It was too late for polite. Those guys understood the language. But One-Eye's growling threw them. They did not know what to do next.
"Croaker!" Murgen called. "Company."
Company indeed. Some of the boys who had given us the fish-eye earlier.
They were just the specific for the bruised egos of our new friends. The boys jumped up and down and howled and banged their spears against their shields. They hurled taunts. They pranced along the stone-marked boundary. One-Eye trotted after them.
The fish were not biting. But they had a little bait of their own. Something got said.
The two warriors howled and attacked. That caught everyone off guard. Three outsiders went down. The others subdued our guides quickly, though not without further mishap.
Wheezer poised on the boundary, wringing his hands and carping at One-Eye. While crows circled high above.
"Goblin!" I snapped. "One-Eye! Get with it!"
One-Eye cackled, reached up, grabbed his hair, and yanked.
He peeled himself from under that silly hat. And the fanged and fiery thing behind the peeling was ugly enough to turn a buzzard's stomach.
Which was all show, all distraction, while Goblin got on with the meat of it.
Goblin seemed to be surrounded by giant worms. It took me a moment to realize all those squirms were lengths of rope. I shrieked when I saw the state of our gear.
Goblin howled with laughter as a hundred chunks of rope went slithering through grass and air to pester, climb, bind, garrote.
Wheezer pranced around in an absolute apoplectic fit. "Stop! Stop! You're destroying the whole concord."
One-Eye ignored him. He put the mask back over the horror while punishing Goblin with ferocious looks. He resented Goblin's ingenuity.
Goblin was not finished. Having strangled everyone not already carved up or nominally friendly, he had his ropes drag the corpses across the boundary.
"No outside witnesses," One-Eye assured me, blind to those damned crows. He glared at Goblin. "What might the little toad have been up to?"
"Say what?"
"Those ropes. That was no spur-of-the-moment piece of work, Croaker. It would take months to charm that much line. I know who he had in mind, too. No bloody more nice, polite, long-suffering One-Eye. The gloves are off now. I'm going to get my revenge before that little bastard catches me with my back turned."
"Preemptive vengeance?" There was a One-Eye concept for you.
"I told you, he's up to something. I'm not going to stand around and wait... "
"Ask Wheezer what to do about the bodies." Wheezer said bury them deep and do a prime job of camouflaging.
"Trouble," Lady said. "Any way you look at it."
"The animals are rested. We'll outrun it."
"I hope so. I wish... " There was something in her voice that I could not decipher: I did not get it till later. Nostalgia. Homesickness. Longing for something irrevocably lost.
Goblin dubbed our new guides the Geek and the Freak. Despite my displeasure the names clung.
We crossed the savannah in fourteen days, without mishap, though Wheezer and the guides panicked each time they heard distant drums.
The message they dreaded did not come till we had left the savannah for the mountainous desert bounding it on the south. Both guides immediately begged to be allowed to stay with the Company. An extra spear is an extra spear.
One-Eye told me, "The drums said they've been declared outlaws. What they said about us you don't want to hear. You decide to go back north again you'd better think about another way to get there."
Four days later we made camp on some heights overlooking a large city and a broad river that flowed southeast. We had come to Gea-Xle, eight hundred miles below the equator. The mouth of that river, sixteen hundred miles farther south, lay at the edge of the world on the map I had made at the Temple of Travellers' Repose. The last place name marked, with great uncertainty, was Troko Tallio, a ways upriver from the coast.
Once camp was set to my satisfaction I went looking for Lady. I located her among some high rocks. But instead of studying the view she was staring into a tin teacup. For an instant the cup appeared to contain a pinprick spark. Then she sensed my approach. She looked up, smiled.
There was no spark in the cup when I looked again. Must have been my imagination.
"The Company is growing," she said. "You've accumulated twenty men since leaving the Tower."
"Uhm." I sat down, stared at the city. "Gea-Xle."
"Where the Black Company was in service. But where wasn't the Company in service?"
I chuckled. "You're right. We're wading around in our own past. We put the present dynasty in power down there. When we left it was without the usual hard feelings. What would happen if we rode in with Murgen showing our true colors?"
"There's only one way to find out. Let's try it."
Our gazes met and locked. The multiple meaning sparked between us. It had been a long time since that lost moment. We had been evading moments like this, a sort of delayed adolescent shyness and guilt.
The sun settled in a glorious conflagration, the only fire there was that evening.
I just could not get past who she used to be.
She was angry with me. But she hid it well and joined me in watching the city put on its night face. That was a cosmetic job worthy of an aging princess.
She did not need to waste energy getting mad at me. I was doing a fine job being mad at myself. "Strange stars, strange skies," I observed. "The constellations are completely out of whack now. Much more and I'll start feeling like I'm in the wrong world."
She made a snorting sound.
"More than I do already. Hell. I'd better rummage the Annals to see what they say about Gea-Xle. I don't know why, but the place bothers me." Which was true, though I'd only just realized it. That was unusual. People intimidate me, not places.
"Why don't you do that?" I could almost hear her thinking, Go hide in your books and your yesterdays. I'll sit here staring today and tomorrow in the eye.
It was one of those times when no matter what you say, it will be the wrong thing. So I did the second worst thing and went away without saying anything at all.
I almost tripped over Goblin going back to camp. Though I was making a racket stumbling through the dark, he was so intent he did not hear me.
He was peeping over a rock, eyeballing the slump of One-Eye's back. He was so obviously up to no good I could not resist. I bent and whispered, "Boo!"
He let put a squawk and jumped about ten feet, stood there giving me the evil eye.
I tramped on into camp and started digging for the book I wanted to read.
"Why don't you mind your own business, Croaker?" One-Eye demanded.
"What?"
"Mind your own business. I was laying for the little toad. If you hadn't stuck your nose in, I'd have had him strung up like an antelope ready for gutting." A rope slithered out of the darkness and curled up in his lap.
"I won't let it happen again."
The Annals did nothing to relieve my apprehension. I got really paranoid, getting that nervous itch between the shoulder blades. I began studying the darkness, trying to see who was watching.
Both Goblin and One-Eye had a big sullen on. I asked, "Can you guys come up for a little serious business?"
Well, yes, they could, but they could not admit that their pouting was not of earthshaking significance, so they just stared at me and waited for me to get on with it. "I've got a bad feeling. Not exactly a premonition, but the same family, and it keeps getting worse."
They stared, stone-faced, refusing comment.
But Murgen volunteered, "I know what you mean, Croaker. I've had the heebie-jeebies since we got here."
I gave the rest a scan. They stopped yakking. The Tonk games came to a halt. Otto and Hagop had small nods to admit that they felt unsettled, too. The rest were too macho to admit anything.