The Return of the Black Company Read online

  You thought sieges were all just laying around relaxing and waiting the other guy out?

  Man, this other guy is a foamy-mouth lunatic.

  And not just nuts. He is a sorcerer. A major player, though he hasn’t shown much here. Before the Old Man got himself offed in the big slugfest that trapped everyone here he hurt Spinner real bad. The old devil just hasn’t been himself since. Poor baby.

  This is it. Top of the tower. And there is the whole stinking burg, laid out like it is on one of those sand tables Lady always liked.

  Oh, yeah. Those rumors have made it here, too. They started with some Shadowlander prisoners. Maybe that was Kina up north. Or something. But it could not have been Lady. She died right out there. Fifty guys saw her taken down. Half of them got killed trying to rescue her.

  How can you say that? You can’t be sure? How many eyewitnesses does it take? She is dead. The Old Man is dead. They’re all dead, them what did not get inside before Mogaba sealed the gates.

  The whole mob is dead. All but the crowd in here. And they are caught between lunatics. It’s a tossup who is crazier, Mogaba or Shadowspinner.

  You see it all? That is it. Dejagore enduring the siege of the Shadowmasters. Not real impressive, is it? But every one of those burned areas memorializes a ferocious hand to hand, house to house negotiation with the Shadowlanders.

  Fires start easily in Dejagore.

  Hell is supposed to be hot, isn’t it?

  4

  … who I am, on the improbably remote chance that my scribblings do survive. I am Murgen, Standardbearer of the Black Company, though I bear the shame of having lost the standard in battle. I am keeping unofficial Annals because Croaker is dead, One-Eye won’t, and hardly anyone else can read or write. I was the heir Croaker trained. I will do it even without official sanction.

  I will be your guide for a few months or weeks or days, however long it takes the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end.

  Nobody inside these walls is going to get out of this. There are too many of them and too few of us. Our sole advantage is that our commander is as mad as theirs. That makes us unpredictable. Don’t add much hope, though.

  Mogaba will not give up as long as he personally is capable of hanging onto something with one hand while he throws rocks with the other.

  I expect my writings to blow away on a dark wind, never to be touched by another eye. Or they might become the tinder Shadowspinner uses to light the pyre under the last man he murders after taking Dejagore.

  If anyone does find this, brother, we begin. This is the Book of Murgen, last of the Annals of the Black Company.

  The long tale winds down.

  * * *

  I will die lost and frightened in a world so alien I cannot understand a tenth of it when I focus all my soul. It is so old.

  Times lies heavily here. Two thousand-year-old traditions underpin incredible absurdities taken completely for granted. Dozens of races and cultures and religions exist in a mix that should be volatile but has persisted so long that conflicts are just reflexive twitches in an ancient body mostly too tired to bother anymore.

  Taglios is only one large principality. There are scores more, mostly now in the Shadowlands, all pretty similar.

  The major peoples are the Gunni, the Shadar, and the Vehdna, names which define religion, race and culture all at once. The Gunni are the most numerous and widespread. Gunni temples, to a bewilderingly broad pantheon, are so numerous you’re seldom out of sight of one.

  Physically, Gunni are small and dark but not black like the Nar. Gunni men wear toga-like robes, weather permitting. Their bright mix of colors declare caste, cult, and professional alliances. Women, too, dress brightly, but in several layers of wraparound cloth. They veil their faces if unmarried, though marriages are made early. They wear their dowries as jewelry. Before they go out they illustrate their foreheads with the caste/cult/professional markings of both their husbands and their fathers. I will never decipher those hieroglyphs.

  Shadar are paler, like heavily tanned whites from the north. They are big, usually over six feet. They do not shave or pluck their beard, unlike the Gunni. Some sects never cut their hair. Bathing is not forbidden but it is a vice seldom indulged. Shadar all dress in grey and wear turbans to define their status. They eat meat. Gunni do not. I have never seen a Shadar woman. Maybe they find their babies under cabbage leaves.

  The Vehdna are the least numerous of the major Taglian ethnic groups. They are as light as the Shadar but smaller, more lightly built, with ferocious features. They share none of the Shadar’s spartan values. Their religion forbids almost everything, rules honored in the breach quite often. They like a little color in their costume, though not bright like the Gunni. They wear pantaloons and real shoes. Even the poorest conceal their bodies and wear something atop their heads. Low-caste Gunni wear nothing but loincloths. Married Vehdna women wear only black. You can see nothing but their eyes. Unmarried Vehdna women you don’t see at all.

  Only the Vehdna believe in an afterlife. And that only for men except for a few female warrior saints and daughters of prophets who had balls big enough to be honorary men.

  Nyueng Bao, rarely seen, usually wear loose-fitting long-sleeve pullover shirts and baggy lightweight pants, generally black, men and women alike. Children go naked.

  Any city down here is glorious chaos.

  It is always a holy day for somebody.

  5

  From the citadel tower it is obvious that Dejagore is a complete contrivance. Of course, most walled cities are shaped by the probability that, part of the time, neighboring states will be managed by thugs. Your own city’s masters will never be worse than benevolent despots, of course, and their worst ambition will be to heighten the hometown glory.

  Until the appearance of the Shadowmasters one short generation ago war was an alien concept throughout this part of the world. It had seen neither armies nor soldiers in all the centuries since the Black Company’s departure.

  Into this improbable paradise came the Shadowmasters, lords of darkness from the far reaches of the earth who brought with them all the wolves of the old nightmare. Soon inept armies were about. They stalked unprepared kingdoms like great cruel behemoths even the gods could not stay. The dark tide spread. Cities crumbled. A lucky few the Shadowmasters chose to rebuild. The peoples of the newly-founded Shadowlands were given their options: obedience or death.

  Jaicur was reborn as Stormgard, seat of the Shadowmaster Stormshadow, she who could bring the winds and thunder howling and bellowing in the darkness. She who had borne the name Stormbringer in another age and place.

  First Stormshadow raised a mound forty feet high on top of the ruins of captured Jaicur, at the heart of a plain she had flattened absolutely by slaves and prisoners of war. Earth for the mound came from the ring of hills completely surrounding the plain. With the mound complete and faced on its outer sides with several layers of imported stone, Stormshadow built her new city up top. And that she surrounded with walls another forty feet high. She did not overlook the latest theories about towers for enfilading fire and barbicans to protect her elevated gates.

  All the Shadowmasters seemed driven by a paranoid need to make themselves safe in their home places.

  Never once in her planning, though, did she take into account the possibility that she might have to resist the onslaught of the Black Company.

  I wish we were half as wicked as I talk.

  Dejagore has four gates. Each stands at one point of the compass rose. Each is at the end of a paved highway running straight in from the hills. Only the road from the south carries any traffic these days.

  Mogaba has sealed three gates, leaving only sally ports which are guarded by his Nar at all times. Mogaba is determined to fight. He is just as determined that not one of our raggedy-ass Taglian legionnaires will run off and not go down with him.

  None of us, be we Black Company Old Crew, Nar, Jaicuri, Taglian, N
yueng Bao, or someone else who had the bad luck to get caught here, is going to get out alive. Not unless Shadowspinner and his gang get so bored they go looking for someone else to bully. Right. You’ve got the eight and ten of swords and to go down you’re going to bet your ass on pulling the nine.

  Your chances of pulling that nine are better than ours of getting out of here.

  The fortified encampment of the Shadowlanders stands south of the city. It is so close we can reach it with our heavy artillery. You can see charred timbers where we tried to burn them out the day of the big battle. We have raided them a few times since then, too, but no longer have the strength to risk.

  We can’t seem to discourage Shadowspinner, though.

  Like most warlords he doesn’t let reality get in the way of his doing whatever he wants to do.

  The artillery gives them a wake-up five nights out of five, pick a random time. That keeps them cranky and tired and a lot less effective whenever they attack. Trouble is, so much effort keeps us tired and cranky, too. And we have other projects going as well.

  Shadowspinner is a puzzle. He is not the first of his kind in Company experience. The heavyweight killers in our past, though, when faced with a situation like this, would have stomped on Dejagore like jumping on an anthill before looking for a real challenge. But here lightweights Goblin and One-Eye can slide around quickly and treacherously enough to parry Spinner’s every feeble thrust.

  His weakness is a mystery.

  Makes you nervous when an enemy doesn’t do everything you think he can. And a Shadowspinner doesn’t become a top badass being gentle.

  One-Eye sees everything in its wickedest light. He says Spinner is slacking because Longshadow has a hold on him and is weakening him deliberately. Your basic old-time power politics with the Company in the middle.

  Before we came along the Shadowmasters did find their biggest challenges in fighting one another.

  On principle Goblin seldom agrees with One-Eye about anything. He claims Shadowspinner is lulling us while he recovers from wounds that were more serious than we suspected.

  My guess is, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

  Crows circle the Shadowlander camp. Always they circle. Some come, some go, but a baker’s dozen minimum are there all the time. Others haunt us day and night. Wherever I go, whenever, a crow is nearby. Except inside. They don’t get inside. We don’t let them inside. Those that try end up in somebody’s pot.

  Croaker had a thing about crows. I think I understand it now. But the bats bother me more.

  We don’t see the bats as often. The crows get most of them. (These crows are not ashamed to come out at night.) And those that the crows don’t get we do, most of the time. Inevitably, though, a few get away. And that isn’t good.

  They spy for the Shadowmasters. They are the far-ranging eyes of wickedness out here where our enemies cannot always manipulate the living darkness.

  Only two Shadowmasters remain. Spinner has problems. They do not have the reach or control they showed back when they could and did run the shadows into the very heart of the Taglian Territories.

  They are fading from the stage.

  One dreams.

  Dreams too easily become nightmares.

  6

  When you look down from the citadel you have to wonder how the Jaicuri manage, all jammed inside Dejagore’s walls. Truth is, they don’t and never did.

  At one time the hills surrounding the plain were covered with farms and orchards and vineyards. After the shadow came enterprises gradually disappeared as the peasant families abandoned the land. And then the anti-shadow, the Black Company, came, ever so hungry after the long sprint south from the victory at Ghoja Ford. And then came the Shadowlander armies which battered us.

  Now the hills bear little but memories of what once was. Vultures never picked bones much cleaner than those hills have been gleaned.

  The wisest peasants were those who fled early. Their children will repopulate the land.

  Later the stupid ones ran here, inside the false safety of Dejagore’s walls. When Mogaba is particularly cranky he drives a few hundred out the gate. They are just mouths crying to be filled. Food must be husbanded for those willing to die defending the walls.

  Locals who fail to contribute, or who demonstrate a weakness for getting sick or seriously injured, go out the gate right behind the peasants.

  Shadowspinner won’t take any in but those willing to help raise his earthworks and dig his burial trenches. The former means laboring under falls of missiles directed by old friends inside, while the latter means making the bed where you will lie as soon as you are useful no longer.

  Hard choices.

  Mogaba cannot fathom why his military genius isn’t universally hailed.

  He doesn’t mess with the Nyueng Bao. Not yet. They haven’t contributed much to Dejagore’s defense but they don’t sap resources, either. Their babies are getting fat while the rest of us tighten our belts.

  You don’t see many dogs or cats now. Horses manage only because they are militarily protected, and then only a handful of them. We’re going to eat hearty when the last fodder is gone.

  Small game like rats and pigeons are becoming scarce. Sometimes you hear the outraged protest of a crow taken by surprise.

  The Nyueng Bao are survivors.

  They are a race possessed of a single impassive face.

  Mogaba does not bother them mainly because when anybody does the whole bunch gets pissed off. And they consider fighting a really serious, holy business.

  They stay out of the way when they can but they aren’t pacifists. A couple of times the Shadowlanders have regretted trying to push through their part of town.

  The Nyueng Bao generated an amazing amount of carnage both times.

  Rumor among the Jaicuri says they eat their enemies.

  It is true, human bones showing evidence of butchery and cookery have been found. Jaicuri are mainly of the Gunni religion. Gunni are vegetarians.

  I do not believe the Nyueng Bao are responsible, but Ky Dam refuses to deny even the blackest allegation against his people.

  Maybe he will accept any canard that makes the Nyueng Bao seem more dangerous. Maybe he wants that kind of talk so fear will build.

  Survivors grasp the tools at hand.

  I wish they would talk. I’d bet they could tell stories that would curl your toes and straighten your hair.

  Ah! Dejagore! Those halcyon days, slouching through hell with a smile on.

  How long before all the fun goes out of the town?

  7

  Bone tired, just as I had been every night for as long as I could remember, I went to take my turn on the wall. I had no ambition at all and even less energy. Seated in a crenel, I heaped aspersions on the ancestors of all my bitty Shadowlander buddies. I am afraid I lacked creativity but I made up for that with virulence. They were up to something out there. You could hear rattlings and mutterings and see torches moving around. There were all the harbingers of a night without sleep. Couldn’t these people be normal and handle their business during regular hours?

  It didn’t sound like they were more enthusiastic than me. I caught the occasional sharp remark about me or my foredaddies, like this mess was all my fault. I guess they were motivated mainly by their sure knowledge that they would never go home if they didn’t recapture Stormgard.

  Maybe nobody on either side would get out of this one alive.

  A crow called, mocking us all. I didn’t bother throwing a rock at it.

  It was misty out. A halfhearted drizzle came and went. Lightning stalked beyond the hills to the south. It had been hot and humid all day, then had turned viciously stormy toward evening. Lakes of water stood in the streets. Stormshadow’s engineers had not made good drainage a high priority, despite the natural advantages available.

  It would not be a good night for attacking tall walls. And not much easier for anyone defending them.

  Still, I almost felt sorry
for the little buggers down below.

  Candles and Red Rudy finished the long climb from the street, groaning. Each carried a heavy leather sack. Candles grumbled, “I’m too old for this shit.”

  “If it works out we’ll all get to get old.”

  Both men leaned on merlons while they caught their wind. Then they dumped their sacks into the darkness. Somebody down there swore in a Shadowlander dialect. “Serves you right, asshole,” Rudy growled back. “Go home. Let me sleep.”

  All of the Old Crew invested time hauling dirt.

  “I know,” Candles told me. “I know. But what good is alive if you’re too damned tired to give a shit?”

  If you read the Annals you know our brothers have said the same thing since the beginning. I shrugged. I could come up with nothing inspirational. Mostly you don’t try to justify or motivate, you just go on.

  Candles grumbled, “Goblin wants you. We’ll cover you here.”

  In battered Shadowlander Rudy shouted downward, “Yeah, I know your turkey gobble. Fuck you.”

  I grunted. It was my watch but I could leave if I wanted. Mogaba didn’t even pretend to try to control the Old Crew anymore. We did our part. We held our ground. We just would not conform to his ideas of what the Black Company ought to be.

  But there was going to be one hell of a showdown if the Shadowmaster and his circus ever hit the road.

  “Where is he?”

  “Down Three.” That he signed in finger speech. We use deaf speech frequently if we talk business out in the open. Bats and crows can’t read it. Neither can any of Mogaba’s faction.

  I grunted again. “Be back.”

  “Sure.”

  I descended the steep, slippery stair, muscles aching, anticipating the weight of the sack I would be carrying when I came back.

  What could Goblin want? Probably a decision on something trivial. That runt and his monocular sidekick religiously avoid taking on any responsibility.