Glen Cook: The Black Company

I drew and loosed, with no hope my arrow would strike a moving target at that range.

It did not, but only because the carpet jerked violently downward and to one side while the arrow was in the air. My shaft ripped past inches behind the carpet rider’s head.

The Lady did something. The air hummed. From nowhere came a giant dragonfly like the one I had seen in the Forest of Cloud. It streaked toward the carpet, hit. The carpet spun, flipped, jerked around. Its rider fell free, plummeted with a despairing cry. I loosed another shaft the instant the man hit earth. He twitched a moment, lay still. And we were upon him.

The Lady ripped the black morion off our victim. And cursed. Softly, steadily, she cursed like a senior sergeant.

“What?” I filially asked. The man was dead enough to satisfy me.

“It’s not her.” She whirled, faced the wood. Her face blanked for several seconds. Then she faced the drifting carpet. She jerked her head at the wood. “Go see if that’s a woman. See if the horse is there.” She began making come-hither gestures at Catcher’s carpet.

I went, mind aboil. Catcher was a woman, eh? Crafty, too. All prepared to be chased here, by the Lady herself.

Fear grew as I slipped through the wood, slow, silent. Catcher had played a game on everyone, and far more shrewdly than even the Lady had anticipated. What next, then? There had been so many attempts on my life... Might this not be the moment to end whatever threat I represented?

Nothing happened, though. Except that I crept up to the corpse in the wood, ripped off a black morion, and found a handsome youth inside. Fear, anger, and frustration overwhelmed me. I kicked him. Some good, abusing dead meat.

The fit did not last. I began looking around the camp where the substitutes had waited. They had been there a while, and been prepared to stay a while longer. They had supplies for a month.

A large bundle caught my eye. I cut the cords binding it, peeped inside. Papers. A bale that must have weighed eighty pounds. Curiosity grabbed me.

I looked around hastily, saw nothing threatening, probed a little deeper. And immediately realized what I had. These were part of the hoard we had unearthed in the Forest of Cloud.

What were they doing here? I’d thought Catcher had turned them over to the Lady. Eh! Plot and counterplot. Maybe he had delivered some. And maybe he kept back others he thought would be useful later. Maybe we had been so close on his heels he had not had time to collect them...

Maybe he would be back. I looked around again, frightened once more.

Nothing stirred.

Where was he?

She, I reminded myself. Catcher was one of the shes.

I looked around, hunting evidence of the Taken’s departure, soon discovered hoofprints leading deeper into the wood. A few paces beyond the camp they reached a narrow trail. I crouched, looking down an aisle of forest, through golden motes floating in shafts of sunlight. I tried to work myself up to go on.

Come, a voice said in my mind. Come.

The Lady. Relieved not to have to follow that trail, I turned back. “It was a man,” I said as I approached the Lady.

“I thought so.” She had the carpet under one hand, floating two feet off the earth. “Get aboard.”

I swallowed, did as I was told. It was like climbing aboard a boat from deep water. I almost fell off twice. As she followed me aboard, I told her, “He-she-stayed on the horse and went on down the trail through the woods.”

“What direction?”

“South.”

The carpet rose swiftly. The dead horses dwindled beneath us. We began to drift over the wood. My stomach felt like I had drunk several gallons of wine the night before.

The Lady cursed softly under her breath. Finally, in a louder voice, she said, “The bitch. She ran a game on us all. My husband included.”

I said nothing. I was debating whether or not to mention the papers. She would be interested. But so was I, and if I mentioned them now I’d never get a chance to poke through them.

“I’ll bet that was what she was doing. Getting rid of the other Taken by pretending to be part of their plot. Then it would have been me. Then she would just leave the Dominator in the ground. She would have it all, and be able to keep him restrained. He can’t break out without help.” She was thinking aloud more than speaking to me. “And I missed the evidence. Or ignored it. It was right there all the time. Cunning bitch. She’ll bum for that.”

We began to fall. I nearly lost what little my stomach contained. We fell into a valley deeper than most in the area, though the hills to either hand stood no more than two hundred feet high. We slowed.

“Arrow,” she said. I had forgotten to ready another.

We drifted down the valley a mile or so, then upslope till we floated beside an outcrop of sedimentary rock. There we hovered, nudging the stone. There was a brisk cold wind. My hands grew numb. We were far from the Tower, into country where winter held full sway. I shivered continuously.

The only warning was a soft, “Hang on.”

The carpet shot forward. A quarter mile distant was a figure lying low on the neck of a racing horse. The Lady dropped till we hurtled along just two feet off the ground.

Catcher saw us. She threw up a hand in a warding gesture. We were upon her. I released my shaft.

The carpet slammed up against me as the Lady pulled it upward, trying to clear horse and rider. She did not pull up enough. Impact made the carpet lurch. Frame members cracked, broke. We spun. I hung on desperately while sky and earth wheeled about me. There was another shock as we hit ground, more spinning as we went over and over. I threw myself clear.

I was on my feet in an instant, wobbling, slapping another arrow across my bow. Catcher’s horse was down with a broken leg. Catcher was beside her, on hands and knees, stunned. A silver arrowhead protruded from her waist, indicting me.

I loosed my shaft. And another, and another, recalling the terrible vitality the Limper had shown in the Forest of Cloud, after Raven had felled him with an arrow bearing die power of his true name. Still in fear, I drew my sword once my final arrow was gone. I charged. I do not know how I retained the weapon through everything that had happened. I reached Catcher, raised the blade high, swung with a vicious two-handed stroke. It was the most fearful, violent blow I have ever struck. Soulcatcher’s head roiled away. The morion’s face guard popped open. A woman’s face stared at me with accusing eyes. A woman almost identical in appearance to the one with whom I had come.

Catcher’s eyes focused upon me. Her lips tried to form words. I stood there frozen, wondering what the hell it all meant. And life faded from Catcher before I caught the message she tried to impart.

I would return to that moment ten thousand times, trying to read those dying lips.

The Lady crept up beside me, dragging one leg. Habit forced me to turn, kneel... “It’s broken,” she said. “Never mind. It can wait.” Her breathing was shallow, rapid. For a moment I thought it was the pain. Then I saw she was looking at the head. She began to giggle.

I looked at that face so like her own, then at her. She rested a hand on my shoulder, allowing me to take some of her weight. I rose carefully, slid an arm around her. “Never did like that bitch,” she said. “Even when we were children...” She glanced at me warily, shut up. The life left her face. She became the ice lady once more.

If ever there was some weird love spark within me, as my brothers accused, it flickered its last. I saw plainly what the Rebel wanted to destroy-that part of the movement which was true White Rose, not puppet to the monster who had created this woman and now wanted her destroyed so it could bring its own breed of terror back to the world. At that moment I’d gladly have deposited her head beside her sister’s.