“No. You ask me, Uncle got her good and she’s somewhere licking her wounds.” I had not seen a single crow since before Sleepy returned. Talk about your basic good omens.
“Thai Dei talking any more?”
“No. You haven’t said—”
“I’m going to go recon the plain.”
“I thought—”
“Now’s the time. Catcher is weak. I know how she heals. We’ll have a week before she’s strong enough to cause us more grief. We need to dive through that window of opportunity. If we put together a balanced force and pack train and push it hard, we should be able to travel seventy or eighty miles before we have to turn back. That ought to give us a good idea where we stand.”
I did not like the idea but did not argue. Lady was the Lieutenant. It was her job to expose the flaws in the Captain’s reasoning. She said nothing so I supposed their discussion was complete.
“I’m thinking fifty men for the first probe,” Croaker said. “All the old guys who followed us here to get to Khatovar. Plus the best new men. All volunteers.”
Not many recent recruits wanted to go to Khatovar. The old terror still held some power even though now they were part of the Company.
“What’s happening in Taglios?” Croaker asked.
I shrugged. “I’m only having normal dreams these days. In fact, I hardly slept the last couple nights. Sleepy mumbles all night. I tried to get him talking but he didn’t seem to hear me.”
“We’ll take him with us. A good long hike might bring him out of it.”
I sighed. “When do you want to do this?”
“As soon as we can get it together. Catcher’s already getting better.”
I sighed again. “I was getting used to not traveling. I was really getting attached to the idea of staying in one place.” And waiting for my wife. Or maybe even going back to meet her if I could get Sleepy to tell me what he had done with my horse.
Croaker harrumphed. Really. The son of a bitch was turning into my grandfather. He said, “You know what this means? Standardbearer?”
“I got a bad feeling it means some dumb fuck name of Murgen is going to have to go be out front again.”
“With no Goblin or One-Eye to cover your back.”
“Shit. Yeah.” But my back was covered, for now until forever. “I see a problem, boss. The Nyueng Bao will insist on sticking with their guys from Dejagore.”
“I’m counting on it. Every one of them who goes up the mountain is one less Taglian I have to worry about getting behind me and maybe wrapping one of those silk dinguses around my neck.”
“What? We haven’t had any trouble with those characters since last winter. There aren’t any left.”
“Ready to bet your life on that? I mean to take the living saint and the rest of our pals along with us.”
“Why you want to do that?”
“So we don’t get any surprises while our backs are turned. You want Howler getting loose, or Longshadow, when none of us are there to round them up again? You want the Prahbrindrah Drah on the prowl again? Or that panther bitch?”
“No. But if I was running things we’d just kill them and burn their bodies. Then we’d mix what was left up good and throw it all in about six different rivers.”
Lady gave me the sort of look that would have made me shit my knickers a few years back. She did not much scare me anymore.
Croaker ignored my opinion. “Once we’re up there and see what it’s like I might set up staging camps so we can move the whole mob in steps.”
“I don’t think I’m ready for this, boss.”
“Not ready? This is where we’ve been heading for the last ten years.”
“There’s a big fucking difference between being on the road and getting there, chief. You go out in the camp and ask, every guy out there will tell you he’s perfectly happy to be on his way to Khatovar. But I bet you you won’t get the same answer about getting there.” I do not believe Croaker ever understood that nobody was as enthusiastic about our quest as he was.
“What do I got to do?” I asked.
“Pack up and get ready. Get your protege whipped into shape because I expect him to trudge right along with the rest of us.”
There was something there... Something that left me on the outside. Something, maybe, that had something to do with the sudden silence that had fallen when I walked in.
“Then I’d better go pack up and get ready, hadn’t I?”
The Old Man glowered at me as I walked out but did not raise a finger to stop me.
Something was going on.
“Another damned wasted trip,” I told Thai Dei. “Only this was the worst one yet.” I was getting mad. I was being used somehow.
96
“It ain’t my fucking idea,” I told Rudy. For the third time. “You don’t like it, go join Goblin and One-Eye. Wherever they are.”
“I just never thought we’d really do it.”
“Nobody but the Old Man did. Me included. But he says we’re going, we’re going. That’s the way it works.”
“Never said I wouldn’t go,” Rudy grumbled, more to himself than to me. He went off to scream at his sergeants. He would need to decide who to leave in charge while we were gone.
I was working on that myself. I had sought recommendations as soon as I got back from the Old Man’s place. We would learn a lot about our southern recruits. The Old Man wanted to leave no Old Crew or Nar behind.
Ochiba, Isi and Sindawe were the only surviving Nar.
Bucket came by. In practical terms, he was my assistant. He did most of the work. I did not interfere unless he got headed in a direction I knew would get the Captain after me. He said, “You really squeezed Rudy’s nuts.”
“The man is driving me bugfuck. What do you want?” More than Rudy was making me cranky. Sleepy was getting worse.. Thai Dei was being a pain in the ass because I had not bothered to visit Uncle Doj while we were across the valley.
“Hey, Murgen, it’s all right to be scared. But you don’t need to make everybody else miserable because you are.”
I started to bark but realized that would not change the fact that he was right. I grabbed up a stone and threw it as far as I could, as if the fear would fly away with it. The rock clattered around amongst some boulders. Half a dozen crows flapped into the air, cursing in their native tongue. “Shit.”
“Not a good sign,” Bucket agreed. “We haven’t seen any of those for a while. Want we should take them out?”
“They weren’t close enough to hear anything. But have somebody check the area.” I considered the sun. There were a few hours of daylight left. I had time to start the recon that needed doing before we took a bigger gang up the mountain.
Bucket sent men to the crow site. One held up what might have been a ground squirrel when it was alive. He held his nose with his free hand. Bucket told me, “Maybe they weren’t spying at all.”
“All things are possible,” I said. “But some are more likely than others. Thai Dei. I know you got some pretty determined ideas about what you owe me but you really don’t need to take risks just because I do.”
The Nyueng Bao squatted not far away, sword sheathed across his back, waiting, a ragged little man who did not look dangerous at all. He looked me in the eye, grunted his go-ahead-and-explain grunt.
