That bunch is Company, too. Shirking work. The antique lunger is Wheezer. Not much good for anything. How he got through the big brawl no one knows. They say he busted heads with the best of them.
The other two black guys are the Geek and the Freak. No telling why. Nothing wrong with them. Look like a couple of rubbed ebony statues, don’t they?
You think these names just come out of a hat? They earn them the hard way. Usually they come out from under One-Eye’s hat, really. Yeah, they probably have real names. But they have been called by nicknames so long even they have trouble remembering.
Goblin and One-Eye are the main ones not to forget. And to remember not to put behind you. They do not deal well with temptation.
This is Glimmers Like Dewdrops Street. Nobody knows why. A real mouthful, right? You ought to hear it in Jaicuri. A jawbreaker. This is the route the Company took coming in to snatch the tower. Maybe they will rename it Runs With Blood Street.
Yeah, the Company charged through here in the heart of the night, killing anything that moved, and jammed in there before they had any idea what was happening. With Shape-shifter’s help they roared on up the tower where they let him help finish off Stormshadow before they tagged him.
It was an old Company grudge. They owed Shifter from another generation, when Shifter, helping Soulcatcher break the city’s resistance, murdered One-Eye’s brother Tom-Tom when the Company was in service to the Syndic of Beryl. Croaker, One-Eye and Goblin, Otto and Hagop are the only guys left from those days. Hell, Croaker is gone now. Isn’t he? History-worshipping slob is buried out there in one of those mounds. Fertilizing the plain. Mogaba is the Old Man now. Sort of, in his own mind.
Those who form it come and go but the Company is forever. Every brother, great or small, is a snack just not yet snapped up by the devouring maw of time.
Those big black monster men watching the gate are the Nar. They are descendants of the Black Company of centuries ago. Scary beasts, aren’t they? Mogaba and a whole herd of his pals joined the Company quest at Gea-Xle. The Old Crew have had no pleasure of them.
You mix the whole crowd up and squeeze them dry, you could not come up with two ounces of sense of humor.
There used to be a lot more of them than there are now but they keep getting themselves killed. They are bone crazy, the whole lot. For them the Company is a religion. Only their Company is not the Black Company of the Old Crew. That becomes more apparent almost by the hour.
All Nar stand more than six feet tall. All Nar run like the wind and leap like gazelles. Mogaba chose only the most athletic and warriorly to join the quest for Khatovar. All the Nar are quick as cats and strong as gorillas. All the Nar use their weapons like they were born with them in their hands.
The rest? The ones who call themselves the Old Crew? Yeah. It is true. The Company is more than a job. If it was just a job, just selling swords to whoever would pay, the Black Company would not be in this part of the world. There was work a plenty in the north. The world never lacks for potentates who want to bully their subjects or neighbors.
The Company is family for those who belong. The Company is home. The Company is a nation of outcasts, alone and defying the whole world.
Now the Company is trying to complete its cycle of life. It is on a quest in search of its birthplace, fabled Khatovar. But all the world seems determined that Khatovar shall be unattainable, a virgin forever hidden behind a veil of shadow.
The Company is home, sure, but Croaker was the only one who ever went completely misty-eyed over that damned angle.
For him the Black Company was a mystery cult though he never went as far as Mogaba and made it a holy calling.
Watch your step. They still don’t have all the mess cleaned out from the last attack. If you couldn’t tell by the smell. The Jaicuri don’t help much anymore. Maybe it is lack of civic pride.
The Nyueng Bao? They are just here. They stay out of the way. They have this notion that they can stay neutral. They will learn. Shadowspinner is going to teach them. Nobody stays neutral in this world. The best you can do is choose your spot to jump in.
Little out of shape? You will come around. A few weeks running hither and yon, blunting Shadowspinner’s probes and hustling out on Mogaba’s spoiling raids, will get you as sharp as a Nyueng Bao sword.
You thought sieges were all just laying around relaxing and waiting the other guy out?
Man, this other guy is a foamy mouth lunatic.
And not just nuts. He is a sorcerer. A major player, though he hasn’t shown much here. Before the Old Man got himself offed in the big slugfest that trapped everyone here he hurt Spinner real bad. The old devil just hasn’t been himself since. Poor baby.
This is it. Top of the tower. And there is the whole stinking burg, laid out like it is on one of those sand tables Lady always liked.
Oh, yeah. Those rumors have made it here, too. They started with some Shadowlander prisoners. Maybe that was Kina up north. Or something. But it could not have been Lady. She died right out there. Fifty guys saw her taken down. Half of them got killed trying to rescue her.
How can you say that? You can’t be sure? How many eyewitnesses does it take? She is dead. The Old Man is dead. They’re all dead, them what did not get inside before Mogaba sealed the gates.
The whole mob is dead. All but the crowd in here. And they are caught between lunatics. It’s a tossup who is crazier, Mogaba or Shadowspinner.
You see it all? That is it. Dejagore enduring the siege of the Shadowmasters. Not real impressive, is it? But every one of those burned areas memorializes a ferocious hand to hand, house to house negotiation with the Shadowlanders.
Fires start easily in Dejagore.
Hell is supposed to be hot, isn’t it?
4
...who I am, on the improbably remote chance that my scribblings do survive. I am Murgen, Standardbearer of the Black Company, though I bear the shame of having lost the standard in battle. I am keeping unofficial Annals because Croaker is dead, One-Eye won’t, and hardly anyone else can read or write. I was the heir Croaker trained. I will do it even without official sanction.
I will be your guide for a few months or weeks or days, however long it takes the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end.
Nobody inside these walls is going to get out of this. There are too many of them and too few of us. Our sole advantage is that our commander is as mad as theirs. That makes us unpredictable. Don’t add much hope, though.
Mogaba will not give up as long as he personally is capable of hanging onto something with one hand while he throws rocks with the other.
I expect my writings to blow away on a dark wind, never to be touched by another eye. Or they might become the tinder Shadowspinner uses to light the pyre under the last man he murders after taking Dejagore.
If anyone does find this, brother, we begin. This is the Book of Murgen, last of the Annals of the Black Company. The long tale winds down.
I will die lost and frightened in a world so alien I cannot understand a tenth of it when I focus all my soul. It is so old.
Times lies heavily here. Two thousand-year-old traditions underpin incredible absurdities taken completely for granted. Dozens of races and cultures and religions exist in a mix that should be volatile but has persisted so long that conflicts are just reflexive twitches in an ancient body mostly too tired to bother anymore.