Free Raker by Glen Cook

I
    The wind tumbled and bumbled and howled around Meystrikt. Arctic imps giggled and blew their frigid breath through chinks in the walls of my quarters. My lamplight flickered and danced, barely surviving. When my fingers stiffened, I folded them round the flame and let them toast.
    The wind was a hard blow out of the north, gritty with powder snow. A foot had fallen during the night. More was coming. It would bring more misery with it. I pitied Elmo and his gang. They were out Rebel hunting.
    Meystrikt Fortress. Pearl of the Salient defenses. Frozen in winter. Swampy in spring. An oven in summer. White Rose prophets and Rebel mainforcers were the least of our troubles.
    The Salient is a long arrowhead of flatland pointing south, between mountain ranges. Meystrikt lies at its point. It funnels weather and enemies down onto the stronghold. Our assignment is to hold this anchor of the Lady's northern defenses. Why the Black Company? We are the best. The Rebel infection began seeping through the Salient after the fall of Forsberg. The Limper tried to stop it and failed. The Lady sent us to clean up the Limper's mess. Her only other option was to abandon another province.
    She endured too many retreats before our coming. She meant the Salient to mark their end.
    The gate watch sounded a trumpet. Elmo was coming in.
    There was no rush to greet him. The rules call for casualness, for a pretense that your guts are not churning with dread. Instead, men peeped from hidden places, wondering about brothers who had gone a-hunting. Anybody lost? Anyone bad hurt? You knew them better than kin. You'd fought side by side for years. Not all of them were friends, but they were family. The only family you had.
    In its heyday, three centuries ago, the Company was 6000 strong. The Annals glow with the glory of those years, when our predecessors served the lords of Hellon. Nowadays my pitiful pages emanate bleakness. We number a mere 189. Time and fate have not served us well.
    The gatemen hammered ice off the windlass. Shrieking its protests, the battered portcullus rose. As Company historian, I could go greet Elmo without violating the unwritten rules. Fool that I am, I went out into the wind and chill.
    A sorry lot of shadows loomed through the blowing snow. The ponies were dragging. Their riders slumped over icy manes. Animals and men hunched into themselves, trying to escape the wind's scratching talons. Clouds of breath smoked from mounts and men, and were ripped away. This, in painting form, would have made a snowman shiver.
    Of the whole Company only Raven ever saw snow before this winter. Some welcome to service with the Lady.
    The riders came closer. They looked more like refugees than brothers of the Black Company. Ice-diamonds twinkled in Elmo's mustache. Rags concealed the rest of his face. The others were so bundled I could not tell who was who. Only Silent rode resolutely tall. He peered straight ahead, disdaining that pitiless wind.
    Elmo nodded as he came through the gate. "We'd started to wonder," I said. Wonder means worry. The rules demand a show of indifference.
    "Hard traveling." Elmo does not talk much.
    "How'd it go?"
    "Black Company twenty-three, Rebel zip. No work for you, Croaker, except Jo-Jo has a little frostbite."
    "You get Raker?"
    Raker is an old, old enemy of the Lady, a luminary of the Rebel Circle of Eighteen. His dire prophecies, skilled witchcraft, and battlefield cunning cost the Lady her province of Forsberg. Then he came to the Salient and made a fool of the Limper. Another collapse appeared imminent. At winter's commencement the Lady sent us to replace that nastiest of the Taken. The move sent shock waves through the empire. A mercenary captain had been assigned forces and powers usually reserved for one of the Ten!
    Salient winter being what it was, only a shot at Raker himself made the Captain field this patrol.
    Elmo bared his face and grinned. He was not talking. He'd just have to tell it again for the