move is imminent.”

“It’s winter,” Longshadow said. “And my enemies are in no hurry. They are content to nibble me to death. This so-called Liberator will never be satisfied that he has men and weapons enough.”

He was right about that. Croaker never stopped going after more.

The Howler joined the group, stifling a scream as he did so. He husked, “The enemy labor battalions have completed the paved road linking Taglios and Stormgard. A similar road is almost complete from Stormgard to Shadowlight.”

Shadowlight lies near the heart of the most populous and prosperous region of the Shadowlands. Shadowspinner had been overlord there. Nominally, the city and its environs still owed allegiance to Longshadow. Yet our soldiers were building a road in the area untroubled.

I wondered why. Croaker’s strategic plan did not require it. He had no intention of besieging Shadowlight. That would tie up too many men for far too long.

Mogaba grumbled, “They press us everywhere. No day passes but that we hear of the fall of another town or village. Many places the locals no longer resist at all. And it would be folly to assume that Croaker and Lady will respect the season.”

Longshadow turned his dread mask toward Mogaba, who flinched. “Have you done anything to make it difficult to sustain a major campaign, General?”

An army
must
live off the land if it ventures far from home. You cannot carry enough food and fodder to sustain it any length of time.

“Very little.” Mogaba didn’t show an ounce of contrition. “I have my orders. And our enemies know what those orders are.”

“What?” Now Longshadow was testy.

“They expect me to sit still.” Mogaba indicated Singh, who nodded agreement reluctantly. “Their strategy assumes that I will defend one fixed point. Because your orders constrain me to do just that they scatter their forces and attack everywhere. Blade cannot blunt their sword alone. The villages will not resist because the people know no help will come. I could defeat the fools in detail, in a short while, if our strategy changed suddenly.”

I don’t think so, I thought, floating there smug in the knowledge that we had Smoke.

“No!” Longshadow forced his quaking flesh to face southward. He glared at the plain of glittering stone. “We will discuss military matters in private only, General.”

Howler delivered a horrible scream edged with mockery. Singh practically dove through the hatchway. His contempt for the Shadowmaster was obvious to everyone but Longshadow himself—though it was likely Longshadow would not have cared. To the Shadowmaster the Strangler was little more than a useful termite. In his mind none of us were much more than pesky insects.

The child left last. She considered Longshadow coldly. Her eyes seemed as old and wicked as time itself. She was a scary little thing for sure.

I wondered what the Old Man thought when he saw her. Or if he even dared look.

Longshadow said, “They don’t think I know what I’m doing.”

“My soldiers are wasted where they are,” Mogaba replied. “They’re losing what edge they had.”

“You may be right. But to attack in any direction you will have to leave what protection I am able to afford you. Without my lost comrades I cannot reach nearly as far as once I did. Will you risk their sorcery without mine to support you?”

Mogaba grunted. He glared at the glittering plain.

“You believe I am a coward for fearing that, General?”

“I stipulate the danger. I grant the value of your protection. But there is much that I could do anyway. Blade has been allowed to act on a limited scale and has accomplished great things. For certain he has demonstrated repeatedly how these Taglians will collapse if you attack their weaknesses.”

“You trust Blade?”

“More than most. Like me, he has nowhere else to run. But I trust no one completely. Our allies least of all. Neither Howler nor the Deceiver joined us out of love for our cause.”

“Indeed.” Apparently amused, Longshadow seemed to relax. “I must explain, General.” Mogaba’s surprise told me that this was an extraordinary eventuality. “I do not stay bottled up here because of the plain. I can leave Overlook for short periods. I will if I must. The Shadowgate wards are fresh and strong and reliable and entirely under my control. But if I do venture out I will have to do so by stealth.”

Mogaba grunted again.

“The reason I stay here is that there are some less obvious players in this game.”

Mogaba frowned. Sounded like a crock to me, too.

“Howler springs from that clan once known as The Ten Who Were Taken.”

“I know.”

“Stormshadow matriculated from that slave school as well. Another graduate was Senjak’s sister. They called her Soulcatcher.”

“I believe we’ve met.”

“Yes. She embarrassed you at Stormgard.” Actually, that was Lady that time. Wasn’t it?

Mogaba nodded. I was surprised. Time seemed to have given him the ability to manage his temper.

“Some years ago circumstances deceived Howler and I. We took Soulcatcher prisoner under the impression that we had captured her sister. She was masquerading as Senjak at the time so the mistake was more her fault than ours. She escaped during some confusion that arose later. Although we did not treat her severely she bears us a unreasonable ill will. She has done us mischief before now and awaits the opportunity to do us major harm.”

“You think if you left Overlook she might invite herself inside and forget to leave the door unlocked?”

“Exactly.”

Ha! Imagine hijacking that incredible fortress.

Mogaba sighed. “So whether I like it or not it will have to be decided on the Plain of Charandaprash.”

“Yes. Will you win?”

“Yes.” Mogaba never did lack confidence. “As long as Croaker remains the man I knew, scarred by that streak of softness.”

“If?”

“He hides behind a hundred masks. His soft streak may be another of those.”

“So this man concerns you despite your desire to discount him.”

“We continue to play to his strengths, not to attack his weaknesses. We allow him time to think, to plan, to maneuver, so he does not need to be subtle. His forces advance everywhere. Along the frontier the people are more afraid of the Black Company than of you. For pure viciousness there is nothing to match his war against Singh’s kind. The Croaker I remember would have taken prisoners. He would have pardoned Stranglers willing to abandon their religion.”

Right, I thought sarcastically. Then I reconsidered. Mogaba might be correct. Croaker
had
been forgiving, once upon a time.

“Maybe Senjak wants the example made.”

“Possibly. She is that hard. But her influence doesn’t explain Croaker’s having spent seven thousand lives trying to get Blade.”

What? This was news.

“Blade deserted him.”

“I deserted him. And I was Company. Blade was only an adventurer, not a brother. He hasn’t come after me that way. With Blade he’s fighting a personal war.”

The falling out with Blade and Blade’s subsequent flight and defection baffled a lot of people, especially his buddies Cordy and Willow. And my name can go to the top of the list. Whispers were that Croaker stumbled onto something real going on between Lady and Blade. Whatever, it was certain that he was as obsessive about Blade as he was about Narayan Singh.

Lady did not interfere in Croaker’s vendetta. Neither did she help.

“That troubles you?”

“Croaker confuses me. In some ways he has become dangerously unpredictable. At the same time he becomes more and more the high priest of the Black Company legend, admitting no other gods before his precious Annals.”

That was not true. Croaker grew less interested all the time. But allow Mogaba his hyperbole. He wanted to sell something.

Mogaba continued, “I fear he may become so skewed he’ll attack in a way so novel we won’t recognize it until it’s too late.”

“As long as he comes. Only disaster awaits him.”

“He’ll come. But is the overall outcome so certain?” I got the feeling both men nurtured major doubts, but each mostly about the other.

“You circle back upon my constraints. Desist. You fear him?”

“I dread him. More than I dread Lady. Lady is straightforward in her enmity. She comes right at you with everything she has. Croaker is determined to flim-flam you into looking somewhere else while he sticks a knife in your back. He will come at you with everything he has, too, but how will he use it? He is not a man of honor.”

Mogaba didn’t really mean that Croaker was dishonorable but that he was not a gentleman in the sense that meant so much to Mogaba—who could not be considered a cavalier himself anymore.

Mogaba continued, “He is no longer sane. I do not believe he is sure what he is doing himself. These days he has to face much for which there is no precedent in his Annals.”

Wrong again, chappie. After four hundred years there is a precedent for everything in the Annals somewhere. The trick is knowing how to look.

“He has limits, General.”

“Of course. Those Taglians are factious and divisive.”

“And that could be his undoing. Politically he will have no option but to try his luck at Charandaprash soon. Where we will crush him.”

“And if I do? We should consider the possibilities of life unplagued by this disease called the Black Company.”

“Oh?”

“Winning one battle will not be enough. If even one of them survives and maintains possession of the Lance of Passion new armies will rise against us. Lady proved that.”

“Then you will have the pleasure of crushing them again.”

Mogaba wanted to argue but elected not to bark into the wind.

“Once Overlook is complete you can hare off on any adventure you like, with my approval
and
with my total support.”

“Adventure?”

“I understand you better than you suppose. You were Gea-Xle’s greatest warrior but you could not prove that to yourself. In the Black Company you were overshadowed by your captain and Senjak. It was necessary for you to have command in order to demonstrate your scope and genius. When you did have an opportunity all your efforts were sabotaged and suborned. You came to me because the Black Company would not allow you the opportunity you need.”

Mogaba nodded. He did not seem pleased with himself, though. And that surprised me. I had thought him too self-centered to entertain moral doubts.

“Go. Conquer the world, General. I’ll enjoy helping you. But you have to crush the Black Company first. You have to stop the Taglians. Because you will have nothing if I fall. Will the Strangler be much help, really?”

“He could be. He talks big about his goddess getting involved but I won’t count on that. I’ve never seen the gods actually take a hand in mortal affairs.”

Odd. Mogaba’s god was Narayan’s goddess, more or less. Had Mogaba lost his faith? Maybe Dejagore had scarred him deeply, too.

“Use them up. Leave none over to turn on us later.”

In my imagination the Shadowmaster was always this huge stinking devil incarnate, a colorful lunatic the magnitude of the worst Taken back in the north. But the real Longshadow was just a mean-spirited old man blessed with too much power.

He told Mogaba, “If this becomes the Year of the Skulls I want it to be
our
year. Not theirs.”

“Understood. What do you think of the child?”

Longshadow grunted uncomfortably.

“Spooky, right? A thousand years old. Her mother in miniature, only worse. More intense, with a deeper darkness inside.”

He could be right. The kid definitely looked weird and evil from my ghost’s eye view.

The Shadowmaster mused, “We may have to hurry her into the embrace of her goddess.”

Mogaba shrugged. He turned to go. “Anyone else you want to see alone?”

“Howler. Wait!”

“What?”

“Where is the Lance of Passion?”

“Wherever Croaker is, I imagine. Or the Standardbearer. That’s still that serpent Murgen, I believe.”

I love you too, Mogaba.

“We must take possession. Might that not be a task for the Deceivers? Even destroying the Black Company may not be enough in the long run. And one other thing for the Deceivers. Have them find out why Senjak wants all that bamboo.”

“Bamboo?”

Was there an echo?

“She has been stripping the Taglian territories for months. Wherever her soldiers go they loot bamboo.”

“That is curious. I will find out.” I followed Mogaba for a moment. Once he was clear of the parapet he muttered, “Bamboo. I have to humor a lunatic.”

*   *   *

I tried to travel south of Overlook. Smoke went only a short way before he balked. Well.

I would find out sooner than I wanted, I supposed. After we settled Longshadow and Overlook the plain was next on the list of obstacles blocking our path to Khatovar.

52

I returned to the chamber with Smoke and our stinky pet Strangler. I was hungry and thirsty but also so excited I shook. I had not uncovered much of resounding import, but, gods! The potential!

I drank from the pitcher, cleared my throat, lifted the corner of the cloth covering the prisoner. “You in there? Want a drink? Want to tell me…?” He was asleep. “Be that way.”

So what now? Help had not arrived. I gnawed on one of Mother Gota’s stones. That eased my hunger. That was all I wanted at the moment.

What now? Keep going out until somebody came to reclaim me? See Lady? Look for Goblin? Hunt for Blade? How about finding out where Soulcatcher was hiding? She had to be out there somewhere, though we had not stubbed our toes on her lately. No place was free of crows if a member of the Company was around.