She Is The Darkness

18

"You all right?" One-Eye asked as I came to the front of the wagon. It was dark out. He had turned his team loose to forage nearby, had a fire burning, and was now back on his driver's seat polishing a spear that looked as though it had been carved from ebony, inlaid with silver highlighting a hundred grotesque figures. "You were thrashing around and yelling back there."

"Thanks for coming to see what was wrong."

"The old woman said you do that all the time. Didn't seem worth worrying about."

"Probably wasn't. I just rolled over on your still parts." Not true but I had a feeling he would have some around somewhere. Even during the worst of the siege of Dejagore he and Goblin had managed to produce something they pretended was beer.

He bought it long enough to give himself away. If this damned wagon stayed in one place very long something better used as food or horse fodder would turn into something else stinky but liquid and alcoholic.

"What's the spear for?" I asked. "Haven't seen it out for a while." He had created it for the specific purpose of killing Shadowmasters.

"Talked to some of our brothers who've been with Lady's division. Came by while you were snoring. Big Bucket and Red Rudy. Said they've seen a big black cat a couple three times lately. Figured I ought to be set with my best."

He did not sound concerned but he was. That spear was a masterpiece of his art.

The cat was probably a shapeshifter named Lisa Daele Bowalk who could not shed her animal form because One-Eye had killed her teacher before she learned how. She had tried to get him before. He was confident that she would try again.

"Catch her if you can," I told him. "I got a notion we could use her if we let Lady work on her for a while."

"Right. That'll be the main thing on my mind."

"I'm going to see the Old Man."

"Tell him I want to go home. It's too damned cold out here for an old man like me."

I chuckled, the way I was supposed to. I got down to the ground despite my stiffness and headed the general direction I presumed Croaker would be, based on the size of the fires.

Good thing One-Eye and I made a habit of using old languages. Thai Dei stepped out of the shadows before I had walked twenty feet. He said nothing but he was there guarding my back, wanted or not.