"That sounds dangerous."
He ignored that. "How about we retire? We're not young enough for this crap anymore."
Hagop said, "Those guys we ran into on the road down from Oar probably had the right idea. Only they were small-time. We ought to find a town and take over. Or sign on with somebody permanent like."
"That's been tried fifty times. Never lasts. Only place it worked was Gea-Xle. And there the guys got itchy feet after a while."
"Bet that wasn't the same guys who rode in."
"We're all old and tired, Hagop."
"Speak for yourself, Granddad," Lady said.
I threw a rock and mounted up. That was an invitation to banter. I did not take it up. I felt old and tired that way, too. She shrugged, mounted up herself. I rode out wondering where we were at, she and I. Probably nowhere. Maybe the spark had been neglected too long. Maybe propinquity was counterproductive.
As we moved farther south we noted a phenomenon. Post riders in numbers like we had seen nowhere else. In every village we were recognized. It was the same old salute and cheer that started in Taglios. Where they had them the young men came out with weapons.
I'm not much for morality. But I felt morally reprehensible when I saw them, as if I were somehow responsible for transmuting a pacific people into fire-eyed militarists.
Otto was of the opinion the weapons had been taken from last year's invaders. Maybe. Some. But most looked so old and rusted and brittle I would wish them only on my enemies.
The commission looked more improbable by the hour. Nowhere did we encounter evidence that Taglians were anything but a pleasant, friendly, industrious people blessed with a land where survival was not a day-to-day struggle. But even these country folk seemed to devote most of their leisure time, whence culture springs, to their bewildering battalions of gods.
"One signal victory," I told Lady when we were about eighty miles south of the city, "and these people will be psyched up to take any hardships the Shadowmasters can dish out."
"And if we take the commission and lose the first battle it won't matter anyway. We won't be around to have to suffer the consequences."
"That's my girl. Always thinking positive."
"Are you really going to take the commission?"
"Not if I can help it. That's why we're out here. But I've got a bad feeling that what I want won't have much to do with what I'll have to do."
Goblin snorted and grumbled something about being dragged around on the claws of fate. He was right. And my only notion for breaking loose was to find a way to keep heading south, Shadowmasters be damned.
We did not press hard, and paused for lunch before our breakfasts were really settled. Our bodies were not up to the continuous abuse of a sustained ride. Getting old.
Otto and Hagop wanted to lay on a fire and fix a real meal. I told them go ahead. Sore and tired, I settled down nearby, head pillowed on a rock, and stared at clouds trudging across alien skies that by day looked no different than those whence I had come.
Things were happening too fast and too strange to wring any sense out of them. I was plagued by a dread that I was the wrong man in the wrong place and wrong time for the Company. I did not feel competent to handle the situation Taglios threatened. Could I presume to lead a nation to war? I did not think so. Even if every Taglian man, woman, and child proclaimed me savior.
I tried comforting myself with the thought that I was not the first Captain with doubts, and far from the first to get embroiled in a local situation armed only with a glimmer of the true problems and stakes. Maybe I was luckier than some. I had Lady, for whom the waters of intrigue were home. If I could tap her talent. I had Mogaba, who, despite those cultural and language barriers that still existed between us, had begun to look like the best pure soldier I'd ever known. I had Goblin and One-Eye and Frogface and—maybe—Shifter. And I had four hundred years of Company shenanigans in my trick bag. But none of that appeased my conscience or stilled my doubts.
What had we gotten into on our simple ride back into the Company's origins?
Was that half the trouble? That we were in unknown territory so far as the Annals were concerned? That I was trying to work without a historical chart?
There were questions about our forebrethren and this country. I'd had little opportunity to ferret out information. The hints I had gathered suggested that those old boys had not been nice fellows. I got the impression that the diaspora of the original Free Companies had been a nut religious thing. The moving doctrine, a vestige of which survived among the Nar, must have been terrible. The name of the Company still struck fear and stirred intense emotion.
The exhaustion caught up. I fell asleep, though I did not realize it till the conversation of crows awakened me.
I bounced up. The others looked at me oddly. They did not hear it. They were about finished with their meal.
Otto was keeping the pot hot for me.
I looked into a lone nearby tree and saw several crows, their ugly heads all cocked so they could look at me. They started chattering. I had a definite feeling they wanted my attention.
I ambled toward them.
Two flew when I was halfway to the tree, gaining altitude in that clumsy way crows have, gliding to the southeast toward an isolated stand of trees maybe a mile away. A good fifty crows circled above those trees.
The remaining crow left the lone tree when he was satisfied I had seen that. I turned to lunch in a thoughtful mood. Halfway through a bad stew I concluded that I had to assume I had been given a warning. The road passed within yards of those trees.
As we mounted up, I said, "People, we ride with weapons bare. Goblin. See those trees yonder? Keep an eye on them. Like your life depends on it."
"What's up, Croaker?"
"I don't know. Just a hunch. Probably wrong, but it don't cost nothing to be careful."
"If you say so." He gave me a funny look, like he was wondering about my stability.
Lady gave me an even funnier look when, as we approached the woods, Goblin squeaked, "The place is infested!"
That's all he got to say. The infestation broke cover. Those little brown guys. About a hundred of them. Real military geniuses, too. Men on foot just don't go jumping people on horseback even if they do outnumber them.
Goblin said, "Gleep!" And then he said something else. The swarm of brown men became surrounded by a fog of insects.
They should have shot us down with arrows.
Otto and Hagop chose what I considered the stupider course. They charged. Their momentum carried them through the mob. My choice seemed the wiser. The others agreed. We just turned away and trotted ahead of the brown guys, leaving them to Goblin's mercies.
My beast stumbled. Master horseman that I am, I promptly fell off. Before I could get to my feet the brown guys were all around me, trying to lay hands on. But Goblin was on the job. I don't know what he did, but it worked. After they knocked me around a little, leaving me a fine crop of bruises, they decided to keep after those who had had sense enough to stay on their horses.
Otto and Hagop thundered past, making a rear attack. I staggered to my feet, looked for my mount. He was a hundred yards away, looking at me in a bemused sort of way. I limped toward him.
Those little guys had some kind of petty magic of their own going, and no sense at all. They just kept on. They dropped like flies, but when they outnumber you a dozen to one you got to worry about more than just a favorable kill ratio.
I did not see it well, busy as I was. And when I did manage to drag my abused flesh aboard my animal's back the whole brouhaha had swept out of sight down a narrow, shallow valley.
I have no idea how, but somehow I managed to get disoriented. Or something. When I got organized and started after my bunch I could not find them. Though I never got much chance to look. Fate intervened in the form of five little brown guys on horses that would have been amusing if they hadn't been waving swords and lances and rushing at me with intent to be obnoxious.