Glen Cook - Shadow Games

Oh, shit.

One-Eye tripped her. Lady and I hacked at her again, without much effect. Then Murgen let her have it with the spearhead on the lance that bore the Company standard.

She howled like one of the damned.

What the hell?

She started moving again. But now Shifter was back. He had taken the form of the forvalaka, the black were-leopard almost impossible to kill or injure. He jumped on Stormbringer and started tearing her apart.

She gave damned near as good as she got. We backed away, stayed away, gave them room.

I don’t know what Shifter did or when. Or if he did anything at all. One-Eye might have imagined it all. But sometime during the thing the little black man sidled up and whispered, “He did it, Croaker. It was him that killed Tom-Tom.”

That was a long time ago. I had almost no feelings about it anymore. But One-Eye had not forgotten nor forgiven. That was his brother...

“What you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Something. I got to do something.”

“What’ll that do to the rest of us? We won’t have an angel anymore.”

“Ain’t gonna have one anyway, Croaker. He’s done got what he wanted right there. Shifter or no Shifter you’re on your own soon as he finishes her off.”

He was right. And chances were damned good Shifter would stop being Lady’s faithful old dog, too. If there was any getting him, this was the time.

The combatants went on for maybe fifteen minutes, shredding each other. I got the impression things were not going as easy as Shifter had hoped. Bringer was putting up a damned good fight.

But he won. Sort of. She stopped resisting. He lay panting, unable to move. She’d locked her limbs around him. He bled from a hundred small wounds. He cursed softly, and I thought I heard him damning someone for helping her, heard him threatening to get someone next.

“You got any special use for him now?” I asked Lady. “I don’t know how much you knew. I don’t care now. But you better think about what he’s going to have on his mind now he don’t need you and me for a stalking horse anymore.”

She shook her head slowly.

Something slid over the edge of the parapet behind her. Another, smaller forvalaka. I thought we were in big trouble, but Shifter’s apprentice made a tactical error. She began to shift forms. She finished just in time to shriek “No!” at One-Eye.

One-Eye had made him a club out of something, and with two quick and heroic swings he bashed Stormbringer and Shapeshifter into complete unconsciousness. They had weakened one another that much.

Shifter’s companion flew at him.

Murgen tripped her by tangling her feet with the head of the lance he carried. He cut her. Blood got all over the standard. She screamed like she was trapped in Hell’s agony.

I recognized her, then. She had done a lot of yelling the last time I’d seen her, so long ago.

Sometime during the excitement a whole herd of crows had gathered on the merlons, out of the way. They started laughing.

Everybody jumped on the woman before she could do

anything. Goblin did some kind of swift magical bind that left her unable to do anything but wiggle her eyes.

One-Eye looked at me and said, “You got any suture with you, Croaker? I got a needle but I don’t think I got enough thread.”

What? “Some.” I always carried some medical odds and ends.

“Gimme.”

I gave him.

He whacked Shifter and Bringer again. “Just to make sure they’re out. They don’t got no special powers when they’re out.”

He squatted down and started sewing their mouths shut. He finished Shifter, said, “Get him stripped. Whack him if he stirs.”

What the hell?

It got gruesome, then more gruesome. “What the hell you doing?” I demanded.

The crows were having a party.

“Sewing all the holes shut. So the devils don’t get out.”

“What?” Maybe it made sense to him. It didn’t to me.

“Old trick for getting rid of evil witch doctors back home.” When he finished with the orifices he sewed fingers and toes together. “Put them in a sack with a hundred pounds of rocks and throw them in the river.”

Lady said, “You’ll have to burn them. And grind what’s left into powder and scatter the powder on the wind.”

One-Eye looked at her for ten seconds. “You mean I done all this work for nothing?”

“No. It’ll help. You don’t want them getting excited while you’re roasting them.”

I gave her a startled look. That was not like her. I turned to Murgen. “You want to get that standard up?”

One-Eye stirred Shifter’s apprentice with a toe. “What about this one? Think I should take care of her, too?”

“She hasn’t done anything.” I squatted beside her. “I remember you now, darling. It took me a while because

we didn’t see that much of you in Juniper. You weren’t very nice to my buddy Marron Shed.” I looked at Lady. “What were you figuring on making out of her?”

She did not answer.

“Be that way. We’ll talk later.” I looked at the apprentice. “Lisa Daela Bowalk. You hear me name your name, the way these others did?” Crows chuckled to one another. “I’m going to give you a break. That you probably don’t deserve. Murgen, find some place to lock this one up. We’ll turn her loose when we’re ready to move out. Goblin, you help One-Eye with whatever he’s got to do.” I looked at the Company standard, bloodstained once again, flying defiantly again. “You” — pointing at One-Eye — “take care of it right. Unless you want two more of them after us the way Limper was.”

He gulped air. “Yeah.”

“Lady, I told you. Tonight in Stormgard. Let’s go find someplace.”

Something was wrong with me. I felt mildly depressed, vaguely let down, once again victim of an anticlimax, of a hollow victory. Why? Two great wickednesses were about to be removed from the face of the earth. Luck had marched with the Company once more. We had added more impossible triumphs to our roll of victories.

We were two hundred miles nearer our destination than we’d had any right to hope. There was no obvious reason to expect much trouble from those troops locked up in that camp south of the city. Their Shadowmaster captain was wounded. The people of Stormgard, for the most part, were accepting us as liberators.

What was to be bothered about?

Tonight in Stormgard.

Tonight in Stormgard was something, though somehow tainted with that lack of satisfaction that haunted me increasingly. I slept well past dawn. A bugle wakened me. The first thing I saw when I cracked my lids was a big black bastard of a crow eyeballing Lady and me. I threw something at it.

Another bugle call. I stumbled to a window. Then streaked to another. “Lady. Get up. We got trouble.”

Trouble snaked out of the southern hills in the form of another enemy army. Mogaba had our boys getting into formation already. Over on the south wall Cletus and his brothers had the artillery harassing the encampment, but their engines could not keep that mob from getting ready for a fight. The people of the city poured from their houses, headed for the walls to watch.

Crows were everywhere.

Lady took a look, snapped, “Let’s get dressed,” and started helping me with my costume. I helped with hers.

I said of mine, “This thing is starting to smell.”

“You may not have to wear it much longer.”

“Eh?”

“That bunch coming out of the hills has to be just

about everybody they’ve got left under arms. Break them and the war is over.”

“Sure. Except for three Shadowmasters who might not see it that way.”