“Get over there on the cot where the breeze will hit you-if the son of a bitch ever comes up. It looks that way.” I’d had to open up Walleye and Wild Bruce to learn the truth. “You mean it’s poison? The damned Blues slipped me something?” Then Pokey took it and lived.” Word was out about that. His whole face puckered at the first taste. “Uhm.” I mixed a nasty, milky concoction. “Eaten outside the commissary lately, Curly?” A fly landed on his head, strutted like a conqueror. “Uhm.” I assumed my professional demeanor, sure what it was. I checked the watch schedule and duty roster. “It’s my stomach, Croaker,” His pate looks like a polished ostrich egg. I mopped my face and grimaced at my first patient. There wasn’t enough breeze to stir a cobweb. I had every shutter thrown wide, praying for a breath off the harbor, rotting fish and all. Only a fool would be surprised by anything found creeping its night streets. The Queen of the Jewel Cities was old and decadent and mad, filled with the stench of degeneracy and moral dryrot. They compile phenomenal records.īeryl totters perpetually, ready to stumble over a precipice into chaos. Still, the best augurs are those who divine from the portents of the past. We did have four modestly accomplished wizards to stand sentinel against predatory tomorrows-though never by any means as sophisticated as divining through sheeps’ entrails. Fools can make an omen of anything in retrospect.

At the Bastion, the eagle not only departed, the ivy on the outer ramparts withered and gave way to a creeper which appeared black in all but the most intense sunlight.īut that happens every year. A mad soothsayer wandered the streets proclaiming the imminent end of the world. Then one evicted, the eagle which lived atop the Paper Tower.Īstrologers refused readings, fearing for their lives.

For nine evenings running, ten black vultures circled the Bastion. At the Fork Barracks, where the Urban Cohorts were billeted, the image of Teux turned completely around. One victim escaped after its bowels were opened and was not recaptured. Priests at several temples reported sacrificial victims without hearts or livers. One bolt struck the bronze plaque sealing the tomb of the forvalaka, obliterating half the spell of confinement. Lightning from a clear sky smote the Necropolitan Hill. One-Eye’s handicap in no way impairs his marvelous hindsight. We must blame ourselves for misinterpreting them. There were prodigies and portents enough, One-Eye says. There must be a way for the Black Company to find her. Until the prophecy: The White Rose has been reborn, somewhere, to embody good once more. The hardbitten men of the Black Company take their pay and do what they must, burying their doubts with their dead. Some feel the Lady, newly risen from centuries in thrall, stands between humankind and evil. This ePub edition v1.0 by Dead^Man Jan, 2011ĭarkness wars with darkness - until the new light breaks.

Black Company by Glen Cook