clearly and carefully. I would be back.
I took a dive into Smoke’s old hiding place before I left. The old Annals were right where I had hidden them.
Interesting to note, though, as I departed, that there were crows all over the Palace district.
One-Eye was still cursing when I came out. Cursing again, I learned, as I let myself down from the rear of the wagon. A different wheel was stuck. We had moved several miles. I was bone dry. I lifted the lid on One-Eye’s waterbarrel. There was not much there. The little that remained was pretty nasty. I drank it anyway.
I walked around to where One-Eye was abusing a fresh crew of victims. “You little shit. Quit barking at the help. They’ll stuff that damned hat down your throat and I’ll end up having to walk. Where’s the Old Man?”
35
“Crows all over, eh?” Croaker mused. “Interesting. Guess it doesn’t surprise me.”
“Hers?” There were crows around us right now. Naturally. He would not let Lady run them off.
“Probably.”
“Are they all nowadays?”
“Take it for granted. You won’t be unpleasantly surprised. Tell me about Longshadow.” The last sentence was not verbal at all but in the finger speech we had learned way back when Darling, the White Rose, was with the Company. We employed it sparingly anymore and I had not thought of using it to get around the crows. It was so obvious when you considered it. There would be no way for the critters to relay the signs.
Nobody believed that the birds understood what they relayed now. They just carried the words.
My fingers were no longer as nimble as once they had been. I had a hard time telling him that Longshadow had done a turnaround and was all business now, calm and sane and decisive.
“Interesting,” he said. He looked up the pass. The Prince’s troops, in the vanguard, had sprung a Shadowlander ambush. The fighting was getting heavy. The column was crushing up behind it. This could get bad.
I looked at the slopes rising to either hand. If Mogaba had a lot of men up there he could embarrass us easily.
“He doesn’t,” Croaker said, as though I had spoken my thoughts.
“You’re getting spooky.” He wore most of the fancy Widowmaker armor most of the time now. There was hardly ever a time when he did not have a crow on his shoulder. He seemed to know his favorites because he always had tidbits for them.
“When I have to play a role I try to live it.” He began talking with his fingers again. “I want you to find Goblin. It is critical.”
“Huh?”
He signed, “I would do it myself but there is no time.” Aloud, he added, “These delaying tactics are working very well for Mogaba. This pass is just too damned tight.” He turned away, strode up the stalled column. The Prahbrindrah Drah was about to get talked to like a new recruit.
Suddenly, over his shoulder, he shot, “Where’re your in-laws, Murgen?”
“What?”
“Where are they? What’re they up to?” He used colloquial Taglian, which meant he did not care what Thai Dei heard. Or specifically wanted him to know about the query.
“I haven’t seen them.” I glanced at Thai Dei. He shook his head. “Maybe they went home.”
“I don’t think so. If that was the case the rest of these clowns would be gone with them. Wouldn’t they?”
I did not think so but there was no need arguing the point. Croaker would never be comfortable with the Nyueng Bao. I told him I would keep an eye out and would let him know if I learned anything, then moved along.
I ran into Sleepy on the way back to One-Eye’s wagon. “Hey, kid. How you doing?” I had not seen him since I gave him his assignment that night in Taglios. He had been working with Big Bucket, helping oversee the special forces teams. He looked tired but still not old enough to be a soldier.
“I’m tired and hungry and beginning to wonder if being buttfucked by my uncles really was worse than this.”
Anybody who could sustain a sense of humor after what Sleepy had suffered was all right by me.
I wondered if he would ever go back and kill them. I doubted it. That sort of thing was acceptable in this bizarre southern culture.
Sleepy asked, “You talk to the Captain yet?”
“I talk to him all the time. I’m the Annalist.”
“I mean about the standardbearer job. You said you might...”
“Oh. Yeah.” His excitement was obvious. But becoming standardbearer meant those above you thought you were destined for big things in the Company. The standardbearer often became Annalist. Frequently he became Lieutenant because he was always near the center of things and knew everything that was going on. The Lieutenant almost always becomes Captain when the job comes open.
Croaker was an anomaly of epic proportion, elected at a time when there were only seven of us, none more qualified, and nobody else would take the job.
“I bounced it off him. He didn’t say no. He’ll probably leave it up to me. And that means it’s a someday sort of thing because right now everybody in this army is working twenty hours a day. There’s no time to teach you anything.”
“We’re not doing anything. I could just hang around you and—”
Big Bucket’s voice rose above all the other tumult of an army on the move, telling Sleepy to get his dead ass back up here, they’ve decided nobody else can crack this nut but us.
“Good luck. And don’t get in a hurry, kid,” I told him. “Hell. Do like I’m doing with the Annals. Wait till the siege of Overlook. We’ll have plenty of time then. Including learning to read and write.”
“I’ve been learning. Believe it or not. I know fifty-three common characters already. I can puzzle out almost anything.”
Written Taglian is fairly complicated because there are more than a hundred characters in the common alphabet and another forty-two in the High Taglian used only by Gunni priests. A lot of the characters duplicate what they mean but distinguish caste. Caste is very important among the Gunni.
“Keep at it,” I told Sleepy. “You’ll make it on determination.”
“Thanks, Murgen.” The kid began scooting uphill, sliding through the press like he was greased.
“Don’t thank me,” I mumbled. Most standardbearers are not as lucky as I have been. It is not a job with an extended life expectancy.
I spotted Lady across the pass, as always surrounded by her admirers and most of the Nar who had not deserted the Company. I headed that way.
36
Men moved to let me through. Things like that happen when you can leave someone as a good taste or foul odor in history’s mouth. Croaker really made the importance of the Annals an article of faith with everyone in the Company.
Lady looked around. Her ordinarily impassive expression betrayed an instant of irritation. I said, “Looks like we’re going to be stalled here till Bucket’s crew convince Mogaba’s people they’d really rather go home and get in out of this weather.”
That was looking kind of bleak. A wind was building. It was colder than the wind had been for days. Heavy clouds were piling up overhead. Looked as if we were going to get some snow.
