They grabbed up whatever bodies they could and hurried back. Limper adjusted his descent and hit them. Half went down. The others dragged at least a dozen dead men inside.

A pair of those flying b.a.l.l.s came shrieking across from Duretile and impacted the castle wall, hurling up a shield of color. Another carpet dropped behind Limper. It released something which plunged into the black castle. There was a flash so brilliant it blinded people for miles around. I was facing away at the moment, but, even so, fifteen seconds pa.s.sed before my vision recovered enough to show me the fortress afire.

This was not the shifting fire we had seen earlier. This was more like a conflagration actually consuming the stuff of the fortress itself. Strange screams came from inside. They set chills crawling my spine. They were screams not of pain but of rage. Creatures appeared on the battlements, flailing away with what looked like cats-o'-nine-tails. extinguishing the flames. Wherever the flames had burned, the fortress was visibly diminished.

A steady stream of ball pairs howled across the valley. I do not see that they contributed anything, yet I'm sure there was purpose behind them.

A third carpet dropped while Limper and the other were climbing. This one trailed a cloud of dust. Wherever the dust touched, it had an effect like Limper's maple seeds, only generalized. Exposed castle creatures shrieked in agony. Several seemed to melt. The others abandoned the walls. Events proceeded in like fashion for quite a while, with the black castle appearing to get the worst of it. Yet they had gotten those bodies inside, and I suspected that meant trouble.

Sometime during all this Asa made a getaway. I was unaware of it. So was everyone else, till hours later, when p.a.w.nbroker spotted him going into the Iron Lily. But p.a.w.nbroker was a good distance away, and the Lily was doing a booming business despite the hour, with everyone who could gathered for drinks while watching the fury on the north ridge. p.a.w.nbroker lost him in the mob. I expect Asa spoke to Shed's sister-in-law and learned that he, too, had escaped. We never had time to interview her.

Meantime, the Lieutenant was getting things under control.

He had the casualties cleared away from the break in the circ.u.mvallation. He moved ballistae into position to fire into any further break-out attempt. He had pit traps dug, sent laborers around to replace those One-Eye had lost.

The Taken continued their hara.s.sment of the castle, though at a more leisurely pace. They had shot their best bolts early.

The occasional pair of b.a.l.l.s howled over from Duretile.

I later learned that Silent was throwing them, having been taught by the Taken.

The worst of it seemed over. Except for the three escapees Elmo was hunting, we had contained the thing. The Limper peeled off to join the hunt for the three. Whisper returned to Duretile to refurbish her store of nasty tricks, Feather patrolled above the castle, dipping down occasionally when its denizens came out to battle the last consuming flames. Relative peace had returned.

n.o.body rested, though. Bodies had been hauled inside. We all wondered if they had gleaned enough to bring the Dominator through.

But they were up to something else in there.

A group of creatures appeared on the wall, setting up a device pointing down-slope. Feather dove.

Bam! Smoke boiled around her, illuminated from within. She came out wobbling. Bam! And bam! again. And thrice more still. And after the last she could no longer hold it. She was afire, a comet arcing up, out, away, and down into the city. A violent explosion occurred where she hit. In moments a savage conflagration raged upon the waterfront. The fire spread swiftly among the tightly packed tenements.

Whisper was out of Duretile and hitting the black castle in minutes, with the vicious dust that melted and the fire that burned the stuff of the fortress itself. There was an intensity to her flying that betrayed her anger over Feather's fall.

The Limper, meantime, broke off hunting escapees to help fight the fire in the Buskin. With his aid it was controlled within hours. Without him the entire district might have burned.

Elmo got two of the fugitives. The third vanished utterly. When the hunt resumed with the help of the Taken, no trace could be found.

Whisper maintained her attack till she exhausted her resources. That came well after sunrise. The fortress looked more like a giant hunk of slag than a castle, yet she had not overcome it. One-Eye, when he came around seeking more tools, told me there was plenty of activity inside.

Chapter Thirty-Seven:.

JUNIPER: THE CALM.

I caught a two-hour nap. The Lieutenant allowed half the troops and workers the same, then the other half. When I wakened, I found few changes, except that the Captain had sent Pockets over to establish a field hospital. Pockets had been down in the Buskin, trying to win friends with free medical attention. I looked in, found only a handful of patients and the situation under control, went on to check the siegework.

The Lieutenant had repaired the gap in the palisade and trench. He had extended both, intending to take them all the way around, despite the difficulty of the nether slope. New, heavier missile weapons were under construction.

He was not content to rely upon the Taken to reduce the place. He did not trust them to do the necessary.

Sometime during my brief sleep, drafts of Candy's prisoners came up. But the Lieutenant did not permit the civilians to leave. He put them to gathering earth while he scoped out a site for building a ramp.

I suggested, "You'd better get some sleep."

"Need to ride herd," he said. He had a vision. His talent had gone unused for years. He wanted this. I suspect he found the Taken an irritation, despite the formidable nature of the black castle.

"It's your show," I said. "But you won't be much good if they hit back and you're too exhausted to think straight."

We were communicating on a level outside words. Weariness had us all fragmented and choppy, neither our thoughts nor actions nor speech moving logically or linearly. He nodded curtly. "You're right." He surveyed the slope. "Seems to be clicking. I'll go down to the hospital. Have somebody get me if something happens."

The hospital tent was the nearest place out of the sun. It was a bright, clear, intense day, promising to be unseasonably warm. I looked forward to that. I was tired of shivering. "Will do."

He was right about things running smoothly. They usually do once the men know what has to be done.

From the viewpoint of the Limper, who again had the air patrol, the slope must have looked like an overturned anthill. Six hundred Company troops were supervising the efforts of ten times as many men from the city. The road uphill carried so much traffic it was being destroyed. Despite the night's excitement and their lack of sleep, I found the men in excellent spirits.

They had been on the march so long, doing nothing else, that they had developed a big store of violent energy. It was pouring out now. They worked with an eagerness which infected the locals. Those seemed pleased to partic.i.p.ate in a task which required the concerted efforts of thousands. Some of the more thoughtful mentioned that Juniper had mounted no major communal effort in generations. One man suggested that that was why the city had gone to seed. He believed the Black Company and its attack on the black castle would be great medicine for a moribund body politic.

That, however, was not a majority opinion. Candy's prisoners, especially, resented being used as a labor force. They represented a strong potential for trouble.

I have been told I always look at the dark underbelly of tomorrow. Possibly. You're less likely to be disappointed that way.

The excitement I expected did not materialize for days. The castle creatures seemed to have pulled their hole in after them. We eased the pace slightly, ceased working as if everything had to be done before tomorrow.

The Lieutenant completed the circ.u.mvallation, including the back slope, looping around One-Eye's excavation. He then broke the front wall and began building his ramp. He did not use many mantlets, for he designed it to provide its own shielding. It rose steeply at our end, with steps constructed of stone from demolished buildings. The work crews downtown were now pulling down structures ruined in the fire following Feather's crash. There were more materials than could be used in the siege. Candy's outfit was salvaging the best to use in new housing planned for the cleared sites.

The ramp would rise till it overtopped the castle by twenty feet, then it would descend to the wall. The work went faster than I expected. So did One-Eye's project. He found a combination of spells which turned stone soft enough to be worked easily. He soon reached a point beneath the castle.

Then he ran into the material that looked like obsidian. And could go no farther. So he started spreading out.

The Captain himself came over. I had been wondering what he was doing. I asked.

"Finding ways to keep people busy," he said. He shambled around erratically. If we did not pay attention, we found ourselves wandering off after he made some sudden turn and went to inspect something apparently trivial. "d.a.m.ned Whisper is turning me into a military governor."

"Uhm?"

"What, Croaker?"

"I'm the Annalist, remember? Got to get this all down somewhere."

He frowned, eyeballed a barrel of water set aside for animals. Water was a problem. A lot had to be hauled to augment the little we caught during the occasional shower. "She has me running the city. Doing what the Duke and city fathers should." He kicked a rock and said nothing more till it stopped rolling. "Guess I'm coping. Isn't anybody in town who isn't working. Aren't getting paid anything but keep, but they're working. Even got people lined up with projects they want done as long as we're making people work. The Custodians are driving me crazy. Can't tell them all their clean-ups may be pointless."

I caught an odd note in that. It underscored a feeling I'd had already, that he was depressed about what was happening.

"Why's that?"

He glanced around. No natives were within earshot. "Just a guess, mind. n.o.body's put it in words. But I think the Lady plans to loot the Catacombs."

"People aren't going to like that."

"I know. You know; I know; even Whisper and Limper know. But we don't give the orders. There's talk about how the Lady is short of money."

In all the years we'd been in her service we'd never missed a payday. The Lady played that straight. The troops got paid, be they mercenaries or regulars. I suspect the various outfits could tolerate a few delays. It's almost a tradition for commanders to screw their troops occasionally.

Most of us didn't much care about money, anyway. We tended toward inexpensive and limited tastes. I suppose att.i.tudes would shift if we had to do without, though.

"Too many men under arms on too many frontiers," the Captain mused. "Too much expansion too fast for too long. The empire can't take the strain. The effort in the Barrowland ate up her reserves. And it's still going. If she whips the Dominator, look for things to change."

"Maybe we made a mistake, eh?"

"Made a lot. Which one are you talking about?"

"Coming north, over the Sea of Torments."

"Yes. I've known that for years."

"And?"

"And we can't get out. Not yet. Someday, maybe, when our orders take us back to the Jewel Cities, or somewhere where we could leave the empire and still find ourselves in a civilized country." There was an almost bottomless yearning in his voice. "The longer I spend in the north, the less I want to end my days here, Croaker. Put that in your Annals."

I had him talking, a rare occurrence. I merely grunted, hoping he would continue filling the silence. He did. "We're running with the darkness, Croaker. I know that don't make no never-mind, really. Logically. We're the Black Company. We're not good or evil. We're just soldiers with swords for sale. But I'm tired of having our work turned to wicked ends. If this looting thing happens, I may step aside. Raven had the right idea back at Charm. He got the h.e.l.l out."

I then set forth a notion that had been in the back of my mind for years. One I'd never taken seriously, knowing it quixotic. "That doesn't contribute anything, Captain. We also have the option of going the other way."

"Eh?" He came back from whatever faraway place ruled him and really looked at me. "Don't be silly, Croaker. That's a fool's game. The Lady squashes anybody who tries." He ground a heel into the earth. "Like a bug."

"Yeah." It was a silly idea, on several levels, not the least of which was that the other side could not afford us. I could not picture us in the Rebel role anyway. The majority of Rebels were idiots, fools or ambitious types hoping to grab a chunk of what the Lady had. Darling was the outstanding exception, and she was more symbol than substance, and a secret symbol at that.

"Eight years since the comet was in the sky," the Captain said. "You know the legends. She won't fall till the Great Comet is up there. You want to try surviving twenty-nine years on the run from the Taken? No, Croaker. Even if our hearts were with the White Rose, we couldn't make that choice. That's suicide. Getting out of the empire is the way."

"She'd come after us."

"Why? Why shouldn't she be satisfied with what she's had of us these ten years? We're no threat to her."

But we were. We very much were, if only because we knew of the existence of the reincarnation of the White Rose. And I was sure that, once we left the empire, either Silent or I would spill that secret. Of course, the Lady did not know that we knew.

"This chatter is an exercise in futility," the Captain said. "I'd rather not talk about it."

"As you wish. Tell me what we're going to do here."

"The Lady is coming in tonight. Whisper says we'll begin the a.s.sault as soon as the auspices are right."

I glanced at the black castle.

"No," he said. "It won't be easy. It may not be possible, even with the Lady helping."

"If she asks about me, tell her I'm dead. Or something," I said.

That won a smile. "But, Croaker, she's your..."

"Raven," I snapped. "I know things about him that could get us all killed. So does Silent. Get him out of Duretile before she gets here. Neither one of us dares face the Eye."

"For that, neither do I. Because I know you know something. We're going to have to take our chances, Croaker."

"Right. So don't put notions into her head."

"I expect she's forgotten you long since, Croaker. You're just another soldier."

Chapter Thirty-Eight:.

JUNIPER: THE STORM.

The Lady hadn't forgotten me. Not even a little. Shortly after midnight a grim Elmo rousted me out. "Whisper is here. Wants you, Croaker."

"Eh?" I hadn't done anything to arouse her ire. Not for weeks.

"They want you over to Duretile. She wants you. Whisper is here to take you back."

Ever seen a grown man faint? I haven't. But I came close. I may have come close to having a stroke, too. My blood pressure must have soared. For two minutes I was vertiginous and unable to think. My heart pounded. My guts ached with fear. I knew she was going to drag me in for a session with the Eye, which sees every secret buried in a man's mind. And yet I could do nothing to evade her. It was too late to run. I wished I had been aboard the ship to Meadenvil with p.a.w.nbroker.

Like a man walking to the gallows, I went out to Whisper's carpet, settled myself behind her, and dwindled into my thoughts as we rose and rushed through the chill night toward Duretile.

As we pa.s.sed over the Port, Whisper called back, "You must have made quite an impression back when, physician. You were the first person she asked about when she got here."

I found enough presence of mind to ask, "Why?"

"I suspect because she wants her story recorded again. As she did during the battle at Charm."

I looked up from my hands, startled. How had she known that? I'd always pictured the Taken and Lady as uncommunicative among themselves.

What she said was true. During the battle at Charm the Lady had dragged me around with her so the events of the day would be recorded as they happened. And she did not demand special treatment. In fact, she insisted I write stuff as I saw it. There was just the faintest whiff of a hint that she expected to be toppled sometime, and, once she was, expected maltreatment by historians. She wanted a neutral record to exist. I hadn't thought about that for years. It was one of the more curious anomalies I'd noted about her. She did not care what people thought of her, but was frightened that the record would be b.a.s.t.a.r.dized to suit someone else's ends.

The tiniest spark of hope rose from that. Maybe she did want a record kept. Maybe I could get through this. If I could remain nimble enough to avoid the Eye.

The Captain met us when we landed on Duretile's northern wall. A glance at the carpets there told me all the Taken were on hand. Even Journey, whom I had expected to remain in the Barrowland. But Journey would have a grudge to soothe. Feather had been his wife.

A second glance told me the Captain was silently apologetic about my situation, that there were things he wanted to say but dared not. I fed him a tiny shrug, hoped we would get a moment later. We did not. Whisper led me from the wall directly into the Lady's presence.