Croaker started to say something.
I interrupted. "I'll be down for the staff meeting in ten minutes."
I could not tell them anything directly but maybe I could get something out sideways.
But I knew nothing would change. The worst of all horrors was waiting up ahead and I was powerless to avert it.
I'd still do my best in the grove. Just in case this time that would come out differently. If I could remember the future well enough to make the right moves.
You. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. You keep dragging me to the wellsprings of pain. Why do you do that? What do you want? Who are you? What are you?
As always, you give me no answers.
14
The goddamned wind had teeth. We huddled in our blankets, shivering, as unmotivated as guys get without hanging it up. Weren't many of us wanted to be in that haunted grove in the first place.
Yet something I could not quite catch, some elusive emotion deep inside me, told me this was critical, that this had to be done just right. That more than I could imagine hinged upon that.
Unseen trees creaked and cracked. The wind groaned and whined. It was easy to let your imagination get away and brood on the fact that thousands had been tortured and murdered there. You might hear their moans inside the wind, their pleas for mercy ignored even now. You might expect to see broken corpses rising up to demand vengeance on the living.
I faked being a hero. I could not stop shaking, though. I pulled my blanket tighter. That did not help, either.
"Candyass!" One-Eye sneered. Like the little shit wasn't about to have a seizure himself. "That bonehead Goblin don't quit farting around and get his dead ass back here I'm gonna go strip him barebutt and nail him to a chunk of ice."
"That's creative."
"Don't be no wiseass, Kid. I'll... "
An especially exuberant gust took off with what he would.
It wasn't just the cold making us shake, though nobody would admit that. It was the place and the mission and the fact that heavy cloud cover robbed us of even the meager comradeship of starlight.
It was goddamned dark. And these Stranglers might now be friends with the man who ran shadows. A little bird said. Actually, a big black bird said.
"We spend too much time in town," I grumbled. One-Eye didn't respond. Thai Dei did, though, with a grunt. But that was a speech for this particular Nyueng Bao.
The wind brought the creak of a stealthy footfall. One-Eye barked, "Goddamnit, Goblin! Quit stomping around. You want the whole damned world to know we're here?" Never mind that Goblin could not be heard five feet away, dancing. One-Eye refuses to be constrained by mundane reason or consistency.
Goblin drifted into place in front of me, squatted. His little yellow teeth chattered. "All set," he murmured. "Whenever you're ready."
"We'd better do it, then. Before I break out in a case of common sense." I grunted as I rose. My knees crackled. My muscles did not want to stretch any more. I swore. I was getting too damned old for this shit, though at thirty-four I was the baby of the bunch. "Move out," I said, loudly enough to be heard by most everyone. You couldn't use hand signals in that darkness.
We were downwind and Goblin had done his stuff. Noise was not a worry.
The men drifted away, mostly so quietly that I had trouble believing I was alone suddenly except for my bodyguard. We moved, too. Thai Dei covered my back. The night didn't bother him. Maybe he has eyes like a cat.
I had plenty of mixed feelings. This was the first time I had run a raid. I was not sure I was over Dejagore enough to handle it. I shied at shadows and remained crazy suspicious of everybody outside the Company, for no reason I could understand. But Croaker insisted, so here I was sneaking around in a dark and evil forest with icicles hanging off my butt, directing the first purely Company op in years. Only it wasn't so purely Company when you considered the fact that all my guys had bodyguards with them.
I got over the self-confidence hurdle just by getting myself moving. Hell, it was too late to stop anything.
I stopped worrying about me and went to work worrying about how we would look after the raid was over. If we blew it we could not blame that on Taglian treachery or factionalism or incompetence, the usual sand in the machine.
I reached the crest of a low ridge. My hands were frozen but my body was wet inside my clothing. Light wavered ahead. The Deceivers, those lucky bastards, had a bonfire to keep them warm. I paused to listen. I heard nothing.
How did the Old Man know the leaders of the Strangler bands would gather for this particular festival? It was downright spooky the way he knew stuff sometimes. Maybe Lady was rubbing off. Maybe he had some magical talent he never mentioned.
I observed, "We're about to find out if Goblin still has that talent."
Thai Dei did not spend a precious grunt. Silence was comment enough.
There were supposed to be thirty to forty top Deceivers over there. We hunt them relentlessly and have done so since Narayan snatched Lady and Croaker's baby. The Old Man has eliminated mercy from the Company vocabulary. And that fits Deceiver philosophy perfectly, though I would bet those guys up ahead would not think that way in a minute.
Goblin still had the knack. The sentries were napping. Still, inevitably, all did not go as planned.
I was fifty feet from the bonfire, sneaking along beside this especially big, ugly shelter when somebody went heeling and toeing out its end like all the devils in Hell were after him. He bent under the weight of a big bundle. That bundle wriggled and whimpered.
"Narayan Singh!" I knew him instantly. "Stop!"
Right, Murgen. Freeze him with your voice.
The rest of the guys recognized him too. A yell went up. We could not believe our luck, though I had been warned that the big prize might be there to grab. Singh was the number one Deceiver, the villain Lady and the Captain want to spend long years killing, an inch at a time.
The bundle had to be their daughter.
I yelled orders. Instead of responding the men did whatever they thought of. Mostly they went after Singh. The racket wakened the rest of the Deceivers. The quickest tried to run.
Luckily, some of the guys stayed on the job.
"You warm now?" Goblin asked. I puffed heartily as I watched Thai Dei shove a skinny blade into the eye of a sleep befuddled Strangler. Thai Dei doesn't cut throats. He doesn't like the mess.
It was over. "How many did we get? How many got away?" I stared the direction Singh had fled. The silence there was not promising. The guys would have raised a real hoorah had they caught him.
Damn! I was excited for a while there. If only I could have dragged him back to Taglios. If wishes were fishes. "Keep some alive. We'll want somebody to tell us bedtime stories. One-Eye. How the hell did Singh all of a sudden know we were here?"
The runt shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe his goddess goosed him and told him to haul ass."
"Give me a break. Kina didn't have anything to do with it." But I wasn't that sure. Sometimes it is hard to disbelieve.
Thai Dei gestured.
"Right," I said. "Just what I was thinking myself."
One-Eye looked puzzled. Goblin grumbled, "What?" My wizards. Right on top of everything.
"Sometimes I wonder if you guys could find your dicks without a map. The shelter, old-timers. The shelter. Don't it seem like that's an awful lot of shack for one runt killer and a kid barely tall enough to bite you on the kneecap? A bit big even for a living saint and the daughter of a goddess?"
One-Eye developed a nasty grin. "Nobody else came out, did they? Yeah. You want I should start a fire?"
Before I could answer him Goblin squealed. I whirled. A shapeless darkness, visible only because of the bonfire, reared out of the shelter entrance then I slammed into the ground, felled by Thai Dei. Fire blasted over my head. Lights crackled. Balls of flame darted in from all around.