The Return of the Black Company (87 page)

The boulder shifted position slightly, pointing its tail of fire farther downhill.

The fireball popped out the other side of the rock like a pimple’s core squirting.

“Shit!” said I. “And double shit! That fucker must be ten feet thick!”

Clete said, “A three-inch ball will run at least fifteen feet into the kind of stone we have around here. Hagop, see the silver character that looks like the rune for Fate?” He pointed at Overlook. There were thousands of characters on the wall. I did not understand which one he meant. Neither did Hagop.

“Tallest line of characters. Middle of the target. Looks like a flagpole trailing two pennons to the right, next to something like a three-tined pitchfork.”

“All right.”

I found it, too.

“Go ahead. Snipe away when you’re ready.”

I protested, “That’s over three thousand yards! Closer to four. He’ll be lucky to hit the wall.”

“Ready.”

“Do it.”

Bacon fried. An orange ball left the bamboo pole. It took less than three seconds to reach Overlook. I would not have been able to follow it had I not been standing behind Hagop. A flash lit up the whole countryside when the fireball hit the spells protecting the wall. It struck right where Hagop aimed it. The target rune appeared slightly discolored once the glare waned.

“Oh, my!” said I. Thai Dei and Uncle Doj yammered at one another. They had no need to understand our quacking to see the potential.

“We figure a ball will run out at least fourteen miles before it loses all its momentum,” Clete said. “By then it won’t have much more energy than a regular ball and won’t be much good for anything but killing shadows and general destruction anymore.” He patted the tube Hagop had used. “This was our prototype. It’s sighted in. We got to do all these others now. Which is why we come up here.”

Hagop and Otto replaced that pole with another not yet marked. Otto gave the back end a half twist. A complete, tray-like section came off. Two guys from Lady’s factory packed the tray with something that looked like potter’s clay, then seated a big black rubber marble in that. Hagop put the tray back into his toy, fiddled with the triggering mechanism, asked the engineer brothers, “You guys satisfied with the way this thing is laid?”

All three squatted. They bickered. Hammers tapped. They argued. Then they, Otto, Hagop and the factory people all assumed particular positions and stared at Overlook.

Bacon crackled. An orange fireball hit the air. A thousand yards out it began to drift to the left, then downward. It hit ground short of the wall. Fire gouted into the air for fifteen seconds. So did bits of stone and sod.

All seven observers began combining observations on a chart. Bickering steadily. They took the tray off the pole and peered through. More notes went onto the chart. That eventually passed into the hands of a specialist who used some of the arcane tools to machine the interior of the pole.

The brothers moved to another pole. Their accomplices had a dozen set up for testing. They repeated the process over and over. Some poles put their fireballs on target first try. Some missed badly. The worst got discarded right away. No sense wasting time on those. There was still a need for less accurate shadowslappers.

Once a pole went through its rework it got tested for consistency. An alphabet of arcane marks in various paints went on to tell the soldiers what quirks the weapon retained.

Otto seldom says much but during his lunch break he observed, “Lady’s really got the power back, now.”

Hardly anyone even suspected the truth. Those who did were not prepared to believe it.

“How many of them things you going to work?” My guys had stopped getting any work done. They were hanging around watching the fireworks like a bunch of big kids.

Clete said, “We brought fifty in this batch. We hope we can come up with twenty reliables out of those. Everything goes right, we’ll start work on some really
big
stuff. Boy, will the Tals be surprised.”

I could imagine what these new fireballs would do to men’s bodies. But I suspected that scything through legions was not their purpose. And my suspicion was confirmed next afternoon.

Lady herself came to inspect the twenty-six pieces the brothers had found acceptable.

The woman seemed emotionally drained, yet did show a bounce that said part of her life was going well. She and the Old Man were finding free moments to be something other than Captain and Lieutenant.

I was pleased for them.

“Excellent,” she said, after she watched every accepted tube smite Overlook’s wall at least once. “What about the crow-specific light arms?”

“You see any crows?” Longo asked. “We got a picket line out. They don’t even get close.”

“Good. Prime all of these things with full loads. I’m going to try my own experiment.”

Hagop told me, “We’re in the chips. We done come up with six more than we even hoped. And half the others are good enough we can use them up close, a mile or less. We’ll kick us some ass, big time.” The whole gang were as thrilled as kids with new toys. And Lady was the worst. She bounced around like she was fifteen again.

The troops shuffled the tables around, began packing tools and loading wagons.

Loftus, Longinus and Otto kept chuckling about something.

I glanced around. I did not like the portents. Even Lady had the look. The look that always showed up on One-Eye and/or Goblin when they were going to pull a stunt the rest of us might regret.

“Just hang on here, everybody!” I yelled, trying to be the responsible one. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but—” This was
my
fief.

A bunch of them, including Lady, the brothers, Otto and Hagop, all got behind the tables. They started wisecracking as they sighted down the lengths of fully loaded heavyweight poles.

“Don’t even think about it!” I growled.

My in-laws hovered behind me, silently, not understanding anything being said but clear on the fact that yesterday and today added up to something significant. Something beyond the obvious.

“Don’t do it!” I begged.

Twenty-two bamboo tubes discharged within seconds of one another. The villains all watched the orange fireballs streak north-northwest, straight into the area where that storm of crows had exploded in my imagination.

It was not my imagination this time.

Catcher’s hideout had to be more than ten miles away. It did not take the fireballs ten seconds to get there. Maybe not five. I was too shaken to be a good judge of time’s passage.

Fire and smoke and shit flew half a mile high.

Now the whole gang went bugfuck. Every one of them—Lady, too—put fireballs into the air in streams of four and five. The distant woods began to boil. Even from so far away I could make out gigantic trees being hurled a thousand feet into the air.

I recalled some trees there being twice as thick as I was tall. They twisted through the sky like scythes of fire.

A firestorm took life below. It hurled flames and smoke heavenward like an angry volcano.

It was a day when a lot of crows died.

I am sure it was a day when Soulcatcher found not one reason to laugh.

88

There is a lot of ritual in human affairs.

The Old Man started me doing sermons from the Annals, the way he had himself in ancient times. He was a firm believer in every man knowing his exact place in our long history. And then most of the older hands were stuck with teaching Taglian to anyone who did not speak it already. Croaker wanted every brother to have a language in common with every other. Sometimes it seemed we had as many native tongues as we had men to speak them. I recalled no instance in the Annals when the Company had become as polyglot as it was now.

Another burden I bore was keeping in shape by hoofing it across to headquarters for staff meetings every few days.

*   *   *

A wonderful aroma wakened me. I shoved my head out of our oft-improved bunker. “What’re you cooking?” I asked Thai Dei.

“Uncle Doj killed a wild pig last night. There will be roast pork today.”

“I hope I can keep it down.”

“It won’t be ready for hours yet. You told me to remind you of your staff meeting this morning.”

“Shit.” It was supposed to be important, too. I did not dare be late. “Better save me some.” I dragged my ass out and made what morning preparations I could. None of us were the sort who spent hours trimming our beards or prettying our hair or taking baths. But you do have to splash a little water in your face sometimes and you do have to get the crud out of your teeth just so you feel like keeping on.

I wondered what would become of our teeth if we did not get One-Eye back. Those tiny little spells he put on them, to protect them, had to be renewed every two years. And we had battalions of new men still lacking their initial exposures.

Thai Dei did not save me diddly. He took the pig off the fire and followed me. There is just no ditching the man.

I was still not riding. Sleepy had not brought my mount back. Sleepy had not come home yet himself, though he had had ample time. He had disappeared while crossing the mountains. No search through the ghostworld nor on site had produced a trace. I feared the worst.

Two sleek crows followed me, gliding from bush to rock to ruin. Otherwise there was no evidence to indicate that Soulcatcher remained alive or was interested in us anymore, despite the vandalism of her home. She was biding her time.

You could say that about the woman. She was crazy but never impatient. Her temper did not control her.

Lady said she had escaped the barrage only because she had taken Howler’s carpet north so she could conspire with the Radisha.

I had orders not to look for Soulcatcher. I had orders to run whenever I sensed her presence. The same with Kina. Smoke was next to useless now. I had become too valuable a resource to risk.

Right.

I glanced back before we started up the far slope. Uncle Doj was trailing us, as he did so often. His step suggested he was ready for anything. One hand rested on Ash Wand always.

Thai Dei and I had resumed training with him, want to or not. He would not explain what was going on inside his head. He just kept whacking away, forcing us to defend ourselves or enjoy painful bruises.

He despaired of my ever reaching what he considered minimal proficiency with a sword. He did not understand the difference between a lone wolf warrior and a soldier who is part of a team of mutually supporting fighters. Or he pretended not to understand.

He expected trouble, no doubt about that. But it was too much trouble to explain.

I have been running with Croaker long enough that I should be used to that.

I reminded Thai Dei, “We’re mushrooms.”

“Huh?”

“Kept in the dark? Fed a diet of horseshit?” You would think that he would remember. But he was not interested in trying. Like most Nyueng Bao attached to the Company. “Never mind.”

Uncle Doj tried to invite himself into the meeting. A couple of hard-eyed guards stepped into his path. He chose to go hang around with the other Nyueng Bao. He never did that before. He seemed to be looking for JoJo, One-Eye’s erstwhile bodyguard. JoJo was never a gregarious sort, even among other Nyueng Bao.

I ducked inside the Old Man’s dugout.

A whole herd of people had gathered in there. They were waiting for me, apparently.

“Let’s get started,” Croaker said. “First, intelligence received. The rumor is true. Mogaba definitely did sign on with the Radisha. He’s started putting together a force somewhere south of Dejagore. The reports didn’t explain where but did say his men have begun evicting the locals from the best croplands so they can support themselves. The leadership in Taglios hasn’t decided exactly what to do yet. There’s actually a lot of sentiment for forgetting us altogether.”

The Captain did not reveal his sources. Some of that came from me and Lady, dreaming and walking the ghost when Smoke was not completely useless. He added, “It seems Mogaba will enjoy the support of several small auxiliary units raised by religious sects with a grudge against us or our friends.”

Blade chuckled.

89

Silence stretched. I found a battered mug left over from Kiaulune’s glory days, helped myself to tea from a pot steeping beside Croaker’s crude hearth. The stuff was more bitter than medicine. That explained why it was still there. I pretended to enjoy it.

“Clete,” Croaker said. “What’s the agricultural situation?” Only in the Black Company would a siege engineer be in charge of farming.

Cletus said, “Nothing new to report. Exceptional crops threatening to mature earlier than the locals predicted. We could do worse than to establish ourselves here.” Cletus and his brothers centered a faction interested in settling down. They felt their new weapons could discourage our most determined enemies. They made no strong representations, though.

The Company had slogged through hell for an age. Now we possessed a rich province and a fine fortress and our only serious enemies were hundreds of miles away and probably disinclined to come after us anytime soon.

I did not listen to the editorializing following a suggestion that the gods loved us because our crops were doing so well. I paid no attention till Longinus started telling us why we no longer needed to be afraid of anyone.

“If the Radisha really traded away half her power so she could keep her position that means the priests are really in charge. I don’t see them, no matter how much they fear us or hate Blade, ever saddling themselves with another real army. The cost and the threat to their power…”

I had heard it all before. The priests would not let the Radisha come after us.

I did not believe it. He was whistling in the dark. But I was a ghostwalker. I could go anywhere and see anything. I had to work harder to mislead myself.

“You’re wrong, Longo,” I said. “We’ll have company here eventually. Probably way sooner than any of us would like.” I even had the Old Man’s attention, suddenly.

“I had a dream.” Most everyone knew that I had visions. The mechanics and reliability remained my secret. To avoid troubling people who might worry about me, I blamed it all on the kinds of seizures I had been having since the siege.