The Return of the Black Company (49 page)

He lived in his own reality, no doubt about that. Had to be a general. He actually believed he could play with Mogaba’s mind.

He had not seen Mogaba at Dejagore. Not enough.

I said, “We’ll be so beat he can come over and dance on our heads.”

“But he won’t. Longshadow has a ball and chain tied to his tail.”

“So he kicks ass and lies to his boss later.”

“That what you’d do?”

“Uh…” I might.

“Longshadow will be here watching him. Go get some sleep. When the sun comes up I want you perched on Mogaba’s shoulder.” Uncle Doj was only steps away, taking everything in. We were speaking Forsberger but I wondered if that was enough of a security measure.

Those crows were never far away.

What I got from the exchange was that Croaker did have a plan. Sometimes it was hard to believe that.

“I’m not tired right now.” I
was
hungry and thirsty, though. Any extended period spent with Smoke leaves me that way. I took advantage of the staff officers’ mess.

Messengers began to come and go. Croaker grumbled, “Guess it’s time to start telling people what they need to do.”

“There’s an original concept. After all these years.”

“Do we really need another smartass Annalist, Murgen? Get some rest.”

He began gathering senior officers for a meeting. I was not invited.

*   *   *

I went back to One-Eye’s wagon, where I ate some more, drank a lot of water and then went ghostwalking again.

Me and the fire chief eavesdropped on Croaker and his commanders but I should not have wasted the time. I learned very little. Croaker did all the talking, referring to a detailed map showing everyone where he wanted each unit to light in front of Mogaba. The only real surprise was that he wanted the Prahbrindrah Drah’s division stationed in the center while his own two divisions positioned themselves on the right flank—excepting one specially trained combat team he wanted on the extreme left, outside Lady’s left flank.

Interesting. Our right wing just happened to face and lap the Shadowlander division Blade had been given to command.

Croaker really wanted Blade.

Narrow-eyed, Lady asked, “Why did you decide to arrange the army this way? We’ve talked about this for three years.…”

Croaker told her, “Because this is where I want you all.”

Lady had trouble keeping her temper. In a long life she had not had to do that much.

Croaker smelled the smoke. “When I don’t explain to you nobody else finds out what I’m planning, either.” He offered some tidbit to one of his crows.

That helped. A little. But the Prahbrindrah Drah and most of the rest had no idea of the significance of Croaker’s crows.

I left Smoke, drank again, snacked, made sure the sleeper got some soup. He did not need nearly as much sustenance as I did. Maybe he was sucking on me out there, like some kind of psychic spider.

I slept. I had bad dreams that I recalled only in shards when I awakened. The Radisha was there. Soulcatcher was there. I suppose the old men in the caverns were there, too, though none of that stuck. Somewhere a bleak fortress.

I gave up trying to remember, went out with Smoke to try to see our approach as the enemy would.

Fireballs scattered colored pearls across the night. Torches speckled distant slopes with islands and snakes of light. The Shadowlander commanders watched without remark except when Blade suggested that the Captain was making his force appear more formidable by burning lots of torches.

They were not concerned. A lot of the junior officers expected Longshadow to turn them loose after they stomped us. They saw themselves heading north in early spring, with the whole summer to plunder and punish.

But a few were veterans of armies we had embarrassed in the past. Those men showed us more respect. And betrayed a more intense desire to cause us pain. They did not believe it would be easy but they did believe we would be defeated.

Mogaba himself seemed more taken with his plans for a counterinvasion than he was interested in further preparing to withstand us here.

I did not like it but I saw no real reason to believe they were overconfident.

Still, all those fireballs and torches were heartening.

That vast mass in motion out there had been inspired by the Black Company. And I had no trouble recalling when there were just seven of us, as unprepossessing a bunch of thugs as ever walked the earth. That was barely more than five years ago. Triumph or failure, this campaign would survive as a mighty drumbeat in the Annals.

I went back to my flesh and slept again. When I awakened our vanguards were already approaching the Plain of Charandaprash. Mist had formed in all the low places and gullies.

20

We stopped amidst a grand hubbub. I leaned out of the wagon.

The mists had become an all-enveloping fog. People with torches hustled hither and yon, their torches glowing like witch-lights. None came near me. All the forces had come together and now the world was very crowded.

Croaker appeared. I told him, “You look totally beat.”

“My ass is banging off my heels.” He climbed aboard, checked Smoke, settled down and closed his eyes.

“Well?”

“Uhm?”

“You’re here. How come? And what about your goddamned pets? They watching?”

For a moment I thought he had gone to sleep that quickly. He did not answer immediately. But: “I’m hiding out. From the birds, too. One-Eye scared them off.” About two minutes later, he added, “I don’t like it, Murgen.”

“What don’t you like?”

“Being Captain. I wish I could’ve stayed Annalist and physician. There’s less pressure.”

“You’re managing all right.”

“Not the way I hear it. I wasn’t Captain I wouldn’t have any long-term worries, either.”

“Hell. And here I thought you were having the time of your life baffling the shit out of everybody.”

“All I’ve ever wanted was to take us home. But they won’t let me.”

“It’s for sure nobody’s ever going to open any doors for us. Especially not the Radisha. What to do about us seems to be on her mind a lot lately.”

“It ought to be.” He smiled. “And I haven’t forgotten her.” He paused a moment, then said, “You’re up on your Annals. What was the bloodiest mess we ever got ourselves into?”

“Right here is my guess. Back in the beginning, four hundred years ago. But that’s only by implication in the surviving Annals.”

“History may repeat itself.” He did not sound thrilled. Not at all. He was not a bloodthirsty man.

Neither am I, despite the hatreds I obsess over here. But my scruples do have blind areas. I do want to see several thousand villains suffer for what happened to Sahra.

Croaker asked, “Do you know of any way to authenticate the lost Annals you took back from Soulcatcher?”

“What?” What a horrible question. It never occurred to me before. “You saying you think they might not be real?”

“I couldn’t read them but I could see that they weren’t originals. They were copies.”

“They might not have told the true story?”

“Smoke believed every word in the ones he had. And oral history supports his view of the Company as the terror of the ages, though there aren’t any specifics. But I do have to wonder because there just aren’t any contemporary accounts from independent observers.”

“Something happened. Even if these books we have now are fabrications. What’re you thinking?”

For a moment Croaker seemed tired of fighting. “Murgen, there’s something going on that’s more than you and me and Lady, the Taglians and the Shadowmasters and all that. Strange things are happening and they don’t add up any other way. I started to wonder when you kept falling into the past.”

“I think Soulcatcher had something to do with that.”

“She may well have. She’s got her fingers in everywhere else. But I don’t think she’s all of it. I think we’re all—even Soulcatcher—being manipulated. And I’m even beginning to think that it’s been going on for ages. That if we had the true firsts of the missing Annals and could read them we might see ourselves and what’s happening in a whole different way.”

“Are you talking about the thing Lady goes on about in her book? Kina? Because I’ve seen her myself, a couple of times, when I was out walking the ghost. Or what I think was her based on myth and what Lady wrote.”

“Kina. Yes. Or something that wants us to think it’s Kina.”

“Wouldn’t that be the same thing, as far as we’re concerned?”

“Uhm. I think she’s having those dreams again.”

I thought so myself. “Looked like that to me, too. She’s getting pretty haggard.”

“I thought a lot about this during the trip down here. Not much to do but think when you’re riding all day. My guess is, things have started going too fast for Kina. This is a critter that’s used to shaping long, slow shadow plays, manipulations that can take decades to unfold. Maybe even generations in our case. Her big scheme might have begun way back before our fore-brethren headed north. But now we’re coming home to roost and everything is happening too fast for her. The more she tries to guide events the more hamhanded she gets.”

“For instance?”

“Like what she did to Smoke.”

“I really figured that was something Soulcatcher did.” Although there had been no evidence to pin that on her, either.

“I suppose that’s possible, too. It’s even possible they were both after him and they got in each other’s way.”

I recalled what I could of the incident from Lady’s book. I decided to stick with my Soulcatcher theory. Deceiver mythology did not credit Kina with that much ability to reach into the mundane world. The whole point of the cult was to bring on a time of such dramatic horror that the walls preventing Kina from touching our world could be ripped down from our side.

I explained that.

Croaker just shrugged. “Listen to this. I’m almost certain there wasn’t supposed to be any Black Company left after Dejagore. Except for Lady. She was the only one who was supposed to survive. And her number was supposed to be up when the Stranglers took our baby.”

I considered that. “If that guy Ram hadn’t fallen for Lady…”

“That would’ve been the end of everything. Kina would’ve had her Daughter of Night over on this side and the Year of the Skulls beginning to unfold without anyone to interfere.”

I looked interested. That was easy. I was. I wanted him to keep going. Before he finished I might actually have some idea why he did everything he did.

He said, “The wild cards messed up Kina’s hand.”

“Wild cards? You mean Soulcatcher?”

“She’s the biggest. But there’s Howler and there was Shifter and there’s still Shifter’s apprentice out there somewhere. All of them not part of the plan.”

It was a hypothesis. It was well beyond any thinking I had done. Or in a different direction.

“You be careful, Murgen. Stay in close touch with your feelings. Don’t let the ghostwalking seduce you. This thing manipulates us through our emotions.”

“Why should I worry? I just write stuff down.”

His response was cryptic. “The standardbearer could be more important than the Daughter of Night before this is all over.”

“How’s that?”

He changed the subject. “You looked for the forvalaka lately?” He meant the shapeshifter trapped in animal form, the apprentice he had mentioned a moment ago.

I thought about it, told him, “I’ve looked a few times but haven’t seen it since I doubled back on the massacre at Vehdna-Bota.”

“I see. No hurry but when you get a chance, find out where she is now. We couldn’t be so lucky that she’s gotten herself killed.”

“Oh, she hasn’t. One-Eye says she’s right out there in the wilds, following us. We were talking about her the other night. He’s convinced her only reason for living is to get even with him for killing Shifter before he taught her how to change back.”

Croaker chuckled. “Yeah. Poor old boy. One of these days he’s going to discover that he isn’t the center of the universe. May all our surprises be pleasant ones. And all of Mogaba’s surprises real gut-rippers.” He chuckled again, wickedly. As he climbed down from the wagon he said, “Almost showtime.”

He did see warfare more in terms of showmanship than in those of deadly games.

21

Once again I fluttered around Mogaba’s head. Me, Murgen, angel of espionage.

Howler and Longshadow had arrived soon after dawn. They believed it would take both their concerted efforts to keep Lady from ripping Mogaba a new poop chute. Lady’s powers seemed to swell as she moved farther south.

An idea hit like religious epiphany. I knew the fear that haunted the Captain. He suspected that Lady had regained her powers by making a pact with Kina.

I have suspected that myself, off and on.

The way sorcery works, the way I understood it, her loss of powers during the battle at the Barrowland should have been irreversible. It had to do with some unfathomable mystical gobbledegook about true names. Gunni mythology contained numerous stories about how gods and demons and devils went around hiding their true names in rocks or trees or grains of sand on the beach so their enemies would not be able to glom onto them and gain a hold. The whole business made no sense but that did not keep it from working.

Lady’s true name had been named during the final showdown with her husband. She survived but, according to the mystical rules, was now an ordinary mortal. With looks to kill for. What made her interesting to people in her former trade was that she was a living storehouse of wicked lore. She had not lost any of her knowledge, only the ability to employ it.

I was surprised that she had not been a bigger target than she had so far.

Her name had no power over her anymore. Being powerless herself, apparently, she could not take advantage of those true names she knew. Otherwise she would have dealt with the Howler and her sister a long time ago. And she would not give those names away even to One-Eye and Goblin. She would die first.

It takes a strange sort to become a wizard or sorceress.

She had her own agenda still, that was certain. One-Eye or Goblin were not much but some things were like dropping a rock down a well.