We broke the boom. We headed for the trading city Thresh, which lies above the Third Cataract. It was a quiet river going down. There might have been no other human beings in the world outside of us on the barge, But the wreckage that kept pace was a screaming reminder that we were not alone, that we belonged to a bleak and bloody-minded species. I was not fit company for man or beast, as they say.
One-Eye joined me where I stood under the battered croc head Goblin had mounted in the bows. “Be there in a little bit, Croaker.”
I dipped into my trick bag of repartee and countered with an unenthusiastic grunt.
“Me and the runt been trying to get a feel for the place up ahead.”
I cracked him up with another grunt. That was his job.
“Don’t got a good feel to it.” We watched another small fishing boat hoist anchor and raise sail and skitter south with the news of our coming. “Not a real danger feel. Not an all-bad feel. Just not a right feel. Like there’s something going on.”
He sounded puzzled around the edges. “You figure it’s something that might concern us, send your pet to find out what. That’s what you bought him for. Isn’t it?”
He smirked.
The current in a lazy turn of the river held us close to the right bank. Two solemn crows watched our progress from a lone dead tree. Gnarled and ugly, the tree made me think of nooses and hanged men.
“Now why didn’t I think of that, Croaker? Here I just sent him into town to check on the quiff situation.”
Teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Croaker.
The imp came back with a disturbing report. There were people in Thresh waiting for us. Specifically us, the Black Company.
How the hell did everybody know we were coming?
The waterfront was mobbed when we warped in, though nobody really believed we had come from Gea-Xle. I guess they figured we spontaneously generated on the river up around the bend. I kept everyone aboard and mostly out of sight till the rest of the convoy arrived.
It came through untouched. Its guards and crews were simmering with stories of the devastation they had found in our wake. Rejoicing spread through Thresh. The blockade had been strangling the city.
I watched the good citizens from behind a mantlet. Here and there I noted hard-eyed little brown men who seemed less than enchanted with our advent.
“Those the guys you were talking about?” I asked One-Eye.
He gave them the fish-eye, then shook his head. “Ours should be over that way. There they are. Weird.”
I saw what he meant. A man with long blond hair. What the hell was he doing down here? “Keep an eye on them.”
I collected Mogaba and Goblin and a couple of the guys who looked like they ate babies for breakfast and went into conference with the bosses of the convoy. They surprised me. They not only did not argue about paying the balance of our fee, they tossed in a bonus on account of every barge got through. Then I got my key people together and told them, “Let’s get off-loaded and hit the road. This place gives me the creeps.”
Goblin and One-Eye complained. Naturally. They wanted to stay and party.
They came around when the iron coach and the great black horses and the Company standard hit the wharfside road. The joy went out of the grand celebration almost immediately. I’d figured it would.
Blank faces watched the unforgotten standard pass.
Thresh had been on the other side when the Company was in service in Goes. Our forebrethren had kicked their butts good. So good they recalled the Company this long after the fact, though Goes itself no longer existed.
We paused in an open market toward the south edge of Thresh. Mogaba had a couple of his lieutenants dicker for supplies. Goblin went stomping around in a squeaking rage because One-Eye had set Frogface to following him, aping his every word and move. The imp was trudging behind him at the moment, looking deep in thought. Otto and Hagop and Candles were trying to thrash out the details of a pool that would pay off big to the guy who guessed closest to when Goblin would come up with a definitive counterstroke. The trouble was a definition of what could be considered definitive.
One-Eye observed proceedings with a benign, smug smile, certain he had attained ascendancy at last. The Nar stood around looking grimly military and still a little baffled because the rest of us had less rigid, absolute standards. They had not been disappointed in us on the river.
One-Eye ambled over. “Them people are giving us the eye again. Got them all picked out now. Four men and a woman.”
“Round them up and bring them over. We’ll see what’s on their minds. Where’s Wheezer?”
One-Eye pointed, then did a fade. As I approached Wheezer I noted that a dozen of my men had disappeared. One-Eye wasn’t going to take any chances.
I told Wheezer to tell Mogaba we weren’t stocking up for a six-month campaign. We just wanted enough stuff for a meal or two getting past the Cataract. We yakked it back and forth, Mogaba struggling with the Jewel Cities dialect he had begun to pick up already. He was a sharp, smart man. I liked him. He was flexible enough to understand that our two versions of the Company could have arisen easily over two hundred years. He worked at being nonjudgmental.
So did I.
“Hey, Croaker. Here you go.” Here came One-Eye, grinning like a possum, bringing in his catch. The three younger men, two of whom were whites, seemed baffled. The woman looked angry. The old man looked like he was daydreaming.
I eyeballed the white men, again wondering how the hell they had gotten here. “They got anything to say for themselves?”
Mogaba drifted over. He looked at the black man thoughtfully.
About then the woman had plenty to say. The darker haired white man wilted slightly but the other just grinned. I said, “Let’s check them on languages. Between us we’ve got most of them they speak up north.”
Frogface popped up. “Try them out on Rosean, chief. I got a hunch.” Then he rattled something at the old man. The guy jumped about a foot off the ground. Frogface chortled. The old man stared like he was seeing a ghost.
Before I could ask what verbal stunt he’d pulled, the blond man asked, “You the captain of this outfit?” He spoke Rosean. I understood him, but my Rosean was rusty. I hadn’t used it in a long time.
“Yeah. You got any other languages you use?”
He had. He tried a couple. His Forsberger was not good, but my Rosean was worse. He asked, “What the hell happened to you guys?” He regretted saying it immediately.
I looked at One-Eye. He shrugged. I asked, “What do you mean?”
“Uh . . . coming down the river. You done the impossible. Ain’t nobody gotten through in a couple years. Me and Cordy and Blade, we were about the last ones.”
“Just lucky.”
He frowned. He had heard the stories spread by the boatmen.
Mogaba said something to one of his lieutenants. They looked the black man, Blade, over good. The Geek and the Freak, who had confessed to being brothers and having the real names Claw-of-the-Lion and Heart-of-the-Lion, also moved in to look him over. He wasn’t pleased. I asked Heart, “Is there something special about that guy?”
“Maybe, Captain. Maybe. Tell you later.”
“Right.” Back to Forsberger. “You’ve been watching us. We want to know why.”
He had an answer all ready. “My buddies and me, we been hired to take the broad and the old boy down the river. We was kind of hoping we could hook on with you guys as far as Taglios. For the extra protection, you know what I mean?” He looked at Murgen and the standard. “I seen that somewhere before.”
“Roses. Who are you?” How stupid did I look? Maybe I needed to check a mirror.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I’m Swan. Willow Swan.” He stuck out a hand. I didn’t take it. “This here’s my buddy Cordy Mather. Cordwood. Don’t ask. Even he don’t know why. And this’s Blade. We been doing what you might call freelancing, up and down the river. Taking advantage of being exotic. You know how it is. You guys been about everywhere.”
He was rattled. You couldn’t have tortured it out of him, maybe, but he was scared half to death. He kept looking at the standard and the coach and the horses and the Nar and shuddering.
He was a lot of things, maybe, that he was not going to admit. A liar was the biggest. I thought it might be interesting, even entertaining, to have him and his bunch along. So I gave him what he wanted. “All right. Tag along. As long as you pull your weight and remember who’s in charge.”
He broke out in smiles. “Great. You got it, chief.” He started chattering at his pals. The old man said something sharp that shut him up.
I asked Frogface, “He give anything away there?”
“Nah. He just said, ‘I did it!,’ chief. And went to bragging on his golden tongue.”
“Swan. Where the hell is this Taglios? I don’t have a Taglios on my maps.”
“Let me see.”
Half an hour later I knew his Taglios was a place my best map named Troko Tallios. “Trogo Taglios,” Swan told me. “There’s this monster city, Taglios, that surrounds an older one that was called Trogo. The official name is Trogo Taglios but nobody ever calls it anything but Taglios anymore. It’s a nice place. You’ll like it.”
“I hope so.”
One-Eye said, “He’s going to try to sell you something, Croaker.”
I grinned. “We’ll have some fun with him while he tries. Watch them. Be friendly with them. Find out whatever you can. Where’s Lady gotten off to now?”
I was too fussed. She wasn’t far off. She was standing aside, inspecting our new acquisitions from another angle. I beckoned her. “What do you think?” I asked when she joined me. Swan’s eyes popped when he got a good look at her. He was in love.
“Not much. Watch the woman. She’s in charge. And she’s used to getting her own way.”
“Aren’t you all?”
“Cynic.”
“That’s me. To the bone. And you’re the one made me that way, love.”
She gave me a funny look, forced a smile.
I wondered if we’d ever recover that moment on that hillside so many miles to the north.
We were just coming back to the river, after having walked past the Third Cataract, when Willow joined me as I walked my horse. He eyed the big black nervously and got around where I would be between it and him. He asked, “Are you guys really the Black Company?”
“The one and only. The evil, mean, rude, crude, nasty, and sometimes even unpleasant Black Company. You never spent any time in the military, did you?”
“As little as I could. Man, last I heard there was a thousand of you guys. What happened?”
“Times got hard up north. A year ago we were down to seven men. How long ago did you leave the empire?”
“Way back. Me and Cordy bugged out of Roses maybe a year after you guys were in there after that Rebel general, Raker. I wasn’t much more than a kid. We sort of drifted from one thing to another, headed south. First thing you know, we was across the Sea of Torments. Then we got into some trouble with the imperials, so we had to get out of the empire. Then we just kept drifting, a little bit this year, a little bit that. We hooked up with Blade. Next thing you know, here we are down here. What’re you guys doing here?”
“Going home.” That was all I needed to tell him.
He knew plenty about us if he had come to us knowing Taglios was on our itinerary but not our final destination.
I said, “In a military outfit it’s not acceptable behavior for just anybody to walk up and start shooting the shit with the commander any time they feel like it. I try to keep this outfit looking military. It intimidates the yokels.”
“Yeah. Gotcha. Channels, and all that. Right.” He went away.
His Taglios was a long way off. I figured we had time to sort his bunch out. So why press?