Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

Hagop sidled close, whispered, “I need to talk to you, private.” He slipped me a folded piece of parchment maybe three and a half inches to a side. It was dirty and it smelled bad. One face had a small triangular tear where it had hung up on something. Hagop looked like he might panic when I opened it.

I stopped walking. The others did, too, wondering what was up. I whispered, “Where did you get this?”

The Company maintained a compound outside the city, on a heath blasted barren back when Whisper arrived to negotiate the treaties by which Aloe gained the perquisites of participation in the Lady’s empire. First among those was continued existence for Aloe and its dependent environs. The compound was nothing exciting. There was a curtain wall of dried mud brick. Everything inside was adobe, too, lightly plastered to resist the rain.

The compound was all brown. A man with a discerning eye might identify shades, but us barbarians only saw brown. Even so, I had a discerning enough eye to spot a new brown patch before Hagop pointed it out.

A flying carpet lay tucked into the shade on the eastern side of the headquarters building. My companions had equally discerning eyes but less troubled hearts.

We were part of a stream, now. Every officer and platoon sergeant had been summoned. Sometimes the Captain gets his butt hairs in a twist and pulls everybody in for an impromptu motivational speech. But there was one critical difference this time.

There was a flying carpet in the shade beside the HQ.

There are, at most, six of those in existence, and only six beings capable of using them.

We were blessed with the presence of one of the Taken.

The happy days were over. Hell had taken a nap but now it was wide awake and raring to go.

Nobody overlooked the carpet. No shoulders failed to slump.

I said, “You guys go ahead. I’ll catch up in a minute. Hagop. Show me.”

He headed for the shade. For the carpet. “I saw it here. I never seen a carpet up close before so I decided to check it out.” He walked me through his experience. One glance at the carpet reaffirmed what I already knew. This unkempt, poorly maintained mess belonged to the Limper.

“I found that folded thing right here.”

Right here would be the place where the Taken sat while the carpet was aloft. The carpet there was especially frayed, stretched, and loose.

Hagop’s finger indicated a fold of material torn away from the wooden frame underneath. “It was mostly covered. It was hung up on that brad.”

A small nail had worked loose maybe three-sixteenths of an inch. A wisp of parchment remained stuck to it. I removed that with my knife, careful to make no personal contact.

“I picked it up. Before I could even look at it the Captain came out and told me to go get you guys.”

“All right. Stay out of sight. We’ll talk later.” I was going to be last inside if I did not hustle.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“It could be bad. Scoot on into town. Don’t tell anybody about this.”

The mess hall was the nearest thing to an assembly hall we had. The cooks had been run off. The place reeked of unhappiness. Half the guys lived in town, now, including me. Some had women. A few even had common-law stepchildren they did not mind supporting.

Those guys would pray that carpet meant the Lady had sent somebody out with the payroll. Only, in Aloe, our pay came from gentle taxes on the people we protected. No need to fly it in from a thousand miles away.

The Captain did his trained-bear shuffle up to the half-ass stage. A creepy brown bundle of rags followed. It dragged one leg. The hall filled with a hard silence.

The Limper. The most absurdly nasty of the Taken. A dedicated enemy of the Black Company. We had screwed him over good back when he tried going against the Lady.

He was back in favor now. But so were we. He could not have his revenge just yet. But he was patient.

The Captain rumbled, “The tedium is about to end, gentlemen. We now know why the Lady put us here. We’re supposed to take out a Rebel captain called Tides Elba.”

I checked the spelling later. It was not a name we knew. He pronounced it “Teadace Elba.”

The Captain said that Tides Elba had enjoyed some successes west of us, but none of her victories had been big enough to catch our attention.

An interesting line of bullshit, some of which might be true.

The Limper climbed up with the Captain. That was a struggle. He had that bad leg and he was a runt—in stature. In wickedness and talent for sorcery he was the baddest of the bad. A reek of dread surrounded him. So did a reek of reek. On his best day, he smelled like he had been in a grave for a long time. He considered us from behind a brown leather mask.

Folks with weaker stomachs jostled for space in the back.

The Limper said nothing. He just wanted us to know he was around. Important to remember. And something foretelling interesting times.