The Black Company: The First Novel of 'The Chronicles of The Black Company' by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online

muttering, clanking, rattling, as the oarsmen wakened.
    The legate reviewed us. He paused before each soldier, pinned a reproduction of the device on his sail over each heart. It was slow going. We were under way before he finished.
    The nearer the envoy approached, the more One-Eye shook. He almost fainted when the legate pinned him. I was baffled. Why so much emotion?
    I was nervous when my turn came, but not frightened. I glanced at the badge as delicate gloved fingers attached it to my jerkin. Skull and circle in silver, on jet, elegantly crafted. A valuable if grim piece of jewelry. Had he not been so rattled, I would have thought One-Eye to be considering how best to pawn it.
    The device now seemed vaguely familiar. Outside the context of the sail, which I had taken as showmanship and ignored. Hadn’t I read or heard about a similar seal somewhere?
    The legate said, “Welcome to the service of the Lady, physician.” His voice was distracting. It did not fit expectations, ever. This time it was musical, lilting, the voice of a young woman putting something over on wiser heads.
    The Lady? Where had I encountered that word used that way, emphasized as though it was the title of a goddess? A dark legend out of olden times.…
    A howl of outrage, pain, and despair filled the ship. Startled, I broke ranks and went to the lip of the air well.
    The forvalaka was in a big iron cage at the foot of the mast. In the shadows it seemed to change subtly as it prowled, testing every bar. One moment it was an athletic woman of about thirty, but seconds later it had assumed the aspect of a black leopard on its hind legs, clawing the imprisoning iron. I recalled the legate saying he might have a use for the monster.
    I faced him. And the memory came. A devil’s hammer drove spikes of ice into the belly of my soul. I knew why One-Eye did not want to cross the sea. The ancient evil of the north.… “I thought you people died three hundred years ago.”
    The legate laughed. “You don’t know your history well enough. We weren’t destroyed. Just chained and buried alive.” His laughter had an hysterical edge. “Chained, buried, and eventually liberated by a fool named Bomanz, Croaker.”
    I dropped to my haunches beside One-Eye, who buried his face in his hands.
    The legate, the terror called Soulcatcher in old tales, a devil worse than any dozen forvalaka, laughed madly. His crewmen cringed. A great joke, enlisting the Black Company in the service of evil. A great city taken and little villains suborned. A truly cosmic jest.
    The Captain settled beside me. “Tell me, Croaker.”
    So I told him about the Domination, and the Dominator and his Lady. Their rule had spanned an empire of evil unrivalled in Hell. I told him about the Ten Who Were Taken (of whom Soulcatcher was one), ten great wizards, near-demigods in their power, who had been overcome by the Dominator and compelled into his service. I told him about the White Rose, the lady general who had brought the Domination down, but whose power had been insufficient to destroy the Dominator, his Lady, and the Ten. She had interred the lot in a charm-bound barrow somewhere north of the sea.
    “And now they’re restored to life, it seems,” I said. “They rule the northern empire. Tom-Tom and One-Eye must have suspected.… We’ve enlisted in their service.”
    “Taken,” he murmured. “Rather like the forvalaka.”
    The beast screamed and hurled itself against the bars of its cage. Soulcatcher’s laughter drifted across the foggy deck. “Taken by the Taken,” I agreed. “The parallel is uncomfortable.” I had begun to shake as more and more old tales surfaced in my mind.
    The Captain sighed and stared into the fog, toward the new land.
    One-Eye stared at the thing in the cage, hating. I tried to ease him away. He shook me off. “Not yet, Croaker. I have to figure this.”
    “What?”
    “This isn’t the one that killed Tom-Tom. It doesn’t have the scars we put on