Once each month, in the evening, the entire Company assembles so the Annalist can read from his predecessors. The readings are supposed to put the men in touch with the outfits history and traditions, which stretch back centuries and thousands of miles.

I placed my selection on a crude lectern and went with the usual formula. Good evening, brothers. A reading from the Annals of the Black Company, last of the Free Companies of Khatovar. Tonight Im reading from the Book of Kette, set down early in the Companys second century by Annalists Lees, Agrip, Holm, and Straw. The Company was in service to the Paingod of Chon Delor at that time. That was when the Company really was black.

The reading is from Annalist Straw. It concerns the Companys role in events surrounding the fall of Chon Delor. I began to read, reflecting privately that the Company has served many losing causes.

The Chon Delor era bore many resemblances to our own, though then, standing more than six thousand strong, the Company was in a better position to shape its own destiny.

I lost track entirely. Old Straw was hell with a pen. I read for three hours, raving like a mad prophet, and held them spellbound. They gave me an ovation when I finished. I retreated from the lectern feeling as though my life had been fulfilled.

The physical and mental price of my histrionics caught up as I entered my barracks. Being a semi-officer, I rated a small cubicle of my own. I staggered right to it.

Raven was waiting. He sat on my bunk doing something artistic with an arrow. Its shaft had a band of silver around it. He seemed to be engraving something. Had I not been exhausted, I might have been curious.

You were superb, Raven told me. Even I felt it.

Eh?

You made me understand what it meant to be a brother of the Black Company back then.

What it still means to some.

Yes. And more. You reached them where they lived.

Yeah. Sure. Whatre you doing?

Fixing an arrow for the Limper. With his true name on it. Catcher gave it to me.

Oh. Exhaustion kept me from pursuing the matter. What did you want?

You made me feel something for the first time since my wife and her lovers tried to murder me and steal my rights and titles, He rose, closed one eye, looked down the length of his arrow. Thanks, Croaker. For a while I felt human again. He stalked out.

I collapsed on the bunk and closed my eyes, recalling Raven strangling his wife, taking her wedding ring, and saying not a word. He had revealed more in that one rapid-fire sentence than since the day we had met. Strange.

I fell asleep reflecting that he had evened scores with everyone but the ultimate source of his despair. The Limper had been untouchable because he was one of the Ladys own. But no more.