Shadow Games

Lady stood there shaking her head.

Were even those three gone? I had killed Limper myself once, and he had come back...

Chills got me again.

When they were Shadowmasters they were anonymous creeps who had only standard-issue cause to do me grief. But the Taken... Some of them had very special and personal cause to hate the Company.

This moment of revelation had turned it into a whole different kind of war.

I have no idea what passed between Shifter and Bringer, but it left the air crackling with electric hatred.

Stormbringer seemed powerless. Why? A few minutes ago she had been bringing in that monster of a storm to whip on us. Shifter was no greater power than she. Unless, somehow, he had come upon that bane of all the Taken, a True Name.

I looked at Lady.

She knew it. She knew all their True Names. She had not lost her knowledge when she had lost her powers.

Power. I had not thought about what I’d had here, almost under my thumb, all this time. What she knew was worth the ransoms of a hundred princes. The secrets locked in her head could enslave or deliver empires.

If you knew she had them.

Some folks knew.

She had a lot more guts than I’d realized, coming out of the Tower and empire with me.

I had to do some rethinking and strategic reorienta-tion. These Shadowmasters, Shifter, the Howler, they all knew what I’d just realized. She was damned lucky she hadn’t been snatched already and squeezed dry.

Shifter laid his huge ugly hands on Stormbringer. And only then did she begin to resist. With sudden, startling violence she did something that hurled Shifter all the way across the parapet. He lay there for a moment, eyes glassy.

Bringer made a break.

I came around with a swordstroke I brought in from the moon, right into her belly. It did not mark her but it stopped her in her tracks. Lady hacked at her overhand. She rolled away from the stroke. I whacked her again. But she got up and started heading out again. And her fingers were dancing. Sparks played between them.

Oh, shit.

One-Eye tripped her. Lady and I hacked at her again, without much effect. Then Murgen let her have it with the spearhead on the lance that bore the Company standard.

She howled like one of the damned.

What the hell?

She started moving again. But now Shifter was back. He had taken the form of the forvalaka, the black were-leopard almost impossible to kill or injure. He jumped on Stormbringer and started tearing her apart.

She gave damned near as good as she got. We backed away, stayed away, gave them room.

I don’t know what Shifter did or when. Or if he did anything at all. One-Eye might have imagined it all. But sometime during the thing the little black man sidled up and whispered, “He did it, Croaker. It was him that killed Tom-Tom.”

That was a long time ago. I had almost no feelings about it anymore. But One-Eye had not forgotten nor forgiven. That was his brother...

“What you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Something. I got to do something.”

“What’ll that do to the rest of us? We won’t have an angel anymore.”

“Ain’t go

He was right. And chances were damned good Shifter would stop being Lady’s faithful old dog, too. If there was any getting him, this was the time.

The combatants went on for maybe fifteen minutes, shredding each other. I got the impression things were not going as easy as Shifter had hoped. Bringer was putting up a damned good fight.

But he won. Sort of. She stopped resisting. He lay panting, unable to move. She’d locked her limbs around him. He bled from a hundred small wounds. He cursed softly, and I thought I heard him damning someone for helping her, heard him threatening to get someone next.

“You got any special use for him now?” I asked Lady. “I don’t know how much you knew. I don’t care now. But you better think about what he’s going to have on his mind now he don’t need you and me for a stalking horse anymore.”

She shook her head slowly.

Something slid over the edge of the parapet behind her. Another, smaller forvalaka. I thought we were in big trouble, but Shifter’s apprentice made a tactical error. She began to shift forms. She finished just in time to shriek “No!” at One-Eye.

One-Eye had made him a club out of something, and with two quick and heroic swings he bashed Stormbringer and Shapeshifter into complete unconsciousness. They had weakened one another that much.

Shifter’s companion flew at him.

Murgen tripped her by tangling her feet with the head of the lance he carried. He cut her. Blood got all over the standard. She screamed like she was trapped in Hell’s agony.

I recognized her, then. She had done a lot of yelling the last time I’d seen her, so long ago.

Sometime during the excitement a whole herd of crows had gathered on the merlons, out of the way. They started laughing.

Everybody jumped on the woman before she could do

anything. Goblin did some kind of swift magical bind that left her unable to do anything but wiggle her eyes.

One-Eye looked at me and said, “You got any suture with you, Croaker? I got a needle but I don’t think I got enough thread.”

What? “Some.” I always carried some medical odds and ends.

“Gimme.”

I gave him.

He whacked Shifter and Bringer again. “Just to make sure they’re out. They don’t got no special powers when they’re out.”

He squatted down and started sewing their mouths shut. He finished Shifter, said, “Get him stripped. Whack him if he stirs.”

What the hell?

It got gruesome, then more gruesome. “What the hell you doing?” I demanded.

The crows were having a party.

“Sewing all the holes shut. So the devils don’t get out.”

“What?” Maybe it made sense to him. It didn’t to me.

“Old trick for getting rid of evil witch doctors back home.” When he finished with the orifices he sewed fingers and toes together. “Put them in a sack with a hundred pounds of rocks and throw them in the river.”

Lady said, “You’ll have to burn them. And grind what’s left into powder and scatter the powder on the wind.”

One-Eye looked at her for ten seconds. “You mean I done all this work for nothing?”

“No. It’ll help. You don’t want them getting excited while you’re roasting them.”

I gave her a startled look. That was not like her. I turned to Murgen. “You want to get that standard up?”

One-Eye stirred Shifter’s apprentice with a toe. “What about this one? Think I should take care of her, too?”

“She hasn’t done anything.” I squatted beside her. “I remember you now, darling. It took me a while because

we didn’t see that much of you in Juniper. You weren’t very nice to my buddy Marron Shed.” I looked at Lady. “What were you figuring on making out of her?”

She did not answer.

“Be that way. We’ll talk later.” I looked at the apprentice. “Lisa Daela Bowalk. You hear me name your name, the way these others did?” Crows chuckled to one another. “I’m going to give you a break. That you probably don’t deserve. Murgen, find some place to lock this one up. We’ll turn her loose when we’re ready to move out. Goblin, you help One-Eye with whatever he’s got to do.” I looked at the Company standard, bloodstained once again, flying defiantly again. “You” — pointing at One-Eye — “take care of it right. Unless you want two more of them after us the way Limper was.”

He gulped air. “Yeah.”

“Lady, I told you. Tonight in Stormgard. Let’s go find someplace.”

Something was wrong with me. I felt mildly depressed, vaguely let down, once again victim of an anticlimax, of a hollow victory. Why? Two great wickednesses were about to be removed from the face of the earth. Luck had marched with the Company once more. We had added more impossible triumphs to our roll of victories.