Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (24 page)

Their boss is one of the Shadowmasters; Longshadow, they call him. He gave the
shadows to the six guys that was in the bowl place. These were just wimpy little
shadows not good for much but carrying messages. They supposedly got bad ones
they can turn loose, too.”

“We’re having some fun now, aren’t we? You find out what’s going on?”

“This Longshadow is up to something. He’s in with the whole bunch trying to keep
the Company away—the brown guys didn’t know why they’re worried—but he’s running
a game on his own, too. The impression I got was he wanted them to capture you
and Lady and have you dragged down to his castle, where he was going to make
some kind of deal, maybe. And that’s about it.”

I had five hundred questions and I started asking them, but Goblin didn’t have
the answers. The man he had interrogated hadn’t had them. Most of the questions
had occurred to him.

He asked, “So, are you going down to the Main?”

“You haven’t changed my mind. Neither have those brown runts. If they don’t have
their mojo men anymore, they won’t give me much trouble. Will they?”

Goblin groaned. “Probably not.”

“So what’s the matter?”

“You think I’m going to let you ride out there without some kind of cover? I’m
groaning about the state of my butt.” He grinned his big frog grin. I grinned
back.

According to our hosts it was a four-hour ride to the Ghoja ford, the nearest
and best crossing over the Main. Swan said there were four along an eighty-mile
stretch of the Main: Theri, Numa, Ghoja, and Vehdna-Bota. Theri being the
farthest upriver. Above Theri the Main coursed through rugged canyons too steep
and bleak for military operations—though Goblin said our little brown friends
had come that way, to evade the attention of the other Shadowmasters. They had
lost a third of their number making the journey.

Vehdna-Bota lay nearest the sea and was useful only during the driest months of
the year. The eighty miles of river between Vehdna-Bota and the sea were always
impassable. Both Vehdna-Bota and Theri fords took their names from Taglian
villages that had been abandoned when the Shadowmasters had invaded last year.

They remained empty.

Numa and Ghoja were villages below the Main, formerly Taglian, now occupied.

Ghoja appeared to be the critical crossing, and Swan, Mather, and Blade had all
seen it. They told me what they could. I asked about the other fords and made an
amusing discovery. Each was unfamiliar with at least one. Ha!

“Me and Goblin will scout the Ghoja crossing. Murgen, you and Cordy check out
Vehdna-Bota. Shadid, you and Swan go to Numa. Sindawe, you and Blade check out
Theri.” I was sending each of the three into strange country.

Cordy laughed. Swan scowled. And Blade . . . Well, I wonder if you could get a
reaction out of Blade by sticking his feet in a fire.

We split up. Lady, Otto, Hagop, and Sindawe’s man all stayed behind to
recuperate. Goblin rode beside me but did not say much after he hoped the
weather would not go sour again. He did not sound like he expected the drizzle
to hold off.

Swan said he had heard the Shadowmasters were fortifying the south bank of the
Ghoja ford. Another indication the enemy would put his main force over there. I
hoped it would come out that way. On the maps the terrain looked very favorable.

Two hours after we split the drizzle resumed. Perfect weather for the dreary
thoughts tramping my brain.

Despite my adventure yesterday it seemed forever since I had been alone long
enough to think a thought through. So with Goblin still as the grave I expected
to do some serious brooding about where Lady and I were going. But she hardly
crossed my mind. Instead, I mulled over what I’d gotten me and the Company into.

I was in charge but not in control. As far back as that monastery things had
been happening that I could not control and could not unravel into sense.

Gea-Xle and the river worsened matters. Now I felt like driftwood tumbling
through a rapid. I had only the slightest idea who was doing what to whom, and
why, but I was locked into the middle of it. Unless this last frantic gesture
showed me an out.

For all I knew if I let the Prahbrindrah suck me in I would be enlisting on the
“wrong” side. Now I knew how the Captain felt when Soulcatcher dragged us into
the Lady’s service. We were fighting in the Forsberg campaigns before the rest
of us began to suspect we’d made a mistake.

It is not necessary for mercenary soldiers to know what is going on. It is
sufficient for them to do the job for which they have taken the gold. That had
been drummed into me from the moment I enlisted. There is neither right nor
wrong, neither good nor evil, only our side and theirs. The honor of the Company
lies within, directed one brother toward another. Without, honor lies only in
keeping faith with the sponsor.

Nothing I knew of the Company’s experiences resembled our present circumstance.

For the first time—mainly by my doing—we were fighting for ourselves first. Our
contract, if we accepted it, would be coincidental to our own desires. A tool.

If I kept my head and perspective as I should, Taglios and all Taglians would
become instruments of our desires.

Yet I doubted. I liked what I had seen of the Taglian people and especially
liked their spirit. After the wounds they had taken keeping their independence
they were still fired up for the Shadowmasters. And I had a good notion I
wouldn’t like those folks if I got to know them. So before it was fairly begun
I’d broken the prime rule and become emotionally involved. Fool that I am.

That damned rain had a personal grudge. It got no heavier but it never let up.

Yet to east and west I saw light that indicated clear skies in those directions.

The gods, if such existed, were laying on the misery especially for me.

The last tenanted place we passed lay six miles from the Ghoja ford. Beyond, the
countryside had been abandoned. It had been empty for months. It was not bad
land, either. The locals must have had a big fear on to uproot and flee. A
change of overlords usually isn’t that traumatic for peasants. The five thousand
who had come north and not returned must have had a real way about them.

The country was not rugged. It was mostly cleared land that rolled gently, and
the road was not awful, considering, though it had not been built to carry
military traffic. Nowhere did I see any fortifications, manmade or natural. I’d
seen none of the former anywhere in Taglian territory. There would be no place
to run and few places to hide in the event of disaster. I became a bit more
respectful of Swan and his buddies, daring what they had.

The ground, when soaked, became a clayey, clinging mud that exercised the
strength and patience even of my tireless steed. Note to the chief of staff.

Plan our battles for clear, dry days.

Right. And while we’re at it, let’s order up only blind enemies.

You have to take what is handed you in this trade.

“You’re damned broody today, Croaker,” Goblin said, after a long while.

“Me? You been chattering like a stone yourself.”

“I’m troubled about all this.”

He was troubled. That was a very un-Goblin-like remark. It meant he was worried
right down to his toenails. “You don’t think we can handle it if we have to take
the commission?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe. You always grab something out of the
trick bag. But we’re getting worn out, Croaker. There’s no zest in it anymore.

What if we did pull it off, and broke through, and got to Khatovar, and ended up
with a big nothing?”

“That’s been the risk since we started. I never claimed anything for this trip.

It’s just something I thought had to be done because I pledged to do it. And
when I turn the Annals over to Murgen I’ll extract the same oath from him.”

“I guess we don’t have anything better to do.”

“To the end of the world and back again. It’s an accomplishment of sorts.”

“I wonder about the first purpose.”

“So do I, old friend. It got lost somewhere between here and Gea-Xle. And I
think these Taglians know something about it. But they’re not talking. Going to
have to try some old-fashioned Company double shuffle on them sometime.”

The drizzle had its good side, I suppose. It lessened visibility. We were over
the last crest and headed down toward the Main and Ghoja ford before I realized
we had come that far. Sentries on the south bank would have spotted us
immediately in better weather.

Goblin sensed it first. “We’re there, Croaker. The river’s right down there.”

We reined in. I asked, “You feel anything on the other side?”

“People. Not alert. But there’s a couple poor fools on sentry duty.”

“What kind of outfit does it feel like?”

“Sloppy. Third rate. I could get a better look if I had a little time.”

“Take some time. I’m going to roam around and look it over.”

The site was what I had been told it would be. The road wandered down a long,

bare slope to the ford, which lay just above an elbow in the river. Below the
elbow a creek ran into the river from my side, though I had to go make sure
because it lay behind higher ground. The creek had a beard of the usual growth
along both banks. There was also a slight rise in the other direction, so that
the road to the ford ran down the center of a slight concavity. Above the ford
the river arched southward in a slow, lazy curve. On my side its bank was
anywhere from two to eight feet high and overgrown with trees and brush
everywhere but at the crossing itself.

I examined all that very carefully, on foot, while my mount waited with Goblin
beyond the ridge. I sneaked down to the edge of the ford itself and spent a half
hour sitting in the wet bushes staring at the fortifications on the other side.

We were not going to get across here. Not easily.

Were they worried about us coming to them? Why?

I used the old triangulation trick to figure out that the watchtower of the
fortress stood about seventy feet high, then withdrew and tried to calculate
what could be seen from its parapet. Most of the light was gone when I finished.

“Find out what you need to know?” Goblin asked when I rejoined him.

“I think so. Not what I wanted, either. Unless you can cheer me up. Could we
force a crossing?”

“Against what’s in there now? Probably. With the water down. If we tried in the
dead of the night and caught them napping.”

“And when the water does go down they’ll have ten thousand men hanging around
over there.”

“Don’t look good, does it?”

“No. Let’s find a place to get out of the rain.”

“I can stand to ride back if you can.”

“Let’s try. We’ll sleep dry if we make it. What do you think of the men over
there? Professionals?”

“My guess is they’re just a little better than men disguised as soldiers.”

“They looked pretty sloppy to me, too. But maybe they don’t have to be any
better in these parts.”

I had seen and watched four men while I was crouching near the ford. They had
not impressed me. Neither had the design or construction of the fortifications.

Clearly, these Shadowmasters had brought in no professionals to train their
forces and they had not developed a good edge on what they did have.

“ ’Course, maybe we saw what we were supposed to see.”

“There’s always that.” An interesting thought, maybe worth some consideration,

because at that moment I noticed a couple of bedraggled crows watching us from a
dead branch on an elm tree. I started to look around for the stump, thought the
hell with it. I would handle that when the time came.

“You remember Shifter’s woman, Goblin?”

“Yeah. So?”

“You said you thought she seemed familiar back in Gea-Xle. Now it’s all of a
sudden coming on me that maybe you were right. I’m sure we ran into her
somewhere before. But I can’t for the life of me think where or when.”

“Does it matter?”

“Probably not. Just one of those things that nag at you. Let’s cut off to the
left here.”

“What the hell for?”

“There’s a town on the map, called Vejagedhya, that I want to look at.”

“I thought we were going back—”

“It’ll only take a few minutes extra.”

“Right.” Grumble, grumble, ragglesnatz.

“Looks like we might have to fight. I need to know the country.”

Fraggin snigglebark.

We ate cold food as we rode. It is not often that I do so, but at such moments I
sometimes envy the man with a cottage and wife.

Everything costs something. It was ghost country we rode, spooky country. The
hand of man was evident everywhere, even in darkness. Some of the homes we
inspected looked like they had been closed up only yesterday. But not once did
we encounter another human being. “I’m surprised thieves haven’t been working
all this.”

“Don’t tell One-Eye.”

I forced a chuckle. “I guess they were smart enough to take their valuables with
them.”

“These people do seem determined to pay whatever price they have to, don’t
they?” He sounded impressed.

Grudgingly, I was developing a case of respect. “And it looks like the Company
is going to be their one toss of the bones with fate.”

“If you let them.”

There was the town, Vejagedhya. It might once have been home to as many as a
thousand people. Now it was even more spooky than the abandoned farms. Out
there, at least, we had encountered wildlife. In the town I saw nothing but a
few crows fluttering from roof to roof.

The townsfolk had not locked their doors. We checked maybe two dozen buildings.

“It would do for a headquarters,” I told Goblin.

He grunted. After a while, he asked, “You making up your mind?”

“Beginning to look made up for me. Right? But we’ll see what the others have to
say.”

We headed north. Goblin did not have much to say after that. That gave me time
to dwell on and invent deeper meanings to my roles as Captain and potential
warlord.