I faked being a hero. I could not stop shaking, though. I pulled my blanket tighter. That did not help, either.

“Candyass!” One-Eye sneered. Like the little shit wasn’t about to have a seizure himself. “That bonehead Goblin don’t quit farting around and get his dead ass back here I’m gonna go strip him barebutt and nail him to a chunk of ice.”

“That’s creative.”

“Don’t be no wiseass, Kid. I’ll...”

An especially exuberant gust took off with what he would.

It wasn’t just the cold making us shake, though nobody would admit that. It was the place and the mission and the fact that heavy cloud cover robbed us of even the meager comradeship of starlight.

It was goddamned dark. And these Stranglers might now be friends with the man who ran shadows. A little bird said. Actually, a big black bird said.

“We spend too much time in town,” I grumbled. One-Eye didn’t respond. Thai Dei did, though, with a grunt. But that was a speech for this particular Nyueng Bao.

The wind brought the creak of a stealthy footfall. One-Eye barked, “Goddamnit, Goblin! Quit stomping around. You want the whole damned world to know we’re here?” Never mind that Goblin could not be heard five feet away, dancing. One-Eye refuses to be constrained by mundane reason or consistency.

Goblin drifted into place in front of me, squatted. His little yellow teeth chattered. “All set,” he murmured. “Whenever you’re ready.”

“We’d better do it, then. Before I break out in a case of common sense.” I grunted as I rose. My knees crackled. My muscles did not want to stretch any more. I swore. I was getting too damned old for this shit, though at thirty-four I was the baby of the bunch. “Move out,” I said, loudly enough to be heard by most everyone. You couldn’t use hand signals in that darkness.

We were downwind and Goblin had done his stuff. Noise was not a worry.

The men drifted away, mostly so quietly that I had trouble believing I was alone suddenly except for my bodyguard. We moved, too. Thai Dei covered my back. The night didn’t bother him. Maybe he has eyes like a cat.

I had plenty of mixed feelings. This was the first time I had run a raid. I was not sure I was over Dejagore enough to handle it. I shied at shadows and remained crazy suspicious of everybody outside the Company, for no reason I could understand. But Croaker insisted, so here I was sneaking around in a dark and evil forest with icicles hanging off my butt, directing the first purely Company op in years. Only it wasn’t so purely Company when you considered the fact that all my guys had bodyguards with them.

I got over the self-confidence hurdle just by getting myself moving. Hell, it was too late to stop anything.

I stopped worrying about me and went to work worrying about how we would look after the raid was over. If we blew it we could not blame that on Taglian treachery or factionalism or incompetence, the usual sand in the machine.