comfortable on a taller rock and laid his sword across his lap, ready for business.
The reason the others wanted to be elsewhere was evident a moment later. I had found one of my missing targets.
A huge, cruel-looking black panther stalked out of the darkness, settled near the fire. Goblin reached out and scratched her behind the ears.
What the hell? This particular panther had no love for him. Though her squabble with One-Eye was an order of magnitude bigger.
“So you decided to help out after all, eh?” Goblin said. “It never was that hard to get along.” Off he went on an odyssey of the imagination, describing in fantastic detail why she was a natural ally of the rest of us despite One-Eye’s having had to do in Shapeshifter. Shifter really had given him no choice, now, had he? Anyway, it was only a matter of time before they completed their research into the character of release spells. Last time he saw One-Eye they were just three terms and a postulate short of putting a wrap on it.
The wind had a real bite as I went looking for Croaker. There were bits of snow zinging around. Nobody had moved since this afternoon. Fireballs flickered across the sky up ahead. There were almost no fires. There was nothing to burn. Men huddled with one another for warmth. Hardly anyone lifted their eyes as I passed. I could have been the Shadowmaster himself and nobody would have cared. Had I been carrying hot food I would have been hailed as a messiah.
Croaker did not have a fire, either. But he had a girlfriend to keep him warm. Something nobody else had. The rat bastard.
“You want to go for a walk?”
Hell, no, he did not. Neither would you if you if you were bundled up in some blankets with a beautiful woman on a freezing night. “Use your imagination here, Murgen. Do I look like somebody who wants to be interrupted?”
“All right. Be that way. I’ve finally located the man you asked about. He seems to be where he’s supposed to be. But—”
“Then go keep an eye on him.”
“There’s a complication.”
“Keep an eye on him. He’s not likely to get into much before I can come check on him. Later.”
With him and Lady both scowling at me I decided I would take the hint and go away. Shaking my head. There are things you can accept intellectually but still not imagine. Those two in the throes of passion fell into the latter category.
If he was in no hurry I was not, either. I had a snack and a nap and a dream about Sarie before I got back to work. It was not a dream I wanted. It was Sarie looking aged and haggard and wearing white. But that was a better dream than the visit to ice hell that followed.
That one did not change much with time, nor did any more details develop. But I never got comfortable with it.
Goblin had all his illusions in place but he did not bother the first fugitives to hurry out of the Dandha Presh. Those would be the men least likely to be trouble in later times. He did have a few individuals captured so he could get a better idea of what had happened to the north. He told the panther, “A shithead like Longshadow don’t deserve followers like Mogaba.”
The panther rumbled deep in her throat.
“You got to wonder about Mogaba. Why the hell don’t he just walk?”
Mogaba had everything under control. His fighting withdrawal was going well for him.
The hundred men with Goblin were all young Taglians interested in becoming part of the Black Company, I gathered. Clever Goblin had sold them the notion that this operation was an entrance exam. The nasty little shit.
He had to feel lonely out there. His bodyguard, Thien Due, knew only a few words of Taglian and had no more inclination to gossip than Thai Dei did. The panther’s conversational skills were limited. The commandos were all under twenty-five. Goblin spoke Taglian well enough but did not speak the language of the young.
In the dialect of the Jewel Cities he muttered, “I miss One-Eye. He may not be worth two dead flies but... Nobody heard that, did they? Us old farts got to stick together. We’re the only ones who know what it’s all about.”
“Or do we?”
“Yeah. I think we do.”
“Were you saying something, sir?” one of the young sergeants asked, rushing up.
“Talking to myself, lad. Guaranteed intelligent conversation. I was thinking out loud about Mogaba. How everybody on the other side’s got their own thing going. Ten minutes after they whip us everybody over there is going to be measuring everybody else for a dagger in the back.”
“Sir?” The young Shadar seemed scandalized by the suggestion that our side might yet lose this war.
“If they blow it, with everything they’ve got going for them, and we come out on top, the same shit is gonna happen on our side.”
Goblin began using his illusions and commandos to begin picking off Shadowlander fugitives, to teach job- appropriate skills while the work was still easy, and to keep the boys from getting bored.
Larger Shadowlander forces began to come down, hurrying, in disarray, walking into Goblin’s setup like they had rehearsed it. Snipers picked off obvious officers. Missile fire drenched the troopers. When they organized for a counterattack they found themselves fighting illusions and shadows.
From my vantage I began to wonder what Goblin was expected to accomplish. He was causing trouble out of all proportion to his numbers but what he was doing was unlikely to have any permanent impact. Unless, of course, him being here meant he was not somewhere else. Which was just the sort of thing that might occur to Croaker. Cook up some cockamamie mission for Goblin so he would not be around getting drunk and feuding with One-Eye and generally obstructing progress.
Still... The Shadowlanders could not find him. He kept giving them ghosts. Word rolled back up into the mountains. Panic rode its back. That effect was all out of proportion to Goblin’s numbers, too.
There was one major theme to Goblin’s ambushes. He was directing his strongest efforts toward eliminating officers. He seemed to have a way to identify those in plenty of time to slide his commandos into position.
The forvalaka. The woman in cat form. She was scouting for him. But how was she communicating?
I spend a lot of time being puzzled by things going on around me.
“I feel like I’m a mushroom on a mushroom farm,” I told Croaker. “Kept in the dark and fed a diet of horseshit.”
Croaker shrugged, said the famous words. “Need to know.”
“He didn’t get Mogaba, if that was the plan. That son of a bitch must take a bath in grease every morning, he’s so slick. He did get that Nar Khucho.”
Croaker grunted.
“Not much of a triumph,” I agreed. “He was already on a stretcher with one leg amputated. But I had to let you know and I’m going to have to put it into the Annals because he did belong to the Company once.”
Croaker shrugged, grunted. That was how we did it.
“He’s got nobody left, then,” I said. “He’s over there all alone, without one friend.”
“Don’t cry for him, Murgen. He’s there because he chose to go there.”
“I’m not crying for him. I had to go through the siege of Dejagore with that guy in charge. Far as I’m concerned anything that happens to him won’t be pain enough.”
“You thought any more about turning the standard over to somebody else?”
“Sleepy’s been bugging me. I told him we’d look at it once we get set up around Overlook.”
“You think he’s the right one, go ahead and start breaking him in. See about his literacy level, too. But I want you staying with the standard for the time being.”
“He’s learning his Taglian. He says.”
“Good. I’ve got work.”
Son of a bitch was not going to let me in on anything.
Goblin’s efforts were the straw that broke the Shadowlander force. They cracked. The survivors scattered. Goblin and his crew faded into the wilds, headed south.
