The Return of the Black Company (25 page)

Sindhu snorted. He seemed to thrive in these conditions.

The something went on a long time but attracted no attention. I became suspicious. I had Goblin’s ward against sleep spells set on me. Oh…? I dragged myself to the compound fence. When nobody smashed me back with the butt of a spear I was sure. The camp was under an enchantment.

Sindhu’s water gave me strength quickly and started my brain perking. It occurred to me that if no one was inclined to stop me this might be the perfect time to take leave of the Shadowmaster’s hospitality. I started worming my way between the fence rails.

My stomach rumbled in protest. I ignored it. Sindhu grabbed my arm. His grip was iron. He said, “Wait.”

I waited. What the hell? That was one of my favorite arms. I didn’t want to deprive myself of its company.

The moon began to rise, a big old squashed orange egg in the east. Sindhu continued to restrain me and continued to stare at the big tent.

A shriek drifted down from high above.

“Holy shit,” I muttered. “Not him.”

Sindhu cursed, too. He was so startled that he let me go. He glared upward.

“That’s the Howler,” I told him. “Really bad news. Shadowspinner could take advanced cruelty lessons from him.”

The side of Spinner’s tent opened. Out rushed a bunch of people carrying what proved to be human body parts. I recognized some of them. The people, that is. Who could mistake Willow Swan with his wild yellow mane? Or Lady, who carried a severed head by its mangy hair? And Blade was only a step behind her, his ebony skin shiny in the moonlight. I did not recognize any of the others.

The sleep spell on the camp, laid rather poorly, unravelled. Southerners jumped up to ask what was happening. Metal clanged and jingled as weapons and mail were located.

One of Lady’s companions, a huge Shadar, started bellowing something about bowing down to the true Daughter of Night.

Sindhu chuckled. Nothing bothered him, it seemed. He could take anything.

He was not holding on to me but I no longer had the strength or inclination to go anywhere.

60

They pulled it off, Lady and her damnfool gang. Audacity pays. They slipped into the camp, murdered Shadowspinner, and when they got caught they convinced the southerners that it was all fated and they should not go doing anything because of that. I could not be much of a witness to their mass conversion. My bowels overruled my desire to observe. I spent most of my time making a worse mess of myself.

At some point our former guards decided to bring us to Lady’s attention in an effort to curry favor.

Blade recognized us as they brought us out of the pen.

Blade looks like he might have been born Nar. Like them he is tall, black and muscular, without an ounce of fat on him. He says little but has a strong presence. His background is shadowy. He ran with Willow Swan and Cordy Mather, who saved him from crocodiles several thousand miles north of Taglios. What everyone knew for sure, what Blade made no effort to hide, was that he hated priests, singly, collectively, and without any prejudice whatsoever where belief system was concerned. Once I thought he was an atheist who hated the whole idea of gods and religion, but after further exposure I decided it was only the retailers of religion he detested. That suggested sharp incidents in his past.

No matter now. Blade took Sindhu and I away from our guards. “Standardbearer, you stink.”

“Call out the ladies in waiting. Let them give me a bath.” I could not remember my last bath. In Dejagore we did not waste water on trivialities.

Of course, now we could bathe all we wanted—although the water would be unclean.

Blade obtained fresh clothing by the expedient of robbing some southern officers, had us clean up and visit the inadequate field physicians Croaker had tried to train for the Taglian forces. They knew less about stopping the drizzling shits than I did.

It was daylight when Lady saw me. She already knew the prisoners were deserters from the city. She was blunt. “Why did you run out, Murgen?”

“I didn’t. We decided somebody had to come find you. I lost the election.… Uh.” She was in a bleak mood, apparently pretty sick herself. Never mind the humor, Murgen. “One-Eye and Goblin figured I was the only trustworthy guy who had any chance of getting through. They couldn’t leave. I didn’t make it, though.”

“Why did you feel the need to send someone?”

“Mogaba elected himself god. With the water around us, keeping the southerners back, he doesn’t need to get along with anybody who doesn’t agree.”

Sindhu said, “The black men believe they serve the goddess, mistress. But their heresies are grotesque. They have become worse than unbelievers.”

I pricked up my ears. Maybe I would learn something about Sindhu’s bunch. I had bones to pick with them. I had not yet found any evidence to suggest that it was not them who kidnapped me and took a crack at murdering Mogaba.

Still, I could not imagine why they would bother.

Sindhu and Lady talked. Her questions sounded vaguely doctrinal. Sindhu’s replies made no sense.

Once Lady interrupted the interview to be sick. A skinny little gink named Narayan, who kept hanging around, seemed inordinately pleased. I noted that Sindhu showed him considerable deference.

I was not happy. The little I knew of their cult assured me that I did not want them influencing my captains.

The interview ended. Blade’s cronies took me away. I got to hang out with Swan and Mather, meaning I had somebody to speak a reasonable language with for a while, but soon I felt like a forgotten man.

“What are we doing?” I asked Swan.

“I don’t know. Cordy and I just tag along behind Her Lordship pretending not to be watching her for the Prabrindrah Drah and Radisha.”

“Pretending?”

“Ain’t much good being a spy if everybody knows it, is there? Anyway, Cordy gets to do all the worrying. He’s the one playing pattycake with the Woman.”

“You mean that ain’t just a vicious rumor? He’s really plooking the Radisha?”

“Hard to believe, ain’t it? She’s got a face like … Hey! Cordy! Where’s them cards? We got us a pigeon here thinks he can play tonk.”

“Thinks? Swan, you’re gonna think I invented the game if you get into it with me.”

Mather was a nondescript character of average height with ginger hair who stood out only because he was white in a land where nobody but harem girls, kept out of the sun from birth, had fair skin. He asked, “Willow’s mouth running away with him again?”

“Maybe. I’ve made a career of playing tonk. Hell, they boot you out of the Black Company if you don’t make journeyman player.”

Mather shrugged. “Then you’ll twist Willow’s head back around straight for him. Here. Deal. I’ll see if the mighty general Blade wants to sit in.”

Swan grumbled, “That would take him out of sight of Lady.” Sounded like some sour grapes there. Mather showed him a smirk that confirmed my guess.

“What
is
it about her?” I asked. “Every damned guy that walks on his hind legs gets near her for five minutes, he starts floating around with his tongue hanging down, banging into things. But I’ve been around her for years. I can see she’s got the right stuff in the right places put together about as good as you could want but I don’t think I could get excited even if she didn’t used to be the Lady and she wasn’t married to the Old Man.” Not that that was literally true. They had not even bothered to jump over a sword.

Swan shuffled. “Cut?”

I cut. I always cut. One-Eye taught me that.

Swan asked, “You really don’t feel it? Man, she comes around me and my brain goes south. And she’s a widow now, so…”

“I don’t think so.”

“What?”

“She ain’t no widow. Croaker is still alive.”

“Shit. That’d be my luck, too. You want to stack Cordy a hand, make him think he’s got a winner, then skunk him?” As soon as I shook my head he wanted to know how come I thought Croaker was alive. I evaded a definitive answer for the few moments it took Mather to return.

“Blade’s too busy looking for an angle to use while he’s close to the magic. You load me up again, Willow? No? Bullshit. Let’s just pick them up and deal them over.”

“Ain’t this the story of my life?” I grumbled. “Look here.” I had two aces, a pair of deuces and a trey. An automatic winner, damned near couldn’t be beat. “And that’s a true natural, no help.”

Swan snickered. “Don’t matter. You don’t got anything to do anyway.”

“You got a point. Why don’t you guys come over to Dejagore? I’ll buy you a mug of One-Eye’s home brew.”

“Ha! Competition, huh?” Swan and Mather had gone into the brewing business back when they first came to Taglios. They were out of the racket now, among their reasons the fact that the priests of all the native religions condemned the use of alcohol.

“I doubt it. The only thing good about their brew is it gets you skunked.”

“That was the only good thing about the rat piss we made,” Mather said. “My dear old daddy the brewmaster rolled over every time we tapped another keg.”

“We never laid any beer up,” Swan countered. “Soon as it was ripe we skimmed the scum off and poured it down Taglian throats. And don’t buy that shit about his daddy, neither. Old Man Mather was a tax assessor who was so dumb he didn’t take bribes.”

“Shut up and deal.” Mather snatched up his cards. “He did brew his own beer. And Swan’s old man was a hod carrier.”

“But a handsome one, Cordy. And a lover. I inherited his good looks.”

“You take after your mother. And if you don’t do something about that hair pretty soon you’re going to wind up in somebody’s harem.”

This was a side of these guys I had not seen before. But I had not spent much time loafing with them. They were not Company. I kept my mouth shut and concentrated on my cards and let them tell me about who they used to be before the wander-dust settled on their shoes and set them roving against all odds.

“What about you, Murgen?” Swan asked after he noticed that I was winning more than my share of hands. “Where did you come from?”

I told them about growing up on a farm. There wasn’t anything exciting about my life until I decided that farming wasn’t what I wanted to do. I joined one of Lady’s armies, found out I didn’t like the way things were done there, deserted and joined up with the Black Company, which was the only place I could hide with the provost after me.

Mather asked, “You ever regret leaving home?”

“Every goddamned day, Mather. Every goddamned day. It was boring raising potatoes but not one time did I ever have a spud try to stick a knife in me. I was hardly ever hungry and almost never cold and the landlord was all right. He made sure his tenants had enough before he took his share. He didn’t live much better than we did. Oh, and the only magic we ever saw was the kind your wandering conjurers perform at town fairs.”

“So why not go home?”

“Can’t.”

“If you’re careful and don’t look prosperous and don’t go around pissing people off you can travel almost anywhere safely. We did.”

“I can’t go home because home ain’t there no more. A Rebel army came through a couple years after I left.” The Company passed through later still, marching from somewhere unpleasant to somewhere where we would be unhappy. The whole country had been turned desert in the name of freedom from the tyranny of the Lady’s empire.

61

Lady sent for me after six days. I had shaken the runs and had eaten well enough to regain a few of the pounds I lost in the pen. I still looked like a refugee from hell. And I was. I was indeed.

Lady did not look good. Tired, pale, under severe pressure, apparently still fighting the sickness that had her puking the other day. She wasted no time on small talk. “I’m sending you back to Dejagore, Murgen. We’re getting disturbing reports about Mogaba.”

I nodded. I had heard some of them. Every night more rafts crossed the lake. The deserters and refugees always were astonished to learn that Shadowspinner was dead and Lady controlled his army—though that was evaporating through desertion, too.

Lady was a hard one. My guess was she meant to let the problem posed by Mogaba solve itself—despite what that would cost Taglios and the Black Company.

“Why?” That was not smart. All those Taglians in there had relatives back home. Many were people of place and substance, for it was that sort who had volunteered to defend Taglios.

“I need you to just go back and be yourself. But write things down. Hone your skills. Keep the Company together. Be prepared for anything.”

I grunted. That wasn’t something I wanted to hear, knowing that the siege could be ended right now.

Lady sensed my reservations. She smiled wanly, made a sudden gesture. “Sleep, Murgen.”

I collapsed on the spot.

She was her nasty old self.

*   *   *

My mind would not clear. The Taglians who had helped me leave Dejagore were like zombies. They did not talk and seemed almost blind. “Down!” I muttered. “Patrol coming.” They did what I said but like men heavily drugged.

Patrols were few by day. It was easy to elude them. It was not their mission to keep people out, anyway. We reached lakeside without any trouble.

“Rest,” I ordered. “Wait for dark.” I was not sure why we had crossed the hills by day. I did not recall starting. “Have I been acting real weird?” I asked.

The taller Taglian shook his head slowly, not quite sure. He was more confused than I was.

I said, “I feel like I walked out of a fog a couple hours ago. I remember getting captured. I remember them keeping us in a nasty pen. I know there was a fight or something. But I don’t remember how we got away.”

“Nor do I, sir,” the shorter soldier said. “I do have a very strong feeling that we need to get back to our comrades quickly. But I don’t know why.”

“How about you?”

The taller man nodded, frowning. He was going to bust a vein trying to remember.

I said, “Maybe Shadowspinner did something to us and let us go. That’s worth keeping in mind—especially if you have urges that really surprise you.”

After dark we stole along the shoreline till we found a raft, jumped aboard and headed for Dejagore. And discovered immediately that we were going to get nowhere using poles. The water was too deep. We ended up using poles and broken boards as inefficient paddles. It took us half the night to make the crossing. And then, naturally, everything went to hell.