A second line came down. I tied myself. We were five feet from the top, unable to get higher. The men on the lines took in the slack. The carpet slid in against the Tower. Poles reached down. I grabbed one.
The carpet dropped away.
For a second I thought I was gone. Then they hauled me in.
There was heavy fighting downstairs, they said. The Limper ignored me completely, hurried away to get in on the action. I just sprawled atop the Tower, glad to be safe. I even napped. I wakened alone with the north wind, and an enfeebled comet on the horizon. I went down to audit the endgame of the Lady’s grand design.
She won. Not one in a hundred Rebels survived, and most of those deserted early.
The Howler spread disease with the globes he dropped. It reached its critical stage soon after the Lady and I departed, chasing Soulcatcher. The Rebel wizards could not stem it on any significant scale. Thus the windrows of dead.
Even so, many of the enemy proved partially or wholly immune, and not all of ours escaped infection. The Rebel took the top tier.
The plan, at that point, called for the Black Company to counterattack. The Limper, rehabilitated, was to assist them with men from inside the Tower. But the Lady was not there to order the charge. In her absence Whisper ordered a withdrawal into the Tower.
The interior of the Tower was a series of death traps manned not only by the Howler’s easterners but by wounded taken inside previous nights and healed by the Lady’s powers.
It ended long before I could thread the maze to my comrades. When I did cross their trail, I learned I was hours behind. They had departed the Tower under orders to establish a picket line where the stockade had stood.
I reached ground level well after nightfall. I was tired. I just wanted peace, quiet, maybe a garrison post in a small town... My mind wasn’t working well. I had things to do, arguments to argue, a battle to fight with the Captain. He would not want’ to betray another commission. There are the physically dead and the morally dead. My comrades were among the latter. They would not understand me. Elmo, Raven, Candy, One-Eye, Goblin, they would act like I was talking a foreign language. And yet, could I condemn them? They were my brothers, my friends, my family, and acted moral within that context. The weight of it fell on me. I had to convince them there was a larger obligation.
I crunched through dried blood, stepping over corpses, leading horses I had liberated from the Lady’s stables. Why I took several is a mystery, except for a vague notion that they might come in handy. The one that Feather had ridden I took because I did not feel like walking.
I paused to stare at the comet. It seemed drained. “Not this time, eh?” I asked it. “Can’t say I’m totally dismayed.” Fake chuckle. How could I be? Had this been the Rebel’s hour, as he had believed, I would be dead.
I stopped twice more before reaching camp. The first time I heard soft cursing as I descended the remnants of the lower retaining wall. I approached the sound, found One-Eye seated beneath the crucified forvalaka. He talked steadily in a soft voice, in a language I did not understand. So intent was he that he did not hear me come. Neither did he hear me go a minute later, thoroughly disgusted.
One-Eye was collecting for the death of his brother Tom-Tom. Knowing him, he would stretch it out for days.
I paused again where the false White Rose had watched the battle. She was there still, very dead at a very young age. Her wizard friends had made her death harder by trying to save her from the Howler’s disease.
“So much for that.” I looked back at the Tower, at the comet. She had won...
Or had she? What had she accomplished, really? The destruction of the Rebel? But he had become the instrument of her husband, an even greater evil. It had been he defeated here, if only he, she, and I knew that. The greater wickedness had been forestalled. Moreover, the Rebel ideal had passed through a cleansing, tempering flame. A generation hence...
I am not religious. I cannot conceive of gods who would give a damn about humanity’s frothy carryings-on. I mean, logically, beings of that order just wouldn’t. But maybe there is a force for greater good, created by our unconscious minds conjoined, that becomes an independent power greater than the sum of its parts. Maybe, being a mind-thing, it is not time-bound. Maybe it can see everywhere and everywhen and move pawns so that what seems to be today’s victory becomes the cornerstone of tomorrow’s defeat.
Maybe weariness did things to my mind. For a few seconds I believed I saw the landscape of tomorrow, saw the Lady’s triumph turning like a serpent and generating her destruction during the next passage of the comet. I saw a true White Rose carrying her standard to the Tower, saw she and her champions as clearly as if I were there that day myself...
I swayed atop that beast of Feather’s, stricken and terrified. For if it were a true vision, I would be there. If it were a true vision, I knew the White Rose. Had known her for a year. She was my friend. And I had discounted her because of a handicap...
I urged the horses toward camp. By the time a sentinel challenged me I had regained enough cynicism to have discounted the vision. I’d just been through too much in one day. Characters like me don’t become prophets. Especially not from the wrong side.
Elmo’s was the first familiar face I saw. “God, you look awful,” He said. “You hurt?”
I could do nothing but shake my head. He dragged me off the horse and put me away somewhere and that was the last I knew for hours. Except that my dreams were as disjointed and time-loose as the vision, and I did not like them at all. And I could not escape them.
The mind is resilient, though. I managed to forget the dreams within moments of awakening.
Chapter Seven
Rose
The argument with the Captain raged for two hours. He was unyielding. He did not accept my arguments, legal or moral. Time brought others into the fray, as they came to the Captain on business. By the time I really lost my temper most of the principals of the Company were present: the Lieutenant, Goblin, Silent, Elmo, Candy, and several new officers recruited here at Charm. What little support I received came from surprising quarters. Silent backed me. So did two of the new officers.
I stamped out. Silent and Goblin followed. I was in a towering rage, though unsurprised by their response. With the Rebel beaten there was little to encourage the Company’s defection. They would be hogs knee-deep in slops now. Questions of right and wrong sounded stupid. Basically, who cared?
It was still early, the day after the battle. I had not slept well, and was full of nervous energy. I paced vigorously, trying to walk it off, Goblin timed me, stepped into my path after I settled down. Silent observed from nearby. Goblin asked, “Can we talk?”
“I’ve been talking. Nobody listens.”
“You’re too argumentative. Come over here and sit down.” Over here proved to be a pile of gear near a campfire where some men were cooking, others were playing Tonk. The usual crowd. They looked at me from the corners of their eyes and shrugged. They all seemed worried. Like they were concerned for my sanity.
I guess if any of them had done what I had, a year ago, I would have felt the same. It was honest confusion and concern based in care for a comrade.
Their thickheadedness irritated me, yet I could not sustain that irritation because by sending Goblin around, they had proven they wanted to understand.
The game went along, quiet and sullen initially, growing animated as they exchanged gossip about the course of the battle.