Shadow Games

Swan and the Prahbrindrah chattered. The Prahbrindrah looked irked. He glanced at One-Eye’s pet, chattered some more.

“He wants to know about your quest.”

“You heard it all coming down the river. You told him already.”

“Man, he’s trying to be polite.”

I shrugged. “How come so much interest in a few people just passing through?”

Swan started looking nervous. We were starting to move in toward it. The Prahbrindrah said several sentences.

Swan said, “The Prahbrindrah says you’ve talked about where you’ve been-and he would like to hear more about your adventures because far peoples and places intrigue him-and your quest, but you haven’t really said where you’re going.” He sounded like he was trying to translate very accurately. Frogface gave me a shallow nod.

We had told Swan’s bunch little during the passage south from the Third Cataract. We had hidden from them as much as they from us. I decided to pronounce the name maybe better kept to myself. “Khatovar.”

Willow did not bother translating.

The Prahbrindrah chattered.

“He says you shouldn’t do that.”

“Too late to stop, Swan.”

“Then you got troubles you can’t even imagine, Captain.” Swan translated. The Prince replied. He got excited.

“Boss says it’s your neck and you can shave with an axe if you want, but no sane man says that name. Death could strike you down before you finished.” He shrugged and smirked as he spoke. “Though it’s likely more mundane forces will slaughter you if you insist on chasing that chimera. There’s bad territory between here and there.” Swan looked at the Prince and rolled his eyes. “We hear tales of monsters and sorcery.”

“Hey, really.” I plucked a morsel from a small bird, chewed, swallowed. “Swan, I brought this outfit here all the way from the Barrowland. You remember the Barrowland. Monsters and sorcery? Seven thousand miles. I never lost a man. You remember the river? Folks who got in my way didn’t live to be sorry. Listen close. I’m trying to say a couple of things here. I’m eight hundred miles from the edge of the map. I won’t stop now. I can’t.” It was one of the longest speeches I’ve ever made, outside reading to the men from the A

“Your problem is those eight hundred miles, Cap. The other seven thousand were a stroll in the country.”

The Prahbrindrah said something short. Swan nodded but did not translate. I looked at Frogface. He told me, “Glittering stone.”

“What?”

“That’s what he said, chief. Glittering stone. I don’t know what he meant.”

“Swan?”

“It’s a local expression. The walking dead’ is the closest way to say it in Rosean. It has something to do with old times and something called the Free Companies of Khatovar, which was bad medicine back when.”

I raised an eyebrow. “The Black Company is the last of the Free Companies of Khatovar, Swan.”

He gave me a sharp look. Then he translated.

The Prince chattered back. He stared at One-Eye’s victim as he did.

“Cap, he says he supposes anything is possible. But a returning company ain’t been spotted since his granddaddy’s granddaddy was a pup. He wonders, though. Says maybe you’re real. Your coming was foretold.” Quick glance at Frogface, with a scowl, like the imp was a traitor. “And the Shadowmasters have warned him against dealing with you. Though that would be the natural inclination, considering the devastation and despair spread by the fanatics of old.”

I glanced at Frogface. He nodded. Swan was striving for exactitude.

Lady said, “He’s playing games, Croaker. He wants something. Tell him to get to the point.”

“That would be nice, Swan.”

He continued translating, “But yesterday’s terror means nothing today. You are not those fanatics. That was seen on the river. And Trogo Taglios will bow the neck to no one. If the pestilence in the south fears a band of freebooters, he is willing to forget the ancient scores and tend to those of his own time. If you too can forget.”

I didn’t have the foggiest what the hell he was talking about.

“Croaker!” Lady snapped, catching the scent of what was in the back of my mind almost before I did. “We don’t have time for you to indulge your curiosity about the past. There’s something going on here. Tend to it before we get our butts in a sling.”

She was turning into one of the guys for sure.

“You getting the idea where we stand, Swan? You don’t really figure we think ru

Some not so very plain talk took a while. Darkness came and the moon rose. It climbed the sky. The operators of the grove became exasperated but were too polite to ask their ruling prince to bug off. And while we stayed, so did the scores who had come out to look at us.

“Definitely something going on,” I whispered to Lady. “But how do I dig it out of him?”

The Prahbrindrah played down everything he said, but the presence of the city fathers shrieked that Taglios was approaching a perilous crossroads. An undercurrent in what I heard told me the Prince wanted to spit in the face of calamity.

Willow tried to explain. “A while back-and nobody’s sure exactly when because nobody was looking for it-what you might call a darkness turned up in a place called Pityus, which is like four hundred miles southeast of Taglios. Nobody worried about it. Then it spread to Tragevec and Kiaulune, which are pretty important, and Six and Fred, and all of a sudden everybody was worried but it was too late. You had this huge chunk of country ruled by these four sorcerers that refugees called Shadowmasters. They had a thing about shadows. Changed Tragevec’s name to Shadowlight and Kiaulune to Shadowcatch and nowadays most everybody calls their empire the Shadowlands.”

“You’re going to get around to telling me what this’s got to do with us, aren’t you?”

“Within a year after the Shadowmasters took over they had those cities-which hadn’t practiced war since the terror of Khatovar-armed and playing imperial games. In the years since, the Shadowmasters have conquered most of the territories between Taglios’s southern frontiers and the edge of the map.”

“I’m starting to smell it, Croaker,” Lady said. She had grown grim as she listened.

“I am, too. Go on, Swan.”

“Well, before they got to us ... Before they went to work on Taglios they had some kind of falling out down there. Started feuding. The refugees talk about the whole big show. Intrigues, betrayals, subversions, assassinations, alliances shifting all over. Whenever it looked like one of them was starting to get ahead the others would gang up. Was like that for fifteen, eighteen years. So Taglios wasn’t threatened.”

“But now they are?”

“Now they’re all looking this way. They made a move last year but it didn’t work out for them.” He looked smug. “What they got here in this berg is all the guts anybody could ask-and not a bat in broad daylight’s notion what the hell to do with them. Me and Cordy and Blade, we kind of got drafted last year. But I wasn’t never much of a soldier and neither was they. As generals we’re like tits on a boar hog.”

“So this isn’t about bodyguarding and dirty-tricking for your Prince at all. Is it? He wants to drag us into his fight. Did he think he could get us on the cheap or something? Didn’t you make a report about our trip down here?”

“He’s the kind of guy who’s got to check things for himself. Maybe he figured to see if you rated yourself cheap. I told him all the stories I ever heard about you guys. He still wanted to see for himself. He’s a pretty good old boy. First prince I ever seen that tries to do what a prince is supposed to do.”

“Rarer than frog hair, then. I’m sure. But you said it, Swan. We’re on a mission from the gods. We don’t have time to mess in local disputes. Maybe when we’re on our way back.” Swan laughed. “What’s so fu