Free Shadows Linger: A Novel of the Black Company (Chronicles of The Black Company) by Glen Cook Page A

Juniper’s citizenry gathered for the Spring and Autumn Rites for the Dead. The wagon could not be seen from the lane.
    Shed squatted in shadow and bush and watched Asa dash to the Enclosure wall. Somebody ought to clear that brush away, Shed thought. It made the wall look tacky. For that matter, the wall needed repairing. Shed crossed and found a gap through which a man could duck-walk. He crept through. Asa was crossing an open meadow, hurrying uphill toward a stand of pines.
    The inner face of the wall was brush-masked, too. Scores of bundles of wood lay among the bushes. Asa had more industry than Shed had suspected. Hanging around Krage’s gang had changed him. They had him scared for sure.
    Asa entered the pines. Shed puffed after him. Ahead, Asa sounded like a cow pushing through the underbrush.
    The whole Enclosure was tacky. In Shed’s boyhood it had been park-like, a fit waiting place for those who had gone before. Now it had the threadbare look that characterized the rest of Juniper.
    Shed crept toward hammering racket. What was Asa doing, making so much noise?
    He was cutting wood from a fallen tree, stacking the pieces in neat bundles. Shed could not picture the little man orderly, either. What a difference terror made.
    An hour later Shed was ready to give up. He was cold and hungry and stiff. He had wasted half a day. Asa was doing nothing remarkable. But he persevered. He had a time investment to recoup. And an irritable Raven awaiting his report.
    Asa worked hard. When not chopping, he hustled bundles down to his wagon. Shed was impressed.
    He stayed, watched, and told himself he was a fool. This was going nowhere.
    Then Asa became furtive. He collected his tools and concealed them, looked around warily. This is it, Shed thought.
    Asa took off uphill. Shed puffed after him. His stiff muscles protested every step. Asa traveled more than a mile through lengthening shadows. Shed almost lost him. A clinking brought him back to the track.
    The little man was using flint and steel. He crouched over a supply of torches wrapped in an oilskin, taken from hiding. He got a brand burning, hastened into some brush. A moment later he clambered over some rocks beyond, disappeared. Shed gave it a minute, then followed. He slid round the boulder where he had seen Asa last. Beyond lay a crack in the earth just big enough to admit a man.
    “My god,” Shed whispered. “He’s found a way into the Catacombs. He’s looting the dead.”
    *   *   *
    “I came straight back,” Shed gasped. Raven was amused by his distress. “I knew Asa was foul, but I never dreamed he’d commit sacrilege.”
    Raven smiled.
    “Aren’t you disgusted?”
    “No. Why are you? He didn’t steal any bodies.”
    Shed came within a hair’s breadth of assaulting him. He was worse than Asa.
    “He making out at it?”
    “Not as well as you. The Custodians take all the burial gifts except passage urns.” Every corpse in the Catacombs was accompanied by a small, sealed urn, usually fixed on a chain around the body’s neck. The Custodians did not touch the few coins in those. When the Day of Passage came, the Boatmen would demand payment for passage to Paradise.
    “All those souls stranded,” Shed murmured. He explained.
    Raven looked baffled. “How can anybody with an ounce of brains believe that crap? Dead is dead. Be quiet, Shed. Just answer questions. How many bodies in the Catacombs?”
    “Who knows? They’ve been putting them away since.… Hell, for a thousand years. Maybe there’s millions.”
    “Must have them stacked like cordwood.”
    Shed wondered about that. The Catacombs were vast, but a thousand years’ worth of cadavers from a city Juniper’s size would make a hell of a pile. He looked at Raven. Damn the man. “It’s Asa’s racket. Let’s not try.”
    “Why not?”
    “Too dangerous.”
    “Your friend hasn’t suffered.”
    “He’s smalltime. If he gets greedy, he’ll get killed. There are Guardians down