messenger the Guards were sure to send flying to their masters if they discovered it.
Those masters were cruel and deadly and the beast stood no chance against them even when in the best of health.
Its master could protect it no more. Its master had been hacked to pieces and the pieces burned. Its master’s soul had been imprisoned in a silver spike that had been driven into his skull.
The beast was doglike in appearance but rather uncertain in size. It had a protean nature. At times it could be as small as a large dog. At other times it might be the size of a small elephant. It was most comfortable being about twice the size of a war-horse. In the great battle it had slain many of its master’s enemies before overpowering sorceries had driven it from the field.
It came stealthily, again and again, despite the fear of exposure, the pain of its wounds, and its frustration. Sometimes the wall of its excavation collapsed. Sometimes rainwater would fill the hole. And always there was the inescapable vigilance of the only truly watchful guardian the victors had left.
A young tree stood among the bones, alone. It was near immortal and was far mightier than the night skulker. It was the child of a god. In time, each night, it wakened to the digger’s presence. Its reaction was uniform and violent.
A blue nimbus formed among the tree’s limbs. Pale lightning ripped toward the monster. It was a quiet sort of lightning, a sizzle instead of boom and crash, but it slapped the monster like an angry adult’s swing at a small child.
The beast suffered no injury, only extreme pain. That it could not endure. Each time it was hit it fled, to await another night and that delay before the child of the god awakened.
The monster’s work went slowly.
IV
Darling left Raven standing there. She rode off with that guy Silent and some other guys that were all that was left of the Black Company, a mercenary outfit that really wasn’t anymore. A long time ago they was on the Lady’s side but something happened to piss them off and they went over to the Rebel. For a long time they was almost the whole Rebel army.
Raven watched them go into the woods. I could tell he wanted to sit down and cry like a baby, maybe as much because he couldn’t understand as because she did ride off on him. But he didn’t.
In most ways he was the toughest, hardest bastard I ever saw, and not always in the best ways. When I first found out he was Raven and not Corbie I like to crapped my drawers. A long time ago there was a Raven that rode with the Black Company that was the baddest of the bad. He was with them only about a year before he deserted but he made himself a big rep while he was there. And this was the same guy.
He said, “We’ll give them a couple hours’ head start so it don’t look like we’re dogging them, then we’ll get out of here.”
“We?”
“You want to hang around here now?”
“That would be desertion.”
“They don’t know if you’re dead or not. They haven’t counted noses yet.” He shrugged. “Up to you. Come or stay.”
I could tell he wanted me to come. Right then I was the only thing he had. But he wasn’t going to make no special appeal. Not hard guy Raven.
I didn’t have no future at the Barrowland and I sure as hell wasn’t going back to ride herd on potatoes. And I didn’t have anybody else in the world, either. “All right. I’m in.”
He started walking into town. What was left after the fight. I tagged along. After a while, he said, “Croaker was about the closest thing to a friend I had when I was in the Company.” He was still confused.
Croaker was the boss mere. He wasn’t boss back when Raven was with them, but they had been through a few captains since the old days. Raven was confused because his old buddy and him had gotten in a fight after the Dominator got put down.
Probably to show off for Darling, Raven had decided he was going to round everything off and close the books by getting rid of the Lady, who lost her powers during the battle. And Croaker said no you don’t and didn’t back down. He put an arrow into Raven’s hip just to show him he was serious.
“Is a friend somebody who just stands back and lets you do whatever you want whenever you want to do it?” He gave me one of his puzzled looks. “Maybe he was a whole lot more her friend than he was yours. Way I heard tell, they spent a lot of time together. They rode off into the sunset together. And you know the way those guys are about brotherhood, sticking together no matter what, the Company being their family, them against the whole world. You told me about it enough.”
There was more I could have said. I could have given it to him by the numbers, how they felt about brothers who ran out on them, but he wouldn’t have got it.
There wasn’t nobody with more guts in a fight than Raven. He wouldn’t back down from nobody or nothing. But in the emotional tight spots he was ready to pack up and run in a minute. He did it to the Company and he did it to Darling, but they could take care of themselves when he did.
I think maybe the worst stunt he ever pulled, and the one that still bugs him the most, is when he ran out on his kids.
He did that back when he enrolled in the Black Company. Maybe he had his reasons, and good ones at the time. He comes up with good excuses. But there’s no getting around the fact that he left his kids when they were too young to take care of themselves. Without making any arrangements for them. He never even told anybody he had kids till he told me, sort of, when he was still being Corbie and started trying to find out what happened to them. They would be grown up now. If they survived.
He didn’t find out anything.
I figured he would make finding them his quest now. He didn’t have anything else going. And trudging through the forest headed south, he made noises like that was what he was planning to do.
We got as far as Oar. He went out on a drunk. And stayed on it.
I went on one, too. I went through me some bad girls. All the things a guys does when he’s been out in the woods for a long time, then hits the city. Took me four days to work through that and another day to shake the hangover. Then I took a look at Raven and saw he was just getting started.
I went and found us a cheap place to stay. Then I got me a job protecting a rich man’s family. That wasn’t hard to do. There were all kinds of rumors about what happened in the Barrowland. The rich saw troubled times coming and wanted to get themselves covered.
Darling and her bunch were in the city somewhere, for a while. So were the bunch from the Black Company. We didn’t run into any of them before they left out.
V
Smeds got sick of Tully’s idea before they were four days out of Oar. Nights were cold in the forest. There was no place to hide from the rain. Whole hordes of bugs chewed on you and you couldn’t get rid of them when you were sick of them like you could with lice and fleas and bedbugs. You could never get comfortable sleeping on the ground-if you could sleep at all with all the racket that went on at night. There were always sticks and stones and roots under you somewhere.
And there was that bastard Old Man Fish, hardly saying shit but always sneering at you because you didn’t know a bunch of woodsy stuff. Like you needed to know that shit to stay alive on the North Side.
It was going to be a pleasure to cut his throat.
Timmy Locan wasn’t much better. Little carrot-top runt never shut up. All right, so he was funny most of the time. So he knew every damned joke there ever was and knew how to tell them right and half of them were the
