The men who fled Rust with the cowardly windwhale eventually
arrived. We learned that the Taken had escaped the Plain, all in a
rage because but one carpet survived. Their offensive would be
delayed till the carpets were replaced. And carpets are among the
greatest and most costly magicks. I suspect the Limper had to do a
lot of explaining to the Lady.
I drafted One-Eye, Goblin, and Silent into an expanded project.
I translated. They extracted proper names, assembled them in
charts. My quarters became all but impenetrable. And barely livable
while they were there, for Goblin and One-Eye had had a couple of
tastes of life outside Darling’s null. They were at one
another constantly.
And I began having nightmares.
One evening I posed a challenge, half as a result of no further
courier arriving, half as busy work meant to stop Goblin and
One-Eye from driving me mad. I said, “I may have to leave the
Plain. Can you do something so I don’t attract any special
attention?”
They had their questions. I answered most honestly. They wanted
to go too, as if a journey west was established fact. I said,
“No way are you going. A thousand miles of this crap?
I’d commit suicide before we got off the Plain. Or murder one
of you. Which I’m considering anyway.”
Goblin squeaked. He pretended mortal terror. One-Eye said,
“Get within ten feet of me and I’ll turn you into a
lizard.”
I made a rude noise. “You can barely turn food into
shit.”
Goblin cackled. “Chickens and cows do better. You can
fertilize with theirs.”
“You got no room to talk, runt,” I snapped.
“Getting touchy in his old age,” One-Eye observed.
“Must be rheumatiz. Got the rheumatiz, Croaker?”
“He’ll wish his problem was rheumatism if he keeps
on,” Goblin promised. “It’s bad enough I have to
put up with you. But you’re at least predictable.”
“Predictable?”
“Like the seasons.”
They were off. I sped Silent a look of appeal. The
son-of-a-bitch ignored me.
Next day Goblin ambled in wearing a smug smile. “We
figured something out, Croaker. In case you do go
wandering.”
“Like what?”
“We’ll need your amulets.”
I had two that they had given me long ago. One was supposed to
warn me of the proximity of the Taken. It worked quite well. The
other, ostensibly, was protective, but it also let them locate me
from a distance. Silent tracked it the time Catcher sent Raven and
me to ambush Limper and Whisper in the Forest of Cloud, when Limper
tried to go over to the Rebel.
Long ago and far away. Memories of a younger Croaker.
“We’ll work up some modifications. So you
can’t be located magically. Let me have them. Later
we’ll have to go outside to test them.”
I eyed him narrowly.
He said, “You’ll have to come so we can test them by
trying to find you.”
“Yeah? Sounds like a drummed-up excuse to get outside the
null.”
“Maybe.” He grinned.
Whatever, Darling liked the notion. Next evening we headed up
the creek, skirting Old Father Tree. “He looks a little
peaked,” I said.
“Caught the sidewash of a Taken spell during the
brouhaha,” One-Eye explained. “I don’t think he
was pleased.”
The old tree tinkled. I stopped, considered it. It had to be
thousands of years old. Trees grow very slow on the Plain. What
stories it would tell!
“Come on, Croaker,” Goblin called. “Old Father
ain’t talking.” He grinned his frog grin.
They know me too well. Know when I see anything old I wonder
what it has seen. Damn them, anyhow.
We left the watercourse five miles from the Hole, quartered
westward into desert where the coral was especially dense and
dangerous. I guess there were five hundred species, in reefs so
close they were almost impenetrable. The colors were riotous.
Fingers, fronds, branches of coral soared thirty feet into the air.
I remain eternally amazed that the wind does not topple them.
In a small sandy place surrounded by coral, One-Eye called a
halt. “This is far enough. We’ll be safe
here.”
I wondered. Our progress had been followed by mantas and the
creatures that resemble buzzards. Never will I trust such beasts
completely.
Long, long ago, after the Battle at Charm, the Company crossed
the Plain en route to assignments in the east. I saw horrible
things happen. I could not shake the memories.
Goblin and One-Eye played games but also tended to business.
They remind me of active children. Always into something, just to
be doing. I lay back and watched the clouds. Soon I fell
asleep.
Goblin wakened me. He returned my amulets. “We’re
going to play hide-and-seek,” he said. “We’ll
give you a head start. If we’ve done everything right, we
won’t be able to find you.”
“Now that’s wonderful,” I replied. “Me
alone out here, wandering around lost.” I was just carping. I
could find the Hole. As a nasty practical joke I was tempted to
head straight there.
This was business, though.
I set off to the southwest, toward the buttes. I crossed the
westward trail and went into hiding among quiescent walking trees.
Only after darkness fell did I give up waiting. I walked back to
the Hole, wondering what had become of my companions. I startled
the sentry when I arrived. “Goblin and One-Eye come
in?”
“No. I thought they were with you.”
“They were.” Concerned, I went below, asked the
Lieutenant’s advice.
“Go find them,” he told me.
“How?”
He looked at me like I was a half-wit. “Leave your silly
amulets, go outside the null, and wait.”
“Oh. Okay.”
So I went back outside, walked up the creek, grumbling. My feet
ached. I was not used to so much hiking. Good for me, I told
myself. Had to be in shape if there was a trip to Oar in the
cards.
I reached the edge of the coral reefs. “One-Eye! Goblin!
You guys around?”
No answer. I was not going on looking, though. The coral would
kill me. I circled north, assuming they had moved away from the
Hole. Each few minutes I dropped to my knees, hoping to spot a
menhir’s silhouette. The menhirs would know what had become
of them.
Once I saw some flash and fury from the corner of my eye and,
without thinking, ran that way, thinking it was Goblin and One-Eye
squabbling. But a direct look revealed the distant rage of a change
storm.
I stopped immediately, belatedly remembering that only death
hurries on the Plain by night.
I was lucky. Just steps onward the sand became spongy, loose. I
squatted, sniffed a handful. It held the smell of old death. I
backed away carefully. Who knows what lay in waiting beneath that
sand?
“Better plant somewhere and wait for the sun,” I
muttered. I was no longer certain of my position.
I found some rocks that would break the wind, some brush for
firewood, and pitched camp. The fire was more to declare myself to
beasts than to keep warm. The night was not cold.
Firemaking was a symbolic statement out there.
Once the flames rose I found that the place had been used
before. Smoke had blackened the rocks. Native humans, probably.
They wander in small bands. We have little intercourse with them.
They have no interest in the world struggle.
Will failed me sometime after the second hour. I fell
asleep.
The nightmare found me. And found me unshielded by amulets or
null.
She came.
It had been years. Last time it was to report the final defeat
of her husband in the affair at Juniper.
A golden cloud, like dust motes dancing in a sunbeam. An
all-over feeling of being awake while sleeping. Calmness and fear
together. An inability to move. All the old symptoms.
A beautiful woman formed in the cloud, a woman out of daydream.
The sort you hope to meet someday, knowing there is no chance. I
cannot say what she wore, if she wore anything. My universe
consisted of her face and the terror its presence inspired.
Her smile was not at all cold. Long ago, for some reason, she
took an interest in me. I supposed she retained some residue of the
old affection, as one does for a pet long dead.
“Physician.” Breeze in the reeds beside the waters
of eternity. The whisper of angels. But never could she make me
forget the reality whence the voice sprang.
Nor was she ever so gauche as to tempt me, either with promises
or herself. That, perhaps, is one reason I think she felt a certain
fondness. When she used me, she gave it to me straight going
in.
I could not respond.
“You are safe. Long ago, by your standard of time, I said
I would remain in touch. I have been unable. You cut me off. I have
been trying for weeks.”
The nightmares explained.
“What?” I squeaked like Goblin.
“Join me at Charm. Be my historian.”
As always when she touched me, I was baffled. She seemed to
consider me outside the struggle while yet a part of it. On the
Stair of Tear, on the eve of the most savage sorcerous struggle
ever I witnessed, she came to promise me I would come to no harm.
She seemed intrigued with my lesser role as Company historian. Back
when, she insisted I record events as they happened. Without regard
to pleasing anyone. I had done so within the limits of my
prejudices.
“The heat in the crucible is rising, physician. Your White
Rose is crafty. Her attack behind the Limper was a grand stroke.
But insignificant on the broader canvas. Don’t you
agree?”
How could I argue? I did agree.
“As your spies have no doubt reported, five armies stand
poised to cleanse the Plain of Fear. It is a strange and
unpredictable land. But it will not withstand what is being
marshaled.”
Again I could not argue, for I believed her. I could but do what
Darling so often spoke of: Buy time. “You may be
surprised.”
“Perhaps. Surprises have been calculated into my plans.
Come out of that cold waste, Croaker. Come to the Tower. Become my
historian.”
This was as near temptation as ever she had come. She spoke to a
part of me I do not understand, a part almost willing to betray
comrades of decades. If I went, there was so much I would know. So
many answers illuminated. So many curiosities satisfied.
“You escaped us at Queen’s Bridge.”
Heat climbed my neck. During our years on the run the
Lady’s forces had overtaken us several times. Queen’s
Bridge was the worst. A hundred brothers had fallen there. And to
my shame, I left the Annals behind, buried in the river bank. Four
hundred years worth of Company history, abandoned.
There was just so much that could be carried away. The papers
down in the Hole were critical to our future. I took them instead
of the Annals. But I suffer frequent bouts of guilt. I must answer
the shades of brethren who have gone before. Those Annals are the
Black Company. While they exist, the Company lives.
“We escaped and escaped, and will continue to escape. It
is fated.”
She smiled, amused. “I have read your Annals, Croaker. New
and old.”
I began throwing wood onto the embers of my fire. I was not
dreaming. “You have them?” Till that moment I had
silenced guilt with promises to recover them.
“They were found after the battle. They came to me. I was
pleased. You are honest, as historians go.”
“Thank you. I try.”
“Come to Charm. There is a place for you in the Tower. You
can see the grand canvas from here.”
“I can’t.”
“I cannot shield you there. If you stay, you must face
what befalls your Rebel friends. The Limper commands that campaign.
I will not interfere. He is not what he was. You hurt him. And he
had to be hurt more to be saved. He has not forgiven you that,
Croaker.”
“I know.” How many times had she used my name? In
all our contacts previously, over years, she had used it but
once.
“Don’t let him take you.”
A slight, twisted bit of humor rose from somewhere inside me.
“You are a failure. Lady.”
She was taken aback.
“Fool that I am, I recorded my romances in the Annals. You
read them. You know I never characterized you as black. Not. I
think, as I would characterize your husband. I suspect an
unconsciously sensed truth lies beneath the silliness of those
romances.”
“Indeed?”
“I don’t think you are black. I think you’re
just trying. I think that, for all the wickedness you’ve
done, part of the child that was remains untainted. A spark
remains, and you can’t extinguish it.”
Unchallenged, I became more daring. “I think you’ve
selected me as a symbolic sop to that spark. I am a reclamation
project meant to satisfy a hidden streak of decency, the way my
friend Raven reclaimed a child who became the White Rose. You read
the Annals. You know to what depths Raven sank once he concentrated
all decency in one cup. Better, perhaps, that he had had none at
all. Juniper might still exist. So might he.”
“Juniper was a boil overdue for lancing. I am not come to
be mocked, physician. I will not be made to look weak even before
an audience of one.”
I started to protest.
“For I know that this, too, will end up in your
Annals.”
She knew me. But then, she had had me before the Eye.
“Come to the Tower, Croaker. I demand no oath.”
“Lady . . . ”
“Even the Taken bind themselves with deadly oaths. You may
remain free. Just do what you do. Heal, and record the truth. What
you would do anywhere. You have value not to be wasted out
there.”
Now there was a sentiment with which I could agree
wholeheartedly. I would take it back and rub some people’s
noses in it. “Say what?”
She started to speak. I raised a warning hand. I had spoken to
myself, not to her. Was that a footfall? Yes. Something big coming.
Something moving slowly, wearily.
She sensed it, too. An eye blink and she was gone, her departure
sucking something from my mind, so that once more I was not certain
I had not dreamed everything, for all that every word remained
immutably inscribed on the stone of my mind.
I shuffled brush onto my fire, backed into a crack behind the
dagger that was the only weapon I’d had sense enough to
bring.
It came closer. Then paused. Then came on. My heartbeat
increased. Something thrust into the firelight.
“Toadkiller Dog! What the hell, hey? What’re you
doing? Come on in out of the cold, boy.” The words tumbled
out, bearing fear away. “Boy, will Tracker be glad to see
you. What happened to you?”
He came forward cautiously, looking twice as mangy as ever. He
dropped onto his belly, rested his chin on forepaws, closed one
eye.
“I don’t have any food. I’m sort of lost
myself. You’re damned lucky, know that? Making it this far.
The plain is a bad place to be on your own.”
Right then that old mongrel looked like he agreed. Body
language, if you will. He had survived, but it had not been
easy.
I told him, “Sun comes up, we’ll head back. Goblin
and One-Eye got lost; it’s their own tough luck.”
After Toadkiller Dog’s arrival I rested better. I guess
the old alliance is imprinted on people, too. I was confident he
would warn me if trouble beckoned.
Come morning we found the creek and headed for the Hole. I
stopped, as I often do, to approach Old Father Tree for a little
one-sided conversation about what he had seen during his long
sentinelship. The dog would not come anywhere near. Weird. But so
what? Weird is the order of the day on the Plain.
I found One-Eye and Goblin snoring, sleeping in. They had
returned to the Hole only minutes after my departure in search of
them. Bastards. I would redress the balance when the chance
came.
I drove them crazy by not mentioning my night out.
“Did it work?” I demanded. Down the tunnel Tracker
was having a noisy reunion with his mutt.
“Sort of,” Goblin said. He was not enthusiastic.
“Sort of? What’s sort of! Does it work or
doesn’t it?”
“Well, what we got is a problem. Mainly, we can keep the
Taken from locating you. From getting a fix on you, so to
speak.”
Obfuscation is a sure sign of trouble with this guy. “But?
But me the but, Goblin.”
“If you go outside the null, there’s no hiding the
fact that you are out.”
“Great. Real great. What good are you guys,
anyway?”
“It’s not that bad,” One-Eye said. “You
wouldn’t attract any attention unless they find out
you’re out from some other source. I mean, they
wouldn’t be watching for you, would they? No reason to. So
it’s just as good as if we got it to do everything we
wanted.”
“Crap! You better start praying that next letter comes
through. Because if I go out and get my ass killed, guess
who’s going to haunt whom forever?”
“Darling wouldn’t send you out.”
“Bet? She’ll go through three or four days of
soul-searching. But she’ll send me. Because that last letter
will give us the key.”
Sudden fear. Had the Lady probed my mind?
“What’s the matter, Croaker?”
I was saved a lie by Tracker’s advent. He bounced in and
pumped my hand like a mad fool. “Thank you, Croaker. Thanks
for bringing him home.” Out he went.
“What the hell was that?” Goblin asked.
“I brought his dog home.”
“Weird.”
One-Eye chortled. “The pot calling the kettle
black.”
“Yeah? Lizard snot. Want me to tell you about
weird?”
“Stow it,” I said. “If I get sent out of here
I want this stuff in perfect order. I just wish we had people who
could read this junk.”
“Maybe I can help.” Tracker was back. The big dumb
lout. A devil with a sword, but probably unable to write his own
name.
“How?”
“I could read some of that stuff. I know some old
languages. My father taught me.” He grinned as if at a huge
joke. He selected a piece written in TelleKurre. He read it aloud.
The ancient language rolled off his tongue naturally, as I had
heard it spoken among the old Taken. Then he translated. It was a
memo to a castle kitchen about a meal to be prepared for visiting
notables. I went over it painstakingly. His translation was
faultless. Better than I could do. A third of the words evaded
me.
“Well. Welcome to the team. I’ll tell
Darling.” I slipped out, exchanging a puzzled glance with
One-Eye behind Tracker’s back.
Stranger and stranger. What was this man? Besides weird. At
first encounter he reminded me of Raven, and fit the role. When I
came to think of him as big, slow, and clumsy, he fit that role.
Was he a reflection of the image in his beholder?
A good fighter, though, bless him. Worth ten of anyone else we
have.
The men who fled Rust with the cowardly windwhale eventually
arrived. We learned that the Taken had escaped the Plain, all in a
rage because but one carpet survived. Their offensive would be
delayed till the carpets were replaced. And carpets are among the
greatest and most costly magicks. I suspect the Limper had to do a
lot of explaining to the Lady.
I drafted One-Eye, Goblin, and Silent into an expanded project.
I translated. They extracted proper names, assembled them in
charts. My quarters became all but impenetrable. And barely livable
while they were there, for Goblin and One-Eye had had a couple of
tastes of life outside Darling’s null. They were at one
another constantly.
And I began having nightmares.
One evening I posed a challenge, half as a result of no further
courier arriving, half as busy work meant to stop Goblin and
One-Eye from driving me mad. I said, “I may have to leave the
Plain. Can you do something so I don’t attract any special
attention?”
They had their questions. I answered most honestly. They wanted
to go too, as if a journey west was established fact. I said,
“No way are you going. A thousand miles of this crap?
I’d commit suicide before we got off the Plain. Or murder one
of you. Which I’m considering anyway.”
Goblin squeaked. He pretended mortal terror. One-Eye said,
“Get within ten feet of me and I’ll turn you into a
lizard.”
I made a rude noise. “You can barely turn food into
shit.”
Goblin cackled. “Chickens and cows do better. You can
fertilize with theirs.”
“You got no room to talk, runt,” I snapped.
“Getting touchy in his old age,” One-Eye observed.
“Must be rheumatiz. Got the rheumatiz, Croaker?”
“He’ll wish his problem was rheumatism if he keeps
on,” Goblin promised. “It’s bad enough I have to
put up with you. But you’re at least predictable.”
“Predictable?”
“Like the seasons.”
They were off. I sped Silent a look of appeal. The
son-of-a-bitch ignored me.
Next day Goblin ambled in wearing a smug smile. “We
figured something out, Croaker. In case you do go
wandering.”
“Like what?”
“We’ll need your amulets.”
I had two that they had given me long ago. One was supposed to
warn me of the proximity of the Taken. It worked quite well. The
other, ostensibly, was protective, but it also let them locate me
from a distance. Silent tracked it the time Catcher sent Raven and
me to ambush Limper and Whisper in the Forest of Cloud, when Limper
tried to go over to the Rebel.
Long ago and far away. Memories of a younger Croaker.
“We’ll work up some modifications. So you
can’t be located magically. Let me have them. Later
we’ll have to go outside to test them.”
I eyed him narrowly.
He said, “You’ll have to come so we can test them by
trying to find you.”
“Yeah? Sounds like a drummed-up excuse to get outside the
null.”
“Maybe.” He grinned.
Whatever, Darling liked the notion. Next evening we headed up
the creek, skirting Old Father Tree. “He looks a little
peaked,” I said.
“Caught the sidewash of a Taken spell during the
brouhaha,” One-Eye explained. “I don’t think he
was pleased.”
The old tree tinkled. I stopped, considered it. It had to be
thousands of years old. Trees grow very slow on the Plain. What
stories it would tell!
“Come on, Croaker,” Goblin called. “Old Father
ain’t talking.” He grinned his frog grin.
They know me too well. Know when I see anything old I wonder
what it has seen. Damn them, anyhow.
We left the watercourse five miles from the Hole, quartered
westward into desert where the coral was especially dense and
dangerous. I guess there were five hundred species, in reefs so
close they were almost impenetrable. The colors were riotous.
Fingers, fronds, branches of coral soared thirty feet into the air.
I remain eternally amazed that the wind does not topple them.
In a small sandy place surrounded by coral, One-Eye called a
halt. “This is far enough. We’ll be safe
here.”
I wondered. Our progress had been followed by mantas and the
creatures that resemble buzzards. Never will I trust such beasts
completely.
Long, long ago, after the Battle at Charm, the Company crossed
the Plain en route to assignments in the east. I saw horrible
things happen. I could not shake the memories.
Goblin and One-Eye played games but also tended to business.
They remind me of active children. Always into something, just to
be doing. I lay back and watched the clouds. Soon I fell
asleep.
Goblin wakened me. He returned my amulets. “We’re
going to play hide-and-seek,” he said. “We’ll
give you a head start. If we’ve done everything right, we
won’t be able to find you.”
“Now that’s wonderful,” I replied. “Me
alone out here, wandering around lost.” I was just carping. I
could find the Hole. As a nasty practical joke I was tempted to
head straight there.
This was business, though.
I set off to the southwest, toward the buttes. I crossed the
westward trail and went into hiding among quiescent walking trees.
Only after darkness fell did I give up waiting. I walked back to
the Hole, wondering what had become of my companions. I startled
the sentry when I arrived. “Goblin and One-Eye come
in?”
“No. I thought they were with you.”
“They were.” Concerned, I went below, asked the
Lieutenant’s advice.
“Go find them,” he told me.
“How?”
He looked at me like I was a half-wit. “Leave your silly
amulets, go outside the null, and wait.”
“Oh. Okay.”
So I went back outside, walked up the creek, grumbling. My feet
ached. I was not used to so much hiking. Good for me, I told
myself. Had to be in shape if there was a trip to Oar in the
cards.
I reached the edge of the coral reefs. “One-Eye! Goblin!
You guys around?”
No answer. I was not going on looking, though. The coral would
kill me. I circled north, assuming they had moved away from the
Hole. Each few minutes I dropped to my knees, hoping to spot a
menhir’s silhouette. The menhirs would know what had become
of them.
Once I saw some flash and fury from the corner of my eye and,
without thinking, ran that way, thinking it was Goblin and One-Eye
squabbling. But a direct look revealed the distant rage of a change
storm.
I stopped immediately, belatedly remembering that only death
hurries on the Plain by night.
I was lucky. Just steps onward the sand became spongy, loose. I
squatted, sniffed a handful. It held the smell of old death. I
backed away carefully. Who knows what lay in waiting beneath that
sand?
“Better plant somewhere and wait for the sun,” I
muttered. I was no longer certain of my position.
I found some rocks that would break the wind, some brush for
firewood, and pitched camp. The fire was more to declare myself to
beasts than to keep warm. The night was not cold.
Firemaking was a symbolic statement out there.
Once the flames rose I found that the place had been used
before. Smoke had blackened the rocks. Native humans, probably.
They wander in small bands. We have little intercourse with them.
They have no interest in the world struggle.
Will failed me sometime after the second hour. I fell
asleep.
The nightmare found me. And found me unshielded by amulets or
null.
She came.
It had been years. Last time it was to report the final defeat
of her husband in the affair at Juniper.
A golden cloud, like dust motes dancing in a sunbeam. An
all-over feeling of being awake while sleeping. Calmness and fear
together. An inability to move. All the old symptoms.
A beautiful woman formed in the cloud, a woman out of daydream.
The sort you hope to meet someday, knowing there is no chance. I
cannot say what she wore, if she wore anything. My universe
consisted of her face and the terror its presence inspired.
Her smile was not at all cold. Long ago, for some reason, she
took an interest in me. I supposed she retained some residue of the
old affection, as one does for a pet long dead.
“Physician.” Breeze in the reeds beside the waters
of eternity. The whisper of angels. But never could she make me
forget the reality whence the voice sprang.
Nor was she ever so gauche as to tempt me, either with promises
or herself. That, perhaps, is one reason I think she felt a certain
fondness. When she used me, she gave it to me straight going
in.
I could not respond.
“You are safe. Long ago, by your standard of time, I said
I would remain in touch. I have been unable. You cut me off. I have
been trying for weeks.”
The nightmares explained.
“What?” I squeaked like Goblin.
“Join me at Charm. Be my historian.”
As always when she touched me, I was baffled. She seemed to
consider me outside the struggle while yet a part of it. On the
Stair of Tear, on the eve of the most savage sorcerous struggle
ever I witnessed, she came to promise me I would come to no harm.
She seemed intrigued with my lesser role as Company historian. Back
when, she insisted I record events as they happened. Without regard
to pleasing anyone. I had done so within the limits of my
prejudices.
“The heat in the crucible is rising, physician. Your White
Rose is crafty. Her attack behind the Limper was a grand stroke.
But insignificant on the broader canvas. Don’t you
agree?”
How could I argue? I did agree.
“As your spies have no doubt reported, five armies stand
poised to cleanse the Plain of Fear. It is a strange and
unpredictable land. But it will not withstand what is being
marshaled.”
Again I could not argue, for I believed her. I could but do what
Darling so often spoke of: Buy time. “You may be
surprised.”
“Perhaps. Surprises have been calculated into my plans.
Come out of that cold waste, Croaker. Come to the Tower. Become my
historian.”
This was as near temptation as ever she had come. She spoke to a
part of me I do not understand, a part almost willing to betray
comrades of decades. If I went, there was so much I would know. So
many answers illuminated. So many curiosities satisfied.
“You escaped us at Queen’s Bridge.”
Heat climbed my neck. During our years on the run the
Lady’s forces had overtaken us several times. Queen’s
Bridge was the worst. A hundred brothers had fallen there. And to
my shame, I left the Annals behind, buried in the river bank. Four
hundred years worth of Company history, abandoned.
There was just so much that could be carried away. The papers
down in the Hole were critical to our future. I took them instead
of the Annals. But I suffer frequent bouts of guilt. I must answer
the shades of brethren who have gone before. Those Annals are the
Black Company. While they exist, the Company lives.
“We escaped and escaped, and will continue to escape. It
is fated.”
She smiled, amused. “I have read your Annals, Croaker. New
and old.”
I began throwing wood onto the embers of my fire. I was not
dreaming. “You have them?” Till that moment I had
silenced guilt with promises to recover them.
“They were found after the battle. They came to me. I was
pleased. You are honest, as historians go.”
“Thank you. I try.”
“Come to Charm. There is a place for you in the Tower. You
can see the grand canvas from here.”
“I can’t.”
“I cannot shield you there. If you stay, you must face
what befalls your Rebel friends. The Limper commands that campaign.
I will not interfere. He is not what he was. You hurt him. And he
had to be hurt more to be saved. He has not forgiven you that,
Croaker.”
“I know.” How many times had she used my name? In
all our contacts previously, over years, she had used it but
once.
“Don’t let him take you.”
A slight, twisted bit of humor rose from somewhere inside me.
“You are a failure. Lady.”
She was taken aback.
“Fool that I am, I recorded my romances in the Annals. You
read them. You know I never characterized you as black. Not. I
think, as I would characterize your husband. I suspect an
unconsciously sensed truth lies beneath the silliness of those
romances.”
“Indeed?”
“I don’t think you are black. I think you’re
just trying. I think that, for all the wickedness you’ve
done, part of the child that was remains untainted. A spark
remains, and you can’t extinguish it.”
Unchallenged, I became more daring. “I think you’ve
selected me as a symbolic sop to that spark. I am a reclamation
project meant to satisfy a hidden streak of decency, the way my
friend Raven reclaimed a child who became the White Rose. You read
the Annals. You know to what depths Raven sank once he concentrated
all decency in one cup. Better, perhaps, that he had had none at
all. Juniper might still exist. So might he.”
“Juniper was a boil overdue for lancing. I am not come to
be mocked, physician. I will not be made to look weak even before
an audience of one.”
I started to protest.
“For I know that this, too, will end up in your
Annals.”
She knew me. But then, she had had me before the Eye.
“Come to the Tower, Croaker. I demand no oath.”
“Lady . . . ”
“Even the Taken bind themselves with deadly oaths. You may
remain free. Just do what you do. Heal, and record the truth. What
you would do anywhere. You have value not to be wasted out
there.”
Now there was a sentiment with which I could agree
wholeheartedly. I would take it back and rub some people’s
noses in it. “Say what?”
She started to speak. I raised a warning hand. I had spoken to
myself, not to her. Was that a footfall? Yes. Something big coming.
Something moving slowly, wearily.
She sensed it, too. An eye blink and she was gone, her departure
sucking something from my mind, so that once more I was not certain
I had not dreamed everything, for all that every word remained
immutably inscribed on the stone of my mind.
I shuffled brush onto my fire, backed into a crack behind the
dagger that was the only weapon I’d had sense enough to
bring.
It came closer. Then paused. Then came on. My heartbeat
increased. Something thrust into the firelight.
“Toadkiller Dog! What the hell, hey? What’re you
doing? Come on in out of the cold, boy.” The words tumbled
out, bearing fear away. “Boy, will Tracker be glad to see
you. What happened to you?”
He came forward cautiously, looking twice as mangy as ever. He
dropped onto his belly, rested his chin on forepaws, closed one
eye.
“I don’t have any food. I’m sort of lost
myself. You’re damned lucky, know that? Making it this far.
The plain is a bad place to be on your own.”
Right then that old mongrel looked like he agreed. Body
language, if you will. He had survived, but it had not been
easy.
I told him, “Sun comes up, we’ll head back. Goblin
and One-Eye got lost; it’s their own tough luck.”
After Toadkiller Dog’s arrival I rested better. I guess
the old alliance is imprinted on people, too. I was confident he
would warn me if trouble beckoned.
Come morning we found the creek and headed for the Hole. I
stopped, as I often do, to approach Old Father Tree for a little
one-sided conversation about what he had seen during his long
sentinelship. The dog would not come anywhere near. Weird. But so
what? Weird is the order of the day on the Plain.
I found One-Eye and Goblin snoring, sleeping in. They had
returned to the Hole only minutes after my departure in search of
them. Bastards. I would redress the balance when the chance
came.
I drove them crazy by not mentioning my night out.
“Did it work?” I demanded. Down the tunnel Tracker
was having a noisy reunion with his mutt.
“Sort of,” Goblin said. He was not enthusiastic.
“Sort of? What’s sort of! Does it work or
doesn’t it?”
“Well, what we got is a problem. Mainly, we can keep the
Taken from locating you. From getting a fix on you, so to
speak.”
Obfuscation is a sure sign of trouble with this guy. “But?
But me the but, Goblin.”
“If you go outside the null, there’s no hiding the
fact that you are out.”
“Great. Real great. What good are you guys,
anyway?”
“It’s not that bad,” One-Eye said. “You
wouldn’t attract any attention unless they find out
you’re out from some other source. I mean, they
wouldn’t be watching for you, would they? No reason to. So
it’s just as good as if we got it to do everything we
wanted.”
“Crap! You better start praying that next letter comes
through. Because if I go out and get my ass killed, guess
who’s going to haunt whom forever?”
“Darling wouldn’t send you out.”
“Bet? She’ll go through three or four days of
soul-searching. But she’ll send me. Because that last letter
will give us the key.”
Sudden fear. Had the Lady probed my mind?
“What’s the matter, Croaker?”
I was saved a lie by Tracker’s advent. He bounced in and
pumped my hand like a mad fool. “Thank you, Croaker. Thanks
for bringing him home.” Out he went.
“What the hell was that?” Goblin asked.
“I brought his dog home.”
“Weird.”
One-Eye chortled. “The pot calling the kettle
black.”
“Yeah? Lizard snot. Want me to tell you about
weird?”
“Stow it,” I said. “If I get sent out of here
I want this stuff in perfect order. I just wish we had people who
could read this junk.”
“Maybe I can help.” Tracker was back. The big dumb
lout. A devil with a sword, but probably unable to write his own
name.
“How?”
“I could read some of that stuff. I know some old
languages. My father taught me.” He grinned as if at a huge
joke. He selected a piece written in TelleKurre. He read it aloud.
The ancient language rolled off his tongue naturally, as I had
heard it spoken among the old Taken. Then he translated. It was a
memo to a castle kitchen about a meal to be prepared for visiting
notables. I went over it painstakingly. His translation was
faultless. Better than I could do. A third of the words evaded
me.
“Well. Welcome to the team. I’ll tell
Darling.” I slipped out, exchanging a puzzled glance with
One-Eye behind Tracker’s back.
Stranger and stranger. What was this man? Besides weird. At
first encounter he reminded me of Raven, and fit the role. When I
came to think of him as big, slow, and clumsy, he fit that role.
Was he a reflection of the image in his beholder?
A good fighter, though, bless him. Worth ten of anyone else we
have.