Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South (29 page)

Dorotea Senjak is with them.”

A long stillness followed. Finally, the one who spoke so seldom observed, “That
alone explains why our friend would send men north secretly. How dearly he would
love to own her.”

The female replied, “For more reasons than the obvious. There appears to be a
relationship with the Company’s Captain. She would be a valuable resource if
that relationship is strong enough to be manipulated.”

“She must be killed as soon as possible.”

“No! We must capture her. If he can use her, so can we. Think what she knows.

What she was. She might hold the key to ridding the world of him and of closing
the gateway. She may be powerless but she has not lost her memory.”

The one who spoke seldom began to laugh. His laughter was as insane as that
heard in Overlook. He was thinking anyone could use the memories of Dorotea
Senjak. Anyone!

The female recognized that laugh, understood what was happening in his mind,

knew she and her companion would have to proceed very carefully. But she
pretended not to see. She asked her companion, “Have you contacted the one in
the swamps?”

“He wants nothing to do with us or our troubles. He is content with his fetid,

humid little empire. But he will come around.”

“Good. We’re agreed? We advance the schedule?”

Heads nodded.

“I will send the orders immediately.”

It had not been a good day. It got no better because the sun went down. The high
had been Frogface reporting Sindawe reaching Vejagedhya. The low followed
immediately. There was no material to fortify the town. A ditch would be it.

But the ground was so sodden the walls of a ditch would keep collapsing.

Oh, well. If the gods were out to get us they were out to get us. All our
wriggling on the hook wouldn’t change a thing.

I was ready to collapse into bed when Murgen burst in. I was so tired I was
seeing double. Two of him did not improve the state of the universe. “What now?”

I snapped.

“Maybe big trouble. Goblin and One-Eye are down at Swan’s place, drunk on their
asses, and they’ve started in. I don’t like the smell of it.”

I got up, resigned to another sleepless night. It had been a long time brewing.

It might get out of hand. “What are they doing?”

“Just the usual, so far. But there’s no fun in it this time. There’s an
undercurrent of viciousness. Anyway, it stinks like somebody could get hurt.”

“Horses ready?”

“I sent word.”

I grabbed up the officer’s baton some Nar had tossed me as we had approached
Gea-Xle. No special reason other than that it was the nearest thing handy for
thumping heads.

The barracks was quiet as we passed through. The men sensed something afoot. By
the time I reached the stables Mogaba and Lady had joined the parade. Murgen
explained while they cursed our Taglian stablehands into readying two more
horses.

That the feud had gotten out of hand was obvious from blocks away. Fires
illuminated the night. Taglians were coming out to see what was happening.

The wizards had squared off in the street outside Swan’s place. That had been
gutted. Fires flickered up and down the street, none major, just patches gnawing
the faces of buildings, evidence of the errant aim of a couple of drunken
sorcerers.

Those troublesome little shits were having difficulty standing, let alone
shooting straight. So maybe the gods do watch out for fools and drunks. Had they
been sober they would have murdered each other.

Unconscious bodies lay scattered around. Swan and Mather and Blade and several
guys from the Company were among them. They had tried to break it up and gotten
creamed for their trouble.

One-Eye and Goblin were escalating. One-Eye had a pained-looking Frogface sicced
on Goblin. Goblin had something that looked like a black snake of smoke growing
out of his belt pouch. It was trying to get past Frogface. When the things
grappled a shower of light washed the street, revealing Taglians crouched,

watching from relative safety.

I halted before they noticed me. “Lady. What’s that thing Goblin’s got?”

“Can’t tell from here. Something he shouldn’t. A match for Frogface, which I
would have thought was out of One-Eye’s class.” She sounded vaguely troubled.

There were times I’d had that notion myself. It did not seem reasonable that you
could walk into a shop and buy a Frogface off the shelf. But it hadn’t bothered
One-Eye, and he was the expert.

Frogface and the snake came to grips midway between their masters. They started
grunting and straining and screaming and thumping around. I wondered aloud, “Is
that what Goblin brought back from the country?”

“What?”

“From the first time I saw him after his set-to with the brown guys directing
the shadows he had this smugness about him. Like he finally had him some way to
whip the world.”

Lady thought. “If he picked it up from the Shadowmasters’ men it could be a
plant. Shifter could tell us for sure.”

“He ain’t here. Let’s make the assumption.”

The last fire burned itself out. Goblin and One-Eye were totally preoccupied.

One-Eye stumbled over his own bootlace. For a moment it looked like Goblin would
get the upper hand. Frogface barely turned the snake’s strike.

“Enough. We can’t do without them, much as I’d like to bury them both and have
done with their crap.” I spurred my horse. Goblin was nearest me. He barely
started to turn. I leaned down and thumped his head. I did not see the result. I
was on One-Eye already. I whacked him up side the head, too.

I turned for a second charge but Lady, Mogaba, and Murgen had them wrapped up.

The battle between Frogface and the snake died out. But they did not. They eyed
one another across ten feet of pavement.

I swung down. “Frogface. Can you talk? Or are you as crazy as your boss?”

“He’s crazy, Cap, not me. But I got an indenture. I got to do what he says.”

“Yeah? Tell me this. What’s that thing growing out of Goblin’s pouch?”

“A kind of imp. In another form. Where’d he come up with it, Cap?”

“I wonder myself. Murgen, check these other guys out. See if we’ve got any real
casualties. Mogaba, drag that little shit over here. I’m going to knock some
heads together.”

We plunked them down side by side with Lady and Mogaba holding them sitting from
behind. They began to come around. Murgen came to tell me none of the
unconscious men were injured.

That was something.

One-Eye and Goblin looked up at me. I paced back and forth, smacking the baton
into my hand. My dictator’s stalk. I whirled on them. “Next time this happens
I’m going to tie you two into a sack, face-to-face, and drop you in the river. I
don’t have the patience for it. Tomorrow, while your hangovers are still killing
you, you’re going to get up and come down here and make good fhe damage. The
expense will come out of your pockets. Do you understand?”

Goblin looked a little sheepish. He managed a feeble nod. One-Eye did not
respond.

“One-Eye? You want another whack up side the head?”

He nodded. Sullenly.

“Good. Now. Goblin. That thing you brought back from the country. Chances are it
belongs to the Shadowmasters. A plant. Before you go to bed I want it stuffed in
a bottle or something and buried. Deep.”

His eyes bugged. “Croaker . . . ”

“You heard me.”

An angry, almost roaring hiss filled the street. The snake thing came up off the
paving and struck at me.

Frogface flung in from the side, deflecting it.

In a sudden, drunken, bug-eyed panic Goblin and One-Eye both tried to get it
under control. I backed off. It was a wild three minutes before Goblin got it
squished into his pouch. He stumbled into Swan’s place. A minute later he came
out carrying a closed wine jar. He looked at me funny. “I’ll bury it, Croaker.”

He sounded embarrassed.

One-Eye was getting himself together, too. He took a deep breath. “I’ll give him
a hand.”

“Right. Try not to talk too much. Don’t get started again.”

He had the grace to look embarrassed too. He gave Frogface a thoughtful look. I
noted that he did not take the imp along to do the heavy work.

“What now?” Mogaba asked.

“Pains me all to hell, but now we count on their consciences to keep them in
line. For a while. If I didn’t need them so much I’d make it a night they’d
remember the rest of their lives. I don’t need this shit. What’re you grinning
about?”

Lady did not stop. “It’s smaller scale, but this is what it was like trying to
keep a rein on the Ten Who Were Taken.”

“Yeah? Maybe so. Murgen, you were out here boozing anyway, you finish picking up
the pieces. I’m going to get some sleep.”

It was worse than I thought it would be. The mud seemed bottomless. The first
day out of Taglios, after a cheering parade, we made twelve miles. I did not
feel desperate. But the road was better nearer the city. After that it got
worse. Eleven miles the next day, nine each of the three days following. We made
that good a time only because we had the elephants along.

The day I wanted to reach the Ghoja ford I was still thirty miles away.

Then Shifter came, wearing his wolf shape, prancing in out of the wilds.

The rains had ended but the sky remained overcast, so the ground did not dry.

The sun was no ally.

Shifter came with a smaller companion. It looked as though his understudy had
caught on to shifting.

He spent an hour with Lady before we moved out. Then he galloped away again.

Lady did not look cheerful.

“Bad news?”

“The worst. They’ve put one over on us, maybe.”

I did not betray the sudden tightness in my innards. “What?”

“Recall the map of the Main. Between Numa and Ghoja there’s that low area that
floods.”

I pictured it. For twelve miles the river ran through an area flanked by plains
that flooded whenever the river rose more than a few feet. At its highest stage
it could be fourteen miles wide there, with most of the flooding on the southern
side. That plain became a huge reservoir, and was the reason the Numa ford
became crossable before the Ghoja. But the last I’d heard it was mostly drained.

“I know it. What about it?”

“Ever since they took the south bank the Shadowmasters have been building a
levee, from the downriver end, right along the normal bank. It’s something
that’s been talked about for ages. The Prahbrindrah wanted to do it, to claim
the plain for farming. But he couldn’t afford the labor. The Shadowmasters don’t
have that problem. They have fifty thousand prisoners on it, Taglians who didn’t
get across the river last year and enemies from their old territories. No one’s
paid any attention because the project is one of those things that anyone who
could would do.”

“But?”

“But. They’ve gotten the levee run out eight miles to the east. That’s not as
huge a deal as it sounds because it only needs to be about ten feet tall. Every
half mile they put in a larger filled area, maybe a hundred fifty yards to a
side, like towers along a wall. They keep the prisoners camped there and use the
platforms for materials dumps.”

“I don’t see where you’re going.”

“Shifter noticed that they’d stopped extending the levee but they were still
stockpiling materials. Then he figured it out. They’re going to dam the river,

partially. Just enough to divert water into the flood plain so they can drop the
level at the Ghoja ford sooner than we expect.”

I thought about it. It was a cunning bit of business, and entirely practical.

The Company had done a trick or two with rivers in its time. All it had to do
was give them a day. If they got across unchallenged we were sunk. “The sneaky
bastards. Can we get there in time?”

“Maybe. Even probably, considering you didn’t wait to leave Taglios. But at the
rate we’re going it’ll be just barely in time and we’ll be worn out from
fighting the mud.”

“Have they started damming yet?”

“They start that this morning, Shifter says. It should take them two days to get
the fill in and one more to divert enough water.”

“Will it affect Numa?”

“Not for a week. The water will keep dropping there for now. Shifter’s guess is
they’ll cross at Numa the day before they do at Ghoja.”

We looked at each other. She saw what I saw. The Shadowmasters had robbed us of
what we had in mind for the night before Ghoja. “Damn them!”

“I know. This mud being what it is, I’ll have to leave today to get there in
time. I probably won’t get back to Ghoja. Use Sindawe in our place. That town is
a waste, anyway.”

“I’ll have to move faster, somehow.”

“Abandon the wagons.”

“But . . . ”

“Leave the engineers and quartermasters behind. Let them make the best time they
can. I’ll leave them the elephants. They’re no good to me anyway. Have each man
carry a little extra. Whatever is most practical. Even the wagons might get
there in time if they skip stopping at Vejagehdya.”

“You’re right. Let’s get at it.” I gathered my people and explained what we were
going to do. An hour later I watched Lady and the cavalry file away to the
southeast. Mogaba’s grumbling infantrymen, each carrying an extra fifteen
pounds, started slogging toward Ghoja.

Even the old warlord carried a load.

I was glad I had had the luck or foresight to send out the bulk of the stuff
several days early.

I walked with the rest of them. My horse was carrying two hundred pounds of junk
and looking humiliated by the experience. One-Eye grumbled along beside me. He
had Frogface out scouting for lines of advance where the earth would least
resist our passage.