The Black Company

I’d selected animals well. In addition to having taken Feather’s mount, I had acquired others of the same tireless breed. Silent set a brisk pace, eschewing communication till, as we hastened down the outer border of the rocky country, he reined in and signed for me to study my surroundings. He wanted to know the line of flight the Lady had followed approaching the Tower.

I told him I thought we had come in about a mile south of where we were then. He gave me the extra horses and edged near the rocks, proceeded slowly, studying the ground carefully. I paid little attention. He could find sign better than I.

I could have found this trail, though. Silent threw up a hand, then indicated the ground. They had departed the badlands about where the Lady and I had crossed the boundary going the other way. “Trying to make time, not cover his trail,” I guessed.

Silent nodded, stared westward. He signed questions about roads.

The main north-south high road passes three miles west of the Tower. It was the road we followed to Forsberg. We guessed he would head there first. Even in these times there would be traffic enough to conceal the passage of a man and child. From ordinary eyes. Silent believed he could follow.

“Remember, this is his country,” I said. “He knows it better than we do.”

Silent nodded absently, unconcerned. I glanced at the sun. Maybe two hours of daylight left, I wondered how big a lead they had.

We reached the high road. Silent studied it a moment, rode south a few yards, nodded to himself. He beckoned me, spurred his mount.

And so we rode those tireless beasts, hard, hour after hour, after the sun went down, all the night long, into the next day, heading toward the sea, till we were far ahead of our quarry. The breaks were few and far between. I ached everywhere. It was too soon after my venture with the Lady for this.

We halted where the road hugged the foot of a wooded hill. Silent indicated a bald spot that made a good watchpoint. I nodded. We turned off and climbed.

I took care of the horses, then collapsed. “Getting too old for this,” I said, and fell asleep immediately.

Silent wakened me at dusk. “They coming?” I asked.

He shook his head, signed that he did not expect them before tomorrow. But I should keep an eye out anyway, in case Raven was travelling by night.

So I sat under the pallid light of the comet, wrapped in a blanket, shivering in the winter wind, for hour upon hour, alone with thoughts I did not want to think. I saw nothing but a brace of roebuck crossing from woods to farmland in hopes of finding better forage.

Silent relieved me a couple hours before dawn. Oh joy, oh joy. Now I could lie down and shiver and think thoughts I did not want to think. But I did fall asleep sometime, because it was light when Silent squeezed my shoulder...

“They coming?”

He nodded.

I rose, rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands, stared up the road. Sure enough, two figures were coming south, one taller than the other. But at that distance they could have been any adult and child. We packed and readied the horses hurriedly, descended the hill. Silent wanted to wait down the road, around the bend. He told me to get on the road behind them, just in case. You never knew about Raven.

He left. I waited, shivering still, feeling very lonely. The travelers breasted a rise. Yes. Raven and Darling. They walked briskly, but Raven seemed unafraid, certain no one was after him. They passed me. I waited a minute, eased out of the woods, followed them around the toe of the hill.

Silent sat his mount in the middle of the road, leaning forward slightly, looking lean and mean and dark. Raven had stopped fifty feet away, exposed his steel. He held Darling behind him.

She noticed me coming, gri

Raven whirled. A snarl stretched his lips. Anger, possibly even hatred, smoldered in his eyes. I stopped beyond the reach of his knives. He did not look willing to talk.

We all remained motionless for several minutes. Nobody wanted to speak first. I looked at Silent. He shrugged. He had come to the end of his plan.

Curiosity had brought me here. I had satisfied part of it. They were alive, and were ru

To my amazement Raven yielded first. “What’re you doing here, Croaker?” I’d thought him able to outstubborn a stone.

“Looking for you.”

“Why?”

“Curiosity. Me and Silent, we got an interest in Darling. We were worried.”

He frowned. He was not hearing what he had expected.

“You can see she’s all right.”

“Yeah. Looks like. How about you?”

“I look like I’m not?”

I glanced at Silent. He had nothing to contribute. “One wonders, Raven. One wonders.”

He was on the defensive. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Fellow freezes out his buddies. Treats them like shit. Then he deserts. Makes people wonder enough to go find out what’s happening.”

“The Captain know you’re here?”

I glanced at Silent again. He nodded. “Yeah. Want to let us in on it, old buddy? Me, Silent, the Captain, Pickles, Elmo, Goblin, we all maybe got an idea...”

“Don’t try to stop me, Croaker.”

“Why are you always looking for a fight? Who said anything about stopping you? They wanted you stopped, you wouldn’t be out here now. You’d never have gotten away from the Tower.”

He was startled.

“They saw it coming, Pickles and the Old Man. They let you go. Some of the rest of us, we’d like to know why. I mean, like, we think we know, and if it’s what we think, then at least you have my blessing. And Silent’s. And I guess everybodys who didn’t hold you back.”

Raven frowned. He knew what I was hinting, but couldn’t make sense of it. His not being old line Company left a communications gap.

“Put it this way,” I said. “Me and Silent figure you’re going down as killed in action. Both of you. Nobody needs to know any different. But, you know, it’s like you’re ru

It sank in. He said, “Sometimes something comes up

that’s so important you can’t tell your best friends. Could get you all killed.”

“Figured that was it. Hey! Take it easy.”

Silent had dismounted and begun an exchange with Darling. She seemed oblivious to the strain between her friends. She was telling Silent what they had done and where they were headed.

“Think that’s smart?” I asked. “Opal? Couple things you should know, then. One, the Lady won. Guess you figured that. Saw it coming, or you wouldn’t have pulled out. Okay. More important. The Limper is back. She didn’t do him in. She shaped him up and he’s her number one boy now.”

Raven turned pale. It was the first I could recall seeing him truly frightened. But his fear was not for himself. He considered himself a walking dead man, a man with nothing to lose. But now he had Darling, and a cause. He had to stay alive.

“Yeah. The Limper. Me and Silent went over this a lot.” Actually, this had occurred to me only a moment earlier. I felt it would go better if he thought some considered deliberation had gone into it. “We figure the Lady will catch on sooner or later. She’ll want to make a move. If she co

Raven sighed, seemed to lose stature. He put his steel away. “That was my plan. Thought we’d cross to Beryl and hide out there.”

“Beryl is technically only the Lady’s ally, but her word is law there. You’ve got to go somewhere where they’ve never heard of her.”