Chronicles of the Black Company by Glen Cook

Author:Glen Cook
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780575086623
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
Published: 2004-03-31T18:30:00+00:00

Juniper: More Trouble

Otto rolled in out of the night. “Hey! Croaker! We got a customer.” I folded my hand but did not throw the cards in. “You sure?” I was damned tired of false alarms.

Otto looked sheepish. “Yeah. For sure.”

Something was wrong here. “Where is he? Let’s have all of it.”

“They’re going to make it inside.”

“They?”

“Man and a woman. We didn’t think they were anything to worry about till they were past the last house and still headed uphill. It was too late to stop them then.”

I slapped my hand down. I was pissed. There would be hell to pay in the morning. Whisper had had it up to her chin with me already. This might be her excuse to park me in the Catacombs. Permanently. The Taken are not patient.

“Let’s go,“ I said in as calm a voice as I could manage, while glaring a hole through Otto. He made sure he stayed out of reach. He knew I was not pleased. Knew I was in a tight place with the Taken. He did not want to give me any excuse to wrap my hands around his neck. “I’m going to cut some throats if this gets screwed up again.” We all grabbed weapons and rushed into the night.

We had our place picked, in brush two hundred yards below the castle gate. I got the men into position just as somebody started screaming inside.

“Sounds bad,” one of the men said.

“Keep it down,” I snapped. Cold crept my spine. It did sound bad.

It went on and on and on. Then I heard the muted jangle of harness and the creak of wheels improperly greased. Then the voices of people talking softly.

We jumped out of the brush. One of the men opened the eye of a lantern. “I’ll be damned!” I said. “It’s the innkeeper.”

The man sagged. The woman stared at us, eyes widening. Then she sprang off the wagon and ran.

“Get her, Otto. And heaven help you if you don’t. Crake, drag this bastard down. Walleye, take the wagon around to the house. The rest of us will cut across.”

The man Shed did not struggle, so I detailed another two men to help Otto. He and the woman were crashing through the brush. She was headed toward a small precipice. She should corner herself there.

We led Shed to the old house. Once in the light, he became more deflated, more resigned. He said nothing. Most captives resist detention somehow, if only by denying that there is any reason to detain them. Shed looked like a man who thought he was overdue for the worst.

“Sit,” I said, and indicated a chair at the table where we had played cards. I took another, turned it, parked myself with forearms atop its back and chin upon my forearms. “We’ve got you dead, Shed.”

He just stared at the tabletop, a man without hope.

“Anything to say?”

“There’s nothing to be said, is there?”

“Oh, I think there’s a whole lot. You’ve got your ass in a sling for sure, but you’re not dead yet.

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