Shadows Linger

Chapter Eight Tally Close-up

I let the tip of my blade drop to the inn floor. I slumped in exhaustion, coughing weakly in the smoke. I swayed, feebly reached for the support of an overturned table. Reaction was setting in. I had been sure this time was the end. If they hadn’t been forced to extinguish the fires themselves...

Elmo crossed the room and threw an arm around me. “You hurt, Croaker? Want me to find One-Eye?”

“Not hurt. Just burned out. Been a long time since I been so scared, Elmo. Thought I was a goner.”

He righted a chair with a foot and sat me down. He was my closest friend, a wiry, old hardcase seldom given to moodiness. Wet blood reddened his left sleeve. I tried to stand. “Sit,” he ordered. “Pockets can take care of it.”

Pockets was my understudy, a kid of twenty-three. The Company is getting older-at least at its core, my contemporaries. Elmo is past fifty. The Captain and Lieutenant straddle that five-zero. I wouldn’t see forty again. “Get them all?”

“Enough.” Elmo settled on another chair. “One-Eye and Goblin and Silent went after the ones who took off.” His voice was vacant. “Half the Rebels in the province, first shot.”

“We’re getting too old for this.” The men began bringing prisoners inside, sifting them for characters who might know something useful. “Ought to leave this stuff to the kids.”

“They couldn’t handle it.” He stared into nothing, at long ago and far away.

“Something wrong?”

He shook his head, then contradicted himself. “What are we doing, Croaker? Isn’t there any end to it?”

I waited. He did not go on. He doesn’t talk much. Especially not about his feelings. I nudged. “What do you mean?”

“Just goes on and on. Hunting Rebels. No end to the supply. Even back when we worked for the Syndic in Beryl. We hunted dissidents. And before Beryl... Thirty-six years of same old same old. And me never sure I was doing right. Especially now.”

It was like Elmo to keep his reservations in abeyance eight years before airing them. “We’re in no position to change anything. The Lady won’t take kindly to us if we suddenly say we’re only going to do thus and so, and none of that.”

The Lady’s service has not been bad. Though we get the toughest missions, we never have to do the dirty stuff. The regulars get those jobs. Preemptive strikes sometimes, sure. The occasional massacre. But all in the line of business. Militarily necessary. We’d never gotten involved in atrocities. The Captain wouldn’t permit that.

“It’s not the morality, Croaker. What’s moral in war? Superior strength. No. I’m just tired.”

“Not an adventure anymore, eh?”

“Stopped being that a long time ago. Turned into a job. Something I do because I don’t know anything else.”

“Something you do very well.” That did not help, but I couldn’t think of anything better to say.

The Captain came in, a shambling bear who surveyed the wreckage with a cold eye. He came over. “How many did we get, Croaker?”

“Count’s not in yet. Most of their command structure, I’d guess.”

He nodded. “You hurt?”

“Worn out. Physically and emotionally. Been a while since I was so scared.”

He righted a table, dragged up a chair, produced a case of maps. The Lieutenant joined him. Later, Candy brought Madle over. Somehow, the innkeeper had survived. “Our friend has some names for you, Croaker.” I spread my paper, scratched out those Madle named. The company commanders began drafting prisoners for grave-digging detail. Idly, I wondered if they realized they were preparing their own resting places. No Rebel soldier is paroled unless we can enlist him inescapably into the Lady’s cause. Madle we enlisted. We gave him a story to explain his survival and eliminated everyone who could deny it. Candy, in a fit of generosity, had the bodies removed from his well.

Silent returned, with Goblin and One-Eye, the two smaller wizards bickering caustically. As usual. I do not recall the argument. It didn’t matter. The struggle was all, and it was all decades old.

The Captain gave them a sour look, asked the Lieutenant, “Heart or Tome?” Heart and Tome are the only substantial towns in Tally. There is a king at Heart who is allied with the Lady. She crowned him two years ago, after Whisper slew his predecessor. He is not popular with the Tallylanders. My opinion, never asked, is that she should dispose of him before he does her further harm.

Goblin laid a fire. The morning hours were nippy. He knelt before it, toasting his fingers.

One-Eye poked around behind Madle’s counter, found a beer jar miraculously unscathed. He drained it in a single draft, wiped his face, surveyed the room, winked at me. “Here we go,” I murmured. The Captain glanced up. “Eh?” “One-Eye and Goblin.” “Oh.” He went back to work and did not look up again.

A face formed in the flames before frog-faced little Goblin. He did not see it. His eyes were closed. I looked at One-Eye. His eye was sealed, too, and his face was all pruned, wrinkles atop wrinkles, shadowed by the brim of his floppy hat. The face in the fire took on detail.

“Eh!” It startled me for a moment. Staring my way, it looked like the Lady. Well, like the face the Lady wore the one time I actually saw her. That was during the battle at Charm. She called me in to dredge my mind for suspicions about a conspiracy among the Ten Who Were Taken... A thrill of fear. I have lived with it for years. If ever she questions me again, the Black Company will be short its senior physician and Annalist. I now have knowledge for which she would flatten kingdoms.

The face in the fire extended a tongue like that of a salamander. Goblin squealed. He jumped up clutching a blistered nose.

One-Eye was draining another beer, back to his victim. Goblin scowled, rubbed his nose, seated himself again. One-Eye turned just enough to place him at the corner of his vision. He waited till Goblin began to nod.

This has been going on forever. Both were with the Company before I joined, One-Eye for at least a century. He is old, but is as spry as men my age.

Maybe spryer. Lately I’ve felt the burden of time more and more, all too often dwelling on everything I’ve missed. I can laugh at peasants and townies chained all their lives to a tiny corner of the earth while I roam its face and see its wonders, but when I go down, there will be no child to carry my name, no family to mourn me save my comrades, no one to remember, no one to raise a marker over my cold bit of ground. Though I have seen great events, I will leave no enduring accomplishment save these Annals.

Such conceit. Writing my own epitaph disguised as Company history.

I am developing a morbid streak. Have to watch that.

One-Eye cupped his hands palms-down on the countertop, murmured, opened them. A nasty spider of fist size stood revealed, wearing a bushy squirrel tail. Never say One-Eye has no sense of humor. It scuttled down to the floor, skipped over to me, grinned up with a One-Eye black face wearing no eye-patch, then zipped toward Goblin.

The essence of sorcery, even for its nonfraudulent practitioners, is misdirection. So with the bushy-tailed spider.

Goblin was not snoozing. He was lying in the weeds. When the spider got close, he whirled and swung a stick of firewood. The spider dodged. Goblin hammered the floor. In vain. His target darted around, chuckling in a One-Eye voice.

The face formed in the flames. Its tongue darted out. The seat of Goblin’s trousers began to smoulder.

“I’ll be damned,” I said.

“What?” the Captain asked, not looking up. He and the Lieutenant had taken opposite ends of an argument over whether Heart or Tome would be the better base of operations.

Somehow, word gets out. Men streamed in for the latest round of the feud. I observed, “I think One-Eye is going to win one.”

“Really?” For a moment old grey bear was interested. One-Eye hadn’t bested Goblin in years.

Goblin’s frog mouth opened in a startled, angry howl. He slapped his bottom with both hands, dancing. “You little snake!” he screamed. “I’ll strangle you! I’ll cut your heart out and eat it! I’ll... I’ll...”

Amazing. Utterly amazing. Goblin never gets mad. He gets even. Then One-Eye will put his twisted mind to work again. If Goblin is even, One-Eye figures he’s behind.

“Settle that down before it gets out of hand,” the Captain said.

Elmo and I got between the antagonists. This thing was disturbing. Goblin’s threats were serious. One-Eye had caught him in a bad temper, the first I’d ever seen. “Ease up,” I told One-Eye.

He stopped. He, too, smelled trouble.

Several men growled. Some heavy bets were down. Usually, nobody will put a copper on One-Eye. Goblin coming out on top is a sure thing, but this time he looked feeble. Goblin did not want to quit. Did not want to play the usual rules, either. He snatched a fallen sword and headed for One-Eye. I couldn’t help grinning. That sword was huge and broken, and Goblin was so small, yet so ferocious, that he seemed a caricature. A bloodthirsty caricature. Elmo couldn’t handle him. I signaled for help. Some quick thinker splashed water on Goblin’s back. He whirled, cussing, started a deadly spell.

Trouble for sure. A dozen men jumped in. Somebody threw another bucket of water. That cooled Goblin’s temper. As we relieved him of the blade, he looked abashed. Defiant, but abashed.

I led him back to the fire and settled beside him. “What’s the matter? What happened?” I glimpsed the Captain from the corner of my eye. One-Eye stood before him, drained by a heavy-duty dressing down.

“I don’t know, Croaker.” Goblin slumped, stared into the fire. “Suddenly everything was too much. This ambush tonight. Same old thing. There’s always another province, always more Rebels. They breed like maggots in a cowpie. I’m getting older and older, and I haven’t done anything to make a better world. In fact, if you backed off to look at it, we’ve all made it worse.” He shook his head. “That isn’t right. Not what I want to say. But I don’t know how to say it any better.”

“Must be an epidemic.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Thinking out loud.” Elmo. Myself. Goblin. A lot of the men, judging by their tenor lately. Something was wrong in the Black Company. I had suspicions, but wasn’t ready to analyze. Too depressing.

“What we need is a challenge,” I suggested. “We haven’t stretched ourselves since Charm.” Which was a half-truth. An operation which compelled us to become totally involved in staying alive might be a prescription for symptoms, but was no remedy for causes. As a physician, I was not fond of treating symptoms alone. They could recur indefinitely. The disease itself had to be attacked.

“What we need,” Goblin said in a voice so soft it almost vanished in the crackle of the flames, “is a cause we can believe in.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That, too.”

From outside came the startled, outraged cries of prisoners discovering that they were to fill the graves they had dug.