Book 1 - Bleak Seasons by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online

Before I break out in a
case of common sense.” I grunted as I rose. My knees
crackled. My muscles did not want to stretch any more. I swore. I
was getting too damned old for this shit, though at thirty-four I
was the baby of the bunch. “Move out,” I said, loudly
enough to be heard by most everyone. You couldn’t use hand
signals in that darkness.
    We were downwind and Goblin had done his stuff. Noise was not a
worry.
    The men drifted away, mostly so quietly that I had trouble
believing I was alone suddenly except for my bodyguard. We moved,
too. Thai Dei covered my back. The night didn’t bother him.
Maybe he has eyes like a cat.
    I had plenty of mixed feelings. This was the first time I had
run a raid. I was not sure I was over Dejagore enough to handle it.
I shied at shadows and remained crazy suspicious of everybody
outside the Company, for no reason I could understand. But Croaker
insisted, so here I was sneaking around in a dark and evil forest
with icicles hanging off my butt, directing the first purely
Company op in years. Only it wasn’t so purely Company when
you considered the fact that all my guys had bodyguards with
them.
    I got over the self-confidence hurdle just by getting myself
moving. Hell, it was too late to stop anything.
    I stopped worrying about me and went to work worrying about how
we would look after the raid was over. If we blew it we could not
blame that on Taglian treachery or factionalism or incompetence,
the usual sand in the machine.
    I reached the crest of a low ridge. My hands were frozen but my
body was wet inside my clothing. Light wavered ahead. The
Deceivers, those lucky bastards, had a bonfire to keep them warm. I
paused to listen. I heard nothing.
    How did the Old Man know the leaders of the Strangler bands
would gather for this particular festival? It was downright spooky
the way he knew stuff sometimes. Maybe Lady was rubbing off. Maybe
he had some magical talent he never mentioned.
    I observed, “We’re about to find out if Goblin still
has that talent.”
    Thai Dei did not spend a precious grunt. Silence was comment
enough.
    There were supposed to be thirty to forty top Deceivers over
there. We hunt them relentlessly and have done so since Narayan
snatched Lady and Croaker’s baby. The Old Man has eliminated
mercy from the Company vocabulary. And that fits Deceiver
philosophy perfectly, though I would bet those guys up ahead would
not think that way in a minute.
    Goblin still had the knack. The sentries were napping. Still,
inevitably, all did not go as planned.
    I was fifty feet from the bonfire, sneaking along beside this
especially big, ugly shelter when somebody went heeling and toeing
out its end like all the devils in Hell were after him. He bent
under the weight of a big bundle. That bundle wriggled and
whimpered.
    “Narayan Singh!” I knew him instantly.
“Stop!”
    Right, Murgen. Freeze him with your voice.
    The rest of the guys recognized him too. A yell went up. We
could not believe our luck, though I had been warned that the big
prize might be there to grab. Singh was the number one Deceiver,
the villain Lady and the Captain want to spend long years killing,
an inch at a time.
    The bundle had to be their daughter.
    I yelled orders. Instead of responding the men did whatever they
thought of. Mostly they went after Singh. The racket wakened the
rest of the Deceivers. The quickest tried to run.
    Luckily, some of the guys stayed on the job.
    “You warm now?” Goblin asked. I puffed heartily as I
watched Thai Dei shove a skinny blade into the eye of a sleep
befuddled Strangler. Thai Dei doesn’t cut throats. He
doesn’t like the mess.
    It was over. “How many did we get? How many got
away?” I stared the direction Singh had fled. The silence
there was not promising. The guys would have raised a real hoorah
had they caught him.
    Damn! I was excited for a while there. If only I could have
dragged him back to Taglios. If wishes were fishes. “Keep
some alive.