The Return of the Black Company (46 page)

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Dark grey-indigo mountains spanned the southern horizon. Charandaprash was just days away. The Captain slowed our advance to a very deliberate pace so the soldiers would have more time to hunt and forage. Our part of the army began coming together in larger and larger forces. Mogaba’s cavalry did not seem much inclined to skirmish yet. Ahead of us streamers of smoke sometimes rose as fleeing enemy caravans failed to run fast enough to outdistance our own horsemen.

Our headquarters party clung to the road. Always, now, there seemed to be corpses lying beside it. They came in all varieties, few of them being our own people.

Croaker had forced me out of One-Eye’s wagon. I was no longer allowed inside while we were moving. So I led the way, mounted atop that giant black stallion, always presenting the Black Company standard. Crows were around constantly. I expect Soulcatcher, wherever she took their reports, was thoroughly amused. The standard was one we had adapted from one she had assigned us decades ago, based upon her own fire-breathing skull of a seal.

Uncle Doj walked beside me. He carried a lance as well as Ash Wand, his holy sword. He had assumed the job of bodyguard while Thai Dei was elsewhere with his mother. We two encountered all the corpses first. “There’s another one that looks like a Deceiver,” I said, indicating a badly hacked body wearing nothing but a ragged loincloth, despite the weather.

“It is good,” Uncle Doj told me. He rolled the corpse over. The man had been run down by someone with an especial dislike for his cult. He had been mutilated badly, mostly while he was still alive.

I did not feel a shred of pity. Men just like him murdered my Sarie.

We encountered nothing but signs of outstanding success. But those did not inspire my confidence in the future.

Roads converged. Forces massed up even more. Every hour we drew nearer Charandaprash, Mogaba and his four badass divisions of well-trained and motivated veterans. Getting closer to soldiers who had been getting ready for us for years. Getting closer to soldiers who were not the clumsy, indifferent militias that had made up most of our opposition so far. The Old Man talked confidently in front of the Taglians, who did not know any better, but I knew he had his doubts.

We would have a numbers advantage but our men had not been drilled until they were automatons. Our men did not fear their officers more than they feared death itself. Our men did not know the price you paid if you stirred the anger of a Shadowmaster. Not in the intimate way the defenders of Charandaprash knew.

Our men had not rehearsed again and again, learning every boulder on the ground where they would be expected to fight.

13

A breeze whipped smoke and the stench of death into my face. A soldier shouted. I glanced back. The Captain, wearing the hideous black Widowmaker armor Lady had created for him, was coming up. Ravens surrounded him. For the thousandth time I wondered about his connection with Soulcatcher.

“You sent for me?”

“There’s something you ought to see, I think.” I had not seen it myself yet, but did know what to expect.

He gestured. “Let’s go.”

We rode up a small rise. We stopped to look at the bodies of six small brown men far too old to have been soldiers. They lay inside a bowl that had been hollowed out of the hard ground, around a fire that still yielded a puny thread of smoke.

“Where are the men who killed them?”

“They didn’t hang around. You don’t take chances with these people.”

Croaker grunted, not pleased but understanding the thinking of the ordinary soldier. He removed his ugly winged helmet. Crows took the opportunity to perch on his shoulders. He seemed not to notice. “I’d say we’ve gotten somebody’s attention.”

I had run into little brown men like these before, years ago when first we had come into the south and more recently in the Deceivers’ holy Grove of Doom, where I had ambushed many of their top people. A group of these skrinsa shadowweavers had had the misfortune to be there on behalf of the Shadowmaster.

These men would have been doing the same as those others, using a gaggle of little shadows to spy and run messages. Croaker pointed. Several of the old men had had chunks ripped right out of them. He observed, “Lady did say you shouldn’t get in the way of her bamboo toys.”

We had overtaken Lady, more or less. She was following a line of advance several miles to our left. If Croaker and she had stolen a kiss they had managed it by magic. Croaker was in too big a hurry to assume complete control of his assembling center corps of two divisions.

He carried a bamboo pole slung across his back. So did I. And so did every other man in the main force, now. Some carried a bundle. “Oh?”

“She’ll pitch a fit if this gets to be a habit.” Croaker was amused.

“She never was a ground-pounder.”

Your average infantryman does not give a rat’s ass about the design function of a weapon. He is concerned about staying alive and about getting his job done with the least risk taken. The bamboo doohickeys were meant for combating killer shadows? So fucking what? If using them made taking out nasty little wizards easier, guess what was going to happen?

Pop!

14

We sighted Lake Tanji an hour before night fell. The sudden view was so stunning I stopped dead in my tracks.

The lake was miles across and cold grey. It dwindled away to my right, the direction our road ran. To our left the land was very rugged. Arms of increasingly substantial hills ran down to the water. The Dandha Presh itself seemed to rise directly from the far shore, all greys in the evening light, dark down low and lighter at the peaks, where snowfields sparkled. A playful god had scrawled a thin cloudline across the panorama, halfway up the mountains, so that the peaks rode a magic carpet.

Grey, grey, grey. Right then the whole world seemed grey.

“Impressive,” the Captain said.

“Not at all like seeing it through Smoke’s eyes.”

He frowned at me even though not even a crow was near enough to hear. “Look there.”

A village burned along the shore several miles ahead. A ball of blue light streaked out of the conflagration, over the water, narrowly missed a small boat. The men aboard the boat tried to row harder but began to catch crabs and get in one another’s way. A swarm of points of light darted at them, not only blue but green, yellow, pink and a stunning shade of violet. A man jumped up and flailed around after a ball hit him in the throat. He fell overboard. His antics rocked the boat dangerously. It shipped water, raised its stern into the air momentarily.

A ball of light zipped through its bottom, leaving a shimmering hole.

Most of the balls missed. Those continued across the lake, slowing gradually. Eventually they just drifted on the breeze and faded away.

The excitement brought a flock of crows fast. They circled overhead. Two big ones dropped onto Croaker’s shoulders. The others scattered in pairs.

The boat sank.

It had been bound for an island that was little more than a rock outcrop boasting a dozen scraggly pine trees and some halfhearted brush. A crow that got close suddenly folded up and went ballistic, hit the water and floated without twitching.

Croaker glared. “Murgen. Move down the foreslope, out of the wind. Find a place to dig in for the night. Line troops only on this side of the ridge. I want a double watch kept. I want two battery wagons up, trained on that island.”

His shoulder ornaments were agitated now. I did not mention them. He was starting to go spooky—and he did not answer questions anyway.

One of the ravens squawked. Croaker grunted back. He dismounted, grabbed an extra bamboo pole from a nearby soldier, headed downhill. His mount followed the trail he broke.

The soldiers who had begun to gather followed Croaker’s example. They formed a skirmish line as they advanced. I could not unsling my own bamboo pole because I was mounted and burdened with the standard. I followed the men on foot. Uncle Doj formed a one-man rearguard.

Two Shadowlander militiamen broke cover suddenly. They stumbled toward the water’s edge. Arrows swarmed.

Standing orders were to take no prisoners. The Shadowlanders had been warned. They had been given four years’ grace. They had made their choices.

Afterward the soldiers began to settle in groups, finding what shelter they could, starting their cooking fires. More and more came up to the line. Our staff group gathered in the lee of a shattered boulder, everybody grumbling and shivering. Pessimists started talking about the chances of snow.

I planted the standard. Uncle Doj and I got ready to make supper. There were no servants in this army. Servants ate up food soldiers could fix for themselves.

Supper would be rice and dried fruit. Croaker and I would add a few strips of jerked beef. Uncle Doj would add some fish meal to his rice. Many of the soldiers would eat no flesh because of religious proscriptions.

I said, “Maybe we can find out if there are any fish in this lake.”

The Old Man looked out there. “Looks like there could be trout.” But he did not say anything about maybe catching them.

The battery wagons came up. Each had a bed four feet wide by ten feet long packed with bamboo tubes. They were the ultimate product of Lady’s arsenals. The Captain supervised their positioning. He wanted them set just right.

Under this overcast it would not be long before it was dark enough for shadows to prowl.

East of the lake, where Lady’s left wing division was advancing through very rugged country, a single point of light shot into the air, sped southward, lost velocity and began to lose altitude slowly. Balls in several colors followed quickly.

The soldiers stirred nervously.

A
whiff
sound came from a nearby wagon. A green fireball streaked out over the lake, its light reflecting off the water. The breeze had died. The lake’s surface was growing calm.

I was more nervous than any of the soldiers. I had seen what those stinking little shadowweavers could do. I had seen men scream out their lives while something invisible gnawed at them.

The soldiers had heard the stories. The sentries would stay awake tonight.

The green ball did not dip toward that island. I sighed. Maybe there was no danger after all.

The wagon crews loosed another ball at regular intervals. Not a one dipped toward that island. I regained my confidence. The men began to relax. Eventually I rolled up in my blankets and lay there watching fireballs streak across the sky.

It was a comfort knowing no shadow attack would go undetected.

I listened to the wagon crews lay bets on what color fireball would pop out next. There was no known pattern. They were getting bored. Soon they would be bitching about getting stuck with the duty while everybody else got to sleep.

15

I was having a bizarre dream about Cordy Mather and the Radisha when somebody poked me. I groaned, cracked an eyelid. I knew I did not have to stand a watch. I had helped with the cooking. I cursed, pulled my blankets over my head and tried to get back to the Palace, where Mather was arguing with the Radisha about her plans to shaft the Black Company after the Shadowmaster fell. It almost felt like I was actually there rather than dreaming.

“Wake up.” Uncle Doj prodded me again.

I tried to cling to the dream. There was more to it. Something nebulous but dangerous about the Radisha. Something that had Mather upset in a major way.

I thought I might be working out something important in my sleep.

“Wake up, Bone Warrior.”

That did it. I hated it when Nyueng Bao called me that, never explaining what they meant. I grunted, “What?”

“Trouble is coming.”

Thai Dei stepped out of the darkness. He spoke! “One-Eye told me to warn you.”

“What’re you doing up here?” His arm had not yet healed completely.

I glanced at the Captain. He was awake. He had a bird perched on one shoulder, beak moving at his ear. He eyed Thai Dei and Uncle Doj but said nothing. He clambered to his feet wearily, collected a couple of bamboo poles and trudged around to where he could see the lake. I followed him. Uncle Doj tagged along behind me. It amazed me that a man so short and wide could move so quietly and gracefully.

I saw nothing new out there in the darkness. Occasional flecks of light continued to streak the tapestry of the night. “Like fireflies.” There were a million stars. The guys who expected snow were going to be disappointed.

“Hush,” Croaker said. He was listening to something. The damned bird on his shoulder?

Where was the other one?

A crimson ball zipped away from one wagon just like scores before it. But when this one neared the island it dipped violently and swerved to the right, scattering the rippling water with ten thousand rubies. At water level the ball became a splash of blood that faded immediately.

There was no reflection off the water anywhere nearby.

“Shadows.”

A half-dozen balls streaked out. They defined a river of darkness snaking across the lake. Then balls started flying around over the remnants of the village that had been burning while that boat sank.

The discharges there reached panic level quickly. The Captain ordered, “Swing one of the wagons around. Give them some support down there. And let’s see if we can’t get a couple more wagons up here fast.”

Some individuals were plinking at the village already, for whatever help that would provide. Croaker told the crew of the second wagon, “Cut loose on that island. Everything you’ve got. Murgen. I want everybody awake and up here. The shit-storm is about to hit.”

I ran off to tap-dance on a couple of snorers famous for their bugle calls.

Both wagons cut loose about the same time. Their trigger cranks squealed and rattled as they whirled. Bamboo tubes discharged color in furious series. How many balls could a wagon launch? A shitload.

Cavalry tubes carried fifteen charges. Standard infantry and infantry long carried thirty and forty charges respectively. The hundreds of tubes on each wagon were longer still.