The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company) (95 page)

I wondered immediately if they had not done something stupid by bringing the man into a crowded hall when a meeting with him needed to be private. Yet a glance around showed me nobody buzzing. Excepting Sleepy’s cronies from her years underground in Taglios.

Might the visitor be some Company brother who had been left behind? Or some past ally?

The glance around also showed me all the Gunni idols apparently stirring. That had begun to divert the attention of the audience. Tobo was grim with concentration. He had his spectral allies hard at work.

That pretty boy had to be somebody special.

A moment later Widowmaker moved for the first time during the festivities. He stood up suddenly. The tip of his spear snapped down, pricked the rags surrounding the Howler, who had managed to stifle his screams and was in the process of beginning to ooze away.

Lifetaker’s great black sword fell an instant later, blocking his line of sight.

58

Gharhawnes: The Traitor General

It was deep in the night when a limping Runmust Singh dragged me out of bed. Out of a real bed. It had been ages. And this one came with a real woman in it. Runmust insisted that she had to get up, too. The Captain wanted us both.

Lady was grumbling something about restructuring the chain of command when we left our cubicle. We ran into Murgen right away. He was waiting for Thai Dei, who had not gotten a personalized wake up call. Sahra was nowhere in sight.

I asked, “When are you two going to work it out so you can go your own ways?” Thai Dei was one of very few Nyueng Bao still dedicating himself to bodyguarding.

“I don’t think that’ll happen,” Murgen said. “He doesn’t have anything else since Narayan died.”

“Ah.” Thai Dei’s son had been slain by Stranglers. Thai Dei was another who had been waiting in line to get some paybacks.

The obligation to protect Murgen had become a convenient fiction for both men. I should have recognized that a long time ago. I who have made such a big deal out of brotherhood for so many years.

Thai Dei bustled up. We set off after Runmust. I said, “Singh, you should let me take a look at that leg. It should’ve healed faster than it has.”

“It’ll mend fine once I get some real rest, sir. And I believe we expect to stay here for some time.”

What good would that do if the man refused to take the opportunity to rest?

I could have Tobo knock him into a coma.

Runmust led us to a room barely big enough to fit a dozen people. Sleepy and Suvrin, the Prahbrindrah Drah and his sister, Tobo and Sahra were there already. So was the handsome stranger.

“Sit,” Sleepy said. Then she got straight to the point. “This is Aridatha Singh.” Beside me, Lady winced, recognizing the name and thinking of her trophies. “Aridatha commands the City Battalions in Taglios. He, the Great General and Ghopal Singh, who commands the Greys, form the triumvirate who’re running Taglios while the Protector is out of town. Aridatha tells me that he and they—the Protector’s top henchmen—have decided they need to get rid of her.”

From one side, in back, Willow Swan grumbled, “Ghopal Singh is a general now? He was a damned sergeant when he worked for me.”

Aridatha responded, “The Protector prides herself on her ability to recognize outstanding talent.”

A joke of sorts had passed between the two. I guess you had to have been part of the situation to follow it.

While we sat around with our mouths hanging open, looking intelligent, Sleepy told the outsider, “These people are here to offer their advice. That’s Croaker. He was the Liberator, once upon a time. That’s Lady. That’s Murgen. They’ve all led the Company at some time. The others you’ll recall from the last time we met.” She passed over Thai Dei, which lent him an air of mystery, nor did she introduce the Prahbrindrah Drah.

I asked, “Did Mogaba send you?”

“I volunteered. Because your Captain knew me. And because your Company has no personal grievance with me.”

Lady stirred. She was willing to invent one.

Sleepy said, “It would seem that there are limits even Mogaba refuses to exceed. And Soulcatcher has managed to discover them.”

Aridatha said, “You have ancient grievances with the Great General.

“I want you to know that he isn’t an evil man. He
is
an obsessed man, though his obsession has weathered away with age. He’s realized that history won’t record his name on the roll of great conquerers. There’s no longer time. He hasn’t entirely made his peace with that but he does see that it’s his own fault. Because of his untimely defection during the siege of Dejagore he has been forced to serve a procession of deranged and incompetent masters. But that’s of no moment now.

“Between us, he, Ghopal, and I have concluded that Taglios should be spared any more torment by the Protector. She’s like a deadly rot. She’s destroying everything slowly. Even our religions and culture. And the only force able to put an end to that is the Black Company.”

Murgen suggested, “You guys could whack her yourselves. She’s not immortal. And she trusts you. As much as she trusts anybody. That gets you close enough.…”

“That plan was in place even before you people resurfaced. But she’s stayed away from the city since the beginning of that crisis. Her messages to the Great General all affirm her determination to keep after you until she’s accounted for every member of the Black Company personally. She was extremely put out because so many people who were supposed to be dead started turning up alive.”

“Believe me, I know how exasperating that is,” Lady said. “For twenty years I chased the Deceiver Narayan Singh. The man had more lives than a cat.”

Aridatha caught the past tense. “Has the living saint of the Deceivers passed to his reward, then?”

“He got away from me through the only exit he had left.” Lady sounded extremely bitter. Like she thought Singh had beaten her by cheating blatantly. Her hatred of Narayan was stronger than I had suspected.

“Then that’s one distraction that no longer needs concern us.”

“Incorrect,” Sleepy said, reclaiming control. “The Daughter of Night is still out there. And Kina still hopes to bring on the Year of the Skulls. Whatever else happens, Kina and her followers still have to be managed. Tell my associates why we should trust anything you tell us, Aridatha.”

“I am, of course, damned to walk in the shadow of a man I met only once in my life, after I was a grown man, and then for only a few minutes, several years ago, in your presence. That’s the legacy of the Deceivers. The cult destroys trust. My answer is, all men should be judged by one standard: their behavior. By the deeds they do. The gesture of good faith I have to make in this instance is, I think, generous.”

Sleepy interrupted. “Aridatha has a brother who lives in Jaicur. Under an assumed name. This brother, real name Sugriva, is going to help us take the city. He’ll scout out the best gate for us to get at in the middle of the night. We’ll use it to prance in and take over before anyone can put up a fight.”

I opened my mouth to argue but stopped before anything stupid came out. Sleepy’s mind was made up. All I could do was my best to make sure everything worked out right. “Soulcatcher has an army between here and there. One that outnumbers us, I hear.”

“And one that’s little better than a rabble, according to Aridatha. Some of the poorer soldiers are armed only with hammers, pitchforks, sickles and such.”

“A guy goes away for a few decades, everything turns to shit,” I said. “I had everybody tall enough to reach his mother’s hand armed up, once upon a time. What happened to all those weapons?”

Riverwalker explained, “When the Protector took over, times got so bad that almost anybody with anything to sell sold it. Weapons were a glut on the market. The steel got forged into other things.”

“And the Protector didn’t care,” Aridatha said. “The Great General finally gave up trying to make her see the point of maintaining arsenals in peacetime. I think it won’t be long now until she understands what he was talking about.”

Sleepy told us, “It isn’t necessary to trust Aridatha or Mogaba to test Jaicur’s defenses. We’re expected to swing west toward the Naghir River. We’ll make a show of doing just that. But Blade, with the light cavalry, will split off the rear of the column and loop back around eastward. The hidden folk will find a route along which the horsemen can approach Jaicur unobserved. In the meantime, the main force will turn again and head for the Rock Road north of Jaicur. That ought to stir up an ant’s nest. And make Soulcatcher forget Jaicur completely for a few days.”

Why had Sleepy bothered calling the rest of us in? She had it all worked out already. And pretty soundly, I thought.

Tobo said, “We do have a more immediate problem than that, Sleepy. You brought General Singh in during the reanimation ceremony. And he’s been seen around camp. It’s inevitable that some of our outside visitors will be Soulcatcher’s creatures. And it’s possible one of them recognized him.”

Sleepy admitted, “I didn’t think fast enough. I’m open to corrective suggestions.”

“I’m already working on it. But I do want to warn you. I don’t think I can be a hundred percent successful in identifying them and cutting them off.”

“Then you’d better consider what would be the best way to warn the other conspirators in Taglios, hadn’t you?”

Aridatha said, “Ghopal and the Great General won’t be taken unawares. The Protector possesses no means of traveling faster than the rumor of her coming. When she heads for Taglios they’ll know before she gets there. And what she brings with her will betray her intentions.”

I nodded. The reasoning seemed sound. And you did have to be really sneaky to outfox Mogaba. Soulcatcher was not sneaky these days. She had developed the habit of just bulling straight ahead because she was the biggest power around.

*   *   *

Sleepy elected to assume a stance which made it look like we were just going to sit and rest. But Tobo scouted the country north of Gharhawnes in ever greater detail, sometimes even going out in person, when he went flying with Shukrat.

The two of them were getting very chummy.

*   *   *

In private I observed, “This is getting distinctly weird. We’re allies with Soulcatcher against our daughter and Kina. We’re allies with the traitor Mogaba against your sister. We’re allies with a demigod whose price for supporting us is that we murder him.”

Lady chuckled weakly. “You did say it has a mythic ring.”

“You know something? It’s got me scared.”

She stared at nothing, waiting for me to explain.

“Scared in a generalized way, not scared like when we’re in a fight. Scared of the shape the future might take.” I had a bad, bad feeling. Because on the surface everything looked just too marvelous for the Black Company.

59

With the Middle Army: When Guests Arrived

The Goblin creature proved difficult to catch. What should have taken just a few days took two weeks and, in the end, necessitated Soulcatcher’s personal intervention—with, to her chagrin, considerable coaching from the shadowy cat thing she could never quite see and never quite ambush and bind to her own service.

In the meantime she amused herself with the girl.

The Daughter of Night was imprisoned in a cage inside Soulcatcher’s tent. That was the largest and most ostentatious tent in the midway camp. The girl had been stripped naked, then had been decorated with a variety of chains and charms. She would not be guarded by or even approached by anyone male. Soulcatcher knew only too well how men could be manipulated by the women of her blood.

Though the girl did not seem interested in listening, Soulcatcher said, “To this day I’m not quite sure how you and that old man managed to get away from me. But I have some suspicions. And it won’t happen again. You’re far too important to your mother to be running around loose.” The voice Soulcatcher selected was annoyingly pedantic.

The girl did not respond. She was alone in her own reality. This was not her first time as a prisoner of someone who planned to use her. She could be patient. Her moment would come. Someone would slip up. An impressionable guard would be assigned. Something. Somewhere, sometime, she would have an opportunity to deceive someone into loving her long enough to want to set her free.

The girl’s continued indifference pricked Soulcatcher into trying to hurt her with news she had wanted to reserve. “He’s dead, you know. Your old man. Narayan Singh. He was strangled. They threw his body in a cesspit.”

That blow did strike home. But after an initial flinch and a brief, black look the Daughter of Night lowered her eyes and settled back into her pose of patient indifference.

Soulcatcher laughed. “Your freak Goddess has abandoned you.”

To which the girl offered her only spoken response since her capture. “All their days are numbered.” Which was like a slap in Soulcatcher’s face. It was one of those slogans Black Company–inspired graffitists had used to taunt her for years.

Soulcatcher snatched a whip, flailed away without doing the girl much harm. The cage itself prevented that.

Someone shouted for Soulcatcher’s attention from outside the entrance to her tent. In that respect her soldiers were well-trained. They did not bother her with trivia.

Responding, Soulcatcher found a gaggle of soldiers with a dead man on a crude litter. The corpse was twisted. Its features were severely distorted. Raindrops slid off the ruined face like tears. “You,” she said, picking a man. “Tell it.” A cavalryman covered with mud, he must have been on picket duty.

“This man came up from the south. He gave the proper recognition signs. He told us that he was bringing you important news about traitors but wouldn’t say anything else.”

“He arrived healthy? How did he get this way?”

“Just before we got to camp he stood up in his stirrups and screamed. His horse reared and threw him. After he hit the ground he shuddered and twitched and made gurgling noises trying to scream. And then he died.”

“Traitors?” No doubt there would be many of those to pay off before this played out. These situations brought them out from under every rock and bush.