The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company) (36 page)

I prayed it was as simple as that.

Nobody demanded that I give them the role of scout. Poor me. More sore feet while the rest of them loafed around in the shade of young pines.

The white crow materialized minutes after I turned the knee of a hill and the others were out of sight. It swooped at me and squawked. It swooped at me again. I tried to swat it like it was some huge, really annoying bug. It laughed and came back, now squawking what sounded like words.

I got it. Finally. The bird wanted me to follow it. “Lead on, fell harbinger, never forgetting that I’m not Gunni and therefore hobbled by no holy ban against eating meat.” I had enjoyed, if that is the proper word, crow stew several times during the lowest lows of my military career.

The crow had only my interests at heart. It led me straight to a large tent village on a hillside overlooking the near outskirts of the New Town. Our people had to be only some of the refugees housed there but Sahra’s hand was obvious everywhere. The layout was neat and orderly and clean. Exactly as the Captain’s rules insisted, though those are honored mainly in the breech when he is not around.

I suffered an immediate conflict. Charge ahead to see everyone I had missed for months? Or run back and collect my traveling companions? Once I started grabbing, it might be hours before—

My choice got made for me. Tobo spotted me.

My first warning was a shout. “Sleepy!” A mass of churning arms and legs charged in from the left and collected me in a totally unexpected hug.

I wriggled loose. “You’ve grown.” A lot. He was taller than me now. And his voice had deepened. “You won’t be able to be Shiki anymore. The great men of Taglios will be brokenhearted.”

“Goblin says it’s time I start breaking the girls’ hearts, anyway.” There was not much doubt that he would have the power to do that. He was going to be a handsome man who had no lack of confidence.

Uncharacteristically, I slipped an arm around his waist and walked down toward where other familiar faces had begun to appear. “How was your journey?”

“Mostly kind of fun, except when they made me study, which was about all the time. Sri Surendranath is worse than Goblin but he says I could be a scholar. So Mother always backs them up whenever anybody wants to make me study. But we got to see a lot of neat things. There was this temple in Praiphurbed that was completely covered with carvings of people doing it all different ways—oh, I’m sorry.” He reddened.

Tobo had a mental image of me as a sort of chaste nun. And most of my adult life would not contradict that view. But I am not against interpersonal adventures, I am just not interested myself. Probably because, Swan insists, I have not yet run into the man whose animal presence completely overwhelms my intellectual reluctance. Swan being a leading authority in his own mind.

He keeps volunteering. Who knows? Maybe someday I will become curious enough to experiment, just to find out if I can be touched without running away to my place to hide.

Now the others were wishing me welcome with a sincerity that set another place inside me, a small, warm place, all aglow. My comrades. My brothers. All kinds of rattle and chatter inundated me. Now we were going to do something. Now we were going to get somewhere. Now we were going to kick some ass if we had to. Sleepy was here to figure it all out and tell everybody where and when to stick the knife.

“God knows all the secrets and all the jokes,” I said, “and I wish He’d share the secret of the joke that explains why He created such a scruffy bunch of hired killers.” I used a little finger to get rid of a tear before anybody realized that it was not raining. “You guys look pretty fat for having been on the road so long.”

Somebody said, “Shit, we been here waiting for you for a whole fuckin’ month. Some of us. The slowest ones got here last week.”

“How’s One-Eye doing?” I asked as Sahra wriggled through the throng.

“He’s fucked up,” a voice volunteered. “How’d you know…?”

I exchanged hugs with Sahra. She said, “We were starting to worry.” A question clung to the edge of her statement.

“Tobo. Your grandmother and Uncle Doj are waiting in the woods back up the road. Run up and tell them to come on down.”

“Where’re the rest?” somebody demanded.

“Swan is with them. The rest are behind us somewhere. We broke up into three groups after we reached the highlands. There were crows around. We didn’t want to give them anything obvious to watch.”

“We did the same thing after we left the barges,” Sahra told me. “Did you see many crows? We saw only a few. They might not have been the Protector’s.”

“The white one keeps turning up.”

“We saw it, too. Are you hungry?”

“You kidding? I’ve been eating your mother’s cooking since we left Jaicur.” I looked around. People were watching who were not Black Company. They might only be refugees, too, but the enthusiasm of my reception was sure to cause talk.

Sahra laughed. It sounded more like the laughter of relief than that of good humor. “How is Mother?”

“I think there’s something wrong, Sahra. She’s stopped being nasty, bitter old Ky Gota. Most of the time she’s lost inside herself. And those times when she is completely aware, she almost has manners.”

“In here.” Sahra lifted a tent flap. It was the largest tent in the encampment. “And Uncle Doj?”

“A step slower but still Uncle Doj. He wants me to turn Nyueng Bao and be his apprentice. Like I have a lot of free time being Murgen’s apprentice. He says it’s just because he doesn’t have anybody else to pass his responsibilities on to. Whatever they are. He seems to think I should sign on before he tells me what for.”

“Did you get the Key?”

“We did. Uncle Doj has it in his pack. But Singh got away. Not unexpectedly. Did he turn up here? We picked up rumors along the way that gave me the idea that he was ahead of us and gaining ground. You do still have the girl?”

Sahra nodded. “But she’s a handful. I think bringing her south again put her in closer touch with Kina. Common sense tells me we should break our promise and kill her.” She settled on a cushion. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m completely worn out. Keeping these people under control when there’s so little for them to do … it’s a miracle that we haven’t had any major incidents.… I bought a farm.”

“You what?”

“I bought a farm. Not far from the Shadowgate. They tell me the soil is lousy, but it’s a place where most of the men can stay out of sight and keep out of trouble and even stay busy building housing or working the ground so we’ll eventually be self-supporting. Half the gang is over there now. Most of these guys here would be, too, except that Murgen said you were going to arrive today. You made good time. We didn’t expect you for several more hours.”

“Does that mean you’re all caught up on what’s going on in the world outside?”

“I have a particularly talented husband who doesn’t always share everything with me. And I don’t always share him with the others. And we both probably shouldn’t be that way. There’re a thousand things we need to talk about, Sleepy. I don’t know where to start. So why not just with, how are you?”

60

The brotherhood had to begin moving.

Goblin burst into the tent uninvited and gasped out the news that Murgen said my feted arrival had caught the eyes of official informants and had aroused the suspicions of the local authorities. Those folks had been disinclined to investigate the refugee camp before only due to a complete lack of ambition. I sent Kendo and a dozen men to secure the southern end of the pass through the Dandha Presh, both to guarantee a favorable welcome for those coming down behind me and to help keep anyone from strolling off northward with news about where we were. I sent several small teams off to capture senior officers and officials before they could become organized. There was no real, fixed, solid governmental structure here because the Protector favored the rule of limited anarchy.

It was obvious that these former Shadowlands, despite their proximity to the glittering plain, were no more than an afterthought to the powers in Taglios. The troubles in the region had been settled with a vengeance. The Great General had won the reputation he had desired. There were few troops and no officials of any renown here now. It looked like a safe, remote province suitable for rusticating human embarrassments deemed not worth exterminating.

Even so, regionwide, there were many more of them than there were of us and we were out of battle practice ourselves. Brains, speed and ferocity would have to sustain us till we gathered the whole clan and completed preparations to follow the road up the south side of the valley.

“So, now you’ve had your power fix and you’ve got time to talk, how the hell are you, Sleepy?” Goblin asked. He looked exhausted.

“Worn to the bone from traveling but still full of vinegar. It’s nice to talk to somebody where I don’t have to lean over backwards to look them in the eye.”

“Walk in the goddamn door talking that shit. I knew there was a reason I didn’t miss you.”

“You say the sweetest things. How’s One-Eye?”

“Getting better. Having Gota here will hurry it up. But he’s never going to be completely right. He’s going to be slow and shaky and have spells where he’ll have trouble remembering what he’s doing. And he’ll always have trouble communicating, especially when he’s excited.”

I nodded, took a deep breath, said, “And it’s going to happen again, isn’t it?”

“It could. It often does. It doesn’t have to, though.” He rubbed his forehead. “Headache. I need some sleep. You can drive yourself crazy trying to deal with something like this.”

“If you need sleep, you’d better get it now. Things are starting to happen. We’ll need you fresh when it gets exciting.”

“I knew there was another reason I didn’t miss you. You haven’t been here long enough to blow your nose and already people and things are flying all over, getting ready to beat each other in the head.”

“It’s my perky personality. Think I should visit One-Eye?”

“Up to you. But he’ll be heartbroken if you don’t. He’s probably already all bent out of shape because you came and saw me first.”

I asked how to find One-Eye and left Goblin. I noted that refugees not associated with the Company were sneaking out of the camp. There were signs of excitement over in the New Town, too.

Gota, Doj and Swan were nearing the camp from the uphill side. Tobo larked around them like an excited pup. I wondered where Swan would stand once the real excitement started. He would stay neutral as long as he could, probably.

“You look better than I expected,” I told One-Eye, who was actually doing something when I ducked into his tent. “That spear? I thought you lost it ages ago.” The weapon in question was an elaborately carved and decorated artifact of extreme magical potency that he had begun crafting back during the siege of Jaicur. Its designated target then had been the Shadowmaster Shadowspinner. Later, he had continued improving it so he could use it against Longshadow. That spear was so darkly beautiful that it seemed a sin to use it just to kill someone.

One-Eye took his time collecting himself. He looked up at me. There was less of him than there was when last I had seen him, and even then he had been just a shell of the One-Eye I remembered from when I was young.

“No.”

Just that one word. None of the usual creative invective or accusations and insults. He did not want to embarrass himself. The results of the stroke were more crippling emotionally than physically. He had been master of his surroundings for two hundred years, far beyond the dreams of men, but now he could not count on being able to speak a complete, coherent sentence.

“I’m here. I’ve got the Key. And things have begun to happen already.”

One-Eye nodded slowly. I hope he understood. There had been a woman in Jaicur, she was a hundred nineteen when she died, they said. In all my years I never saw her do anything but sit in a chair and drool. She understood nothing anyone said to her. She had to be changed like a baby. She had to be fed like a baby. I did not want that to happen to One-Eye. He was old and cantankerous and a major pain more often than not, but he was a fixture of my universe. He was my brother.

“That other woman. That married one. She does not have the fire.” His words were a ghost of speech. When he talked, his hands shook too badly to hold his tools.

“She’s afraid to succeed.”

“And afraid not to. You are busy, Little Girl.” He beamed because he had gotten that out without much trouble. “You do what you must. But I have to talk to you again. Soon. Before this happens to me again.” He spoke slowly and with great care. “You are the one.” He was tiring, so great was his mental effort. He beckoned me closer, murmured, “Soldiers live. And wonder why.”

Someone threw the tent flap back. Brilliant light burst inside. I knew it was Gota without being able to see. Her odor preceded her. “Try not to make him talk too much. He’s worn out.”

“I have seen this problem before.” Cold, yet civil. More animated than she had been for some time but still not the caustic, frequently irrational Gota of last year. “I will be of more value here.” Her accent was much less heavy than usual. “Go kill someone, Stone Soldier.”

“Been a while since anybody called me that.”

Gota bowed mockingly as she waddled past. “Bone Warrior. Soldier of Darkness, go forth and conjure the Children of the Dead from the Land of Unknown Shadows. All Evil Dies There an Endless Death.”

I stepped outside, baffled. What was that all about?

Behind me, “Calling the Heaven and the Earth and the Day and the Night.”

I thought I had heard that formula before but could not recall the place or the context. Surely it was sometime when a person of the Nyueng Bao conviction was being particularly cryptic.

The excitement had increased. Someone had stolen some horses already … had
acquired
them. Let us not leap too far with our conclusions. Several riders were charging around, unguided by any rational plan. Something should have been in place for a situation like this. I grumbled, “This’s what happens when nobody wants to take charge. You three men! Get over here! What in the name of God are you doing?”