The summons from Whisper caught me unprepared. It was too early
for the daily report. I’d barely finished breakfast. I knew
it meant trouble. I was not disappointed.
The Taken prowled like a caged animal, radiating tension and
anger. I went inside by the numbers, stood at a perfect attention,
giving no excuse for the picking of nits—in case whatever it was
was not my fault.
She ignored me for several minutes, working off energy. Then she
seated herself, stared at her hands thoughtfully. Her gaze rose.
And she was in complete control. She actually smiled. Had she been
as beautiful as the Lady, that smile would have melted granite. But
she was what she was, a scarred old campaigner, so a smile only
ameliorated the grimness of her face.
“How were the men disposed last night?” she asked.
Baffled, I responded, “Excuse me? You mean their
temper?”
“Where were they stationed?”
“Oh.” That was properly Elmo’s province, but I
knew better than to say so. The Taken do not tolerate excuses,
sound though they may be. “The three men on the ship south
with Bullock, looking for that man Asa.” I worried about her
having sent them. When I do not understand the motives of the
Taken, I get paranoid. “Five down in the Buskin pretending to
be foreign sailors. Three more down there watching people
we’ve found especially interesting. I’d have to
double-check with Elmo to be positive, but at least four more were
in other parts of the city, trying to pick up something of
interest. The rest of us were here in the castle, off duty. Wait.
One man would have been down in the Duke’s secret police
office, and two would have been at the Enclosure, hanging around
with the Custodians. I was with the Inquisitors most of the night,
picking their brains. We’re scattered pretty thin right now.
I’ll be glad when the Captain gets here. We’ve got too
much going for the available manpower. The occupation planning is
way behind.”
She sighed, rose, resumed pacing. “My fault as much as
anyone’s, I suppose.” She looked out a window for a
long time. Then she beckoned. I joined her.
She indicated the black castle. “Just whiskers short.
They’re trying to open the way for the Dominator already.
It’s not yet time, but they’re getting hurried. Maybe
they’ve sensed our interest.”
This Juniper business was like some giant, tentacled sea beast
from a sailor’s lie. No matter where we turned or what we
did, we got deeper into trouble. By working at cross-purposes with
the Taken, trying to cover an increasingly more obvious trail, we
were complicating their efforts to deal with the peril of the black
castle. If we did cover well, we just might make it possible for
the Dominator to emerge into an unprepared world.
I did not want that horror upon my conscience.
Though I fear I tend not to record it that way, we were
embroiled in substantial moral quandaries. We are not accustomed to
such problems. The lot of the mercenary does not require much
moralizing or making of moral decisions. Essentially, the mercenary
sets morality aside, or at best reorders the customary structures
to fit the needs of his way of life. The great issues become how
well he does his job, how faithfully he carries out his commission,
how well he adheres to a standard demanding unswerving loyalties to
his comrades. He dehumanizes the world outside the bounds of his
outfit. Then anything he does, or witnesses, becomes of minor
significance as long as its brunt is borne outside the Company.
We had drifted into a trap where we might have to face the
biggest choice in the Company’s history. We might have to
betray four centuries of Company mythos on behalf of the greater
whole.
I knew I could not permit the Dominator to restore himself, if
that turned out to be the only way we could keep the Lady from
finding out about Darling and Raven.
Yet . . . The Lady was not much better. We
served her, and, till lately, well and faithfully, obliterating the
Rebel wherever we found him, but I don’t think many of us
were indifferent to what she was. She was less evil than the
Dominator only because she was less determined about it, more
patient in her drive for total and absolute control.
That presented me with another quandary. Was I capable of
sacrificing Darling to prevent the Dominator’s return? If
that became the price?
“You seem very thoughtful,” Whisper said.
“Uhm. There’re too many angles to this business. The
Custodians. The Duke. Us. Bullock, who has axes of his own to
grind.” I had told her about Bullock’s Buskin origins,
feeding her seemingly irrelevant information to complicate and
distract her thinking.
She pointed again. “Didn’t I suggest a close watch
be kept on that place?”
“Yes, ma’am. We did for a while, too. But nothing
ever happened, and then we were told to do some other
things . . . ” I broke off, quaking with
a sudden nasty suspicion.
She read my face. “Yes. Last night. And this delivery was
still alive.”
“Oh boy,” I murmured. “Who did it? You
know?”
“We just sensed the consequent changes. They tried to open
the way. They weren’t strong enough yet, but they came very
close.”
She began to prowl. Mentally, I ticked off the roster for the
Buskin last night. I was going to ask some very pointed
questions.
“I consulted the Lady directly. She’s very worried.
Her orders are to let ancillary business slide. We’re to
prevent any more bodies reaching the castle. Yes, the rest of your
Company will be here soon. From six to ten days. And there is much
to be done to prepare for their arrival. But, as you observed,
there is too much to do and too few to do it. Let your Captain cope
when he arrives. The black castle must be isolated.”
“Why not fly some men in?”
“The Lady has forbidden that.”
I tried to look perplexed. “Buy why?” I had a
sweating, fearful suspicion that I knew.
Whisper shrugged. “Because she doesn’t want you
wasting time making hellos and briefing newcomers. Go see what can
be done about isolating the castle.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I departed, thinking it had gone both better and worse than I
had anticipated. Better, because she did not throw one of her
screaming rages. Worse, because she had in effect announced that we
who were here already were suspect, that we might have succumbed to
a moral infection the Lady did not want communicated to our
brethren.
Scary.
“Yeah,” Elmo said when I told him. He did not need
it explained. “Which means we got to make contact with the
Old Man.”
“Messenger?”
“What else? Who can we break loose and cover?”
“One of the men from the Buskin.”
Elmo nodded. “I’ll handle that. You go ahead and
figure how to isolate the castle with the manpower we
have.”
“Why don’t you go scout the castle? I want to find
out what those guys were doing last night.”
“That’s neither here nor there now, Croaker.
I’m taking over. Not saying you done a bad job, just you
didn’t get it done. Which is my fault, really. I’m the
soldier.”
“Being a soldier won’t make any difference, Elmo.
This isn’t soldier’s work. It’s spy stuff. And
spies need time to worm into the fabric of a society. We
haven’t had enough of that.”
“Time is up now. Isn’t that what you
said?”
“I guess,” I admitted. “All right. I’ll
scout the castle. But you find out what went on down there last
night. Especially around that placed called the Iron Lily. It keeps
turning up, just like that guy Asa.”
All the while we talked, Elmo was changing. Now he looked like a
sailor down on his luck, too old to ship, but still tough enough
for dirty work. He would fit right in down in the Buskin. I told
him so.
“Yeah. Let’s get moving. And don’t plan on
getting much sleep till the Captain gets here.”
We looked at one another, not saying what lay in the backs of
our minds. If the Taken did not want us in touch with our brethren,
what might they do when the Company hove in sight, coming out of
the Wolanders?
Up close, the black castle was both intriguing and unsettling. I
took a horse over, circled the place several times, even flipped a
cheerful wave at the one movement I detected atop its glassy
ramparts.
There was some difficult ground behind it—steep, rocky,
overgrown with scraggly, thorny brush which had a sagey odor.
Nobody lugging a corpse would reach the fortress from that
direction. The ground was better along the ridgeline to east and
west, but even there an approach was improbable. Men of the sort
who sold corpses would do things the easy way. That meant using the
road which ran from the Port River waterfront, through the scatter
of merchant class houses on the middle slopes, and just kept on to
the castle gate. Someone had followed that course often, for wheel
ruts ran from the end of the road to the castle.
My problem was, there was no place a squad could lie in wait
without being seen from the castle wall. It took me till dusk to
finalize my plan.
I found an abandoned house a ways down the slope and a little
upriver. I would conceal my squad there and post sentries down the
road, in the populated area. They could run a message to the rest
of us if they saw anything suspicious. We could hustle up and
across the slope to intercept potential body-sellers. Wagons would
be slow enough to allow us the time needed.
Old Croaker is a brilliant strategist. Yes, sir. I had my troops
in place and everything set by midnight. And had two false alarms
before breakfast. I learned the embarrassing way that there was
legitimate night traffic past my sentry post.
I sat in the old house with my team, alternately playing tonk
and worrying, and on rare occasions napping. And wondering a lot
about what was happening down in the Buskin and across the valley
in Duretile.
I prayed Elmo could keep his fingers on all the strings.
The summons from Whisper caught me unprepared. It was too early
for the daily report. I’d barely finished breakfast. I knew
it meant trouble. I was not disappointed.
The Taken prowled like a caged animal, radiating tension and
anger. I went inside by the numbers, stood at a perfect attention,
giving no excuse for the picking of nits—in case whatever it was
was not my fault.
She ignored me for several minutes, working off energy. Then she
seated herself, stared at her hands thoughtfully. Her gaze rose.
And she was in complete control. She actually smiled. Had she been
as beautiful as the Lady, that smile would have melted granite. But
she was what she was, a scarred old campaigner, so a smile only
ameliorated the grimness of her face.
“How were the men disposed last night?” she asked.
Baffled, I responded, “Excuse me? You mean their
temper?”
“Where were they stationed?”
“Oh.” That was properly Elmo’s province, but I
knew better than to say so. The Taken do not tolerate excuses,
sound though they may be. “The three men on the ship south
with Bullock, looking for that man Asa.” I worried about her
having sent them. When I do not understand the motives of the
Taken, I get paranoid. “Five down in the Buskin pretending to
be foreign sailors. Three more down there watching people
we’ve found especially interesting. I’d have to
double-check with Elmo to be positive, but at least four more were
in other parts of the city, trying to pick up something of
interest. The rest of us were here in the castle, off duty. Wait.
One man would have been down in the Duke’s secret police
office, and two would have been at the Enclosure, hanging around
with the Custodians. I was with the Inquisitors most of the night,
picking their brains. We’re scattered pretty thin right now.
I’ll be glad when the Captain gets here. We’ve got too
much going for the available manpower. The occupation planning is
way behind.”
She sighed, rose, resumed pacing. “My fault as much as
anyone’s, I suppose.” She looked out a window for a
long time. Then she beckoned. I joined her.
She indicated the black castle. “Just whiskers short.
They’re trying to open the way for the Dominator already.
It’s not yet time, but they’re getting hurried. Maybe
they’ve sensed our interest.”
This Juniper business was like some giant, tentacled sea beast
from a sailor’s lie. No matter where we turned or what we
did, we got deeper into trouble. By working at cross-purposes with
the Taken, trying to cover an increasingly more obvious trail, we
were complicating their efforts to deal with the peril of the black
castle. If we did cover well, we just might make it possible for
the Dominator to emerge into an unprepared world.
I did not want that horror upon my conscience.
Though I fear I tend not to record it that way, we were
embroiled in substantial moral quandaries. We are not accustomed to
such problems. The lot of the mercenary does not require much
moralizing or making of moral decisions. Essentially, the mercenary
sets morality aside, or at best reorders the customary structures
to fit the needs of his way of life. The great issues become how
well he does his job, how faithfully he carries out his commission,
how well he adheres to a standard demanding unswerving loyalties to
his comrades. He dehumanizes the world outside the bounds of his
outfit. Then anything he does, or witnesses, becomes of minor
significance as long as its brunt is borne outside the Company.
We had drifted into a trap where we might have to face the
biggest choice in the Company’s history. We might have to
betray four centuries of Company mythos on behalf of the greater
whole.
I knew I could not permit the Dominator to restore himself, if
that turned out to be the only way we could keep the Lady from
finding out about Darling and Raven.
Yet . . . The Lady was not much better. We
served her, and, till lately, well and faithfully, obliterating the
Rebel wherever we found him, but I don’t think many of us
were indifferent to what she was. She was less evil than the
Dominator only because she was less determined about it, more
patient in her drive for total and absolute control.
That presented me with another quandary. Was I capable of
sacrificing Darling to prevent the Dominator’s return? If
that became the price?
“You seem very thoughtful,” Whisper said.
“Uhm. There’re too many angles to this business. The
Custodians. The Duke. Us. Bullock, who has axes of his own to
grind.” I had told her about Bullock’s Buskin origins,
feeding her seemingly irrelevant information to complicate and
distract her thinking.
She pointed again. “Didn’t I suggest a close watch
be kept on that place?”
“Yes, ma’am. We did for a while, too. But nothing
ever happened, and then we were told to do some other
things . . . ” I broke off, quaking with
a sudden nasty suspicion.
She read my face. “Yes. Last night. And this delivery was
still alive.”
“Oh boy,” I murmured. “Who did it? You
know?”
“We just sensed the consequent changes. They tried to open
the way. They weren’t strong enough yet, but they came very
close.”
She began to prowl. Mentally, I ticked off the roster for the
Buskin last night. I was going to ask some very pointed
questions.
“I consulted the Lady directly. She’s very worried.
Her orders are to let ancillary business slide. We’re to
prevent any more bodies reaching the castle. Yes, the rest of your
Company will be here soon. From six to ten days. And there is much
to be done to prepare for their arrival. But, as you observed,
there is too much to do and too few to do it. Let your Captain cope
when he arrives. The black castle must be isolated.”
“Why not fly some men in?”
“The Lady has forbidden that.”
I tried to look perplexed. “Buy why?” I had a
sweating, fearful suspicion that I knew.
Whisper shrugged. “Because she doesn’t want you
wasting time making hellos and briefing newcomers. Go see what can
be done about isolating the castle.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I departed, thinking it had gone both better and worse than I
had anticipated. Better, because she did not throw one of her
screaming rages. Worse, because she had in effect announced that we
who were here already were suspect, that we might have succumbed to
a moral infection the Lady did not want communicated to our
brethren.
Scary.
“Yeah,” Elmo said when I told him. He did not need
it explained. “Which means we got to make contact with the
Old Man.”
“Messenger?”
“What else? Who can we break loose and cover?”
“One of the men from the Buskin.”
Elmo nodded. “I’ll handle that. You go ahead and
figure how to isolate the castle with the manpower we
have.”
“Why don’t you go scout the castle? I want to find
out what those guys were doing last night.”
“That’s neither here nor there now, Croaker.
I’m taking over. Not saying you done a bad job, just you
didn’t get it done. Which is my fault, really. I’m the
soldier.”
“Being a soldier won’t make any difference, Elmo.
This isn’t soldier’s work. It’s spy stuff. And
spies need time to worm into the fabric of a society. We
haven’t had enough of that.”
“Time is up now. Isn’t that what you
said?”
“I guess,” I admitted. “All right. I’ll
scout the castle. But you find out what went on down there last
night. Especially around that placed called the Iron Lily. It keeps
turning up, just like that guy Asa.”
All the while we talked, Elmo was changing. Now he looked like a
sailor down on his luck, too old to ship, but still tough enough
for dirty work. He would fit right in down in the Buskin. I told
him so.
“Yeah. Let’s get moving. And don’t plan on
getting much sleep till the Captain gets here.”
We looked at one another, not saying what lay in the backs of
our minds. If the Taken did not want us in touch with our brethren,
what might they do when the Company hove in sight, coming out of
the Wolanders?
Up close, the black castle was both intriguing and unsettling. I
took a horse over, circled the place several times, even flipped a
cheerful wave at the one movement I detected atop its glassy
ramparts.
There was some difficult ground behind it—steep, rocky,
overgrown with scraggly, thorny brush which had a sagey odor.
Nobody lugging a corpse would reach the fortress from that
direction. The ground was better along the ridgeline to east and
west, but even there an approach was improbable. Men of the sort
who sold corpses would do things the easy way. That meant using the
road which ran from the Port River waterfront, through the scatter
of merchant class houses on the middle slopes, and just kept on to
the castle gate. Someone had followed that course often, for wheel
ruts ran from the end of the road to the castle.
My problem was, there was no place a squad could lie in wait
without being seen from the castle wall. It took me till dusk to
finalize my plan.
I found an abandoned house a ways down the slope and a little
upriver. I would conceal my squad there and post sentries down the
road, in the populated area. They could run a message to the rest
of us if they saw anything suspicious. We could hustle up and
across the slope to intercept potential body-sellers. Wagons would
be slow enough to allow us the time needed.
Old Croaker is a brilliant strategist. Yes, sir. I had my troops
in place and everything set by midnight. And had two false alarms
before breakfast. I learned the embarrassing way that there was
legitimate night traffic past my sentry post.
I sat in the old house with my team, alternately playing tonk
and worrying, and on rare occasions napping. And wondering a lot
about what was happening down in the Buskin and across the valley
in Duretile.
I prayed Elmo could keep his fingers on all the strings.