Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (11 page)

I set about doing some writing in the latest of my own volumes, occasionally
peeking at one or another of the wizards. They had forgotten their feud, were
using their heads for something more than the creation of mischief.

During one of my upward glances I caught a silvery yellow flash. It seemed to
come from the rocks where I had been a while back, watching the city lights.

“Lady!”

I barked my shins a dozen times getting there, then felt like a fool when I
found her seated on a rock, arms around her legs, chin on her knees,

contemplating the night. The light of a newly risen moon fell upon her from
behind. She was astonished by my wild stumble to the rescue.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“What?”

“I saw some weird flashes up here.”

Her expression, in that light, seemed honestly baffled.

“Must have been a trick of the moonlight. Better turn in pretty soon. I want to
get an early start.”

“All right,” she said in a small, troubled voice.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. I’m just lost.”

I knew what she meant without her having to explain.

Going back I ran into Goblin and One-Eye moving up carefully. Fireflies of magic
danced in their hands and dread smoldered in their eyes.

Willow was amazed. It actually went pretty much the way it was supposed to. The
Taglians gave up their territories below the Main without a finger raised to
resist. The army of the Shadowmasters came over the river and still met no
resistance. It dissolved into its four elements. Still meeting no opposition,

those forces broke up into companies, the better to plunder. The looting was so
good all discipline collapsed.

Taglian marauders began picking off foragers and small raiding parties,

suddenly, everywhere. The invaders suffered a thousand casualties before they
understood. Cordy Mather engineered that phase, claiming to emulate his military
idols, the Black Company. When the invaders responded with larger foraging
parties he countered by leading them into traps and ambushes. At his peak he
twice suckered entire companies into densely built and specially prepared towns
that he burned down around them. The third time he tried that, though, the
invaders did not take the bait. His overconfident Taglians got whipped. Wounded,

he went back to Taglios to contemplate the fickleness of fate.

Willow, meantime, was marching around the eastern Taglian territories with Smoke
and twenty-five hundred volunteers, keeping close to the enemy commander, trying
to look like a menace that would become nemesis the moment the invaders made a
mistake. Smoke had no intention of fighting, and was so stubborn even Willow was
tempted to grumble.

Smoke claimed he was waiting for something to happen. He wouldn’t say what.

Blade got stuck down south, in the territories yielded without a fight, along
the Main River. He was supposed to get the locals together and keep any
messengers from going back and forth. It was an easy job. There were no bridges
across the river and only four places where it could be forded. The
Shadowmasters must have been preoccupied. Their suspicions were not aroused. Or
maybe they just assumed no news was good news.

What Smoke was waiting for happened.

Like Blade said, Taglios was hag-ridden by its priests. Three major religions
existed there, not in harmony. Each had its splinters, factions, and subcults
that feuded among themselves when they weren’t feuding with the others. Taglian
culture centered upon religious differences and the efforts of the priests to
get ahead of each other. A lot of lower-class people weren’t signed up with
anybody. Especially out in the country. Likewise the ruling family, who did not
dare get religion if they wanted to stay in charge.

Old Smoke was waiting for one of the boss priests to get the idea he could make
a name for himself and his tribe by getting out and busting the heads of the
invaders nobody else would fight. “Purely a cynical political maneuver,” Smoke
told Willow. “The Prahbrindrah’s waited a long time to show someone what can
happen if they don’t do things his way.”

He showed them.

One of the priests got the bright idea. He conned about fifteen thousand guys
into thinking they could handle experienced professionals, heads up. He led the
mob out to look for the invaders. They didn’t have any trouble finding them. The
Shadowmasters’ commander thought this was what he was waiting for, too. The
Shadowmasters’ other conquests had all been settled by one big brawl.

Willow and Smoke and a few others stood on top of a hill where both sides could
see them and spent an afternoon watching two thousand men massacre fifteen
thousand. The Taglians that got away did so mostly because the invaders were too
tired to chase them.

“Now we’ll fight,” Smoke said. So Willow moved his force up and poked till the
invaders got aggravated and came after him. He ran till they stopped. Then he
poked again. And ran again. And so forth. He got the notion from a poorly
remembered version of a time when the Black Company ran for a thousand miles and
led their enemies into a trap where they died almost to a man, thinking they had
it won almost to the end.

Maybe these guys heard the same story. Anyway, they didn’t want to be led. First
time they balked they just camped and wouldn’t move. So Willow talked it over
with Smoke and Smoke rounded up some volunteers from the countryside and started
building a wall around the invaders.

Next time the invaders just turned and marched off toward Taglios, which is what
they should have done at the start, instead of trying to get rich. So Willow
jumped on them from behind and kept making a nuisance of himself till he
convinced the enemy commander that he had to be gotten rid of or there just
wouldn’t be any rest.

He told Smoke, “I don’t know squat about strategy or tactics or anything, but I
figure I only got to work on one guy, really. The head guy over there. I get him
to do what I want, he brings everybody else with him. And I know how to
aggravate a guy till he’ll fight me.”

Which is what he did.

The Shadowmaster’s general finally chased him into a town that had been getting
ready all along. It was a bigger version of Cordy’s game. Only this time there
wasn’t going to be a fire. All the people had been got out and about twelve
thousand volunteers put in their place. While Willow and Smoke were running the
invaders around, those guys were building a wall.

Willow ran into the town and thumbed his nose. He did everything he could to get
the enemy chief mad. The man did not get mad fast, though. He surrounded the
town, then got every man he had in Taglian territory that could still walk. Then
he attacked.

It was a nasty brawl. The invaders had it bad because in the tight streets they
could not take advantage of better discipline. They always had guys shooting
arrows at them off the rooftops. They always had guys with spears jumping out of
doors and alleys. But they were better soldiers. They killed a lot of Taglians
before they realized they were in a box, with about six times as many Taglians
after them as they expected. By then it was too late for them to get out. But
they took a lot of Taglians with them.

When it was over Willow went back to Taglios. Blade came home too, and they
opened the tavern back up and celebrated for a couple weeks. Meantime, the
Shadowmasters figured out what happened and got thoroughly pissed. They made all
kinds of threats. The prince, the Prahbrindrah Drah, basically thumbed his nose
and told them to put it where the sun don’t shine.

Willow, Cordy, and Blade got a month off, then it was time for the next part,

which was to take a long trip north with the Radisha Drah and Smoke. Willow
didn’t figure this part was going to be a lot of fun, but nobody could figure a
better way to work it.

I got them all up and decked out in their second best. Murgen had the standard
out. There was a nice breeze to stretch it. Those great black horses stamped and
champed, eager to get on down the road. Their passion communicated itself to
their lesser cousins.

The gear was packed and loaded. There was no reason to hold movement—except that
rattling conviction that the event would be something more than a ride into a
city.

“You in a dramatic mood, Croaker?” Goblin asked. “Feel like showing off?”

I did and he knew it. I wanted to spit defiance in the face of my premonition.

“What have you got in mind?”

Instead of answering directly, he told One-Eye, “When we get down there and come
over that saddleback where they can get their first good look at us, you do a
couple of thunders and a Trumpet of Doom. I’ll do a Riding Through the Fire.

That ought to let them know the Black Company is back in town.”

I glanced at Lady. She seemed partly amused, partly patronizing.

For a moment One-Eye looked like he wanted to squabble. He swallowed it and
nodded curtly. “Let’s do it if we’re going to do it, Croaker.”

“Move out,” I ordered. I did not know what they had in mind, but they could get
flashy when they wanted.

They took the point together, Murgen a dozen yards behind with the standard. The
rest fell into the usual file, with me and Lady side by side leading our share
of pack animals. I recall eyeing the gleaming bare backs or the Geek and the
Freak and reflecting that we had us some real infantry now.

The beginning of it was tight twists and turns on a steep, narrow path, but
after a mile the way widened till it was almost a road. We passed several
cottages evidently belonging to herdsmen, not nearly as poor and primitive as
one would suspect.

Up we went into the backside of the saddle Goblin mentioned, and the show
started. It was almost exactly what he prescribed.

One-Eye clapped his hands a couple of times and the results were sky-shaking
crashes. Then he set them to his cheeks and let fly a trumpet call just as loud.

Meantime, Goblin did something that filled the saddleback with a dense black
smoke that turned into ferocious-looking but harmless flames. We rode through. I
fought down a temptation to order a gallop and tell the wizards to have the
horses breathe fire and kick up lightnings. I wanted a showy announcement of the
Company’s return, but not the appearance of a declaration of war.

“That ought to impress somebody,” I said, looking back at the men riding out of
the flames, the ordinary horses prancing and shying.

“If it doesn’t scare hell out of them. You should be more careful how much you
give away, Croaker.”

“I feel daring and incautious this morning.” Which was maybe the wrong thing to
say after my failure of daring and lack of incaution the night before. But she
let it pass.

“They’re talking about us up there.” She indicated the pair of stocky
watchtowers flanking the road, three hundred yards ahead. There was no way to
avoid riding between them, through a narrow passage filled with the shadow of
death. Up top, heliographs chatted tower to tower and presumably with the city
as well.

“Hope they’re saying something nice, like hurray, the boys are back in town.” We
were close enough so I could make out the men up there. They did not look like
guys getting ready for a fight. A couple sat on the merlons with their legs
dangling outside. One that I took to be an officer stood in a crenel with one
foot up on a merlon, leaning on his knee, watching casually.

“About the way I’d do it if I had me a really sneaky trap set,” I grumped.

“Not everyone in the world has the serpentine sort of mind you do, Croaker.”

“Oh yeah? I’m plain simple compared to some I could name.”

She gave me one of her sharp old-time Lady-on-fire withering looks.

One-Eye was not there to say it himself, so I said it for him. “That snake’s
probably got more smarts than you do, Croaker. The only trouble he goes hunting
is breakfast.”

We were close to the one tower now, with Goblin and One-Eye and Murgen already
past. I raised my hat in a friendly salute.

The officer reached down beside him, picked up something, tossed it down. It
came tumbling toward me. I snatched it out of the air. “What an athlete! Maybe
I’ll go for two out of three.”

I looked at what I caught.

It was a black stick about an inch and a quarter in diameter and fifteen inches
long, carved from some heavy wood, decorated all over with ugly what-is-its.

“I’ll be damned.”

“No doubt. What is it?”

“An officer’s baton. I’ve never seen one before. But they’re mentioned all
through the Annals, up through the fall of Sham, which was some sort of
mysterious lost city up on the plateau we just crossed.” I lifted the baton in a
second salute to the man above.

“The Company was there?”

“It’s where it ended up after it left Gea-Xle. The Captain didn’t find his
silver mountain. He did find Sham. The Annals are pretty confused. The people of
Sham are supposed to have been a lost race of whites. It seems that about three
days after the Company found Sham, so did the ancestors of the Geek and the
Freak. They got themselves worked up into some kind of religious frenzy and
jumped all over the city. The first horde to get there killed damned near
everybody, including most of the Company officers, before the Company finished
killing them. The guys who survived headed north because there was another mob
closing in from the south, keeping them from heading back this way. These batons
aren’t mentioned after that.”

To which her only response was, “They knew you were coming, Croaker.”

“Yeah.” It was a mystery. I do not like mysteries. But it was only one of a herd
and the bellies of most of them would never come floating up where I could give
them the eyeball.