The southerners seem to have just closed their eyes and shoved their heads into a beehive, don’t they? What? Why so reluctant? Come see. This is amusing. Everywhere you look the southerners are falling back. Some—

“You all right, Murgen?” I shook my head. I felt like a kid who had spun around about twenty times, intentionally trying to make himself dizzy before jumping into some silly competition.

I was in an alley. Runt boy Goblin was beside me, looking extremely concerned. “I’m fine,” I told him.

Then I fell to my knees, stuck my hands out to grab the alley walls so I would not spin around anymore. I insisted, “I’m all right.”

“Of course you are. Candles. Keep an eye on this dork. He tries to take over, get deaf. He’s got too tender a heart.”

I tried not to let my ego become engaged. Maybe I was too tender, too much a sucker. The world sure isn’t kind to the man who tries to be gentle and thoughtful.

Its spin slowed down till I no longer had to hold on. A scuffle broke out behind us. Someone cursed in a nasal, liquid tongue. Somebody else growled, “This asshole is fast!”

“Whoa whoa whoa!” I yelled. “Let the man alone! Let him come up here.”

Candles didn’t knock me over the head or contradict me. The short, wide Nyueng Bao guy who had shown me to Ky Dam’s hideout marched up to me. The fingers of his right hand rubbed his right cheek. He seemed utterly astonished that somebody had laid a hand on him. His ego suffered again when he spoke in Nyueng Bao and I said, “Sorry, old-timer. No speakee. Gonna got to be Taglian or Groghor with me.” In Groghor, which my maternal grandmother spoke because Grandpa captured her from those people, I asked, “What’s happening?” I knew maybe twenty words in Groghor, but that was twenty more than anyone else within seven thousand miles.

“The Speaker sends me to lead you to where the invader is most vulnerable. We have watched closely and know.”

“Thank you. We appreciate it. Lead on.” Shifting languages, I observed, “Marvellous how these guys suddenly talk the lingo when they want something.” Candles grunted.

Goblin, who had sneaked forward for a look around, returned just in time to offer me directions to the same weak point the Nyueng Bao had in mind. The squat man seemed a little surprised we could find our butts with our hands, maybe even a touch disgruntled.

“You got a name, short and wide?” I asked. “If you don’t have one you prefer I guarantee you these guys will hang one on you and I promise you won’t like it.”

“Hear hear,” Goblin agreed, chuckling. “I am Doj. All Nyueng Bao call me Uncle Doj.” “All right, Uncle. You going up there with us? Or did you just come over to direct traffic?” Already Goblin was whispering instructions to the guys creeping up behind us. No doubt he had left a few soft spells of sleepiness or confusion amongst the southerners as he was scouting.

Little discussion was needed. We would drive into their soft spot, kill anything that moved, split them in half, butcher anybody who didn’t run away, then we would back away before Mogaba began feeling too confident.

“I will accompany you although that stretches the Speaker’s instructions to extremes. You Bone Warriors surprise us continually. I wish to watch you at your work.”

I never considered killing people to be my profession but did not care to argue. “You speak Taglian very well, Uncle.”

He smiled. “I am forgetful, though, Stone Soldier. I may not remember a word after tonight.” Unless the Speaker jogged his memory, I supposed.

Uncle Doj did a great deal more than watch us hack and stab southerners. He turned into a one-man cyclone flailing around with a lightning sword. He was as sudden as the lightning but as graceful as a dancer. Each time he moved another Shadowlander fell.

“Damn,” I told Goblin a while later. “Remind me not to get into a quarrel with that character.”

“I’ll remind you to bring a crossbow and let him have it in the back from thirty feet is what I’ll do. After I put a deafness and a stupidity spell on him to even things up a little.”

“Don’t be surprised if it’s me distracting you someday when One-Eye sneaks up and offers you a cactus suppository.”

“Speaking of the runt. Tell me. Who’s being conspicuously absent without leave lately?”

I sent messages to the various units suggesting that we had done our part to relieve Mogaba’s troops. We should all go back to our part of town, patch ourselves up, take naps, like that. I told the Nyueng Bao elder, “Uncle Doj, please inform the Speaker that the Black Company extends its gratitude and friendship. Tell him he is free to call upon that at any time. We will extend ourselves as much as possible.”

The short, wide man bowed far enough that his movement had to mean something. I bowed back, almost as deeply. That must have been the right move because he smiled slightly, bowed shallowly for himself, hustled off.

“Runs like a duck,” Candles observed.

“I’m glad that duck was on our side, though.”

“You can say that again.”

“I’m glad that duck... Argh!” Candles had me by the throat.

“Somebody help me shut him up.”

That was just the start of what became a wild night of blowing off tensions. I got no chance to participate myself but I heard it was a banner night for the Jaicuri whores.

“Where the hell have you been?” I snarled at One-Eye. “The Company just fought through its nastiest episode in, oh, just days, and you were obviously absent every stinking second.” Not that his presence would have made any difference.

One-Eye grinned. My displeasure did not bother him a bit. He had outlived or outstubborned a parade of snotnoses like me. “Shit, Kid, I had to get my Shadowmaster sticker back, didn’t I? I’ve got a lot of work in that thing... What’s the matter?”

“Huh?” For a moment I saw a little black louse scuttling across a grey landscape from a height unattainable anywhere in Dejagore, even atop the citadel, where Old Crew guys were not welcome anymore. “Never mind, runt. I’d like to kick your ass but it wouldn’t do any good now. So you were out there. What became of Widowmaker and Lifetaker?” While I was arranging a quieter life for our leader those two vanished without a trace.

I wondered how Mogaba would write all this if he was keeping the Annals.

“One-Eye?”

“What?” Now he sounded irritated.

“You want to answer me? What happened to Widowmaker and Lifetaker?”

“You know something, Kid? I don’t have the faintest freaking idea. And I don’t care. I only had one thing on my mind. I wanted my spear back so I could use it next time that sucker ain’t looking. Then I had to worry about dodging a gang of raggedyass Shadowlanders who tried to jump me. They went away somewhere. All right?”

And none of us could fathom that. Because they vanished just when the Shadowlander confidence was rockiest. Shadowspinner had his tail between his legs and his boys could have been broken.

I grumbled, “If that was the Old Man and Lady they would’ve kept coming till they broke the whole show wide open. Wouldn’t they?”

I glared at an albino crow perched not twenty feet away. Its head was cocked. It stared at me with malign intelligence.

There were a lot of crows tonight.

Other agendas were being pursued. I was just one pawn caught up in tides of intrigue. But if we were careful the Company need not get swept away.

Mogaba and the Nar and their Taglian troops stayed busy for days. Maybe the Shadowmasters decided to make Mogaba pay for his failure to fulfill his end of the implicit bargain.

Which was just one more example of the way people down here go bugfuck when they are involved with the Black Company.