Shadow Games

I tramped on into camp and started digging for the book I wanted to read.

“Why don’t you mind your own business, Croaker?” One-Eye demanded.

“What?”

“Mind your own business. I was laying for the little toad. If you hadn’t stuck your nose in, I’d have had him strung up like an antelope ready for gutting.” A rope slithered out of the darkness and curled up in his lap.

“I won’t let it happen again.”

The A

Both Goblin and One-Eye had a big sullen on. I asked, “Can you guys come up for a little serious business?”

Well, yes, they could, but they could not admit that their pouting was not of earthshaking significance, so they just stared at me and waited for me to get on with it. “I’ve got a bad feeling. Not exactly a premonition, but the same family, and it keeps getting worse.”

They stared, stone-faced, refusing comment.

But Murgen volunteered, “I know what you mean, Croaker. I’ve had the heebie-jeebies since we got here.”

I gave the rest a scan. They stopped yakking. The Tonk games came to a halt. Otto and Hagop had small nods to admit that they felt unsettled, too. The rest were too macho to admit anything.

So. Maybe my collywobbles were not imaginary.

“I get a feeling going down there could become a watershed of Company history. Can one of you geniuses tell me why?”

Goblin and One-Eye looked at each other. Neither spoke.

“The only thing the A

“What does that mean?” That Murgen was a natural shill.

“It means our forebrethren didn’t have to fight their way out. They could have renewed their commission. But the Captain heard about a treasure mountain up north where the silver nuggets were supposed to weigh a pound.”

There was more to the tale but they did not want to hear it. We were not really the Black Company anymore, just rootless men from nowhere headed the same direction. How much was that my fault? How much the fault of bitter circumstance?

“No comment?” They both looked thoughtful, though. “So. Murgen. Break out the real colors tomorrow. With all the honors.”

That jacked up some eyebrows.

“Finish the tea, guys. And tell your bellies to get ready for some real brew. They make the genuine elixir down there.”

That sparked some interest.

“You see? The A

I set about doing some writing in the latest of my own volumes, occasionally peeking at one or another of the wizards. They had forgotten their feud, were using their heads for something more than the creation of mischief.

During one of my upward glances I caught a silvery yellow flash. It seemed to come from the rocks where I had been a while back, watching the city lights.

“Lady!”

I barked my shins a dozen times getting there, then felt like a fool when I found her seated on a rock, arms around her legs, chin on her knees, contemplating the night. The light of a newly risen moon fell upon her from behind. She was astonished by my wild stumble to the rescue.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“What?”

“I saw some weird flashes up here.”

Her expression, in that light, seemed honestly baffled.

“Must have been a trick of the moonlight. Better turn in pretty soon. I want to get an early start.”

“All right,” she said in a small, troubled voice.

“Is something wrong?”

“No. I’m just lost.”

I knew what she meant without her having to explain.

Going back I ran into Goblin and One-Eye moving up carefully. Fireflies of magic danced in their hands and dread smoldered in their eyes.

Chapter Sixteen

Willow’s war

Willow was amazed. It actually went pretty much the way it was supposed to. The Taglians gave up their territories below the Main without a finger raised to resist. The army of the Shadowmasters came over the river and still met no resistance. It dissolved into its four elements. Still meeting no opposition, those forces broke up into companies, the better to plunder. The looting was so good all discipline collapsed.

Taglian marauders began picking off foragers and small raiding parties, suddenly, everywhere. The invaders suffered a thousand casualties before they understood. Cordy Mather engineered that phase, claiming to emulate his military idols, the Black Company. When the invaders responded with larger foraging parties he countered by leading them into traps and ambushes. At his peak he twice suckered entire companies into densely built and specially prepared towns that he burned down around them. The third time he tried that, though, the invaders did not take the bait. His overconfident Taglians got whipped. Wounded, he went back to Taglios to contemplate the fickleness of fate.

Willow, meantime, was marching around the eastern Taglian territories with Smoke and twenty-five hundred volunteers, keeping close to the enemy commander, trying to look like a menace that would become nemesis the moment the invaders made a mistake. Smoke had no intention of fighting, and was so stubborn even Willow was tempted to grumble.

Smoke claimed he was waiting for something to happen. He wouldn’t say what.

Blade got stuck down south, in the territories yielded without a fight, along the Main River. He was supposed to get the locals together and keep any messengers from going back and forth. It was an easy job. There were no bridges across the river and only four places where it could be forded. The Shadowmasters must have been preoccupied. Their suspicions were not aroused. Or maybe they just assumed no news was good news.

What Smoke was waiting for happened.

Like Blade said, Taglios was hag-ridden by its priests. Three major religions existed there, not in harmony. Each had its splinters, factions, and subcults that feuded among themselves when they weren’t feuding with the others. Taglian culture centered upon religious differences and the efforts of the priests to get ahead of each other. A lot of lower-class people weren’t signed up with anybody. Especially out in the country. Likewise the ruling family, who did not dare get religion if they wanted to stay in charge.

Old Smoke was waiting for one of the boss priests to get the idea he could make a name for himself and his tribe by getting out and busting the heads of the invaders nobody else would fight. “Purely a cynical political maneuver,” Smoke told Willow. “The Prahbrindrah’s waited a long time to show someone what can happen if they don’t do things his way.”

He showed them.

One of the priests got the bright idea. He co

Willow and Smoke and a few others stood on top of a hill where both sides could see them and spent an afternoon watching two thousand men massacre fifteen thousand. The Taglians that got away did so mostly because the invaders were too tired to chase them.

“Now we’ll fight,” Smoke said. So Willow moved his force up and poked till the invaders got aggravated and came after him. He ran till they stopped. Then he poked again. And ran again. And so forth. He got the notion from a poorly remembered version of a time when the Black Company ran for a thousand miles and led their enemies into a trap where they died almost to a man, thinking they had it won almost to the end.