The Return of the Black Company (30 page)

“I did what seemed like the right thing.”

“Indeed. Without any appeal or obligation. Which caused your current predicament.”

“I must be missing something.”

“Because you are not Nyueng Bao. Thai Dei will not leave you now. He is the oldest male. He owes you six lives. His baby will not leave him. Sahra will not leave because she must remain under her brother’s protection until she marries. And, as you can see, she may be a while getting through the horror. In this city, upon this pilgrimage she never wanted to make, she has lost everything that ever meant anything to her. Except her mother.”

“A man might almost think the gods had it in for her,” I said, then hoped that did not sound too much like a wisecrack.

“One might. Standardbearer, the only good thing she recalls about that hellnight is you. She will cling to you the way a desperate swimmer will cling to a rock in a rushing stream.”

It was time to be careful. A big part of me wished her clinging was more than metaphorical. “How about Ky Gota and those other kids?”

“The children can be adopted into the families of their mothers. Gota, surely, can move.” Doj continued muttering under his breath, which was uncharacteristic. Sounded like something about wanting to move her a couple thousand miles. “Though she will not take it well.”

“Don’t tell me you’re less than enchanted with Ky Gota too?”

“No one is enchanted with that ill-tempered lizard.”

“And I once thought that you two were married.”

He stopped cold, stunned. “You’re mad!”

“I changed my mind, didn’t I?”

“Hong Tray, old witch, what hast thou wished upon me?”

“What?”

“Talking to myself, Standardbearer. Engaging in the debate I cannot lose. That woman, Hong Tray, my mother’s cousin, was a witch. She could see into the future sometimes and if what she saw failed to please her she wanted it changed. And she had some strange ideas about that.”

“I trust you know what you’re talking about.”

He did not get it. “Not entirely. The witch toyed with all our destinies but never explained. Perhaps she was blind to her own fate.”

I let myself be distracted. “What will your people do now?”

“We will survive, Standardbearer. Like you Soldiers of Darkness, that is what we do.”

“If you really think you owe me for stumbling in there with Thai Dei, tell me what that means. Soldiers of Darkness. Stone Soldier. Bone Warrior. What do they mean?”

“One might almost accept your protestations.”

“Look at it this way. If I do know what you’re talking about you have nothing to lose by telling me what I already know.”

In that light it was hard to tell but I believe Uncle Doj smiled again. For the second time in one day. “Clever,” he said. And did not explain a thing.

74

Uncle Doj relieved me of most of my guests. I ended up sharing quarters with Thai Dei and his son To Tan, plus Sahra. Sahra helped with the baby and struggled to put together meals, though the Company kitchen could serve everyone in the warrens. She needed to stay busy. Thai Dei followed me almost everywhere. Both he and Sahra were lethargic and uncommunicative and added up to about half a human being between them.

I began to worry. They belonged to a hardy people accustomed to surviving cruel disasters. They should show some signs of recovery.

I assembled the brains of the outfit: Cletus, Loftus, Longinus, Goblin and One-Eye, Otto and Hagop. “I got some questions, troops.”

“He got to be here?” Goblin meant Thai Dei.

“He’s all right. Ignore him.”

“What kind of questions?” One-Eye demanded.

“So far we haven’t had any major health problems in the Company. But there’s cholera and typhoid out there, not to mention plenty of the old-fashioned drizzling shits. We all right?”

Goblin muttered something and passed gas loudly.

“Barbarian,” One-Eye sneered. “We’re all right because we follow Croaker’s health rules like they was religious laws. Only we can’t make the rules stick much longer. We’re almost out of fuel. And these Nyueng Bao. They don’t like to bother boiling water and keeping clean and not shitting where they live. We got them going along right now but it ain’t going to last.”

“It’s been overcast and nasty for a few days, I hear. Are we collecting any rainwater?”

“Plenty for us,” Loftus told me. “But not enough for us and them, let alone getting any put back into the cisterns.”

“I was afraid of that. About the fuel, I mean. You guys know any way to fix rice or beans so you can digest them without cooking them?”

Nobody knew. Longinus suggested, “Maybe soaking them a long time in water might help. My mother did that.”

“Damn. I really want us to get through this. But how?”

Goblin seemed to develop a small secret smile at that. Like he had a definite idea. He exchanged glances with One-Eye.

“You guys got something?”

“Not yet,” Goblin told me. “There’s an experiment we still have to try.”

“Get on with it.”

“After the meeting. We need you to help.”

“Wonderful. All right. Can anyone tell me what the rest of the city thinks about our disappearance?”

Hagop coughed, clearing his throat. He did not say much ordinarily so everybody paused to listen. “I been doing watches in the lookouts. Sometimes you can hear talk. I don’t think we done our reputation any good. Also, I don’t think we fooled anybody. They don’t talk about us much but nobody figures we just cut out. They think we found some way to dig a hole and fill it up with wine, women and food and pulled it in after us and we ain’t coming back out again till the rest of them are good and dead.”

“Guys, I tried to get the wine, women and banquets but all I could come up with was the hole.”

Out of nowhere, Otto said, “The water’s going down.”

“What?”

“It is, Murgen. It’s down five feet already.”

“Would flooding the city make that much difference? No? Why’s that?”

Goblin and One-Eye exchanged significant looks.

“What?” I demanded.

“After we do our experiment.”

“All right. The rest of you guys. You know the problems. Go see if there’s anything we can do about them.”

75

“Talk to me,” I told the runt wizards.

Goblin said, “We think something was done to you when you were out there.” He jerked his head shoreward.

“What? Get serious! I…”

“We are. You were gone a long time. And you changed. How many disappearing spells have you had since you got back?”

I gave it an honest think. “Only one. Maybe. When I was kidnapped. I don’t remember anything about it. I’m sure they drugged me. I was drinking tea with the Speaker, then I was in that street where you found me. I have no idea how I got there. I have vague recollections of smelling smoke and going out a door which put me somewhere that I did not expect to be when I got to the other side. I vaguely remember thinking something about being in the house of pain.”

“They tortured you.”

“They did.” I still had the nicks and bruises to prove it. I had no idea what I might have been asked, if anything. I did suspect that Sindhu’s pals were behind my abduction and the attempt on Mogaba.

If so, their life sure took an unpleasant turn when the Black Company found them.

“We’ve been watching you,” Goblin said. “And you have been behaving pretty strange sometimes. What we want to do is put you to sleep and see if we can’t reach the part of you that was there when things happened.”

“I don’t get you.”

“You don’t have to. You just have to cooperate.”

“You’re sure?”

“We’re sure.”

He did not sound sure.

*   *   *

I awakened on my own pallet. Not refreshed. Someone was wiping my hot face with a cold, wet cloth. I opened my eyes. In the light of one tiny candle Sahra looked more lovely than ever. She looked better than imagination. She continued to wipe my face.

I had another hangover-type headache. What had they done? I ought at least to get the enjoyment that came before the pain.

To Tan began to fuss. He slept in a basket of evil-smelling rags beneath my writing table. I reached over and took his hand. He stopped crying, content to have human contact. He did not cry for his mother much anymore.

I raised my other hand to take Sahra’s. She pushed it back gently. She never spoke. I never did hear her speak, not even to her own children.

I looked around. Thai Dei was gone. Anymore it seemed I had a better chance of shaking my shadow. Thai Dei was there even in the dark.

I started to sit up. Sahra held me down with two fingers. I was too weak to do anything. And my head felt like it doubled in size just rising that foot.

Sahra offered me a hand-carved wooden cup filled with something that smelled so foul my eyes watered. Nyueng Bao swamp medicine. I drank. It tasted worse than it smelled.

She continued to mop my face. I shivered and shook. The pain went away. I began to relax, to feel both energetic and positive. That was good stuff. Maybe they made it smell and taste bad so people would not take it all the time.

We stared at one another a long time, saying nothing but reaching a decision our conscious minds did not entirely recognize at the moment. Hong Tray drifted across my thoughts with a smile and an admonition.

This time I managed a smile when I sat up. Unchallenged. “I have work to do.”

Sahra shook her head. She fished under the table for To Tan, dug him out of his basket. He was in desperate need of changing. Sahra tugged my finger.

“I haven’t done this in twenty years.” Not since I was a kid myself and had baby brothers and sisters and cousins to change. “Stop wiggling, you little turd. You ought to know the drill by now.” To Tan looked back at me with serious big eyes, not understanding my words but catching my tone.

We got him cleaned up and clothed again, in rags that would have embarrassed a beggar. I told Sahra, “I’ll go kill somebody, get him something better to wear.”

She laid a hand lightly on my forearm, restraining me.

“That was a joke, hon. You hang around with me, you’re going to hear some dark stuff. I don’t mean it literally. I’m going to work now.”

I moved into the passageway slowly, my legs watery. Sahra followed, To Tan straddling her left hip. We ran into Bucket right away, looking groggy as he headed for his own pallet. I asked, “You seen Goblin and One-Eye?”

“They went upstairs with their magic junk. To the big lookout.”

“Thanks.”

Before we walked five feet, Bucket called, “Longo tell you the water is coming up in the catacombs?”

I sighed and shook my head, listened to the half-hearted rumble of my stomach, wondered if anybody had found a way to get some food cooked, wound my way through the maze to the ladders that would take me up to Goblin and One-Eye.

The light of day might do me good. If I had the strength to climb that far. I had not seen the sun for a long time.

76

I would not see the sun for a while longer.

Sahra handed To Tan up through the trapdoor. He was asleep again. I guess you do sleep a lot when you are a baby starving to death.

It was daytime but a driving rain was falling. Hagop sat astride a chair turned backwards, forearms on the chair’s back, staring into the rain morosely. “How long has this been going on?” I asked.

“Day or three.”

“We getting any fresh water out of it?”

“About as much as we can being as we’re hiding out.”

“What’re those two doing?” Goblin and One-Eye were on the floor in the middle of the room, crosslegged, farthest from the moisture blowing inside. They did not look up.

“Wizard stuff. Don’t bother them. They’ll bite your leg off.”

One-Eye grumbled, “And somebody’s gonna lose a set of ears if he don’t stop yakking.”

Hagop and I each spent one of our diminishing supply of single-finger salutes. One-Eye did not acknowledge the accolade.

The lookout had a window facing each direction. I went to the biggest.

This rain was not what we called a gullywasher back home but it was strong and steady. I could barely sense the vague loom of the surrounding hills. Nearer at hand I could make out the surface of the water. It was down despite the rain. It was a grey that spoke of sickness.

I saw a Jaicuri raft out there, so loaded with people that it was awash. Men using short boards as paddles labored carefully to drive it toward shore.

I made the rounds of the other windows, studied the city. I was pleased to see our Taglians at their posts the way they had been taught.

“They’ve been doing it by the numbers,” Hagop agreed. “And that gets them left alone.”

“By Mogaba?”

“By everybody. The fighting is almost constant.”

The streets and alleys were now canals. I saw bodies floating everywhere. The stench was overwhelming. The water level, though, was lower than I had expected. I could see the citadel from the east window. There were Nar up top there, ignoring the weather. They moved around the parapet, studying our part of town.

Hagop noticed me watching them. “They’re worried about us. They think we might come sort them out sometime.”

“Sure we will.”

“They’re superstitious about guys like Goblin and One-Eye.”

“Which shows you how dangerous a little ignorance can be.”

“I heard that,” One-Eye grumbled. He and Goblin could have been playing some obscure dice game for all I could tell. I liked it better when they conjured big lights that went around smashing things and burning them up. Destruction I can understand.

Sahra seemed tired of lugging To Tan so I took him. She offered a grateful smile. It lit up the lookout.

One-Eye and Goblin paused to exchange glances amongst themselves and with Hagop.

“What are you guys doing?” I demanded.

“We found out we were right.”

“Yeah? That might be a first. You were right about what?”

“About your head having been tampered with.”

I shuddered to a sudden chill. That is not something anyone welcomes. “Who did it? How?”

“How we haven’t been able to figure out for sure. It might have been managed several ways. Who and what are more interesting, anyway.”