Shadow Games: The Fourth Chronicles of the Black Company: First Book of the South Read Online Free

to actually lay hands on them.”
    Lady supported me with a nod. Getting really into the spirit, there.
    Goblin pasted on his most ferocious face. Made him look like a saber-toothed
     toad. “Then you knew about this clean back before we ever left the Barrowland.”
    I admitted that that was true.
    “You goatfu-lover. I bet you’ve spent all this time concocting some half-assed
     off-the-wall plan that’s guaranteed to get us all killed.”
    I confessed that that was mostly true, too. “We’re going to ride up there like
     we own the Tower. You’re going to make the garrison think Lady is still number
     one.”
    One-Eye snorted, stomped off to the horses. Goblin got up and stared down at me.
    And stared some more. And sneered. “We’re just going to strut in and snatch
     them, eh? Like the Old Man used to say, audacity and more audacity.” He did not
     ask his real question.
    Lady answered it for him, anyway. “I gave my word.”
    Goblin did not mouth the next question, either. No one did. And Lady left it
     hanging.
    It would be easy for her to job us. She could keep her word and have us for
     breakfast afterward. If she wanted.
    My plan (sic), boiled down, depended entirely on my trust in her. It was a trust
     my comrades did not share.
    But they do, however foolishly, trust me.
    The Tower at Charm is the largest single construction in the world, a
     featureless black cube five hundred feet to the dimension. It was the first
     project undertaken by the Lady and the Taken after their return from the grave,
    so many lifetimes ago. From the Tower the Taken had marched forth, and raised
     their armies, and conquered half the world. Its shadow still fell upon half the
     earth, for few knew that the heart and blood of the empire had been sacrificed
     to buy victory over a power older and darker still.
    There is but one ground-level entrance to the Tower. The road leading to it runs
     as straight as a geometrician’s dream. It passes through parklike grounds that
     only someone who had been there could believe was the site of history’s
     bloodiest battle.
    I had been there. I remembered.
    Goblin and One-Eye and Hagop and Otto remembered, too. Most of all, One-Eye
     remembered. It was on this plain that he destroyed the monster that had murdered
     his brother.
    I recalled the crash and tumult, the screams and terrors, the horrors wrought by
     wizards at war, and not for the first time I wondered, “Did they really all die
     here? They went so easily.”
    “Who you talking about?” One-Eye demanded. He did not need to concentrate on
     keeping Lady englamored.
    “The Taken. Sometimes I think about how hard it was to get rid of the Limper.
    Then I wonder how so many Taken could have gone down so easy, a whole bunch in a
     couple days, almost never where I could see it. So sometimes I get to suspecting
     there was maybe some faking and two or three are still around somewhere.”
    Goblin squeaked, “But they had six different plots going, Croaker. They was all
     backstabbing each other.”
    “But I only saw a couple of them check out. None of you guys saw the others go.
    You heard about it. Maybe there was one more plot behind all the other plots.
    Maybe . . . ”
    Lady gave me an odd, almost speculative look, like maybe she had not thought
     much about it herself and did not like the ideas I stirred now.
    “They died dead enough for me, Croaker,” One-Eye said. “I saw plenty of bodies.
    Look over there. Their graves are marked.”
    “That don’t mean there’s anybody in them. Raven died on us twice. Turn around
     and there he was again. On the hoof.”
    Lady said, “You have my permission to dig them up if you like, Croaker.”
    A glance showed me she was chiding me gently. Maybe even teasing. “That’s all
     right. Maybe someday when I’m good and bored and got nothing better to do than
     look at rotten corpses.”
    “Gah!” Murgen said. “Can’t you guys talk about something else?” Which was a