“I never intended to use it. I wanted them convinced I was committed to a certain course.”
Mogaba smiled. I suspected he’d figured it out ahead of time.
“It won’t work,” Goblin muttered.
I gave him a look. “The men working the trenches at the city end are armed. I promised them first crack at getting even. We get the gates open all we have to do is lean back and watch.”
“Won’t work. You’re forgetting that Shadowmaster in there. You think you’re going to sneak up on him?”
“Yes. Our guardian angel will make sure.”
“Shifter? I’d trust him as far as I can throw a pregnant elephant.”
“I say anything about trusting him? He wants us for a stalking horse for some scheme. He’s got to keep us healthy. Right?”
“Your mind is going, Croaker,” One-Eye said. “You been hanging around Lady too long.”
She kept a blank face on. That might not have been a compliment.
“Mogaba, I’ll need a dozen of the Nar. After Goblin and One-Eye put the sentries to sleep Frogface will climb the wall with a rope and anchor it. Your boys will go up and take the barbican from the rear and open the gate.”
He nodded. “How soon?”
“Anytime. One-Eye. Send Frogface scouting. I want to know what that Shadowmaster is doing. If he’s watching us we won’t go.”
We moved an hour later. It went like operations go in textbooks. Like it was ordained by the gods. In another hour every one of the freed prisoners, except those we had enrolled in the legions, was inside the city. They reached the citadel and broke in before resistance developed.
They raged through Stormgard, ignoring the rain and thunder and lightning, venting a lot of rage, probably mostly in directions askew.
Me in my Widowmaker suit stalked through the open gates fifteen minutes after the mob rush. Lifetaker rode beside me. The locals eowered away from us, though some seemed to be welcoming their liberators. Halfway to the citadel Lady said, “You even fooled me this time. When you said tonight in Stormgard...”
A gust and ferocious fusillade of rain silenced her. Lightning cut loose in a sudden vicious duel. By the flashes I witnessed the passage of a pair of panthers that I would have missed otherwise. Chills not of the rain crawled my spine. I had seen that bigger one before, in another embattled city, when I was young.
They were headed toward the citadel, too.
I asked, “What are they up to?” My confidence was less than complete. There were no crows out in this storm. I realized I had come to count them my good luck.
“I don’t know.”
“Better check it.” I increased my pace.
There were a lot of dead men around the entrance to the citadel. Most were my laborers. Sounds of fighting still echoed inside. Grinning guards saluted me clumsily. I asked, “Where’s the Shadowmaster?”
“I hear she’s in the big tower. Up high. Her men are fighting like crazy. But she isn’t helping them.”
Thunder and lightning went mad for a full minute. Bolts smashed at the city. Had the god of thunders gone crazy? But for the torrential rainfall a hundred fires might have started.
I pitied the legions, out there on guard. Maybe Mogaba would bring them in out of it.
The storm died into an almost normal rain after that last insane fit, with only a few lightweight flashes.
I looked up the one tower that loomed over the rest of the citadel — and, deja vu, in a flash spied a cat shape scaling its face.
“Damn me!”
The thunder had left me unable to hear the horses coming. I looked back. One-Eye, Goblin, and Murgen, still flaunting the Company standard. One-Eye was staring up at the tower. His face was not pleasant to behold.
He was flashing on the same memory. “Forvalaka, Croaker.”
“Shifter.”
“I know. I’m wondering if it was him last time.”
“What’re you talking about?” Lady asked.
I said, “Murgen, let’s plant that standard up where the world can see it when the sun comes up.”
“Right.”
We stalked into the citadel, Lady trying to find out what had passed between me and One-Eye. I developed a hearing problem. One-Eye took the lead. We climbed dark stairs where the footing was treacherous because of blood and bodies. There was no more fighting going on above us.
Ominous.
The last fighters of both sides were in a chamber a couple stories from the top. All dead. “Sorcery here,” Goblin muttered.
“We go up,” One-Eye snapped.
“I know.”
Total agreement between them. For once.
I drew my sword. There was no flame in it, and no color to my costume now. Goblin and One-Eye had other things on their minds.
We caught up with Shifter and the Shadowmaster in the parapet of the tower. Shifter had assumed human form. He had the Shadowmaster at bay. It was a tiny thing in black, almost impossible to take seriously as a danger. There was no sign of Shifter’s sidekick. I told Goblin, “There’s one missing. Keep an eye out.”
“Got you.” He knew what was going on. He was as serious as ever I’ve seen him.
Shifter started moving in on the Shadowmaster. It had nowhere to retreat. I gestured Lady to move out to his right. I went left. I’m not sure what One-Eye was doing.
I glanced toward the camp south of the city. The rain had stopped while we were inside the tower. The camp was plainly visible by its own lights. I got the impression they knew something was wrong over here but they were not about to come find out what.
They were nice and close. Put artillery on the wall and life could get miserable for them.
The Shadowmaster backed up against the merlons edging the parapet, apparently able to do nothing. Why were they impotent? This one was who? Stormshadow?
Shifter was close enough to touch, now. One hand darted out and ripped the black robing off the Shadowmaster.
I gawked. I heard Lady’s gasp from fifteen feet away.
One-Eye said it. “I’ll go to hell. Stormbringer! But she’s supposed to be dead.”
Stormbringer. Another of the original Ten Who Were Taken. Another one who was supposed to have perished in the Battle at Charm, after murdering the Hanged Man and... and Shifter!
Aha! I said to me, said I. Aha! A settlement of scores. Shifter knew all the time. Shifter had been out to get Stormbringer from the start.
And where one mysteriously surviving Taken was in business for herself, might there not be more? Like about three more?
“What the hell? They all still around but the Hanged Man, Limper, and Soulcatcher?” I’d seen those three go down myself.
Lady stood there shaking her head.
Were even those three gone? I had killed Limper myself once, and he had come back...
Chills got me again.
When they were Shadowmasters they were anonymous creeps who had only standard-issue cause to do me grief. But the Taken... Some of them had very special and personal cause to hate the Company.
This moment of revelation had turned it into a whole different kind of war.
I have no idea what passed between Shifter and Bringer, but it left the air crackling with electric hatred.
Stormbringer seemed powerless. Why? A few minutes ago she had been bringing in that monster of a storm to whip on us. Shifter was no greater power than she. Unless, somehow, he had come upon that bane of all the Taken, a True Name.
I looked at Lady.
She knew it. She knew all their True Names. She had not lost her knowledge when she had lost her powers.
Power. I had not thought about what I’d had here, almost under my thumb, all this time. What she knew was worth the ransoms of a hundred princes. The secrets locked in her head could enslave or deliver empires.
If you knew she had them.
Some folks knew.
She had a lot more guts than I’d realized, coming out of the Tower and empire with me.
I had to do some rethinking and strategic reorientation. These Shadowmasters, Shifter, the Howler, they all knew what I’d just realized. She was damned lucky she hadn’t been snatched already and squeezed dry.
Shifter laid his huge ugly hands on Stormbringer. And only then did she begin to resist. With sudden, startling violence she did something that hurled Shifter all the way across the parapet. He lay there for a moment, eyes glassy.
Bringer made a break.
I came around with a swordstroke I brought in from the moon, right into her belly. It did not mark her but it stopped her in her tracks. Lady hacked at her overhand. She rolled away from the stroke. I whacked her again. But she got up and started heading out again. And her fingers were dancing. Sparks played between them.
Oh, shit.
One-Eye tripped her. Lady and I hacked at her again, without much effect. Then Murgen let her have it with the spearhead on the lance that bore the Company standard.
She howled like one of the damned.
What the hell?
She started moving again. But now Shifter was back. He had taken the form of the forvalaka, the black were-leopard almost impossible to kill or injure. He jumped on Stormbringer and started tearing her apart.
She gave damned near as good as she got. We backed away, stayed away, gave them room.
I don’t know what Shifter did or when. Or if he did anything at all. One-Eye might have imagined it all. But sometime during the thing the little black man sidled up and whispered, “He did it, Croaker. It was him that killed Tom-Tom.”
That was a long time ago. I had almost no feelings about it anymore. But One-Eye had not forgotten nor forgiven. That was his brother...
“What you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Something. I got to do something.”
“What’ll that do to the rest of us? We won’t have an angel anymore.”
“Ain’t gonna have one anyway, Croaker. He’s done got what he wanted right there. Shifter or no Shifter you’re on your own soon as he finishes her off.”
He was right. And chances were damned good Shifter would stop being Lady’s faithful old dog, too. If there was any getting him, this was the time.
The combatants went on for maybe fifteen minutes, shredding each other. I got the impression things were not going as easy as Shifter had hoped. Bringer was putting up a damned good fight.
But he won. Sort of. She stopped resisting. He lay panting, unable to move. She’d locked her limbs around him. He bled from a hundred small wounds. He cursed softly, and I thought I heard him damning someone for helping her, heard him threatening to get someone next.
“You got any special use for him now?” I asked Lady. “I don’t know how much you knew. I don’t care now. But you better think about what he’s going to have on his mind now he don’t need you and me for a stalking horse anymore.”
She shook her head slowly.
Something slid over the edge of the parapet behind her. Another, smaller forvalaka. I thought we were in big trouble, but Shifter’s apprentice made a tactical error. She began to shift forms. She finished just in time to shriek “No!” at One-Eye.
One-Eye had made him a club out of something, and with two quick and heroic swings he bashed Stormbringer and Shapeshifter into complete unconsciousness. They had weakened one another that much.
Shifter’s companion flew at him.
Murgen tripped her by tangling her feet with the head of the lance he carried. He cut her. Blood got all over the standard. She screamed like she was trapped in Hell’s agony.
I recognized her, then. She had done a lot of yelling the last time I’d seen her, so long ago.
Sometime during the excitement a whole herd of crows had gathered on the merlons, out of the way. They started laughing.
Everybody jumped on the woman before she could do anything. Goblin did some kind of swift magical bind that left her unable to do anything but wiggle her eyes.
One-Eye looked at me and said, “You got any suture with you, Croaker? I got a needle but I don’t think I got enough thread.”
What? “Some.” I always carried some medical odds and ends.
“Gimme.”
I gave him.
He whacked Shifter and Bringer again. “Just to make sure they’re out. They don’t got no special powers when they’re out.”
He squatted down and started sewing their mouths shut. He finished Shifter, said, “Get him stripped. Whack him if he stirs.”
What the hell?
It got gruesome, then more gruesome. “What the hell you doing?” I demanded.
The crows were having a party.
“Sewing all the holes shut. So the devils don’t get out.”
“What?” Maybe it made sense to him. It didn’t to me.
“Old trick for getting rid of evil witch doctors back home.” When he finished with the orifices he sewed fingers and toes together. “Put them in a sack with a hundred pounds of rocks and throw them in the river.”
Lady said, “You’ll have to burn them. And grind what’s left into powder and scatter the powder on the wind.”
One-Eye looked at her for ten seconds. “You mean I done all this work for nothing?”
“No. It’ll help. You don’t want them getting excited while you’re roasting them.”
I gave her a startled look. That was not like her. I turned to Murgen. “You want to get that standard up?”
One-Eye stirred Shifter’s apprentice with a toe. “What about this one? Think I should take care of her, too?”
“She hasn’t done anything.” I squatted beside her. “I remember you now, darling. It took me a while because we didn’t see that much of you in Juniper. You weren’t very nice to my buddy Marron Shed.” I looked at Lady. “What were you figuring on making out of her?”
She did not answer.
“Be that way. We’ll talk later.” I looked at the apprentice. “Lisa Daela Bowalk. You hear me name your name, the way these others did?” Crows chuckled to one another. “I’m going to give you a break. That you probably don’t deserve. Murgen, find some place to lock this one up. We’ll turn her loose when we’re ready to move out. Goblin, you help One-Eye with whatever he’s got to do.” I looked at the Company standard, bloodstained once again, flying defiantly again. “You” — pointing at One-Eye — “take care of it right. Unless you want two more of them after us the way Limper was.”
He gulped air. “Yeah.”
“Lady, I told you. Tonight in Stormgard. Let’s go find someplace.”
Something was wrong with me. I felt mildly depressed, vaguely let down, once again victim of an anticlimax, of a hollow victory. Why? Two great wickednesses were about to be removed from the face of the earth. Luck had marched with the Company once more. We had added more impossible triumphs to our roll of victories.
We were two hundred miles nearer our destination than we’d had any right to hope. There was no obvious reason to expect much trouble from those troops locked up in that camp south of the city. Their Shadowmaster captain was wounded. The people of Stormgard, for the most part, were accepting us as liberators.
What was to be bothered about?
Chapter Forty: DEJAGORE (FORMERLY STORMGARD)
Tonight in Stormgard.
Tonight in Stormgard was something, though somehow tainted with that lack of satisfaction that haunted me increasingly. I slept well past dawn. A bugle wakened me. The first thing I saw when I cracked my lids was a big black bastard of a crow eyeballing Lady and me. I threw something at it.
Another bugle call. I stumbled to a window. Then streaked to another. “Lady. Get up. We got trouble.”
Trouble snaked out of the southern hills in the form of another enemy army. Mogaba had our boys getting into formation already. Over on the south wall Cletus and his brothers had the artillery harassing the encampment, but their engines could not keep that mob from getting ready for a fight. The people of the city poured from their houses, heade
d for the walls to watch.
Crows were everywhere.
Lady took a look, snapped, “Let’s get dressed,” and started helping me with my costume. I helped with hers.
I said of mine, “This thing is starting to smell.”
“You may not have to wear it much longer.”
“Eh?”
“That bunch coming out of the hills has to be just about everybody they’ve got left under arms. Break them and the war is over.”
“Sure. Except for three Shadowmasters who might not see it that way.”
I stepped to the window, shaded my eyes. I thought I could detect a black dot floating among the soldiers. “We don’t have anybody on our side now. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty with Shifter.”
“You did the right thing. He’d fulfilled his agenda. He might even have joined the others against us. He had no grudge against them.”
“Did you know who they were?”
“I never suspected. Honest. Not till a day or two ago. Then it seemed too unlikely to mention.”
“Let’s get at it.”
She kissed me, and it was a kiss with oomph behind it. We’d come a long way... She put her helmet on and turned into the grim dark thing called Lifetaker. I did my magic trick and turned into Widowmaker. The scurrying rats who people Stormgard — I guessed we should change the name back when the dust settled — stared at us in fear and awe as we strode through the streets.
Mogaba met us. He’d brought our horses. We mounted up. I asked, “How bad does it look?”
“Can’t tell yet. With two battles under our belts and two victories I’d say we’re the more tempered force. But there’ll be a lot of them and I don’t think you have any more tricks up your sleeves.”
“You’re right about that. This is the last thing I expected. If this Shadowmaster uses his power...”
“Don’t mention it to the men. They’ve been warned we might encounter unusual circumstances. They’ve been told to ignore them and get on with their jobs. You want to use the elephants again?”
“Everything. Every damned thing we’ve got. This one could be the whole war. Win it, we’ve got them off Taglios’s back and we’ve opened the road all the way south. They won’t have an army left to field.”