The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company) (91 page)

Lately he had noticed an evolution in his thinking about the Company. An accelerating evolution. A frightening evolution.

He had become suspicious of his own reason.

Following a general meeting to consider policy for the empire the Great General met with the men responsible for the capital city.

“Kina is active again,” Mogaba murmured. Ghopal and Aridatha listened politely. He was referencing events from before their time, that they knew only by repute. “She’s doing that thing where she gradually shapes everyone’s prejudices.”

They offered him blank looks.

“Not history buffs, eh?” Mogaba explained. “The strangest part was, nobody ever wondered why they were terrified. They just didn’t remember that three years earlier they’d never heard of the Black Company.”

Ghopal said, “What you’re saying is, the Strangler Goddess has a particular fear of the Black Company. She wants the whole world to climb all over them and destroy them. Even if blood has to be spilled.”

“Isn’t this an interesting quandary,” Aridatha said. “If we can overcome the Black Company, we’ll still have to deal with the Protector. If we knock her down, too, then we’ll still have to handle the Stranglers and Kina, in order to prevent the Year of the Skulls. Wave after wave. No end to it.”

“No end to it,” Mogaba agreed. “And I’m getting to be quite an old man.” He had begun to nurture an outrageous notion almost as soon as he had determined that he was being manipulated. “There are a couple of old records I want to check. I want you both back here same time tomorrow.”

The Great General did not lack courage. The next evening he led Ghopal and Aridatha into the brightly lit room. He presented a more convincing case for his belief that Kina had awakened, drawing heavily upon excerpts from copies of Black Company Annals residing in the national library.

Aridatha Singh said, “I believe you. I just wonder what happened to wake her up again.”

“Ghopal?”

“I’m not sure I understand. But I don’t think I have to. Aridatha does. I trust his wisdom.”

“Then I’ll talk to Aridatha. But you listen.” Mogaba chuckled.

Aridatha listened to his idea, the reasoning behind it, frowning all the while. Ghopal seemed aghast. But he kept his mouth shut. Aridatha went off alone with his thoughts. After a while he nodded reluctantly and said. “I have a brother in Dejagore. I’ll find a reason to go visit. I know some people who might listen to what you have to say if it’s me doing the talking.”

“What?”

Aridatha said, “You recall a few years ago when the Company underground here started kidnapping people? Willow Swan, the Purohita, and so on? I was one of the people they snatched.”

Ghopal wanted to know why, and Mogaba wondered how he had gotten away.

“I got away because they let me go. They only picked me up because they wanted to show me off to somebody they were holding already.” Aridatha took a long, deep breath and revealed his great secret. “My father. Narayan Singh. They were showing him their power.”

“Narayan Singh?
The
Narayan Singh? The Strangler?” Ghopal asked.

“That Narayan Singh. I didn’t know. Not till then. Our mother told us our father was dead. She believed it, I think. The Shadowmasters conscripted him into their labor battalions during their first invasion, before the Black Company ever arrived from the north. I was the youngest of four children. I’m pretty sure the older ones knew the truth. My brother Sugriva moved to Dejagore and changed his name. My sister Khaditya changed hers, too. Her husband would die of mortification if he knew.”

“You’ve never mentioned this before.”

“I think you can understand why.”

“Oh. I do. That’s a cruel burden to bear.” Mogaba already found himself responding to the Deceiver connection. With exactly the sort of paranoid fear everyone did to any Deceiver connection. It was inevitable. Aloud, he said, “I wonder how those people ever trust each other?”

Aridatha replied, “I suspect you’d have to be inside and a part of it all to understand. I think the biggest part of it, though, would be their faith in their Goddess.”

The Great General looked at Ghopal Singh. “If the Greys have objections I need to hear them now.”

Ghopal shook his head. “Only one Grey is going to know about this. For now. The others wouldn’t understand.”

“Aridatha. You have someone you trust to take charge while you’re gone?” The City Battalions did not know they were part of a conspiracy to free Taglios from its protector. It was necessary to keep firm control there.

“Yes. But no one in the know. If you have unusual requests you’ll have to justify them based on what’s going on in the city.” The soldiers understood that their role was to keep the peace if the population became too restive for the Greys alone.

Mogaba asked, “Are there enough provocations to make any excuses sound good?”

Ghopal showed a large array of teeth. Shadar were proud of their well-kept teeth. “That’s almost amusing. Since the news reached the street that the Black Company really is back, there’s actually been less related graffiti. As though real Company sympathizers don’t want to risk identification and the non-Company vandals responsible for most of it suddenly don’t want to be identified with any terror that’s for real.”

“Terror?”

“You were right, what you said last night. There’s a growing fear of the Company out there. Like you said, it was in olden times. I don’t understand but it’s helping keep the peace just when I expected a lot more trouble.”

“If you need provocations and the villains don’t provide them, feel free to create your own. Aridatha, you know what needs doing. Do it. As quickly as possible. Before events move so fast they rob us of more chances.” Though it could happen almost momentarily, Mogaba had abandoned any real hope of catching the Protector unaware as she returned to the city.

At the moment it seemed she did not plan to return until the Black Company invasion was settled.

51

The Taglian Territories: The Middle Ground

Soulcatcher, in full leather and fuller ire, stalked the perimeter of the encampment midway between Ghoja and Dejagore. A dozen frightened officers followed, each silently appealing for mercy to his choice of god or gods. The Protector in a rage was a disaster no one wanted to experience. Her excesses made no more sense than do those of a tornado.

“They haven’t moved. For six days now they’ve hardly taken a step. After hurtling northward like the storm itself, so fast we were killing ourselves trying to pull something together fast enough to stop them. What’re they doing? What changed suddenly?” As always when she was under stress Soulcatcher was a babble of conflicting voices. That added to the uneasiness of the men tagging after her. None had had any experience with her before her arrival in camp. The actuality was more unnerving than the stories predicted. She seemed every bit as cruel and capricious as any god. Several graves beyond the perimeter attested to the violence of her temper.

These sycophants would never find out but those who died had been chosen only after extended supernatural espionage. Not one had been a devoted servant of the Protectorate. Each had said so aloud. Additionally, none had been particularly competent leaders and that had been clear to their soldiers and compatriots. They had attained their positions through nepotism or cronyism, not ability.

Soulcatcher was culling her officer corps. She was disappointed that necessity prevented her from doing more. That corps was terrible. But she would take no responsibility for that. Of course.

How poor would it have been without the efforts of the Great General? Probably an awful, corrupt joke without a punchline. Without Mogaba’s dedicated nurturing there would have been little to assemble here.

How to keep it here? The desertion rate was supportable now but showing signs of rising. Was that the enemy strategy? Wait until the Taglian armies melted because of the demands of the approaching harvest? Would they charge north again then? It sounded like a Black Company sort of thing to do. Indications were, they had the wealth to maintain a force in the field a long time.

Mogaba’s messages indicated his own suspicions concerning a similar strategy. He was tailoring his own approach toward getting his enemy to take the long way around, into a trap.

Soulcatcher did not believe there would be any chance to trap the Black Company. Their intelligence resources were much too wonderful. While her own continued to fade. All species of crows were becoming endangered. Mice, bats, rats, owls, those sorts of creatures had no range. There seemed to be no modern sources of quality crystal or worthy mercury with which to create a scrying glass or bowl. The shadows she still controlled were few and feeble and frightened and she refused to risk them in enemy territory, often because each time she did a few more would not come back. And for now she was cut off from her only source of replacements.

She glanced skyward, saw vultures circling to the north, over woods which ran from right to left for as far as she could see. The growth followed a shallow stream. Her sister had won a small victory over the Shadowmasters there, ages ago, soon after the Black Company had suffered the disaster that led to the siege of Dejagore.

“I’m going to walk up there and see what those vultures find so interesting.”

No one gave in to the urge to protest.

Maybe the vultures would dine on her.

“None of you need to come with me.”

Relief was obvious.

52

The Nether Taglian Territories: Lady Made Grumpy Noises

Lady was in a towering rage. I could not recall ever having seen her so close to losing control. “How the
hell
could they let that happen? Somebody was supposed to stay in that little shit’s pocket every second!”

No one bothered to respond. She did not want answers. Not really. She wanted somebody to hurt.

Tobo was quietly busy talking to things that were there only when you looked away. Big things, little things, human-looking things and things that had escaped from madmen’s nightmares. Goblin was going to be found. Goblin was going to be tracked and harassed and hurt if at all possible, all the live-long day. Insofar as this fragment of the Company was concerned Goblin was going to be the main mission from this day forward. He was to be hunted down and exorcised—or exterminated—before he could engineer any more disasters on Kina’s behalf.

Though long out of practice and definitely out of the habit, Lady hurled a deadly spell at an inoffensive scrub pine. The tree began to wilt almost immediately.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded. “I thought you couldn’t…”

“Be quiet. Let me think.” So astonished was Lady that she forgot to be angry about Goblin.

I was quiet. I gave her all the thinking room a girl could want.

Was there a silver lining inside our latest black cloud?

My at-the-moment not very lucky wife called, “Tobo. Next message you send north, ask if the little shit got away with one of the gate keys. Or anything else unusual.”

Tobo made little gestures to the air, then replied, “I checked on that already. He got away with nothing more than two horses and one saddle. Not even a sausage. He’s probably eating bugs. The only unusual thing mentioned is that nobody noticed him. An eventuation almost certainly artificial in origin.”

“Because?”

“Because he’s being damned hard to notice right now. The Black Hounds shouldn’t be having trouble finding and following him. But they are. He’s as elusive as a ghost. Each time they do make contact it’s because he’s been following the road, without deviating, and they can just wait for him to show up.”

“Following the road where?”

“North. Toward the junction with the Rock Road. Though because he isn’t talking his plans are unclear.”

Tobo still had a sense of humor about what was going on.

I asked Lady, “How did you manage to murder that tree?”

She mused, “A good question. Without a good answer. I never felt any sharpened Kina presence.”

“You think it might have to do with Goblin? We know Kina must’ve put a piece of herself into him or he wouldn’t even be alive.”

“I would’ve sensed something before. I think. Tobo. Did you feel anything weird about Goblin?”

“Of course.” The boy was curt. He was trying to work. Old folks kept interrupting. “He wasn’t Uncle Goblin anymore. But he wasn’t any more powerful than he was before, either.”

I said, “Maybe it was something that didn’t come out until he got the chance to kill Narayan.”

Debate on the why increasingly focused on the fact that crippled old Narayan had been in no shape to run or do anything on behalf of his Goddess and, if left in our hands, would have been compelled to reveal whatever he knew eventually. And while most of us would view his murder as a betrayal by his Goddess, what we knew of Deceiver doctrine suggested that he might actually see it as a reward. Having been strangled for the Goddess, Narayan would go directly to Deceiver paradise where, no doubt, his rewards would be commensurate with his service.

I tend toward the cynical view where religion is concerned.

After a silence so extended I decided she was not listening, my beloved responded, “You might just be smarter than you look. She’d expect us to be suspicious enough to watch every breath Goblin took. So she’d want him to seem as normal as possible until he got a solid chance to get away.” She began to pace. “Poor Goblin. That would’ve been mostly him, maybe even really trying to help his old friends as much as he could. And he’ll still be partly Goblin, but a prisoner inside his own body.” The hollowness of her voice indicated that she might have been through that herself, once upon a time.

“Which tells us nothing of his purpose. Or of Kina’s.”

“She’s in prison. She wants out. That doesn’t take any special figuring.”

“But there’ll be a grand plan. Old Goblin didn’t get his soul eaten up just so he could be flung across the pond of the world like a skipping stone. He’s going to go somewhere and he’s going to do something and if he gets away with it all the rest of us are going to end up really sorry.”