Glen Cook - Shadow Games

“I feel daring and incautious this morning.” Which was maybe the wrong thing to say after my failure of daring and lack of incaution the night before. But she let it pass.

“They’re talking about us up there.” She indicated the pair of stocky watchtowers flanking the road, three hundred yards ahead. There was no way to avoid riding between them, through a narrow passage filled with the shadow of death. Up top, heliographs chatted tower to tower and presumably with the city as well.

“Hope they’re saying something nice, like hurray, the boys are back in town.” We were close enough so I could make out the men up there. They did not look like guys getting ready for a fight. A couple sat on the merlons with their legs dangling outside. One that I took to be an officer stood in a crenel with one foot up on a merlon, leaning on his knee, watching casually.

“About the way I’d do it if I had me a really sneaky trap set,” I grumped.

“Not everyone in the world has the serpentine sort of mind you do, Croaker.”

“Oh yeah? I’m plain simple compared to some I could name.”

She gave me one of her sharp old-time Lady-on-fire withering looks.

One-Eye was not there to say it himself, so I said it for him. “That snake’s probably got more smarts than you do, Croaker. The only trouble he goes hunting is breakfast.”

We were close to the one tower now, with Goblin and One-Eye and Murgen already past. I raised my hat in a friendly salute.

The officer reached down beside him, picked up something, tossed it down. It came tumbling toward me. I snatched it out of the air. “What an athlete! Maybe I’ll go for two out of three.”

I looked at what I caught.

It was a black stick about an inch and a quarter in diameter and fifteen inches long, carved from some heavy wood, decorated all over with ugly what-is-its. “I’ll be damned.”

“No doubt. What is it?”

“An officer’s baton. I’ve never seen one before. But they’re mentioned all through the Annals, up through the fall of Sham, which was some sort of mysterious lost city up on the plateau we just crossed.” I lifted the baton in a second salute to the man above.

“The Company was there?”

“It’s where it ended up after it left Gea-Xle. The Captain didn’t find his silver mountain. He did find Sham. The Annals are pretty confused. The people of Sham are supposed to have been a lost race of whites. It seems that about three days after the Company found Sham, so did the ancestors of the Geek and the Freak. They got themselves worked up into some kind of religious frenzy and jumped all over the city. The first horde to get there killed damned near everybody, including most of the Company officers, before the Company finished killing them. The guys who survived headed north because there was another mob closing in from the south, keeping them from heading back this way. These batons aren’t mentioned after that.”

To which her only response was, “They knew you were coming, Croaker.”

“Yeah.” It was a mystery. I do not like mysteries. But it was only one of a herd and the bellies of most of them would never come floating up where I could give them the eyeball.

There were two guys waiting down the road from the watchtowers, a third of a mile from the city wall. The surrounding countryside was pretty barren for so close to a city. I guess the ground was poor. Farther north and south there was plenty of green. One of the two guys gave Goblin an old Company standard. There was no doubt what it was, though I did not recognize any of the honors. It was damned ragged, as you would expect of something as old as it had to be.

What the hell was going on here?

One-Eye tried talking to those guys but it was like starting a conversation with a stone. They faced their mounts around and got out front. I gave One-Eye a nod when he looked back to see if we should follow.

A twelve-man honor guard presented arms as we passed through the gate. But nobody else greeted us. Silence ran with us as we moved through the streets, people stopping to stare at the pale-faced strangers. Lady got half the attention.

She deserved it. She looked damned good. Very damned good. Black and tight both became her. She had the body to pull it off.

Our guides led us to a barracks and stable. The barracks part had been maintained but not used for a long time. It seemed we were supposed to make ourselves at home. All right.

Our guides did a fade while we were checking the place out.

“Well,” Goblin said. “Bring on the dancing girls.”

There were no dancing girls. There was not a lot of anything else either, unless you count apparent indifference. I had everybody stick tight the rest of the day, but nothing happened. We had been shelved and forgotten. Next morning I turned loose our two most recent recruits, along with One-Eye and Wheezer, on a mission meant to find a barge that would take us down the river.

“You just sent the fox to get a new latch for the chicken coop,” Goblin protested. “You should’ve sent me along to keep him honest.”

Otto busted out laughing.

I grinned but kept the rest inside. “You aren’t brown enough to get by out there, little buddy.”

“Oh, horse hockey. You bothered to look outside since we got here? There’s white folks around, Fearless Leader.”

Hagop said, “He’s right, Croaker. Ain’t a lot of them, but I seen a few.”

“Where the hell did they come from?” I muttered, going to the door. Sparkle and Candles got out of my way. They were there to ambush any surprise unwanted guests. I went outside and leaned against the whitewashed wall, chewed a piece of horse sorrel I plucked from the edge of the street.

Yeah. The boys were right. There were a pair of whites, an old man and a twenty-fivish woman, skulking down the way. They made a production of being indifferent to me while everyone else gawked.

“Goblin. Get your tail out here.”

He stumped outside, sulky. “Yeah?”

“Take a discreet look down there. You see an old man and a younger woman?”

“White?”

“Yes.”

“I see them. So what?”

“Ever seen them before?”

“At my age everybody looks like somebody I’ve seen before. But we’ve never been in this part of the world. So maybe they look like somebody we seen somewhere else. She does, anyway.”

“Hunh. Other way around for me. Something about the way he moves rings alarms.”

Goblin plucked his own horse sorrel. I watched. When I looked back the odd couple were gone. Headed our way were three black guys who looked like trouble on the hoof. “Gods. I didn’t know they made them that big.”

Goblin muttered, stared past them. He wore a puzzled frown. He cocked his head like he was having trouble hearing.

The three big guys marched up, stopped. One started talking. I did not understand a word. “No spikee, pal. Try another lingo.”

He did. I did not get any of that, either. He shrugged and checked his buddies. One of them tried a clicky tongue.

“You lose again, guys.”

The biggest broke into a ferocious dance of frustration. His buddies gabbled. And Goblin wandered away on me without a fare-thee-well Croaker. I caught a glimpse of his back as he scooted into a passage between buildings.

Meantime, my new friends decided I was deaf or stupid. They yelled at me, slowly. Which brought Sparkle and Candles outside, followed by the others. The three big guys cussed each other some more and decided to go away.

“What was that all about?” Hagop asked.

“You got me.”

Goblin came trooping back wearing a big smug frog grin.

“I’m amazed,” I said. “I figured I was going to lose a week while I hunted down the local hoosegow and sold my soul to dig you out.”