I now had two feeble squads, Otto and the four from Opal, and Hagop and the three from Beryl. Such was the Company’s history. Pick up a man here, enlist two there, keep on keeping on.

Southward and southward. Through Rebosa, where the Company had seen service briefly, and where Otto and Hagop had enlisted. They found their city changed immensely and yet not at all. They had no trouble leaving it behind. They brought in another man there, a nephew, who quickly earned the name Smiley because of his consistent sullenness and sarcastic turn of phrase.

Then Padora, and on, to that great crossroads of trade routes where I was born and where I enlisted just before the Company ended its service there. I was young and foolish when I did. Yes. But I did get to see the far reaches of the world.

I ordered a day of rest at the vast caravan camp outside the city wall, along the westward road, while I went into town and indulged myself, walking streets I had run as a kid. Like Otto said about Rebosa, the same and yet dramatically changed. The difference, of course, was inside me.

I stalked through the old neighborhood, past the old tenement. I saw no one I knew-unless a woman glimpsed briefly, who looked like my grandmother, was my sister. I did not confront her, nor ask. To those people I am dead.

A return as imperial legate would not change that.

We stood before the last imperial mile marker. Lady was trying to convince the lieutenant commanding our guards that his mission was complete, that imperial soldiers crossing the frontier might be construed as an unacceptable provocation.

Sometimes her people are too loyal.

A half-dozen border militiamen, equally divided between sides, clad identically and obviously old friends, stood around a short distance away, discussing us in murmurs of awe. The rest of us fidgeted.

It seemed ages since I had been beyond imperial frontiers. I found the prospect vaguely unsettling.

“You know what we’re doing, Croaker?” Goblin asked.

“What’s that?”

“We’re travelling backward in time.”

Backward in time. Backward into our own history. A simple enough statement, but an important thought.

“Yeah. Maybe you’re right. Let me go stir the pot. Else we’ll never get moving.”

I joined Lady, who gave me a nasty look. I pasted on my sweetest smile and said, “Look here. I’m over on the other side of the line. You got a problem, Lieutenant?”

He bobbed his head. He was more in awe of my rank and title, unearned though they were, than he was of the woman who was supposed to be his boss. And that was because he believed he owed her certain duties even she could not overrule.

“The Company has openings for a few good men with military experience,” I said. “Now that we’re out of the empire and don’t have to have the imperial permission, we’re actively recruiting.”

He caught on real fast, skipped across beside me, gave Lady a big grin.

“There is one thing,” I said. “You come over here and do it, you’re going to have to take the oath to the Company, same as anybody else. Meaning you can’t pledge yourself to any higher loyalty.”

Lady gave him a nasty-sweet smile. He stepped back across, figuring he’d better do some serious thinking before he committed himself.

I told Lady, “That goes for everybody. I would not presume before. But if you come out of the empire and continue to ride with us it will be under the same conditions accepted by everyone else.”

Such a look she gave me. “But I’m just a woman...”

“Not a precedent, friend. It didn’t happen often. The world don’t have much room for female adventurers. But women have marched with the Company.” Turning to the lieutenant, I said, “And if you sign on, your oath will be taken as genuine. First time you get an order and look to her for advice on yes or no, out you go. Alone in a foreign land.” It was one of my more assertive days.

Lady muttered some very unladylike sniggen snaggen riddly rodden racklesnatzes under her breath, then told the lieutenant, “Go talk it over with your men.” The moment he was out of hearing she demanded, “Does this mean we stop being friends? If I take your damned oath?”

“Do you reckon I stopped being friends with the others when they elected me Captain?”

“I admit I don’t hear a lot of yes sir,’ ’no sir,’ ’your worship sir.’”

“But you do see them do what they’re told when they know I mean what I say.”

“Most of the time.”

“Goblin and One-Eye need a little extra convincing once in a while. What’s it going to be? You going to be a soldier?”

“Do I have a choice, Croaker? You can be a bastard.”

“Of course you have a choice. You can go back with your men and be the Lady.”

The lieutenant was talking to his troops and the idea of going on south was proving less popular than he or I had thought it would. Most of the bunch started getting their horses together, facing north, before he finished talking.

He finally came over and presented us with six men who wanted to go on with us. He did not include himself with the group. Evidently his conscience had shown him a way around doing what he considered to be his duty minutes before.

I questioned the men briefly and they did seem interested in going on. So I brought them over the line and swore them all in, making a production of it for Lady’s sake. I do not recall doing anything particularly formal for anyone else before.

I gave the six to Otto and Hagop for dividing between them, and kept the one for me, and later entered their names into the Annals when we learned how they wanted to be known.

Lady remained content to be called Lady. It sounded like a name when heard by speakers of any language but one, anyway.

Crows watched the whole show from a nearby tree.

Though the sun stared in through a dozen vaulted windows there was darkness in that place where Darkness met.

A pool of molten stone simmered in the center of the vast floor. It cast bloody light upon four seated figures floating a few feet in the air. They faced one another over the pool, forming an equilateral triangle with a couple at its apex. Those two were leagued more often than not. They were allied now.

There had been war among the four for a long time, with nothing gained, one in relation to another. But at the moment there was an armistice.

Shadows slithered and swirled and pranced around them. Nothing could be seen of any of them except vague shapes. All four chose to conceal themselves within robes of black, behind black masks.

The smallest, one of the couple, broke a silence that had reigned an hour. “She has begun moving south. Those who served her and still bear her indelible mark are moving also. They have crossed the sea, and they come bearing mighty talismans. And their road is strewn with those who would join their destinies to that black standard. Including some whose power we would be foolish not to beware.”

One angle of the triangle made a sound of contempt.

The other asked, “And what of the one in the north?”

“The Great One remains secure. The lesser one who lay in the shade of the prisoning tree does so no longer. It has been resurrected and given new form. It comes south too, but it is so insane and vengeance-starved that it is not to be feared. A child could dispose of it.”

“Have we cause to fear that our presence here is known?”

“None. Even in Trogo Taglios only a few are convinced that we exist. Beyond the First Cataract we are but a rumor, and not that above the Second. But he who has made himself master in the great swamps may have sensed us stirring. It is possible he suspects there is more afoot than he knew.”

The reporter’s companion added, “They come. She comes. But harnessed to the pace of man and animal. We still have a year. Or more.”