Free She Is the Darkness: Book Two of Glittering Stone: A Novel of the Black Company by Glen Cook

spy and run messages. Croaker pointed. Several of the old men
     had had chunks ripped right out of them. He observed, “Lady did say you
     shouldn’t get in the way of her bamboo toys.”
    We had overtaken Lady, more or less. She was following a line of advance several
     miles to our left. If Croaker and she had stolen a kiss they had managed it by
     magic. Croaker was in too big a hurry to assume complete control of his
     assembling center corps of two divisions.
    He carried a bamboo pole slung across his back. So did I. And so did every other
     man in the main force, now. Some carried a bundle. “Oh?”
    “She’ll pitch a fit if this gets to be a habit.” Croaker was amused.
    “She never was a ground-pounder.”
    Your average infantryman does not give a rat’s ass about the design function of
     a weapon. He is concerned about staying alive and about getting his job done
     with the least risk taken. The bamboo doohickeys were meant for combating killer
     shadows? So fucking what? If using them made taking out nasty little wizards
     easier, guess what was going to happen?
    Pop!

Black Company GS 7 - She is Darkness
    14
    We sighted Lake Tanji an hour before night fell. The sudden view was so stunning
     I stopped dead in my tracks. The lake was miles across and cold grey. It
     dwindled away to my right, the direction our road ran. To our left the land was
     very rugged. Arms of increasingly substantial hills ran down to the water. The
     Dandha Presh itself seemed to rise directly from the far shore, all greys in the
     evening light, dark down low and lighter at the peaks, where snowfields
     sparkled. A playful god had scrawled a thin cloudline across the panorama,
    halfway up the mountains, so that the peaks rode a magic carpet.
    Grey, grey, grey. Right then the whole world seemed grey.
    “Impressive,” the Captain said.
    “Not at all like seeing it through Smoke’s eyes.”
    He frowned at me even though not even a crow was near enough to hear. “Look
     there.”
    A village burned along the shore several miles ahead. A ball of blue light
     streaked out of the conflagration, over the water, narrowly missed a small boat.
    The men aboard the boat tried to row harder but began to catch crabs and get in
     one another’s way. A swarm of points of light darted at them, not only blue but
     green, yellow, pink and a stunning shade of violet. A man jumped up and flailed
     around after a ball hit him in the throat. He fell overboard. His antics rocked
     the boat dangerously. It shipped water, raised its stern into the air
     momentarily.
    A ball of light zipped through its bottom, leaving a shimmering hole.
    Most of the balls missed. Those continued across the lake, slowing gradually.
    Eventually they just drifted on the breeze and faded away.
    The excitement brought a flock of crows fast. They circled overhead. Two big
     ones dropped onto Croaker’s shoulders. The others scattered in pairs. The boat
     sank.
    It had been bound for an island that was little more than a rock outcrop
     boasting a dozen scraggly pine trees and some halfhearted brush. A crow that got
     close suddenly folded up and went ballistic, hit the water and floated without
     twitching.
    Croaker glared. “Murgen. Move down the foreslope, out of the wind. Find a place
     to dig in for the night. Line troops only on this side of the ridge. I want a
     double watch kept. I want two battery wagons up, trained on that island.”
    His shoulder ornaments were agitated now. I did not mention them. He was
     starting to go spooky and he did not answer questions anyway.
    One of the ravens squawked. Croaker grunted back. He dismounted, grabbed an
     extra bamboo pole from a nearby soldier, headed downhill. His mount followed the
     trail he broke.
    The soldiers who had begun to gather followed Croaker’s example. They formed a
     skirmish line as they advanced. I could not unsling my own bamboo pole because I
     was mounted and burdened with the standard. I followed the men