The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company (Chronicles of the Black Company)

Free The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company (Chronicles of the Black Company) by Glen Cook

Book: The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company (Chronicles of the Black Company) by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online
Authors: Glen Cook
around for a way to shaft us instead of doing the honorable thing and paying us off and simply terminating our commission.”
    “That’s what I love about you, Croaker. Your unflagging faith in humanity.”
    “Absolutely. Every ounce of my cynicism is supported by historical precedent,” I grumped.
    “You really know how to melt a woman, you know that, Croaker?”
    “Huh?” I come armed with a whole arsenal of such brilliant repartee.
    “I came out here with some feebleminded notion of seducing you. For some reason I’m not in the mood to try anymore.”
    Well. Some of them you screw up royal.
    *   *   *
    There was an observation catwalk along some parts of the monastery wall. I went up into the northeast corner, leaned on the adobe and stared back the way we had come. Busy feeling sorry for myself. Every couple hundred years that sort of thing leads to a productive insight.
    The damned crows were thicker than ever. Must have been twenty of them now. I cursed them and, I swear, they mocked me. When I threw a loose piece of adobe they all jumped up and fled toward …
    “Goblin!” I think he was out keeping an eye on me in case I got suicidal.
    “Yeah?”
    “Get One-Eye and Lady and come up here. Fast.” I turned and stared up the slope at the thing that had caught my eye.
    It stopped moving but was unmistakably a human figure in robes so black looking at them was like looking at a rent in the fabric of existence. It carried something under its right arm, about the size of a hatbox, held in place by the natural fall of the limb. The crows swarmed around it, twenty or thirty of them, squabbling over the right to perch upon its shoulders. It was a good quarter mile from where I stood but I felt the gaze from its hooded, unseen face beating upon me like the heat from a furnace.
    The crowd turned up with Goblin and One-Eye as quarrelsome as ever. Lady asked, “What is it?”
    “Take a look out there.”
    They looked. Goblin squeaked, “So?”
    “So? What do you mean, so?”
    “What’s so interesting about an old tree stump and a flock of birds?”
    I looked. Damn! A stump … But as I stared there was an instant’s shimmer and I saw the black figure again. I shuddered.
    “Croaker?” Lady asked. She was still mad at me but concerned even so.
    “Nothing. My eyes were playing tricks on me. I thought I saw the damned thing moving. Forget it.”
    They took me at my word, stomped off to whatever they had been doing. I watched them go and for another moment doubted my own senses.
    But then I looked again.
    The crows were flying off in a crowd, except for two headed straight toward me. And the stump was hiking off across the hillside as though intent on circling the monastery.
    I mumbled a little to myself but it did not do any good.
    *   *   *
    I tried giving the Temple a few more days to work its magic but the next one hundred fifty years of our journey drummed on in my mind. There was no repose now. I was too itchy to sit. I announced my intention. And I got no kickbacks. Just acquiescent nods. Maybe even relieved nods.
    What was this?
    I sat up and came out of myself, where I had been spending a lot of time reexamining the familiar old furniture. I had not been paying attention to the others.
    They were restless, too.
    There was something in the air. Something that told us all it was time to hit the road. Even the monks seemed eager to see us move out. Curious.
    Them that stays alive in the soldiering business are them that listens to such feelings even when they make no sense. You feel like you got to move, you move. You stay put and get stomped, it is too late to whine about all that work for nothing.

 
    12
    The Shaggy Hills
    To reach One-Eye’s jungle we had to pass through several miles of woods, then climb over a range of decidedly odd hills. The hills were very round, very steep, and completely treeless, though not especially high. They were covered with a short brown grass that caught

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