The Return of the Black Company Read Online Free Page A

to look. It gets a tad bigger whenever a sack of earth goes to the wall or into one of our other projects. It is no cozy warren, though. It takes willpower to go down into those dank, dark places where the air hardly moves, candles never come wholly to life, and there is at least a chance that any shadow may harbor a screaming death.
    And me, I have a thing about being buried alive.
    It gets no easier with practice.
    Hagop and Otto, Goblin and One-Eye and I went through this before, on the Plain of Fear, where for about five thousand years we lived like badgers in the ground.
    “Cletus. Where’s Goblin?” Cletus is one of three brothers who serve as our engineers and master artillerymen.
    “Around the corner. Next cellar.”
    Cletus, Loftus and Longinus are geniuses. They figured out how to bring fresh air down the chimneys of existing structures up top, then into the deep tunnels, let it flow slowly through the complex, then send it up other chimneys. Plain engineering, but it seemed like sorcery to me. A flow of breathable air, though slow and never pure, serves us well enough.
    It does nothing to lessen the damp and the smell.
    I found Goblin. He was holding a candle for Longinus while the latter slapped wet mortar onto freshly scrubbed stonework about eye level. “What’s the problem, Goblin?”
    “Rained like a bastard up there, eh?”
    “Gods swiped a river somewhere and dropped it here. Why?”
    “We’ve got a thousand leaks down here.”
    “Big problem?”
    “Could be later on. There’s no drainage. We’re as low as we can go unless the Twelve tunnel goes good.”
    “Sounds like an engineering problem to me.”
    “It is,” Longinus said, smoothing the mortar. “And Clete did anticipate it. We’ve waterproofed from the start. Trouble is, you can’t tell how you’re doing until you get a really nasty rain. We’re lucky it didn’t go on the way it does during the rainy season. Three days of that, we might’ve gotten flooded out.”
    “Still sounds like an engineering problem. You can handle it, right?”
    Longinus shrugged. “We’ll work on it. That’s all we can do, Croaker.”
    Little dig there. Like telling me, let everybody do their own worrying.
    “That’s why you wanted me?” It seemed a little weak, even for Goblin.
    “No. Longo, you don’t hear anything.” The toad-faced man made a complex gesture with three fingers of his left hand as he said that. Some half-hinted glimmer trailed behind his fingers momentarily. Longinus went back to work like he was deaf.
    “It’s so important you need to cut him out?”
    “He talks. He don’t mean no harm but he can’t help repeating everything he hears.”
    “And makes it better when he tells it. I know. All right. Tell me.”
    “Something has happened with the Shadowmaster. He’s changed. Me and One-Eye only decided for sure about an hour ago but we think it’s been going on for a while. He’s just kept us from seeing it.”
    “What?”
    Goblin leaned closer, as though Longinus might yet eavesdrop. “He’s gotten well, Murgen. He’s just about back to normal. He’s been getting his feet under him before he comes down on us with them both at once. We also decided that he is hiding the change more from his buddy Longshadow than he is from us. We don’t scare him that much.”
    I stiffened, recalling strange behavior on the encircling plain, going on right now. “Oh, shit!”
    “What?”
    “He’s going to come tonight. Real soon. They were moving into position when I came down. I thought it was just the usual.… We’d better go full alert.” I headed out of there with what energy I had, announcing the alert wherever I saw anybody.

 
    9
    Shadowspinner did not hurry. The Company took its positions on the wall. The Taglian rabble we led got as ready as they ever get. I sent warning to Mogaba and Speaker Ky Dam. Mogaba is a jerk and a lunatic but not a complete fool. He believes he keeps the job separate from personalities.