Shadows Linger

The gate opened immediately. Raven scrambled onto the wagon’s seat. “Get up, mules.”

“You’re not going inside?”

“Why not?”

“Hey. No way. No.”

“Shut up, Shed. You want your money, you help unload.”

Shed stifled a whimper. He hadn’t bargained for this.

Raven drove through the gate, turned right, halted be-neath a broad arch. A single lantern battled the darkness clotting the passageway. Raven swung down. Shed followed, his nerves shrieking. They dragged the bodies out of the wagon and swung them onto stone slabs nearby. Then Raven said, “Get back on the wagon. Keep your mouth shut.” The one body stirred. Shed grunted. Raven pinched his leg savagely. “Shut up.”

A shadowy shape appeared. It was tall, thin, clad in loose black pantaloons and a hooded shirt. It examined each body briefly, seemed pleased. It faced Raven. Shed glimpsed a face all of sharp angles and shadows, lustrous, olive, cold, with a pair of softly luminous eyes. “Thirty. Thirty. Forty. Thirty. Seventy,” it said. Raven countered, “Thirty. Thirty. Fifty. Thirty. One hundred.”

“Forty. Eighty.” “Forty-five. Ninety.” “Forty. Ninety.” “Done.”

They were dickering! Raven was not interested in quibbling over the old people. The tall being would not advance his offer for the youth. But the dying man was negotiable.

Shed watched the tall being count out coins at the feet of the corpses. That was a damned fortune! Two hundred twenty pieces of silver! With that he could tear the Lily down and build a new place. He could get out of the Buskin altogether.

Raven scooped the coins into his coat pocket. He gave Shed five. “That’s all?”

“Isn’t that a good night’s work?”

It was a good month’s work, and then some. But to get only five of...

“Last time we were partners,” Raven said, swinging onto the driver’s seat. “Maybe we will be again. But tonight you’re a hired hand. Understand?” There was a hard edge to his voice. Shed nodded, beset by new fears.

Raven backed the wagon. Shed felt a sudden chill. That archway was hot as hell. He shuddered, feeling the hunger of the thing watching them.

Dark, glassy, jointless stone slid past. “My god!” He could see into the wall. He saw bones, fragments of bones, bodies, pieces of bodies, all suspended as if floating in the night. As Raven turned toward the gate, he saw a staring face. “What kind of place is this?”

“I don’t know, Shed. I don’t want to know. All I care is, they pay good money. I need it. I have a long way to go.”

Chapter Twelve

The Barrowland

The Taken called the Limper met the Company at Frost. We’d spent a hundred and forty-six days on the march. They were long days and hard, grinding, men and animals going on more by habit than desire. An outfit in good shape, like ours, is capable of covering fifty or even a hundred miles in a day, pushing hell out of it, but not day after week after month, upon incredibly miserable roads. A smart commander does not push on a long march. The days add up, each leaving its residue of fatigue, till men begin collapsing if the pace is too desperate.

Considering the territories we crossed, we made damned good time. Between Tome and Frost lie mountains where we were lucky to make five miles a day, deserts we had to wander in search of water, rivers that took days to cross using makeshift rafts. We were fortunate to reach Frost having lost only two men.

The Captain shone with a glow of accomplishment-till the military governor summoned him.

He assembled the officers and senior noncoms when he returned. “Bad news,” he told us. “The Lady is sending the Limper to lead us across the Plain of Fear. Us and the caravan we’ll escort.”

Our response was surly. There was bad blood between the Company and the Limper. Elmo asked, “How soon will we leave, sir?” We needed rest. None had been promised, of course, and the Lady and the Taken seem unconscious of human frailties, but still...

“No time specified. Don’t get lazy. He’s not here now, but he could turn up tomorrow.”

Sure. With the flying carpets the Taken use, they can turn up anywhere within days. I muttered, “Let’s hope other business keeps him away a while.”

I did not want to encounter him again. We had done him wrong, frequently, way back. Before Charm we worked closely with a Taken called Soulcatcher. Catcher used us in several schemes to discredit Limper, both out of old enmity and because Catcher was secretly working on behalf of the Dominator. The Lady was taken in. She nearly destroyed the Limper, but rehabilitated him instead, and brought him back for the final battle.

Way, way back, when the Domination was aborning, centuries before the foundation of the Lady’s empire, the Dominator overpowered his greatest rivals and compelled them into his service. He accumulated ten villains that way, soon known as the Ten Who Were Taken. When the White Rose raised the world against the Dominator’s wickedness, the Ten were buried with him. She could destroy none of them outright.

Centuries of peace sapped the will of the world to guard itself. A curious wizard tried to contact the Lady. The Lady manipulated him, effected her release. The Ten rose with her. Within a generation she and they forged a new dark empire. Within two they were embattled with the Rebel, whose prophets agreed the White Rose would be reincarnated to lead them to a final victory.

For a while it looked like they would win. Our armies collapsed. Provinces fell. Taken feuded and destroyed one another. Nine of the Ten perished. The Lady managed to Take three Rebel chieftains to replace a portion of her losses: Feather, Journey, and Whisper-likely the best general since the White Rose. She gave us a terrible time before her Taking.

The Rebel prophets were correct in their prophecies, except about the last battle. They expected a reincarnated White Rose to lead them. She did not. They did not find her in time.

She was alive then. But she was living on our side of the battleline, unaware of what she was. I learned who she was. It is that knowledge which makes my life worthless should I be put to the question.

“Croaker!” the Captain snapped. “Wake up!” Everybody looked at me, wondering how I could daydream through whatever he’d said.

“What?”

“You didn’t hear me?”

“No, sir.”

He glowered his best bear glower. “Listen up, then. Be ready to travel by carpet when the Taken arrive. Fifty pounds of gear is your limit.”

Carpet? Taken? What the hell? I looked around. Some of the men gri

Patiently, the Captain explained, “The Lady wants ten men sent to help Whisper and Feather in the Barrowland. Doing what I don’t know. You’re one of the ones she picked.”

Flutter of fear. “Why me?” It was rough, back when I was her pet.

“Maybe she still loves you. After all these years.”

“Captain...”

“Because she said so, Croaker.”

“I guess that’s good enough. Sure can’t argue with it. Who else?”

“Pay attention and you’d know these things. Worry about it later. We have other fish to fry now.”

Whisper came to Frost before the Limper. I found myself tossing a pack aboard her flying carpet. Fifty pounds. The rest I had left with One-Eye and Silent.

The carpet was a carpet only by courtesy, because tradition calls it that. Actually, it is a piece of heavy fabric stretched on a wooden frame a foot high when grounded. My fellow passengers were Elmo, who would command our team, and Kingpin. Kingpin is a lazy bastard, but he swings a mean blade.

Our gear, and another hundred pounds belonging to men who would follow us later, rested at the center of the carpet. Shaking, Elmo and Kingpin tied themselves in place at the carpet’s two rear corners. My spot was the left front. Whisper sat at the right. We were heavily bundled, almost to immobility. We would be flying fast and high, Whisper said. The temperature upstairs would be low.