Shadow Games

He was rattled. You couldn’t have tortured it out of him, maybe, but he was scared half to death. He kept looking at the standard and the coach and the horses and the Nar and shuddering.

He was a lot of things, maybe, that he was not going to admit. A liar was the biggest. I thought it might be

interesting, even entertaining, to have him and his bunch along. So I gave him what he wanted. “All right. Tag along. As long as you pull your weight and remember who’s in charge.”

He broke out in smiles. “Great. You got it, chief.” He started chattering at his pals. The old man said something sharp that shut him up.

I asked Frogface, “He give anything away there?”

“Nah. He just said, ’I did it!,’ chief. And went to bragging on his golden tongue.”

“Swan. Where the hell is this Taglios? I don’t have a Taglios on my maps.”

“Let me see.”

Half an hour later I knew his Taglios was a place my best map named Troko Tallies. “Trogo Taglios,” Swan told me. “There’s this monster city, Taglios, that surrounds an older one that was called Trogo. The official name is Trogo Taglios but nobody ever calls it anything but Taglios anymore. It’s a nice place. You’ll like it.”

“I hope so.”

One-Eye said, “He’s going to try to sell you something, Croaker.”

I gri

I was too fussed. She wasn’t far off. She was standing aside, inspecting our new acquisitions from another angle. I beckoned her. “What do you think?” I asked when she joined me. Swan’s eyes popped when he got a good look at her. He was in love.

“Not much. Watch the woman. She’s in charge. And she’s used to getting her own way.”

“Aren’t you all?”

“Cynic.”

“That’s me. To the bone. And you’re the one made me that way, love.”

She gave me a fu

I wondered if we’d ever recover that moment on that hillside so many miles to the north.

We were just coming back to the river, after having walked past the Third Cataract, when Willow joined me as I walked my horse. He eyed the big black nervously and got around where I would be between it and him. He asked, “Are you guys really the Black Company?”

“The one and only. The evil, mean, rude, crude, nasty, and sometimes even unpleasant Black Company. You never spent any time in the military, did you?”

“As little as I could. Man, last I heard there was a thousand of you guys. What happened?”

“Times got hard up north. A year ago we were down to seven men. How long ago did you leave the empire?”

“Way back. Me and Cordy bugged out of Roses maybe a year after you guys were in there after that Rebel general, Raker. I wasn’t much more than a kid. We sort of drifted from one thing to another, headed south. First thing you know, we was across the Sea of Torments. Then we got into some trouble with the imperials, so we had to get out of the empire. Then we just kept drifting, a little bit this year, a little bit that. We hooked up with Blade. Next thing you know, here we are down here. What’re you guys doing here?”

“Going home.” That was all I needed to tell him.

He knew plenty about us if he had come to us knowing Taglios was on our itinerary but not our final destination.

I said, “In a military outfit it’s not acceptable behavior for just anybody to walk up and start shooting the shit with the commander any time they feel like it. I try to keep this outfit looking military. It intimidates the yokels.”

“Yeah. Gotcha. Cha

His Taglios was a long way off. I figured we had time to sort his bunch out. So why press?

Chapter Twenty-Two

Taglios

We returned to the river and sailed down to the Second Cataract. Faster traffic had carried the word that the boys were back. Idon, a bizarre strip of a town, was a ghost city. We saw not a dozen souls there. Once again we had come to a place where the Black Company was remembered. That made me uncomfortable.

What had our forebrethren done down here? The A

Below Idon, while we waited to find a bargemaster with guts enough to take us south, I had Murgen plant the standard. Mogaba, as serious as ever, got a ditch dug and our encampment lightly fortified. I swiped a boat and crossed the river and climbed the hills to the ruins of Cho’n Delor. I spent a day roaming that haunted memorial to a dead god, alone except for crows, always wondering about the sort of men who had gone before me.

I suspected and feared that they had been men very much like me. Men caught in the rhythm and motion and pace, unable to wriggle free.

The A

Most had left their mark only when he recorded their passing.

I have been accused of the same. It has been said that too often when I bother to mention someone in particular it is only as a name of the slain. And maybe there’s truth in that. Or maybe that’s getting it backward. There is always pain in writing about those who have perished before me. Even when I mention them only in passing. These are my brethren, my family. Now, almost, my children. These A

But I was speaking of ruins, the spoor of battle.

The Pastel Wars must have been a struggle as bitter as that we had endured in the north, confined to a smaller territory. The scars were still grim. They might take a thousand years to heal.

Twice during that outing I thought I glimpsed the mobile stump I had seen from the wall of the Temple of Travellers’ Repose. I tried getting closer, for a better look, but it always disappeared on me.

It was never more than a glimpse from the corner of my eye, anyway. Maybe I was imagining it.

I did not get to explore as thoroughly as I wanted. I was tempted to hang around but the old animal down inside told me I did not want to be stranded in those ruins after dark. It told me wicked things stalked Cho’n Delor’s night. I listened. I went back over the river. Mogaba met me at the shore. He wanted to know what I had found. He was as interested in the Company’s past as I was.

I liked and respected the big black man more with every hour. That evening I formalized his hitherto de facto status as commander of the Company infantry. And I resolved to take Murgen’s A

Maybe it was just a hunch. Whatever, I decided that it was time I got the Company’s internal workings whipped into order.

All these natives, lately, were afraid of us. They carried old grudges. Maybe farther down the river there was somebody with less fear and a bigger grudge.

We were on the brink of lands where the Company’s adventures were recalled in the early lost volumes of the A

While I moped around Cho’n Delor One-Eye found a southern bargemaster willing to carry us all the way to Trogo Taglios. The man’s fee was exorbitant, but Willow Swan assured me I was unlikely to get a better offer. We were haunted by our historical legacy.

I got no help from Swan or his companions unearthing that.