The Black Company

Chapter Five: HARDEN

The wind howled and flung blasts of dust and sand against our backs. We retreated into it, walking backward, the gritty storm finding every gap in armor and clothing, combining with sweat in a stinking, salty mud. The air was hot and dry. It sucked the moisture away quickly, leaving the mud dried in clots. We all had lips cracked and swollen, tongues like moldy pillows choking on the grit crusting the insides of our mouths.

Stormbringer had gotten carried away. We were suffering almost as much as was the Rebel. Visibility was a scant dozen yards. I could barely see the men to my right and left, and only two guys in the rearguard line, walking backward before me. Knowing our enemies had to come after us facing into the wind did not cheer me much.

The men in the other line suddenly scuttled around, plying their bows. Tall somethings loomed out of the swirling dust, cloakshadows swirling around them, flapping like vast wings. I drew my bow and let fly, sure my shaft would drift astray.

It did not. A horseman threw up his hands. His animal whirled and ran before the wind, pursuing riderless companions.

They were pushing hard, keeping close, trying to pick us off before we escaped the Windy Country to the more defensible Stair of Tear. They wanted every man of us stretched dead and plundered beneath the unforgiving desert sun.

Step back. Step back. So damned slow. But there was no choice. If we turned our backs they would swarm over us. We had to make them pay for every approach, to intimidate their exuberance thoroughly.

Stormbringer's sending was our best armor. The Windy Country is wild and brisk at the best of times, flat, barren, and dry, uninhabited, a place where sandstorms are common. But never had it seen a storm like this, that went on hour after hour and day after day, relenting only in the hours of darkness. It made the Windy Country no fit place for any living thing. And only that kept the Company alive.

There were three thousand of us now, falling back before the inexorable tide that had swamped Lords. Our little brotherhood, by refusing to break, had become the nucleus to which the fugitives from the disaster had attached themselves once the Captain had fought his way through the siege lines. We had become the brains and nerves of this fleeing shadow of an army. The Lady herself had sent orders for all Imperial officers to defer to the Captain. Only the Company had produced any signal successes during the northern campaign.

Someone came out of the dust and howl behind me, tapped my shoulder. I whirled. It was not yet time to leave the line.

Raven faced me. The Captain had figured out where I was.

Raven's whole head was wrapped in rags. I squinted, one hand raised to block the biting sand. He screamed something like, "Ta kata wa ya." I shook my head. He pointed rearward, grabbed me, yelled into my ear. "The Captain wants you."

Of course he did. I nodded, handed over bow and arrows, leaned into the wind and grit. Weapons were in short supply. The arrows I had given him were spent Rebel shafts gleaned after they had come wobbling out of the brownish haze.

Trudge trudge trudge. Sand pattering against the top of my head as I walked with chin against chest, hunched, eyes slitted. I did not want to go back. The Captain was not going to say anything I wanted to hear.

A big bush came spinning and bounding toward me. It nearly bowled me over. I laughed. We had Shapeshifter with us. The Rebel would waste a lot of arrows when that hit their lines. They outnumbered us ten or fifteen to one, but numbers could not soften their fear of the Taken.

I stamped into the fangs of the wind till I was sure I had gone too far, or had lost my bearings. It was always the same. After I decided to give up, there it was, the miraculous isle of peace. I entered it, staggering in the sudden absence of wind. My ears roared, refusing to believe the quiet.

Thirty wagons rolled along in tight formation inside the quiet, wheel to wheel. Most were filled with casualties. A thousand men surrounded the wagons, tramping doggedly southward. They stared at the earth and dreaded the coming of their turns out on the line. There was no conversation, no exchange of witticisms. They had seen too many retreats. They followed the Captain only because he promised a chance to survive.

"Croaker! Over here!" The Lieutenant beckoned me from the formation's extreme right flank.

The Captain looked like a naturally surly bear wakened from hibernation prematurely. The grey at his temples wriggled as he chewed his words before spitting them out. His face sagged. His eyes were dark hollows. His voice was infinitely tired. "Thought I told you to stick around,"

"It was my turn. , . ."

"You don't take a turn, Croaker. Let me see if I can put it into words simple enough for you. We have three thousand men. We're in continuous contact with the Rebel. We've got one half-assed witchdoctor and one real doctor to take care of those boys. One-Eye has to spend half his energy helping maintain this dome of peace. Which leaves you to carry the medical load. Which means you don't risk yourself out on the line. Not for any reason."

I stared into the emptiness above his left shoulder, scowling at the sand swirling around the sheltered area.

"Am I getting through, Croaker? Am I making myself clear? I appreciate your devotion to the Annals, your determination to get the feel of the action, but. ..."

I bobbed my head, glanced at the wagons and their sad burdens. So many wounded, and so little I could do for them. He did not see the helpless feeling that caused. All I could do was sew them up and pray, and make the dying comfortable till they went-whereupon we dumped them to make room for newcomers.

Too many were lost who need not have been, had I had time, trained help, and a decent surgery. Why did I go out to -the battle line? Because I could accomplish something there. I could strike back at our tormentors.

"Croaker," the Captain growled. "I get the feeling you're not listening."

"Yes sir. Understood, sir. I'll stay here and tend to my sewing."

"Don'* look so bleak." He touched my shoulder. "Catcher says we'll reach the Stair of Tear tomorrow. Then we can do what we all want. Bloody Harden's nose."

Harden had become the senior Rebel general. "Did he say how we're going to manage that, outnumbered a skillion to one?"

The Captain scowled. He did his shuffling little bear dance while he phrased a reassuring answer.

Three thousand exhausted, beaten men turn back Harden's victory-hopped horde? Not bloody likely. Not even with three of the Ten Who Were Taken helping.

"I thought not," I sneered.

"That's not your department, though, is it? Catcher doesn't second-guess your surgical procedures, does he? Then why question the grand strategy?"

I grinned. "The unwritten law of all armies, Captain. The lower ranks have the privilege of questioning the sanity and competence of their commanders. It's the mortar holding an army together."

The Captain eyed me from his shorter stature, wider displacement, and from beneath shaggy brows. "That holds them together, eh? And you know what keeps them moving?"

"What's that?"

"Guys like me ass-kicking guys like you when they start philosophizing. If you get my drift."

"I believe I do, sir." I moved out, recovered my kit from the wagon where I had stashed it, went to work. There were few new casualties.

Rebel ambition was wearing down under Stormbringer's ceaseless assault.

I was loafing along, waiting for a call, when I spotted Elmo loping out of the weather. I hadn't seen him for days. He fell in beside the Captain. I ambled over.

"... sweep around our right," he was saying. "Maybe trying to reach the Stair first." He glanced at me, lifted a hand in greeting. It shook. He was pallid with weariness. Like the Captain, he had had little rest since we had entered the Windy Country.

"Pull a company out of reserve. Take them in flank," the Captain replied. "Hit them hard, and stand fast. They won't expect that. It'll shake them. Make them wonder what we're up to."

"Yes sir." Elmo turned to go,

"Elmo?"

"Sir?"

"Be careful out there. Save your energy. We're going to keep moving tonight."

Elmo's eyes spoke tortured volumes. But he did not question his orders. He is a good soldier. And, as did I, he knew they came from above the Captain's head. Perhaps from the Tower itself.

Hitherto, night had brought a tacit truce. The rigors of the days had left both armies unwilling to take one needless step after dark. There had been no nighttime contact.

Even those hours of respite, when the storm slept, were not enough to keep the armies from marching with their butts drooping against their heels. Now our high lords wanted an extra effort, hoping to gain some tactical advantage. Get to the Stair by night, get dug in, make the Rebel come at us out of perpetual storm. It made sense. But it was the sort of move ordered by an armchair general three hundred miles behind the fighting.

"You hear that?" the Captain asked me.

"Yeah. Sounds dumb."

"I agree with the Taken, Croaker. The travelling will be easier for us and more difficult for the Rebel. Are you caught up?"

"Yes."

"Then try to stay out of the way. Go hitch a ride. Fake a nap."

I wandered away, cursing the ill fortune that had stripped us of most of our mounts. Gods, walking was getting old.

I did not take the Captain's advice, though it was sound. I was too keyed up to rest. The prospect of a night march had shaken me.

I roamed around seeking old friends. The Company had scattered throughout the larger mob, as cadre for the Captain's will. Some men I hadn't seen since Lords. I did not know if they were still alive.

I could find no one but Goblin, One-Eye, and Silent. Today Goblin and One-Eye were no more communicative than Silent. Which said a lot about morale.

They trudged doggedly onward, eyes on the dry earth, only rarely making some gesture or muttering some word to maintain the integrity of our bubble of peace. I trudged with them. Finally, I tried breaking the ice with a "Hi."

Goblin grunted. One-Eye gave me a few seconds of evil stare. Silent did not acknowledge my existence.

"Captain says we're going to march through the night," I told them. I had to make someone else as miserable as I was.

Goblin's look asked me why I wanted to tell that kind of lie. One-Eye muttered something about turning the bastard into a toad.

"The bastard you're going to have to turn is Soulcatcher," I said smugly.

He gave me another evil look. "Maybe I'll practice on you, Croaker."

One-Eye did not like the night march, so Goblin immediately approved the genius of the man who had initiated the idea. But his enthusiasm was so slight One-Eye did not bother taking the bait.

I thought I would give it another try. "You guys look as sour as I feel."

No rise. Not even a turn of the head. "Be that way." I drooped too, put one foot ahead of the other, blanked my mind.

They came and got me to take care of Elmo's wounded. There were a dozen of them, and that was it for the day. The Rebel had run out of do or die.

Darkness came early under the storm. We went about business as usual. We got a little away from the Rebel, waited for the storm to abate, pitched a camp with fires built of whatever brush could be scrounged. Only this time it was just a brief rest, till the stars came out. They stared down with mockery in their twinkles, saying all our sweat and blood really had no meaning in the long eye of time. Nothing we did would be recalled a thousand years from now.

Such thoughts infected us all. No one had any ideals or glory-lust left. We just wanted to get somewhere, lie down, and forget the war.

The war would not forget us. As soon as he believed the Rebel to be satisfied that we were encamped, the Captain resumed the march, now in a ragged column snaking slowly across moonlighted barrens.

Hours passed and we seemed to get nowhere. The land never changed. I glanced back occasionally, checking the renewed storm Stormbringer was hurling against the Rebel camp. Lightning rippled and flickered in this one. It was more furious than anything they had faced so far.

The shadowed Stair of Tear materialized so slowly that it was there for an hour before I realized it was not a bank of cloud low on the horizon. The stars began to fade and the east to lighten before the land started rising.

The Stair of Tear is a rugged, wild range virtually impassable except for the one steep pass from which the cordillera takes its name. The land rises gradually till it reaches sudden, towering red sandstone bluffs and mesas which stretch either way for hundreds of miles. In the morning sun they looked like the weathered battlements of a giant's fortress.

The column wound into a canyon choked with talus, halted while a path was cleared for the wagons. I dragged myself to a bluff top and watched the storm. It was moving our way.

Would we get through before Harden arrived?

The blockage was a fresh fall which covered only a quarter mile of road. Beyond it lay the route traveled by caravans before the war interrupted trade.

I faced the storm again. Harden was making good time. I suppose anger drove him. He was not about to turn loose. We had killed his brother-in-law, and had engineered the Taking of his cousin... .

Movement to the west caught my eye. A whole range of ferocious thunderheads was moving toward Harden, rumbling and brawling among themselves. A funnel cloud spun off and streaked toward the sandstorm. The Taken play rough.

Harden was stubborn. He kept coming through everything.

"Yo! Croaker!" someone shouted. "Come on."

I looked down. The wagons were through the worst. Time to go.

Out on the flats the thunderheads spun off another funnel cloud. I almost felt sorry for Harden's men.

Soon after I rejoined the column the ground shuddered. The bluff I had climbed quivered, groaned, toppled, sprawled across the road. Another little gift for Harden.

We reached our stopping place shortly before nightfall. Decent country at last! Real trees. A gurgling creek. Those who had any strength left began digging in or cooking.

The rest fell in their tracks. The Captain did not press. The best medicine at the moment was the simple freedom to rest.

I slept like the proverbial log.

One-Eye wakened me at rooster time. "Let's get to work," he said. "The Captain wants a hospital set up." He made a face. His looks like a prune at the best of times. "We're supposed to have some help coming up from Charm."

I groaned and moaned and cursed and got up. Every muscle was stiff. Every bone ached. "Next time we're someplace civilized enough to have taverns remind me to drink a toast to eternal peace," I grumbled. "One-Eye, I'm ready to retire."

"So who isn't? But you're the Annalist, Croaker. You're always rubbing our noses in tradition. You know you only got two ways out while we've got this commission. Dead or feet first. Shove some chow in your ugly face and let's get cracking. I got more important things to do than play nursemaid."

"Cheerful this morning, aren't we?"

"Positively rosy." He grumped around while I got myself into an approximation of order.

The camp was coming to life. Men were eating and washing the desert off their bodies. They were cussing and fussing and bitching. Some were even talking to one another. The recovery had begun.

Sergeants and officers were out surveying the lie of the slope, seeking the most defensible strongpoints. This, then, was the place where the Taken wanted to make a stand.

It was a good spot. It was that part of the pass which gave the Stair its name, a twelve hundred foot rise overlooking a maze of canyons. The old road wound back and forth across the mountainside in countless switchbacks, so that from a distance it looked like a giant's lopsided stairway

One-Eye and I drafted a dozen men and began moving the wounded to a quiet grove well above the prospective battleground. We spent an hour making them comfortable and getting set for future business.

"What's that?" One-Eye suddenly demanded,

I listened. The din of preparation had died. "Something up," I said.

"Genius," he countered. "Probably the people from Charm."

"Let's take a look." I tramped out of the grove and down toward the Captain's headquarters. The newcomers were obvious the moment I left the trees.

I would guess there were a thousand of them, half soldiers from the Lady's personal Guard in brilliant uniforms, the rest apparently teamsters. The tram of wagons and livestock were more exciting than the reinforcements. "Feast time tonight," I called to One-Eye, who was following me. He looked the wagons over and smiled. Pure pleasure smiles from him are only slightly more common than the fabled hen's teeth. They are certainly worth recording in these Annals.

With the Guards battalion was the Taken called The Hanged Man. He was improbably tall and lean. His head was twisted way over to one side. His neck was swollen and purpled from the bite of a noose. His face was frozen into the bloated expression of one who has been strangled. I expect he had considerable difficulty speaking.

He was the fifth of the Taken I had seen, following Soulcatcher, the Limper, Shapeshifter, and Whisper. I missed Nightcrawler in Lords, and had not yet seen Stormbringer, despite proximity. The Hanged Man was different. The others usually wore something to conceal head and face. Excepting Whisper, they had spent ages in the ground. The grave had not treated them kindly.

Soulcatcher and Shapeshifter were there to greet the Hanged Man. The Captain was nearby, back to them, listening to the commander of the Lady's guardsmen. I eased closer, hoping to eavesdrop.

The guardsman was being surly because he had to place himself at the Captain's disposal. None of the regulars liked taking orders from a come-lately mercenary from overseas.

I sidled nearer the Taken. And found I could not understand a word of their conversation. They were speak TelleKurre, which had died with the fall of the Domination.

A hand touched mine, lightly. Startled, I looked down into the wide brown eyes of Darling, whom I had not seen for days. She made rapid gestures with her fingers. I have been learning her signs. She wanted to show me something.

She led me to Raven's tent, which was not far from the Captain's. She scrambled inside, returned with a wooden doll. Loving craftsmanship had gone into its creation. I could not imagine the hours Raven must have put into it. I could not imagine where he had found them.

Darling slowed her finger talk so I could follow more easily. I was not yet very facile. She told me Raven made the doll, as I had guessed, and that now he was sewing up a wardrobe. She thought she had a great treasure. Recalling the village where we had found her, I could not doubt that it was the finest toy she had ever possessed.

Revealing object, when you think about Raven, who comes across so bitter, cold, and silent, whose only use for a knife seems so sinister.

Darling and I conversed for several minutes. Her thoughts are delightfully straightforward, a refreshing contrast in a world filled with devious, prevaricating, unpredictable, scheming people.

A hand squeezed my shoulder, halfway between angry and companionable. "The Captain is looking for you, Croaker. "Raven's dark eyes glinted like obsidian under a quarter moon. He pretended the doll was invisible. He likes to come across hard, I realized.

"Right," I said, making manual good-byes. I enjoyed learning from Darling. She enjoyed teaching me. I think it gave her a feeling of worth. The Captain was considering having everyone learn her sign language. It would make a valuable supplement to our traditional but inadequate battle signals.

The Captain gave me a black look when I arrived, but spared me a lecture. "Your new help and supplies are over yonder. Show them where to go."

"Yes sir."

The responsibility was getting to him. He hadn't ever commanded so many men, nor faced conditions so adverse, with orders so impossible, staring at a future so uncertain.. From where he stood it looked like we would be sacrificed to buy time.

We of the Company are not enthusiastic fighters. But the Stair of Tear could not be held by trickery.

It looked like the end had come.

No one will sing songs in our memory. We are the last of the Free Companies of Khatovar. Our traditions and memories live only in these Annals. We are our only mourners.

It is the Company against the world. Thus it has been and ever will be.

My aid from the Lady consisted of two qualified battlefield surgeons and a dozen trainees of various degrees of skill, along with a brace of wagons brimming with medical supplies. I was grateful. Now I stood a chance of saving a few men.

I took the newcomers to my grove, explained how I worked, turned them loose on my patients. After making sure they were not complete incompetents, I turned the hospital over and left.

I was restless. I did not like what was happening to the Company. It had acquired too many new followers and responsibilities. The old intimacy was gone. Time was, I saw every one of the men every day. Now there were some I had not seen since before the debacle at Lords. I did not know if they were dead, alive, or captive. I was almost neurotically anxious that some men had been lost and would be forgotten.

The Company is our family. The brotherhood makes it go. These days, with all these new northern faces, the prime force holding the Company together is a desperate effort by the brethren to reachieve the old intimacy. The strain of trying marks every face.

I went out to one of the forward watchpoints, which overlooked the fall of the brook into the canyons. Way, way down there, below the mist, lay a small, glimmering pool. A thin trickle left it, running toward the Windy Country. It would not complete its journey. I searched the chaotic ranks of sandstone towers and buttes. Thunder-heads with lightning swords aflash on their brows grumbled and pounded the badlands, reminding me that trouble was not far away.

Harden was coming despite Stormbringer's wrath. He would make contact tomorrow, I guessed. I wondered how much the storms had hurt him. Surely not enough.

I spied a brown hulk shambling down the switchback road. Shapeshifter, going out to practice his special terrors. He could enter the Rebel camp as one of them, practice poison magics upon their cookpots or Fill their drinking water with disease. He could become the shadow in the darkness that all men fear, taking them one at a time, leaving only mangled remains to fill the living with terror. I envied him even while I loathed him.

The stars twinkled above the campfire. It had burned low while some of us old hands played Tonk. I was a slight winner. I said, "I'm quitting while I'm ahead. Anybody want my place?" I unwound my aching legs and moved away, settled against a log, stared at the sky. The stars seemed merry and friendly.

The air was cool and fresh and still. The camp was quiet. Crickets and nightbirds sang their soothing songs. The world was at peace. It was hard to believe that this place was soon to become a battlefield. I wriggled till I was comfortable, watched for shooting stars. I was determined to enjoy the moment. It might be the last such I would know.

The fire spit and crackled. Somebody found ambition enough to add a little wood. It blazed up, sent piney smoke drifting my way, launched shadows which danced over the intent faces of the card players. One-Eye's lips were taut because he was losing. Goblin's frog mouth was stretched in an unconscious grin. Silent was a blank, being Silent. Elmo was thinking hard, scowling as he calculated odds. Jolly was more sour than customary. It was good to see Jolly again. I had feared him lost at Lords.

Only one puny meteor rolled across the sky. I gave it up, closed my eyes, listened to my heartbeat. Harden is coming. Harden is coming, it said. It pounded out a drumbeat, mimicking the tread of advancing legions.

Raven settled down beside me. "Quiet tonight," he observed.

"Calm before the storm," I replied. "What's cooking with the high and the mighty?"

"Lot of argument. The Captain, Catcher, and the new one are letting them yap, Letting them get it out of their systems. Who's ahead?"

"Goblin."

"One-Eye isn't dealing from the bottom of the deck?"

"We never caught him."

"I heard that," One-Eye growled. "One of these days, Raven. ..." ,

"I know. Zap. I'm a frog prince. Croaker, you been up the hill since it got dark?"

"No. Why?"

"Something unusual over in the east. Looks like a comet."

My heart did a small flip. I calculated quickly. "You're probably right. It's due back." I rose. He did too. We walked uphill.

Every major event in the saga of the Lady and her husband has been presaged by a comet. Countless Rebel prophets have predicted that she will fall while a comet is in the sky. But their most dangerous prophecy concerns the child who will be a reincarnation of the White Rose. The Circle is spending a lot of energy trying to locate the kid.

Raven led me to a height from which we could see the stars lying low in the east. Sure enough, something like a faraway silver spearhead rode the sky there. I stared a long time before observing, "It seems to be pointed at Charm."

"I thought so too." He was silent for a while. "I'm not much on prophecies, Croaker. They sound too much like superstition. But this makes me nervous."

"You've heard those prophecies all your life. I'd be surprised if they hadn't touched you."

He grunted, not satisfied. "The Hanged Man brought news of the east. Whisper has taken Rust."

"Good news, good news," I said, with considerable sarcasm.

"She's taken Rust and surrounded Trinket's army. We can have the whole east by next summer."

We faced the canyon. A few of Harden's advance units had reached the foot of the switchbacks. Stormbringer had broken off her long assault in order to prepare for Harden's attempt to break through here.

"So it comes down to us," I whispered. "We have to stop them here or the whole thing goes because of a sneak attack through the back way."

"Maybe. But don't count the Lady out even if we fail. The Rebel hasn't yet faced Her. And they know it to a man. Each mile they move toward the Tower will fill them with greater dread. Terror itself will defeat them unless they find their prophesied child."

"Maybe." We watched the comet. It was far, far away yet, just barely detectable. It would be up there a long time. Great battles would be fought before it departed.

I made a face. "Maybe you shouldn't have shown me. Now I'll dream about the damned thing."

Raven flashed a rare grin. "Dream us a victory," he suggested.

I did some dreaming aloud. "We've got the high ground. Harden has to bring his men up twelve hundred feet of switchback. They'll be easy meat when they get here."

"Whistling in the dark, Croaker. I'm going to turn in. Good luck tomorrow."

"Same to you," I replied. He would be in the thick of it. The Captain had chosen him to command a battalion of veteran regulars. They would be holding one flank, sweeping the road with arrow flights.

I dreamed, but my dreams were not what I expected. A wavering golden thing came, hovered above me, glowing like shoals of faraway stars. I was not sure whether I was asleep or awake, and still have not satisfied myself either way. I will call it dream because it sits more comfortably that way. I do not like to think the Lady had taken that much interest in me.

It was my own fault. All those romances I wrote about her had gone to seed on the fertile stable floor of my imagination. Such presumption, my dreams. The Lady Herself send Her spirit to comfort one silly, war-weary, quietly frightened soldier? In the name of heaven, why?

That glow came and hovered above me, and sent reassurances overtoned by harmonics of amusement. Fear not, my faithful. The Stair of Tear is not the Lock of the Empire. It can be broken without harm. Whatever happens, my faithful will remain safe. The Stair is but a milemark. along the Rebel's road to destruction.

There was more, all of a puzzlingly personal nature. My wildest fantasies were being reflected back upon me. At the end, for just an instant, a face peeked from the golden glow. It was the most beautiful female face I have ever seen, though I cannot now recall it.

Next morning I told One-Eye about the dream as I hounded my hospital into life. He looked at me and shrugged. "Too much imagination, Croaker." He was preoccupied, anxious to complete his medical chores and get gone. He hated the work.

My work caught up, I meandered toward the main encampment. My head was stuffy and my mood sour. The cool, dry mountain air was not as invigorating as it should have been.

I found the temper of the men as sour as my own. Below, Harden's forces were moving.

Part of winning is a downdeep certainty that, no matter how bad things look, a road to victory will open. The Company carried that conviction through the debacle at Lords. We'd always found a way to bloody the Rebel's nose, even while the Lady's armies were in retreat. Now, though... . The conviction has begun to waver.

Forsberg, Roses, Lords, and a dozen lesser defeats. Part of losing is the converse of winning. V/e were haunted by a secret fear that, despite the obvious advantages of terrain and backing by the Taken, something would go wrong.

Maybe they cooked it up themselves. Maybe the Captain was behind it, or even Soulcatcher. Possibly it came about naturally, as these things once did... .

One-Eye had trooped downhill behind me, sour, surly, grumbling to himself, and spoiling for a row. His path crossed Goblin's.

Slugabed Goblin had just dragged out of his bedroll. He had a bowl of water and was washing up. He is a fastidious little wart. One-Eye spotted him and saw a chance to punish somebody with his foul mood. He muttered a string of strange words and went into a curious little fling that looked half ballet and half primitive war dance.

Goblin's water changed.

I smelled it from twenty feet away. It had turned a malignant brown. Sickening green gobs floated on its surface. It even felt foul.

Goblin rose with magnificent dignity, turned. He looked an evilly grinning One-Eye in the eye for several seconds. Then he bowed. When his head came up he wore a huge frog smile. He opened his mouth and let fly the most godawful, earthshaking howl I have ever heard.

They were off, and damned be the fool who got in their way. Shadows scattered round One-Eye, wriggling across the earth like a thousand hasty serpents. Ghosts danced, crawling from under rocks, jumping down from trees, hopping out of bushes. The latter squealed and howled and giggled and chased One-Eye's shadow snakes.

The ghosts stood two feet tall and very much resembled half-pint One-Eyes with double-ugly faces and behinds like those of female baboons in season. What they did with captured shadow snakes taste forbids me tell.

One-Eye, foiled, leapt into the air. He cursed, shrieked, foamed at the mouth. To us old hands, who had witnessed these hatter-mad battles before, it was obvious that Goblin had been laying in the weeds, waiting for One-Eye to start something.

This was one time when One-Eye had more than a lone bolt to shoot.

He banished the snakes. The rocks, bushes, and trees that had belched Goblin's critters now disgorged gigantic, glossy-green dung beetles. The big bugs jumped Goblin's elves, rolled them right up, and began tumble-bugging them toward the edge of the cliff.

Needless to say, all the whoop and holler drew an audience. Laughter ripped out of us old hands, long familiar with this endless duel. It spread to the others once they realized this was not sorcery run amok.

Goblin's red-bottomed ghosts sprouted roots and refused to be tumbled. They grew into huge, drooling-mawed carnivorous plants fit to inhabit the crudest jungle of nightmare. Clickety-clackety-crunch, all across the slope, carapaces broke between closing vegetable jaws. That spine-shaking, tooth-grinding feeling you get when you crunch a big cockroach slithered across the slopes, magnified a thousand times, birthing a plague of shudders. For a moment even One-Eye remained motionless.

I glanced around. The Captain had come to watch. He betrayed a satisfied smile. It was a precious gem, that smile, rarer than roc's eggs. His companions, regular officers and Guards captains, appeared baffled.

Someone took up position beside me, at an intimate, comradely distance. I glanced sideways, found myself shoulder to shoulder with Soulcatcher. Or elbow to shoulder. The Taken does not stand very tall.

"Amusing, yes?" he said in one of his thousand voices.

I nodded nervously.

One-Eye shuddered all over, jumped high in the air' again, wailed and howled, then went down kicking and flopping like a man with the falling sickness.

The surviving beetles rushed together, zip-zap, clickety-clack, into two seething piles, clacking their mandibles angrily, scraping against one another chitinously. Brown smog wriggled from the piles in thick ropes, twisted and joined, became a curtain concealing the frenzied bugs. The smoke contracted into globules which bounced, bounding higher after each contact with the earth. Then they did not come down, but rather drifted on the breeze, sprouting what grew into gnarly digits.

What we had here were replicas of One-Eye's horny paws a hundred times life size. Those hands went weed-plucking through Goblin's monster garden, ripping his plants up by the roots, knotting their stems together in elegant, complicated sailor's knots, forming an ever-elongating braid.

"They do have more talent than one would suspect," Soulcatcher observed. "But so wasted on frivolity."

"I don't know." I gestured. The show was having an invigorating effect on morale.. Feeling a breath of that boldness which animates me at odd moments, I suggested, "This is a sorcery they can appreciate, unlike the oppressive, bitter wizardries of the Taken."

Catcher's black morion faced me for a few seconds. I imagined fires burning behind the narrow eyeslits. Then a girlish giggle slipped forth. "You're right. We're so filled with doom and gloom and brooding and terror we infect whole armies. One soon forgets the emotional panorama of life."

How odd, I thought. This was a Taken with a chink in its armor, a Soulcatcher drawing aside one of the veils concealing its secret being. The Annalist in me caught the scent of a tale and began to bay.

Catcher sidestepped me as though reading my thoughts. "You had a visitation last night?" The Annalist-hound's voice died in midcry. "I had a strange dream. About the Lady."

Catcher chuckled, a deep, bass rumble. That constant change of voices can rattle the most stolid of men. It put me on the defensive. His very comradeliness, too, disturbed me.

"I think she favors you, Croaker. Some little thing about you has captured her imagination, just as she has caught yours. What did she have to say?"

Something way back told me to be careful. Catcher's query was warm and offhand, yet there was a hidden intensity there which said that the question was not at all casual.

"Just reassurances," I replied. "Something about the Stair of Tear not being all that critical in her scheme. But it was only a dream."

"Of course." He seemed satisfied. "Only a dream." But the voice was the female one he used when he was most serious.

The men were oohing and ahing. I turned to check the progress of the contest.

Goblin's skein of pitcher-plants had transmogrified into a huge airborne man-of-war jellyfish. The brown hands were entangled in its tentacles, trying to tear themselves free. And over the cliff face, observing, floated a giant pink face, bearded, surrounded by tangled orange hair. One eye was half closed, sleepily, by a livid scar. I frowned baffled. "What's that?" I knew it was not any doing of Goblin's or One-Eye's, and wondered if Silent had joined the game, just to show them up.

Soulcatcher made a sound that was a creditable imitation of a bird's dying squawk. "Harden," he said, and whirled to face the Captain, bellowing, "To arms. They come."

In seconds men were flying toward their positions. The last hints of the struggle between Goblin and One-Eye became misty tatters floating on the wind, drifting toward the leering Harden face, giving it a loathsome case of acne where they touched. A cute fillip, I thought, but don't try to take him heads up, boys. He won't play games.

The answer to our scramble was a lot of horn-blowing from below, and a grumble of drums which echoed in the canyons like distant thunder.

The Rebel poked at us all day, but it was obvious that he was not serious, that he was just prodding the hornets' nest to see what would happen. He was well aware of the difficulty of storming the Stair.

All of which portended Harden having something nasty up his sleeve.

Overall, though, the skirmishes boosted morale. The men began to believe there was a chance they could hold.

Though the comet swam among the stars, and a galaxy of campfires speckled the Stair below, the night gave the lie to my feeling that the Stair was the heart of war. I sat on an outcrop overlooking the enemy, knees up under my chin, musing on the latest news from the east. Whisper was besieging Frost now, after having finished Trinket's army and having defeated Moth and Sidle among the talking menhirs of the Plain of Fear. The east looked a worse disaster for the Rebel than was the north for us.

It could get worse here. Moth and Sidle and Linger had joined Harden. Others of the Eighteen were down there, as yet unidentified. Our enemies did smell blood.

I have never seen the northern auroras, though I am told we would have gotten glimpses had we held Oar and Deal long enough to have wintered there. The tales I have heard about those gentle, gaudy lights make me think they are the only thing to compare with what took shape over the canyons, as the Rebel campfires dwindled. Long, long, thin banners of tenuous light twisted up toward the stars, shimmering, undulating like seaweed in a gentle current, Soft pinks and greens, yellows and blues, beautiful hues. A phrase leapt into my mind. An ancient name. The Pastel Wars.

The Company fought in the Pastel Wars, long, long ago. I tried to recall what the Annals said about those conflicts. It would not all come to the fore, but I remembered enough to become frightened. I hurried toward the officers' compound, seeking Soulcatcher.

I found him, and told him what I remembered, and he thanked me for my concern, but said he was familiar with both the Pastel Wars and the Rebel cabal sending up these lights. We had no worries. This attack had been anticipated and the Hanged Man was here to abort it.

"Take yourself a seat somewhere, Croaker. Goblin and One-Eye put on their show. Now it's the turn of the Ten." He oozed a confidence both strong and malignant, so that I supposed the Rebel had fallen into some Taken trip.

I did as he suggested, venturing back out to my lonely watchpost. Along the way I passed through a camp arouse by the growing spectacle. A murmur of fear ran hither and yon, rising and falling like the mutter of distant surf.

The colored streamers were stronger now, and there was a frenetic jerkiness to their movements which suggested a thwarted will. Maybe Catcher was right. Maybe this would come to nothing but a flashy show for the troops.

I resumed my perch. The canyon bottom no longer twinkled. It was a sea of ink down there, not at all softened by the glow of the writhing streamers. But if nothing could be seen, plenty could be heard. The acoustics of the land were remarkable.

Harden was on the move. Only the advance of his entire army could generate so much metallic rattle and tinkle.

Harden and his henchmen were confident too.

A soft green light banner floated up into the night, fluttering lazily, like a streamer of tissue in an updraft. It faded as it rose, and disintegrated into dying sparks high overhead.

What snipped it loose? I wondered. Harden or the Hanged Man? Did this bode good or ill?

It was a subtle contest, almost impossible to follow. It was like watching superior fencers duel. You could not follow everything unless you were an expert yourself. Goblin and One-Eye had gone at it like a couple of barbarians with broadswords, comparatively speaking.

Little by little, the colorful aurora died. That had to be the doing of the Hanged Man. The unanchored light banners did us no harm.

The racket below got closer.

Where was Stormbringer? We had not heard from her for a while. This seemed an ideal time to gift the Rebel with miserable weather.

Catcher, too, seemed to be laying down on the job. In all the time we have been in service to the Lady we have not seen him do anything really dramatic. Was he less mighty than his reputation, or, perhaps, saving himself for some extremity only he foresaw?

Something new was happening below. The canyon walls had begun to glow in stripes and spots, a deep, deep red that was barely noticeable at first. The red became brighter. Only after patches began to drip and ooze did I notice the hot draft riding up the cliff face.

"Great gods," I murmured, stricken. Here was a deed worthy of my expectations of the Taken.

Stone began to grumble and roar as molten rock ran away and left mountainsides undermined. There were cries from below, the cries of the hopeless who see doom coming and can do nothing to stay or evade it. Harden's men were being cooked and crushed.

They were in the witch's cauldron for sure, but something made me uneasy anyway. There seemed to be too little yelling for a force the size of Harden's.

In spots the rock became so hot it caught fire. The canyon expelled a furious updraft. The wind howled over the hammering of falling rocks. The light grew bright enough to betray Rebel units climbing the switchbacks.

Too few, I thought. ... A lonely figure on another outcrop caught my eye. One of the Taken, though in the shifting, uncertain light I could not be certain which. It was nodding to itself as it observed the enemy's travails.

The redness, the melting, the collapsing and burning spread till the whole panorama was veined with red and poked with bubbling pools.

A drop of moisture hit my cheek. I looked up, startled, and a second fat drop smacked the bridge of my nose.

The stars had vanished. The spongy bellies of fat grey clouds raced overhead, almost low enough to touch, garishly tinted by the hellscape below.

The bellies of the clouds opened over the canyon. Caught on the edge of the downpour, I was nearly beaten to my knees. Out there it was more savage.

Rain hit molten rock. The roar of steam was deafening. Parti-colored, it stormed toward the sky. The fringe I caught, as I turned to run, was hot enough to redden patches of skin.

Those poor Rebel fools, I thought. Steamed like lobsters... .

I had been dissatisfied because I had seen little spectacular from the Taken? Not anymore. I had trouble keeping my supper down as I reflected on the cold, cruel calculation that had gone into the planning of this.

I suffered one of those crises of conscience familiar to every mercenary, and which few outside the profession understand. My job is to defeat my employer's enemies. Usually any way I can. And heaven knows the Company has served some blackhearted villains. But there was something wrong about what was happening below. In retrospect, I think we ail felt it. Perhaps it sprang from a misguided sense of solidarity with fellow soldiers dying without an opportunity to defend themselves.

We do have a sense of honor in the Company.

The roar of downpour and steam faded. I ventured back to my vantage point. Except for small patches, the canyon was dark. I looked for the Taken I had seen earlier. He was gone.

Above, the comet came out from behind the last clouds, marring the night like a tiny, mocking smile. It had a distinct bend in its tail. Over on the saw-toothed horizon, a moon took a cautious peek at the tortured land.

Horns blared in that direction, their tinny voices distinctly edged with panic. They gave way to a distance muddled sound of fighting, an uproar which swelled rapidly. The fighting sounded heavy and confused. I started toward my makeshift hospital, confident there would be work for me soon. For some reason I was not particularly startled or upset.

Messengers dashed past me, zipping around purposefully. The Captain had done that much with those stragglers. He had restored their senses of order and discipline.

Something whooshed overhead. A seated man riding a dark rectangle swooped through the moonlight, banking toward the uproar. Soulcatcher on his flying carpet.

A bright violet shell flared around him. His carpet rocked violently, slid sideways for a dozen yards. The light faded, shrank in upon him and vanished, leaving me with spots before my eyes. I shrugged, tramped on up the hill.

The early casualties beat me to the hospital. In a way, I was pleased. That indicated efficiency and retention of cool heads under fire. The Captain had worked wonders.

The clatter of companies moving through the darkness confirmed my suspicion that this was more than a nuisance attack by men who seldom dared the dark. (The night belongs to the Lady). Somehow, we had been flanked.

"About damned time you showed your ugly face," One-Eye growled. "Over there. Surgery. I had them start setting up lights."

I washed and got to it. The Lady's people joined me, and pitched in heroically, and for the first time since we had taken the commission I felt like I was doing the wounded some good.

But they just kept pouring in. The clangor continued to rise. Soon it was evident that the Rebel's canyon thrust had been but a feint. All that showy drama had been to little purpose.

Dawn was coloring the sky when I glanced up and found a tattered Soulcatcher facing me. He looked like he had been roasted over a slow fire, and basted in something bluish, greenish, and nasty. He exuded a smoky aroma.

"Start loading your wagons, Croaker," he said in his businesslike female voice. "The Captain is sending you a dozen helpers."

All the transport, including that come up from the south, was parked above my open-air hospital. I glanced that way. A tall, lean, crooked-necked individual was harassing the teamsters into hitching up. "The battle going sour?" I asked. "Caught you by surprise, didn't they?"

Catcher ignored the latter remark. "We have achieved most of our goals. Only one task remains unfulfilled." The voice he chose was deep, sonorous, slow, a speech-maker's voice. "The fighting may go either way. It's too soon to tell. Your Captain has given this rabble backbone. But lest defeat catch you up, get your charges moving."

A few wagons were creaking down toward us already. I shrugged, passed the word, found the next man who needed my attention. While I worked, I asked Catcher, "If the thing is in the balance, shouldn't you be over there pounding on the Rebel?"

"I'm doing the Lady's bidding, Croaker. Our goals are almost met. Linger and Moth are no more. Sidle is grievously injured. Shifter has accomplished his deceit. There is naught left but to deprive the Rebel of their general."

I was confused. Divergent thoughts found their ways to my tongue and betrayed themselves. "But shouldn't we try to break them here?" And, "This northern campaign has been hard on the Circle. First Raker, then Whisper. Now Linger and Moth."

"With Sidle and Harden to go. Yes. They beat us again and again, and each time it costs them the heart of their strength." He gazed downhill, toward a small company coming our way. Raven was in the lead. Catcher faced the wagon park. The Hanged Man stopped gesturing and struck a pose: man listening.

Suddenly, Soulcatcher resumed talking. "Whisper has breached the walls of Frost. Nightcrawler has negotiated the treacherous menhirs on the Plain of Fear, and approaches the suburbs of Thud. The Faceless is on the Plain now, moving toward Barns. They say Parcel committed suicide last night at Ade, to avoid capture by Bonegnasher. Things aren't the disaster they seem, Croaker."

The hell they aren't, I thought. That's the east. This is here. I could not get excited about victories a quarter of the world away. Here we were getting stomped, and if the Rebel broke through to Charm, nothing that happened in the east would matter.

Raven halted his group and approached me alone. "What do you want them to do?"

I assumed the Captain had sent him, so was sure the Captain had ordered the withdrawal. He would not play games for Catcher. "Put the ones we've treated into the wagons." The teamsters were arraying themselves in a nice line. "Send a dozen or so walking wounded with each wagon. Me and One-Eye and the rest will keep cutting and sewing. What?"

He had a look in his eye. I did not like it. He glanced at Soulcatcher. So did I.

"I haven't told him yet," Catcher said.

"Told me what?" I knew I would not like it when heard I it. They had that nervous smell about them. It screamed bad news.

Raven smiled. Not a happy smile, but a sort of gruesome rictus. "You and me, we've been drafted again, Croaker."

"What? Come on! Not again!" I still got the shakes thinking about helping do in the Limper and Whisper

"You have the practical experience," Catcher said.

I kept shaking my head.

Raven growled, "I have to go, so do you, Croaker. Besides, you'll want to get it in the Annals, how you took out more of the Eighteen than any of the Taken."

"Crap. What am I? A bounty hunter? No. I'm a physician. The Annals and fighting are incidental."

Raven told Catcher, "This is the man the Captain had to drag off the line when we were crossing the Windy Country." His eyes were narrow, his cheeks taut. He did not want to go either. He was displacing his resentment by chiding me.

"There is no option, Croaker," Soulcatcher said in a child's voice. "The Lady chose you." He tried to soften my disappointment by adding, "She rewards well those who please her. And you have caught her fancy."

I damned myself for my earlier romanticism. That Croaker who had come north, so thoroughly bemused by the mysterious Lady, was another man. A stripling, filled with the foolish ignorances of youth. Yeah. Sometimes you He to yourself just to keep going.

Catcher told me, "We're not going it alone this time, Croaker. We'll have help from Crooked Neck, Shifter, and Stormbringer."

Sourly, I remarked, "Takes the whole gang to scrub one bandit, eh?"

Catcher did not take the bait. He never does. "The carpet is over there. Collect your weapons and join me." He stalked away.

I took my ire out on my helpers, completely unfairly. Finally, when One-Eye was ready to blow, Raven remarked, "Don't be an asshole, Croaker. We've got to do it, let's do it."

So I apologized to everyone and marched down to join Soulcatcher.

Soulcatcher said, "Get aboard," indicating places. Raven and I assumed the positions we had used before. Catcher handed us lengths of cord. "Tie yourselves securely. This could get rough. I don't want you falling off. And keep a knife handy so you can cut loose when we go in."

My heart fluttered. To tell the truth, I was excited about flying again. Moments from my previous flight haunted me with their joy and beauty. There is a glorious feeling of freedom up there with the cool wind and the eagles.

Catcher even tied himself. Bad sign. "Ready?" Not awaiting an answer, he started muttering. The carpet rocked gently, floated upward light as down on a breeze.

We cleared the treetops. Frame wood smacked me in the behind. My guts sank. Air whipped around me. My hat blew off. I grabbed and missed. The carpet tilted precariously. I found myself gaping down at an earth receding rapidly. Raven grabbed me. Had we not been tied we both would have gone over the side.

We drifted out over the canyons, which looked like a crazy maze from above. The Rebel mass looked like army ants on the march.

I glanced around the sky, which itself is a marvel from that perspective. There were no eagles on the wing. Just vultures. Catcher made a dash through one flight, scattered them.

Another carpet floated up, passed nearby, drifted away till it became but a distant speck. It carried the Hanged Man and two heavily armed Imperials.

"Where's Stormbringer?" I asked.

Catcher extended an arm. Squinting, I discerned a dot on the blue over the desert.

We drifted till I began to wonder if anything was going to happen. Studying the Rebel's progress palled fast. He was making too much headway.

"Get ready," Catcher called over his shoulder.

I gripped my ropes, anticipating something nerve wracking.

"Now."

The bottom fell out. And stayed out- Down, down, and down we plunged. The air screamed. The earth rolled and twisted and hurtled upward. The distant specks that were Stormbringer and the Hanged Man also plummeted. They grew more distinct as we slanted in from three directions.

We whipped past the level where our brethren were striving to stem the Rebel flood. Down we continued, into a less steep glide, rolling, twisting, fishtailing to avoid colliding with wildly eroded sandstone towers. Some I could have touched as we hurtled past.

A small meadow appeared ahead. Our velocity dropped dramatically, till we hovered. "He's there," Catcher whispered. We slid forward a few yards, floated just peeping round a pillar of sandstone.

The once green meadow had been churned by the passage of horses and men. A dozen wagons and their teamsters remained there. Catcher cursed under his breath.

A shadow flew from between rock spires to our left. Flash! Thunder shook the canyon. Sod hurtled into the air. Men cried out, staggered around, scrambled for their weapons.

Another shadow whipped through from another direction. I do not know- what the Hanged Man did, but the Rebels began clawing their throats, gasping.

One big man shook the magic and staggered toward a huge black horse tethered to a picket post at the nether end of the meadow. Catcher took our carpet in fast. The earth slammed against its frame. "Off!" he growled as we bounced. He snatched a sword himself.

Raven and I clambered off and followed Catcher on unsteady legs. The Taken swooped down on the choking teamsters and raged among them, blade throwing gore. Raven and I contributed to the massacre, I hope with less enthusiasm.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Catcher raved at his victims. "He was supposed to be alone."

The other carpets returned and settled nearer the fleeing man. The Taken and their henchmen pursued him on wobbly legs. He vaulted onto the horse's back and parted the picket rope with a vicious swordstroke. I stared. I had not expected Harden to be so intimidating. He was every bit as ugly as the apparition that had appeared during Goblin's bout with One-Eye.

Catcher cut down the last Rebel teamster. "Come!" he snapped. We dogged him as he loped toward Harden. I wondered why I did not have sense enough to hang back.

The Rebel general stopped fleeing. He felled one of the Imperials, who had outdistanced everybody, let out a great bellow of laughter, then howled something unintelligible. The air crackled with the imminence of sorcery.

Violet light flared around all three Taken, more intense than when it had hit Catcher during the night. It stopped them in their tracks. It was a most puissant sorcery. It occupied them totally. Harden turned his attention to the rest of us.

The second Imperial reached him. His great sword hammered down, pounding through the soldier's guard. The horse ambled forward at Harden's urging, gingerly stepping over the fallen. Harden looked at the Taken and cursed the animal, flailed around with his blade.

The horse moved no faster. Harden smote its neck savagely, then howled. His hand would not come free of its mane. His cry of rage became one of despair. He turned his blade on the beast, could not harm it, instantly hurled the weapon at the Taken. The violet surrounding them had begun to weaken.

Raven was two steps from Harden, I three behind him. Stormbringer's men were as close, approaching from the other side.

Raven slashed, a strong, upward cutting stroke. His swordtip thumped Harden's belly-and rebounded. Chain mail? Harden's big fist lashed out and connected with Raven's temple. He wobbled a step and sagged.

Without thought I shifted aim and slashed at Harden's hand. We both yelled when iron bit bone and scarlet flowed.

I leapt over Raven, stopped, spun. Stormbringer's soldiers were hacking at Harden. His mouth was open. His scarred face was contorted as he concentrated on ignoring pain while he used his powers to save himself. The Taken remained out of it for the moment. He faced three ordinary men. But all that did not register till later.

I could see nothing but Harden's steed. The animal was melting... . No. Not melting. Changing.

I giggled. The great Rebel general was astride Shape-shifter's back.

My giggles became crazy laughter.

My little fit cost me my opportunity to participate in the death of a champion. Stormbringer's two soldiers cut Harden to pieces while Shifter held and stifled him. He was dead meat before I regained my self-control.

The Hanged Man, too, missed the denouement. He was busy dying, Harden's great thrown blade buried in his skull. Soulcatcher and Stormbringer moved toward him.

Shifter completed his change into a great, greasy, stinking, fat, naked creature which, despite standing on its hind legs, seemed no more human than the beast he had portrayed. He kicked Harden's remains and quaked with mirth, as though his deadly trick had been the finest jest of the century.

Then he saw the Hanged Man. Shudders ran through his flab. He hastened toward the other Taken, incoherencies frothing his lips.

Crooked Neck worked the sword loose from his skull. He tried to say something, had no luck. Stormbringer and Soulcatcher made no move to help.

I stared at Stormbringer. Such a tiny thing she was. I knelt to test Raven's pulse. She was no bigger than a child. How could such a small package chain such terrible wrath?

Shifter shambled toward the tableau, anger knotting the muscles under the fat across his shaggy shoulders. He halted, faced Catcher and Stormbringer from a tense stance. Nothing was said, but it seemed the Hanged Man's fate was being decided. Shifter wanted to help. The others did not.

Puzzling. Shifter is Catcher's ally. Why this sudden conflict?

Why this daring of the Lady's wrath? She would not be pleased if the Hanged Man died.

Raven's pulse was fluttery when first I touched his throat, but it firmed up. I breathed a little easier.

Stormbringer's soldiers eased up toward the Taken, eyeing Shifter's gross back.

Catcher exchanged glances with Stormbringer. The woman nodded. Soulcatcher whirled. The slits in his mask blazed a lava red.

Suddenly, there was no Catcher. There was a cloud of darkness ten feet high and a dozen across, black as the inside of a coal sack, thicker than the densest fog. The cloud jumped quicker than an adder's strike. There was one mouselike squeak of surprise, then a sinister, enduring silence. After all the roar and clangor, the quiet was deadly ominous.

I shook Raven violently. He did not respond.

Changer and Stormbringer stood over the Hanged Man, staring at me. I wanted to scream, to run, to crawl into the ground to hide. I was a magic man, able to read their thoughts. I knew too much.

Terror froze me.

The coal dust cloud vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Soulcatcher stood between the soldiers. Both toppled slowly, with the majesty of stately old pines.

I gouged Raven. He groaned. His eyes flickered open and I caught a glimpse of pupil, Dilated. Concussion. Damn it! ...

Catcher looked at his partners in crime. Then, slowly, he turned on me.

The three Taken closed in. In the background, the Hanged Man went on dying. He was very noisy about it. I did not hear him, though. I rose, knees watery, and faced my doom.

It's not supposed to end this way, I thought. This isn't right... .

All three stood there and stared.

I stared back. Nothing else I could do.

Brave Croaker. Guts enough, at least, to stare Death in the eye.

"You didn't see a thing, did you?" Catcher asked softly. Cold lizards slithered down my spine. That voice was one one of the dead soldiers had used while hacking away at Harden.

I shook my head.

"You were too busy fighting Harden, then you were occupied with Raven."

I nodded weakly. My knee joints were jelly. I would have bolted otherwise. Foolish as that would have been. Catcher said, "Get Raven onto Bringer's carpet." He pointed.

Nudging, whispering, cajoling, I helped Raven walk. He hadn't the least idea where he was or what he was doing. But he let me steer him.

I was worried. I could find no obvious damage, yet he was not acting right. "Take him straight to my hospital," I said. I could not look Stormbringer in the eye, nor did I achieve the inflection I wanted. My words came out sounding like a plea.

Catcher summoned me to his carpet. I went with all the enthusiasm of a hog to the slaughter chute. He could be playing a game. A fall from his carpet would be a permanent cure for any doubts he harbored about my ability to keep quiet.

He followed me, tossed his bloody sword aboard, settled himself. The carpet floated upward, crawled toward the great scrap of the Stair.

I glanced back at the still forms on the meadow, nagged by undirected feelings of shame. That had not been right... . And yet, what could I have done?

Something golden, something like a pale nebula in the farthest circle of the midnight sky, moved in the shade cast by one of the sandstone towers.

My heart nearly stopped.

The Captain sucked the headless and increasingly demoralized Rebel army into a trap. A great slaughter ensued. Lack of numbers and sheer exhaustion kept the Company from hurling the Rebel off the mountain. .Nor did the complacency of the Taken help. One fresh battalion, one sorcerous assault, might have given us the day.

I treated Raven on the run, after placing him aboard the last wagon to head south. He would remain odd and remote for days. Care of Darling fell my way by default. The child was a fine distraction from the depression of yet another retreat.

Maybe that was the way she had rewarded Raven for his generosity.

"This is our last withdrawal," the Captain promised. He would not call it a retreat, but hadn't the gall to call it an advance to the rear, retrograde action, or any of that gobbledegook. He did not mention the fact that any further withdrawal would come after the end. Charm's fail would mark the death-date of the Lady's Empire. In all probability it will terminate these Annals, and scriven the end of Company history.

Rest in peace, you last of the warrior brotherhoods. You were home and family to me... .

News came which had not been allowed to reach us at the Stair of Tear. Tidings of other Rebel armies advancing from the north along routes more westerly than our line of retreat. The list of cities lost was long and disheartening, even granting exaggeration by the reporters. Soldiers defeated always overestimate the strength of their foe. That soothes egos suspecting their own inferiority.

Walking with Elmo, down the long, gentle south slope, toward the fertile farmlands north of Charm, I suggested, "Sometime when there aren't any Taken around, how about you hint to the Captain that it might be wise if he started disassociating the Company from Soulcatcher."

He looked at me oddly. My old comrades had been doing that lately. Since Harden's fall I had been moody, dour, and uncommunicative. Not that I was a bonfire at the best of times, mind. The pressure was crushing my spirit. I denied myself my usual outlet, the Annals, for fear Soulcatcher would somehow detect what I had written.

"It might be better if we weren't too closely identified with him," I added.

"What happened out there?" By then everyone knew the basic tale. Harden slain. The Hanged Man fallen. Raven and I the only soldiers who got out alive. Everybody had an insatiable thirst for details.

"I can't tell you. But you tell him. When none of the Taken are around."

Elmo did his sums and came to the conclusion not far off the mark. "All right, Croaker. Will do. Take care."

Take care I would. If Fate let me.

That was the day we received word of new victories in the east. The Rebel redoubts were collapsing as fast as the Lady's armies could march-It was also the day we heard that all four northern and western Rebel armies had halted to rest, recruit, and refit for an assault on Charm. Nothing stood between them and the Tower. Nothing, that is, but the Black Company and its accumulation of beaten men.

The great comet is in the sky, that evil harbinger of all great shifts of fortune.

The end is near.

We are retreating still, toward our final appointment with Destiny.

I must record one final incident in the tale of the encounter with Harden. It took place three days north of the Tower and consisted of another dream like the one I suffered at the head of the Stair. The same golden dream, which might have been no dream at all, promised me, "My faithful need have no fear." Once again it allowed me a glimpse of that heart-stopping face. And then it was gone and the fear returned, not lessened in the least.

The days passed. The miles wore away. The great ugly block of the Tower hove over the horizon. And the comet grew ever more brilliant in the nighttime sky.