friends in the world and nothing else to live for. He’s just going on.”
“One and a half?”
“Willow he’s got. I’m the half. We pulled him out when somebody threw him to the crocodiles. He stuck because he owed us a life. After what we’ve been through since then if you was keeping accounts you couldn’t figure who owes who what anymore. I can’t tell you about the real Blade. He never lets you see that.”
“What are we into? Or is that something you figure you shouldn’t tell me?”
“What?”
“There’s more going on than your Woman and the Prahbrindrah trying to get us to keep the Shadowmasters out. Otherwise they’d make a straight deal instead of trying to con us.”
We travelled a mile while he thought. He finally said, “I don’t know for sure. I think they’re doing the way they are because of the way the Black Company did Taglios before.”
“I thought so. And we don’t know what pur forebreth-ren did. And no one will tell us. It’s like one giant conspiracy where everybody in Taglios won’t tell us anything. In a city that big you’d think I’d find one guy with an axe to grind.”
“You’d find platoons if you looked in the right place. All them priests spend their lives looking to cut each others’ throats.”
He had given me something there. I wasn’t sure what. “I’ll keep it in mind. I don’t know if I can handle priests, though.”
“They’re like any other guys if you get your bluff in.”
The gloom closed in tighter as the day advanced. I was so soaked I no longer paid that much attention. We hit a stretch where we had to go single file. Cordy and Murgen dropped back. “I picked up a few things I’ll tell you about later,” Murgen said before he went.
I moved up behind the roi to ask how much farther. It was just the misery of the day, but I felt like I’d been travelling for weeks.
Something whipped across our path so suddenly that that unflappable mount of Shadid’s reared and whinnied. He shouted “What the hell was that?” in his native tongue. I understood because I’d learned a few words when I was a kid.
I caught only a glimpse. It looked like a monster grey wolf with a deformed pup clinging to its back. It vanished before my eye could track it.
Do wolves do that? Carry their young on their backs?
I laughed almost hysterically. Why worry about that when I ought to be wondering if there was such a thing as a wolf the size of a pony?
Murgen and Cordy caught up and wanted to know what had happened. I said I didn’t know because I was no longer sure I had seen what I had seen.
But the wonder lay back there in the shadows of my mind, ripening.
Shadid stopped two miles past the place where we’d been ambushed originally. It was getting hard to see. He peered around, trying to read landmarks. He grunted, moved out to his left, off the road. I spied signs suggesting this was the way he had come with Otto and Hagop.
After another half mile the ground dropped into a small valley where a narrow creek ran. Rocks stuck up seemingly at random. Likewise, trees grew in scatters. It was now so dark I could not see more than twenty feet.
We started finding bodies.
A lot of little brown men had died for their cause. Whatever that was.
Shadid stopped again. “We led them in from the other direction. Here’s where we split. We went up that way. The others held on to give us a head start.” He dismounted, began snooping around. The light was almost gone before he found the track out of the valley. It was full dark before we covered a mile.
Murgen said, “Maybe we ought to go back and wait. We can’t accomplish much stumbling around in the dark.”
“You go back if you want,” I snapped, with a savagery that surprised me. “I’m staying till I find ...”
I could not see him, but I suspected he was grinning through his misery. He said, “Maybe we shouldn’t split up. That much more trouble getting everybody back together.”
Riding through the night in unfamiliar territory is not one of the smarter things I’ve done. Especially with a horde out there that wanted to do me harm. But the gods take care of fools, I guess.
Our mounts stopped. Their ears pricked. After a moment mine made a sound. A moment later still that sound was repeated from our left quarter. Without being urged the animals turned that way.
We found Sindawe and the man he’d brought in a crude bough shelter, their mounts hanging around outside. Both were injured, Sindawe the worst. We talked briefly while I did some stitching and patching and bandaging. Lady had ordered them to disappear. Goblin had covered for them while the pursuit went on off to the southeast. They had planned to head north in the morning.
I told them where to meet up, then got back into my saddle.
I was dead on my butt, barely able to stay upright, but something made me go on. Something I did not want to examine too closely lest I have to mock myself for my sentiment.
I got no arguments, though I think Mather was getting a little unsure of my sanity. I heard him whispering with Murgen, and Murgen telling him to can it.
I took the lead and gave my horse his head, telling him to find Lady’s mount. I’d never determined how intelligent the beasts were, but it seemed worth a try. And the animal went walking, though his pace was a little slow to suit me.
I don’t know how long the ride went on. There was no way to estimate time. After a while I began drifting off and coming awake with a start, then drifting off again. Near as I could tell, the others were doing the same thing.
I could have raised hell with them and me both, but that would have been unreasonable. Reasonable men would have been in a warm room, back at that village, snoring.
I was about half awake when the crest of a hill half a mile ahead burst into flames. It was like an explosion. One moment darkness, the next several acres ablaze and men and animals scattering, burning, too. The smell of sorcery was so strong I could detect it.
“Go, horse!”
There was light enough for it to risk a trot.
A minute later I was moving over ground dotted by smoldering, twitching bodies. Little brown men. One hell of a lot of little brown men.
The flaming trees illuminated a racing silhouette, a gigantic wolf with a smaller wolf astride, clinging with paws and claws. “What the hell is that?” Mather demanded.
Murgen guessed, “That Shifter, Croaker?”
“Maybe. Probably. We know he’s around somewhere. Lady!” I yelled it at the burning trees. The fire was dying in the drizzle.
A sound that might have been an answer slithered through the crackling.
“Where are you?”
“Here.”
Something moved amidst an outcrop of small rocks. I jumped down. “Goblin! Where the hell are you?”
No Goblin. Just Lady. And now not enough light to see how badly she was hurt. And hurt she was, no doubt about that. A fool damned thing to do, and me a physician who ought to know better, but I sat down and pulled her into my lap and held her, rocking her like a baby.
The mind goes.
From the minute you sign on with the Company you’re doing things that make no sense, drills and practices and rehearsals, so that when the crunch comes you’ll do the right thing automatically, without thought. The mind goes. I was without thought of anything but loss. I did not do the right thing.
I was lucky. I had companions whose brains had not turned to mud.
They got together enough burnable wood to get a fire started, got me my gear, and with a little judicious yelling got me to stop fussing and start doing.
She wasn’t as bad off as she’d seemed in the dark. A few cuts, a lot of bruises, maybe a concussion to
