Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (18 page)

He gestured. An invisible force snagged the lamplighter’s heels. Up he went,

wriggling like a fish on a line, mouth stretched to scream but nothing coming
out.

I settled opposite Lady. A jerk of my head. “One-Eye’s idea of low-key. Don’t
let the victim scream.” I popped a melon ball into my mouth.

One-Eye stopped lifting the lamplighter when his nose was twenty feet off the
ground.

Lady began poking through the Nar’s food.

The expedient of turning my back on One-Eye did not let me attain the mood I’d
had in mind when arranging the evening. And Lady remained troubled.

I glanced over my shoulder occasionally.

The captive shed bits of clothing like dead leaves peeling away. The flesh
beneath, betrayed, crawled with tiny lime and lemon glowing worms. When two of
different hues butted heads they sparked and the failed assassin tried to
shriek. When the mood took him, One-Eye let the man fall till his nose was a
foot off the ground. Frogface whispered into his ear till One-Eye hoisted him up
again.

Real low-key. What the hell would he have done if I’d asked for a show?

Goblin caught my eye. I raised an eyebrow. He used deaf sign to tell me,

“Company coming. Looks like big stuff.”

I pretended no greater interest than my meal while watching Lady intently. She
seemed possessed of no special awareness.

There were two of them, well dressed and courteous. One was a native, walnut
brown but not of negroid stock. The people of Taglios were dark but not negroid.

The negroid peoples we had seen there were all visitors from up the river. The
other one we knew already, Willow Swan, with the hair as yellow as maize.

Swan spoke to the Nar nearest him while his companion appraised One-Eye’s
efforts. I nodded to Goblin, who went to see if he could get any sense from
Swan.

He came back looking thoughtful. “Swan says the guy with him is the boss wog
around here. His choice of words, not mine.”

“I guess it was bound to come.” I exchanged glances with Lady. She had on her
empress’s face, readable as a rock. I wanted to shake her, to hug her, to do
something to free up the passion that had appeared so briefly before going
underground. She shrugged.

I said, “Invite them to join us. And tell One-Eye to send the imp over. I want
him to check on Swan’s translations.”

The serving staff got down on their faces as our guests approached. It was the
first time I had seen that kind of behavior in Taglios. Swan’s prince was the
real thing.

Swan got right to it. “This here’s the Prahbrindrah Drah, the head guy around
here.”

“And you work for him.”

He smiled. “In a left-hand sort of way. Drafted. He wants to know if you’re
looking for a commission.”

“You know we’re not.”

“I told him. But he wanted to check it out personal.”

“We’re on a quest.” I thought that sounded dramatic enough.

“A mission from the gods?”

“A what?”

“These Taglians are superstitious. You ought to know that by now. That would be
the way to get the quest idea across. Mission from the gods. Sure you couldn’t
stick around for a while? Take a break from the road. I know how rough it is,

travelling and travelling. And my man needs somebody to do his dirty work. You
guys got a rep for handling that stuff.”

“What do you really know about us, Swan?”

He shrugged. “Stories.”

“Stories. Hunh.”

The Prahbrindrah Drah said something.

“He wants to know why that guy is hanging up in the air.”

“Because he tried to stab me in the back. After somebody tried to poison my
guards. After a while I’m going to ask him why.”

Swan and the Prahbrindrah chattered. The Prahbrindrah looked irked. He glanced
at One-Eye’s pet, chattered some more.

“He wants to know about your quest.”

“You heard it all coming down the river. You told him already.”

“Man, he’s trying to be polite.”

I shrugged. “How come so much interest in a few people just passing through?”

Swan started looking nervous. We were starting to move in toward it. The
Prahbrindrah said several sentences.

Swan said, “The Prahbrindrah says you’ve talked about where you’ve been—and he
would like to hear more about your adventures because far peoples and places
intrigue him—and your quest, but you haven’t really said where you’re going.” He
sounded like he was trying to translate very accurately. Frogface gave me a
shallow nod.

We had told Swan’s bunch little during the passage south from the Third
Cataract. We had hidden from them as much as they from us. I decided to
pronounce the name maybe better kept to myself. “Khatovar.”

Willow did not bother translating.

The Prahbrindrah chattered.

“He says you shouldn’t do that.”

“Too late to stop, Swan.”

“Then you got troubles you can’t even imagine, Captain.” Swan translated. The
Prince replied. He got excited.

“Boss says it’s your neck and you can shave with an axe if you want, but no sane
man says that name. Death could strike you down before you finished.” He
shrugged and smirked as he spoke. “Though it’s likely more mundane forces will
slaughter you if you insist on chasing that chimera. There’s bad territory
between here and there.” Swan looked at the Prince and rolled his eyes. “We hear
tales of monsters and sorcery.”

“Hey, really.” I plucked a morsel from a small bird, chewed, swallowed. “Swan, I
brought this outfit here all the way from the Barrowland. You remember the
Barrowland. Monsters and sorcery? Seven thousand miles. I never lost a man. You
remember the river? Folks who got in my way didn’t live to be sorry. Listen
close. I’m trying to say a couple of things here. I’m eight hundred miles from
the edge of the map. I won’t stop now. I can’t.” It was one of the longest
speeches I’ve ever made, outside reading to the men from the Annals.

“Your problem is those eight hundred miles, Cap. The other seven thousand were a
stroll in the country.”

The Prahbrindrah said something short. Swan nodded but did not translate. I
looked at Frogface. He told me, “Glittering stone.”

“What?”

“That’s what he said, chief. Glittering stone. I don’t know what he meant.”

“Swan?”

“It’s a local expression. ‘The walking dead’ is the closest way to say it in
Rosean. It has something to do with old times and something called the Free
Companies of Khatovar, which was bad medicine back when.”

I raised an eyebrow. “The Black Company is the last of the Free Companies of
Khatovar, Swan.”

He gave me a sharp look. Then he translated.

The Prince chattered back. He stared at One-Eye’s victim as he did.

“Cap, he says he supposes anything is possible. But a returning company ain’t
been spotted since his granddaddy’s granddaddy was a pup. He wonders, though.

Says maybe you’re real. Your coming was foretold.” Quick glance at Frogface,

with a scowl, like the imp was a traitor. “And the Shadowmasters have warned him
against dealing with you. Though that would be the natural inclination,

considering the devastation and despair spread by the fanatics of old.”

I glanced at Frogface. He nodded. Swan was striving for exactitude.

Lady said, “He’s playing games, Croaker. He wants something. Tell him to get to
the point.”

“That would be nice, Swan.”

He continued translating, “But yesterday’s terror means nothing today. You are
not those fanatics. That was seen on the river. And Trogo Taglios will bow the
neck to no one. If the pestilence in the south fears a band of freebooters, he
is willing to forget the ancient scores and tend to those of his own time. If
you too can forget.”

I didn’t have the foggiest what the hell he was talking about.

“Croaker!” Lady snapped, catching the scent of what was in the back of my mind
almost before I did. “We don’t have time for you to indulge your curiosity about
the past. There’s something going on here. Tend to it before we get our butts in
a sling.”

She was turning into one of the guys for sure.

“You getting the idea where we stand, Swan? You don’t really figure we think
running into you and the woman up there was by chance, do you? Talk me some
plain talk.”

Some not so very plain talk took a while. Darkness came and the moon rose. It
climbed the sky. The operators of the grove became exasperated but were too
polite to ask their ruling prince to bug off. And while we stayed, so did the
scores who had come out to look at us.

“Definitely something going on,” I whispered to Lady. “But how do I dig it out
of him?”

The Prahbrindrah played down everything he said, but the presence of the city
fathers shrieked that Taglios was approaching a perilous crossroads. An
undercurrent in what I heard told me the Prince wanted to spit in the face of
calamity.

Willow tried to explain. “A while back—and nobody’s sure exactly when because
nobody was looking for it—what you might call a darkness turned up in a place
called Pityus, which is like four hundred miles southeast of Taglios. Nobody
worried about it. Then it spread to Tragevec and Kiaulune, which are pretty
important, and Six and Fred, and all of a sudden everybody was worried but it
was too late. You had this huge chunk of country ruled by these four sorcerers
that refugees called Shadowmasters. They had a thing about shadows. Changed
Tragevec’s name to Shadowlight and Kiaulune to Shadowcatch and nowadays most
everybody calls their empire the Shadowlands.”

“You’re going to get around to telling me what this’s got to do with us, aren’t
you?”

“Within a year after the Shadowmasters took over they had those cities—which
hadn’t practiced war since the terror of Khatovar—armed and playing imperial
games. In the years since, the Shadowmasters have conquered most of the
territories between Taglios’s southern frontiers and the edge of the map.”

“I’m starting to smell it, Croaker,” Lady said. She had grown grim as she
listened.

“I am, too. Go on, Swan.”

“Well, before they got to us . . . Before they went to work on Taglios they had
some kind of falling out down there. Started feuding. The refugees talk about
the whole big show. Intrigues, betrayals, subversions, assassinations, alliances
shifting all over. Whenever it looked like one of them was starting to get ahead
the others would gang up. Was like that for fifteen, eighteen years. So Taglios
wasn’t threatened.”

“But now they are?”

“Now they’re all looking this way. They made a move last year but it didn’t work
out for them.” He looked smug. “What they got here in this berg is all the guts
anybody could ask—and not a bat in broad daylight’s notion what the hell to do
with them. Me and Cordy and Blade, we kind of got drafted last year. But I
wasn’t never much of a soldier and neither was they. As generals we’re like tits
on a boar hog.”

“So this isn’t about bodyguarding and dirty-tricking for your Prince at all. Is
it? He wants to drag us into his fight. Did he think he could get us on the
cheap or something? Didn’t you make a report about our trip down here?”

“He’s the kind of guy who’s got to check things for himself. Maybe he figured to
see if you rated yourself cheap. I told him all the stories I ever heard about
you guys. He still wanted to see for himself. He’s a pretty good old boy. First
prince I ever seen that tries to do what a prince is supposed to do.”

“Rarer than frog hair, then. I’m sure. But you said it, Swan. We’re on a mission
from the gods. We don’t have time to mess in local disputes. Maybe when we’re on
our way back.” Swan laughed. “What’s so funny?”

“You really don’t got no choice.”

“No?” I tried to read him. I couldn’t. Lady shrugged when I looked at her,

“Well? Why not?”

“To get where you want to go you got to head right through the Shadowlands.

Seven, eight hundred miles of them. I don’t think even you guys can make it.

Neither does he.”

“You said they were four hundred miles away.”

“Four hundred miles to Pityus, Cap. Where it started. They got everything from
the border south now. Seven, eight hundred to Shadowcatch. And like I said, they
started on us last year. Took everything south of the Main.”

I knew the Main to be a broad river south of Taglios, a natural frontier and
barrier.

Swan continued, “Their troops are only eighty miles from Taglios some places.

And we know they’re planning a push as soon as the rivers go down. And we don’t
figure they’re gonna be polite. All four Shadowmasters said they would get mean
if the Prahbrindrah had anything to do with you guys.”

I looked at Lady. “Damned awful lot of folks know more about what I’m doing and
where I’m going than I do.”

She ignored me. She asked, “Why didn’t he run us off, Swan? Why did he send you
to meet us?”

“Oh, he never sent us. He didn’t know about that part till we got back. He just
figures if the Shadowmasters are scared of you guys then he ought to be friends
with you.”

It wasn’t me who frightened them, but why give that away? Swan and his buddies
and boss didn’t need to know who Lady had been. “He’s got guts.”

“They all got guts. Out the yang-yang. Pity is, they don’t know what to do with
them. And I can’t show them. Like he says, the Shadowmasters would come sooner
or later anyway, so why appease them? Why let them pick their time?”

“What’s in this for Willow Swan? You come on pretty strong for a guy just
passing through.”

“Cordy ain’t here to hear me, so I’ll tell it straight. I’m not on the run no
more. I’ve found my place. I don’t want to lose it. Good enough?”

Maybe. “I couldn’t give him an answer here, now. You know that if you know
anything about the Black Company at all. I don’t think there’s much chance. It
isn’t what we want to do. But I’ll give the situation a fair look. Tell him I
want a week and the cooperation of his people.” I planned to spend another
eleven days resting and refitting. I was out nothing making that promise.