happened to you guys?” He regretted saying it immediately.
I looked at One-Eye. He shrugged. I asked, “What do you mean?”
“Uh... coming down the river. You done the impossible. Ain’t nobody gotten through in a couple years. Me and Cordy and Blade, we were about the last ones.”
“Just lucky.”
He frowned. He had heard the stories spread by the boatmen.
Mogaba said something to one of his lieutenants. They looked the black man, Blade, over good. The Geek and the Freak, who had confessed to being brothers and having the real names Claw-of-the-Lion and Heart-of-the-Lion, also moved in to look him over. He wasn’t pleased. I asked Heart, “Is there something special about that guy?”
“Maybe, Captain. Maybe. Tell you later.”
“Right.” Back to Forsberger. “You’ve been watching us. We want to know why.”
He had an answer all ready. “My buddies and me, we been hired to take the broad and the old boy down the river. We was kind of hoping we could hook on with you guys as far as Taglios. For the extra protection, you know what I mean?” He looked at Murgen and the standard. “I seen that somewhere before.”
“Roses. Who are you?” How stupid did I look? Maybe I needed to check a mirror.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I’m Swan. Willow Swan.” He stuck out a hand. I didn’t take it. “This here’s my buddy Cordy Mather. Cordwood. Don’t ask. Even he don’t know why. And this’s Blade. We been doing what you might call freelancing, up and down the river. Taking advantage of being exotic. You know how it is. You guys been about everywhere.”
He was rattled. You couldn’t have tortured it out of him, maybe, but he was scared half to death. He kept looking at the standard and the coach and the horses and the Nar and shuddering.
He was a lot of things, maybe, that he was not going to admit. A liar was the biggest. I thought it might be
interesting, even entertaining, to have him and his bunch along. So I gave him what he wanted. “All right. Tag along. As long as you pull your weight and remember who’s in charge.”
He broke out in smiles. “Great. You got it, chief.” He started chattering at his pals. The old man said something sharp that shut him up.
I asked Frogface, “He give anything away there?”
“Nah. He just said, ’I did it!,’ chief. And went to bragging on his golden tongue.”
“Swan. Where the hell is this Taglios? I don’t have a Taglios on my maps.”
“Let me see.”
Half an hour later I knew his Taglios was a place my best map named Troko Tallies. “Trogo Taglios,” Swan told me. “There’s this monster city, Taglios, that surrounds an older one that was called Trogo. The official name is Trogo Taglios but nobody ever calls it anything but Taglios anymore. It’s a nice place. You’ll like it.”
“I hope so.”
One-Eye said, “He’s going to try to sell you something, Croaker.”
I grinned. “We’ll have some fun with him while he tries. Watch them. Be friendly with them. Find out whatever you can. Where’s Lady gotten off to now?”
I was too fussed. She wasn’t far off. She was standing aside, inspecting our new acquisitions from another angle. I beckoned her. “What do you think?” I asked when she joined me. Swan’s eyes popped when he got a good look at her. He was in love.
“Not much. Watch the woman. She’s in charge. And she’s used to getting her own way.”
“Aren’t you all?”
“Cynic.”
“That’s me. To the bone. And you’re the one made me that way, love.”
She gave me a funny look, forced a smile.
I wondered if we’d ever recover that moment on that hillside so many miles to the north.
We were just coming back to the river, after having walked past the Third Cataract, when Willow joined me as I walked my horse. He eyed the big black nervously and got around where I would be between it and him. He asked, “Are you guys really the Black Company?”
“The one and only. The evil, mean, rude, crude, nasty, and sometimes even unpleasant Black Company. You never spent any time in the military, did you?”
“As little as I could. Man, last I heard there was a thousand of you guys. What happened?”
“Times got hard up north. A year ago we were down to seven men. How long ago did you leave the empire?”
“Way back. Me and Cordy bugged out of Roses maybe a year after you guys were in there after that Rebel general, Raker. I wasn’t much more than a kid. We sort of drifted from one thing to another, headed south. First thing you know, we was across the Sea of Torments. Then we got into some trouble with the imperials, so we had to get out of the empire. Then we just kept drifting, a little bit this year, a little bit that. We hooked up with Blade. Next thing you know, here we are down here. What’re you guys doing here?”
“Going home.” That was all I needed to tell him.
He knew plenty about us if he had come to us knowing Taglios was on our itinerary but not our final destination.
I said, “In a military outfit it’s not acceptable behavior for just anybody to walk up and start shooting the shit with the commander any time they feel like it. I try to keep this outfit looking military. It intimidates the yokels.”
“Yeah. Gotcha. Channels, and all that. Right.” He went away.
His Taglios was a long way off. I figured we had time to sort his bunch out. So why press?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Taglios
We returned to the river and sailed down to the Second Cataract. Faster traffic had carried the word that the boys were back. Idon, a bizarre strip of a town, was a ghost city. We saw not a dozen souls there. Once again we had come to a place where the Black Company was remembered. That made me uncomfortable.
What had our forebrethren done down here? The Annals went on about the Pastel Wars but did not recall the sort of excesses that would terrify the descendants of the survivors forever.
Below Idon, while we waited to find a bargemaster with guts enough to take us south, I had Murgen plant the standard. Mogaba, as serious as ever, got a ditch dug and our encampment lightly fortified. I swiped a boat and crossed the river and climbed the hills to the ruins of Cho’n Delor. I spent a day roaming that haunted memorial to a dead god, alone except for crows, always wondering about the sort of men who had gone before me.
I suspected and feared that they had been men very much like me. Men caught in the rhythm and motion and pace, unable to wriggle free.
The Annalist who recorded the epic struggle that took place while the Company was in service to the Paingod had written a lot of words, sometimes going into too great a detail about daily minutiae, but he had had very little to say about the men with whom he had served.
Most had left their mark only when he recorded their passing.
I have been accused of the same. It has been said that too often when I bother to mention someone in particular it is only as a name of the slain. And maybe there’s truth in that. Or maybe that’s getting it backward. There is always pain in writing about those who have perished before me. Even when I mention them only in passing. These are my brethren, my family. Now, almost, my children. These Annals are their memorial. And my catharsis. But even as a child I was a master at damping and concealing my emotions.
But I was speaking of ruins, the spoor of battle.
The Pastel Wars must have been a struggle as bitter as that we had endured in the north, confined to a smaller territory. The scars were still grim. They might take a thousand years to heal.
Twice during that outing I thought I glimpsed the mobile stump I had seen from the wall of the Temple of
