The Return of the Black Company Read Online Free PDF

control thousands of skittish Taglian legionnaires while keeping the Jaicuri in line. If he should fall his assistant Sindawe would step up, then Ochiba, and only then, maybe, if I can’t hide fast enough, me.
    Soldiers and civilians both fear Mogaba more than they respect him after all this time besieged. And that troubles me. The Annals demonstrate over and over that fear is the most fertile soil for treachery.

 
    11
    Mogaba holds staff conferences in the citadel. There is a war room there, once the toy of the sorceress Stormshadow. Mogaba considers meeting there a great concession to the distances us underlings must hike. He does not like leaving his own part of the action. For that reason I could count on this being short.
    He was polite enough, though it was a strained courtesy obvious to all. He said, “I received your message. It was not entirely clear.”
    “I garbled it intentionally. I didn’t want the messenger telling everybody on his way to see you.”
    “It is not good news, then, I assume.” He spoke the Jewel Cities dialect the Company picked up when it was in service to the Syndic of Beryl. Most of us used it only when we did not want the natives to understand what we were saying. Mogaba used it because he did not yet have enough Taglian to get by without interpreters. Even his Jewel Cities dialect was badly accented.
    “Definitely not good news,” I said. Mogaba’s friend Sindawe translated for the Taglian officers present. I continued, “Goblin and One-Eye tell me Shadowspinner is completely healthy again and means tonight to be his big comeback show. So tonight won’t be just another raid, it will be a big punchout for the whole works.”
    A dozen pairs of eyes stared, praying I was making the sort of bad joke Goblin and One-Eye would find hilarious. Mogaba’s own eyes were icy. He wanted to make me recant by sheer weight of his gaze.
    Mogaba has no use for One-Eye or Goblin. They are one of the big sources of contention between him and the Old Crew. He is sure that real wizards, however puny, have no place among real warriors, who are supposed to rely on their strength, their wit, their will, and even maybe their superior steel—if they have it.
    Goblin and One-Eye, besides being wizards, besides being sloppy and undisciplined and rowdy, worst of all fail to agree that Mogaba is the best thing that could have happened to the Black Company.
    Mogaba hates Shadowspinner in part because he knows the Shadowmaster will never meet him in a trial by combat that can be sung about down through the ages.
    Mogaba wants his place in the Annals. He lusts after a major place in the Annals. And he is going to get that, but not the way he wants.
    “Do you have a suggestion about how to deal with this threat?” Mogaba showed no emotion, though Shadowspinner getting well meant the date of our executions had been advanced.
    I considered suggesting prayer but it was obvious Mogaba was not in the mood. “Afraid not.”
    “There is nothing in your books?”
    He meant the Annals. Croaker tried hard to get him to study them. Croaker was big on looking for, and deferring to, precedent—mainly because he lacked much confidence in his mastery of strategy and leadership. On the other hand, Mogaba lacked no confidence whatsoever. He always had an excuse not to study Company history. Only recently had it occurred to me that he might not read or write. Those are skills considered unmanly in some places. Maybe that was true among the Nar of Gea-Xle, despite the fact that keeping the Annals was a holy duty of our Black Company forebrethren.
    The Nar say very little about their beliefs. The rest of us are aware that they consider us heretics, though.
    “Very little. The time-honored tactic is to attract the wizard’s attention to a secondary target where he will do less damage than he wants. You hold his attention there till he gets tired or until you sneak up and cut his throat. Sneakups aren’t practical here. This