The Black Company

“Yes.” He spat.

“Shifter wasn’t a bad guy. For one of the Taken.”

“None of them are. For Taken, As long as you don’t get in their way.” He spat again, eyed the Tower. “What’s going on here, Croaker?”

“Eh?” He was as civil as he had been since our return from the field.

“What’s this show all about? Why is she doing it this way?”

I was not sure what he was asking. “I don’t know. She doesn’t confide in me.”

He scowled. “No?” As though he did not believe me! Then he shrugged. “Be interesting to find out.”

“No doubt.” I watched Darling. She was inordinately intrigued by the attack. She asked Raven a stream of questions. They were not simple. You might expect their like from an apprentice general, a prince, someone expected to assume eventual command.

“Shouldn’t she be somewhere safer?” I asked. “I mean...”

“Where?” Raven demanded. “Where would she be safer than with me?” His voice was hard, his eyes narrow with suspicion. Startled, I dropped the subject.

Was he jealous because I had become Darling’s friend? I don’t know. Everything about Raven is strange.

Stretches of the farther trench had vanished. In places the middle trench had been filled and tamped. The Rebel had moved his surviving towers and ramps up to the extreme limit of our artillery. New towers were a-building. New mantlets were everywhere. Men huddled behind every one.

Braving merciless fire, Rebel pioneers bridged the final trench. Counterattacks stalled them again and again, yet they kept coming. They completed their eighth bridge about the third hour after noon.

Vast infantry formations moved forward. They swarmed across the bridges, into the teeth of the arrowstorm. They hit our first line randomly, pelting in like sleet, dying against a wall of spears and shields and swords. Bodies piled up. Our bowmen threatened to fill the ditches around the bridges. And still they came.

I recognized a few ba

They crossed the bridges and formed up, advanced in fair order, exerted heavy pressure on our center. Behind them a second line formed, stronger, deeper, and broader. When it was solid its officers moved it forward a few yards, had their men crouch behind their shields.

Pioneers moved mantlets across, joined them in a sort of palisade. Our heaviest artillery concentrated on these. Behind the ditch, hordes ran fill to selected points.

Though the men on the bottom level were our least reliable-I suspect the lottery was rigged-they repelled the Rebel elite. Success gave them only a brief respite. The next mass attacked.

Our line creaked. It might have broken had the men had anywhere to run. They had the habit of fleeing. But here they were trapped, with no chance of getting up the retaining wall.

That wave receded. On his end Moonbiter counterattacked and routed the enemy before him. He destroyed most of their mantlets and briefly threatened their bridges. I was impressed by his aggressiveness.

It was late. The Lady had not come forth. I suppose she had not doubted we would hold. The enemy launched a last assault, a human wave attack, that came within a whisper of swamping our men. In places the Rebel reached the retaining wall and tried to scale or dismantle it. But our men did not collapse. The incessant rain of arrows broke the Rebel determination.

They withdrew. Fresh units filled in behind the mantlets. A temporary peace settled in. The field belonged to their pioneers.

“Six days,” I said to no one in particular. “I don’t think we can hang on.”

The first line shouldn’t survive tomorrow. The horde would storm the second level. Our archers were deadly as archers, but I doubted they would do well hand-to-hand. Moreover, once forced into close combat they could no longer punish the enemy coming up. Then the Rebel towers would do them as they had been done.

We had cut a narrow trench near the rear of the pyramid top. It served as our latrine. The Captain caught me at my most inelegant. “They need you down on the bottom level, Croaker. Take One-Eye and your crew.”

“What?”

“You’re a physician, aren’t you?”

“Oh,” Silly of me. Should have known I could not remain an observer.

The rest of the Company went down too, to perform other tasks.

Getting down was no trouble, though traffic was heavy on the temporary ramps. Men from the upper level and pyramid top hauled munitions down to the bowmen (the Lady must have squirreled arrows for a generation), brought corpses and casualties up.

“Be a good time to jump us,” I told One-Eye. “Just scamper up the ramps.”

“They’re too busy doing the same things we are.” We passed within ten feet of Soulcatcher. I lifted a hand in tentative greeting. He did the same after a pause. I got the feeling he was startled.

Down we went, and down again, into Stormbringer’s territory.

It was hell down there. Every battlefield is, after, but never had I seen anything like this. Men were down everywhere. Many were Rebels our men hadn’t the energy to finish. Even the troops from up top just booted them aside so they could collect our people. Forty feet away, ignored, Rebel soldiers were gathering their own people and ignoring ours. “It’s like something out of the old A

“Torn wasn’t this bloody.”

“Uhm.” He was there. He went back a long way.

I found an officer and asked where we should set up shop. He suggested we’d be the most use to Bonegnasher.

Going, we passed uncomfortably near Stormbringer. One-Eye’s amulet burned my wrist.

“Friend of yours?” One-Eye asked sarcastically.

“What?”

“Such a look you got from the old spook.”

I shuddered. Lime thread. Taken on the wind. That could have been Stormbringer.

Bonegnasher was a big one, bigger than Shifter, eight feet tall and six hundred pounds of iron mean muscle. He was so strong it was grotesque. He had a mouth like a crocodile, and supposedly had eaten his enemies in the old days. A few of the old stories also call him Bonecrusher, because of his strength.

While I stared, one of his lieutenants told us to go out to the far right flank, where fighting had been so light no medical team had yet been assigned.

We located the appropriate battalion commander. “Set up right here,” he told us. “I’ll have the men brought to you.” He looked sour.

One of his staff volunteered, “He was a company commander this morning. It was hard on officers today.” When you have heavy casualties among your officers they are leading from the front to keep the men from breaking.

One-Eye and I started patching. “Thought you had it easy over here.”

“Easy is relative.” He looked at us hard, talking about easy when we had spent the day loafing on the pyramid.

Torchlight medicine is a bunch of fun. Between us we treated several hundred men. Whenever I paused to work the pain and stiffness out of my hands and shoulders, I glanced at the sky, perplexed. I had expected the Taken to go crazy again tonight.

Bonegnasher ambled into our makeshift surgery, naked to the waist, maskless, looking like an oversized wrestler. He said nothing. We tried to ignore him. His piggy little eyes remained tight as he watched.

One-Eye and I were working on the same man, from opposite ends. He stopped suddenly, head coming up like that of a startled horse. His eye got big. He looked around wildly. “What is it?” I asked.

“I don’t... Odd. It’s gone. For a second... Never mind.”

I kept an eye on him. He was frightened. More frightened than the presence of the Taken justified. As if some personal danger threatened him. I glanced at Bonegnasher. He was watching One-Eye too.

One-Eye did it again later, while we were working separate patients. I looked up. Beyond him, down at waist level, I caught the glow of eyes. A chill scrambled down my spine.