The Black Company: The First Novel of 'The Chronicles of The Black Company'

Read The Black Company: The First Novel of 'The Chronicles of The Black Company' for Free Online Page B

Book: Read The Black Company: The First Novel of 'The Chronicles of The Black Company' for Free Online
Authors: Glen Cook
a boat grounded on the beach. The legate had come.
    We gathered our things and began taking leave of camp followers who had trickled out from the city. Our animals and equipment would be their reward for faith and friendship. I spent a sad, gentle hour with a woman to whom I meant more than I suspected. We shed no tears and told one another no lies. I left her with memories and most of my pathetic fortune. She left me with a lump in my throat and a sense of loss not wholly fathomable.
    “Come on, Croaker,” I muttered as I clambered down to the beach. “You’ve been through this before. You’ll forget her before you get to Opal.”
    A half dozen boats were drawn up on the strand. As each filled northern sailors shoved it into the surf. Oarsmen drove it into the waves, and in seconds it vanished into the fog. Empty boats came bobbing in. Every other boat carried equipment and possessions.
    A sailor who spoke the language of Beryl told me there was plenty of room aboard the black ship. The legate had left his troops in Beryl as guards for the new puppet Syndic, who was another Red distantly related to the man we had served.
    “Hope they have less trouble than we did,” I said, and went away to brood.
    The legate was trading his men for us. I suspected we were going to be used, that we were headed into something grimmer than we could imagine.
    Several times during the wait I heard a distant howl. At first I thought it the song of the Pillar. But the air was not moving. When it came again I lost all doubt. My skin crawled.
    The quartermaster, the Captain, the Lieutenant, Silent, Goblin, One-Eye, and I waited till the last boat. “I’m not going,” One-Eye announced as a boatswain beckoned us to board.
    “Get in,” the Captain told him. His voice was gentle. That is when he is dangerous.
    “I’m resigning. Going to head south. Been gone long enough, they should’ve forgotten me.”
    The Captain jabbed a finger at the Lieutenant, Silent, Goblin, and me, jerked his thumb at the boat. One-Eye bellowed. “I’ll turn the lot of you into ostriches.…” Silent’s hand sealed his mouth. We ran him to the boat. He wriggled like a snake in a firepit.
    “You stay with the family,” the Captain said softly.
    “On three,” Goblin squealed merrily, then quick-counted. The little black man arced into the boat, twisting in flight. He bobbed over the gunwale cursing, spraying us with saliva. We laughed to see him showing some spirit. Goblin led the charge that nailed him to a thwart.
    Sailors pushed us off. The moment the oars bit water One-Eye subsided. He had the look of a man headed for the gallows.
    The galley took form, a looming, indeterminate shape slightly darker than the surrounding darkness. I heard the fog-hollowed voices of seamen, timbers creaking, tackle working, long before I was sure of my eyes. Our boat nosed in to the foot of an accomodation ladder. The howl came again.
    One-Eye tried to dive overboard. We restrained him. The Captain applied a bootheel to his butt. “You had your chance to talk us out of this. You wouldn’t. Live with it.”
    One-Eye slouched as he followed the Lieutenant up the ladder, a man without hope. A man who had left a brother dead and now was being forced to approach that brother’s killer, upon which he was powerless to take revenge.
    We found the Company on the maindeck, snuggled amongst mounds of gear. The sergeants threaded the mess toward us.
    The legate appeared. I stared. This was the first I had seen him afoot, standing. He was short. For a moment I wondered if he were male at all. His voices were often otherwise.
    He surveyed us with an intensity that suggested he was reading our souls. One of his officers asked the Captain to fall the men in the best he could on the crowded deck. The ship’s crew were taking up the center flats decking over the open well that ran from the bow almost to the stern, and from deck level down to the lower oar bank. Below, there was

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