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  Lady was intensely interested in the discussion. She understood, too. And Goblin cracked, “You’re dead, Maggot Lips.”

  “What?” One-Eye squeaked,

  “The first set of sweet hips that shakes your way will lead you right off to the cannibals’ cookpots.”

  “They aren’t cannibals...” Sudden panic tautened One-Eye’s face.

  It took him that long to realize that Goblin had understood him while he was talking with Wheezer. He looked at the rest of us. Some of us gave ourselves away.

  He looked that much more distraught. He whispered to Wheezer with great animation.

  Wheezer cackled. His laugh seemed half chicken cluck, half peacock call. It cost him a coughing fit.

  It was a bad one. One-Eye beckoned me. “You’re sure you can’t do something for this guy, Croaker? He busts a lung and dies, we’re hurting.”

  “Nothing. He shouldn’t be traipsing around to begin with...” No point singing that song. Wheezer refused to hear it. “You or Goblin ought to be able to do him more good than I can.”

  “You can’t help a guy who won’t let you.”

  “Ain’t it the truth,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “How long before we get us some guides?”

  “All I hear is ‘soon’ when I ask.”

  Soon indeed. A pair of tall black men came up the road at a steady, hardy trot. They were the sleakest, healthiest specimens I had seen in a long time. Each carried a sheaf of javelins across his back; a short-hafted, long-bladed spear in his right hand; and a shield of some white and black striped hide upon his left arm. Their limbs moved in perfect cadence, as though each man was half of some marvelous, rhythmic machine.

  I glanced at Lady. No thoughts were evident on her face. “They would make grand soldiers,” she said.

  The two trotted straight to Wheezer, feigning a vast indifference to the rest of us. But I felt them studying us sidelong. White people had to be rare this side of the jungle. They barked at Wheezer in an arrogant tongue filled with clicks and stops.

  Wheezer did some heavy kowtowing. He responded in the same language, whining like a slave addressing an ill-tempered master.

  “Trouble,” Lady prophesied.

  “Right-o.” This contempt for the outsider was not a new experience. I had to get busy and establish who said “Jump!” and who asked “How high?”

  I talked to Goblin using the finger speech of the deaf. One-Eye caught it. He cackled. That stirred our new guides’ indignation.

  It would be touchy. They had to give me what they themselves knew was provocation. Only then would they accept being put in their place.

  One-Eye was getting big ideas. I signed him to restrain himself, to prepare some impressive illusion. Aloud, I demanded, “What’s all the babble? Get into the middle of that.”

  He started nagging Wheezer.

  Wheezer carried on like a man caught between a rock and a hard place. He told One-Eye that the K’Hlata did not bargain. He said they would go through our things and pick out what they thought was worth their trouble.

  “They try that and they’ll get their fingers bitten off at the elbow. Tell them that. Politely.”

  It was too late for polite. Those guys understood the language. But One-Eye’s growling threw them. They did not know what to do next.

  “Croaker!” Murgen called. “Company.”

  Company indeed. Some of the boys who had given us the fish-eye earlier.

  They were just the specific for the bruised egos of our new friends. The boys jumped up and down and howled and banged their spears against their shields. They hurled taunts. They pranced along the stone-marked boundary. One-Eye trotted after them.

  The fish were not biting. But they had a little bait of their own. Something got said.

  The two warriors howled and attacked. That caught everyone off guard. Three outsiders went down. The others subdued our guides quickly, though not without further mishap.

  Wheezer poised on the boundary, wringing his hands and carping at One-Eye. While crows circled high above.

  “Goblin!” I snapped. “One-Eye! Get with it!”

  One-Eye cackled, reached up, grabbed his hair, and yanked.

  He peeled himself from under that silly hat. And the fanged and fiery thing behind the peeling was ugly enough to turn a buzzard’s stomach.

  Which was all show, all distraction, while Goblin got on with the meat of it.

  Goblin seemed to be surrounded by giant worms. It took me a moment to realize all those squirms were lengths of rope. I shrieked when I saw the state of our gear.

  Goblin howled with laughter as a hundred chunks of rope went slithering through grass and air to pester, climb, bind, garrote.

  Wheezer pranced around in an absolute apoplectic fit. “Stop! Stop! You’re destroying the whole concord.”

  One-Eye ignored him. He put the mask back over the horror while punishing Goblin with ferocious looks. He resented Goblin’s ingenuity.

  Goblin was not finished. Having strangled everyone not already carved up or nominally friendly, he had his ropes drag the corpses across the boundary.

  “No outside witnesses,” One-Eye assured me, blind to those damned crows. He glared at Goblin. “What might the little toad have been up to?”

  “Say what?”

  “Those ropes. That was no spur-of-the-moment piece of work, Croaker. It would take months to charm that much line. I know who he had in mind, too. No bloody more nice, polite, long-suffering One-Eye. The gloves are off now. I’m going to get my revenge before that little bastard catches me with my back turned.”

  “Preemptive vengeance?” There was a One-Eye concept for you.

  “I told you, he’s up to something. I’m not going to stand around and wait...”

  “Ask Wheezer what to do about the bodies.” Wheezer said bury them deep and do a prime job of camouflaging.

  “Trouble,” Lady said. “Any way you look at it.”

  “The animals are rested. We’ll outrun it.”

  “I hope so. I wish...” There was something in her voice that I could not decipher: I did not get it till later. Nostalgia. Homesickness. Longing for something irrevocably lost.

  Goblin dubbed our new guides the Geek and the Freak. Despite my displeasure the names clung.

  We crossed the savannah in fourteen days, without mishap, though Wheezer and the guides panicked each time they heard distant drums.

  The message they dreaded did not come till we had left the savannah for the mountainous desert bounding it on the south. Both guides immediately begged to be allowed to stay with the Company. An extra spear is an extra spear.

  One-Eye told me, “The drums said they’ve been declared outlaws. What they said about us you don’t want to hear. You decide to go back north again you’d better think about another way to get there.”

  Four days later we made camp on some heights overlooking a large city and a broad river that flowed southeast. We had come to Gea-Xle, eight hundred miles below the equator. The mouth of that river, sixteen hundred miles farther south, lay at the edge of the world on the map I had made at the Temple of Travellers’ Repose. The last place name marked, with great uncertainty, was Troko Tallio, a ways upriver from the coast.

  Once camp was set to my satisfaction I went looking for Lady. I located her among some high rocks. But instead of studying the view she was staring into a tin teacup. For an instant the cup appeared to contain a pinprick spark. Then she sensed my approach. She looked up, smiled.

  There was no spark in the cup when I looked again. Must have been my imagination.

  “The Company is growing,” she said. “You’ve accumulated twenty men since leaving the Tower.”

  “Uhm.” I sat down, stared at the city. “Gea-Xle.”

  “Where the Black Company was in service. But where wasn’t the Company in service?”

  I chuckled. “You’re right. We’re wading around in our own past. We put the present dynasty in power down there. W
hen we left it was without the usual hard feelings. What would happen if we rode in with Murgen showing our true colors?”

  “There’s only one way to find out. Let’s try it.”

  Our gazes met and locked. The multiple meaning sparked between us. It had been a long time since that lost moment. We had been evading moments like this, a sort of delayed adolescent shyness and guilt.

  The sun settled in a glorious conflagration, the only fire there was that evening.

  I just could not get past who she used to be.

  She was angry with me. But she hid it well and joined me in watching the city put on its night face. That was a cosmetic job worthy of an aging princess.

  She did not need to waste energy getting mad at me. I was doing a fine job being mad at myself. “Strange stars, strange skies,” I observed. “The constellations are completely out of whack now. Much more and I’ll start feeling like I’m in the wrong world.”

  She made a snorting sound.

  “More than I do already. Hell. I’d better rummage the Annals to see what they say about Gea-Xle. I don’t know why, but the place bothers me.” Which was true, though I’d only just realized it. That was unusual. People intimidate me, not places.

  “Why don’t you do that?” I could almost hear her thinking, Go hide in your books and your yesterdays. I’ll sit here staring today and tomorrow in the eye.

  It was one of those times when no matter what you say, it will be the wrong thing. So I did the second worst thing and went away without saying anything at all.

  I almost tripped over Goblin going back to camp. Though I was making a racket stumbling through the dark, he was so intent he did not hear me.

  He was peeping over a rock, eyeballing the slump of One-Eye’s back. He was so obviously up to no good I could not resist. I bent and whispered, “Boo!”

  He let put a squawk and jumped about ten feet, stood there giving me the evil eye.

  I tramped on into camp and started digging for the book I wanted to read.

  “Why don’t you mind your own business, Croaker?” One-Eye demanded.

  “What?”

  “Mind your own business. I was laying for the little toad. If you hadn’t stuck your nose in, I’d have had him strung up like an antelope ready for gutting.” A rope slithered out of the darkness and curled up in his lap.

  “I won’t let it happen again.”

  The Annals did nothing to relieve my apprehension. I got really paranoid, getting that nervous itch between the shoulder blades. I began studying the darkness, trying to see who was watching.

  Both Goblin and One-Eye had a big sullen on. I asked, “Can you guys come up for a little serious business?”

  Well, yes, they could, but they could not admit that their pouting was not of earthshaking significance, so they just stared at me and waited for me to get on with it. “I’ve got a bad feeling. Not exactly a premonition, but the same family, and it keeps getting worse.”

  They stared, stone-faced, refusing comment.

  But Murgen volunteered, “I know what you mean, Croaker. I’ve had the heebie-jeebies since we got here.”

  I gave the rest a scan. They stopped yakking. The Tonk games came to a halt. Otto and Hagop had small nods to admit that they felt unsettled, too. The rest were too macho to admit anything.

  So. Maybe my collywobbles were not imaginary.

  “I get a feeling going down there could become a watershed of Company history. Can one of you geniuses tell me why?”

  Goblin and One-Eye looked at each other. Neither spoke.

  “The only thing the Annals say that’s weird is that Gea-Xle was one of those rare places the Company walked away from.”

  “What does that mean?” That Murgen was a natural shill.

  “It means our forebrethren didn’t have to fight their way out. They could have renewed their commission. But the Captain heard about a treasure mountain up north where the silver nuggets were supposed to weigh a pound.”

  There was more to the tale but they did not want to hear it. We were not really the Black Company anymore, just rootless men from nowhere headed the same direction. How much was that my fault? How much the fault of bitter circumstance?

  “No comment?” They both looked thoughtful, though. “So. Murgen. Break out the real colors tomorrow. With all the honors.”

  That jacked up some eyebrows.

  “Finish the tea, guys. And tell your bellies to get ready for some real brew. They make the genuine elixir down there.”

  That sparked some interest.

  “You see? The Annals are good for something after all.”

  I set about doing some writing in the latest of my own volumes, occasionally peeking at one or another of the wizards. They had forgotten their feud, were using their heads for something more than the creation of mischief.

  During one of my upward glances I caught a silvery yellow flash. It seemed to come from the rocks where I had been a while back, watching the city lights.

  “Lady!”

  I barked my shins a dozen times getting there, then felt like a fool when I found her seated on a rock, arms around her legs, chin on her knees, contemplating the night. The light of a newly risen moon fell upon her from behind. She was astonished by my wild stumble to the rescue.

  “What happened?” I demanded.

  “What?”

  “I saw some weird flashes up here.”

  Her expression, in that light, seemed honestly baffled.

  “Must have been a trick of the moonlight. Better turn in pretty soon. I want to get an early start.”

  “All right,” she said in a small, troubled voice.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No. I’m just lost.”

  I knew what she meant without her having to explain.

  Going back I ran into Goblin and One-Eye moving up carefully. Fireflies of magic danced in their hands and dread smoldered in their eyes.

  Chapter Sixteen: WILLOW’S WAR

  Willow was amazed. It actually went pretty much the way it was supposed to. The Taglians gave up their territories below the Main without a finger raised to resist. The army of the Shadowmasters came over the river and still met no resistance. It dissolved into its four elements. Still meeting no opposition, those forces broke up into companies, the better to plunder. The looting was so good all discipline collapsed.

  Taglian marauders began picking off foragers and small raiding parties, suddenly, everywhere. The invaders suffered a thousand casualties before they understood. Cordy Mather engineered that phase, claiming to emulate his military idols, the Black Company. When the invaders responded with larger foraging parties he countered by leading them into traps and ambushes. At his peak he twice suckered entire companies into densely built and specially prepared towns that he burned down around them. The third time he tried that, though, the invaders did not take the bait. His overconfident Taglians got whipped. Wounded, he went back to Taglios to contemplate the fickleness of fate.

  Willow, meantime, was marching around the eastern Taglian territories with Smoke and twenty-five hundred volunteers, keeping close to the enemy commander, trying to look like a menace that would become nemesis the moment the invaders made a mistake. Smoke had no intention of fighting, and was so stubborn even Willow was tempted to grumble.

  Smoke claimed he was waiting for something to happen. He wouldn’t say what.

  Blade got stuck down south, in the territories yielded without a fight, along the Main River. He was supposed to get the locals together and keep any messengers from going back and forth. It was an easy job. There were no bridges across the river and only four places where it could be forded. The Shadowmasters must have been preoccupied. Their suspicions were not aroused. Or maybe they just assumed no news was good news.

  What Smoke was waiting for happened.

  Like Blade said, Taglios was hag-ridden by its priests. Three major religions existed there, not in harmony. Each had its splinters, factions, and subc
ults that feuded among themselves when they weren’t feuding with the others. Taglian culture centered upon religious differences and the efforts of the priests to get ahead of each other. A lot of lower-class people weren’t signed up with anybody. Especially out in the country. Likewise the ruling family, who did not dare get religion if they wanted to stay in charge.

  Old Smoke was waiting for one of the boss priests to get the idea he could make a name for himself and his tribe by getting out and busting the heads of the invaders nobody else would fight. “Purely a cynical political maneuver,” Smoke told Willow. “The Prahbrindrah’s waited a long time to show someone what can happen if they don’t do things his way.”

  He showed them.

  One of the priests got the bright idea. He conned about fifteen thousand guys into thinking they could handle experienced professionals, heads up. He led the mob out to look for the invaders. They didn’t have any trouble finding them. The Shadowmasters’ commander thought this was what he was waiting for, too. The Shadowmasters’ other conquests had all been settled by one big brawl.

  Willow and Smoke and a few others stood on top of a hill where both sides could see them and spent an afternoon watching two thousand men massacre fifteen thousand. The Taglians that got away did so mostly because the invaders were too tired to chase them.

  “Now we’ll fight,” Smoke said. So Willow moved his force up and poked till the invaders got aggravated and came after him. He ran till they stopped. Then he poked again. And ran again. And so forth. He got the notion from a poorly remembered version of a time when the Black Company ran for a thousand miles and led their enemies into a trap where they died almost to a man, thinking they had it won almost to the end.

  Maybe these guys heard the same story. Anyway, they didn’t want to be led. First time they balked they just camped and wouldn’t move. So Willow talked it over with Smoke and Smoke rounded up some volunteers from the countryside and started building a wall around the invaders.

  Next time the invaders just turned and marched off toward Taglios, which is what they should have done at the start, instead of trying to get rich. So Willow jumped on them from behind and kept making a nuisance of himself till he convinced the enemy commander that he had to be gotten rid of or there just wouldn’t be any rest.