Glen Cook - Chronicles of the Black Company

A Gollancz eBook

Omnibus copyright Glen Cook 2007

The Black Company copyright Glen Cook 1984

Shadows Linger copyright Glen Cook 1984

The White Rose copyright Glen Cook 1985

All rights reserved.

The right of Glen Cook to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martin's Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

This eBook first published in 2010 by Gollancz.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 08662 3

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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This one is for the people of the
St. Louis Science Fiction Society.
Love you all.

T here were prodigies and portents enough, One-Eye says. We must blame ourselves for misinterpreting them. One-Eyes handicap in no way impairs his marvelous hindsight.

Lightning from a clear sky smote the Necropolitan Hill. One bolt struck the bronze plaque sealing the tomb of the forvalaka, obliterating half the spell of confinement. It rained stones. Statues bled. Priests at several temples reported sacrificial victims without hearts or livers. One victim escaped after its bowels were opened and was not recaptured. At the Fork Barracks, where the Urban Cohorts were billeted, the image of Teux turned completely around. For nine evenings running, ten black vultures circled the Bastion. Then one evicted the eagie which lived atop the Paper Tower.

Astrologers refused readings, fearing for their lives. A mad soothsayer wandered the streets proclaiming the imminent end of the world. At the Bastion, the eagle not only departed, the ivy on the outer ramparts withered and gave way to a creeper which appeared black in all but the most intense sunlight.

But that happens every year. Fools can make an omen of anything in retrospect.

We should have been better prepared. We did have four modestly accomplished wizards to stand sentinel against predatory tomorrowsthough never by any means as sophisticated as divining through sheeps entrails.

Still, the best augurs are those who divine from the portents of the past. They compile phenomenal records.

Beryl totters perpetually, ready to stumble over a precipice into chaos. The Queen of the Jewel Cities was old and decadent and mad, filled with the stench of degeneracy and moral dryrot. Only a fool would be surprised by anything found creeping its night streets.

I had every shutter thrown wide, praying for a breath off the harbor, rotting fish and all. There wasnt enough breeze to stir a cobweb. I mopped my face and grimaced at my first patient. Crabs again, Curly?

He grinned feebly. His face was pale. Its my stomach, Croaker. His pate looks like a polished ostrich egg. Thus the name. I checked the watch schedule and duty roster. Nothing there he would want to avoid. Its bad, Croaker. Really.

Uhm. I assumed my professional demeanor, sure what it was. His skin was clammy, despite the heat. Eaten outside the commissary lately, Curly? A fly landed on his head, strutted like a conqueror. He didnt notice.

Yeah. Three, four times.

Uhm. I mixed a nasty, milky concoction. Drink this. All of it.

His whole face puckered at the first taste. Look, Croaker, I

The smell of the stuff revolted me. Drink, friend. Two men died before I came up with that. Then Pokey took it and lived. Word was out about that.

He drank.

You mean its poison? The damned Blues slipped me something?

Take it easy. Youll be okay. Yeah. It looks that way. Id had to open up Walleye and Wild Bruce to learn the truth. It was a subtle poison. Get over there on the cot where the breeze will hit youif the son of a bitch ever comes up. And lie still. Let the stuff work. I settled him down.

Tell me what you ate outside. I collected a pen and a chart tacked onto a board. I had done the same with Pokey, and with Wild Bruce before he died, and had had Walleyes platoon sergeant backtrack his movements. I was sure the poison had come from one of several nearby dives frequented by the Bastion garrison.

Curly produced one across-the-board match. Bingo! Weve got the bastards now.

Who? He was ready to go settle up himself.

You rest. Ill see the Captain. I patted his shoulder, checked the next room. Curly was it for morning sick call.

I took the long route, along Trejans Wall, which overlooks Beryls harbor. Halfway over I paused, stared north, past the mole and lighthouse and Fortress Island, at the Sea of Torments. Particolored sails speckled the dingy grey-brown water as coastal dhows scooted out along the spiderweb of routes linking the Jewel Cities. The upper air was still and heavy and hazy. The horizon could not be discerned. But down on the water the air was in motion. There was always a breeze out around the Island, though it avoided the shore as if fearing leprosy. Closer at hand, the wheeling gulls were as surly and lackadaisical as the day promised to make most men.

Another summer in service to the Syndic of Beryl, sweating and grimy, thanklessly shielding him from political rivals and his undisciplined native troops. Another summer busting our butts for Curlys reward. The pay was good, but not in coin of the soul. Our forebrethren would be embarrassed to see us so diminished.

Beryl is misery curdled, but also ancient and intriguing. Its history is a bottomless well filled with murky water. I amuse myself plumbing its shadowy depths, trying to isolate fact from fiction, legend, and myth. No easy task, for the citys earlier historians wrote with an eye to pleasing the powers of their day.

The most interesting period, for me, is the ancient kingdom, which is the least satisfactorily chronicled. It was then, in the reign of Niam, that the for-valaka came, were overcome after a decade of terror, and were confined in their dark tomb atop the Necropolitan Hill. Echoes of that terror persist in folklore and matronly admonitions to unruly children. No one recalls what the for-valaka were, now.

I resumed walking, despairing of beating the heat. The sentries, in their shaded kiosks, wore towels draped around their necks.

A breeze startled me. I faced the harbor. A ship was rounding the Island, a great lumbering beast that dwarfed the dhows and feluccas. A silver skull bulged in the center of its full-bellied black sail. That skulls red eyes glowed. Fires flickered behind its broken teeth. A glittering silver band encircled the skull.

What the hell is that? a sentry asked.

I dont know, Whitey. The ships size impressed me more than did its flashy sail. The four minor wizards we had with the Company could match that showmanship. But Id never seen a galley sporting five banks of oars.