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CHAPTER 1
THE PLAIN OF FEAR
The still desert air had a lenselike quality. The riders seemed frozen in time, moving without drawing closer. We took turns counting. I could not get the same number twice running.
A breath of a breeze whined in the coral, stirred the leaves of Old Father Tree. They tinkled off one another with the song of wind chimes. To the north, the glimmer of change lightning limned the horizon like the far clash of warring gods.
A foot crunched sand. I turned. Silent gawked at a talking menhir. It had appeared in the past few seconds, startling him. Sneaky rocks. Like to play games.
"There are strangers on the Plain," it said.
I jumped. It chuckled. Menhirs have the most malevolent laughs this side of fairy stories. Snarling, I ducked into its shadow. "Hot out here already." And: "That's One-Eye and Goblin, back from Tanner."
It was right and I was wrong. I was too narrowly focused. The patrol had been away a month longer than planned. We were worried. Lately the Lady's troops have been more active along the bounds of the Plain of Fear.
Another chuckle from the block of stone.
It towered over me, thirteen feet tall. A middle-sized one. Those over fifteen feet seldom move.
The riders were closer, yet seemed no nearer. Blame nerves. Times are desperate for the Black Company. We cannot afford casualties. Any man lost would be a friend of many years. I counted again. Seemed right this time. But there was a riderless mount. ... I shivered despite the heat.
They were on the downtrail leading to a creek three hundred yards from where we watched, concealed within a great reef. The walking trees beside the ford stirred, though the breeze had failed.
The riders urged their mounts to hurry. The animals were tired. They were reluctant, though they knew they were almost home. Into the creek. Water splashing. I grinned, pounded Silent's back. They were all there. Every man, and another.
Silent shed his customary cool, returned a smile. Elmo slipped out of the coral and went to meet our brethren. Otto, Silent, and I hurried after him.
Behind us, the morning sun was a great seething ball of blood.
Men piled off horses, grinning. But they looked bad. Goblin and One-Eye worst of all. But they had come back to territory where their wizards' powers were useless. This near Darling they are no greater than the rest of us.
I glanced back. Darling had come to the head of the tunnel, stood like a phantom in its shadow, all in white.
Men hugged men; then old habit took charge. Everybody pretended it was just another day. "Rough out there?" I asked One-Eye. I considered the man accompanying them. He was not familiar.
"Yes." The dried-up little black man was more diminished than first I had thought.
"You all right?"
"Took an arrow." He rubbed his side. "Flesh wound."
From behind One-Eye, Goblin squeaked, "They almost got us. Been chasing us a month. We couldn't shake them."
"Let's get you down in the Hole," I told One-Eye.
"Not infected. I cleared it."
"I still want a look." He has been my assistant since I enlisted as Company physician. His judgment is sound. Yet health is my responsibility, ultimately.
"They were waiting for us, Croaker." Darling was gone from the mouth of the tunnel, back to the stomach of our subterranean fastness. The sun remained bloody in the east, legacy of the change storm's passing. Something big drifted across its face. Windwhale?
"Ambush?" I glanced back at the patrol.
"Not us specifically. For trouble. They were on the ball." The patrol had had a double mission: to contact our sympathizers in Tanner to find out if the Lady's people were coming alive after a long hiatus, and to raid the garrison there in order to prove we could hurt an empire that bestrides half a world.
As we passed it the menhir said, "There are strangers on the Plain, Croaker."
Why do these things happen to me? The big stones talk to me more than to anyone else.
Twice a charm? I paid attention. For a menhir to repeat itself meant it considered its message critical. "The men hunting you?" I asked One-Eye.
He shrugged. "They wouldn't give up."
"What's happening out there?" Hiding on the Plain, I might as well be buried alive.
One-Eye's face remained unreadable. "Corder will tell it."
"Corder? That the guy you brought in?" I knew the name though not the man. One of our best informants.
"Yeah."
"No good news, eh?"
"No."
We slipped into the tunnel which leads down to our warren, our stinking, moldering, damp, tight little rabbit-hole fortress. It is disgusting, but it is the heart and soul of the New White Rose Rebellion. The New Hope, as it is whispered among the captive nations. The Joke Hope to those of us who live here. It is as bad as any rat-infested dungeon — though a man can leave. If he does not mind a venture into a world where all the might of an empire is turned upon him.
CHAPTER 2
THE PLAIN OF FEAR
Corder was our eyes and ears in Tanner. He had contacts everywhere. His work against the Lady goes back decades. He is one of the few who escaped her wrath at Charm, where she obliterated the Rebel of old. In great part, the Company was responsible. In those days we were her strong right arm. We piloted her enemies into the trap.
A quarter million men died at Charm. Never was there a battle so vast or grim, nor of outcome so definitive. Even the Dominator's bloody failure in the Old Forest consumed but half as many lives.
Fate compelled us to switch sides — once there was no one left to help us in our fight.
One-Eye's wound was as clean as he claimed. I cut him loose, ambled off to my quarters. Word was, Darling wanted the patrol rested before she accepted its report. I shivered with premonition, afraid to hear their tidings.
An old, tired man. That is what I am. What became of the old fire, drive, ambition? There were dreams once upon a time, dreams now all but forgotten. On sad days I dust them off and fondle them nostalgically, with a patronizing wonder at the naivete of the youth who dreamed them.
Old infests my quarters. My great project. Eighty pounds of ancient documents, captured from the general Whisper when we served the Lady and she the Rebel. They are supposed to contain the key to breaking the Lady and the Taken. I have had them six years. And in six years I have found nothing. So much failure. Depressing. Nowadays, more often than not I merely shuffle them, then turn to these Annals.
Since our escape from Juniper they have been little more than a personal journal. The remnant of the Company generates little excitement. What outside news we get is so slim and unreliable I seldom bother recording it. Moreover, since her victory over her husband in Juniper, the Lady seems to be in stasis even more than we, running on inertia.
Appearances deceive, of course. And the Lady's essence is illusion.
"Croaker."
I looked up from a page of Old TelleKurre already studied a hundred times. Goblin stood in the doorway. He looked like an old toad. "Yeah?"
"Something happening up top. Grab a sword."
I grabbed my bow and a leather cuirass. I am too ancient for hand-to-hand. I'd rather stand off and plink if I have to fight at all. I considered the bow as I followed Goblin. It had been given me by the Lady herself, during the battle at Charm. Oh, the memories. With it I helped slay Soulcatcher, the Taken who brought the Company into the Lady's service. Those days now seemed almost prehistoric.
We galloped into sunlight. Others came out with us, dispersed amidst cactus and coral. The rider coming down the trail — the only path in here — would not see us.
He rode alone, on a moth-eaten mule. He was not armed. "All this for an old man on a mule?" I asked. Men scooted through coral and between cacti, making one hell of a racket. The old-timer had to know we were there. "We'd better work on getting out here more quietly."
"Yeah."
Startled, I whirled. Elmo was behind me, one hand shading his eyes. He looked as old and tired as I felt. Each day something reminds me that none of us are young anymore. Hell, none of us were young when we came north, over the Sea of Torments. "We need new blood, Elmo."
He sneered.
Yes. We will be a lot older before this is done. If we last. For we are buying time. Decades, hopefully.
The rider crossed the creek, stopped. He raised his hands. Men materialized, weapons held negligently. One old man alone, at the heart of Darling's null, presented no danger.
Elmo, Goblin, and I strolled down. As we went I asked Goblin, "You and One- Eye have fun while you were gone?" They have been feuding for ages. But here, where Darling's presence forbids it, they cannot play sorcerous tricks.
Goblin grinned. When he grins, his mouth spreads from ear to ear. "I loosened him up."
We reached the rider. "Tell me later."
Goblin giggled, a squeaking noise like water bubbling in a teakettle. "Yeah."
"Who are you?" Elmo asked the mule rider.
"Tokens."
That was not a name. It was a password for a courier from the far west. We had not heard it for a long time. Western messengers had to reach the Plain through the Lady's most tamed provinces.
"Yeah?" Elmo said. "How about that? Want to step down?"
The old man eased off his mount, presented his bonafides. Elmo found them acceptable. Then he announced, "I've got twenty pounds of stuff here." He tapped a case behind his saddle. "Every damn town added to the load."
"Make the whole trip yourself?" I asked.
"Every foot from Oar."
"Oar? That's ..."
More than a thousand miles. I hadn't known we had anyone up there. But there is a lot I do not know about the organization Darling has assembled. I spend my time trying to get those damned papers to tell me something that may not be there.
The old man looked at me as though subjecting my soul to an accounting. "You the physician? Croaker?"
"Yeah. So?"
"Got something for you. Personal." He opened his courier case. For a moment everyone was alert. You never know. But he brought out an oilskin packet wrapped to protect something against the end of the world. "Rains all the time up there," he explained. He gave me the packet.
I weighed it. Not that heavy, oilskin aside. "Who's it from?"
The old man shrugged.
"Where'd you get it?"
"From my cell captain."
Of course. Darling has built with care, structuring her organization so that it is almost impossible for the Lady to break more than a fraction. The child is a genius.
Elmo accepted the rest, told Otto, "Take him down and find him a bunk. Get some rest, old-timer. The White Rose will question you later."
An interesting afternoon upcoming, maybe, what with this guy and Corder both to report. I hefted the mystery packet, told Elmo, "I'll go give this a look." Who could have sent it? I knew no one outside the Plain. Well ... But the Lady would not inject a letter into the underground. Would she?
Twinge of fear. It had been a while, but she had promised to keep in touch.
The talking menhir that had forewarned us about the messenger remained rooted beside the path. As I passed, it said, "There are strangers on the Plain, Croaker."
I halted. "What? More of them?"
It reverted to character, would say no more.
Never will I comprehend those old stones. Hell, I still don't understand why they are on our side. They hate all outsiders separately but equally. They and every one of the weird sentences out here.
I slipped into my quarters, unstrung my bow, left it leaning against the earth wall. I settled at my worktable and opened the packet.
I did not recognize the hand. I found the ending was not signed. I began to read.
CHAPTER 3
STORY FROM YESTERYEAR
Croaker:
The woman was bitching again. Bomanz massaged his temples. The throbbing did not slacken. He covered his eyes "Saita, sayta, suta," he murmured, his sibilants angry and ophidian.
He bit his tongue. One did not make a sending upon one's wife. One endured with humbled dignity the consequences of youthful folly. Ah, but what temptation! What provocation!
Enough, fool! Study the damned chart.
Neither Jasmine nor the headache relented.
"Bloody hell!" He slapped the weights off the corners of the chart, rolled the thin silk around a wisp of glass rod. He slipped the rod inside the shaft of a fake antique spear. That shaft was shiny with handling. "Besand would spot it in a minute," he grumbled.
He ground his teeth as his ulcer took a bite of gut. The closer the end drew, the greater was the danger. His nerves were shot. He was afraid he might crack at the last barrier, that cowardice would devour him and he would have lived in vain.
Thirty-seven years was a long time to live in the shadow of the headsman's axe.
"Jasmine," he muttered. "And call a sow Beauty." He flung the door-hanging aside, shouted downstairs, "What is it now?"
It was what it always was. Nagging unconnected with the root of her dissatisfaction. An interruption of his studies as a payback for what she fancied was his having misspent their lives.
He could have become a man of consequence in Oar. He could have given her a great house overstuffed with fawning servants. He could have draped her in cloth-of- gold. He could have fed her tumble-down fat with meat at every meal. Instead, he had chosen a scholar's life, disguising his name and profession, dragging her to this bleak, haunted break in the Old Forest. He had given her nothing but squalor, icy winters, and indignities perpetrated by the Eternal Guard.
Bomanz stamped down the narrow, squeaky, treacherous stairway. He cursed the woman, spat on the floor, thrust silver into her desiccated paw, drove her away with a plea that supper, for once, be a decent meal. Indignity? he thought. I'll tell you about indignity, you old crow. I'll tell you what it's like to live with a perpetual whiner, a hideous old bag of vapid, juvenile dreams. ...
"Stop it, Bomanz," he muttered. "She's the mother of your son. Give her her due. She hasn't betrayed you." If nothing else, they still shared the hope represented by the map on silk. It was hard for her, waiting, unaware of his progress, knowing only that nearly four decades had yielded no tangible result.
The bell on the shop door tinkled. Bomanz clutched at his shopkeeper persona. He scuttled forward, a fat, bald little man with blue-veined hands folded before his chest. "Tokar." He bowed slightly. "I didn't expect you so soon."
Tokar was a trader from Oar, a friend of Bomanz's son Stancil. He had a bluff, honest, irreverent manner Bomanz deluded himself into seeing as the ghost of his own at a younger age.
"Didn't plan to be back so soon, Bo. But antiques are the rage. It surpasses comprehension."
"You want another lot? Already? You'll clean me out." Unsaid, the silent complaint: Bomanz, this means replenishment work. Time lost from research.
"The Domination is hot this year. Stop pottering around, Bo. Make hay, and all that. Next year the market could be as dead as the Taken."
"They're not ... Maybe I'm getting too old, Tokar. I don't enjoy the rows with Besand anymore. Hell. Ten years ago I went looking for him. A good squabble killed boredom. The digging grinds me down, too. I'm used up. I just want to sit on the stoop and watch life go by." While he chattered, Bomanz set out his best antique swords, pieces of armor, soldiers' amulets, and an almost perfectly preserved shield. A box of arrowheads with roses engraved. A pair of broad-bladed thrusting spears, ancient heads mounted on replica shafts.
"I can send you some men. Show them where to dig. I'll pay you commission. You won't have to do anything. That's a damned fine axe, Bo. TelleKurre? I could sell a bargeload of TelleKurre weaponry."
"UchiTelle, actually." A twinge from his ulcer. "No. No helpers." That was all he needed. A bunch of young hotshots hanging over his shoulder while he made his field calculations.
"Just a suggestion."
"Sorry. Don't mind me. Jasmine was on me this morning."
Softly, Tokar asked, "Found anything connected with the Taken?"
With the ease of decades, Bomanz dissembled, feigning horror. "The Taken? Am I a fool? I wouldn't touch it if I could get it past the Monitor."
Tokar smiled conspiratorily. "Sure. We don't want to offend the Eternal Guard. Nevertheless ... There's one man in Oar who would pay well for something that could be ascribed to one of the Taken. He'd sell his soul for something that belonged to the Lady. He's in love with her."
"She was known for that." Bomanz avoided the younger man's gaze. How much had Stance revealed? Was this one of Besand's fishing expeditions? The older Bomanz became, the less he enjoyed the game. His nerves could not take this double life. He was tempted to confess just for the relief.
No, damnit! He had too much invested. Thirty-seven years. Digging and scratching every minute. Sneaking and pretending. The most abject poverty. No. He would not give up. Not now. Not when he was this close.
"In my way, I love her, too," he admitted. "But I haven't abandoned good sense. I'd scream for Besand if I found anything. So loud you'd hear me in Oar."
"All right. Whatever you say." Tokar grinned. "Enough suspense." He produced a leather wallet. "Letters from Stancil."
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The White Rose"
by .
Copyright © 1985 Glen Cook.
Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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