The place fell silent. Men appeared as if by magic. "Bar the damned door!" One-Eye muttered. "They keep stumbling in like this, I'll freeze my ass off. Play the hand out, Elmo."
The Captain came in. He is short, dark, has hard eyes, and radiates the self-confidence of a man accustomed to instant obedience. He took his usual seat. "Let's hear it, Sergeant." Nobody else calls Elmo "Sergeant."
The Captain is not one of our more colorful characters. Too quiet. Too serious. Too seldom seen. Nevertheless, he is a competent tactician and brilliant manager of men. He compares commanding the Company to running a zoo. He is the only one of us Raven takes seriously.
Elmo laid his cards down, tapped their edges into alignment, ordered his thoughts. He is obsessed with brevity and precision.
"Sergeant?"
"Silent spotted a picket line south of the farm, Captain. We circled north. Attacked after sunset. They tried to scatter. Silent distracted Raker while we handled the others. Thirty men. We got twenty-three. We yelled a lot about not letting our spy get hurt. We missed Raker."
Sneaky makes this outfit work. We want the Rebel to believe his ranks are shot with informers. That hamstrings his communications and decision-making, and makes life less chancy for Silent, One-Eye, and Goblin, our clutch of second-rate wizards.
The planted rumor. The small frame. The touch of bribery or blackmail. Those are our preferred weapons. We opt battle only when we have our opponents mouse-trapped.
"You returned directly to the fortress?"
"Yes, sir. After burning the farmhouse and outbuildings. Raker concealed his trail well."
The Captain considered the smoke-darkened beams overhead. Only One-Eye's snapping of his cards broke the silence. The Captain dropped his gaze. "Then, pray, why are you and Silent grinning like a pair of prize fools?"
One-Eye muttered, "Proud they came home empty-handed."
Elmo grinned. "But we didn't."
Silent dug inside his filthy shirt, produced the small leather bag that always hangs on a thong around his neck. His trick bag. It is filled with noxious oddments like putrefied bat's ears or elixir of nightmare. This time he produced a folded piece of paper. He cast dramatic glances at One-Eye and Goblin, opened the packet fold by fold. Even the Captain left his seat, crowded the table.
"Behold!" said Elmo.
III
Tain't nothing but hair." Heads shook. Throats grumbled. Somebody questioned Elmo's grasp on reality. But One-Eye and Goblin had three big coweyes between them. One-Eye chirruped inarticulately. Goblin squeaked a few times, but, then, Goblin always squeaks. "It's really his?" he managed at last. "Really his?"
Elmo and Silent radiated the smugness of eminently successful conquistadors. "Absodamnlutely," Elmo said. "Right off the top of his bean. We had that old man by the balls and he knew it. He was heeling and toeing it out of there so fast he smacked his noggin on a doorframe. Saw it myself, and so did Silent. Left these on the beam. Whoo, that gaffer can step."
And Goblin, an octave above his usual rusty-hinge squeal, dancing in his excitement, said, "Gents, we've got him. He's as good as hanging on a meathook right now. The big one." He meowed at One-Eye. "What do you think of that, you sorry little spook?"
A herd of minuscule lightning bugs poured out of One-Eye's nostrils. Good soldiers all, they fell into formation, spelling out the words Goblin is a Poof. Their little wings hummed the words for the benefit of the illiterate.
There is no truth to that canard. Goblin is thoroughly heterosexual. One-Eye is a provocateur. In Goblin he has met his match, and for years they have pursued a hapless duel.
Goblin made a gesture. A great shadow-figure, like Soulcatcher but tall enough to brush the ceiling beams, bent and skewered One-Eye with an accusing finger. A sourceless voice whispered, "It was you that corrupted the lad, sodder."
One-Eye snorted, shook his head, shook his head and snorted. His eye glazed. Goblin giggled, stifled himself, giggled again. He spun away, danced a wild victory jig in front of the fireplace.
Our less intuitive brethren grumbled. A couple hairs. Big deal. With those and two bits silver you could get rolled by the village whores.
"Gentlemen!" The Captain understood.
The shadow-show ceased. The Captain considered his wizards. He thought. He paced. He nodded to himself. Finally, he asked, "One-Eye. Are they enough?"
One-Eye chuckled, an astonishingly deep sound for so small a man. "One hair, sir, or one nail paring, is enough. Sir, we have him."
Goblin continued his weird dance. Silent kept grinning. Raving lunatics, the lot of them.
The Captain thought some more. "We can't handle this ourselves." He circled the hall, his pace portentous. "We have to bring in one of the Taken."
Our most precious secret is the fact that we possess three sorcerers. They aren't great, but they make us effective where the odds look improbably long. The enemy can't find out. He would squander his resources, squash us like bugs.
One of the Taken. Cold stole in and froze us into statues. One of the Lady's shadow disciples.... one of those dark lords here? No....
"Not the Limper. He's got a hard-on for us."
"Shifter gives me the creeps." "Nightcrawler is worse." One-Eye said, "We can handle it, Captain."
"And Raker's cousins would be on you like flies on a horseapple. No."
"Soulcatcher," the Lieutenant suggested. "He is our patron, more or less."
The suggestion carried. Soulcatcher is a known quantity. He recruited us into the Lady's service. We don his death's-head badges when it serves the Captain's purpose.
The Captain said, "Contact him, One-Eye. Be ready to move when he gets here."
One-Eye nodded, grinned. He was in love. Already tricky, nasty plots were afoot in his twisted mind.
It should have been Silent's game, really. The Captain gave it to One-Eye because he cannot come to grips with Silent's refusal to talk. That scares him for some reason.
Silent did not protest.
Some of our native servants are spies. We know who they are, thanks to One-Eye and Goblin. One, who knew nothing about the hair, was allowed to flee with news that we were setting up an espionage headquarters in the free city Roses.
When you have the smaller battalions you learn guile.
IV
The Ten Who Were Taken. Four centuries ago a sorcerer consummate and cruel established suzerainty over an empire unrivaled before or since. He is remembered only as The Dominator, his era as The Domination, and his empire as either The Dominion or The Domination. His chief ally was his lover, the woman known then and now as the Lady, or Dark Lady. Their true names they obscured with admirable cunning and caution.
Their slaves-worshippers-captains, the Ten, were drawn from among the greatest of their vanquished and seduced opponents. They, too, obscured their true names during the long-ago wars of liberation. They became Nightcrawler, Stormbringer, the Howler, and so on. In the end, the Dominator was surrounded in the northern forests and overwhelmed. He and his champions were buried alive in a barrow complex subsequently guarded by every spell of confinement known.
Before he fell, the Dominator prophesied his own resurrection.
Centuries slid away. Some tinkering fool cracked the spells. That which had slept awakened. Graves opened. The Taken arose. The Lady rose with them - but the Dominator did not. She had tricked him at their fall, and placed herself supreme.
So. A new empire came into being. In time, Soulcatcher enlisted the Black Company to fight the Lady's battles.
Every ruler makes enemies. The Lady is no exception. Her greatest are the Sons of the White Rose, or White Prophets, who claim spiritual and philosophical descent from the White Rose, the she-general who brought the Dominion down. We call them Rebels. Their high command is the Circle of Eighteen. They are powerful wizards who steal into the empire masterminding rebellion. The empire is fraying round its edges. The Lady's armies have been losing battles even when commanded by the Taken. The future looks grim. The Rebel grows stronger daily.