The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company (Chronicles of the Black Company) (71 page)

He smelled odd right from the start. Not White Rose odd but you knew he wasn’t no runaway farm boy like me or some city kid from the slums that signed up because there wasn’t nothing else to do with his life. He had some class when he wanted to show it. He was educated. He talked maybe five or six languages and he could read and I heard him talk with the old man about things that I didn’t have a rooster’s notion what they meant.

So I got me this idea. I’d get to be his buddy and then get him to teach me how to read and write.

It was the same old thing, see. Join the army and get off the farm and go on adventures and life would be great. Learn to read and write, I could get out of the army and go off on adventures and everything would be great.

Sure.

I don’t know if everybody is that way. I’m not the kind that can ask guys about things like that. But I know me enough to know that there ain’t nothing ever going to turn out to be exactly what I want and nothing is ever going to satisfy me. I’m the guy with so much ambition I’m living here in a one-room walk-up with a wino whose big talent seems to be puking his guts up after scarfing down about three gallons of the cheapest wine he can find.

So anyway I got Raven to start teaching me and we ended up buddies, even if he was weird. And that didn’t do me no good when the shit storm hit and he turned out to be a spy. Lucky for me, my bosses and his bosses had to get together to gang up on the monster in the ground up there, that us Guards was getting paid so good to watch.

That’s when I found out he was really Raven, the guy that used to run with the Black Company, that took the White Rose away from the Limper when she was a little kid and hid her out and raised her up till she was ready to take on her destiny.

I thought he was dead. So did everybody else, on both sides. Especially the White Rose, who had loved him, and not like a brother or father. Which is why he turned himself into a dead man and ran away. He couldn’t handle what it means to have somebody in love with you. Running away was the only thing he knew how to do.

But he was some in love with her, too, and the only way he had to show it was turn himself into Corbie and go spying and hope he could find her some big weapon she could use when she came to her final confrontation with the Lady. My big boss.

So what happens? Fate sticks an oar in and stirs everything up and when we look around what do we find? The Dominator, the old monster buried in the Barrowland, the blackest evil this old world ever knew, was awake and trying to get out, and the only way to stop him was for everybody to drop their old fights and gang up. So the Lady came to the Barrowland with all her double-ugly champions, and the White Rose came with the Black Company, and things started getting interesting.

And damnfool Raven mooned around in the middle of it all thinking he could just walk over and take up with Darling like he hadn’t walked out on her and let her think he was dead for a bunch of years.

The damn fool. I know more about sorcery than he’ll ever know about women.

So they let the old evil come up out of the ground, then they jumped all over it. It was so big and black they couldn’t kill its spirit, only its flesh, so they burned that flesh to ash and scattered the ash and imprisoned its soul in a silver spike. They drove the spike into the trunk of a sapling that was the son of some kind of god that would live forever and grow around it and keep it from ever causing any more grief. Then they all went away. Even Darling, with some guy named Silent.

There were tears in her eyes when she went. Some of that feeling for Raven was still there inside her. But she was not going to open up and let him do it to her again.

And he stood there watching her go, dumbstruck. He couldn’t figure out why she would do that to him.

Damn fool.

2

It was weird that nobody else thought of it right away. But maybe that was because people were more taken with what had happened between the Lady and the White Rose and were wondering what that would mean to the empire and the rebellion. For a while it looked like half the world was up for grabs. Everybody who was the sort to do some grabbing was eyeballing his or her chances and scouting around to see if they might get turned into eunuchs if they tried.

So it was up to some second-rate hustlers from Oar’s north side to take first whack at stealing the silver spike.

The news from the Barrowland was still in the shithouse rumor stage when Tully Stahl came pounding on the door of the room where his cousin Smeds Stahl stayed.

The room Smeds lived in had no furnishings except roaches and dirt, half a dozen mildewed, stolen blankets, and half a gross of empty clay wine jugs that he never got around to taking back. They made him pay deposit at the Thorn and Crown. Smeds called the jugs his life savings. If times got really tough he could trade eight empties for a full.

Tully said that was a dumb way to do things. Whenever Smeds got ripped and pissed he started throwing things around. He wasted his savings.

The shards never got picked up, either, just kicked against one wall, where they formed a dusty badland.

When Tully got on him Smeds figured he was just putting on airs because he was flush. Tully had two married women giving him presents for helping out around the house when the old man was gone. And he was living with a widow he was going to clean out as soon as he found some other woman to take him in. He thought being a success gave him the right to dish out advice.

Tully pounded on the door. Smeds ignored him. The Kinbro girls from upstairs, Marti and Sheena, eleven and twelve, were there for their “music lessons.” The three of them were naked and tumbling around on the ratty blankets. The only instrument in sight was a skin flute.

Smeds made the girls stop bouncing and giggling. There was people who wouldn’t appreciate how he was preparing them for later life.

Pound. Pound. Pound. “Come on, Smeds. Open up. It’s me. Tully.”

“I’m busy.”

“Open up. I got a deal I got to talk about.”

Sighing, Smeds untangled himself from skinny young limbs and trudged to the door. “It’s my cousin. He’s all right.”

The girls had been into the wine. They didn’t care. They didn’t cover themselves. They just sat there grinning when Smeds let Tully in.

“Some friends,” Smeds explained. “You want in? They don’t mind.”

“Some other time. Get them out.”

Smeds glared at his cousin. Getting too damned pushy. “Come on, girls. Get your clothes on. Papa has to talk business.”

Tully and Smeds watched while they got into ragged clothing. It didn’t occur to Smeds to dress. Sheena gave old Hank the Shank a playful slap as she went by. “See you later.”

The door closed. “You’re going to get your ass in a sling,” Tully said.

“No more than you. You ought to meet their mother.”

“She got any money?”

“No. But she blows a mean horn. Got a thing about it. She gets going she just can’t quit.”

“When you going to clean this pigsty?”

“Soon as the maid gets back from holiday. So what’s so important you have to break in on my party?”

“You heard about what happened up in the Barrowland?”

“I heard some stories. I didn’t pay no attention. What do I care? Won’t make no difference to me.”

“It might. You hear the part about the silver spike?”

Smeds thought. “Yeah. They stuck it in a tree. I thought that would be handy to glom on to. Then I thought some more and figured there wouldn’t be enough silver in it to make it worth the trip.”

“It isn’t the silver, cousin. It’s what’s in the silver.”

Smeds turned it around in his mind some. He couldn’t find Tully’s angle. “You better lay it out by the numbers.” Smeds Stahl was not known for his keen mind.

“That big nail has the soul of the Dominator trapped in it. That means it’s one bad hunk of metal. You take some big wazoo of a sorcerer, I bet he could pound it into some kind of all-time mean amulet. You know, like in stories.”

Smeds frowned. “We aren’t sorcerers.”

Tully got impatient. “We’d be the middlemen. We go up there and dig it out of that tree and hide it out till word gets around that it’s gone. Then we let it out that it’s for sale. To the highest bidder.”

Smeds frowned some more and put his whole brain to work. He was no genius but he had plenty of low, mean cunning and he had learned how to stay alive. “Sounds damned dangerous to me. Something we’d need help on if we wanted to come out of it in one piece.”

“Right. Even the easy part, going up there and liberating the damned thing, would be more than a two-man job. The Great Forest might be a pretty rough place for guys who don’t know anything about the woods. I figured we’d need two more guys, one of them who knows about the woods.”

“Already we’re talking a four-way split here, Tully. On how much?”

“I don’t know. Give them time to bid it up, I think we’d be set for life. And I ain’t talking no four-way split, neither, Smeds. Two ways. All in the family.”

They looked at each other. Smeds said, “You got the plan. Tell me.”

“You know Timmy Locan? Was in the army for a while?”

“About long enough to figure out how to go over the hill. Yeah. He’s all right.”

“He was in long enough to learn how it works. We might run into soldiers up there. Would your heart be broken if they found him in an alley with his head bashed in?”

That was an easy one. “No.” His heart would be fine as long as it wasn’t Smeds Stahl they found.

“How about Old Man Fish? He used to trap in the Great Forest.”

“Couple of straight arrows.”

“That’s what we need. Honest crooks. Not some guys who might try to do us out of our share. What do you say? Want to go for it?”

“Tell me how much is in it again.”

“Enough to live like princes. We going to go talk to those guys?”

Smeds shrugged. “Why not? What have I got better to do?” He looked at the ceiling.

“You better get some clothes on.”

*   *   *

Heading down the stairs, Smeds said, “You’d better do the talking.”

“Good idea.”

*   *   *

Heading up the street, Smeds asked, “You ever killed anybody?”

“No. I never needed to. I don’t see where I’d have any problem.”

“I had to once. Cut a guy’s throat. It ain’t like you think. They spray blood all over the place and make weird noises. And they take a long time to croak. And they keep trying to come after you. I still get nightmares about that guy trying to take me with him.”

Tully looked at him and made a face. “Then do it some other way next time.”

3

Each night there was moonlight enough, a thing came down out of the northern Great Forest, quiet as a limping shadow, into the lorn and trammeled place of death called the Barrowland. That place was heavy with the fetor of corruption. A great many corpses lay rotting in shallow graves.

Limping on three legs, the thing cautiously circled the uncorrupted carcass of a dragon, settled on its haunches in the hole it was digging so patiently, night after night, with a single paw. While it worked it cast frequent glances toward the ruins of a town and military compound several hundred yards to the west.

The garrison had existed to shield the Barrowland from trespassers with evil intentions and to watch for signs that the old darkness in the ground was stirring. Those reasons no longer existed. The battle in which the digging beast had been crippled, in which the dragon had perished, in which the town and compound had been devastated, had put an end to the need for a military stewardship.

Except that it had not occurred to anyone in authority to give the surviving Guards new assignments. Some had stayed, not knowing what else to do or where else to go.

Those men were sworn enemies of the beast.

Had it been healthy, the thing would not have been concerned. It could have dealt with those men easily. Healthy, it was a match for any company of soldiers. Crippled and still suffering from a dozen unhealed wounds, it would not be able to outrun a man let alone outfight those it would have to get through before it could pursue the messenger the Guards were sure to send flying to their masters if they discovered it.

Those masters were cruel and deadly and the beast stood no chance against them even when in the best of health.

Its master could protect it no more. Its master had been hacked to pieces and the pieces burned. Its master’s soul had been imprisoned in a silver spike that had been driven into his skull.

The beast was doglike in appearance but rather uncertain in size. It had a protean nature. At times it could be as small as a large dog. At other times it might be the size of a small elephant. It was most comfortable being about twice the size of a war-horse. In the great battle it had slain many of its master’s enemies before overpowering sorceries had driven it from the field.

It came stealthily, again and again, despite the fear of exposure, the pain of its wounds, and its frustration. Sometimes the wall of its excavation collapsed. Sometimes rainwater would fill the hole. And always there was the inescapable vigilance of the only truly watchful guardian the victors had left.

A young tree stood among the bones, alone. It was near immortal and was far mightier than the night skulker. It was the child of a god. In time, each night, it wakened to the digger’s presence. Its reaction was uniform and violent.

A blue nimbus formed among the tree’s limbs. Pale lightning ripped toward the monster. It was a quiet sort of lightning, a sizzle instead of boom and crash, but it slapped the monster like an angry adult’s swing at a small child.

The beast suffered no injury, only extreme pain. That it could not endure. Each time it was hit it fled, to await another night and that delay before the child of the god awakened.

The monster’s work went slowly.

4

Darling left Raven standing there. She rode off with that guy Silent and some other guys that were all that was left of the Black Company, a mercenary outfit that really wasn’t anymore. A long time ago they was on the Lady’s side but something happened to piss them off and they went over to the Rebel. For a long time they was almost the whole Rebel army.