"Your problem is those eight hundred miles, Cap. The other seven thousand were a stroll in the country."
The Prahbrindrah said something short. Swan nodded but did not translate. I looked at Frogface. He told me, "Glittering stone."
"What?"
"That's what he said, chief. Glittering stone. I don't know what he meant."
"Swan?"
"It's a local expression. ‘The walking dead' is the closest way to say it in Rosean. It has something to do with old times and something called the Free Companies of Khatovar, which was bad medicine back when."
I raised an eyebrow. "The Black Company is the last of the Free Companies of Khatovar, Swan."
He gave me a sharp look. Then he translated.
The Prince chattered back. He stared at One-Eye's victim as he did.
"Cap, he says he supposes anything is possible. But a returning company ain't been spotted since his granddaddy's granddaddy was a pup. He wonders, though. Says maybe you're real. Your coming was foretold." Quick glance at Frogface, with a scowl, like the imp was a traitor. "And the Shadowmasters have warned him against dealing with you. Though that would be the natural inclination, considering the devastation and despair spread by the fanatics of old."
I glanced at Frogface. He nodded. Swan was striving for exactitude.
Lady said, "He's playing games, Croaker. He wants something. Tell him to get to the point."
"That would be nice, Swan."
He continued translating, "But yesterday's terror means nothing today. You are not those fanatics. That was seen on the river. And Trogo Taglios will bow the neck to no one. If the pestilence in the south fears a band of freebooters, he is willing to forget the ancient scores and tend to those of his own time. If you too can forget."
I didn't have the foggiest what the hell he was talking about.
"Croaker!" Lady snapped, catching the scent of what was in the back of my mind almost before I did. "We don't have time for you to indulge your curiosity about the past. There's something going on here. Tend to it before we get our butts in a sling."
She was turning into one of the guys for sure.
"You getting the idea where we stand, Swan? You don't really figure we think running into you and the woman up there was by chance, do you? Talk me some plain talk."
Some not so very plain talk took a while. Darkness came and the moon rose. It climbed the sky. The operators of the grove became exasperated but were too polite to ask their ruling prince to bug off. And while we stayed, so did the scores who had come out to look at us.
"Definitely something going on," I whispered to Lady. "But how do I dig it out of him?"
The Prahbrindrah played down everything he said, but the presence of the city fathers shrieked that Taglios was approaching a perilous crossroads. An undercurrent in what I heard told me the Prince wanted to spit in the face of calamity.
Willow tried to explain. "A while back—and nobody's sure exactly when because nobody was looking for it—what you might call a darkness turned up in a place called Pityus, which is like four hundred miles southeast of Taglios. Nobody worried about it. Then it spread to Tragevec and Kiaulune, which are pretty important, and Six and Fred, and all of a sudden everybody was worried but it was too late. You had this huge chunk of country ruled by these four sorcerers that refugees called Shadowmasters. They had a thing about shadows. Changed Tragevec's name to Shadowlight and Kiaulune to Shadowcatch and nowadays most everybody calls their empire the Shadowlands."
"You're going to get around to telling me what this's got to do with us, aren't you?"
"Within a year after the Shadowmasters took over they had those cities—which hadn't practiced war since the terror of Khatovar—armed and playing imperial games. In the years since, the Shadowmasters have conquered most of the territories between Taglios's southern frontiers and the edge of the map."
"I'm starting to smell it, Croaker," Lady said. She had grown grim as she listened.
"I am, too. Go on, Swan."
"Well, before they got to us... Before they went to work on Taglios they had some kind of falling out down there. Started feuding. The refugees talk about the whole big show. Intrigues, betrayals, subversions, assassinations, alliances shifting all over. Whenever it looked like one of them was starting to get ahead the others would gang up. Was like that for fifteen, eighteen years. So Taglios wasn't threatened."
"But now they are?"
"Now they're all looking this way. They made a move last year but it didn't work out for them." He looked smug. "What they got here in this berg is all the guts anybody could ask—and not a bat in broad daylight's notion what the hell to do with them. Me and Cordy and Blade, we kind of got drafted last year. But I wasn't never much of a soldier and neither was they. As generals we're like tits on a boar hog."
"So this isn't about bodyguarding and dirty-tricking for your Prince at all. Is it? He wants to drag us into his fight. Did he think he could get us on the cheap or something? Didn't you make a report about our trip down here?"
"He's the kind of guy who's got to check things for himself. Maybe he figured to see if you rated yourself cheap. I told him all the stories I ever heard about you guys. He still wanted to see for himself. He's a pretty good old boy. First prince I ever seen that tries to do what a prince is supposed to do."
"Rarer than frog hair, then. I'm sure. But you said it, Swan. We're on a mission from the gods. We don't have time to mess in local disputes. Maybe when we're on our way back." Swan laughed. "What's so funny?"
"You really don't got no choice."
"No?" I tried to read him. I couldn't. Lady shrugged when I looked at her, "Well? Why not?"
"To get where you want to go you got to head right through the Shadowlands. Seven, eight hundred miles of them. I don't think even you guys can make it. Neither does he."
"You said they were four hundred miles away."
"Four hundred miles to Pityus, Cap. Where it started. They got everything from the border south now. Seven, eight hundred to Shadowcatch. And like I said, they started on us last year. Took everything south of the Main."
I knew the Main to be a broad river south of Taglios, a natural frontier and barrier.
Swan continued, "Their troops are only eighty miles from Taglios some places. And we know they're planning a push as soon as the rivers go down. And we don't figure they're gonna be polite. All four Shadowmasters said they would get mean if the Prahbrindrah had anything to do with you guys."
I looked at Lady. "Damned awful lot of folks know more about what I'm doing and where I'm going than I do."
She ignored me. She asked, "Why didn't he run us off, Swan? Why did he send you to meet us?"
"Oh, he never sent us. He didn't know about that part till we got back. He just figures if the Shadowmasters are scared of you guys then he ought to be friends with you."
It wasn't me who frightened them, but why give that away? Swan and his buddies and boss didn't need to know who Lady had been. "He's got guts."
"They all got guts. Out the yang-yang. Pity is, they don't know what to do with them. And I can't show them. Like he says, the Shadowmasters would come sooner or later anyway, so why appease them? Why let them pick their time?"
"What's in this for Willow Swan? You come on pretty strong for a guy just passing through."
"Cordy ain't here to hear me, so I'll tell it straight. I'm not on the run no more. I've found my place. I don't want to lose it. Good enough?"