Dreams of Steel (Chronicle of the Black Company) by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online

victory north of the river. Taglian artisans were reinforcing it and beginning a companion fortress on the north bank.
    Swan scanned the scabrous encampment west of the fortress. Eight hundred men lived there. Some were construction workers. Most were fugitives from the south. One large group particularly irked him. “Think Jah has figured out that the Woman is here?”
    Jahamaraj Jah was a power-hungry Shadar priest. He had commanded the mounted auxiliaries during the southern expedition. His flight north had been so precipitous he’d beaten Swan’s party to the ford by several days.
    “I think he’s guessed. He tried to sneak a messenger across last night.” The Radisha, through Swan, had forbidden anyone to cross the river. She didn’t want news of the disaster reaching Taglios before its dimensions were known.
    “Uhm?”
    “Messenger drowned. Cordy says Jah thinks he made it.” Blade chuckled wickedly. He hated priests. Baiting them was his favorite sport. All priests, of whatever faith.
    “Good. That’ll keep him out of our hair till we figure out what to do with him.”
    “I know what to do.”
    “Political consequences,” Swam cautioned. “That your solution to everything? Cut somebody’s throat?”
    “Always slows them down.”
    The guards at the fortress gate saluted. They were favorites of the Radisha and, though neither Blade nor Swan nor Mather wanted it, they commanded Taglios’ defenses now.
    Swan said, “I got to learn to think in the long term, Blade. Never thought we’d be back at this after the Black Company showed.”
    “You got a lot to learn, Willow.”
    Cordy and Smoke waited outside the room where the Radisha holed up. Smoke looked like he had a bad stomach. Like he’d make a run for it if he got a chance.
    Swan said, “You’re looking grim, Cordy.”
    “Just tired. Mostly of playing with the runt.”
    Swan raised an eyebrow. Cordy was the calm one, the patient guy, the one who poured oil on the waters. Smoke must have provoked him good. “She ready?”
    “Whenever.”
    “Let’s do it. I got a river full of fish waiting.”
    “Better figure on them getting grey hair before you get back.” Mather knocked, pushed the wizard ahead of him.
    The Radisha entered the room from the side as Swan closed the door. Here, in private, with men not from her own culture, she didn’t pretend to a traditional sex role. “Did you tell them, Cordy?”
    Willow exchanged glances with Blade. Their old buddy on a nickname basis with the Woman? Interesting. What did he call her? She didn’t look like a Cuddles.
    “Not yet.”
    “What’s up?” Swan asked.
    The Radisha said, “I’ve had my men mixing with the soldiers. They’ve heard rumors that the woman who was the Lieutenant of the Black Company survived. She’s trying to pull the survivors together south of here.”
    “Best news I’ve heard in a while,” Swan said. He winked at Blade.
    “Is it?”
    “I thought it was a crying shame to lose such a resource.”
    “I’ll bet. You have a low mind, Swan.”
    “Guilty. Hard not to once you’ve had a gander at her. So she made it. Great. Gets us three off the hook. Gives you a professional to carry on.”
    “That remains to be seen. There’ll be difficulties. Cordy. Tell them.”
    “Twenty-some men from the Second just came in. They’d stayed off the road to avoid the Shadowmasters’ patrols. About seventy miles south of here they took a couple prisoners. The night before our guys grabbed them Kina and a ghost army supposedly attacked their camp and killed most of them.”
    Swan looked at Blade, at the Radisha, at Cordy again. “I missed something. Who’s Kina? And what’s got into Smoke?” The wizard was shaking like somebody had dunked him in icewater.
    Mather and Blade shrugged. They didn’t know.
    The Radisha sat down. “Get comfortable.” She chewed her lip. “This will be difficult to tell.”
    “Then just go straight at it,” Swan said.
    “Yes. I suppose.”