Tally Mix-Up

You try your damnedest, but something always goes wrong. That’s life. If you’re smart, you plan for it.

Somehow, somebody got away from Madle’s, along about the twenty-fifth Rebel who stumbled into our web, when it really looked like Neat had done us a big favor, summoning the local hierarchy to a conference. Looking backward, it is hard to fix blame. We all did our jobs. But there are limits to how alert you stay under extended stress. The man who disappeared probably spent hours plotting his break. We did not notice his absence for a long time.

Candy figured it out. He threw his cards in at the tail of a hand, said, “We’re minus a body, troops. One of those pig farmers. The little guy who looked like a pig.”

I could see the table from the corner of my eye. I grunted. “You’re right. Damn. Should have taken a head count after each trip to the well.”

The table was behind Pawnbroker. He did not turn around. He waited a hand, then ambled to Madle’s counter and bought a crock of beer. While his rambling distracted the locals, I made rapid signs with my fingers, in deaf-speech. “Better be ready for a raid. They know who we are. I shot my mouth off.”

The Rebel would want us bad. The Black Company has earned a widespread reputation as a successful eradicator of the Rebel pestilence, wherever it appears. Though we are not as vicious as reputed, news of our coming strikes terror wherever we go. The Rebel often goes to ground, abandoning his operations, where we appear.

Yet here were four of us, separated from our companions, evidently unaware that we were at risk. They would try. The question at hand was how hard.

We did have cards up our sleeves. We never play fair if we can avoid it. The Company philosophy is to maximize effectiveness while minimizing risk.

The tall, dark man rose, left his shadow, stalked toward the stair to the sleeping rooms. Candy snapped, “Watch him, Otto.” Otto hurried after him, looking feeble in the man’s wake. The locals watched, wondering.

Pawnbroker used signs to ask, “What now?”

“We wait,” Candy said aloud, and with signs added, “Do what we were sent to do.”

“Not much fun, being live bait,” Pawnbroker signed back. He studied the stair nervously. “Set Otto up with a hand,” he suggested.

I looked at Candy. He nodded. “Why not? Give him about seventeen.” Otto would go down first time around every time if he had less than twenty. It was a good percentage bet.

I quick figured the cards in my head, and grinned. I could give him seventeen and have enough low cards left to give each of us a hand that would burn him. “Give me those cards.”

I hurried through the deck, building hands. “There.” Nobody had higher than a five. But Otto’s hand had higher cards than the others.

Candy grinned. “Yeah.”

Otto did not come back. Pawnbroker said, “I’m going up to check.”

“All right,” Candy replied. He went and got himself a beer. I eyed the locals. They were getting ideas. I stared at one and shook my head.

Pawnbroker and Otto returned a minute later, preceded by the dark man, who returned to his shadow. Pawnbroker and Otto looked relieved. They settled down to play.

Otto asked, “Who dealt?”

“Candy did,” I said. “Your go.”

He went down. “Seventeen.”

“Heh-heh-heh,” I replied. “Burned you. Fifteen.”

And Pawnbroker said, “Got you both. Fourteen.”

And Candy, “Fourteen, You’re hurting, Otto.”

He just sat there, numbed, for several seconds. Then he caught on. “You bastards! You stacked it! You don’t think I’m going to pay off. …”

“Settle down. Joke, son,” Candy said. “Joke. It was your deal anyhow,” The cards went around and the darkness came. No more insurgents appeared. The locals grew ever more restless. Some worried about their families, about being late. As everywhere else, most Tallylanders are concerned only with their own lives. They don’t care whether the White Rose or the Lady is ascendant.

The minority of Rebel sympathizers worried about when the blow might fall. They were afraid of getting caught in the crossfire.

We pretended ignorance of the situation.

Candy signed, “Which ones are dangerous?”

We conferred, selected three men who might become trouble. Candy had Otto bind them to their chairs.

It dawned on the locals that we knew what to expect, that we were prepared. Not looking forward, but prepared.

The raiders waited till midnight. They were more cautious than the Rebel we encountered ordinarily. Maybe our reputation was too strong. …

They burst in in a rush. We discharged our spring tubes and began swinging swords, retreating to a corner away from the fireplace. The tall man watched indifferently.

There were a lot of Rebels. Far more than we had expected. They kept storming inside, crowding up, getting into one another’s ways, climbing over the corpses of their comrades. “Some trap,” I gasped. “Must be a hundred of them.”

“Yeah,” Candy said. “It don’t look good.” He kicked at a man’s groin, cut him when he covered up.

The place was wall-to-wall insurgents, and from the noise there were a hell of a lot more outside. Somebody didn’t want us getting away.

Well, that was the plan.

My nostrils flared. There was an odor in the air, just the faintest off-key touch, subtle under the stink of fear and sweat. “Cover up!” I yelled, and whipped a wad of damp wool from my belt pouch. It stunk worse than a squashed skunk. My companions followed suit.

Somewhere a man screamed. Then another. Voices rose in a hellish chorus. Our enemies surged around, baffled, panicky. Faces twisted in agony. Men fell down in writhing heaps, clawing their noses and throats. I was careful to keep my face in the wool.

The tall, thin man came out of his shadows. Calmly, he began despatching guerrillas with a fourteen-inch, silvery blade. He spared those customers we had not bound to their chairs.

He signed, “It’s safe to breathe now,”

“Watch the door,” Candy told me. He knew I had an aversion to this kind of slaughter. “Otto, you take the kitchen. Me and Pawnbroker will help Silent.”

The Rebel outside tried to get us by speeding arrows through the doorway. He had no luck. Then he tried firing the place. Madle suffered paroxysms of rage. Silent, one of the three wizards of the Company, who had been sent into Tally weeks earlier, used his powers to squelch the fire. Angrily, the Rebel prepared for a siege.

“Must have brought every man in the province,” I said.

Candy shrugged. He and Pawnbroker were piling corpses into defensive barricades. “They must have set up a base camp near here.” Our intelligence about the Tally guerrillas was extensive. The Lady prepares well before she sends us in. But we hadn’t been told to expect such strength available at short notice.

Despite our successes, I was scared. There was a big mob outside, and it sounded like more were arriving regularly. Silent, as an ace in the hole, hadn’t much more value.

“You send your bird?” I demanded, assuming that had been the reason for his trip upstairs. He nodded. That provided some relief. But not much.

The tenor changed. They were quieter outside. More arrows zipped through the doorway. It had been ripped off its hinges in the first rush. The bodies heaped in it would not slow the Rebel long. “They’re going to come,” I told Candy.

“All right.” He joined Otto in the kitchen. Pawnbroker joined me. Silent, looking mean and deadly, stationed himself in the center of the common room.

A roar went up outside.

“Here they come!”

We held the main rush, with Silent’s help, but others began to batter the window shutters. Then Candy and Otto had to concede the kitchen. Candy killed an overzealous attacker and spun away long enough to bellow, “Where the hell are they, Silent?”

Silent shrugged. He seemed almost indifferent to the proximity of death. He hurled a spell at a man being boosted through a window.

Trumpets brayed in the night. “Ha!” I shouted. “They’re coming!” The last gate of the trap had closed.

One question remained. Would the Company close in before our attackers finished us?

More windows gave. Silent could not be everywhere. “To the stair!” Candy shouted. “Fall back to the stair.”

We raced for it. Silent called up a noxious fog. It was not the deadly thing he had used before. He could not do that again, now. He hadn’t time to prepare.

The stair was easily held. Two men, with Silent behind them, could hold it forever.

The Rebel saw that. He began setting fires. This time Silent could not extinguish all the flames.