Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (21 page)

What had we gotten into on our simple ride back into the Company’s origins?

Was that half the trouble? That we were in unknown territory so far as the
Annals were concerned? That I was trying to work without a historical chart?

There were questions about our forebrethren and this country. I’d had little
opportunity to ferret out information. The hints I had gathered suggested that
those old boys had not been nice fellows. I got the impression that the diaspora
of the original Free Companies had been a nut religious thing. The moving
doctrine, a vestige of which survived among the Nar, must have been terrible.

The name of the Company still struck fear and stirred intense emotion.

The exhaustion caught up. I fell asleep, though I did not realize it till the
conversation of crows awakened me.

I bounced up. The others looked at me oddly. They did not hear it. They were
about finished with their meal.

Otto was keeping the pot hot for me.

I looked into a lone nearby tree and saw several crows, their ugly heads all
cocked so they could look at me. They started chattering. I had a definite
feeling they wanted my attention.

I ambled toward them.

Two flew when I was halfway to the tree, gaining altitude in that clumsy way
crows have, gliding to the southeast toward an isolated stand of trees maybe a
mile away. A good fifty crows circled above those trees.

The remaining crow left the lone tree when he was satisfied I had seen that. I
turned to lunch in a thoughtful mood. Halfway through a bad stew I concluded
that I had to assume I had been given a warning. The road passed within yards of
those trees.

As we mounted up, I said, “People, we ride with weapons bare. Goblin. See those
trees yonder? Keep an eye on them. Like your life depends on it.”

“What’s up, Croaker?”

“I don’t know. Just a hunch. Probably wrong, but it don’t cost nothing to be
careful.”

“If you say so.” He gave me a funny look, like he was wondering about my
stability.

Lady gave me an even funnier look when, as we approached the woods, Goblin
squeaked, “The place is infested!”

That’s all he got to say. The infestation broke cover. Those little brown guys.

About a hundred of them. Real military geniuses, too. Men on foot just don’t go
jumping people on horseback even if they do outnumber them.

Goblin said, “Gleep!” And then he said something else. The swarm of brown men
became surrounded by a fog of insects.

They should have shot us down with arrows.

Otto and Hagop chose what I considered the stupider course. They charged. Their
momentum carried them through the mob. My choice seemed the wiser. The others
agreed. We just turned away and trotted ahead of the brown guys, leaving them to
Goblin’s mercies.

My beast stumbled. Master horseman that I am, I promptly fell off. Before I
could get to my feet the brown guys were all around me, trying to lay hands on.

But Goblin was on the job. I don’t know what he did, but it worked. After they
knocked me around a little, leaving me a fine crop of bruises, they decided to
keep after those who had had sense enough to stay on their horses.

Otto and Hagop thundered past, making a rear attack. I staggered to my feet,

looked for my mount. He was a hundred yards away, looking at me in a bemused
sort of way. I limped toward him.

Those little guys had some kind of petty magic of their own going, and no sense
at all. They just kept on. They dropped like flies, but when they outnumber you
a dozen to one you got to worry about more than just a favorable kill ratio.

I did not see it well, busy as I was. And when I did manage to drag my abused
flesh aboard my animal’s back the whole brouhaha had swept out of sight down a
narrow, shallow valley.

I have no idea how, but somehow I managed to get disoriented. Or something. When
I got organized and started after my bunch I could not find them. Though I never
got much chance to look. Fate intervened in the form of five little brown guys
on horses that would have been amusing if they hadn’t been waving swords and
lances and rushing at me with intent to be obnoxious.

On another day I might have stayed forty yards ahead and plinked at them with my
bow. But I wasn’t in the mood. I just wanted to be left alone and to get back
together with the others.

I galloped off. Up and down and around a few hills and I lost them easily. But
in the process I lost myself. During all the fun the sky clouded over. It
started to drizzle. Just to make me that much more enchanted with my chosen way
of life. I set out to find the road, hoping I would find traces of my companions
there.

I topped a hill and spied that damned crow-surrounded figure that had been
haunting me since the Temple of Travellers’ Respose. It was striding along in
the distance, directly away from me. I forgot about the others. I kicked my
mount into a gallop. The figure paused and looked back. I felt the weight of its
stare but did not slow. I would unravel this mystery now.

I charged down a shallow hill, leapt a wash in which muddy water gurgled. The
figure was out of sight for a moment. Up the other side. When I reached the
crest there was nothing to be seen but a few random crows circling no particular
point. I used language that would have distressed my mother immensely.

I did not slow but continued my career till I reached the approximate point
where I had seen the thing last. I reined in, swung down, began stomping around
looking for sign. A mighty tracker, me. But, moist as the ground was already,

there had to be traces. Unless I was crazy and seeing things.

I found traces, sure enough. And I felt the continued pressure of that stare.

But I did not see the thing I sought. I was baffled. Even considering the
probability that there was sorcery involved, how could it have vanished so
completely? There was no cover anywhere around.

I spotted some crows starting to circle about a quarter mile away. “All right,

you son of a bitch. We’ll see how fast you can run.”

There was nothing there when I got there.

The cycle repeated itself three times. I got no closer. The last time I halted I
did so atop a low crest that, from a quarter mile, overlooked a hundred-acre
wood. I dismounted and stood beside my horse. We stared. “You, too?” I asked.

His breathing was as uneven as mine. And those monster beasts never got winded.

That was a sight, down there. Never have I seen so many crows except maybe on a
recent battlefield.

In a lifetime of travel and study I have come upon half a hundred tales about
haunted forests. The woods are always described as dark and dense and old or the
trees are mostly dead, skeleton hands reaching for the sky. This wood fit none
of the particulars except for density. Yet it sure felt haunted.

I tossed my reins across the horse’s neck, strapped on a buckler, drew my sword
from its saddle scabbard, and started forward. The horse came along behind me,

maybe eight feet back, head down so his nostrils were almost to the ground, like
a hound on the track.

The crows were most numerous over the center of the wood. I did not trust my
eyes but thought I detected some squat dark structure among the trees there. The
closer I got the slower I moved, meaning maybe a part of me was still infected
with common sense. The part that kept telling me that I was not cut out for this
sort of thing. I wasn’t some lone brawling swordsman who stalked evil into its
lair.

I am a dope cursed with an unhealthy portion of curiosity. Curiosity had me by
the chin whiskers and kept right on dragging me along.

There was one lone tree that approximated the stereotype, a bony old thing about
half dead, as big around as me, standing like a sentinel thirty feet from the
rest of the wood. Scrub and saplings clustered around its feet, rising waist
high. I paused to lean against it while I talked myself into or out of
something. The horse came up till his nose bumped my shoulder. I turned my head
to look at him.

Snake hiss. Thump!

I gawked at the arrow quivering in the tree three inches from my fingers and
only started to get myself down when it struck me that the shaft had not been
meant to stick me in the brisket.

Head, shaft, and fletching, that bolt was as black as a priest’s heart. The
shaft itself had an enameled look. An inch behind the head was a wrap of white.

I levered the arrow out of the tree and held the message close enough to read.

It is not yet time, Croaker .

The language and alphabet were those of the Jewel Cities.

Interesting. “Right. Not yet time.” I peeled the paper off, crumpled it into a
ball, tossed it at the wood. I looked for some sign of the archer. There was
none. Of course.

I shoved the arrow into my quiver, swung onto my saddle, turned the horse and
rode about a step. A shadow ran past, of a crow flying up to have a look at the
seven little brown men waiting for me atop the hill. “You guys never give up, do
you?”

I got back down, behind the horse, took out my bow, strung it, drew an arrow—the
arrow just collected—and started angling across the hillside, staying behind my
mount. The little brown guys turned their toy horses and moved with me.

When I had a nice range I jumped out and let fly at the nearest. He saw it
coming and tried to dodge, only he did himself more harm than good. I meant to
put the shaft into his pony’s neck. It slammed in through his knee, getting him
and the animal both. The pony threw him and took off, dragging him from a
stirrup.

I mounted up fast, took off through the gap. Those little horses did not move
fast enough to close it.

So we were off, them pounding after me at a pace to kill their animals in an
hour, my beast barely cantering and, I think, having a good time. I can’t recall
any other horse I’ve ridden looking back to check the pursuit and adjusting its
pace to remain tantalizingly close.

I had no idea who the brown guys were but there had to be a bunch of them the
way they kept turning up. I considered working on this bunch, taking them out
one by one, decided discretion was the better part. If need be I could bring the
Company down and forage for them.

I wondered what became of Lady and Goblin and the others. I doubted they had
come to any harm, what with our advantage in mounts, but . . .

We were separated and there was no point spending the remaining daylight looking
for them. I would get back to the road, turn north, find a town and someplace
dry.

The drizzle irritated me more than the fact that I was being hunted.

But that stretch of forest bothered me more than the rain. That was a mystery
that scared the crap out of me.

The crows and walking stump were real. No doubt of that anymore. And the stump
knew me by name.

Maybe I ought to bring the Company down and go after whatever hid there.

The road was one of those wonders that turns to mud hip deep if somebody spits
on it. There were no fences in this part of the world, so I just rode beside it.

I came to a village almost immediately.

Call it a stroke of fate, or timing. Timing. My life runs on weird timing. There
were riders coming into town from the north. They looked even more bedraggled
than I felt. They were not little brown men but I gave them the suspicious eye
anyway and looked for places to duck. They were carrying more lethal hardware
than I was, and I had enough to outfit a platoon.

“Yo! Croaker!”

Hell. That was Murgen. I got a little closer and saw that the other three were
Willow Swan, Cordy Mather, and Blade.

What the hell were they doing down here?

The one who had withdrawn everything but moral support did not give up his right
to complain and criticize.

The gathering of the Shadowmasters took place in the heights of a soaring tower
in that one’s new capitol fortress, Overlook, which lay two miles south of
Shadowcatch. It was a strange, dark fortress, more vast than some cities. It had
thick walls a hundred feet high. Every vertical surface was sheathed in plates
of burnished brass or iron. Ugly silver lettering in an alphabet known only to a
few damascened those plates, proclaiming fearful banes.

The Shadowmasters assembled in a room not at all in keeping with their penchant
for darkness. The sun burned through a skylight and through walls of crystal.

The three shrank from the glare, though they were clad in their darkest apparel.

Their host floated near the southern wall, seldom withdrawing his gaze from the
distance. His preoccupation was obsessive.

Out there, many miles away but visible from that great height, lay a vast flat
expanse. It shimmered. It was as white as the corpse of an old dead sea. The
visitors thought his fear and fixation dangerously obsessive. If it was not
feigned. If it was not the fulcrum of an obscure and deadly strategem. But it
was impossible not to be impressed by the magnitude of the defenses he had
raised.

The fortress had been seventeen years in the building and was not yet more than
two-thirds completed.

The small one, the female, asked, “It’s quiet out there now?” She spoke the
language that was emblazoned upon the fortress walls.

“It’s always quiet during the day. But come the night . . . Come the night . . .

” Fear and hatred blackened the air.

He blamed them for his dire circumstances. They had mined the shadows and had
awakened the terror, then they had left him to face the consequences alone.

He turned. “You have failed. You have failed and failed and failed. The Radisha
went north without inconvenience. They sailed through the swamps like vengeance
itself, so easily she never had to lift a finger. They go where they will and do
what they will, without peril, so blithely sure they don’t even notice your
meddling. And now they and she are on your marches, conjuring mischief there. So
you come to me.”