Flight West

Despite my exoneration by the tree, I never quite regained my former status with my comrades. Always there was a certain reserve, perhaps as much from envy of my apparent sudden female wealth as from trust slow to heal. I cannot deny the pain it caused me. I had been with those guys since I was a boy. They were my family.

I did take some ribbing about getting onto crutches in order to get out of work. But my work would have gone on had I had no legs at all.

Those damned papers. I had them committed to memory, set to music. And still I did not have the key we sought, nor what the Lady hoped to find. The cross-referencing was taking forever. The spelling of names, in pre-Domination and Domination times, had been free-form. TelleKurre is one of those languages where various letter combinations can represent identical sounds.

Pain in the damned fundament.

I do not know how much Darling told the others. I was not at the Big Meeting. Neither was the Lady. But word came out: The Company was moving out.

One day to get ready.

Topside, near nightfall, on my crutches, I watched the windwhales arrive. There were eighteen of them, all summoned by Father Tree. They came with their mantas and a whole panoply of Plain sentient forms. Three dropped to the ground. The Hole puked up its contents.

We began boarding. I got a ration because I had to be lifted, along with my papers, gear, and crutches. The whale was a small one. I would share it with just a few people. The Lady. Of course. We could not be separated now. And Goblin. And One-Eye. And Silent, after a bloody sign battle, for he did not want to be separated from Darling. And Tracker. And the child of the tree, for whom Tracker was guardian and I was in loco parentis. I think the wizards were supposed to keep an eye on the rest of us, though little they could have done had a situation presented itself.

Darling, the Lieutenant, Elmo, and the other old hands boarded a second wind whale. The third carried a handful of troops and a lot of gear.

We lifted off, joined the formation above.

A sunset from five thousand feet is unlike anything you will see from the ground. Unless you are atop a very lonely mountain. Magnificent.

With darkness came sleep. One-Eye spelled me under. I still had a good deal of swelling and pain.

Yes. We were outside the null. Our whale flew the far flank from Darling. Specifically for the Lady’s benefit.

Even then she did not give herself away.

The winds were favorable and we had the blessing of Father Tree. Dawn found us passing over Horse. It was there the truth finally surfaced.

Taken came up, all in their fish-carpets, armed to the gills. Panic noises wakened me. I got Tracker to help me stand. After one glance at the fire of the rising sun, I spied the Taken drifting into guardian positions around our whale. Goblin and them expected an attack. They howled their hearts out. Somehow One-Eye found a way for it all to be Goblin’s fault. They went at it.

But nothing happened. Almost to my surprise, too. The Taken merely maintained station. I glanced at the Lady. She startled me with a wink. Then: “We all have to cooperate, whatever our differences.”

Goblin heard that. He ignored One-Eye’s ranting for a moment, stared at the Taken. After a bit he looked at the Lady. Really looked.

I saw the light dawn. In a more than normally squeaky voice, and with a truly goofy look, he said, “I remember you.” He remembered the one time he had had a sort of direct contact with her. Many years ago, when he tried to contact Soulcatcher, he had caught her in the Tower, in the Lady’s presence. …

She smiled her most charming smile. The one that melts statues.

Goblin threw a hand in front of his eyes, turned away from her. He looked at me with the most awful expression, I could not help laughing. “You always accused me. …”

“You didn’t have to go and do it, Croaker!” His voice climbed the scale till it became inaudible. He sat down abruptly.

No lightning bolt splattered him across the sky. After a time he looked up and said, “Elmo is going to crap!” He giggled.

Elmo was the most unremitting of them all when it came to reminding me of my romances about the Lady.

After the humor went out of it, after One-Eye had been through it, too, and Silent had had his worst fears confirmed, I began to wonder about my friends.

One and all, they were westward bound on Darling’s say-so. They had not been informed, in so many words, that we were allied with our former enemies.

Fools. Or was Darling? What happened once the Dominator was down and we were ready to go after each other again? …

Whoa, Croaker. Darling learned to play cards from Raven. Raven was a cutthroat player.

It was the Forest of Cloud by nightfall. I wonder what they made of us in Lords. We passed right over. The streets filled with gawkers.

Roses passed in the night. Then the other old cities of our early years in the north. There was little talk. The Lady and I kept our heads together, growing more tense as our strange fleet neared its destination and we drew no nearer unearthing the nuggets we sought.

“How long?” I asked. I had lost track of time.

“Forty-two days,” she said.

“We were in the desert that long?”

“Time flies when you’re having fun.”

I gave her a startled look. A joke? Even an old cliché? From her?

I hate it when they go human on you. Enemies are not supposed to do that.

She had been crawling all over me with it for a couple months.

How can you hate?

The weather stayed halfway decent till we got to Forsberg. Then it became clabbered misery.

It was solid winter up there. Good, briskly refreshing winds loaded up with pellets of powder snow. A nice abrasive for a tender face like mine. A bombardment to clear out the lice on the backs of the whales, too. Everybody cussed and fussed and grumbled and huddled for warmth that dared not be provided by man’s traditional ally, fire. Only Tracker seemed untouched. “Don’t anything bother that thing?” I asked.

In the oddest voice I ever heard her use, the Lady replied, “Loneliness. If you want to kill Tracker the easy way, lock him up alone and go away.”

I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. Whom did I know who had been alone a long time? Who, maybe, just maybe, had begun to wonder if absolute power were worth the absolute price?

I knew beyond the glimmer of doubt that she had enjoyed every second of pretend on the Plain. Even the moments of danger. I knew that had I had the hair on my ass, there in the last days, I could have become more than a pretend boyfriend. There was a growing and quiet desperation to her in that time as going back to being the Lady approached.

Some of that I might have appropriated out of ego, for a very critical time faced her. She was under a lot of stress. She knew the enemy we faced. But not all was ego. I think she actually did like me as a person.

“I got a request,” I said softly, in the middle of the huddle, banishing thoughts caused by a woman pressed against me.

“What?”

“The Annals. They’re all that’s left of the Black Company.” Depression had set in fast. “There was an obligation undertaken ages ago, when the Free Companies of Khatovar were formed. If any of us get through this alive, someone should take them back.”

I do not know if she understood. But: “They’re yours,” she said.

I wanted to explain, but could not. Why take them back? I am not sure where they are supposed to go. Four hundred years the Company drifted slowly north, waxing, waning, turning over its constituents. I have no idea if Khatovar still exists or if it is a city, country, a person, or a god. The Annals from the earliest years either did not survive or went home already. I have seen nothing but digests and excerpts from the earliest century. … No matter. Part of the Annalist’s undertaking has always been to return the Annals to Khatovar should the Company disband.

The weather worsened. By Oar it seemed actively inimical, and may have been. That thing in the earth would know we were coming.

Just north of Oar all the Taken suddenly dropped away like rocks. “What the hell?”

“Toadkiller Dog,” the Lady said. “We’ve caught up with him. He hasn’t reached his master yet.”

“Can they stop him?”

“Yes.”

I crutched over to the side of the whale. I do not know what I expected to see. We were up in the snow clouds.

There were a few flashes below. Then the Taken came back. The Lady looked displeased. “What happened?” I asked.

“The monster got crafty. Ran into the null where it brushes the ground. The visibility is too poor to go after him.”

“Will it make much difference?”

“No.” But she did not sound entirely confident.

The weather worsened. But the whales remained undaunted. We reached the Barrowland. My group went to the Guards compound. Darling’s put up at Blue Willy. The boundary of the null fell just outside the compound wall.

Colonel Sweet himself greeted us. Good old Sweet who I thought was dead for sure. He had a gimp leg now. I cannot say he was convivial. But then, it was a time when nobody was.

The orderly assigned us was our old friend Case.