Goblin howled like a leopardess in heat, started making mystical passes. His fingers raked furrows of fire out of the air.
Even I ignored him. “What is it?”
“It’s an imp, Croaker. An honest-to-god imp. Don’t you know an imp when you see one?”
“No. Where’d it come from?” I was not sure I wanted to know, knowing One-Eye.
“Heading down to the river we come on this little bunch of shops around an outdoor bazaar where they got all kinds of neat stuff for wizards, fortune-tellers, spirit talkers, Ouija workers, and such. And right there in the window of this dinky hole-in-the-wall shop, just begging for a new home, was this little guy. I couldn’t resist. Say hello to the Captain, Frogface.”
The imp piped, “Hello to the Captain, Frogface.” It giggled just like Goblin, in a higher voice.
“Jump on out of there, bitty buddy,” One-Eye said. The imp popped into the air as if shot up. One-Eye chortled. He caught it by a foot and stood there with it dangling head down like a toddler with a doll. He eyeballed Goblin, who was positively apoplectic, so fussed he could not go on with the magical funny business he had started.
One-Eye dropped the imp. It flipped and landed on its feet, sped across and stared up at Goblin like a young bastard having a sudden epiphany about the identity of its sire. It did cartwheels back to One-Eye, said, “I’m going to like it here with you guys.”
I snagged One-Eye by the collar and lifted him off the floor. “What about the damned boat?” I shook him a little. “I sent you out to hire a goddamned boat, not to buy talking knickknacks.” It was one of those flashes of rage that last about three seconds, rare for me but usually strong enough to let me make an ass of myself.
My father had them a lot. When I was little I would hide under the table for the minute or so they took to pass.
I set One-Eye down. Looking amazed, he told me, “I found one, all right? Pulls out day after tomorrow, at first light. I couldn’t get an exclusive charter because we couldn’t afford anything big enough to haul us and the animals and coaches if that was all the barge would be carrying. I ended up making a deal.”
The imp Frogface was behind Wheezer, clinging to and peeking around his leg like a frightened child—though I got the feeling it was laughing at us. “All right. I apologize for blowing up. Tell me about the deal.”
“This is only good to what they call the Third Cataract, understand. That’s a place eight hundred sixty miles down that a boat can’t get past. There’s about an eight-mile portage, then you have to hire passage again.”
“To the Second Cataract, no doubt.”
“Sure. Anyway, we can get the long first leg free, with food and fodder provided, if we serve as guards on this commercial barge.”
“Ah. Guards. What do they need guards for? And why so many?”
“Pirates.”
“I see. Meaning we’d end up fighting even if we did pay for our passage.”
“Probably.”
“Did you get a good look at the boat? Is it defensible?”
“Yeah. We could turn it into a floating fort in a couple days. It’s the biggest damned barge I ever seen.”
A tinkle of alarm began nagging in the back of my thoughts. “We’ll give it another look in the morning. All of us. The deal sounds too good to be true, which probably means it is.”
“I figured. That was one of the reasons I bought Frogface. I can send him sneaking around to check things out.” He grinned and glanced at Goblin, who had gone into a corner to plot and pout. “Also, with Frogface along we don’t have to waste no coin on guides and interpreters. He can do all that for us.”
That sent my eyebrows up. “Really?”
“That’s right. See? I do do something useful once in a while.”
“You’re threatening to. You say the imp is ready to use?”
“As ready as he can be.”
“Come on outside where it’s private. I got about ten jobs for it.”
18
The Barge
I took the outfit to the waterfront before the sun got its rump over the hills beyond the river. The city remained somnolent, except for traffic headed the way we were. The nearer the river the worse it got. And the waterfront was a frenzied hive.
There were crows.
“Looks like they’ve been at it all night,” I said. “Which one is it, One-Eye?”
“That big one over there.”
I headed the direction he pointed. The barge was a monster, all right. It was a giant wooden shoe of a thing meant mainly to drift with the current. Travel would be slow on a fat, sluggish river like this. “It looks new.”
We moved in an island of silence and stares. I tried to read the faces of the laborers we passed. I saw little but a slight wariness. I noted a few armed men, as big as my visitors of yesterday, boarding some of the lesser barges. I eyed the stevedores marching aboard our craft. “Why the lumber, do you suppose?”
“My idea,” One-Eye said. “It’s to build mantlets. The only protection from missile fire they had was wicker screens. I’m surprised they listened and went to the bother and expense. Maybe they took me up on all my suggestions. We’re set if they did.”
“I’m not surprised.” I was now sure that not only had our arrival been foreseen, it had been calculated into the schemes of an entire city. That pirate infestation was more than a nuisance. These folks meant to hammer it down using a band of expendable adventurers.
I did not understand why they thought they had to run a game on us. That was our trade. And we had to go down that river anyway.
Maybe it was the way the society worked. Maybe they could not believe the truth.
With Frogface’s help it took about six minutes to straighten out the bargemaster and the committee of bigwigs waiting with him. I wrangled the promise of a huge fee on top of our passage. “We go to work as soon as we see the money,” I told them. Lo. It appeared almost magically.
One-Eye told me, “You could have held them up.”
“They’re desperate,” I agreed. “Must be something they have to get through. Let’s get to work.”
“Don’t you want to know what?”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re going anyway.”
“Maybe. But I’ll have Frogface look around.”
“Whatever.” I toured the main deck. Otto and Hagop tagged along. We talked upgraded defensibility. “We need a better idea of what we’re up against. We want to be prepared for pirate tactics. For example, we might set up engines behind the mantlets if they attack from small boats.”
I paused along the wharf-side rail. It was obvious a convoy would follow our barge, which as obviously had been constructed to lead the way. Never would they get it back upriver. It had only enough oars to keep it pointed the right direction.
There were crows over the chaos. I ignored them. I had begun to suspect I was obsessed.
Then I spied an island of emptiness against a warehouse wall. People avoided it without noting what they were doing. A vague shape stood in shadow. Crows fluttered up and down.
I felt like someone was staring at me. Was it my imagination? No one else saw the damned crows. “Time I found out what the hell is going on. One-Eye! I need to borrow your new pet.”
I told Frogface to go over and take a gander. He went. And in a minute he was back, giving me a funny look. “What was I supposed to see, Captain?”
“What did you see?”
“Nothing.”
I looked over there. Nothing was what I saw now. But then I spotted the three big guys who had tried to talk to me yesterday. They had a bunch of cousins with them, getting in the way. They were watching our barge. I presumed they were interested in us still. “Got a translating job for you, runt.”
* * *
The biggest guy’s name was Mogaba. Him and his buddies wanted to sign on with the Company. He said there were more at home like them if I would have them. Then he claimed a right. He told me that all the big men I saw
wandering around with sharp steel were descendants of the Black Company men who had served Gea-Xle in olden times. They were the Nar, the military caste of the city. I got the impression that to them I was something holy, the real Captain, a demigod.
“What do you think?” I asked One-Eye.
“We could use guys like them. Look at them. Monsters. Take all you can get if they’re for real.”
“Can Frogface find out?”
“You bet.” He instructed the imp, sent him scooting.
* * *
“Croaker.”
I jumped. I had not heard One-Eye coming. “What?”
“Those Nar are the real thing. Tell him, Frogface.”
The imp piped away in that high Goblin voice.
The Nar were indeed descendants of our forebrethren. They did form a separate caste, a warrior cult built around the myths the Company left behind. They kept their own set of Annals and observed the ancient traditions better than we did. Then Frogface hit me with the kicker.
Somebody called Eldon the Seer, a famous local wizard, foretold our coming months ago, about the time we were crossing those shaggy-backed hills headed for D’loc-Aloc. The Nar (a word meaning black) had initiated a series of contests and trials to select the best man of each hundred to rejoin the father standard and make the pilgrimage to Khatovar. If we would have them.
Eldon the Seer had deciphered our mission from afar, too.
I do not like it when things are going on that I do not understand. Understand?
Mogaba was chosen commander of the delegation by virtue of being the champion of the caste.
While the Nar prepared for a holy hadj the lords and merchants of Gea-Xle began setting up to use us to break through a pirate blockade that had become impenetrable in recent years.
The great hope from the north. That was us.
“I don’t know what to say,” I told One-Eye.
“I’ll tell you one thing, Croaker. You aren’t going to be able to tell those Nar guys no.”
I did not have that inclination. These pirates, about whom nobody would say much, sounded increasingly nasty. Somewhere down the line, without it having been stated explicitly, I had come on the notion that they had big magic they could call out when the going got hairy. “Why not?”
“Those guys are serious, Croaker. Religious serious. They’d do something crazy like throw themselves on their swords because the Captain found them inadequate to march with the Company.”
“Come on.”
“Really. I mean it. It’s a religious thing with them. You’re always telling about old ways. When the standard was a tutelary deity and whatnot. They’ve gone the other direction from what we did. The Company that went north turned into your basic gang of cutthroats. The kids they left behind turned them into gods.”
“That’s scary.”
“Better believe.”
“They’re going to be disappointed in us. I’m the only one left who takes the traditions seriously.”
“Horseapples, Croaker. Spit and polish and beating the drum for the olden days ain’t all there is to it. I got to go find that little geek Goblin and see if he can stop pouting long enough for us to do a layout on how we work this scow if it gets hit. Hell. The pirates know everything that’s going on up here. Maybe our reputation will scare them into letting us slide through.”
“Think so?” It sounded like a nice idea.
“No. Frogface! Get over here. Acts like a damned kid, getting into things. Frogface, I want you to stick with Croaker. You do what he tells you just like if he was me. Got it? You don’t and I’ll paddle your butt.”
For all its talents, the imp had the mind of a five-year-old. With an attention span to match. It told One-Eye it would behave and help me, but I did not expect that to be easy.
I went down to the wharf and accepted thirty-two recruits into our brotherhood of arms. Mogaba was so pleased I thought he might hug me.
They were a damned impressive thirty-two men, every one a monster and quick and lithe as a cat. If they were the mongrel children of the men who had served in Gea-Xle, what must those old-timers have been like?
First thing after I swore them in, Mogaba asked if it was all right if his caste brothers did guard duty aboard the other boats. So they could tell their sons that they had followed the hadj as far as the Third Cataract.
“Sure. Why not?” Mogaba and his boys had my head spinning. For the first time since I got stiffed with the job, I really felt like I was the Captain.
The gang dispersed to get their gear and to spread the good news.
I noted the master of the barge watching from up forward. He was wearing a big poo-eating grin.
Things were going just dandy for his crowd. They thought they had us by the short hairs and broken to the bridle.
* * *
“Hey, Croaker. Here comes your prodigal girlfriend.”
“You too, Pup? I ought to toss you in the river.” If I could run the imp down. He had the energy of a five-year-old, too.
I spotted her by the commotion she caused. Or the lack of it. Where she passed men paused to look and sigh and shake their heads wistfully. It did not occur to them to whistle, catcall, or make crude remarks.
I looked around and picked a victim. “Murgen!”
Murgen ambled over. “What do you need?”
“When Lady gets here show her her quarters. The attached room is for her guests.”
“I thought…”
“Don’t think. Just do.”
I made myself scarce. I was not yet ready for the inevitable battle.
19
The River
Night on the river. A moon splattering the dark mirror of water. A stillness at times almost supernatural, then the cacophony of a festival in hell: crocodiles grunting, fifty kinds of frogs singing, birds hooting and squawking, hippos snorting; the gods only knew what all.
And bugs buzzing. The bugs were almost as bad as they had been in the jungle. They would get worse once we entered the wetlands farther south. The river was said to flow imperceptibly through a swamp ten to eighty miles wide and three hundred miles long. Here the west bank was still tame. The east was three-quarters wild. The people we saw watching from boats in the mouths of sloughs and creeks were as poorly tamed as their land.
I was assured that they, living in the shadow of the city, were harmless. When they came whooping out it was to hawk crocodile hides and parrot-feather cloaks. On impulse I bought one of the cloaks, the biggest and most outrageously colorful one available. It must have weighed sixty pounds. Wearing it I became the very image of a savage chieftain.
Mogaba examined the cloak and pronounced it a wise buy. He told me it would shed darts and arrows better than armor of steel.
Some of the Nar bought croc hides to toughen their shields.
Goblin got a wild hair and bought him a couple of preserved croc heads. One was so big it looked like it had been lopped off a dragon. While I was seated up top contemplating the nighttime river, wondering about crows, he was up forward mounting his monster purchase as a figurehead. I supposed he had some drama up his sleeve.
He came to me with the smaller head. “I want to fit you out to wear this.”
“You what?”
“I want to fit you out to wear this. So when the pirates come you can strut around up here in your feather coat breathing fire like some mythological beast.”
“That’s a great gimmick. I really like it. In fact, I love it. Why don’t we see if we can’t get some dope like Big Bucket to try it.”
“But—”
“You don’t think I’m going to stand up there and let people snipe at me, do you?”
“You’ll have plenty of protection from me and One-Eye.”
“Yeah? Then my prayers are answered at last. For years I’ve wanted nothing more than protection from you and One-Eye. ‘Preserve me, O sainted fathers of the Company!’ I’ve cried a thousand times. Yea, ten thousand times have I called—” r />
Sputtering, he cut me off and changed the subject. He squeaked, “Those people your girlfriend brought aboard—”
“Next fool who calls Lady my girlfriend gets to throw a saddle on a croc and see if they can be broken. You get my drift?”
“Yeah. You got your feelings hurt on account of reality is catching up with you.”
I kept my mouth shut, but just barely.
“Bad news, those two are, Croaker.” He whispered in the no-breath whisper we use when we are creeping past enemy sentries. “There’s big mojo brewing down in their cabin.”
He was trying to make himself useful. He had been overshadowed since the appearance of Frogface. So I did not tell him I was on to that already and had had me a thought or two about what could be done.
A fish jumped up and skipped across the water to get away from some predator. For his effort he got his reward: some night bird snagged him on the bounce.
I grunted. Should I let Goblin know how much I knew and suspected? Or should I just go on looking dumb while setting the moment up? Building a mystique had become important now that the Company was on the grow. It should work for a while. The old hands should not suspect me of taking as cynical and pragmatic an approach to command as I planned.
I listened to Goblin’s outpouring of fact, suspicion, and speculation. Little that he said was new. What was new only more thoroughly framed the picture I had. I told him, “I think it’s time you came up with the masterpiece of your life, Goblin. Something plain, direct, and powerful, that you can cut loose in a second.”
He turned on the famous Goblin grin. “I’m way ahead of you, Croaker. I’ve got a couple of things in the works that are going to amaze people when I use them.”
“Good.” I had a feeling One-Eye was in for a shock somewhere down the line.
* * *
The journey to the Third Cataract takes a minimum two weeks because the current does not exceed a slow walk. Adding pirate trouble could make the trip last forever.
By the end of our fourth day the barge was as defensible as possible. Timber shields protected the main deck. Their lower ends projected over the water to make boarding from boats difficult. None of the embrasures in that shielding were big enough for a man to weasel through. The guys had put together four ballistae for each side. Thanks to One-Eye’s foresight we had the makings for firebombs by the score, and ready bombs in well-protected nests atop the deckhouse. The three brothers from Beryl built us a dolphin, which is a fish-shaped weight attached to a long chain. It is swung out on a boom and dropped through the bottoms of boats. My favorite engine, though, was thought up by Patience, a former caravan guard.