“Shit,” Elmo muttered. He is a good man, but muggy spring days make him lazy. “Okay. Otto. Silent. Peewee. Whitey. Billygoat. Raven...”
I coughed discreetly.
“You’re out of your head, Croaker. All right.” He did a quick count on his fingers, called three more names. We formed outside the column. Elmo gave us the once-over to make sure we hadn’t forgotten our heads. “Let’s go.”
We hurried forward. Doughbelly directed us into a wood-lot overlooking the stricken town. Longhead and a man called Jolly waited there. Elmo asked, “Any developments?”
Jolly, who is professionally sarcastic, replied, “The fires are burning down.”
We looked at the village. I saw nothing that did not turn my stomach. Slaughtered livestock. Slaughtered cats and dogs. The small, broken forms of dead children.
“Not the kids too,” I said, without realizing I was speaking. “Not the babies again.”
Elmo looked at me oddly, not because he was unmoved himself but because I was uncharacteristically sympathetic. I have seen a lot of dead men. I did not enlighten him. For me there is a big difference between adults and’ kids. “Elmo, I have to go in there.”
“Don’t be stupid. Croaker. What can you do?”
“If I can save one kid...”
Raven said, “I’ll go with him.” A knife appeared in his hand. He must have learned that trick from a conjurer. He does it when he is nervous or angry.
“Think you can bluff twenty-five men?”
Raven shrugged. “Croaker is right, Elmo, It’s got to be done. Some things you don’t tolerate.”
Elmo surrendered. “We’ll all go. Pray they aren’t so drunk they can’t tell friend from foe.”
Raven started riding.
The village was good-sized. There had been more than two hundred homes before the Limper’s advent. Half were burned or burning. Bodies littered the streets. Flies clustered round their sightless eyes. “Nobody of military age,” I noted.
I dismounted and knelt beside a boy of four or five. His skull had been smashed, but he was breathing. Raven dropped beside me. “Nothing I can do,” I said.
“You can end his ordeal.” There were tears in Raven’s eyes. Tears and anger. “There’s no excuse for this.” He moved to a corpse lying in shadow.
This one was about seventeen. He wore the jacket of a Rebel Mainforcer. He had died fighting. Raven said, “He must have been on leave. One boy to protect them.” He pried a bow from lifeless fingers, bent it. “Good wood. A few thousand of these could rout the Limper.” He slung the bow and appropriated the boy’s arrows.
I examined another two children. They were beyond help. Inside a burned hut I found a grandmother who had died trying to shield an infant. In vain.
Raven exuded disgust. “Creatures like the Limper create two enemies for every one they destroy.”
I became aware of muted weeping, and of cursing and laughter somewhere ahead. “Let’s see what that is.”
Beside the hut we found four dead soldiers. The lad had left his mark. “Good shooting,” Raven observed. “Poor fool.”
“Fool?”
“He should’ve had the sense to run. Might’ve gone easier on everyone.” His intensity startled me. What did he care about a boy from the other side? “Dead heroes don’t get a second chance.”
Aha! He was drawing a parallel with an event in his own mysterious past.
The cursing and weeping resolved into a scene fit to disgust anyone tainted with humanity.
There were a dozen soldiers in the circle, laughing at their own crude jokes. I remembered a bitch dog surrounded by males who, contrary to custom, were not fighting for mounting rights but were taking turns. They might have killed her had I not intervened.
Raven and I mounted up, the better to see.
The victim was a child of nine. Welts covered her. She was terrified, yet making no sound. In a moment I understood. She was a mute.
War is a cruel business prosecuted by cruel men. The gods know the Black Company are no cherubim. But there are limits.
They were making an old man watch. He was the source of both curses and weeping.
Raven put an arrow into a man about to assault the girl.
“Dammit!” Elmo yelled. “Raven!...”
The soldiers turned on us. Weapons appeared. Raven loosed another arrow. It dropped the trooper holding the old man. The Limper’s men lost any inclination to fight. Elmo whispered, “Whitey, go tell the old man to haul ass over here.”
One of the Limper’s men took a like notion. He scampered off. Raven let him run.
The Captain would have his behind on a platter.
He did not seem concerned. “Old timer. Come here. Bring the child. And get some clothes on her.”
Part of me could not help but applaud, but another part called Raven a fool.
Elmo did not have to tell us to watch our backs. We were painfully aware that we were in big trouble. Hurry, Whitey, I thought.
Their messenger reached their commander first. He came tottering up the street. Doughbelly was right. -He was worse than his men.
The old timer and girl clung to Raven’s stirrup. The old man scowled at our badges. Elmo nudged his mount forward, pointed at Raven. I nodded.
The drunken officer stopped in front of Elmo. Dull eyes assayed us. He seemed impressed. We have grown hard in a rough trade, and look it.
“You!” he squealed suddenly, exactly the way Whiny-voice had done in Opal. He stared at Raven. Then he spun, ran.
Raven thundered, “Stand still, Lane! Take it like a man, you gutless thief!” He snatched an arrow from his quiver.
Elmo cut his bowstring.
Lane stopped. His response was not gratitude. He cursed. He enumerated the horrors we could expect at the hand of his patron.
I watched Raven.
He stared at Elmo in cold fury. Elmo faced it without flinching. He was a hard guy himself.
Raven did his knife trick. I tapped his blade with my swordtip. He mouthed one soft curse, glared, relaxed. Elmo said, “You left your old life behind, remember?”
Raven nodded once, sharply. “It’s harder than I thought.” His shoulders sagged. “Run away, Lane. You’re not important enough to kill.”
A clatter rose behind us. The Captain was coming.
That little wart of the Limper’s puffed up and wriggled like a cat about to pounce. Elmo glared at him down the length of his sword. He got the hint.
Raven muttered, “I should know better anyway. He’s only a butt boy.”
I asked a leading question. It drew a blank stare.
The Captain rattled up. “What the hell is going on?”
Elmo began one of his terse reports. Raven interrupted. “Yon sot is one of Zouad’s jackals. I wanted to kill him. Elmo and Croaker stopped me.”
Zouad? Where had I heard that name? Connected with the Limper. Colonel Zouad. The Limper’s number one villain. Political liaison, among other euphemisms. His name had occurred in a few overheard conversations between Raven and the Captain. Zouad was Raven’s intended fifth victim? Then the Limper himself must have been behind Raven’s misfortunes.
Curiouser and curiouser. Also scarier and scarier. The Limper is not anybody to mess with.
The Limper’s man shouted, “I want this man arrested.” The Captain gave him a look. “He murdered two of my men.”
The bodies were there in plain sight. Raven said nothing. Elmo stepped out of character and volunteered, “They were raping the child. Their idea of pacification.”
The Captain stared at his opposite number. The man reddened. Even the blackest villain will feel shame if caught unable to justify himself. The Captain snapped, “Croaker?”
“We found one dead Rebel, Captain. Indications were this sort of thing started before he became a factor.”
He asked the sot, “These people are subjects of the Lady? Under her protection?” The point might be arguable in other courts, but at the moment it told. By his lack of a defense the man confessed a moral guilt.