Blood-drinking, liver-eating wereleopards. Ancient, darkness-wise, filled with a millenium of hatred and hunger. The stuff of nightmare all right, “Can you handle it?”

“N’Gamo couldn’t. I’ll never be his match, and he lost an arm and a foot trying to destroy a young male. What we have here is an old female. Bitter, cruel, and clever. The four of us might hold her off. Conquer her, no.”

“But if you and One-Eye know this thing....”

“No.” He had the shakes. He gripped his drum so tight it creaked. “We can’t.”

Chaos died. Beryl’s streets remained as starkly silent as those of a city overthrown. Even the mutineers concealed themselves till hunger drove them to the city granaries.

The Syndic tried to tighten the screws on the Captain. The Captain ignored him. Silent, Goblin, and One-Eye tracked the monster. The thing functioned on a purely animal level, feeding the hunger of an age. The factions besieged the Syndic with demands for protection.

The Lieutenant again summoned us to the officers’ mess. The Captain wasted no time. “Men, our situation is grim.” He paced. “Beryl is demanding a new Syndic. Every faction has asked the Black Company to stand aside.” The moral dilemma escalated with the stakes. “We aren’t heroes,” the Captain continued. “We’re tough. We’re stubborn. We try to honor our commitments. But we don’t die for lost causes.”

I protested, the voice of tradition questioning his unspoken proposition.

“The question on the table is the survival of the Company, Croaker.”

“We have taken the gold. Captain. Honor is the question on the table. For four centuries the Black Company has met the letter of its commissions. Consider the Book of Set, recorded by Annalist Coral while the Company was in service to the Archon of Bone, during the Revolt of the Chiliarchs.”

“You consider it, Croaker.”

I was irritated. “I stand on my right as a free soldier.”

“He has the right to speak,” the Lieutenant agreed. He is more a traditionalist than I.

“Okay. Let him talk. We don’t have to listen.”

I reiterated that darkest hour in the Company’s history... till I realized I was arguing with myself. Half of me wanted to sell out.

“Croaker? Are you finished?”

I swallowed. “Find a legitimate loophole and I’ll go along.”

Tom-Tom gave me a mocking drumroll. One-Eye chuckled. “That’s a job for Goblin, Croaker. He was a lawyer before he worked his way up to pimping.”

Goblin took the bait. “I was a lawyer? Your mother was a lawyer’s....”

“Enough!” The Captain slapped the tabletop. “We’ve got Croaker’s okay. Go with it. Find an out.”

The others looked relieved. Even the Lieutenant. My opinion, as Annalist, carried more weight than I liked.

“The obvious out is the termination of the man holding our bond,” I observed. That hung in the air like an old, foul smell. Like the stench in the tomb of the forvalaka.

“In our battered state, who could blame us if an assassin slipped past?”

“You have a disgusting turn of mind. Croaker,” Tom-Tom said. He gave me another drumroll.