The Black Company

I suppose seven hours passes as a night’s sleep. I didn’t strangle Tom-Tom when he wakened me. But I did grouse and crab till he threatened to turn me into a jackass braying at the Gate of Dawn. Only then, after I had dressed and we had joined a dozen others, did I realize that I didn’t have a notion what was happening.

“We’re going to look at a tomb,” Tom-Tom said.

“Huh?” I am none too bright some mornings.

“We’re going to the Necropolitan Hill to eyeball that forvalaka tomb,”

“Now wait a minute...”

“Chicken? I always thought you were, Croaker.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll have three top wizards along, with nothing to do but babysit your ass. One-Eye would go too, but the Captain wants him to hang around.”

“Why is what I want to know.”

“To find out if vampires are real. They could be a put-up from yon spook ship.”

“Neat trick. Maybe we should have thought of it.” The forvalaka threat had done what no force of arms could: stilled the riots.

Tom-Tom nodded. He dragged fingers across the little

drum that gave him his name. I filed the thought. He’s worse than his brother when it comes to admitting shortcomings.

The city was as still as an old battlefield. Like a battlefield, it was filled with stench, flies, scavengers, and the dead. The only sound was the tread of our boots and, once, the mournful cry of a sad dog standing sentinel over its fallen master. “The price of order,” I muttered, I tried to run the dog off. It wouldn’t budge.

“The cost of chaos,” Tom-Tom countered. Thump on his drum. “Not quite the same thing, Croaker.”

The Necropolitan Hill is taller than the heighth on which the Bastion stands. From the Upper Enclosure, where the mausoleums of the wealthy stand, I could see the northern ship.

“Just lying out there waiting,” Tom-Tom said. “Like the Syndic said.”

“Why don’t they just move in? Who could stop them?” Tom-Tom shrugged. Nobody else offered an opinion. We reached the storied tomb. It looked the part it played in rumor and legend. It was very, very old, definitely lightning-blasted, and scarred with tool marks. One thick oak door had burst asunder. Toothpicks and fragments lay scattered for a dozen yards around.

Goblin, Tom-Tom, and Silent put their heads together. Somebody made a crack about that way they might have a brain between them. Goblin and Silent then took stations flanking the door, a few steps back. Tom-Tom’ faced it head on. He shuffled around like a bull about to charge, found his spot, dropped into a crouch with his arms flung up oddly, like a parody of a martial arts master. “How about you fools open the door?” he growled.

“Idiots. I had to bring idiots.” Wham-wham on the drum. “Stand around with their fingers in their noses.”

A couple of us grabbed the ruined door and heaved. It was too warped to give much. Tom-Tom rapped his drum, let out a villainous scream, and jumped inside. Goblin bounced to the portal behind him. Silent moved up in a fast glide.

Inside, Tom-Tom let out a rat squeak and started sneezing. He stumbled out, eyes watering, grinding his nose with the heels of his hands. He sounded like he had a bad cold when he said, “Wasn’t a trick.” His ebony skin had gone grey.

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

He jerked a thumb toward the tomb. Goblin and Silent were inside now. They started sneezing.

I sidled to the doorway, peeked. I couldn’t see squat. Just dust thick in the sunlight close to me. Then I stepped inside. My eyes adjusted.

There were bones everywhere. Bones in heaps, bones in stacks, bones sorted neatly by something insane. Strange bones they were, similar to those of men, but of weird proportion to my physician’s eye. There must have been fifty bodies originally. They’d really packed them in, back when, Forvalaka for sure, then, because Beryl buries its villains uncremated.

There were fresh corpses too, I counted seven dead soldiers before the sneezing started. They wore the colors of a mutinous cohort.

I dragged a body outside, let go, stumbled a few steps, was noisily sick- When I regained control, J turned back to examine my booty.

The others stood around looking green. “No phantom did that,” Goblin said. Tom-Tom bobbed his head. He was more shaken than anyone. More shaken than the sight demanded, I thought.

Silent got on with business, somehow conjuring a brisk, small maid of a breeze that scurried in through the mausoleum door and bustled out again, skirts laden with dust and the smell of death.

“You all right?” I asked Tom-Tom.

He eyed my medical kit and waved me off. “I’ll be okay. I was just remembering.”

I gave him a minute, then prodded, “Remembering?”

“We were boys, One-Eye and me. They’d just sold us to N’Gamo, to become his apprentices. A messenger came from a village back in the hills.” He knelt beside the dead soldier. “The wounds are identical.”

I was rattled. Nothing human killed that way, yet the damage seemed deliberate, calculated, the work of a malign intelligence. That made it more horrible.