"Not much. Watch the woman. She's in charge. And she's used to getting her own way."
"Aren't you all?"
"Cynic."
"That's me. To the bone. And you're the one made me that way, love."
She gave me a funny look, forced a smile.
I wondered if we'd ever recover that moment on that hillside so many miles to the north.
We were just coming back to the river, after having walked past the Third Cataract, when Willow joined me as I walked my horse. He eyed the big black nervously and got around where I would be between it and him. He asked, "Are you guys really the Black Company?"
"The one and only. The evil, mean, rude, crude, nasty, and sometimes even unpleasant Black Company. You never spent any time in the military, did you?"
"As little as I could. Man, last I heard there was a thousand of you guys. What happened?"
"Times got hard up north. A year ago we were down to seven men. How long ago did you leave the empire?"
"Way back. Me and Cordy bugged out of Roses maybe a year after you guys were in there after that Rebel general, Raker. I wasn't much more than a kid. We sort of drifted from one thing to another, headed south. First thing you know, we was across the Sea of Torments. Then we got into some trouble with the imperials, so we had to get out of the empire. Then we just kept drifting, a little bit this year, a little bit that. We hooked up with Blade. Next thing you know, here we are down here. What're you guys doing here?"
"Going home." That was all I needed to tell him.
He knew plenty about us if he had come to us knowing Taglios was on our itinerary but not our final destination.
I said, "In a military outfit it's not acceptable behavior for just anybody to walk up and start shooting the shit with the commander any time they feel like it. I try to keep this outfit looking military. It intimidates the yokels."
"Yeah. Gotcha. Channels, and all that. Right." He went away.
His Taglios was a long way off. I figured we had time to sort his bunch out. So why press?
Chapter Twenty-two: TAGLIOS
We returned to the river and sailed down to the Second Cataract. Faster traffic had carried the word that the boys were back. Idon, a bizarre strip of a town, was a ghost city. We saw not a dozen souls there. Once again we had come to a place where the Black Company was remembered. That made me uncomfortable.
What had our forebrethren done down here? The Annals went on about the Pastel Wars but did not recall the sort of excesses that would terrify the descendants of the survivors forever.
Below Idon, while we waited to find a bargemaster with guts enough to take us south, I had Murgen plant the standard. Mogaba, as serious as ever, got a ditch dug and our encampment lightly fortified. I swiped a boat and crossed the river and climbed the hills to the ruins of Cho'n Delor. I spent a day roaming that haunted memorial to a dead god, alone except for crows, always wondering about the sort of men who had gone before me.
I suspected and feared that they had been men very much like me. Men caught in the rhythm and motion and pace, unable to wriggle free.
The Annalist who recorded the epic struggle that took place while the Company was in service to the Paingod had written a lot of words, sometimes going into too great a detail about daily minutiae, but he had had very little to say about the men with whom he had served.
Most had left their mark only when he recorded their passing.
I have been accused of the same. It has been said that too often when I bother to mention someone in particular it is only as a name of the slain. And maybe there's truth in that. Or maybe that's getting it backward. There is always pain in writing about those who have perished before me. Even when I mention them only in passing. These are my brethren, my family. Now, almost, my children. These Annals are their memorial. And my catharsis. But even as a child I was a master at damping and concealing my emotions.
But I was speaking of ruins, the spoor of battle.
The Pastel Wars must have been a struggle as bitter as that we had endured in the north, confined to a smaller territory. The scars were still grim. They might take a thousand years to heal.
Twice during that outing I thought I glimpsed the mobile stump I had seen from the wall of the Temple of Travellers' Repose. I tried getting closer, for a better look, but it always disappeared on me.
It was never more than a glimpse from the corner of my eye, anyway. Maybe I was imagining it.
I did not get to explore as thoroughly as I wanted. I was tempted to hang around but the old animal down inside told me I did not want to be stranded in those ruins after dark. It told me wicked things stalked Cho'n Delor's night. I listened. I went back over the river. Mogaba met me at the shore. He wanted to know what I had found. He was as interested in the Company's past as I was.
I liked and respected the big black man more with every hour. That evening I formalized his hitherto de facto status as commander of the Company infantry. And I resolved to take Murgen's Annalist training more seriously.
Maybe it was just a hunch. Whatever, I decided that it was time I got the Company's internal workings whipped into order.
All these natives, lately, were afraid of us. They carried old grudges. Maybe farther down the river there was somebody with less fear and a bigger grudge.
We were on the brink of lands where the Company's adventures were recalled in the early lost volumes of the Annals. The earliest extant picked up our tale in cities north of Trogo Taglios—cities that no longer exist. I wished there was some way I could dig details of the past out of the locals. But they were not talking to us.
While I moped around Cho'n Delor One-Eye found a southern bargemaster willing to carry us all the way to Trogo Taglios. The man's fee was exorbitant, but Willow Swan assured me I was unlikely to get a better offer. We were haunted by our historical legacy.
I got no help from Swan or his companions unearthing that.
My notion for unmasking Swan and his gang gradually made very little headway. The woman forced them to stay to themselves, which did not please Cordy Mather. He was hungry for news from the empire. I did find out that the old man was called Smoke, but never got a hint of the woman's name. Even with Frogface on the job.
They were cautious people.
Meantime, they watched us so closely I felt they were taking notes whenever I bellied up to the rail to increase the flow in the river.
Other concerns plagued me, too. Crows. Always, crows. And Lady, who hardly spoke these days. She pulled her turns at duty with the rest of the Company but stayed out of the way otherwise.
Shifter and his girlfriend were not to be seen. They had disappeared while we unloaded at Thresh—though I held the disturbing certainty that they were still around, close enough to be watching.
What with the crows and all our arrivals anticipated I had the feeling I was being watched all the time. It was not hard to get a little paranoid.
We rode the rapids of the First Cataract and swept on down the great river, into the dawn of Company history.
My maps called it Troko Tallios. Locally they called it Trogo Taglios, though those who lived there used the shorter Taglios, mostly. As Swan said, the Trogo part refers to an older city that has been enveloped by the younger, more energetic Taglios.
It was the biggest city I had ever seen, a vast sprawl without a protective wall, still growing rapidly, horizontally instead of vertically. Northern cities grow upward because no one wants to build outside the wall.