Bleak Seasons (33 page)

Lady slept less than did the Captain. Croaker seldom slept more than five hours
a night. If sheer drive could conquer Mogaba and the Shadowmaster we were
surefire winners.

Both Lady and the Old Man hide so much inside themselves that even after all
these years I have no sure grasp of how they think. They share a strong love but
seldom demonstrate it.

They want to recover their daughter and avenge themselves upon the Deceivers but
never speak of the child publicly. Croaker is determined to lead the Company
back to mysterious Khatovar, to unearth its origins, but does not talk about
that at all anymore.

On the surface it would seem those two live only for the war.

I drifted back to One-Eye’s factory. I was reluctant to leave Smoke. I knew if I
delayed much longer I would return to find my body exhausted, starved, and
extremely thirsty. The smart way to use Smoke was to take short journeys mixed
with lots of times out for snacks and drinks. But that was hard to recall out
there, especially when there was so much pain waiting back in my own slice of
reality.

This time I discovered a room I had overlooked earlier. In it Vehdna workers
moved lazily amongst a dozen ceramic tubs. Some carried buckets from which they
scooped fluid into the tubs a cup at a time. The fluid came from a vat a man
kept stirring when he was not adding water or some white powder.

I saw little remarkable about those tubs. The solution got added at one end. At
the other end fluid trickled down a glass tube into a large earthenware jug.

Once filled each jug got stopped and carried carefully to storage on shelves
well out of the way. Unlike wines, they were shelved upright. Curiously, the
lamps in the room burned unusually bright.

I studied one tub, noted that small bubbles kept rising at the end where the
workers added the fluid. At the far end, well below the surface, were dozens of
short rods caked with a silvery white substance. On the floor of the tub were
several handleless glass cups. Using ceramic tools a gloved worker moved a cup
under a rod, scraped stuff off into the cup. Once that settled he used wooden
tongs to lift the cup from the tub. He carried it with considerable care but,

nevertheless, managed to stumble.

The stuff off the rod blazed fiercely when exposed to the air.

I had to get back to my flesh. I had to eat. Soon enough I would have to pack
because real soon all of us would be headed south. The war’s next stage was
gathering momentum.

Otto and Hagop were back, after innumerable frustrating delays on the last river
leg, which should have been the easiest part of their journey. They were
concealed in the same Shadar waterfront warehouse that I had used to hold the
captives from the Grove of Doom. One-Eye collected me from my quarters. He and I
and my brown shadow headed for the river. The Old Man beat us there. He could
drop everything when he really wanted. “You all right, Murgen?”

“I’m handling it.”

“He’s spending too much time with Smoke,” One-Eye said. “That don’t sound
healthy. Would you look at these guys?” He meant Otto and Hagop, though the
others of their expedition were confined to the warehouse, too, and were not
enthusiastic about being kept away from their families. It had been almost three
years.

Neither Otto nor Hagop looked much different. I told Hagop, “I’d almost given up
on you guys.” We shook hands. I shook with Otto, too. “I thought your luck
finally ran out.”

“We came close, Murgen. We used up a lot.”

“So,” the Old Man said. “What took so long?”

“Actually, there ain’t that much to tell.” Hagop looked at Croaker oddly, as
though to make sure he was talking to the real Old Man. Croaker was in his
Shadar disguise. “We went, we did what we could, we came back.” Like a
fourteen-thousand-mile round trip was routine? In the Company we do not brag
about the big stuff. “We didn’t do a lot of sightseeing.”

While Hagop talked Otto made a circuit of the doors and windows. He asked, “We
need to worry about spies?”

“This is Taglios,” Croaker replied. By which he meant that everyone is always
watching everyone else, looking for an edge.

“We figured you guys would have then all squared away by now.”

“That’s a lot of squaring. Shadowlander spies, yeah, they aren’t a problem. Lady
and Goblin and One-Eye took care of them.”

I said, “We still have the priesthoods.”

“And we’ve had a little Deceiver trouble lately.”

Something in my face warned Hagop against pursuing that. Not now. “How goes the
war, then?”

“Slowly,” Croaker told him. “We can talk about that later. You do us any good up
there?”

“Not much, to be honest.”

“Damn!”

“We did get a bunch of stuff for the Annals. Murgen, you might want to work it
in. It’s stuff about what other people were doing that will help make better
sense of what we did. I figure you could work it in between stuff that Croaker
wrote. That way them that comes after us can see both sides. Huhm?”

“Maybe you ought to take over.” Sourly.

“Learn me how to read and write. I’m too old for this other shit.”

“Might do that,” I glanced at Croaker. “Long as you don’t edit me.”

The Old Man grinned.

Hagop chuckled. “The gods forfend, Murgen. Not me. Hey. I found out all about
what happened after we left up there, too. You wouldn’t believe the excitement.

The Limper came back one more time. Don’t worry. It’s all settled now. The
empire is boring these days.”

“Sounds like I wish I was back home.”

Croaker asked, “Did you actually get into the Tower?”

“We spent six months there. Mainly getting the runaround at first.”

“And?”

“We finally convinced them that Lady was getting her powers back. They got
cooperative then. Folks in the Tower these days like not having her around.”

“Gee. That’ll break her heart,” I said.

Hagop grinned. “Yeah. They won’t send us any help. Say they don’t want to make
any new enemies. I think it’s mostly because they don’t want Lady getting
nostalgic for her good old days and heading back north.”

Croaker said, “We figured that. There’s nothing in this for them but keeping
Lady away. What did you get?”

“They opened their records. Lent us translators. Even opened graves when we
asked.”

“They would have an interest in who was buried there themselves.”

“Damned if they didn’t. They had to change their linens after we told them who
all turned up alive down here. See, they had a major scare when the Limper came
back and damned near took them apart.”

I said, “That guy had a bigger boner for us than Soulcatcher does.” No way did
we need to add the Limper to our list of enemies. “What about my turnip seeds?”

Hagop said, “They made sure of Limper this time. Absolutely sure. I got your
seeds. Turnips and parsnips and even some seed potatoes if they haven’t
spoiled.”

Croaker said, “They would make sure of Limper.” He watched Otto prowl. Otto was
restless, uncomfortable. “So they let you poke around and even gave you some
help with it. What did you learn?” That had been the point. To see if they knew
anything way up north that we could use here.

“Not much. It don’t seem likely that Longshadow was ever one of the Taken.”

I was confident of that. I was sure he would have betrayed himself to Howler by
now if they had been allies in the past. “Those potatoes. Did you get the little
kind like I . . . ”

Hagop glowered at me, told the Old Man, “There is the remotest chance that he
could be the Faceless Man, Moonbiter, or Nightcrawler although everybody up
there was sure those three really did bite the dust. It was just that we
couldn’t come up with any bodies.”

“How about one of the later Taken?” Croaker mused.

“Five actually survived. Journey, Whisper, Blister, Creeper and Learned. But
Lady stripped all five of their powers. In front of witnesses.”

“But Lady has been getting her powers back,” I argued.

“A point. On the other hand, we know the exact day when the Shadowmasters
appeared. Even the hour, I gather. All the later Taken were still in business up
north. In fact, most of them weren’t even Taken yet.”

I traded glances with the Old Man. He began pacing. He said, “When Soulcatcher
held me captive she told me one of the Shadowmasters who died at Dejagore wasn’t
ever one of the Taken.”

I added, “Neither was Shadowspinner.”

Hagop said, “All they could tell us, really, was that they didn’t have a clue if
Longshadow used to be one of the old mob. The written record supported them.”

Croaker kept pacing, narrowly avoided a collision with Otto, but stayed well
away from the cluster of unhappy Taglians awaiting his blessing upon their
desires to go home. After all this time could they recognize him through his
Shadar disguise? Probably.

I was sure he was thinking that this war with the Shadowmasters was no ordinary
struggle, that the stakes went far beyond simple survival. He said, “We’ve taken
three of the bastards down. But Longshadow is the worst. He is the craziest.

He’s working on Overlook day and night . . . ”

“Still?”

“Still. The poor idiot is a living testimonial to the fact that everything takes
longer and costs more. Even magic can’t get you around that. But he’s a lot
closer to being finished than he was when you left. And if he does get done
before we get him we can bend over and kiss our butts goodbye. It’ll be the end
of the world. His plan is to pull his hole in behind him and loose the dogs of
hell then come out later and collect up the pieces of whatever is left.”

I grumbled, “I’ve heard this one before.” I never took it entirely serious
despite the characters involved. But it did sound like Croaker believed
Longshadow was capable of doing it. Maybe his adventures with Smoke had shown
him something I had missed so far.

So the end of the world was imminent, either at the hands of Kina and her
Deceivers or at those of Longshadow. Either way, only the Black Company could
prevent the tragedy.

Yeah. Sure.

I wanted to tell Croaker, old buddy, we’re only the Black Company. We’re just a
gang of misfits who can’t make it in life except as hired swords. Sure, we got
ourselves into an asskicking contest with some bizarro creeps now but there
ain’t nobody going to care in a hundred years. We are entangled in an affair of
honor because of promises we made and stuff like the Stranglers snatching your
kid. But don’t try to sell anybody on saving the world.

I was scared the Old Man might be developing a case of the big head, like
Longshadow, Mogaba, the Howler, Kina, all the devils of our time. One of the
Annalist’s duties is to remind the Captain that he is not a demigod. But I was
out of practice. Hell, I could not deflate Uncle Doj when he got going.

“I need an edge, Hagop,” Croaker said. “I need it bad. Tell me you found
something. Anything.”

“I found Murgen’s turnip seeds.”

“Damnit . . . ”

“The best suggestion they had was that we might try to trace the survivors of
the Circle of Eighteen.” Well. That was interesting.

Croaker stopped pacing. He looked at me as though I might be able to tell him
something. I saw his focus fade. He was remembering the Battle at Charm.

The Circle of Eighteen raised huge rebel armies to pull Lady down. The
culminating battle at Charm had been the bloodiest in recorded history.

The Circle did not win.

Croaker said, “We killed Harden and Raker. Lady turned Whisper to Taken. That
accounts for three.”

“A lot more just got lost when we whipped them,” I observed. My “we” drew smiles
from Otto, Hagop and the Old Man. I was maybe twelve at the time and had not yet
even heard of the Black Company.

Hagop said, “We were too damned thorough back then, boss. We went out looking
for and flat could not find any Rebel veterans to interrogate. We couldn’t even
find names for seven of the Eighteen. But there were people at the Tower who
were junior officers then who claimed they had witnessed the deaths of all of
the Eighteen except one called Trinket, those who became Taken, and one of the
ones whose names we couldn’t find out.”

“Trinket.” Croaker resumed pacing. He mused, “I remember Trinket. But just the
name. We were at the Stair of Tear. We got word that Trinket was surrounded. In
the east. We were busy with Harden. I don’t know if I even mentioned it in the
Annals.”

Ha! A chance to show off. “You did. One sentence. That’s it, though. You said
Whisper had taken Rust and Trinket was surrounded.”

“Whisper. Yes. She’d been Taken only a little while.” He had been there to help
set up the Taking. “That’s one for Lady. She would know if there was anything
between those two.”

“Trinket was female,” Hagop told us. “What’s Longshadow?”

Croaker frowned.

I said, “He never gets all the way naked but I’m pretty sure Longshadow is a he.

Physically.”

The Old Man offered me a daggers look. Damn! But the Taglians were way off in a
corner sulking. None of them caught my slip. Hagop was not on the list of three,

either, though. I hastened to amend myself. “But Smoke is the only one who ever
saw him in the flesh. And he ain’t talking.”

“He still alive?” Hagop asked.

“Barely,” Croaker said. “We keep him alive. Men have come back from comas
before. That’s it, Hagop? All that time and travel. That’s all you got me?”

“That’s the way she goes sometimes, boss.” He grinned. “Oh. I almost forgot.

They did give me a coffin full of papers and stuff that night have belonged to
some of the people who maybe could have turned into Longshadow if he was ever
one of the Eighteen. The stuff is all packaged and labeled in case some wizard
decides he wants to use them.”

Croaker’s face lit up like a bonfire. “You shithead.” Grinning, he yelled,

“Otto, send them guys home, why don’t you? Bonharj, the rest of you, what the
hell are you doing hanging around here? Your people want to see you.” He told
me, “Guess we ought to ship that stuff down to Lady. She’ll know what to do with
it.”