Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (10 page)

We waited six days at the edge of the savannah. Twice bands of dark-skinned
warriors came to look us over. The first time, Wheezer told us, “Don’t let them
lure you off the road.”

He said it to One-Eye, not knowing that I had picked up enough of the chatter to
follow what they said. I have a fair gift for tongues.

Most of us old hands do. We have to learn so many.

“What road?” One-Eye demanded. “That cow path?” He indicated a track that
meandered into the distance.

“Whatever is between the white stones is the road. The road is holy. As long as
you stay on it you’ll be safe.”

On first pitching camp we were warned not to leave a circle circumscribed by
white stones. I guessed the significance of the lines of white stones running
southward. Trade would demand sheltered routes. Though little trade seemed to be
moving these days. Seldom had we encountered any sizable caravan heading north
since leaving the empire. We saw no one headed south. Except perhaps a walking
stump.

Wheezer continued, “Beware the plains peoples anyway. They are treacherous. They
will employ every blandishment and deceit imaginable to draw you outside. Their
women are especially notorious. Remember: They are always watching. To leave the
road is death.”

Lady was intensely interested in the discussion. She understood, too. And Goblin
cracked, “You’re dead, Maggot Lips.”

“What?” One-Eye squeaked,

“The first set of sweet hips that shakes your way will lead you right off to the
cannibals’ cookpots.”

“They aren’t cannibals . . . ” Sudden panic tautened One-Eye’s face.

It took him that long to realize that Goblin had understood him while he was
talking with Wheezer. He looked at the rest of us. Some of us gave ourselves
away.

He looked that much more distraught. He whispered to Wheezer with great
animation.

Wheezer cackled. His laugh seemed half chicken cluck, half peacock call. It cost
him a coughing fit.

It was a bad one. One-Eye beckoned me. “You’re sure you can’t do something for
this guy, Croaker? He busts a lung and dies, we’re hurting.”

“Nothing. He shouldn’t be traipsing around to begin with . . . ” No point
singing that song. Wheezer refused to hear it. “You or Goblin ought to be able
to do him more good than I can.”

“You can’t help a guy who won’t let you.”

“Ain’t it the truth,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “How long before
we get us some guides?”

“All I hear is ‘soon’ when I ask.”

Soon indeed. A pair of tall black men came up the road at a steady, hardy trot.

They were the sleakest, healthiest specimens I had seen in a long time. Each
carried a sheaf of javelins across his back; a short-hafted, long-bladed spear
in his right hand; and a shield of some white and black striped hide upon his
left arm. Their limbs moved in perfect cadence, as though each man was half of
some marvelous, rhythmic machine.

I glanced at Lady. No thoughts were evident on her face. “They would make grand
soldiers,” she said.

The two trotted straight to Wheezer, feigning a vast indifference to the rest of
us. But I felt them studying us sidelong. White people had to be rare this side
of the jungle. They barked at Wheezer in an arrogant tongue filled with clicks
and stops.

Wheezer did some heavy kowtowing. He responded in the same language, whining
like a slave addressing an ill-tempered master.

“Trouble,” Lady prophesied.

“Right-o.” This contempt for the outsider was not a new experience. I had to get
busy and establish who said “Jump!” and who asked “How high?”

I talked to Goblin using the finger speech of the deaf. One-Eye caught it. He
cackled. That stirred our new guides’ indignation.

It would be touchy. They had to give me what they themselves knew was
provocation. Only then would they accept being put in their place.

One-Eye was getting big ideas. I signed him to restrain himself, to prepare some
impressive illusion. Aloud, I demanded, “What’s all the babble? Get into the
middle of that.”

He started nagging Wheezer.

Wheezer carried on like a man caught between a rock and a hard place. He told
One-Eye that the K’Hlata did not bargain. He said they would go through our
things and pick out what they thought was worth their trouble.

“They try that and they’ll get their fingers bitten off at the elbow. Tell them
that. Politely.”

It was too late for polite. Those guys understood the language. But One-Eye’s
growling threw them. They did not know what to do next.

“Croaker!” Murgen called. “Company.”

Company indeed. Some of the boys who had given us the fish-eye earlier.

They were just the specific for the bruised egos of our new friends. The boys
jumped up and down and howled and banged their spears against their shields.

They hurled taunts. They pranced along the stone-marked boundary. One-Eye
trotted after them.

The fish were not biting. But they had a little bait of their own. Something got
said.

The two warriors howled and attacked. That caught everyone off guard. Three
outsiders went down. The others subdued our guides quickly, though not without
further mishap.

Wheezer poised on the boundary, wringing his hands and carping at One-Eye. While
crows circled high above.

“Goblin!” I snapped. “One-Eye! Get with it!”

One-Eye cackled, reached up, grabbed his hair, and yanked.

He peeled himself from under that silly hat. And the fanged and fiery thing
behind the peeling was ugly enough to turn a buzzard’s stomach.

Which was all show, all distraction, while Goblin got on with the meat of it.

Goblin seemed to be surrounded by giant worms. It took me a moment to realize
all those squirms were lengths of rope. I shrieked when I saw the state of our
gear.

Goblin howled with laughter as a hundred chunks of rope went slithering through
grass and air to pester, climb, bind, garrote.

Wheezer pranced around in an absolute apoplectic fit. “Stop! Stop! You’re
destroying the whole concord.”

One-Eye ignored him. He put the mask back over the horror while punishing Goblin
with ferocious looks. He resented Goblin’s ingenuity.

Goblin was not finished. Having strangled everyone not already carved up or
nominally friendly, he had his ropes drag the corpses across the boundary.

“No outside witnesses,” One-Eye assured me, blind to those damned crows. He
glared at Goblin. “What might the little toad have been up to?”

“Say what?”

“Those ropes. That was no spur-of-the-moment piece of work, Croaker. It would
take months to charm that much line. I know who he had in mind, too. No bloody
more nice, polite, long-suffering One-Eye. The gloves are off now. I’m going to
get my revenge before that little bastard catches me with my back turned.”

“Preemptive vengeance?” There was a One-Eye concept for you.

“I told you, he’s up to something. I’m not going to stand around and wait . . .

”

“Ask Wheezer what to do about the bodies.” Wheezer said bury them deep and do a
prime job of camouflaging.

“Trouble,” Lady said. “Any way you look at it.”

“The animals are rested. We’ll outrun it.”

“I hope so. I wish . . . ” There was something in her voice that I could not
decipher: I did not get it till later. Nostalgia. Homesickness. Longing for
something irrevocably lost.

Goblin dubbed our new guides the Geek and the Freak. Despite my displeasure the
names clung.

We crossed the savannah in fourteen days, without mishap, though Wheezer and the
guides panicked each time they heard distant drums.

The message they dreaded did not come till we had left the savannah for the
mountainous desert bounding it on the south. Both guides immediately begged to
be allowed to stay with the Company. An extra spear is an extra spear.

One-Eye told me, “The drums said they’ve been declared outlaws. What they said
about us you don’t want to hear. You decide to go back north again you’d better
think about another way to get there.”

Four days later we made camp on some heights overlooking a large city and a
broad river that flowed southeast. We had come to Gea-Xle, eight hundred miles
below the equator. The mouth of that river, sixteen hundred miles farther south,

lay at the edge of the world on the map I had made at the Temple of Travellers’

Repose. The last place name marked, with great uncertainty, was Troko Tallio, a
ways upriver from the coast.

Once camp was set to my satisfaction I went looking for Lady. I located her
among some high rocks. But instead of studying the view she was staring into a
tin teacup. For an instant the cup appeared to contain a pinprick spark. Then
she sensed my approach. She looked up, smiled.

There was no spark in the cup when I looked again. Must have been my
imagination.

“The Company is growing,” she said. “You’ve accumulated twenty men since leaving
the Tower.”

“Uhm.” I sat down, stared at the city. “Gea-Xle.”

“Where the Black Company was in service. But where wasn’t the Company in
service?”

I chuckled. “You’re right. We’re wading around in our own past. We put the
present dynasty in power down there. When we left it was without the usual hard
feelings. What would happen if we rode in with Murgen showing our true colors?”

“There’s only one way to find out. Let’s try it.”

Our gazes met and locked. The multiple meaning sparked between us. It had been a
long time since that lost moment. We had been evading moments like this, a sort
of delayed adolescent shyness and guilt.

The sun settled in a glorious conflagration, the only fire there was that
evening.

I just could not get past who she used to be.

She was angry with me. But she hid it well and joined me in watching the city
put on its night face. That was a cosmetic job worthy of an aging princess.

She did not need to waste energy getting mad at me. I was doing a fine job being
mad at myself. “Strange stars, strange skies,” I observed. “The constellations
are completely out of whack now. Much more and I’ll start feeling like I’m in
the wrong world.”

She made a snorting sound.

“More than I do already. Hell. I’d better rummage the Annals to see what they
say about Gea-Xle. I don’t know why, but the place bothers me.” Which was true,

though I’d only just realized it. That was unusual. People intimidate me, not
places.

“Why don’t you do that?” I could almost hear her thinking, Go hide in your books
and your yesterdays. I’ll sit here staring today and tomorrow in the eye.

It was one of those times when no matter what you say, it will be the wrong
thing. So I did the second worst thing and went away without saying anything at
all.

I almost tripped over Goblin going back to camp. Though I was making a racket
stumbling through the dark, he was so intent he did not hear me.

He was peeping over a rock, eyeballing the slump of One-Eye’s back. He was so
obviously up to no good I could not resist. I bent and whispered, “Boo!”

He let put a squawk and jumped about ten feet, stood there giving me the evil
eye.

I tramped on into camp and started digging for the book I wanted to read.

“Why don’t you mind your own business, Croaker?” One-Eye demanded.

“What?”

“Mind your own business. I was laying for the little toad. If you hadn’t stuck
your nose in, I’d have had him strung up like an antelope ready for gutting.” A
rope slithered out of the darkness and curled up in his lap.

“I won’t let it happen again.”

The Annals did nothing to relieve my apprehension. I got really paranoid,

getting that nervous itch between the shoulder blades. I began studying the
darkness, trying to see who was watching.

Both Goblin and One-Eye had a big sullen on. I asked, “Can you guys come up for
a little serious business?”

Well, yes, they could, but they could not admit that their pouting was not of
earthshaking significance, so they just stared at me and waited for me to get on
with it. “I’ve got a bad feeling. Not exactly a premonition, but the same
family, and it keeps getting worse.”

They stared, stone-faced, refusing comment.

But Murgen volunteered, “I know what you mean, Croaker. I’ve had the
heebie-jeebies since we got here.”

I gave the rest a scan. They stopped yakking. The Tonk games came to a halt.

Otto and Hagop had small nods to admit that they felt unsettled, too. The rest
were too macho to admit anything.

So. Maybe my collywobbles were not imaginary.

“I get a feeling going down there could become a watershed of Company history.

Can one of you geniuses tell me why?”

Goblin and One-Eye looked at each other. Neither spoke.

“The only thing the Annals say that’s weird is that Gea-Xle was one of those
rare places the Company walked away from.”

“What does that mean?” That Murgen was a natural shill.

“It means our forebrethren didn’t have to fight their way out. They could have
renewed their commission. But the Captain heard about a treasure mountain up
north where the silver nuggets were supposed to weigh a pound.”

There was more to the tale but they did not want to hear it. We were not really
the Black Company anymore, just rootless men from nowhere headed the same
direction. How much was that my fault? How much the fault of bitter
circumstance?

“No comment?” They both looked thoughtful, though. “So. Murgen. Break out the
real colors tomorrow. With all the honors.”

That jacked up some eyebrows.

“Finish the tea, guys. And tell your bellies to get ready for some real brew.

They make the genuine elixir down there.”

That sparked some interest.

“You see? The Annals are good for something after all.”