Otto rolled in out of the night. “Hey! Croaker! We got a
customer.”
I folded my hand but did not throw the cards in. “You
sure?” I was damned tired of false alarms.
Otto looked sheepish. “Yeah. For sure.”
Something was wrong here. “Where is he? Let’s have
all of it.”
“They’re going to make it
inside.”
“They?”
“Man and a woman. We didn’t think they were anything
to worry about till they were past the last house and still headed
uphill. It was too late to stop them then.”
I slapped my hand down. I was pissed. There would be hell to pay
in the morning. Whisper had had it up to her chin with me already.
This might be her excuse to park me in the Catacombs. Permanently.
The Taken are not patient.
“Let’s go.” I said in as calm a voice as I
could manage, while glaring a hole through Otto. He made sure he
stayed out of reach. He knew I was not pleased. Knew I was in a
tight place with the Taken. He did not want to give me any excuse
to wrap my hands around his neck. “I’m going to cut
some throats if this gets screwed up again.” We all grabbed
weapons and rushed into the night.
We had our place picked, in brush two hundred yards below the
castle gate. I got the men into position just as somebody started
screaming inside.
“Sounds bad,” one of the men said.
“Keep it down,” I snapped. Cold crept my spine. It
did sound bad.
It went on and on and on. Then I heard the muted jangle of
harness and the creak of wheels improperly greased. Then the voices
of people talking softly.
We jumped out of the brush. One of the men opened the eye of a
lantern. “I’ll be damned!” I said.
“It’s the innkeeper.”
The man sagged. The woman stared at us, eyes widening. Then she
sprang off the wagon and ran.
“Get her, Otto. And heaven help you if you don’t.
Crake, drag this bastard down. Walleye, take the wagon around to
the house. The rest of us will cut across.”
The man Shed did not struggle, so I detailed another two men to
help Otto. He and the woman were crashing through the brush. She
was headed toward a small precipice. She should corner herself
there.
We led Shed to the old house. Once in the light, he became more
deflated, more resigned. He said nothing. Most captives resist
detention somehow, if only by denying that there is any reason to
detain them. Shed looked like a man who thought he was overdue for
the worst.
“Sit,” I said, and indicated a chair at the table
where we had played cards. I took another, turned it, parked myself
with forearms atop its back and chin upon my forearms.
“We’ve got you dead, Shed.” He just stared at the tabletop, a man without hope.
“Anything to say?”
“There’s nothing to be said, is there?”
“Oh, I think there’s a whole lot. You’ve got
your ass in a sling for sure, but you’re not dead yet. You
maybe could talk your way out of this.”
His eyes widened slightly, then emptied again. He did not
believe me.
“I’m not an Inquisitor, Shed.”
His eyes flickered with momentary life.
“It’s true. I followed Bullock around because he
knew the Buskin. My job had very little to do with his. I
couldn’t care less about the Catacombs raid. I do care about
the black castle, because it’s a disaster in the making, but
not as much as I care about you. Because of a man named
Raven.”
“One of your men called you Croaker. Raven was scared to
death of somebody named Croaker that he saw one night when the
Duke’s men grabbed some of his friends.”
So. He’d witnessed our raid. Damn, but I had cut it close
to the wind that time.
“I’m that Croaker. And I want to know everything you
know about Raven and Darling. And everything about anybody else who
knows anything.” The slightest hint of defiance crossed his
face. “A lot of folks are looking for you, Shed. Bullock
isn’t the only one. My boss wants you, too. And she’s
worse trouble than he is. You wouldn’t like her at all. And
she’ll get you if you don’t do this right.”
I would rather have given him to Bullock. Bullock wasn’t
interested in our problems with the Taken. But Bullock was out of
town.
“There’s Asa, too. I want to know everything you
haven’t told me about him.” I heard the woman cursing
in the distance, carrying on like Otto and the guys were trying to
rape her. I knew better. They hadn’t the nerve after having
screwed up once already tonight. “Who’s the
slot?”
“My barmaid. She . . . ” And his
story boiled out. Once he started, there was no stopping him.
I had a notion how to wriggle out of a potentially embarrassing
situation. “Shut him up.” One of the men clamped a hand
over Shed’s mouth. “Here’s what we’re going
to do, Shed. Assuming you want out of this alive.”
He waited.
“The people I work for will know a body was delivered
tonight. They’ll expect me to catch whoever did it.
I’ll have to give them someone. That could be you, the girl,
or both of you. You know some things I don’t want the Taken
to find out. One way I can avoid handing you over is having you
turn up dead. I can make that real if I have to. Or you can fake it
for me. Let the slot see you looking like you’ve been
wrecked. You follow?”
Shaking, he replied, “I think so.”
“I want to know everything.”
“The girl . . . ”
I held up a hand, listened. The uproar was close. “She
won’t come back from her meeting with the Taken.
There’s no reason we couldn’t turn you loose once
we’re done doing what we have to do.”
He did not believe me. He had committed crimes he believed
deserved the harshest punishment, and he expected it.
“We’re the Black Company, Shed. Juniper is going to
get to know that real well soon. Including the fact that we keep
our promises. But that’s not important to you. Right now you
want to stay alive long enough to get a break. That means
you’d damned well better fake being dead, and do it better
than any stiff you ever hauled up the hill.”
“All right.”
“Take him over by the fire and make him look like
he’s had it rough.”
The men knew what to do. They sort of scattered Shed around
without actually hurting him. I tossed a few things around to make
it look like there had been a fight, and finished just in time.
The girl came sailing through the doorway, propelled by
Otto’s fist. She looked the worse for wear. So did Otto and
the men I’d sent to help. “Wildcat, eh?”
Otto tried to grin. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.
“Ain’t the half of it, Croaker.” He kicked the
girl’s feet from under her. “What happened to the
guy?”
“Got a little feisty. I stuck a knife in him.”
“I see.”
We stared at the girl. She stared back, the fire gone. Each few
seconds she glanced at Shed, looked back more subdued.
“Yep. You’re in a heap of trouble,
sweetheart.”
She gave us the song-and-dance I’d expected from Shed. We
ignored it, knowing it was bullshit. Otto cleaned up, then bound
her hands and ankles. He parked her in a chair. I made sure it
faced away from Shed. The poor bastard had to breathe.
I sat down opposite the girl and began to question her. Shed
said he had told her almost everything. I wanted to know if she
knew anything about Raven that could give him or us away.
I got no chance to find out.
There was a great rush of air around the house. A roar like a
tornado passing. A crack like thunder.
Otto said it all. “Oh shit! Taken.” The door blew
inward. I rose, stomach twisting, heart hammering. Feather came in
looking like she’d just walked through a burning building.
Wisps of smoke rose from her smouldering apparel.
“What the hell?” tasked.
“The castle. I got too close. They almost knocked me out
of the sky. What have you got?”
I told my story quickly, not omitting the fact that we had
allowed a corpse to get past. I indicated Shed. “One dead,
trying to fight questioning. But this one is healthy.” I
indicated the girl.
Feather moved close to the girl. She had taken a real blast out
there. I did not feel the aura of great power rigidly constrained
that one usually senses in the presence of the Taken. And she did
not sense the life still throbbing in Marron Shed. “So
young.” She lifted the girl’s chin. “Oh. What
eyes. Fire and steel. The Lady will love this one.”
“We keep the watch?” I asked, assuming she would
confiscate the prisoner.
“Of course. There may be others.” She faced me.
“No more will get through. The margin is too narrow. Whisper
will forgive the latest. But the next is your doom.”
“Yes, ma’am. Only it’s hard to do and not
attract the attention of the locals. We can’t just go set up
a roadblock.”
“Why not?”
I explained. She had scouted the black castle and knew the lay
of the land. “You’re right. For the moment. But your
Company will be here soon. There’ll be no need for secrecy
then.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Feather took the girl’s hand. “Come,” she
said.
I was amazed at how docilely our hellcat followed Feather. I
went outside and watched Feather’s battered carpet rise and
hurry toward Duretile. One despairing cry floated in its wake.
I found Shed in the doorway when I turned to go inside. I wanted
to smack him for that, but controlled myself.
“Who was that?” he asked. ’“What was
that?”
“Feather. One of the Taken. One of my bosses.”
“Sorceress?”
“One of the greatest. Go sit. Let’s talk. I need to
know exactly what that girl knows about Raven and
Darling.”
Intense questioning convinced me that Lisa did not know enough
to arouse Whisper’s suspicions. Unless she connected the name
Raven with the man who had helped capture her years ago.
I continued grilling Shed till first light. He practically
begged to tell every filthy detail of his story. He had a big need
to confess. Over coming days, when I sneaked down to the Buskin, he
revealed everything recorded where he appears as the focal
character. I do not think I have met many men who disgusted me
more. Nastier men, yes. I have encountered scores. Greater villains
come by the battalion. Shed’s leavening of self-pity and
cowardice reduced him from those categories to an essentially
pathetic level.
Poor dolt. He was born to be used.
And yet . . . There was one guttering spark
in Marron Shed, reflected in his relationships with his mother,
Raven, Asa, Lisa, Sal, and Darling, that he noted but did not
recognize himself. He had a hidden streak of charity and decency.
It was the gradual growth of that spark, with its eventual impact
upon the Black Company, which makes me feel obligated to record all
the earlier noxious details about that frightened little man.
The morning following his capture, I rode into the city in
Shed’s wagon and allowed him to open the Iron Lily as usual.
During the morning I got Elmo and Goblin in for a conference. Shed
was unsettled when he discovered that we all knew one another. Only
through sheer luck had he not been taken earlier.
Poor fellow. The grilling never ceased. Poor us. He could not
tell us everything we wanted to know.
“What are we going to do about the girl’s
father?” Elmo asked.
“If there is a letter, we’ve got to grab it.”
I replied. “We can’t have anybody stirring up more
problems. Goblin, you take care of the papa. He’s even a
little suspicious, see he has a heart attack.”
Sourly, Goblin nodded. He asked Shed for the father’s
whereabouts, departed. And returned within half an hour. “A
great tragedy. He didn’t have a letter. She was bluffing. But
he did know too much that would come out under questioning. This
business is beginning to get to me. Hunting Rebels was cleaner. You
knew who was who and where you stood.”
“I’d better get back up the hill. The Taken might
not be understanding about me being down here. Elmo, better keep
somebody in Shed’s pocket.”
“Right. Pawnbroker lives there from now on. That clown
takes a crap, he’s holding his hand.”
Goblin looked remote and thoughtful. “Raven buying a ship.
Imagine that. What do you figure he was going to do?”
“I think he wanted to head straight out to sea,” I
said. “I hear there’re islands out there, way out.
Maybe another continent. A guy could hide pretty good out
there.”
I went back up the hill and loafed for two days, except to slip
off and get everything I could out of Shed. Not a damned thing
happened. Nobody else tried to make a delivery. I guess Shed was
the only fool in the body business.
Sometimes I looked at those grim black battlements and wondered.
They had taken a crack at Feather. Somebody in there knew the Taken
meant trouble. How long before they realized they had been cut off
and did something to get the meat supply moving again?
Otto rolled in out of the night. “Hey! Croaker! We got a
customer.”
I folded my hand but did not throw the cards in. “You
sure?” I was damned tired of false alarms.
Otto looked sheepish. “Yeah. For sure.”
Something was wrong here. “Where is he? Let’s have
all of it.”
“They’re going to make it
inside.”
“They?”
“Man and a woman. We didn’t think they were anything
to worry about till they were past the last house and still headed
uphill. It was too late to stop them then.”
I slapped my hand down. I was pissed. There would be hell to pay
in the morning. Whisper had had it up to her chin with me already.
This might be her excuse to park me in the Catacombs. Permanently.
The Taken are not patient.
“Let’s go.” I said in as calm a voice as I
could manage, while glaring a hole through Otto. He made sure he
stayed out of reach. He knew I was not pleased. Knew I was in a
tight place with the Taken. He did not want to give me any excuse
to wrap my hands around his neck. “I’m going to cut
some throats if this gets screwed up again.” We all grabbed
weapons and rushed into the night.
We had our place picked, in brush two hundred yards below the
castle gate. I got the men into position just as somebody started
screaming inside.
“Sounds bad,” one of the men said.
“Keep it down,” I snapped. Cold crept my spine. It
did sound bad.
It went on and on and on. Then I heard the muted jangle of
harness and the creak of wheels improperly greased. Then the voices
of people talking softly.
We jumped out of the brush. One of the men opened the eye of a
lantern. “I’ll be damned!” I said.
“It’s the innkeeper.”
The man sagged. The woman stared at us, eyes widening. Then she
sprang off the wagon and ran.
“Get her, Otto. And heaven help you if you don’t.
Crake, drag this bastard down. Walleye, take the wagon around to
the house. The rest of us will cut across.”
The man Shed did not struggle, so I detailed another two men to
help Otto. He and the woman were crashing through the brush. She
was headed toward a small precipice. She should corner herself
there.
We led Shed to the old house. Once in the light, he became more
deflated, more resigned. He said nothing. Most captives resist
detention somehow, if only by denying that there is any reason to
detain them. Shed looked like a man who thought he was overdue for
the worst.
“Sit,” I said, and indicated a chair at the table
where we had played cards. I took another, turned it, parked myself
with forearms atop its back and chin upon my forearms.
“We’ve got you dead, Shed.” He just stared at the tabletop, a man without hope.
“Anything to say?”
“There’s nothing to be said, is there?”
“Oh, I think there’s a whole lot. You’ve got
your ass in a sling for sure, but you’re not dead yet. You
maybe could talk your way out of this.”
His eyes widened slightly, then emptied again. He did not
believe me.
“I’m not an Inquisitor, Shed.”
His eyes flickered with momentary life.
“It’s true. I followed Bullock around because he
knew the Buskin. My job had very little to do with his. I
couldn’t care less about the Catacombs raid. I do care about
the black castle, because it’s a disaster in the making, but
not as much as I care about you. Because of a man named
Raven.”
“One of your men called you Croaker. Raven was scared to
death of somebody named Croaker that he saw one night when the
Duke’s men grabbed some of his friends.”
So. He’d witnessed our raid. Damn, but I had cut it close
to the wind that time.
“I’m that Croaker. And I want to know everything you
know about Raven and Darling. And everything about anybody else who
knows anything.” The slightest hint of defiance crossed his
face. “A lot of folks are looking for you, Shed. Bullock
isn’t the only one. My boss wants you, too. And she’s
worse trouble than he is. You wouldn’t like her at all. And
she’ll get you if you don’t do this right.”
I would rather have given him to Bullock. Bullock wasn’t
interested in our problems with the Taken. But Bullock was out of
town.
“There’s Asa, too. I want to know everything you
haven’t told me about him.” I heard the woman cursing
in the distance, carrying on like Otto and the guys were trying to
rape her. I knew better. They hadn’t the nerve after having
screwed up once already tonight. “Who’s the
slot?”
“My barmaid. She . . . ” And his
story boiled out. Once he started, there was no stopping him.
I had a notion how to wriggle out of a potentially embarrassing
situation. “Shut him up.” One of the men clamped a hand
over Shed’s mouth. “Here’s what we’re going
to do, Shed. Assuming you want out of this alive.”
He waited.
“The people I work for will know a body was delivered
tonight. They’ll expect me to catch whoever did it.
I’ll have to give them someone. That could be you, the girl,
or both of you. You know some things I don’t want the Taken
to find out. One way I can avoid handing you over is having you
turn up dead. I can make that real if I have to. Or you can fake it
for me. Let the slot see you looking like you’ve been
wrecked. You follow?”
Shaking, he replied, “I think so.”
“I want to know everything.”
“The girl . . . ”
I held up a hand, listened. The uproar was close. “She
won’t come back from her meeting with the Taken.
There’s no reason we couldn’t turn you loose once
we’re done doing what we have to do.”
He did not believe me. He had committed crimes he believed
deserved the harshest punishment, and he expected it.
“We’re the Black Company, Shed. Juniper is going to
get to know that real well soon. Including the fact that we keep
our promises. But that’s not important to you. Right now you
want to stay alive long enough to get a break. That means
you’d damned well better fake being dead, and do it better
than any stiff you ever hauled up the hill.”
“All right.”
“Take him over by the fire and make him look like
he’s had it rough.”
The men knew what to do. They sort of scattered Shed around
without actually hurting him. I tossed a few things around to make
it look like there had been a fight, and finished just in time.
The girl came sailing through the doorway, propelled by
Otto’s fist. She looked the worse for wear. So did Otto and
the men I’d sent to help. “Wildcat, eh?”
Otto tried to grin. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.
“Ain’t the half of it, Croaker.” He kicked the
girl’s feet from under her. “What happened to the
guy?”
“Got a little feisty. I stuck a knife in him.”
“I see.”
We stared at the girl. She stared back, the fire gone. Each few
seconds she glanced at Shed, looked back more subdued.
“Yep. You’re in a heap of trouble,
sweetheart.”
She gave us the song-and-dance I’d expected from Shed. We
ignored it, knowing it was bullshit. Otto cleaned up, then bound
her hands and ankles. He parked her in a chair. I made sure it
faced away from Shed. The poor bastard had to breathe.
I sat down opposite the girl and began to question her. Shed
said he had told her almost everything. I wanted to know if she
knew anything about Raven that could give him or us away.
I got no chance to find out.
There was a great rush of air around the house. A roar like a
tornado passing. A crack like thunder.
Otto said it all. “Oh shit! Taken.” The door blew
inward. I rose, stomach twisting, heart hammering. Feather came in
looking like she’d just walked through a burning building.
Wisps of smoke rose from her smouldering apparel.
“What the hell?” tasked.
“The castle. I got too close. They almost knocked me out
of the sky. What have you got?”
I told my story quickly, not omitting the fact that we had
allowed a corpse to get past. I indicated Shed. “One dead,
trying to fight questioning. But this one is healthy.” I
indicated the girl.
Feather moved close to the girl. She had taken a real blast out
there. I did not feel the aura of great power rigidly constrained
that one usually senses in the presence of the Taken. And she did
not sense the life still throbbing in Marron Shed. “So
young.” She lifted the girl’s chin. “Oh. What
eyes. Fire and steel. The Lady will love this one.”
“We keep the watch?” I asked, assuming she would
confiscate the prisoner.
“Of course. There may be others.” She faced me.
“No more will get through. The margin is too narrow. Whisper
will forgive the latest. But the next is your doom.”
“Yes, ma’am. Only it’s hard to do and not
attract the attention of the locals. We can’t just go set up
a roadblock.”
“Why not?”
I explained. She had scouted the black castle and knew the lay
of the land. “You’re right. For the moment. But your
Company will be here soon. There’ll be no need for secrecy
then.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Feather took the girl’s hand. “Come,” she
said.
I was amazed at how docilely our hellcat followed Feather. I
went outside and watched Feather’s battered carpet rise and
hurry toward Duretile. One despairing cry floated in its wake.
I found Shed in the doorway when I turned to go inside. I wanted
to smack him for that, but controlled myself.
“Who was that?” he asked. ’“What was
that?”
“Feather. One of the Taken. One of my bosses.”
“Sorceress?”
“One of the greatest. Go sit. Let’s talk. I need to
know exactly what that girl knows about Raven and
Darling.”
Intense questioning convinced me that Lisa did not know enough
to arouse Whisper’s suspicions. Unless she connected the name
Raven with the man who had helped capture her years ago.
I continued grilling Shed till first light. He practically
begged to tell every filthy detail of his story. He had a big need
to confess. Over coming days, when I sneaked down to the Buskin, he
revealed everything recorded where he appears as the focal
character. I do not think I have met many men who disgusted me
more. Nastier men, yes. I have encountered scores. Greater villains
come by the battalion. Shed’s leavening of self-pity and
cowardice reduced him from those categories to an essentially
pathetic level.
Poor dolt. He was born to be used.
And yet . . . There was one guttering spark
in Marron Shed, reflected in his relationships with his mother,
Raven, Asa, Lisa, Sal, and Darling, that he noted but did not
recognize himself. He had a hidden streak of charity and decency.
It was the gradual growth of that spark, with its eventual impact
upon the Black Company, which makes me feel obligated to record all
the earlier noxious details about that frightened little man.
The morning following his capture, I rode into the city in
Shed’s wagon and allowed him to open the Iron Lily as usual.
During the morning I got Elmo and Goblin in for a conference. Shed
was unsettled when he discovered that we all knew one another. Only
through sheer luck had he not been taken earlier.
Poor fellow. The grilling never ceased. Poor us. He could not
tell us everything we wanted to know.
“What are we going to do about the girl’s
father?” Elmo asked.
“If there is a letter, we’ve got to grab it.”
I replied. “We can’t have anybody stirring up more
problems. Goblin, you take care of the papa. He’s even a
little suspicious, see he has a heart attack.”
Sourly, Goblin nodded. He asked Shed for the father’s
whereabouts, departed. And returned within half an hour. “A
great tragedy. He didn’t have a letter. She was bluffing. But
he did know too much that would come out under questioning. This
business is beginning to get to me. Hunting Rebels was cleaner. You
knew who was who and where you stood.”
“I’d better get back up the hill. The Taken might
not be understanding about me being down here. Elmo, better keep
somebody in Shed’s pocket.”
“Right. Pawnbroker lives there from now on. That clown
takes a crap, he’s holding his hand.”
Goblin looked remote and thoughtful. “Raven buying a ship.
Imagine that. What do you figure he was going to do?”
“I think he wanted to head straight out to sea,” I
said. “I hear there’re islands out there, way out.
Maybe another continent. A guy could hide pretty good out
there.”
I went back up the hill and loafed for two days, except to slip
off and get everything I could out of Shed. Not a damned thing
happened. Nobody else tried to make a delivery. I guess Shed was
the only fool in the body business.
Sometimes I looked at those grim black battlements and wondered.
They had taken a crack at Feather. Somebody in there knew the Taken
meant trouble. How long before they realized they had been cut off
and did something to get the meat supply moving again?