The argument with the Captain raged for two hours. He was
unyielding. He did not accept my arguments, legal or moral. Time
brought others into the fray, as they came to the Captain on
business. By the time I really lost my temper most of the
principals of the Company were present: the Lieutenant, Goblin,
Silent, Elmo, Candy, and several new officers recruited here at
Charm. What little support I received came from surprising
quarters. Silent backed me. So did two of the new officers.
I stamped out. Silent and Goblin followed. I was in a towering
rage, though unsurprised by their response. With the Rebel beaten
there was little to encourage the Company’s defection. They would
be hogs knee-deep in slops now. Questions of right and wrong
sounded stupid. Basically, who cared?
It was still early, the day after the battle. I had not slept
well, and was full of nervous energy. I paced vigorously, trying to
walk it off, Goblin timed me, stepped into my path after I settled
down. Silent observed from nearby. Goblin asked, “Can we talk?”
“I’ve been talking. Nobody listens.”
“You’re too argumentative. Come over here and sit down.” Over
here proved to be a pile of gear near a campfire where some men
were cooking, others were playing Tonk. The usual crowd. They
looked at me from the corners of their eyes and shrugged. They all
seemed worried. Like they were concerned for my sanity.
I guess if any of them had done what I had, a year ago, I would
have felt the same. It was honest confusion and concern based in
care for a comrade.
Their thickheadedness irritated me, yet I could not sustain that
irritation because by sending Goblin around, they had proven they
wanted to understand.
The game went along, quiet and sullen initially, growing
animated as they exchanged gossip about the course of the
battle.
Goblin asked, “What happened yesterday, Croaker?”
“I told you.”
Gently, he suggested, “How about we go over it again? Get more
of the detail.” I knew what he was doing. A little mental therapy
based on an assumption that prolonged proximity to the Lady had
unsettled my mind. He was right. It had. It had opened my eyes,
too, and I tried to make that clear as I reiterated my day, calling
on such skills as I have developed scribbling these Annals, hoping
to convince him that my stance was rational and moral and everyone
else’s was not.
“You see what he did when those Oar boys tried to get behind the
Captain?” one of the cardplayers asked. They were gossiping about
Raven. I had forgotten him till then. I pricked up my ears and
listened to several stories of his savage heroics. To hear them
talk, Raven had saved everybody in the Company at least once.
Somebody asked, “Where is he?”
Lots of headshaking. Someone suggested, “Must have gotten
killed. The Captain sent a detail after our dead. Guess we’ll see
him go in the ground this afternoon.”
“What happened to the kid?”
Elmo snorted. “Find him and you’ll find her.”
“Talking about the kid, you see what happened when they tried to
clobber second platoon with some kind of knockout spell? It was
weird. The kid acted like nothing ever happened. Everybody else
went down like a rock. She just looked kind of puzzled and shook
Raven. Up he came, bam, hacking away. She shook them all back
awake. Like the magic couldn’t touch her, or something.”
Somebody else said, “Maybe that’s cause she’s deaf. Like maybe
the magic was sound.”
“Ah, who knows? Pity she didn’t make it, though. Kind of got
used to her hanging around.”
“Raven, too. Need him to keep old One-Eye from cheating,”
Everybody laughed.
I looked at Silent, who was eavesdropping on my conversation
with Goblin. I shook my head. He raised an eyebrow. I used
Darling’s signs to tell him, They aren’t dead. He liked Darling
too.
He rose, walked behind Goblin, jerked his head. He wanted to see
me alone. I extricated myself and followed him.
I explained that I had seen Darling while returning from my
venture with the Lady, that I suspected Raven was deserting by the
one route he thought would not be watched. Silent frowned and
wanted to know why.
“You got me. You know how he’s been lately.” I did not mention
my vision or dreams, all of which seemed fantastic now. “Maybe he
got fed up with us.”
Silent smiled a smile that said he did not believe a word of
that. He sighed, want to know why. What do you know? He assumed I
knew more about Raven and Darling than anyone else because I was
always probing for personal details to put into the Annals.
“I don’t know anything you don’t. He hung around with the
Captain and Pickles more than anybody else.”
He thought for about ten seconds, then signed, You saddle two
horses. No, four horses, with some food. We may be a few days. I
will go ask questions. His manner did not brook argument.
That was fine with me. A ride had occurred to me while I was
talking to Goblin. I had given up the notion because I could think
of no way to pick up Raven’s trail.
I went to the picket where Elmo had taken the horses last night.
Four of them. For an instant I reflected on the chance a greater
force existed, moving us. I conned a couple men into saddling the
beasts for me while I went and finagled some food out of Pickles.
He was not easy to get around. He wanted the Captain’s personal
authorization. We worked out a deal where he would get a special
mention in the Annals.
Silent joined me at the tail of the negotiations. Once we had
strapped the supplies aboard the horses, I asked, “You learn
anything?”
He signed, Only that the Captain has some special knowledge he
will not share. I think it had more to do with Darling than with
Raven.
I grunted. Here it was again . . . The
Captain had come up with a notion like mine? And had had it this
morning, while we were arguing? Hmm. He had a tricky
mind . . . I think Raven left without the Captain’s permission, but has his
blessing. Did you interrogate Pickles?
“Thought you were going to do that.”
He shook his head. He hadn’t had time.
“Go ahead now. Still a few things I want to get together.” I
hustled to the hospital tent, accoutered myself with my weapons and
dug out a present I had been saving for Darling’s birthday. Then I
hunted Elmo up and told him I could use some of my share of the
money we had kyped in Roses.
“How much?”
“Much as I can get.”
He looked at me long and hard, decided to ask no questions. We
went to his tent and counted it out quietly. The men knew nothing
about that money. The secret remained with those of us who had gone
to Roses after Raker. There were those, though, who wondered how
One-Eye managed to keep paying his gambling debts when he never won
and had no time for his usual black marketeering.
Elmo followed me when I left his tent. We found Silent already
mounted up, the horses ready to go. “Going for a ride, eh?” he
asked.
“Yeah.” I secured the bow the Lady had given me to my saddle,
mounted up.
Elmo searched our faces with narrowed eyes, then said, “Good
luck.” He turned and walked away. I looked at Silent.
He signed, Pickles claims ignorance too. I did trick him into
admitting he had given Raven extra rations before the fighting
started yesterday. He knows something too.
Well, hell. Everybody seemed to be in on the guesswork. As
Silent led off, I turned my thoughts to the morning’s
confrontation, seeking hints of things askew. And I found a few.
Goblin and Elmo had their suspicions too.
—•—•—•—
There was no avoiding a passage through the Rebel camp. Pity. I
would have preferred to have avoided it. The flies and stench were
thick. When the Lady and I rode through, it looked empty. Wrong.
We’d simply not seen anyone. The enemy wounded and camp followers
were there. The Howler had dropped, his globes on them too.
I’d selected animals well. In addition to having taken Feather’s
mount, I had acquired others of the same tireless breed. Silent set
a brisk pace, eschewing communication till, as we hastened down the
outer border of the rocky country, he reined in and signed for me
to study my surroundings. He wanted to know the line of flight the
Lady had followed approaching the Tower.
I told him I thought we had come in about a mile south of where
we were then. He gave me the extra horses and edged near the rocks,
proceeded slowly, studying the ground carefully. I paid little
attention. He could find sign better than I.
I could have found this trail, though. Silent threw up a hand,
then indicated the ground. They had departed the badlands about
where the Lady and I had crossed the boundary going the other way.
“Trying to make time, not cover his trail,” I guessed.
Silent nodded, stared westward. He signed questions about
roads.
The main north-south high road passes three miles west of the
Tower. It was the road we followed to Forsberg. We guessed he would
head there first. Even in these times there would be traffic enough
to conceal the passage of a man and child. From ordinary eyes.
Silent believed he could follow.
“Remember, this is his country,” I said. “He knows it better
than we do.”
Silent nodded absently, unconcerned. I glanced at the sun. Maybe
two hours of daylight left. I wondered how big a lead they had.
We reached the high road. Silent studied it a moment, rode south
a few yards, nodded to himself. He beckoned me, spurred his
mount.
And so we rode those tireless beasts, hard, hour after hour,
after the sun went down, all the night long, into the next day,
heading toward the sea, till we were far ahead of our quarry. The
breaks were few and far between. I ached everywhere. It was too
soon after my venture with the Lady for this.
We halted where the road hugged the foot of a wooded hill.
Silent indicated a bald spot that made a good watchpoint. I nodded.
We turned off and climbed.
I took care of the horses, then collapsed. “Getting too old for
this,” I said, and fell asleep immediately.
Silent wakened me at dusk. “They coming?” I asked.
He shook his head, signed that he did not expect them before
tomorrow. But I should keep an eye out anyway, in case Raven was
travelling by night.
So I sat under the pallid light of the comet, wrapped in a
blanket, shivering in the winter wind, for hour upon hour, alone
with thoughts I did not want to think. I saw nothing but a brace of
roebuck crossing from woods to farmland in hopes of finding better
forage.
Silent relieved me a couple hours before dawn. Oh joy, oh joy.
Now I could lie down and shiver and think thoughts I did not want
to think. But I did fall asleep sometime, because it was light when
Silent squeezed my shoulder . . .
“They coming?”
He nodded.
I rose, rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands, stared up the
road. Sure enough, two figures were coming south, one taller than
the other. But at that distance they could have been any adult and
child. We packed and readied the horses hurriedly, descended the
hill. Silent wanted to wait down the road, around the bend. He told
me to get on the road behind them, just in case. You never knew
about Raven.
He left. I waited, shivering still, feeling very lonely. The
travelers breasted a rise. Yes, Raven and Darling. They walked
briskly, but Raven seemed unafraid, certain no one was after him.
They passed me. I waited a minute, eased out of the woods, followed
them around the toe of the hill.
Silent sat his mount in the middle of the road, leaning forward
slightly, looking lean and mean and dark. Raven had stopped fifty
feet away, exposed his steel. He held Darling behind him.
She noticed me coming, grinned and waved. I grinned back,
despite the tension of the moment.
Raven whirled. A snarl stretched his lips. Anger, possibly even
hatred, smoldered in his eyes. I stopped beyond the reach of his
knives. He did not look willing to talk.
We all remained motionless for several minutes. Nobody wanted to
speak first. I looked at Silent. He shrugged. He had come to the
end of his plan.
Curiosity had brought me here. I had satisfied part of it. They
were alive, and were running. Only the why remained shadowy.
To my amazement Raven yielded first. “What’re you doing here,
Croaker?” I’d thought him able to outstubborn a stone.
“Looking for you.”
“Why?”
“Curiosity. Me and Silent, we got an interest in Darling. We
were worried.”
He frowned. He was not hearing what he had expected.
“You can see she’s all right.”
“Yeah. Looks like. How about you?”
“I look like I’m not?”
I glanced at Silent. He had nothing to contribute. “One wonders,
Raven. One wonders.”
He was on the defensive. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Fellow freezes out his buddies. Treats them like shit. Then he
deserts. Makes people wonder enough to go find out what’s
happening.”
“The Captain know you’re here?”
I glanced at Silent again. He nodded. “Yeah. Want to let us in
on it, old buddy? Me, Silent, the Captain, Pickles, Elmo, Goblin,
we all maybe got an idea . . . ”
“Don’t try to stop me, Croaker.”
“Why are you always looking for a fight? Who said anything about
stopping you? They wanted you stopped, you wouldn’t be out here
now. You’d never have gotten away from the Tower.”
He was startled.
“They saw it coming, Pickles and the Old Man. They let you go.
Some of the rest of us, we’d like to know why. I mean, like, we
think we know, and if it’s what we think, then at least you have my
blessing. And Silent’s. And I guess everybody’s who didn’t hold you
back.”
Raven frowned. He knew what I was hinting, but couldn’t make
sense of it. His not being old line Company left a communications
gap.
“Put it this way,” I said. “Me and Silent figure you’re going
down as killed in action. Both of you. Nobody needs to know any
different. But, you know, it’s like you’re running away from home.
Even if we wish you well, we maybe feel a little hurt an account of
the way you do it. You were voted into the Company. You went
through hell with us. You . . . Look what you
and me went through together. And you treat us like shit. That
don’t go down too well.”
It sank in. He said, “Sometimes something comes up that’s so important you can’t tell your best friends. Could get
you all killed.”
“Figured that was it. Hey! Take it easy.”
Silent had dismounted and begun an exchange with Darling. She
seemed oblivious to the strain between her friends. She was telling
Silent what they had done and where they were headed.
“Think that’s smart?” I asked. “Opal? Couple things you should
know, then. One, the Lady won. Guess you figured that. Saw it
coming, or you wouldn’t have pulled out. Okay. More important. The
Limper is back. She didn’t do him in. She shaped him up and he’s
her number one boy now.”
Raven turned pale. It was the first I could recall seeing him
truly frightened. But his fear was not for himself. He considered
himself a walking dead man, a man with nothing to lose. But now he
had Darling, and a cause. He had to stay alive.
“Yeah. The Limper. Me and Silent went over this a lot.”
Actually, this had occurred to me only a moment earlier. I felt it
would go better if he thought some considered deliberation had gone
into it. “We figure the Lady will catch on sooner or later. She’ll
want to make a move. If she connects you, you’ll have the Limper on
your trail. He knows you. He’d start looking in your old stomping
grounds, figuring you’d get in touch with old friends. You got any
friends who could hide you from the Limper?”
Raven sighed, seemed to lose stature. He put his steel away.
“That was my plan. Thought we’d cross to Beryl and hide out
there.”
“Beryl is technically only the Lady’s ally, but her word is law
there. You’ve got to go somewhere where they’ve never heard of
her.”
“Where?”
“This isn’t my part of the world.” He seemed calm enough now, so
I dismounted. He eyed me warily, then relaxed. I said, “I pretty
much know what I came to find out. Silent?”
Silent nodded, continued his conversation with Darling.
I took the money bag from my bedroll, tossed it to Raven. “You
left your share of the Roses take.” I brought the spare horses up.
“You could travel faster if you were riding.”
Raven struggled with himself, trying to say thank you, unable to
get through the barriers he had built around the man inside. “Guess
we could head toward . . . ”
“I don’t want to know. I’ve met the Eye twice already. She’s got
a thing about getting her side set down for posterity. Not that she
wants to look good, just that she wants it down true. She knows how
history rewrites itself. She doesn’t want that to happen to her.
And I’m the boy she’s picked to do the writing.”
“Get out, Croaker. Come with us. You and Silent. Come with
us.”
It had been a long, lonely night. I had thought about it a lot.
“Can’t, Raven. The Captain has to stay where he’s at, even if he
don’t like it. The Company has to stay. I’m Company. I’m too old to
run away from home. We’ll fight the same fight, you and me, but
I’ll do my share staying with the family.”
“Come on, Croaker. A bunch of mercenary
cutthroats . . . ”
“Whoa! Hold it.” My voice hardened more than I wanted. He
stopped. I said, “Remember that night in Lords, before we went
after Whisper? When I read from the Annals? What you said?”
He did not respond for several seconds. “Yes. That you’d made me
feel what it meant to be a member of the Black Company. All right.
Maybe I don’t understand it, but I did feel it.”
“Thanks.” I took another package from my bedroll. This one was
for Darling. “You talk to Silent a while, eh? I got a birthday
present here.”
He looked at me a moment, then nodded. I turned so my tears
would not be so obvious. And after I said my goodbyes to the girl,
and cherished her delight in my feeble present, I went to the
roadside and had myself a brief, quiet cry. Silent and Raven
pretended blindness.
I would miss Darling. And I would spend the rest of my days
frightened for her. She was precious, perfect, always happy. The
thing in that village was behind her, But ahead lay the most
terrible enemy imaginable. None of us wanted that for her.
I rose, erased the evidence of tears, took Raven aside. “I don’t
know your plans. I don’t want to know. But just in case. When the
Lady and I caught up with Soulcatcher the other day, he had a whole
bale of those papers we dug up in Whisper’s camp. He never turned
them over to her. She doesn’t know they exist.” I told him where
they could be found. “I’ll ride out that way in a couple weeks. If
they’re still there, I’ll see what I can find in them myself.”
He looked at me with a cool, expressionless face. He was
thinking my death warrant was signed if I came under the Eye again.
But he did not say it. “Thanks, Croaker. If I’m ever up that way,
I’ll check into it.”
“Yeah. You ready to go, Silent?”
Silent nodded.
“Darling, come here.” I squeezed her in a long, tight hug. “You
be good for Raven.” I unfastened the amulet One-Eye had given me,
fixed it on her wrist, told Raven, “That’ll let her know if any
unfriendly Taken comes around. Don’t ask me how, but it works.
Luck.”
“Yeah.” He stood there looking at us as we mounted, still
baffled. He raised a hand tentatively, dropped it.
I told Silent, “Let’s go home.” And we rode away.
Neither of us looked back.
It was an incident that never happened. After all, hadn’t Raven
and his orphan died at the gates of Charm?
Back to the Company. Back to business. Back to the parade of
years. Back to these Annals. Back to fear.
Thirty-seven years before the comet returns. The vision has to
be false. I’ll never survive that long. Will I?
The argument with the Captain raged for two hours. He was
unyielding. He did not accept my arguments, legal or moral. Time
brought others into the fray, as they came to the Captain on
business. By the time I really lost my temper most of the
principals of the Company were present: the Lieutenant, Goblin,
Silent, Elmo, Candy, and several new officers recruited here at
Charm. What little support I received came from surprising
quarters. Silent backed me. So did two of the new officers.
I stamped out. Silent and Goblin followed. I was in a towering
rage, though unsurprised by their response. With the Rebel beaten
there was little to encourage the Company’s defection. They would
be hogs knee-deep in slops now. Questions of right and wrong
sounded stupid. Basically, who cared?
It was still early, the day after the battle. I had not slept
well, and was full of nervous energy. I paced vigorously, trying to
walk it off, Goblin timed me, stepped into my path after I settled
down. Silent observed from nearby. Goblin asked, “Can we talk?”
“I’ve been talking. Nobody listens.”
“You’re too argumentative. Come over here and sit down.” Over
here proved to be a pile of gear near a campfire where some men
were cooking, others were playing Tonk. The usual crowd. They
looked at me from the corners of their eyes and shrugged. They all
seemed worried. Like they were concerned for my sanity.
I guess if any of them had done what I had, a year ago, I would
have felt the same. It was honest confusion and concern based in
care for a comrade.
Their thickheadedness irritated me, yet I could not sustain that
irritation because by sending Goblin around, they had proven they
wanted to understand.
The game went along, quiet and sullen initially, growing
animated as they exchanged gossip about the course of the
battle.
Goblin asked, “What happened yesterday, Croaker?”
“I told you.”
Gently, he suggested, “How about we go over it again? Get more
of the detail.” I knew what he was doing. A little mental therapy
based on an assumption that prolonged proximity to the Lady had
unsettled my mind. He was right. It had. It had opened my eyes,
too, and I tried to make that clear as I reiterated my day, calling
on such skills as I have developed scribbling these Annals, hoping
to convince him that my stance was rational and moral and everyone
else’s was not.
“You see what he did when those Oar boys tried to get behind the
Captain?” one of the cardplayers asked. They were gossiping about
Raven. I had forgotten him till then. I pricked up my ears and
listened to several stories of his savage heroics. To hear them
talk, Raven had saved everybody in the Company at least once.
Somebody asked, “Where is he?”
Lots of headshaking. Someone suggested, “Must have gotten
killed. The Captain sent a detail after our dead. Guess we’ll see
him go in the ground this afternoon.”
“What happened to the kid?”
Elmo snorted. “Find him and you’ll find her.”
“Talking about the kid, you see what happened when they tried to
clobber second platoon with some kind of knockout spell? It was
weird. The kid acted like nothing ever happened. Everybody else
went down like a rock. She just looked kind of puzzled and shook
Raven. Up he came, bam, hacking away. She shook them all back
awake. Like the magic couldn’t touch her, or something.”
Somebody else said, “Maybe that’s cause she’s deaf. Like maybe
the magic was sound.”
“Ah, who knows? Pity she didn’t make it, though. Kind of got
used to her hanging around.”
“Raven, too. Need him to keep old One-Eye from cheating,”
Everybody laughed.
I looked at Silent, who was eavesdropping on my conversation
with Goblin. I shook my head. He raised an eyebrow. I used
Darling’s signs to tell him, They aren’t dead. He liked Darling
too.
He rose, walked behind Goblin, jerked his head. He wanted to see
me alone. I extricated myself and followed him.
I explained that I had seen Darling while returning from my
venture with the Lady, that I suspected Raven was deserting by the
one route he thought would not be watched. Silent frowned and
wanted to know why.
“You got me. You know how he’s been lately.” I did not mention
my vision or dreams, all of which seemed fantastic now. “Maybe he
got fed up with us.”
Silent smiled a smile that said he did not believe a word of
that. He sighed, want to know why. What do you know? He assumed I
knew more about Raven and Darling than anyone else because I was
always probing for personal details to put into the Annals.
“I don’t know anything you don’t. He hung around with the
Captain and Pickles more than anybody else.”
He thought for about ten seconds, then signed, You saddle two
horses. No, four horses, with some food. We may be a few days. I
will go ask questions. His manner did not brook argument.
That was fine with me. A ride had occurred to me while I was
talking to Goblin. I had given up the notion because I could think
of no way to pick up Raven’s trail.
I went to the picket where Elmo had taken the horses last night.
Four of them. For an instant I reflected on the chance a greater
force existed, moving us. I conned a couple men into saddling the
beasts for me while I went and finagled some food out of Pickles.
He was not easy to get around. He wanted the Captain’s personal
authorization. We worked out a deal where he would get a special
mention in the Annals.
Silent joined me at the tail of the negotiations. Once we had
strapped the supplies aboard the horses, I asked, “You learn
anything?”
He signed, Only that the Captain has some special knowledge he
will not share. I think it had more to do with Darling than with
Raven.
I grunted. Here it was again . . . The
Captain had come up with a notion like mine? And had had it this
morning, while we were arguing? Hmm. He had a tricky
mind . . . I think Raven left without the Captain’s permission, but has his
blessing. Did you interrogate Pickles?
“Thought you were going to do that.”
He shook his head. He hadn’t had time.
“Go ahead now. Still a few things I want to get together.” I
hustled to the hospital tent, accoutered myself with my weapons and
dug out a present I had been saving for Darling’s birthday. Then I
hunted Elmo up and told him I could use some of my share of the
money we had kyped in Roses.
“How much?”
“Much as I can get.”
He looked at me long and hard, decided to ask no questions. We
went to his tent and counted it out quietly. The men knew nothing
about that money. The secret remained with those of us who had gone
to Roses after Raker. There were those, though, who wondered how
One-Eye managed to keep paying his gambling debts when he never won
and had no time for his usual black marketeering.
Elmo followed me when I left his tent. We found Silent already
mounted up, the horses ready to go. “Going for a ride, eh?” he
asked.
“Yeah.” I secured the bow the Lady had given me to my saddle,
mounted up.
Elmo searched our faces with narrowed eyes, then said, “Good
luck.” He turned and walked away. I looked at Silent.
He signed, Pickles claims ignorance too. I did trick him into
admitting he had given Raven extra rations before the fighting
started yesterday. He knows something too.
Well, hell. Everybody seemed to be in on the guesswork. As
Silent led off, I turned my thoughts to the morning’s
confrontation, seeking hints of things askew. And I found a few.
Goblin and Elmo had their suspicions too.
—•—•—•—
There was no avoiding a passage through the Rebel camp. Pity. I
would have preferred to have avoided it. The flies and stench were
thick. When the Lady and I rode through, it looked empty. Wrong.
We’d simply not seen anyone. The enemy wounded and camp followers
were there. The Howler had dropped, his globes on them too.
I’d selected animals well. In addition to having taken Feather’s
mount, I had acquired others of the same tireless breed. Silent set
a brisk pace, eschewing communication till, as we hastened down the
outer border of the rocky country, he reined in and signed for me
to study my surroundings. He wanted to know the line of flight the
Lady had followed approaching the Tower.
I told him I thought we had come in about a mile south of where
we were then. He gave me the extra horses and edged near the rocks,
proceeded slowly, studying the ground carefully. I paid little
attention. He could find sign better than I.
I could have found this trail, though. Silent threw up a hand,
then indicated the ground. They had departed the badlands about
where the Lady and I had crossed the boundary going the other way.
“Trying to make time, not cover his trail,” I guessed.
Silent nodded, stared westward. He signed questions about
roads.
The main north-south high road passes three miles west of the
Tower. It was the road we followed to Forsberg. We guessed he would
head there first. Even in these times there would be traffic enough
to conceal the passage of a man and child. From ordinary eyes.
Silent believed he could follow.
“Remember, this is his country,” I said. “He knows it better
than we do.”
Silent nodded absently, unconcerned. I glanced at the sun. Maybe
two hours of daylight left. I wondered how big a lead they had.
We reached the high road. Silent studied it a moment, rode south
a few yards, nodded to himself. He beckoned me, spurred his
mount.
And so we rode those tireless beasts, hard, hour after hour,
after the sun went down, all the night long, into the next day,
heading toward the sea, till we were far ahead of our quarry. The
breaks were few and far between. I ached everywhere. It was too
soon after my venture with the Lady for this.
We halted where the road hugged the foot of a wooded hill.
Silent indicated a bald spot that made a good watchpoint. I nodded.
We turned off and climbed.
I took care of the horses, then collapsed. “Getting too old for
this,” I said, and fell asleep immediately.
Silent wakened me at dusk. “They coming?” I asked.
He shook his head, signed that he did not expect them before
tomorrow. But I should keep an eye out anyway, in case Raven was
travelling by night.
So I sat under the pallid light of the comet, wrapped in a
blanket, shivering in the winter wind, for hour upon hour, alone
with thoughts I did not want to think. I saw nothing but a brace of
roebuck crossing from woods to farmland in hopes of finding better
forage.
Silent relieved me a couple hours before dawn. Oh joy, oh joy.
Now I could lie down and shiver and think thoughts I did not want
to think. But I did fall asleep sometime, because it was light when
Silent squeezed my shoulder . . .
“They coming?”
He nodded.
I rose, rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands, stared up the
road. Sure enough, two figures were coming south, one taller than
the other. But at that distance they could have been any adult and
child. We packed and readied the horses hurriedly, descended the
hill. Silent wanted to wait down the road, around the bend. He told
me to get on the road behind them, just in case. You never knew
about Raven.
He left. I waited, shivering still, feeling very lonely. The
travelers breasted a rise. Yes, Raven and Darling. They walked
briskly, but Raven seemed unafraid, certain no one was after him.
They passed me. I waited a minute, eased out of the woods, followed
them around the toe of the hill.
Silent sat his mount in the middle of the road, leaning forward
slightly, looking lean and mean and dark. Raven had stopped fifty
feet away, exposed his steel. He held Darling behind him.
She noticed me coming, grinned and waved. I grinned back,
despite the tension of the moment.
Raven whirled. A snarl stretched his lips. Anger, possibly even
hatred, smoldered in his eyes. I stopped beyond the reach of his
knives. He did not look willing to talk.
We all remained motionless for several minutes. Nobody wanted to
speak first. I looked at Silent. He shrugged. He had come to the
end of his plan.
Curiosity had brought me here. I had satisfied part of it. They
were alive, and were running. Only the why remained shadowy.
To my amazement Raven yielded first. “What’re you doing here,
Croaker?” I’d thought him able to outstubborn a stone.
“Looking for you.”
“Why?”
“Curiosity. Me and Silent, we got an interest in Darling. We
were worried.”
He frowned. He was not hearing what he had expected.
“You can see she’s all right.”
“Yeah. Looks like. How about you?”
“I look like I’m not?”
I glanced at Silent. He had nothing to contribute. “One wonders,
Raven. One wonders.”
He was on the defensive. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Fellow freezes out his buddies. Treats them like shit. Then he
deserts. Makes people wonder enough to go find out what’s
happening.”
“The Captain know you’re here?”
I glanced at Silent again. He nodded. “Yeah. Want to let us in
on it, old buddy? Me, Silent, the Captain, Pickles, Elmo, Goblin,
we all maybe got an idea . . . ”
“Don’t try to stop me, Croaker.”
“Why are you always looking for a fight? Who said anything about
stopping you? They wanted you stopped, you wouldn’t be out here
now. You’d never have gotten away from the Tower.”
He was startled.
“They saw it coming, Pickles and the Old Man. They let you go.
Some of the rest of us, we’d like to know why. I mean, like, we
think we know, and if it’s what we think, then at least you have my
blessing. And Silent’s. And I guess everybody’s who didn’t hold you
back.”
Raven frowned. He knew what I was hinting, but couldn’t make
sense of it. His not being old line Company left a communications
gap.
“Put it this way,” I said. “Me and Silent figure you’re going
down as killed in action. Both of you. Nobody needs to know any
different. But, you know, it’s like you’re running away from home.
Even if we wish you well, we maybe feel a little hurt an account of
the way you do it. You were voted into the Company. You went
through hell with us. You . . . Look what you
and me went through together. And you treat us like shit. That
don’t go down too well.”
It sank in. He said, “Sometimes something comes up that’s so important you can’t tell your best friends. Could get
you all killed.”
“Figured that was it. Hey! Take it easy.”
Silent had dismounted and begun an exchange with Darling. She
seemed oblivious to the strain between her friends. She was telling
Silent what they had done and where they were headed.
“Think that’s smart?” I asked. “Opal? Couple things you should
know, then. One, the Lady won. Guess you figured that. Saw it
coming, or you wouldn’t have pulled out. Okay. More important. The
Limper is back. She didn’t do him in. She shaped him up and he’s
her number one boy now.”
Raven turned pale. It was the first I could recall seeing him
truly frightened. But his fear was not for himself. He considered
himself a walking dead man, a man with nothing to lose. But now he
had Darling, and a cause. He had to stay alive.
“Yeah. The Limper. Me and Silent went over this a lot.”
Actually, this had occurred to me only a moment earlier. I felt it
would go better if he thought some considered deliberation had gone
into it. “We figure the Lady will catch on sooner or later. She’ll
want to make a move. If she connects you, you’ll have the Limper on
your trail. He knows you. He’d start looking in your old stomping
grounds, figuring you’d get in touch with old friends. You got any
friends who could hide you from the Limper?”
Raven sighed, seemed to lose stature. He put his steel away.
“That was my plan. Thought we’d cross to Beryl and hide out
there.”
“Beryl is technically only the Lady’s ally, but her word is law
there. You’ve got to go somewhere where they’ve never heard of
her.”
“Where?”
“This isn’t my part of the world.” He seemed calm enough now, so
I dismounted. He eyed me warily, then relaxed. I said, “I pretty
much know what I came to find out. Silent?”
Silent nodded, continued his conversation with Darling.
I took the money bag from my bedroll, tossed it to Raven. “You
left your share of the Roses take.” I brought the spare horses up.
“You could travel faster if you were riding.”
Raven struggled with himself, trying to say thank you, unable to
get through the barriers he had built around the man inside. “Guess
we could head toward . . . ”
“I don’t want to know. I’ve met the Eye twice already. She’s got
a thing about getting her side set down for posterity. Not that she
wants to look good, just that she wants it down true. She knows how
history rewrites itself. She doesn’t want that to happen to her.
And I’m the boy she’s picked to do the writing.”
“Get out, Croaker. Come with us. You and Silent. Come with
us.”
It had been a long, lonely night. I had thought about it a lot.
“Can’t, Raven. The Captain has to stay where he’s at, even if he
don’t like it. The Company has to stay. I’m Company. I’m too old to
run away from home. We’ll fight the same fight, you and me, but
I’ll do my share staying with the family.”
“Come on, Croaker. A bunch of mercenary
cutthroats . . . ”
“Whoa! Hold it.” My voice hardened more than I wanted. He
stopped. I said, “Remember that night in Lords, before we went
after Whisper? When I read from the Annals? What you said?”
He did not respond for several seconds. “Yes. That you’d made me
feel what it meant to be a member of the Black Company. All right.
Maybe I don’t understand it, but I did feel it.”
“Thanks.” I took another package from my bedroll. This one was
for Darling. “You talk to Silent a while, eh? I got a birthday
present here.”
He looked at me a moment, then nodded. I turned so my tears
would not be so obvious. And after I said my goodbyes to the girl,
and cherished her delight in my feeble present, I went to the
roadside and had myself a brief, quiet cry. Silent and Raven
pretended blindness.
I would miss Darling. And I would spend the rest of my days
frightened for her. She was precious, perfect, always happy. The
thing in that village was behind her, But ahead lay the most
terrible enemy imaginable. None of us wanted that for her.
I rose, erased the evidence of tears, took Raven aside. “I don’t
know your plans. I don’t want to know. But just in case. When the
Lady and I caught up with Soulcatcher the other day, he had a whole
bale of those papers we dug up in Whisper’s camp. He never turned
them over to her. She doesn’t know they exist.” I told him where
they could be found. “I’ll ride out that way in a couple weeks. If
they’re still there, I’ll see what I can find in them myself.”
He looked at me with a cool, expressionless face. He was
thinking my death warrant was signed if I came under the Eye again.
But he did not say it. “Thanks, Croaker. If I’m ever up that way,
I’ll check into it.”
“Yeah. You ready to go, Silent?”
Silent nodded.
“Darling, come here.” I squeezed her in a long, tight hug. “You
be good for Raven.” I unfastened the amulet One-Eye had given me,
fixed it on her wrist, told Raven, “That’ll let her know if any
unfriendly Taken comes around. Don’t ask me how, but it works.
Luck.”
“Yeah.” He stood there looking at us as we mounted, still
baffled. He raised a hand tentatively, dropped it.
I told Silent, “Let’s go home.” And we rode away.
Neither of us looked back.
It was an incident that never happened. After all, hadn’t Raven
and his orphan died at the gates of Charm?
Back to the Company. Back to business. Back to the parade of
years. Back to these Annals. Back to fear.
Thirty-seven years before the comet returns. The vision has to
be false. I’ll never survive that long. Will I?