Travellers’ Repose. I tried getting closer, for a better look, but it always disappeared on me.
It was never more than a glimpse from the corner of my eye, anyway. Maybe I was imagining it.
I did not get to explore as thoroughly as I wanted. I was tempted to hang around but the old animal down inside told me I did not want to be stranded in those ruins after dark. It told me wicked things stalked Cho’n Delor’s night. I listened. I went back over the river. Mogaba met me at the shore. He wanted to know what I had found. He was as interested in the Company’s past as I was.
I liked and respected the big black man more with every hour. That evening I formalized his hitherto de facto status as commander of the Company infantry. And I resolved to take Murgen’s Annalist training more seriously.
Maybe it was just a hunch. Whatever, I decided that it was time I got the Company’s internal workings whipped into order.
All these natives, lately, were afraid of us. They carried old grudges. Maybe farther down the river there was somebody with less fear and a bigger grudge.
We were on the brink of lands where the Company’s adventures were recalled in the early lost volumes of the Annals. The earliest extant picked up our tale in cities north of Trogo Taglios-cities that no longer exist. I wished there was some way I could dig details of the past out of the locals. But they were not talking to us.
While I moped around Cho’n Delor One-Eye found a southern bargemaster willing to carry us all the way to Trogo Taglios. The man’s fee was exorbitant, but Willow Swan assured me I was unlikely to get a better offer. We were haunted by our historical legacy.
I got no help from Swan or his companions unearthing that.
My notion for unmasking Swan and his gang gradually made very little headway. The woman forced them to stay to themselves, which did not please Cordy Mather. He was hungry for news from the empire. I did find out that the old man was called Smoke, but never got a hint of the woman’s name. Even with Frogface on the job.
They were cautious people.
Meantime, they watched us so closely I felt they were taking notes whenever I bellied up to the rail to increase the flow in the river.
Other concerns plagued me, too. Crows. Always, crows. And Lady, who hardly spoke these days. She pulled her turns at duty with the rest of the Company but stayed out of the way otherwise.
Shifter and his girlfriend were not to be seen. They had disappeared while we unloaded at Thresh-though I held the disturbing certainty that they were still around, close enough to be watching.
What with the crows and all our arrivals anticipated I had the feeling I was being watched all the time. It was not hard to get a little paranoid.
We rode the rapids of the First Cataract and swept on down the great river, into the dawn of Company history.
My maps called it Troko Tallies. Locally they called it Trogo Taglios, though those who lived there used the shorter Taglios, mostly. As Swan said, the Trogo part refers to an older city that has been enveloped by the younger, more energetic Taglios.
It was the biggest city I had ever seen, a vast sprawl without a protective wall, still growing rapidly, horizontally instead of vertically. Northern cities grow upward because no one wants to build outside the wall.
Taglios lay on the southeast bank of the great river, actually inland a little, straddling a tributary that snakes between a half-dozen low hills. We debarked in a place that was really a satellite of the greater city, a riverport town called Maheranga. Soon Maheranga would share the fate of Trogo.
Trogo retained its identity only because it was the seat of the lords of the greater principiate, its governmental and religious center.
The Taglian people seemed friendly, peaceable, and overly god-ridden, much as Swan and Mather had described in brief exchanges during our journey. But underneath that they seemed to be frightened. And Swan had told us nothing about that.
And it was not the Company that was their terror. They treated us with respect and courtesy.
Swan and party vanished as soon as we tied up. I did not have to tell One-Eye to keep an eye on them.
The maps showed the sea only forty miles from Taglios, but that was along a straight line to the nearest coast, west across the river. Down the river’s meander and delta it was two hundred miles to salt water. On the map the delta looked like a many-fingered, spidery hand clawing at the belly of the sea.
It is useful to know a little about Taglios because the Company ended up spending a lot more time there than any of us planned. Maybe even more than the Taglians themselves hoped.
Once I was convinced we would be secure doing so I ordered a break at Taglios. The rest was overdue. And I needed to do some heavy research. We were near the edge of the maps in my possession.
I discovered that I had come to count on Swan and Mather to show me around. Without them I was forced to rely on One-Eye’s pet devil. And that I did not like. For no reason I could finger, I did not entirely trust the imp. Maybe it was because his sense of humor so closely reflected his owner’s. The only time you trusted One-Eye was when your life was at stake.
I hoped we were now far enough south that I could chart the rest of our course to Khatovar before we resumed travelling.
Lady had been the perfect soldier since the encounter on the river, though not much of a companion otherwise. She was shaken badly by the Howler’s return and enmity. He had been a staunch supporter in the old days.
She was still caught in the purgatory zone between the old Lady and the new that had to be, and the heart was not bound in the same direction as the head. She could not find her way out and, much as I ached for her, I did not know how to take her hand and show her.
I figured she deserved a distraction. I had Frogface shop for a local equivalent of Opal’s Gardens and he astonished me by finding one. I asked Lady if she would be interested in a real social evening out.
She was amenable, if not excited after so many months of neglect. Not thrilled. Just, “I don’t have anything better to do, so why not.”
She never was the social sort. And both my maneuver on the river and my evasions through attention to duty had not left her pleased with me.
We did it decked out, with drama, though without as much uproar as we had raised in Opal. I did not want the local lords taking offense. One-Eye and Goblin behaved. Frogface was the only clear evidence of sorcery. None of that nastiness we had shown in Opal. Frogface went along in his capacity as universal translator.
One-Eye decked his pet out in a costume as flamboyant as his own, one that mocked Goblin’s dress subtly. It seemed to state that this was how nice Goblin could look if he would get over being a slob.
Taglios’s elite went to see and be seen in an olive grove past its prime bearing years. The grove bestrode a hill near old Trogo. A hot spring fed a score of private baths. It cost a bundle to get in when you were not known, most of that in bribes. Even so, it was two days after I asked before room could be found for us.
We went in the coach with Goblin and One-Eye up top and squads of four Nar each marching before and behind. Murgen drove. He took the coach away after he delivered us. The others accompanied us into the grove. I wore my legate’s costume. Lady was dressed for the kill, but in black. All the time with the black. It looked good on her, but times were I wished she would try another color.
She said, “Our presence has stirred more interest than you expected.” Our advent had caused very little stir in the streets of Taglios.
She was right. Unless the grove was a major in place to spend an evening a lot of class folks had come out just to give us the eye. It looked like everyone who might be anyone was there. “Wonder why?”
“There’s something going on here, Croaker.”
I am not blind. I knew. I knew after a few minutes with Willow Swan way back upriver. But I could not find out what. Even Frogface was no help. If they did any scheming they did it when he was not around.
Except for the Nar, who had lived with ceremony in Gea-Xle, we were all uncomfortable under the pressure of so many eyes. I admitted, “This might not have been one of my brighter ideas.”
“On the contrary. It confirms our suspicions that there’s a greater interest in us than should be for simple travellers. They mean to use us.” She was disturbed.
“Welcome to life in the Black Company, sweetheart,” I said. “Now you know why I’m cynical about lords and
