easy to find. And they gave me no trouble. I
guess they figured if I would go away from Lady they’d leave me alone. Only a few stuck with me. I turned on them and uncorked a few specials I was saving for the next time One-Eye got out of line, and after they all stopped kicking I buzzed over there and sneaked up and there was this hilltop that had been sort of hollowed out, like a bowl, and down in the bowl there was these six guys all facing a little fire. Only there was something weird. You couldn’t see them right. It was like you was looking at them through a fog. Only the fog was black. Sort of. Lots of little shadows, I’d guess you’d call them. Some of them no bigger than a mouse’s shadow. All buzzing around like bees.”
He was talking as fast as his mouth would go, yet I knew he was having trouble telling what he had seen. That words for what he wanted to convey did not exist, at least in any languages us mundanes would understand.
“I think they were seeing what we were doing in the flames, then sending those shadows out to tell their boys what to do to us and how to get into our way.”
“Hunh?”
“Maybe you were lucky, not dealing with them so much in the daytime.”
“Right.” I figured I’d had troubles enough chasing a walking treestump around the countryside. “See any crows while you were at it?”
He looked at me funny. “Yeah. As a matter of fact. See, I was laying there in the mud looking at these guys, trying to figure what I had in the trick bag that I could smack them with, and all of a sudden there’s about twenty crows swooping around. The whole thing blew up like it was raining naptha instead of water. Cooked those brown guys good. Only those crows maybe weren’t crows. You know what I mean?”
“Not till you tell me.”
“I only saw them for a second, but it seemed like I could see right through them.”
“You always do,” I muttered, and he looked at me weird again. “So you figure any of the brown guys who’re still out there are wandering around lost now? Like puppies without their masters?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I figure they’re as smart as you or me. Well, as smart as you, anyway. They just don’t have their advantage anymore.”
The old woman was still fussing over Lady. She had taken her somewhere to get bathed and patched up. As if she needed patching.
“How does this save me a trip to the Main?”
“I’m not finished yet, Your Grand Impatience. Right after the blowup here came one of the guys I thought I’d finished, tracking me down, all on his lonesome, and he’s stumbling around holding his head like something got ripped out. I grabbed him. And I grabbed a couple loose shadows that were hanging around and I slapped one of them around a little and sent it off to tell One-Eye I needed to borrow his little beast. I taught another shadow how to make a guy talk and when the little monster showed up we asked the brown guy a few hundred questions.”
“Frogface is here?”
“He went back. Mogaba’s got them working their butts off up there.”
“Good for him. You asked questions. You got answers?”
“Not that made much sense. These little brown guys come from a berg called Shadowcatch. Specifically, out of some kind of superfortress called Overlook. Their boss is one of the Shadowmasters; Longshadow, they call him. He gave the shadows to the six guys that was in the bowl place. These were just wimpy little shadows not good for much but carrying messages. They supposedly got bad ones they can turn loose, too.”
“We’re having some fun now, aren’t we? You find out what’s going on?”
“This Longshadow is up to something. He’s in with the whole bunch trying to keep the Company away-the brown guys didn’t know why they’re worried-but he’s running a game on his own, too. The impression I got was he wanted them to capture you and Lady and have you dragged down to his castle, where he was going to make some kind of deal, maybe. And that’s about it.”
I had five hundred questions and I started asking them, but Goblin didn’t have the answers. The man he had interrogated hadn’t had them. Most of the questions had occurred to him.
He asked, “So, are you going down to the Main?”
“You haven’t changed my mind. Neither have those brown runts. If they don’t have their mojo men anymore, they won’t give me much trouble. Will they?”
Goblin groaned. “Probably not.”
“So what’s the matter?”
“You think I’m going to let you ride out there without some kind of cover? I’m groaning about the state of my butt.” He grinned his big frog grin. I grinned back.
According to our hosts it was a four-hour ride to the Ghoja ford, the nearest and best crossing over the Main. Swan said there were four along an eighty-mile stretch of the Main: Theri, Numa, Ghoja, and Vehdna-Bota. Theri being the farthest upriver. Above Theri the Main coursed through rugged canyons too steep and bleak for military operations-though Goblin said our little brown friends had come that way, to evade the attention of the other Shadowmasters. They had lost a third of their number making the journey.
Vehdna-Bota lay nearest the sea and was useful only during the driest months of the year. The eighty miles of river between Vehdna-Bota and the sea were always impassable. Both Vehdna-Bota and Theri fords took their names from Taglian villages that had been abandoned when the Shadowmasters had invaded last year. They remained empty.
Numa and Ghoja were villages below the Main, formerly Taglian, now occupied. Ghoja appeared to be the critical crossing, and Swan, Mather, and Blade had all seen it. They told me what they could. I asked about the other fords and made an amusing discovery. Each was unfamiliar with at least one. Ha!
“Me and Goblin will scout the Ghoja crossing. Murgen, you and Cordy check out Vehdna-Bota. Shadid, you and Swan go to Numa. Sindawe, you and Blade check out Theri.” I was sending each of the three into strange country.
Cordy laughed. Swan scowled. And Blade ... Well, I wonder if you could get a reaction out of Blade by sticking his feet in a fire.
We split up. Lady, Otto, Hagop, and Sindawe’s man all stayed behind to recuperate. Goblin rode beside me but did not say much after he hoped the weather would not, go sour again. He did not sound like he expected the drizzle to hold off.
Swan said he had heard the Shadowmasters were fortifying the south bank of the Ghoja ford. Another indication the enemy would put his main force over there. I hoped it would come out that way. On the maps the terrain looked very favorable.
Two hours after we split the drizzle resumed. Perfect weather for the dreary thoughts tramping my brain.
Despite my adventure yesterday it seemed forever since I had been alone long enough to think a thought through. So with Goblin still as the grave I expected to do some serious brooding about where Lady and I were going. But she hardly crossed my mind. Instead, I mulled over what I’d gotten me and the Company into.
I was in charge but not in control. As far back as that monastery things had been happening that I could not control and could not unravel into sense. Gea-Xle and the river worsened matters. Now I felt like driftwood tumbling through a rapid. I had only the slightest idea who was doing what to whom, and why, but I was locked into the middle of it. Unless this last frantic gesture showed me an out.
For all I knew if I let the Prahbrindrah suck me in I would be enlisting on the “wrong” side. Now I knew how the Captain felt when Soulcatcher dragged us into the Lady’s service. We were fighting in the Forsberg campaigns before the rest of us began to suspect we’d made a mistake.
It is not necessary for mercenary soldiers to know what is going on. It is sufficient for them to do the job for which they have taken the gold. That had been drummed into me from the moment I enlisted. There is neither right nor wrong, neither good nor evil, only our side and theirs. The honor of the Company lies within, directed one brother toward another. Without, honor lies only in keeping faith with the sponsor.
Nothing I knew of the Company’s experiences resembled our present circumstance. For the first time- mainly by my doing-we were fighting for ourselves first. Our contract, if we accepted it, would be coincidental to our own desires. A tool. If I kept my head and perspective as I should, Taglios and all Taglians would become instruments of our desires.
