I buried my head in my hands, muttered, “I thought we had them whipped.” Why the hell had we left Beryl?
Soulcatcher prodded Raven with a toe. Raven did not stir. “Come on!” Catcher grumbled. “They need me at Lords. Nightcrawler and I may end up trying to hold the city by ourselves.”
“Why didn’t you just leave us if the situation is so critical?”
He hemmed and hawed and slid around it, and before he finished I suspected that this one Taken had a sense of honor, a sense of duty toward those who had accepted his protection. He would not admit it, though. Never. That would not fit the image of the Taken.
I thought about another journey through the sky. I thought hard. I am as lazy as the next guy, but I could not take that. Not now. Not feeling the way I did. “I’d fall off for sure. There’s no point you hanging around. We won’t be ready for days. Hell, we can walk out.” I thought about the forest. Walking did not appeal to me either. “Give us our badges back. So you can locate us again. Then you can pick us up if you get time.”
He grumbled. We batted it back and forth. I kept on about how shaky I was, about how shaky Raven would be.
He was anxious to get moving. He let me convince him. He unloaded his carpet-he had gone somewhere while I was unconscious-and climbed aboard. “I’ll see you in a few days.” His carpet rose far faster than it had done with Raven and I aboard. And then it was gone. I dragged myself to the things he had left behind.
“You bastard.” I chuckled. His protest had been a shuck. He had left food, our own weapons that we had left in Lords, and odds and ends we might need to survive. Not a bad boss, for one of the Taken. “Hey! Silent! Where the hell are you?”
Silent drifted into the clearing. He looked at me, at Raven, at the supplies, and did not say anything. Of course not. He is Silent.
He looked ragged around the edges. “Not enough sleep?” I asked. He nodded. “You see what happened here?” He nodded again. “I hope you remember it better than I do.” He shook his head. Damn. So it will go into the Annals unclear.
It is a weird way to hold a conversation, one man talking and the other head-shaking. Getting information across can be incredibly difficult. I should study the communicative gestures Raven has learned from Darling. Silent is her second best friend. It would be interesting just to eavesdrop on their conversations.
“Let’s see what we can do for Raven,” I suggested.
Raven was sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. He did not come out of it for hours. I used the interim to interrogate Silent.
The Captain had sent him. He had come on horseback. He was, in fact, on his way before Raven and I were summoned for our interview with Soulcatcher. He had ridden hard, day and night. He had reached the clearing only a short while before I spotted him.
I asked how he had known where to go, granting that the Captain would have nursed enough information from Catcher to get him started-a move which fit the Captain’s style. Silent admitted he had not known where he was headed, except generally, till we had reached the area. Then he had tracked us through the amulet Goblin had given me.
Crafty little Goblin. He had not betrayed a hint. Good thing, too. The eye would have found the knowledge. “You think you could have done something if we’d really needed help?” I asked.
Silent smiled, shrugged, stalked over to the stone pile and seated himself. He was done with the question game. Of all the Company he is the least concerned about the image he will present in the Annals. He does not care-whether people like or hate him, does not care where he has been or where he is going. Sometimes I wonder if he cares whether he lives or dies, wonder what makes him stay. He must have some attachment to the Company.
Raven finally came around. We nursed him and fed him and, finally, bedraggled, we rounded up Whisper’s and the Limper’s horses and headed for Lords. We traveled without enthusiasm, knowing we were headed for another battlefield, another land of standing dead men.
We could not get close. Harden’s Rebels had the city besieged, circumvallated and bottled in a double fosse. A grim black cloud concealed the city itself. Cruel lightning rambled its edges, dueling the might of the Eighteen. Harden had not come alone.
The Circle seemed determined to avenge Whisper.
“Catcher and Nightcrawler are playing rough,” Raven observed, after one particularly violent exchange. “I suggest we drift south and wait. If they abandon Lords, we’ll join back up when they run toward the Windy Country.” His face twisted horribly. He did not relish that prospect. He knew the Windy Country.
So south we scooted, and joined up with other stragglers. We spent twelve days in hiding, waiting. Raven organized the stragglers into the semblance of a military unit. I passed the time writing and thinking about Whisper, wondering how much she would influence the eastern situation.
The rare glimpses I got of Lords convinced me that she was our side’s last real hope.
Rumor had the Rebel applying just as much pressure elsewhere. The Lady supposedly had to transfer The Hanged Man and Bonegnasher from the east to stiffen resistance. One rumor had Shapeshifter slain in the fighting at Rye.
I worried about the Company. Our brethren had gotten into Lords before Harden’s arrival.
Not a man falls without my telling his tale. How can I do that from twenty miles away? How many details will be lost in the oral histories I will have to collect after the fact? How many men will fall without their deaths being observed at all?
But mostly I spend my time thinking about the Limper and the Lady. And agonizing.
I do not think that I will be writing any more cute, romantic fantasies about our employer. I have been too close to her. I am not in love now.
I am a haunted man. I am haunted by the Limper’s screams. I am haunted by the Lady’s laughter. I am haunted by my suspicion that we are furthering the cause of something that deserves to be scrubbed from the face of the earth. I am haunted by the conviction that those bent upon the Lady’s eradication are little better than she.
I am haunted by the clear knowledge that, in the end, evil always triumphs.
Oh, my. Trouble. There is a nasty black cloud crawling over the hills to the northeast. Everybody is running around, grabbing weapons and saddling horses. Raven is yelling at me to get my butt moving...
Chapter Five
Harden
The wind howled and flung blasts of dust and sand against our backs. We retreated into it, walking backward, the gritty storm finding every gap in armor and clothing, combining with sweat in a stinking, salty mud. The air was hot and dry. It sucked the moisture away quickly, leaving the mud dried in clots. We all had lips cracked and swollen, tongues like moldy pillows choking on the grit crusting the insides of our mouths.
Stormbringer had gotten carried away. We were suffering almost as much as was the Rebel. Visibility was a scant dozen yards. I could barely see the men to my right and left, and only two guys in the rearguard line, walking backward before me. Knowing our enemies had to come after us facing into the wind did not cheer me much.
The men in the other line suddenly scuttled around, plying their bows. Tall somethings loomed out of the swirling dust, cloakshadows swirling around them, flapping like vast wings. I drew my bow and let fly, sure my shaft would drift astray.
It did not. A horseman threw up his hands. His animal whirled and ran before the wind, pursuing riderless companions.
They were pushing hard, keeping close, trying to pick us off before we escaped the Windy Country to the more defensible Stair of Tear. They wanted every man of us stretched dead and plundered beneath the unforgiving desert sun.