Shadow Games

I was about to follow up last, with Murgen, when Murgen said, “Hold up. Somebody’s coming.” He pointed.

I looked into the drizzle to the south and saw three shapes, riders coming in. Their mounts were tall enough that they could be nothing but Lady’s gifts. Swan cursed the delay but we waited.

The three were Hagop, Otto, and the roi Shadid. Shadid looked ragged. And Hagop and Otto were wounded. “Damn you two. Can’t you take a crap without getting hurt?” In the thirty or so years I had known them it seemed they had come up wounded about three times a year. And survived everything. Pd begun to suspect they were immortal and the blood was the price they paid.

“They piled an ambush on top of the ambush, Croaker,” Hagop said. “They ran us down that valley right into another gang on horseback.”

My stomach tightened. “And?”

He put on a feeble grin. “I figure they’re sorry they did. We cut them up bad.”

“Where are the others?”

“I don’t know. We scattered. Lady said for Shadid to ride back up here with us and wait. She led them off.”

“All right. Blade. Why don’t you show us where to roost?”

Murgen looked at me with a question unspoken. I told him, “Yeah. We’ll get them settled. Then we’ll go.”

The place Blade took us wasn’t really an i

I got Otto and Hagop sewed up and bandaged and generally settled into a routine they knew all too well. Meanwhile, the householder brought food, for which Swan expressed our sincere gratitude.

Murgen said, “It’s going to be getting dark, Croaker.”

“I know. Swan, we’re going put to find the others. Got a spare horse if you want to ride along.”

“You kidding? Go out in that muck when I don’t have to? Hell. All right. I guess.” He started levering himself out of his chair.

“Sit down, Willow,” Mather said. “I’ll go. I’m in better shape than you are.”

Swan said, “You talked me into it, you smooth-talking son of a bitch. I don’t know how you do it, you golden-tongued bastard. You can get anything you want out of me. Be careful.”

“Ready?” Mather asked me. He stifled a small smile.

“Yeah.”

We went out and climbed onto the horses, who were begi

“Cordy can tell you better than me. I just stuck with them.”

The roi was not setting a blistering pace. I fought down the growls breeding in my gut. I kept telling me she was a big girl and she’d been taking care of herself since before I was born. But the man in me kept saying that’s your woman, you got to take care of her.

Sure.

“Cordy? I know you guys don’t work for me and you got your own priorities, but...”

“Nothing to cover up, Captain. Word came that some of you guys was going to ride out. That boggled the Woman. She figured you all to make a break for the Main in a mob and learn about the Shadowmasters the hard way. Instead, you went to scout it. She didn’t think you were that smart.”

“We’re talking about the old broad you guys brought down the river, right. The Radisha?”

“Yeah. We call her the Woman. Blade hung it on her before we knew who she was.”

“And she knew we were heading out before we went. Interesting. This is a wondrous time of my life, Mr. Mather. For the last year everybody in the world has known what I was going to do before I did. It’s enough to make a guy nervous.”

We passed some trees. In one I spied this incredibly bedraggled crow. I laughed, and hoped aloud he was as miserable as me. The others eyed me uncertainly. I wondered if I shouldn’t start cultivating a new image. Work it up slowly. All the world dreads a madman. If I played it right...

“Hey, Cordy, old travelling buddy. You sure you don’t know anything about those little brown guys?”

“All I know is they tried to ice us when we was headed north. Nobody ever saw anybody like them before. They figure to be out of the Shadowlands.”

“Why are the Shadowmasters paranoid about us?” I did not expect an answer. I did not get one. “Cordy, you guys really serious about wi

“I am. For Taglios. I found something there I never found anywhere else. Willow too, though you could roast him and never get it out of him. I don’t know about Blade. I guess he’s in because we’re in. He’s got one and a half friends in the world and nothing else to live for. He’s just going on.”

“One and a half?”

“Willow he’s got. I’m the half. We pulled him out when somebody threw him to the crocodiles. He stuck because he owed us a life. After what we’ve been through since then if you was keeping accounts you couldn’t figure who owes who what anymore. I can’t tell you about the real Blade. He never lets you see that.”

“What are we into? Or is that something you figure you shouldn’t tell me?”

“What?”

“There’s more going on than your Woman and the Prahbrindrah trying to get us to keep the Shadowmasters out. Otherwise they’d make a straight deal instead of trying to con us.”

We travelled a mile while he thought. He finally said, “I don’t know for sure. I think they’re doing the way they are because of the way the Black Company did Taglios before.”

“I thought so. And we don’t know what pur forebreth-ren did. And no one will tell us. It’s like one giant conspiracy where everybody in Taglios won’t tell us anything. In a city that big you’d think I’d find one guy with an axe to grind.”

“You’d find platoons if you looked in the right place. All them priests spend their lives looking to cut each others’ throats.”

He had given me something there. I wasn’t sure what. “I’ll keep it in mind. I don’t know if I can handle priests, though.”

“They’re like any other guys if you get your bluff in.”

The gloom closed in tighter as the day advanced. I was so soaked I no longer paid that much attention. We hit a stretch where we had to go single file. Cordy and Murgen dropped back. “I picked up a few things I’ll tell you about later,” Murgen said before he went.

I moved up behind the roi to ask how much farther. It was just the misery of the day, but I felt like I’d been travelling for weeks.

Something whipped across our path so suddenly that that unflappable mount of Shadid’s reared and whi

I caught only a glimpse. It looked like a monster grey wolf with a deformed pup clinging to its back. It vanished before my eye could track it.

Do wolves do that? Carry their young on their backs?

I laughed almost hysterically. Why worry about that when I ought to be wondering if there was such a thing as a wolf the size of a pony?

Murgen and Cordy caught up and wanted to know what had happened. I said I didn’t know because I was no longer sure I had seen what I had seen.

But the wonder lay back there in the shadows of my mind, ripening.

Shadid stopped two miles past the place where we’d been ambushed originally. It was getting hard to see. He peered around, trying to read landmarks. He grunted, moved out to his left, off the road. I spied signs suggesting this was the way he had come with Otto and Hagop.

After another half mile the ground dropped into a small valley where a narrow creek ran. Rocks stuck up seemingly at random. Likewise, trees grew in scatters. It was now so dark I could not see more than twenty feet.