beat a fighting retreat into its fortified encampment.
During the ensuing siege the enemy penetrated the camp several
times. During one such penetration the volumes in question
vanished. Both the Annalist and his understudy were slain. The
Books could not be reconstructed from memory.
Oh, well. I was ahead of the game.
Books available charted our future almost to the edge of the
maps owned by the monks, and those ran all the way to Here There Be
Dragons. Another century and a half of a journey into our
yesterdays. By the time we retraced our route that far I hoped we
would stand at the heart of a map that encompassed our
destination.
As soon as it was clear that we had struck gold I obtained
writing materials and a virgin volume of the Annals. I could write
as fast as One-Eye and the monk could translate.
Time fled. A monk brought candles. Then a hand settled on my
shoulder. Lady said, “Do you want to take a break? I could do
that for a while.”
For half a minute I just sat there turning red. That, after I
practically ditched her outside. After I never even thought of her
all day.
She told me, “I understand.”
Maybe she did. She had read the various Books of Croaker—or, as
posterity might recall them, the Books of the North—several
times.
With Murgen and Lady spelling me the translation went quickly.
The only practical limit was One-Eye’s endurance.
It was not all one way. I had to trade my later Annals for their
older ones. Lady sweetened the deal with a few hundred anecdotes
about the dark empire of the north, but the monks never connected
my Lady with the queen of darkness.
One-Eye is a tough old buzzard. He held up. Four days after he
made his great discovery the job was done.
I let Murgen into the game but he did all right. And I had to
beg/buy four blank journals in order to get everything
transcribed.
Lady and I resumed our stroll about where we had broken it, but
with me a little down.
“What’s the matter?” she chided, and to my
astonishment wanted to know if it was a postcoital depression. Just
the faintest of digs there, I think.
“No. I’ve just found out a ton about the
Company’s history. But I didn’t learn anything
that’s really new.”
She understood but she kept quiet and let me articulate my
dissatisfaction.
“It’s told a hundred ways, poorly and well,
according to the skill of the particular Annalist, but, except for
the occasional interesting detail, it was the same old march,
countermarch, fight, celebrate or run away, record the dead, and,
sooner or later, get even with the sponsor for betraying us. Even
at that place with the unpronounceable name, where the Company was
in service for fifty-six years.”
“Gea-Xle.” She got her mouth around it like she had
had practice.
“Yeah, there. Where the contract lasted so long the
Company almost lost its identity, intermarrying with the population
and all that, becoming a sort of hereditary bodyguard, with arms
handed down from father to son. But as it always will, the
essential moral destitution of those would-be princes made itself
evident and somebody decided to cheat us. He got his throat cut and
the Company moved on.”
“You certainly read selectively, Croaker.”
I looked at her. She was laughing at me quietly.
“Yeah, well.” I’d stated it pretty baldly. A
prince did try to cheat our forebrethren and did get his throat
cut. But the Company installed a new, friendly, beholden dynasty
and did hang around a few years before that Captain got a wild hair
and decided to go treasure hunting.
“You have no reservations about commanding a band of hired
killers?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” I admitted, sliding past the trap
nimbly. “But we never cheated a sponsor.” Not exactly.
“Sooner or later, every sponsor cheated us.”
“Including yours truly?”
“One of your satraps beat you to it. But given time we
would have become less than indispensable and you would have
started looking around for a
During the ensuing siege the enemy penetrated the camp several
times. During one such penetration the volumes in question
vanished. Both the Annalist and his understudy were slain. The
Books could not be reconstructed from memory.
Oh, well. I was ahead of the game.
Books available charted our future almost to the edge of the
maps owned by the monks, and those ran all the way to Here There Be
Dragons. Another century and a half of a journey into our
yesterdays. By the time we retraced our route that far I hoped we
would stand at the heart of a map that encompassed our
destination.
As soon as it was clear that we had struck gold I obtained
writing materials and a virgin volume of the Annals. I could write
as fast as One-Eye and the monk could translate.
Time fled. A monk brought candles. Then a hand settled on my
shoulder. Lady said, “Do you want to take a break? I could do
that for a while.”
For half a minute I just sat there turning red. That, after I
practically ditched her outside. After I never even thought of her
all day.
She told me, “I understand.”
Maybe she did. She had read the various Books of Croaker—or, as
posterity might recall them, the Books of the North—several
times.
With Murgen and Lady spelling me the translation went quickly.
The only practical limit was One-Eye’s endurance.
It was not all one way. I had to trade my later Annals for their
older ones. Lady sweetened the deal with a few hundred anecdotes
about the dark empire of the north, but the monks never connected
my Lady with the queen of darkness.
One-Eye is a tough old buzzard. He held up. Four days after he
made his great discovery the job was done.
I let Murgen into the game but he did all right. And I had to
beg/buy four blank journals in order to get everything
transcribed.
Lady and I resumed our stroll about where we had broken it, but
with me a little down.
“What’s the matter?” she chided, and to my
astonishment wanted to know if it was a postcoital depression. Just
the faintest of digs there, I think.
“No. I’ve just found out a ton about the
Company’s history. But I didn’t learn anything
that’s really new.”
She understood but she kept quiet and let me articulate my
dissatisfaction.
“It’s told a hundred ways, poorly and well,
according to the skill of the particular Annalist, but, except for
the occasional interesting detail, it was the same old march,
countermarch, fight, celebrate or run away, record the dead, and,
sooner or later, get even with the sponsor for betraying us. Even
at that place with the unpronounceable name, where the Company was
in service for fifty-six years.”
“Gea-Xle.” She got her mouth around it like she had
had practice.
“Yeah, there. Where the contract lasted so long the
Company almost lost its identity, intermarrying with the population
and all that, becoming a sort of hereditary bodyguard, with arms
handed down from father to son. But as it always will, the
essential moral destitution of those would-be princes made itself
evident and somebody decided to cheat us. He got his throat cut and
the Company moved on.”
“You certainly read selectively, Croaker.”
I looked at her. She was laughing at me quietly.
“Yeah, well.” I’d stated it pretty baldly. A
prince did try to cheat our forebrethren and did get his throat
cut. But the Company installed a new, friendly, beholden dynasty
and did hang around a few years before that Captain got a wild hair
and decided to go treasure hunting.
“You have no reservations about commanding a band of hired
killers?” she asked.
“Sometimes,” I admitted, sliding past the trap
nimbly. “But we never cheated a sponsor.” Not exactly.
“Sooner or later, every sponsor cheated us.”
“Including yours truly?”
“One of your satraps beat you to it. But given time we
would have become less than indispensable and you would have
started looking around for a
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