The Return of the Black Company (47 page)

The fireflies went mad. Every single ball launched darted downward after a shadow. Each made its dip nearer shore.

“Lots of shadows,” Croaker observed laconically. This was a new thing but a thing we had feared for years. Shadows attacking in waves and a flood instead of sneaking around like spies and assassins.

The Old Man seemed calm. Me, I damned near drizzled down my leg. I ran, but only far enough to get hold of the standard and a bundle of bamboo. I planted the former beside the Old Man, got the business end of a pole pointed southward, found the handgrip trigger mechanism and started turning. Each quarter turn sent another fireball streaking. I told Thai Dei, “Grab you some bamboo, brother. You too, Uncle. This isn’t going to be anything you can stop with a sword.”

Balls were arcing over from the far slope now. There were enough in transit to define the wave of darkness headed our way. Fireballs plunged into that darkness like bright hail, flared, faded. This was the nightmare tide we had dreaded for so long, the hellpower of the Shadowmaster unleashed.

Balls consumed shadows by the thousand. The flood came on. Unlike mortal soldiers those things could do nothing but follow commands. Sorcery compelled them.

My pole went dry. I grabbed another one. Uncle Doj and Thai Dei began to grasp the situation. They found poles and got into the act, though Thai Dei was not very fast one-handed.

The dark tide came off the water and headed upslope. As it drew closer I began to make out individual shadows.

I saw these things first way back when we first came to Taglios, in the days when there were four Shadowmasters and together they could reach a lot farther than could Longshadow now. The skrinsa shadowweavers came north to kill us. They failed. But in their time they used small shadows, few bigger than my fist. I never saw one bigger than a cat.

Some in this flood dwarfed cattle. Those absorbed fireballs with no apparent effect. I saw dozens survive multiple hits.

I muttered, “Maybe Lady wasn’t as clever as she thought.”

Croaker replied, “Think what it would be like without her cleverness.”

We would be dead already.

“Got you.”

Closer. Closer. The dark wall was but a hundred yards distant now, the shadows far fewer in number and moving slower but relentless nevertheless.

Now the wagons could not depress their aim low enough to hit the shadows. They shifted their attentions to that island.

Uncle Doj shouted, drew Ash Wand. I have no idea what he thought that would do to the huge clot of darkness racing straight toward us while a swarm of small shadows scurried around it like frightened offspring. No sword held any power against this darkness.

I tried to burn a hole through the clot’s heart, poised on the brink of panic.

Death ravened closer and closer.

Balls from the rear began falling around us as little shadows slithered in amongst the rocks.

The screams began.

The dark mass became a bonfire as fireballs hammered it. It slowed, slowed some more, but never stopped coming. It reared like a boar grizzly issuing his challenge. I spun my handgrip hard, yelled some kind of nonsense. That killer slice of hell’s breath strained to get at me but could not. It was as though the thing, at the last instant, had encountered some invisible and unbreakable barrier.

The darkness radiated a dank psychic horror I imagined went with the grave, a hunger known only by things undead, an odor of the soul I remembered from too many bad dreams about bone-strewn wastelands and old men bound up in cocoons of spun ice. My terror grew stronger. I yanked at my handgrip long after my pole went dry, long after there was no more reason to crank.

The shadow kept trying to get to me until the barrage of fireballs consumed its last whisper of darkness.

The excitement faded quickly. Only balls launched toward the island found many targets.

The rock outcrop was taking a pounding from Lady’s division, too, the troops over there having figured out what was happening. I thought the volume of fire so heavy it might actually consume the island.

Then Croaker ordered fire reduced to precautionary levels. “No sense wasting our tools. We’re going to run into this sort of thing again.” He stared at me for half a minute. Then he asked, “How did we get surprised like this?” He used that Juniper tongue.

I shrugged. “Don’t ask me.” I chose Forsberger because I did not know the other well enough. “I was busy carrying the standard.” Meaning I was cut off from Smoke most of the time these days for what he considered sufficient reason. He was going to have to count on One-Eye to provide his warnings.

“Shit,” he said, without much venom. “Goddamn shit. Don’t get clever with—”

A grand shriek rolled across the lake. Lady’s troops loosed a furious barrage at something that darted up from the island and raced away southward. Croaker grunted. “The Howler!”

“We got them scared now, boss. The Shadowmaster is sending the big boys out to play.”

Croaker showed me a twitch of the lip. Not much. His sense of humor had gone to hell lately. Maybe he lost it when he was Soulcatcher’s prisoner. Or maybe when he came back to find out that he was a father but chances were he would never see his kid.

Howler escaped.

We stood down eventually but hardly anyone got any more sleep.

16

Dawn did come. It found our dead already burned or buried by soldiers who had been unable to sleep. I did not have to look at one tormented face.

There was no shortage of tormented landscape. It looked as though small lightnings had been on a year-long rampage around the lake. Already some of the more daring troopers were down at the water’s edge collecting dead fish.

Of the things that had attacked us there was no trace at all.

Croaker suggested, “You might spend a
little
more time with Smoke.” Which, of course, was more than a suggestion, though given reluctantly. He had given up counting on One-Eye for anything but grief.

I glanced around. My in-laws were nowhere in sight. I told him, “One-Eye did send warning.”

“It wasn’t what I’d call timely. It must have taken Howler and Longshadow days to set last night up. We should have been ready.”

“Maybe not being ready will work out for the best, though.”

“Why? How?”

“If we’d ambushed their ambush they would’ve started wondering how we knew about it. The way it worked out they’ll just sit around cussing Lady for thinking ahead.”

“You got a point. But I still want a little more warning. Just don’t go getting hung up on ghostwalking.”

“What about the standard? I don’t know where Sleepy is these days and there isn’t another sworn brother handy.” Nobody who was not Company was going to touch our most holy of relics. The standard—actually, the lance from which the standard hangs—is the only artifact we have which has remained with the Company since its beginnings. The oldest Annals have all been recopied time and time again, undergoing translation after translation.

Croaker told me, “I’ll manage it. You get sick and have to ride for a while.” He did and I did. Wearing his full Widowmaker armor he became terrible to behold once he took up the standard. A dark aura seemed to envelop him.

Much of that had to do with spells Lady had built into and onto the armor, layer after layer, for years. Even though Widowmaker was pure powerless invention, the vision was supposed to suggest something way beyond the ordinary, was supposed to stir the observer’s superstitions. So was the Lifetaker character Lady had created for herself. But hers had grown into its legend. Or had been something more than invention to start.

When Lady donned that armor she resembled one of the avatars of the goddess Kina. Some of her soldiers and more of her enemies half believed that when she donned the Lifetaker garb she became possessed by the dark goddess. I did not like that idea and did not accept it but Lady never discouraged it.

It did touch near a suspicion I have entertained from the time I first read Lady’s volume of the Annals.

Could it be possible she was still a tool of that Mother of Night? Maybe unwittingly?

*   *   *

Uncle Doj and Thai Dei scowled suspiciously when I told them I was sick again and was going to ride in One-Eye’s wagon for a while. I am sure Uncle Doj now knew Smoke was aboard and wanted to find out why the comatose wizard was important enough for us to carry off to war. He did not press me, though. He remained sensitive to Croaker’s scrutiny.

“How you doing, Kid?” One-Eye asked as I clambered aboard. He sounded depressed. Maybe he had a good ass-chewing from the Old Man. Again.

“You missed some big fun last night.”

“Not hardly. And I can tell you that I’m too damned old for this crap. Croaker don’t get us to Khatovar pretty damned soon I’m gonna drop out and take up leek farming.”

“I’ve got some good turnip seed. And rutabagas. I could use a manager.…”

“Work for you? Bullshit. Anyway, I know where I can get me some good ground cheap. Up in the Dhojar Prine. I could take Goblin along and make him lead field hand.”

He was just making chin music and we both knew it. I suggested, “You want to run a big operation you’re going to need a good woman to help. My mother-in-law would just love to remarry.”

Sourly, he told me, “I had it all scoped out to fix Goblin up with her. That would’ve been my all-time masterpiece. But he had to go and disappear.”

“Gods just can’t take a fucking joke, can they?”

“No shit. You should get more sleep. You look like you’ve been up all night. And you’re getting a little testy.”

Like a demon summoned by the naming of its name Mother Gota came waddling around the side of One-Eye’s wagon. One-Eye squeaked in surprise. I gulped air. She was supposed to be a long way back up the road.

But, then, Thai Dei was supposed to be back there recuperating, too.

The old woman was lugging so many weapons she looked like a dwarfish arms merchant. She looked up. Her usual grim scowl was missing. She smiled at One-Eye, showing us her absent teeth.

One-Eye gave me a look of hopeless appeal. “They can’t take a joke. Not even a little one, not even once. Don’t stress him, Kid. I got the cough fixed but now he ain’t taking his soup so good.” Ignoring the Nyueng Bao woman, he settled himself on the driver’s seat, cracked a whip.

I wasted no time. I made myself comfortable and went ghostwalking.

*   *   *

I like the word “consternation.” It sounds like what it means.

There was a shitload of consternation surrounding Mogaba when I arrived. He and his gang had gotten an incoherent report from Howler, who was not exactly in pristine condition when he reached Charandaprash. He and his carpet both had been hit by Lady’s marksmen.

An important point was that Howler and the Shadowmaster had cooked up the night’s festivities without ever having consulted Mogaba. Mogaba was pissed off, the way generals get whenever their expertise is disdained.

Blade’s force had joined Mogaba’s. Croaker had talked about trying to cut him off but nothing had developed. There had been no time for planning and launching a strong enough force.

Usually the boss does manage to separate the wishful from the possible, whatever his own feelings.

Upon arriving, Blade took charge of the division forming Mogaba’s left flank, meaning he would be head to head with the Prahbrindrah Drah when the field armies collided. It was interesting to note that all the division commanders of the Shadowlander main force, along with the head general himself, were renegades who had gone over from our side.

They were all competent soldiers but I doubted that Longshadow cared. What mattered to him most was that they would be strongly motivated to avoid defeat and capture.

I scurried ahead to Overlook, to be there when Howler reported from the front. It ought to be entertaining. Longshadow turned into a raving, foamy-mouthed madman when things really went wrong.

I had to adjust my position in time only slightly to watch the screaming sorcerer arrive on a carpet that was a herd of holes held together by a handful of threads. It was a wonder it did not fall apart under him.

Longshadow listened to Howler’s report. He was angry but he did not fault his ally. Which was odd. He was not one to assume much blame himself. Howler observed, “She was a step ahead this time.”

“Did any of our assets survive the skirmish?”

Skirmish?

“No.”

“Time to keep the skildirsha behind the Dandha Presh, then. For now we’ll use them only for communications and reconnaissance. What of the skrinsa? Any out there?”

“Not living. Not that I transported.”

“Excellent.”

This was scary. Longshadow always dealt with bad news by turning into a raving lunatic.

The Howler said, “Husband those who still live. Order them to begin teaching their craft to any with the capacity to learn it. If your mighty general fails and the Company breaks through at Charandaprash, shadowweavers will be priceless.”

Longshadow grunted, fiddled with his mask. “You knew the woman. Senjak. Does she have the power to break our armies?”

“She would have in olden times. It’s possible she may be strong enough now. Unless we go up there to preoccupy her while our troops exterminate hers.”

I found it interesting that they believed Lady was in charge, whatever appearance we presented. Possibly that was because Howler had been under her thumb for so long, virtually her slave. He might not be capable of believing her anything less than the master. Too, they seemed unable to recognize the fact that our better motivated troops had beaten theirs regularly without any sorcerous, mystical or divine assistance.

Longshadow asked, “Are there a great many of them coming?”

“Yes. Although they have broken with past practice. Many are camp followers weakened by trying to live off a land already scoured by military foragers.”

True. And even the soldiers were less than one hundred percent. However much groundwork we had laid, the last leg of the journey passed through barren country.

“But their force is larger?”