Shadow Games

Chapter Seventeen: GEA-XLE

I got them all up and decked out in their second best. Murgen had the standard out. There was a nice breeze to stretch it. Those great black horses stamped and champed, eager to get on down the road. Their passion communicated itself to their lesser cousins.

The gear was packed and loaded. There was no reason to hold movement—except that rattling conviction that the event would be something more than a ride into a city.

"You in a dramatic mood, Croaker?" Goblin asked. "Feel like showing off?"

I did and he knew it. I wanted to spit defiance in the face of my premonition. "What have you got in mind?"

Instead of answering directly, he told One-Eye, "When we get down there and come over that saddleback where they can get their first good look at us, you do a couple of thunders and a Trumpet of Doom. I'll do a Riding Through the Fire. That ought to let them know the Black Company is back in town."

I glanced at Lady. She seemed partly amused, partly patronizing.

For a moment One-Eye looked like he wanted to squabble. He swallowed it and nodded curtly. "Let's do it if we're going to do it, Croaker."

"Move out," I ordered. I did not know what they had in mind, but they could get flashy when they wanted.

They took the point together, Murgen a dozen yards behind with the standard. The rest fell into the usual file, with me and Lady side by side leading our share of pack animals. I recall eyeing the gleaming bare backs or the Geek and the Freak and reflecting that we had us some real infantry now.

The beginning of it was tight twists and turns on a steep, narrow path, but after a mile the way widened till it was almost a road. We passed several cottages evidently belonging to herdsmen, not nearly as poor and primitive as one would suspect.

Up we went into the backside of the saddle Goblin mentioned, and the show started. It was almost exactly what he prescribed.

One-Eye clapped his hands a couple of times and the results were sky-shaking crashes. Then he set them to his cheeks and let fly a trumpet call just as loud. Meantime, Goblin did something that filled the saddleback with a dense black smoke that turned into ferocious-looking but harmless flames. We rode through. I fought down a temptation to order a gallop and tell the wizards to have the horses breathe fire and kick up lightnings. I wanted a showy announcement of the Company's return, but not the appearance of a declaration of war.

"That ought to impress somebody," I said, looking back at the men riding out of the flames, the ordinary horses prancing and shying.

"If it doesn't scare hell out of them. You should be more careful how much you give away, Croaker."

"I feel daring and incautious this morning." Which was maybe the wrong thing to say after my failure of daring and lack of incaution the night before. But she let it pass.

"They're talking about us up there." She indicated the pair of stocky watchtowers flanking the road, three hundred yards ahead. There was no way to avoid riding between them, through a narrow passage filled with the shadow of death. Up top, heliographs chatted tower to tower and presumably with the city as well.

"Hope they're saying something nice, like hurray, the boys are back in town." We were close enough so I could make out the men up there. They did not look like guys getting ready for a fight. A couple sat on the merlons with their legs dangling outside. One that I took to be an officer stood in a crenel with one foot up on a merlon, leaning on his knee, watching casually.

"About the way I'd do it if I had me a really sneaky trap set," I grumped.

"Not everyone in the world has the serpentine sort of mind you do, Croaker."

"Oh yeah? I'm plain simple compared to some I could name."

She gave me one of her sharp old-time Lady-on-fire withering looks.

One-Eye was not there to say it himself, so I said it for him. "That snake's probably got more smarts than you do, Croaker. The only trouble he goes hunting is breakfast."

We were close to the one tower now, with Goblin and One-Eye and Murgen already past. I raised my hat in a friendly salute.

The officer reached down beside him, picked up something, tossed it down. It came tumbling toward me. I snatched it out of the air. "What an athlete! Maybe I'll go for two out of three."

I looked at what I caught.

It was a black stick about an inch and a quarter in diameter and fifteen inches long, carved from some heavy wood, decorated all over with ugly what-is-its. "I'll be damned."

"No doubt. What is it?"

"An officer's baton. I've never seen one before. But they're mentioned all through the Annals, up through the fall of Sham, which was some sort of mysterious lost city up on the plateau we just crossed." I lifted the baton in a second salute to the man above.

"The Company was there?"

"It's where it ended up after it left Gea-Xle. The Captain didn't find his silver mountain. He did find Sham. The Annals are pretty confused. The people of Sham are supposed to have been a lost race of whites. It seems that about three days after the Company found Sham, so did the ancestors of the Geek and the Freak. They got themselves worked up into some kind of religious frenzy and jumped all over the city. The first horde to get there killed damned near everybody, including most of the Company officers, before the Company finished killing them. The guys who survived headed north because there was another mob closing in from the south, keeping them from heading back this way. These batons aren't mentioned after that."

To which her only response was, "They knew you were coming, Croaker."

"Yeah." It was a mystery. I do not like mysteries. But it was only one of a herd and the bellies of most of them would never come floating up where I could give them the eyeball.

There were two guys waiting down the road from the watchtowers, a third of a mile from the city wall. The surrounding countryside was pretty barren for so close to a city. I guess the ground was poor. Farther north and south there was plenty of green. One of the two guys gave Goblin an old Company standard. There was no doubt what it was, though I did not recognize any of the honors. It was damned ragged, as you would expect of something as old as it had to be.

What the hell was going on here?

One-Eye tried talking to those guys but it was like starting a conversation with a stone. They faced their mounts around and got out front. I gave One-Eye a nod when he looked back to see if we should follow.

A twelve-man honor guard presented arms as we passed through the gate. But nobody else greeted us. Silence ran with us as we moved through the streets, people stopping to stare at the pale-faced strangers. Lady got half the attention.

She deserved it. She looked damned good. Very damned good. Black and tight both became her. She had the body to pull it off.

Our guides led us to a barracks and stable. The barracks part had been maintained but not used for a long time. It seemed we were supposed to make ourselves at home. All right.

Our guides did a fade while we were checking the place out.

"Well," Goblin said. "Bring on the dancing girls."

There were no dancing girls. There was not a lot of anything else either, unless you count apparent indifference. I had everybody stick tight the rest of the day, but nothing happened. We had been shelved and forgotten. Next morning I turned loose our two most recent recruits, along with One-Eye and Wheezer, on a mission meant to find a barge that would take us down the river.

"You just sent the fox to get a new latch for the chicken coop," Goblin protested. "You should've sent me along to keep him honest."

Otto busted out laughing.

I grinned but kept the rest inside. "You aren't brown enough to get by out there, little buddy."

"Oh, horse hockey. You bothered to look outside since we got here? There's white folks around, Fearless Leader."

Hagop said, "He's right, Croaker. Ain't a lot of them, but I seen a few."

"Where the hell did they come from?" I muttered, going to the door. Sparkle and Candles got out of my way. They were there to ambush any surprise unwanted guests. I went outside and leaned against the whitewashed wall, chewed a piece of horse sorrel I plucked from the edge of the street.

Yeah. The boys were right. There were a pair of whites, an old man and a twenty-fivish woman, skulking down the way. They made a production of being indifferent to me while everyone else gawked.

"Goblin. Get your tail out here."

He stumped outside, sulky. "Yeah?"

"Take a discreet look down there. You see an old man and a younger woman?"

"White?"

"Yes."

"I see them. So what?"

"Ever seen them before?"

"At my age everybody looks like somebody I've seen before. But we've never been in this part of the world. So maybe they look like somebody we seen somewhere else. She does, anyway."

"Hunh. Other way around for me. Something about the way he moves rings alarms."

Goblin plucked his own horse sorrel. I watched. When I looked back the odd couple were gone. Headed our way were three black guys who looked like trouble on the hoof. "Gods. I didn't know they made them that big."

Goblin muttered, stared past them. He wore a puzzled frown. He cocked his head like he was having trouble hearing.

The three big guys marched up, stopped. One started talking. I did not understand a word. "No spikee, pal. Try another lingo."

He did. I did not get any of that, either. He shrugged and checked his buddies. One of them tried a clicky tongue.

"You lose again, guys."

The biggest broke into a ferocious dance of frustration. His buddies gabbled. And Goblin wandered away on me without a fare-thee-well Croaker. I caught a glimpse of his back as he scooted into a passage between buildings.

Meantime, my new friends decided I was deaf or stupid. They yelled at me, slowly. Which brought Sparkle and Candles outside, followed by the others. The three big guys cussed each other some more and decided to go away.

"What was that all about?" Hagop asked.

"You got me."

Goblin came trooping back wearing a big smug frog grin.

"I'm amazed," I said. "I figured I was going to lose a week while I hunted down the local hoosegow and sold my soul to dig you out."

He put on a show of being hurt. He squeaked, "I thought I saw your girlfriend sneaking off. I just went to check."

"Judging by your smugness, you did see her."

"Sure did. And I saw her meet up with your old man and his fluff."

"Yeah? Let's go inside and give it a think."

I checked around in there just to make sure Goblin was not seeing things. Lady was gone, sure enough.

What the hell?

One-Eye and his crew came strutting in late that afternoon. One-Eye smirked like a cat with feathers in his whiskers. Geek and Freak lugged a big closed basket between them. Wheezer hacked and chewed and smiled like there was big mischief afoot and he maybe had a big hand in it.

Goblin jumped up from a nap with a squawk of protest before One-Eye got started. "You get right on back out that door with that whatever-it-is, Buzzard Breath. Before I turn that spider's nest you call a brain into toys for tumblebugs."

One-Eye did not give him a look. "Check this out, Croaker. You ain't going to believe what I found."

The boys set the basket down and popped the lid.

"I probably won't," I agreed. I snuck up on that basket, expecting a gross of cobras, or something such. What I saw was a pint-sized ringer for Goblin... Better say demitasse-sized, since Goblin is not much more than a half-pint himself. "What the hell is it? Where'd it come from?"

One-Eye stared at Goblin. "I been asking myself that for years." He had the biggest "Gottcha!" grin I ever saw.

Goblin howled like a leopardess in heat, started making mystical passes. His fingers raked furrows of fire out of the air.

Even I ignored him. "What is it?"

"It's an imp, Croaker. An honest-to-god imp. Don't you know an imp when you see one?"

"No. Where'd it come from?" I was not sure I wanted to know, knowing One-Eye.

"Heading down to the river we come on this little bunch of shops around an outdoor bazaar where they got all kinds of neat stuff for wizards, fortune-tellers, spirit talkers, Ouija workers, and such. And right there in the window of this dinky hole-in-the-wall shop, just begging for a new home, was this little guy. I couldn't resist. Say hello to the Captain, Frogface."

The imp piped, "Hello to the Captain, Frogface." It giggled just like Goblin, in a higher voice.

"Jump on out of there, bitty buddy," One-Eye said. The imp popped into the air as if shot up. One-Eye chortled. He caught it by a foot and stood there with it dangling head down like a toddler with a doll. He eyeballed Goblin, who was positively apoplectic, so fussed he could not go on with the magical funny business he had started.

One-Eye dropped the imp. It flipped and landed on its feet, sped across and stared up at Goblin like a young bastard having a sudden epiphany about the identity of its sire. It did cartwheels back to One-Eye, said, "I'm going to like it here with you guys."

I snagged One-Eye by the collar and lifted him off the floor. "What about the damned boat?" I shook him a little. "I sent you out to hire a goddamned boat, not to buy talking knick-knacks." It was one of those flashes of rage that last about three seconds, rare for me but usually strong enough to let me make an ass of myself.

My father had them a lot. When I was little I would hide under the table for the minute or so they took to pass.

I set One-Eye down. Looking amazed, he told me, "I found one, all right? Pulls out day after tomorrow, at first light. I couldn't get an exclusive charter because we couldn't afford anything big enough to haul us and the animals and coaches if that was all the barge would be carrying. I ended up making a deal."

The imp Frogface was behind Wheezer, clinging to and peeking around his leg like a frightened child—though I got the feeling it was laughing at us. "All right. I apologize for blowing up. Tell me about the deal."

"This is only good to what they call the Third Cataract, understand. That's a place eight hundred sixty miles down that a boat can't get past. There's about an eight-mile portage, then you have to hire passage again."

"To the Second Cataract, no doubt."

"Sure. Anyway, we can get the long first leg free, with food and fodder provided, if we serve as guards on this commercial barge."

"Ah. Guards. What do they need guards for? And why so many?"

"Pirates."

"I see. Meaning we'd end up fighting even if we did pay for our passage."

"Probably."

"Did you get a good look at the boat? Is it defensible?"

"Yeah. We could turn it into a floating fort in a couple days. It's the biggest damned barge I ever seen."

A tinkle of alarm began nagging in the back of my thoughts. "We'll give it another look in the morning. All of us. The deal sounds too good to be true, which probably means it is."

"I figured. That was one of the reasons I bought Frogface. I can send him sneaking around to check things out." He grinned and glanced at Goblin, who had gone into a corner to plot and pout. "Also, with Frogface along we don't have to waste no coin on guides and interpreters. He can do all that for us."

That sent my eyebrows up. "Really?"

"That's right. See? I do do something useful once in a while."

"You're threatening to. You say the imp is ready to use?"

"As ready as he can be."

"Come on outside where it's private. I got about ten jobs for it."