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  Sindawe, Mogaba’s lieutenant and third, offered, “I feel this to be the heart of it, Captain. I have spent much time on the streets. I have seen this in the eyes of all who look upon me. They think I am much more than what I am.”

  “Hey. They don’t just look at me. I go out they start hailing me everything but emperor. It’s embarrassing.”

  “But they won’t talk,” Goblin said, starting to pack up. “They’ll bow and grin and kiss your backside and give you anything but their virgin daughters, but they won’t say squat if you go after a concrete answer.”

  “Truth is a deadly weapon,” Lady said.

  “Which is why priests and princes dread it,” I said. “If we’re more than we seem, what do they think we are?”

  Lady said, “What the Company was when it came through heading north.”

  Sindawe agreed. “The answer would be in the missing Annals.”

  “Of course. And they’re missing.” If I had had my own along I would have paused to review what I had learned at the Temple of Traveller’s Repose. Those first few books had been lost down here somewhere.

  None of the names on my maps rang any bells. None of what I remembered contained any echoes. Cho’n Delor had been the end of history, so to speak. The beginning of unknown country, though there was much in the Annals from before the Pastel Wars.

  Could they have changed all the names?

  “Oh, my aching ass,” Goblin complained as he clambered into the saddle. A sight to behold, a runt like him getting up the side of one of those horses. Every time Otto had a crack about getting him a ladder. “Croaker, I got an idea.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  He ignored that. “How about we retire? We’re not young enough for this crap anymore.”

  Hagop said, “Those guys we ran into on the road down from Oar probably had the right idea. Only they were small-time. We ought to find a town and take over. Or sign on with somebody permanent like.”

  “That’s been tried fifty times. Never lasts. Only place it worked was Gea-Xle. And there the guys got itchy feet after a while.”

  “Bet that wasn’t the same guys who rode in.”

  “We’re all old and tired, Hagop.”

  “Speak for yourself, Granddad,” Lady said.

  I threw a rock and mounted up. That was an invitation to banter. I did not take it up. I felt old and tired that way, too. She shrugged, mounted up herself. I rode out wondering where we were at, she and I. Probably nowhere. Maybe the spark had been neglected too long. Maybe propinquity was counterproductive.

  As we moved farther south we noted a phenomenon. Post riders in numbers like we had seen nowhere else. In every village we were recognized. It was the same old salute and cheer that started in Taglios. Where they had them the young men came out with weapons.

  I’m not much for morality. But I felt morally reprehensible when I saw them, as if I were somehow responsible for transmuting a pacific people into fire-eyed militarists.

  Otto was of the opinion the weapons had been taken from last year’s invaders. Maybe. Some. But most looked so old and rusted and brittle I would wish them only on my enemies.

  The commission looked more improbable by the hour. Nowhere did we encounter evidence that Taglians were anything but a pleasant, friendly, industrious people blessed with a land where survival was not a day-to-day struggle. But even these country folk seemed to devote most of their leisure time, whence culture springs, to their bewildering battalions of gods.

  “One signal victory,” I told Lady when we were about eighty miles south of the city, “and these people will be psyched up to take any hardships the Shadowmasters can dish out.”

  “And if we take the commission and lose the first battle it won’t matter anyway. We won’t be around to have to suffer the consequences.”

  “That’s my girl. Always thinking positive.”

  “Are you really going to take the commission?”

  “Not if I can help it. That’s why we’re out here. But I’ve got a bad feeling that what I want won’t have much to do with what I’ll have to do.”

  Goblin snorted and grumbled something about being dragged around on the claws of fate. He was right. And my only notion for breaking loose was to find a way to keep heading south, Shadowmasters be damned.

  We did not press hard, and paused for lunch before our breakfasts were really settled. Our bodies were not up to the continuous abuse of a sustained ride. Getting old.

  Otto and Hagop wanted to lay on a fire and fix a real meal. I told them go ahead. Sore and tired, I settled down nearby, head pillowed on a rock, and stared at clouds trudging across alien skies that by day looked no different than those whence I had come.

  Things were happening too fast and too strange to wring any sense out of them. I was plagued by a dread that I was the wrong man in the wrong place and wrong time for the Company. I did not feel competent to handle the situation Taglios threatened. Could I presume to lead a nation to war? I did not think so. Even if every Taglian man, woman, and child proclaimed me savior.

  I tried comforting myself with the thought that I was not the first Captain with doubts, and far from the first to get embroiled in a local situation armed only with a glimmer of the true problems and stakes. Maybe I was luckier than some. I had Lady, for whom the waters of intrigue were home. If I could tap her talent. I had Mogaba, who, despite those cultural and language barriers that still existed between us, had begun to look like the best pure soldier I’d ever known. I had Goblin and One-Eye and Frogface and — maybe — Shifter. And I had four hundred years of Company shenanigans in my trick bag. But none of that appeased my conscience or stilled my doubts.

  What had we gotten into on our simple ride back into the Company’s origins?

  Was that half the trouble? That we were in unknown territory so far as the Annals were concerned? That I was trying to work without a historical chart?

  There were questions about our forebrethren and this country. I’d had little opportunity to ferret out information. The hints I had gathered suggested that those old boys had not been nice fellows. I got the impression that the diaspora of the original Free Companies had been a nut religious thing. The moving doctrine, a vestige of which survived among the Nar, must have been terrible. The name of the Company still struck fear and stirred intense emotion.

  The exhaustion caught up. I fell asleep, though I did not realize it till the conversation of crows awakened me.

  I bounced up. The others looked at me oddly. They did not hear it. They were about finished with their meal.

  Otto was keeping the pot hot for me.

  I looked into a lone nearby tree and saw several crows, their ugly heads all cocked so they could look at me. They started chattering. I had a definite feeling they wanted my attention.

  I ambled toward them.

  Two flew when I was halfway to the tree, gaining altitude in that clumsy way crows have, gliding to the southeast toward an isolated stand of trees maybe a mile away. A good fifty crows circled above those trees.

  The remaining crow left the lone tree when he was satisfied I had seen that. I turned to lunch in a thoughtful mood. Halfway through a bad stew I concluded that I had to assume I had been given a warning. The road passed within yards of those trees.

  As we mounted up, I said, “People, we ride with weapons bare. Goblin. See those trees yonder? Keep an eye on them. Like your life depends on it.”

  “What’s up, Croaker?”

  “I don’t know. Just a hunch. Probably wrong, but it don’t cost nothing to be careful.”

  “If you say so.” He gave me a funny look, like he was wondering about my stability.

  Lady gave me an even funnier look when, as we approached the woods, Goblin squeaked, “The place is infested!”

  That’s all he got to say. The infestation broke cover. Those little brown guys. About a hundred of them. Real military geniuses, too. Men on foot just don’t go jumping people on horseback even if
they do outnumber them.

  Goblin said, “Gleep!” And then he said something else. The swarm of brown men became surrounded by a fog of insects.

  They should have shot us down with arrows.

  Otto and Hagop chose what I considered the stupider course. They charged. Their momentum carried them through the mob. My choice seemed the wiser. The others agreed. We just turned away and trotted ahead of the brown guys, leaving them to Goblin’s mercies.

  My beast stumbled. Master horseman that I am, I promptly fell off. Before I could get to my feet the brown guys were all around me, trying to lay hands on. But Goblin was on the job. I don’t know what he did, but it worked. After they knocked me around a little, leaving me a fine crop of bruises, they decided to keep after those who had had sense enough to stay on their horses.

  Otto and Hagop thundered past, making a rear attack. I staggered to my feet, looked for my mount. He was a hundred yards away, looking at me in a bemused sort of way. I limped toward him.

  Those little guys had some kind of petty magic of their own going, and no sense at all. They just kept on. They dropped like flies, but when they outnumber you a dozen to one you got to worry about more than just a favorable kill ratio.

  I did not see it well, busy as I was. And when I did manage to drag my abused flesh aboard my animal’s back the whole brouhaha had swept out of sight down a narrow, shallow valley.

  I have no idea how, but somehow I managed to get disoriented. Or something. When I got organized and started after my bunch I could not find them. Though I never got much chance to look. Fate intervened in the form of five little brown guys on horses that would have been amusing if they hadn’t been waving swords and lances and rushing at me with intent to be obnoxious.

  On another day I might have stayed forty yards ahead and plinked at them with my bow. But I wasn’t in the mood. I just wanted to be left alone and to get back together with the others.

  I galloped off. Up and down and around a few hills and I lost them easily. But in the process I lost myself. During all the fun the sky clouded over. It started to drizzle. Just to make me that much more enchanted with my chosen way of life. I set out to find the road, hoping I would find traces of my companions there.

  I topped a hill and spied that damned crow-surrounded figure that had been haunting me since the Temple of Travellers’ Respose. It was striding along in the distance, directly away from me. I forgot about the others. I kicked my mount into a gallop. The figure paused and looked back. I felt the weight of its stare but did not slow. I would unravel this mystery now.

  I charged down a shallow hill, leapt a wash in which muddy water gurgled. The figure was out of sight for a moment. Up the other side. When I reached the crest there was nothing to be seen but a few random crows circling no particular point. I used language that would have distressed my mother immensely.

  I did not slow but continued my career till I reached the approximate point where I had seen the thing last. I reined in, swung down, began stomping around looking for sign. A mighty tracker, me. But, moist as the ground was already, there had to be traces. Unless I was crazy and seeing things.

  I found traces, sure enough. And I felt the continued pressure of that stare. But I did not see the thing I sought. I was baffled. Even considering the probability that there was sorcery involved, how could it have vanished so completely? There was no cover anywhere around.

  I spotted some crows starting to circle about a quarter mile away. “All right, you son of a bitch. We’ll see how fast you can run.”

  There was nothing there when I got there.

  The cycle repeated itself three times. I got no closer. The last time I halted I did so atop a low crest that, from a quarter mile, overlooked a hundred-acre wood. I dismounted and stood beside my horse. We stared. “You, too?” I asked. His breathing was as uneven as mine. And those monster beasts never got winded.

  That was a sight, down there. Never have I seen so many crows except maybe on a recent battlefield.

  In a lifetime of travel and study I have come upon half a hundred tales about haunted forests. The woods are always described as dark and dense and old or the trees are mostly dead, skeleton hands reaching for the sky. This wood fit none of the particulars except for density. Yet it sure felt haunted.

  I tossed my reins across the horse’s neck, strapped on a buckler, drew my sword from its saddle scabbard, and started forward. The horse came along behind me, maybe eight feet back, head down so his nostrils were almost to the ground, like a hound on the track.

  The crows were most numerous over the center of the wood. I did not trust my eyes but thought I detected some squat dark structure among the trees there. The closer I got the slower I moved, meaning maybe a part of me was still infected with common sense. The part that kept telling me that I was not cut out for this sort of thing. I wasn’t some lone brawling swordsman who stalked evil into its lair.

  I am a dope cursed with an unhealthy portion of curiosity. Curiosity had me by the chin whiskers and kept right on dragging me along.

  There was one lone tree that approximated the stereotype, a bony old thing about half dead, as big around as me, standing like a sentinel thirty feet from the rest of the wood. Scrub and saplings clustered around its feet, rising waist high. I paused to lean against it while I talked myself into or out of something. The horse came up till his nose bumped my shoulder. I turned my head to look at him.

  Snake hiss. Thump!

  I gawked at the arrow quivering in the tree three inches from my fingers and only started to get myself down when it struck me that the shaft had not been meant to stick me in the brisket.

  Head, shaft, and fletching, that bolt was as black as a priest’s heart. The shaft itself had an enameled look. An inch behind the head was a wrap of white. I levered the arrow out of the tree and held the message close enough to read.

  It is not yet time, Croaker.

  The language and alphabet were those of the Jewel Cities.

  Interesting. “Right. Not yet time.” I peeled the paper off, crumpled it into a ball, tossed it at the wood. I looked for some sign of the archer. There was none. Of course.

  I shoved the arrow into my quiver, swung onto my saddle, turned the horse and rode about a step. A shadow ran past, of a crow flying up to have a look at the seven little brown men waiting for me atop the hill. “You guys never give up, do you?”

  I got back down, behind the horse, took out my bow, strung it, drew an arrow — the arrow just collected — and started angling across the hillside, staying behind my mount. The little brown guys turned their toy horses and moved with me.

  When I had a nice range I jumped out and let fly at the nearest. He saw it coming and tried to dodge, only he did himself more harm than good. I meant to put the shaft into his pony’s neck. It slammed in through his knee, getting him and the animal both. The pony threw him and took off, dragging him from a stirrup.

  I mounted up fast, took off through the gap. Those little horses did not move fast enough to close it.

  So we were off, them pounding after me at a pace to kill their animals in an hour, my beast barely cantering and, I think, having a good time. I can’t recall any other horse I’ve ridden looking back to check the pursuit and adjusting its pace to remain tantalizingly close.

  I had no idea who the brown guys were but there had to be a bunch of them the way they kept turning up. I considered working on this bunch, taking them out one by one, decided discretion was the better part. If need be I could bring the Company down and forage for them.

  I wondered what became of Lady and Goblin and the others. I doubted they had come to any harm, what with our advantage in mounts, but...

  We were separated and there was no point spending the remaining daylight looking for them. I would get back to the road, turn north, find a town and someplace dry.

  The drizzle irritated me more than the fact that I was being hunted.

  But that stretch of forest bothered me more
than the rain. That was a mystery that scared the crap out of me.

  The crows and walking stump were real. No doubt of that anymore. And the stump knew me by name.

  Maybe I ought to bring the Company down and go after whatever hid there.

  The road was one of those wonders that turns to mud hip deep if somebody spits on it. There were no fences in this part of the world, so I just rode beside it. I came to a village almost immediately.

  Call it a stroke of fate, or timing. Timing. My life runs on weird timing. There were riders coming into town from the north. They looked even more bedraggled than I felt. They were not little brown men but I gave them the suspicious eye anyway and looked for places to duck. They were carrying more lethal hardware than I was, and I had enough to outfit a platoon.

  “Yo! Croaker!”

  Hell. That was Murgen. I got a little closer and saw that the other three were Willow Swan, Cordy Mather, and Blade.

  What the hell were they doing down here?

  Chapter Twenty-six: OVERLOOK

  The one who had withdrawn everything but moral support did not give up his right to complain and criticize.

  The gathering of the Shadowmasters took place in the heights of a soaring tower in that one’s new capitol fortress, Overlook, which lay two miles south of Shadowcatch. It was a strange, dark fortress, more vast than some cities. It had thick walls a hundred feet high. Every vertical surface was sheathed in plates of burnished brass or iron. Ugly silver lettering in an alphabet known only to a few damascened those plates, proclaiming fearful banes.

  The Shadowmasters assembled in a room not at all in keeping with their penchant for darkness. The sun burned through a skylight and through walls of crystal. The three shrank from the glare, though they were clad in their darkest apparel. Their host floated near the southern wall, seldom withdrawing his gaze from the distance. His preoccupation was obsessive.

  Out there, many miles away but visible from that great height, lay a vast flat expanse. It shimmered. It was as white as the corpse of an old dead sea. The visitors thought his fear and fixation dangerously obsessive. If it was not feigned. If it was not the fulcrum of an obscure and deadly strategem. But it was impossible not to be impressed by the magnitude of the defenses he had raised.