His belly was going to ache from rubbing against stone.
I learned that there was a lot more to Stormshadow’s citadel than I had seen in the little time I spent there these past few months. Down below there, beneath the surrounding plazas, were countless unsuspected storerooms and prison cells, armories and barracks rooms, cisterns and smithies. I whispered, “They have supplies down here to hold out for years.” Meaning the Nar and their favorites, holed up inside the citadel. Stormshadow had laid in a great store against the evil day.
Mogaba had lied to me, just trying to find out how well off we Old Crew were.
Was that what the old man wanted me to know?
Was this why the Nyueng Bao had seemed to prosper while everyone else became gaunt? Were they nibbling at these stores like mice, taking just a little here and there so their predations would go unnoticed?
Uncle Doj beckoned. “Hurry.”
Soon I began to hear a distant chanting. “We may not be in time, Bone Warrior. Hurry.”
I didn’t slug him mostly because the racket would have alerted the singing men.
I knew they were Nar before I saw a thing. I had heard the rhythms and style before, though not these particular lyrics. Always before, though, there had been joy in their work songs and celebrations. This song was cold and grim.
Uncle Doj left the candle, tugged my elbow. We continued to step sideways until, suddenly, we were in an ordinary passageway, not some tight, secret squeeze behind a wall. Nothing concealed the entrance to the hidden ways. That was just a shadowed corner unlikely to entice a closer look.
There was light out there, from candles in sconces widely spaced. The people in charge were frugal despite their wealth.
Uncle Doj placed a finger to his lips. We were near dangerous people who might detect us in an instant. He dropped to his knees and led me right into a large chamber where most of the Nar had gathered. Lighting was nonexistent except down where they were. Doj got behind a pillar. I squatted behind a low, dusty table just inside the doorway. I wished I was as dark as the Nar. My forehead must be shining like a little half moon.
This life hardens you. Too soon you have seen so much that when you encounter another something terrible you don’t howl and run in circles, snapping at your tail. But most of us still appreciate horror if horror is there. Horror was there.
There was an altar. Mogaba and Ochiba were involved in something ceremonial. Above the altar stood a small statue of dark stone, a four-armed woman dancing. I was too far away to make out details but I was pretty sure sure she had vampire fangs and six teats. She might be wearing a necklace of baby skulls. The Nar might give her another name but she was Kina. The worship offered by the Nar was not that described in the Jaicuri scriptures, though.
The Deceivers do not want to spill blood. That is why they are called Stranglers.
The Nar not only spilled blood on behalf of their goddess, they drank it. And it looked like they had been doing so for some time down there. Drained corpses hung to one side. Their latest sacrifice, a hapless Jaicuri, got hoisted up with those soon after I arrived.
The Nar were practical in their religion. After the grim ceremony ended they began butchering one of the bodies.
I got down and crawled out of there. I did not give one rat’s ass what Uncle Doj thought.
I have seen a lot with the Company, including tortures and cruelties almost beyond comprehension and inhumanities I do not have the capacity to fathom, but never had I encountered socially-sanctioned cannibalism.
I did not puke or boil over in outrage. That would be silly. I just put distance between me and that till I could speak without worrying about who might overhear. “I have seen enough. Let’s get out of here.”
Uncle Doj responded with a thin smile and lifted eyebrow.
“I have to relay this. I have to write it down. We may not survive this siege. They will. Word of what they are has to survive, too.” He watched me closely. Was he wondering if the rest of us also enjoyed the occasional long pig roast as well?
Probably.
This sort of thing might go some toward explaining our ambiguous reception in these parts.
Mogaba could not read. If it did not occur to him that the dark side of the Nar was no secret anymore I could leave word in my Annals, to be salvaged by Lady or the Old Man.
“They are all down there,” Uncle said. “So we will return by a swifter path.” By which he meant we would stroll through regular passageways just like we belonged there.
“What’s that noise?” I asked.
Uncle gestured for silence. We stole forward.
We discovered a group of Taglian soldiers bricking up a sallyport we could have used to leave. Why were they doing that? That door could not be broken open from the outside. It still had Stormshadow’s spells protecting it.
Uncle pulled me back, headed another direction. Obviously he knew the citadel quite well. And I had no difficulty imgaining him roaming around in there all the time, just for the hell of it. He seemed like that kind of guy.
66
“You look like somebody ate your favorite puppy,” Goblin told me. Cracks like that could be heard all the time now that there were no more dogs. There were just two sources of meat left. The Nar exploited both. We restricted ourselves to stupid crows.
I told Goblin and One-Eye what I had seen. Uncle Doj stood behind me, quietly disgruntled because I wanted to see my own people before I visited the Speaker. I was barely halfway through it when One-Eye interrupted. “You got to tell the whole Company this one, Kid.” For once he was as serious as a spear through the gut.
And for once Goblin agreed with One-Eye without any big groan and moan about the unfairness of it all. “You need to get this word out exactly the way you want it known to everybody. There’s going to be a lot of talk. You don’t want anybody building it up worse than it is when they pass it along.”
“Get them together, then. While I’m waiting I’m going to skim those Jaicuri books. There may be something else I need to tell them.”
“May I join you?” Uncle Doj asked.
“No. Go tell the old man that I’ll be there as soon as I can.
This is family.”
“As you will.” He said something to Thai Dei, stalked away.
Bucket interrupted my reading. “Got them together, Murgen. All but Clete. He’s off somewhere whoring and even his brothers don’t know where to find him.”
“All right.”
“It something bad? You got that look.”
“Yeah.”
“It can get worse than it already is?”
“You’re going to hear all about it in just a little bit.”
In five minutes I got up in front of sixty men and told my tale, marvelling as I did that a band so frail and few could be so feared. More, I marvelled that there were so many of us when, hardly more than two years ago, there were just seven of us pretending to be the Black Company.
“You guys want to keep it down until I’m done?” The news had them excited in a grim way. “Listen up. That is the word. They’re making human sacrifices and eating the corpses. But that ain’t the whole story. Ever since they joined us at Gea-Xle they’ve been hinting and even saying right out that us northern guys are heretics. That means they think the whole Company used to do things their way.”
That started everybody talking and yelling.
I pounded a mason’s hammer on a block of wood. “Shut up, you morons! It ain’t the way the Company ever
