Shadow Games

Chapter Twenty-eight: BACK TO SCOUTING

The pinhead gods had other ideas.

I am not a swift worker, and Lady had her natural reluctances—and all of a sudden the sky opened up like somebody chopped open the bellies of the clouds. The downpour was heavy and cold and came with just a breath or two of chill wind for warning. I'd have thought I was already wet enough not to mind more, but...

We'd hardly stopped scrambling around trying to find some shelter when Murgen and the others came out of the night. Murgen said, "It was Goblin, all right, but he was gone when we got there." He assumed I knew what he was talking about. "Croaker, I know us Black Company types is tough he-men and neither rain nor snow nor little brown geeks is supposed to stop us from doing any damned thing we want, but I'm burned out on this rain. I guess I got what you call conditioned at the Barrowland. I can't handle too much of it. I get the collywobbles."

I was burned out on it, too. Especially now it was coming down serious. But... "What about Goblin?"

"What about him? I'll make you a bet, Croaker. That little dork is all right. Goddamned well better off than we are. Eh?"

This is where command really gets you. When you make a choice that feels like you're taking the easy way out. When you think you are taking convenience over obligation. "Right, then. Let's see if we can't find our way back to town." I let go Lady's hand. We got ourselves in better array. Those guys pretended not to notice. I supposed the troops back in Taglios would know before sunrise, somehow. Rumor works that way.

Damn, I wished I was guilty as suspected.

We reached the village as the world began to turn grey. Even those fabulous mounts of ours were worn out. We boothorned them into a stable meant for half a dozen normal animals and went clumping inside. I was sure the owner would be thrilled to death to see his clientele expanded again and looking like they'd just spent the night rolling around in the mud.

The old boy wasn't around. Instead, a pudgy little woman appeared from the kitchen, looked at us like she thought the barbarians had invaded, then saw Lady.

Lady looked just as rough as the rest of us. Just as mean. But there was no mistaking her for a guy. The old gal rushed her and babbled in Taglian and reached up to pat her back and I didn't need Cordy to tell me she was doing an "Oh, you poor dear" routine. We followed them back into the kitchen.

And there was friend Goblin, leaning back with his feet up on a log in front of a fire, sipping something from a huge mug.

"Get the little bastard!" Murgen said, and started after him.

Goblin bounced up and squeaked, "Croaker!"

"Where you been, runt? Sitting here drinking toddies while we're out stomping in the mud trying to save your butt from the baddies, eh?"

Murgen got him cornered. "Hey! No! I just got here myself."

"Where's your horse? The stable was one short when we put ours in."

"It's pretty miserable out there. I left it out back and came straight inside."

"It's not miserable for a horse? Murgen, throw him out and don't let him back inside till he takes care of his horse."

Not that we had done all that decent a job ourselves. But we'd at least gotten them in out of the wet.

"Cordy, when the old gal finishes fussing over Lady ask her how far it is to the Main."

"The Main? You're not still—"

"I'm still. As soon as I get some chow inside me and a couple hours of sleep. It's what I came down for and it's what I'm going to do. Your pals have been running a game on us, whatever their reasons, and I don't like it. If I can take the Company on without getting drafted into somebody's fight, I'm going to do it."

He sort of smiled. "All right. If you have to see for yourself, see for yourself. But be careful."

Goblin came in looking sheepish and conciliatory and wet. "Where are you going now, Croaker?"

"Where we were going in the first place. The river."

"Maybe I can save you the trouble."

"I doubt it. But let's hear it. You find out something while you were adventuring on your own?"

His eyes narrowed.

"Sorry. It wasn't one of my all-time best nights."

"You're having a lot of not-so-good times in recent years, Croaker. Being Captain gives you a sour stomach."

"Yeah."

We exchanged stares. I won the lookdown. He said, "After Lady and I split up I only got about half a mile before I realized them brown guys weren't being fooled. I knew I did a good job with the illusion. If they didn't all come after me, then they had some mojo of their own somewhere. I already suspected they did on account of how they stuck all the time even when we outran them. So I figured if I couldn't get back to Lady I'd do the next best thing and go after whoever was controlling and guiding them. When I started sniffing around for it it was damned easy to find. And they gave me no trouble. I guess they figured if I would go away from Lady they'd leave me alone. Only a few stuck with me. I turned on them and uncorked a few specials I was saving for the next time One-Eye got out of line, and after they all stopped kicking I buzzed over there and sneaked up and there was this hilltop that had been sort of hollowed out, like a bowl, and down in the bowl there was these six guys all facing a little fire. Only there was something weird. You couldn't see them right. It was like you was looking at them through a fog. Only the fog was black. Sort of. Lots of little shadows, I'd guess you'd call them. Some of them no bigger than a mouse's shadow. All buzzing around like bees."

He was talking as fast as his mouth would go, yet I knew he was having trouble telling what he had seen. That words for what he wanted to convey did not exist, at least in any languages us mundanes would understand.

"I think they were seeing what we were doing in the flames, then sending those shadows out to tell their boys what to do to us and how to get into our way."

"Hunh?"

"Maybe you were lucky, not dealing with them so much in the daytime."

"Right." I figured I'd had troubles enough chasing a walking treestump around the countryside. "See any crows while you were at it?"

He looked at me funny. "Yeah. As a matter of fact. See, I was laying there in the mud looking at these guys, trying to figure what I had in the trick bag that I could smack them with, and all of a sudden there's about twenty crows swooping around. The whole thing blew up like it was raining naptha instead of water. Cooked those brown guys good. Only those crows maybe weren't crows. You know what I mean?"

"Not till you tell me."

"I only saw them for a second, but it seemed like I could see right through them."

"You always do," I muttered, and he looked at me weird again. "So you figure any of the brown guys who're still out there are wandering around lost now? Like puppies without their masters?"

"I wouldn't say that. I figure they're as smart as you or me. Well, as smart as you, anyway. They just don't have their advantage anymore."

The old woman was still fussing over Lady. She had taken her somewhere to get bathed and patched up. As if she needed patching.

"How does this save me a trip to the Main?"

"I'm not finished yet, Your Grand Impatience. Right after the blowup here came one of the guys I thought I'd finished, tracking me down, all on his lonesome, and he's stumbling around holding his head like something got ripped out. I grabbed him. And I grabbed a couple loose shadows that were hanging around and I slapped one of them around a little and sent it off to tell One-Eye I needed to borrow his little beast. I taught another shadow how to make a guy talk and when the little monster showed up we asked the brown guy a few hundred questions."

"Frogface is here?"

"He went back. Mogaba's got them working their butts off up there."

"Good for him. You asked questions. You got answers?"

"Not that made much sense. These little brown guys come from a berg called Shadowcatch. Specifically, out of some kind of superfortress called Overlook. Their boss is one of the Shadowmasters; Longshadow, they call him. He gave the shadows to the six guys that was in the bowl place. These were just wimpy little shadows not good for much but carrying messages. They supposedly got bad ones they can turn loose, too."

"We're having some fun now, aren't we? You find out what's going on?"

"This Longshadow is up to something. He's in with the whole bunch trying to keep the Company away—the brown guys didn't know why they're worried—but he's running a game on his own, too. The impression I got was he wanted them to capture you and Lady and have you dragged down to his castle, where he was going to make some kind of deal, maybe. And that's about it."

I had five hundred questions and I started asking them, but Goblin didn't have the answers. The man he had interrogated hadn't had them. Most of the questions had occurred to him.

He asked, "So, are you going down to the Main?"

"You haven't changed my mind. Neither have those brown runts. If they don't have their mojo men anymore, they won't give me much trouble. Will they?"

Goblin groaned. "Probably not."

"So what's the matter?"

"You think I'm going to let you ride out there without some kind of cover? I'm groaning about the state of my butt." He grinned his big frog grin. I grinned back.

According to our hosts it was a four-hour ride to the Ghoja ford, the nearest and best crossing over the Main. Swan said there were four along an eighty-mile stretch of the Main: Theri, Numa, Ghoja, and Vehdna-Bota. Theri being the farthest upriver. Above Theri the Main coursed through rugged canyons too steep and bleak for military operations—though Goblin said our little brown friends had come that way, to evade the attention of the other Shadowmasters. They had lost a third of their number making the journey.

Vehdna-Bota lay nearest the sea and was useful only during the driest months of the year. The eighty miles of river between Vehdna-Bota and the sea were always impassable. Both Vehdna-Bota and Theri fords took their names from Taglian villages that had been abandoned when the Shadowmasters had invaded last year. They remained empty.

Numa and Ghoja were villages below the Main, formerly Taglian, now occupied. Ghoja appeared to be the critical crossing, and Swan, Mather, and Blade had all seen it. They told me what they could. I asked about the other fords and made an amusing discovery. Each was unfamiliar with at least one. Ha!

"Me and Goblin will scout the Ghoja crossing. Murgen, you and Cordy check out Vehdna-Bota. Shadid, you and Swan go to Numa. Sindawe, you and Blade check out Theri." I was sending each of the three into strange country.

Cordy laughed. Swan scowled. And Blade... Well, I wonder if you could get a reaction out of Blade by sticking his feet in a fire.

We split up. Lady, Otto, Hagop, and Sindawe's man all stayed behind to recuperate. Goblin rode beside me but did not say much after he hoped the weather would not go sour again. He did not sound like he expected the drizzle to hold off.

Swan said he had heard the Shadowmasters were fortifying the south bank of the Ghoja ford. Another indication the enemy would put his main force over there. I hoped it would come out that way. On the maps the terrain looked very favorable.

Two hours after we split the drizzle resumed. Perfect weather for the dreary thoughts tramping my brain.

Despite my adventure yesterday it seemed forever since I had been alone long enough to think a thought through. So with Goblin still as the grave I expected to do some serious brooding about where Lady and I were going. But she hardly crossed my mind. Instead, I mulled over what I'd gotten me and the Company into.

I was in charge but not in control. As far back as that monastery things had been happening that I could not control and could not unravel into sense. Gea-Xle and the river worsened matters. Now I felt like driftwood tumbling through a rapid. I had only the slightest idea who was doing what to whom, and why, but I was locked into the middle of it. Unless this last frantic gesture showed me an out.

For all I knew if I let the Prahbrindrah suck me in I would be enlisting on the "wrong" side. Now I knew how the Captain felt when Soulcatcher dragged us into the Lady's service. We were fighting in the Forsberg campaigns before the rest of us began to suspect we'd made a mistake.

It is not necessary for mercenary soldiers to know what is going on. It is sufficient for them to do the job for which they have taken the gold. That had been drummed into me from the moment I enlisted. There is neither right nor wrong, neither good nor evil, only our side and theirs. The honor of the Company lies within, directed one brother toward another. Without, honor lies only in keeping faith with the sponsor.

Nothing I knew of the Company's experiences resembled our present circumstance. For the first time—mainly by my doing—we were fighting for ourselves first. Our contract, if we accepted it, would be coincidental to our own desires. A tool. If I kept my head and perspective as I should, Taglios and all Taglians would become instruments of our desires.

Yet I doubted. I liked what I had seen of the Taglian people and especially liked their spirit. After the wounds they had taken keeping their independence they were still fired up for the Shadowmasters. And I had a good notion I wouldn't like those folks if I got to know them. So before it was fairly begun I'd broken the prime rule and become emotionally involved. Fool that I am.

That damned rain had a personal grudge. It got no heavier but it never let up. Yet to east and west I saw light that indicated clear skies in those directions. The gods, if such existed, were laying on the misery especially for me.

The last tenanted place we passed lay six miles from the Ghoja ford. Beyond, the countryside had been abandoned. It had been empty for months. It was not bad land, either. The locals must have had a big fear on to uproot and flee. A change of overlords usually isn't that traumatic for peasants. The five thousand who had come north and not returned must have had a real way about them.

The country was not rugged. It was mostly cleared land that rolled gently, and the road was not awful, considering, though it had not been built to carry military traffic. Nowhere did I see any fortifications, manmade or natural. I'd seen none of the former anywhere in Taglian territory. There would be no place to run and few places to hide in the event of disaster. I became a bit more respectful of Swan and his buddies, daring what they had.

The ground, when soaked, became a clayey, clinging mud that exercised the strength and patience even of my tireless steed. Note to the chief of staff. Plan our battles for clear, dry days.

Right. And while we're at it, let's order up only blind enemies.

You have to take what is handed you in this trade.

"You're damned broody today, Croaker," Goblin said, after a long while.

"Me? You been chattering like a stone yourself."

"I'm troubled about all this."

He was troubled. That was a very un-Goblin-like remark. It meant he was worried right down to his toenails. "You don't think we can handle it if we have to take the commission?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe. You always grab something out of the trick bag. But we're getting worn out, Croaker. There's no zest in it anymore. What if we did pull it off, and broke through, and got to Khatovar, and ended up with a big nothing?"

"That's been the risk since we started. I never claimed anything for this trip. It's just something I thought had to be done because I pledged to do it. And when I turn the Annals over to Murgen I'll extract the same oath from him."

"I guess we don't have anything better to do."

"To the end of the world and back again. It's an accomplishment of sorts."

"I wonder about the first purpose."

"So do I, old friend. It got lost somewhere between here and Gea-Xle. And I think these Taglians know something about it. But they're not talking. Going to have to try some old-fashioned Company double shuffle on them sometime."

The drizzle had its good side, I suppose. It lessened visibility. We were over the last crest and headed down toward the Main and Ghoja ford before I realized we had come that far. Sentries on the south bank would have spotted us immediately in better weather.

Goblin sensed it first. "We're there, Croaker. The river's right down there."

We reined in. I asked, "You feel anything on the other side?"

"People. Not alert. But there's a couple poor fools on sentry duty."

"What kind of outfit does it feel like?"

"Sloppy. Third rate. I could get a better look if I had a little time."

"Take some time. I'm going to roam around and look it over."

The site was what I had been told it would be. The road wandered down a long, bare slope to the ford, which lay just above an elbow in the river. Below the elbow a creek ran into the river from my side, though I had to go make sure because it lay behind higher ground. The creek had a beard of the usual growth along both banks. There was also a slight rise in the other direction, so that the road to the ford ran down the center of a slight concavity. Above the ford the river arched southward in a slow, lazy curve. On my side its bank was anywhere from two to eight feet high and overgrown with trees and brush everywhere but at the crossing itself.

I examined all that very carefully, on foot, while my mount waited with Goblin beyond the ridge. I sneaked down to the edge of the ford itself and spent a half hour sitting in the wet bushes staring at the fortifications on the other side.

We were not going to get across here. Not easily.

Were they worried about us coming to them? Why?

I used the old triangulation trick to figure out that the watchtower of the fortress stood about seventy feet high, then withdrew and tried to calculate what could be seen from its parapet. Most of the light was gone when I finished.

"Find out what you need to know?" Goblin asked when I rejoined him.

"I think so. Not what I wanted, either. Unless you can cheer me up. Could we force a crossing?"

"Against what's in there now? Probably. With the water down. If we tried in the dead of the night and caught them napping."

"And when the water does go down they'll have ten thousand men hanging around over there."

"Don't look good, does it?"

"No. Let's find a place to get out of the rain."

"I can stand to ride back if you can."

"Let's try. We'll sleep dry if we make it. What do you think of the men over there? Professionals?"

"My guess is they're just a little better than men disguised as soldiers."

"They looked pretty sloppy to me, too. But maybe they don't have to be any better in these parts."

I had seen and watched four men while I was crouching near the ford. They had not impressed me. Neither had the design or construction of the fortifications. Clearly, these Shadowmasters had brought in no professionals to train their forces and they had not developed a good edge on what they did have.

" 'Course, maybe we saw what we were supposed to see."

"There's always that." An interesting thought, maybe worth some consideration, because at that moment I noticed a couple of bedraggled crows watching us from a dead branch on an elm tree. I started to look around for the stump, thought the hell with it. I would handle that when the time came.

"You remember Shifter's woman, Goblin?"

"Yeah. So?"

"You said you thought she seemed familiar back in Gea-Xle. Now it's all of a sudden coming on me that maybe you were right. I'm sure we ran into her somewhere before. But I can't for the life of me think where or when."

"Does it matter?"

"Probably not. Just one of those things that nag at you. Let's cut off to the left here."

"What the hell for?"

"There's a town on the map, called Vejagedhya, that I want to look at."

"I thought we were going back—"

"It'll only take a few minutes extra."

"Right." Grumble, grumble, ragglesnatz.

"Looks like we might have to fight. I need to know the country."

Fraggin snigglebark.

We ate cold food as we rode. It is not often that I do so, but at such moments I sometimes envy the man with a cottage and wife.

Everything costs something. It was ghost country we rode, spooky country. The hand of man was evident everywhere, even in darkness. Some of the homes we inspected looked like they had been closed up only yesterday. But not once did we encounter another human being. "I'm surprised thieves haven't been working all this."

"Don't tell One-Eye."

I forced a chuckle. "I guess they were smart enough to take their valuables with them."

"These people do seem determined to pay whatever price they have to, don't they?" He sounded impressed.

Grudgingly, I was developing a case of respect. "And it looks like the Company is going to be their one toss of the bones with fate."

"If you let them."

There was the town, Vejagedhya. It might once have been home to as many as a thousand people. Now it was even more spooky than the abandoned farms. Out there, at least, we had encountered wildlife. In the town I saw nothing but a few crows fluttering from roof to roof.

The townsfolk had not locked their doors. We checked maybe two dozen buildings. "It would do for a headquarters," I told Goblin.

He grunted. After a while, he asked, "You making up your mind?"

"Beginning to look made up for me. Right? But we'll see what the others have to say."

We headed north. Goblin did not have much to say after that. That gave me time to dwell on and invent deeper meanings to my roles as Captain and potential warlord.

If there was no choice but to fight, and to lead a nation, I was going to make demands. I was not going to let the Taglians put me in a position where they could second-guess and override my every decision. I had watched my predecessors get half crazy dealing with that. If the Taglians hooked me, I was going to hook them right back.

We might call it something prettier, but by damn I was going to be a military dictator.

Me. Croaker. The itinerant military physician and amateur historian. Able to indulge in all the abuses I'd damned in princes for so long. It was a sobering notion.

If we bought it, and took the commission, and I got what I would demand, I might have Wheezer follow me around and remind me that I'm mortal. He wasn't good for much else.

The rain let up as we were riding into town.

Now I knew the gods loved me.