The Return of the Black Company (79 page)

“His disposition’s improved since the last time we saw him,” Hagop observed. “He don’t let these little setbacks bother him anymore.”

“How you guys been keeping? We don’t get a lot of personal news over here.”

Hagop frowned. Otto said, “A nick here, a ding there. Nothing serious.” Practically ever since I met them one or both had been recovering from some kind of wound. It was what they were known for. They were icons, practically. Otto and Hagop could not be killed, only injured, and as long as they stayed alive the Black Company would survive.

Hagop said, “We was sent over with a bunch of stuff for the Old Man and some stuff for you to put in the Annals. Names.”

“Oh.” Croaker and I always tried to record the names of our fallen brethren the best we could. A lot of guys counted on it. Once they were gone it would be the only evidence that they had ever lived. It was immortality of a sort.

“Lot a names,” Hagop persisted. “Hundreds. Last night was not a good night for the Old Division.”

“You going to be able?” Otto asked. “Is everything buried down there in the mud?”

“It is. But I was more careful with the Annals and that stuff than I was with me. I kept them in a room with logs for the walls and floor and ceiling, with drainage and everything. Just in case. I figured the Shadowmaster would be the problem, though. Hundreds of names? Really? Any I know?”

“They’re just all on a list.”

“I’ll have to add them on at the back of the volume I’m doing now.” If there were hundreds they would be recent enlistees, their names likely unknown to me. They would be recorded on a payroll somewhere but that had nothing to do with me.

Thai Dei materialized. I had not noted his absence till he did. He said, “My mother was all right.” He did not sound real sure about that, though.

“Uhm?”

“They found her in the wizard’s hole when they dug him out. Which was why they were so long getting to you. Your Captain knew you were all right. He did not know if the wizard was dead or alive.”

He meant One-Eye, I realized. Well, of course, if the quake had been bad enough to overcome the fine craftsmanship Thai Dei and I put into our place, then One-Eye’s place could not be anything but a rainwater pool by now.

“She was in One-Eye’s dugout?”

Embarrassed, whispering because there were other Nyueng Bao around, Thai Dei admitted, “They were both dead drunk. Passed out in their own vomit. Didn’t even know the roof had fallen in till the rescuers pulled them out.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “But I’m just going to have to laugh.” It came on me hard. It was more than just picturing those two getting plotzed together. It was the release of all the stress from last night.

Otto and Hagop stared at the slopes to the south, restraining their own amusement.

I suffered another laugh seizure. I realized that, before lunch, word would be all over what was left of the army. Undoubtedly it would suffer severe exaggaration and would evolve into some prurient epic before it reached our most remote outpost.

The slope that had been the home of the headquarters group had turned into thirty acres of pockmarks. Hardly a dugout had survived. Prisoners were digging in a dozen different places.

I spotted one familiar face, then another, directing rescue teams. “So. She didn’t stay mad at them.”

“What?” Thai Dei asked.

“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.” Speak of the devil. There she came out of the Old Man’s bunker. Which had survived unscathed. Croaker was right behind her. Neither looked rested. But they sure looked pleased with themselves.

I grumbled inarticulately, deep in my throat.
My
wife was half a world away.

Croaker ambled over. “Time for your annual bath, Murgen.”

“If I just stand here in the rain long enough…”

Lady stared a hole through me. She wanted to interrogate me. But not now, not here, not in front of so many people who did not need to hear my answers because half of them did not themselves know where their loyalties lay.

I asked, “How bad did we get hurt last night?”

Croaker shuddered. Maybe some cold rainwater got inside his collar. “I don’t know yet. Lady has almost two thousand people she still can’t account for.”

“They keep turning up, though,” she said, joining us. “I imagine we’ll find most of them eventually.” Probably dead.

I said, “Otto and Hagop say we lost a big chunk of the Old Division.”

Croaker nodded. “They brought a list. It’s way longer than I hoped. We still don’t have anything useful from the other divisions. The New Division is still disorganized and the Prince’s fell apart completely. Did you have something you wanted to say in private? You have that look.”

“Yes.” Smoke rose from the crude chimney of Croaker’s shelter. Warm sounded good. I would make up something to tell him if I had to.

I joined him in the warmth with no remorse and little sympathy for the guys I had left out in the rain.

Lady followed us inside. She wore a smug but hungry look.

*   *   *

Lady had one of Croaker’s rough maps spread before the fire. “Can you pinpoint where he went down?” She meant the Howler. “Maybe we can still catch him if he was hurt bad.”

“What’s that?” the Old Man asked when I mumbled.

“Uh … I said, ‘you never stop tempting trouble, do you?’”

Lady did not turn me into a toad. Nor even one of Otto’s ugly little mole-rats. She was in a good mood this morning, as opposed to last night.

Smoke groaned. He startled me, though it was his second groan since I had come into Croaker’s shelter. I glanced that way. The curtain was open. Longshadow and Narayan Singh had been stacked in the alcove with the stricken wizard. I could not imagine Lady and the Old Man fooling around with that crew piled up only a few feet away, but it was obvious that they had taken complete advantage of their opportunity.

I was mildly surprised Lady would turn her prisoners over—even to her old man. Longshadow represented a great opportunity to gain power. And Singh … Lady owed Singh a lot. But so did the Captain.

Maybe they would make a family project out of Narayan.

She asked fewer questions than I expected, mainly about Smoke’s limitations. I did not mention that I was developing an ability to travel without the comatose wizard. She did not ask. Croaker, though, noted that I knew about Howler even though I had been in my own bunker during the Taken’s run of bad luck.

“I’ll send Blade,” she decided. “He’s levelheaded. He can get a job done without getting himself or Howler killed.”

I wanted to ask how Blade and Swan had slithered back into her favor but management decisions were none of my business. I had had Lady explain that to me already, emphatically, regarding another matter.

She left to offer Blade his opportunity.

While she was away Croaker asked, “Where’s the standard?”

“Buried in my dugout.”

“Uhm. How about the Annals and stuff?”

“They’re in there, too. But they should be all right for now. If we have another quake, or a lot more rain, though … I don’t know.”

“We’ll go after that as soon as we’ve got our people dug out.”

“How come she brought Singh and the Shadowmaster here?”

He understood. “Because I’m the physician. And they’re both about half a heartbeat short of dying. Maybe if she’d had somebody of her own handy, whom she trusted…” He let it trail off. He would never trust his woman completely, where ambition might enter the equation.

“She’s probably less risk than you think. I think I figured it out last night.”

“What?”

“Her relationship to Kina. How it works and why it exists. I think I got it.”

“You have time to think when you’re out playing spook?”

“Some.”

“So tell me about my sweetie and Kina.”

“Begin with the premise that she’s pretty damned bright.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He smiled at some private thought.

“Not to mention pretty strong-willed.”

“You going to waste my time with understatements? Or are you going to get on with it?”

“Onward. I think that, a long time ago, before we ever got to Gea-Xle, when she first showed unexpected signs of regaining some power, she understood that some force down here meant to use her. And she let it happen. And that lulled that force into thinking that it had claimed a slave when in fact what it really got was a parasite.”

Several possible responses stirred behind Croaker’s eyes. But he said only, “Go on.”

“That’s pretty much it. While the goddess was using her, Lady was limpeting herself to Kina so she could suck off power she could use herself. I think she’s burrowed in so deep Kina can’t get rid of her without crippling herself. I think Lady may even have some control over what the goddess does. Kina got real upset last night. The Daughter of Night was being threatened directly. But when she tried to help the kid, even though she managed to get really destructive, her efforts never quite hit their mark.”

“And you think Lady…?”

“Yes. He’s right.” Lady stepped into the weak light. No telling how long she had been behind us, listening. She was the darkness when it came to moving quietly. “That doesn’t leave this place. So long as they think I’m the real thing the end results will be the same as if I were.”

I discovered some interesting mold formations developing on the wall in front of me. I gave them my devoted attention.

Croaker said, “If you’re like some kind of leech or something, how come Kina hasn’t tried to get rid of you?”

“Most of Kina is asleep. The part that isn’t is interested only in bringing on the Year of the Skulls. And she’s pretty stupid besides. She didn’t understand what I’d done till recently. She may ponder it for years before she decides to do something about it.”

I said, “She does seem to look at time in a different way.”

Lady continued, “I’m concerned that my beloved sister may have solved the puzzle, too. Or will now that she has the girl. The girl knows.”

I said, “Catcher’s hiding out in the same place she has ever since she got here.” The Old Man knew where that was.

Croaker said, “I’d love to take a crack. But we’ve only got ten hours to get ready for another night.”

I understood. But boy would it have been nice to get Catcher tucked safely into the past.

Twenty minutes of speculation did nothing to unravel Catcher’s ultimate motives. Not even Lady could guess what Catcher really wanted or what she might do next.

“She was that way when she was four years old,” Lady said. “Hell. She was born unpredictable.”

I must have looked too interested. The story stopped there.

I did not overlook the fact that neither Croaker nor Lady ever referred to their child in any way that might suggest that she was anything but an unnatural monster entirely unconnected to them.

73

I watched Wheezer direct the winkling out of a small shadow that had worked its way up close to the perimeter of One-Eye’s safe zone before going into hiding from the light. Lady had modified One-Eye’s amulets so that they could be used to detect shadows. Our guys were rooting them out with great enthusiasm—particularly considering that most of those guys were exhausted. I said, “I can’t believe that old boy isn’t dead yet.”

On cue Wheezer tried to hawk up a lung. He was ancient when he joined the Company years ago and was dying of consumption even then. The only thing good that could be said about his situation was that he somehow managed to stay alive.

Thai Dei grunted. He did not care about Wheezer. Although he was supposedly helping excavate our bunker he spent more attention on his mother, who snored ferociously in the shelter of a tent that had belonged to somebody who had not survived the night. His face was stone. His eyes were ice. If another Nyueng Bao came anywhere near him his hackles rose. He was just waiting for somebody to say something, anything, that he could interpret as an insult so he could spend his embarrassment in a good fight.

When they dug Gota and One-Eye out not only were they passed out drunk, they were on the same pallet wearing less than their usual apparel.

So that was his tonk game, eh?

I worked hard not to crack a smile. Thai Dei might decide I was truly family after all and take it out on me.

I hoped he would not confront One-Eye. One-Eye would have a murderous hangover when he woke up. One-Eye with a hangover is not somebody to annoy.

Croaker was sorely exercised, I knew. The little wizard had rendered himself useless at a time when his talents were needed desperately.

Everywhere you looked people were scurrying to rebuild and to get ready for another night with a leaky Shadowgate. Lady and the Old Man hoped Longshadow would help improve that situation but no good news had been reported yet. They were having trouble getting him out of his shell.

They had no time to concentrate. Messengers came and went continuously, interrupting constantly.

“Another dozen shovels full and I think we can get it open,” I told Thai Dei. I had conscripted a door somebody else had stolen from the ruins. I had used it to close off the little workroom I had managed to complete just in time for the earthquake.

One of Croaker’s guards appeared. “The Captain wishes to see you, Standardbearer.”

“Wonderful. I’ll be right back, Thai Dei.” I clambered up out of the muddy hole and headed for Croaker’s dugout. I ducked inside. The crowd had thinned out. Amazing. “What you need, boss?” He and Lady had Longshadow stretched out on a table made out of another stolen door. The Shadowmaster was too long for it. His feet hung off.

Lady had managed to eliminate the sorcerer’s protective shell.

“Fellow just came in from Blade’s bunch, Murgen. They’ve found Howler. He’s still buried in the snow. They don’t know if he’s unconscious or dead.”

“He’s been there long enough he should’ve froze to death.” But he was one of the Taken. They did not die easily. Especially not Howler. I glanced at Lady.

She told me, “I can’t tell from here.”

Croaker said, “They also caught Cordy Mather and his gang. They asked what to do about them.” He was poking and squeezing Longshadow’s limbs, looking for broken bones, I guess. He told Lady, “This man hasn’t eaten right for a long time.”