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Title:
Shadows Linger
Series: The Black Company
#2
Author: Glen Cook
Rating: 4 of 5
Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages:
208
Words: 91K
Publish: 1984
As
I was reading this, I kept going to myself “Self, I don’t
remember ANY of this, did I actually read this book before?” and
then I’d trot off to the most magical book place in the world, my
little website (Bookstooge.wordpress.com) and search for “Shadows
Linger” and sho’nuff, there it was, back in 2015. Everything I
wrote in that review showed that yes, I had read the book and that
yes, this was the same book but that my brain had just remembered
exactly 0% of it.
However,
in my defense….
Two
weeks after I finished this book, I barely remembered a thing about
it, again! (I’m writing this well before the time it has been
publicly scheduled for you all to fawn over and adore) That actually
makes me feel better.
I
remember enjoying the Black Company when I read it a decade ago, but
I don’t remember many details. And so far, I’ve really enjoyed
Black Company and Shadows Linger, but nothing truly
memorable is sticking in my head. Big picture things, like what I
wrote about back in 2015. But if you start asking me little detail
oriented questions about this book, I’m just going to look at you
vacantly and drool copiously on your foot.
The
Black Company is working for The Lady and her magical minions, the
Taken. The Taken are a bunch of backstabbers and some of them have it
in for the Black Company. So the Black Company ends up at the end of
the book being decimated and on the run from The Lady, even though
most of what they did was in self-defense against the Taken. And in
the background is the threat of The Lady’s husband, The Dominator,
who once ruled the world with an iron fist. He’s not dead, just
magically entombed.
And
what’s with that anyway? Why this (&&^%!%$)@ idea that you
can just put people in prison and that will solve the problem? It
just kicks the can down the road and some poor sod of a generation
will have to deal with the return of that villain again, and again,
and again. Just kill that son of a biscuit the first time and have
done with it.
Because
I had such a good time, I upped my rating to 4stars (from 3.5 last
time).
For a slightly less ranty review, please check out One Reading Nurses review of this book.
★★★★☆
From
BlackCompany.fandom.com
Plot summary
Two
young children are acting as lookouts for their Rebel uncle.
They see the grizzled soldiers of the Black Company approaching.
The band's reputation has preceded them, and the children know the
identities of some the Company men. When they turn to notify their
uncle, they are captured by Goblin.
Suppressing the Rebel in Tally
province
The
Black Company is garrisoned in Tome, one of only two substantial
towns in Tally, the most easterly province of the Lady's
Empire in the northern continent. An advance team of
Company veterans – the physician and Annalist Croaker,
the wizard Silent, Candy, Pawnbroker, Kingpin,
and Otto – is embedded in Madle's tavern, waiting
for local Rebels to arrive. The uncle of the captured
children – Neat – and some other Rebels arrive. They
are killed in the ambush, and several other groups of local Rebels
fall for the same trap. The Company men play tonk between
each action. The tavern is eventually swamped by a massive mob of
furious Rebels. The Company men fight for every inch, and the Rebels
soon resort to burning them out. They barely survive the grueling
combat.
New orders: relocate to the
Barrowland
They
soon receive orders to march thousands of miles across the Lady's
vast empire to the Barrowland in the far north. After a
146-day march from Tome to Frost, Croaker is airlifted
alongside Elmo and Kingpin by Whisper on
her flying carpet directly to the Barrowland. Croaker
spends 6 comfortable weeks there. Then they learn they are all to go
to someplace called Juniper, a frigid port city far outside the
Empire's bounds in the distant northwest corner of the map. Croaker
is again spared another long march – this one much longer and more
grueling than the one from Tome – when he, 24 other Company men,
and a handful of Imperial men are whisked across the continent to
Juniper by the new Taken. In addition to Croaker, others in this
elite group include: the sergeant Elmo, the wizard Goblin,
the veterans Pawnbroker, Kingpin, and Otto, and other
trusted soldiers like Sharkey, Tickle, Walleye, Crake,
and Stork. They are spared the long westerly march across the
northern continent and through the frigid Wolander Mountains.
In Juniper: Raven, Darling, and
Marron Shed
Two
familiar faces are already in Juniper. Raven (who deserted
the Company during the Battle at Charm) and his mute
ward Darling have taken up residence in the lodgings above
the Iron Lily, a downtrodden tavern in the poor quarter called
the Buskin. Darling assists the barkeeper Marron Shed,
while Raven has been somehow accumulating a fortune. Shed, a
notorious coward, is broke and remains at the mercy of a gangster
named Krage who has designs to seize the Lily from him.
Raven
helps Shed by intimidating Red and Count, two of
Krage's enforcers. He soon shares the secret of his wealth to Shed.
He has been selling the corpses of the poor people who die overnight
in the frozen Buskin nights to bizarre humanoids which
inhabit a mysterious and shunned structure called the black
castle. Raven even lets him participate in the corpse-selling scheme,
first as an equal partner, then as an assistant. When they learn that
the homeless man called Asa has been robbing the
sacred Catacombs beneath the Enclosure, they accompany
him to loot the corpses to sell to the black castle. There, Asa is
seriously wounded by a Guardian, but Raven slays the tomb
defender and they escape with their lives and the loot.
The black castle
Meanwhile,
Croaker attends a meeting within the palace of Duretile between
the city's leadership (including Duke Zimerlan,
senior Custodian Hargadon, and chief Inquisitor Bullock)
and those in Croaker's group who represent the Lady's Empire (led by
the Taken Whisper and Feather). There he learns that Duke
Zimerlan had requested help from the Lady regarding the growing black
castle. The duke explains what his people know about the structure's
bizarre history. When it was first discovered generations in the
past, it was tiny. After some of his ancestors died investigating it,
the population of the city would come to fear and ignore the
frightening edifice. Hargadon explains that there is a sharp decrease
in the number of bodies being collected by his Custodians for
deposition in the Catacombs.
Croaker
and Bullock both speak the language of the Jewel Cities, so they
work together to determine who has been selling corpses to the black
castle. They check out Shed and Asa.
Escalating violence between Raven
and Krage
Soon,
the antagonism between Krage and Raven escalates. Raven kills some of
Krage's men, including wounding Count, and even targets the
gangster himself. It culminates in a bloodbath where Raven and even
Shed himself ambush Krage and his troop of thugs in a wild fight
across the frozen rooftops and alleys of the Buskin. Krage, who is
paralyzed, and the bodies of his men are sold to the black castle for
a sizable stack of coins.
The Crater raid; Raven flees with
Darling
Eventually,
Croaker and Bullock orchestrate a perfectly-executed raid on an
establishment called the Crater, where a handful of
tired Rebel fugitives from the Empire occasionally gather
to reminisce about their failed attempt to overthrow the Lady back
during the days of the Circle of Eighteen. Two of the captured
prisoners do confess to selling a handful of corpses to the black
castle, but, this does not account for the significant volume of
traffic in recent years. As it happens, Raven missed being
ensnared in this raid by pure luck. Croaker had by this time learned
about his old comrade's presence in the city, and was relieved that
Raven had escaped. Raven's capture and subsequent interrogation would
have exposed that his ward Darling was the reincarnation of the White
Rose, a prophesied enemy of the Lady. Croaker and some other veteran
members of the Black Company had ensured that she and Raven escaped
the Empire unnoticed after the Battle at Charm. Instead, Raven
took Darling and quickly fled the city aboard his own ship, which he
had ordered built and crewed using his fortune from the black castle
corpse deliveries.
The connection between the black
castle and the Barrowland
Whisper
finally explains to Croaker the connection between the Barrowland and
Juniper, and the reason why they are all in this city so far outside
the Empire. The black castle overlooking Juniper from the Wolander
Mountains is the focal point of an upcoming escape attempt
orchestrated by the imprisoned Dominator, a terrible sorcerer of
unrivaled magnitude who is the Lady's husband and
arch-nemesis. Raven, by selling the corpses to the black castle to
financially support Darling, had been unwittingly fueling the sorcery
which will unleash the most evil tyrant in the continent's history.
The more bodies he sold to the creatures within, the larger the
castle grew. Once the structure reaches a certain size, the Dominator
will be released from the Great Barrow, his prison beneath the
Barrowland, after about 413 years of confinement.
Marron Shed's downward spiral at
the Iron Lily
At
the Iron Lily, Marron Shed enjoys the good fortune of newfound wealth
for a time. Krage and his menacing gang are dead, and many workmen
from the thawed harbor are coming to his tavern to get drunk. Shed
buys a cottage near the Enclosure for his frail, blind
mother June and hires servants – Bo and Lana and
their daughter – to be her caregivers. But his luck takes a steep
downturn. Shed's cousin Wally, who helped him run the Lily,
stole a large sum of money to pay a gambling debt. Shed confronts him
and unintentionally beats him to death in a rage. After selling his
body to the black castle creatures, Shed then supported Wally's
wife Sal and their children out of guilt, acquiring further
dependents in addition to his mother and her servants.
Shed
is also seduced by a prostitute named Sue, a honeypot hired by
the Buskin loan shark named Gilbert. Deeply in love, he
squanders a fortune and brings his finances to the brink of disaster.
When he discovers the truth about Gilbert, he is heartbroken, but
resolves to get vengeance because Sue's scheme would have resulted in
the foreclosure of the Lily. He kidnaps Sue and takes her to the
black castle, where he was paid a fortune for her because she was
alive.
One final delivery to the black
castle
Shed
allows Lisa Daele Bowalk, a young woman who had previously acted
as a barmaid for him, to assume part ownership of the Lily and
control over his finances. Lisa tricks him into admitting his part in
selling bodies to the black castle creatures, and forces him into
continuing the venture. Together they kill Gilbert and deliver his
body to the castle. There, Shed resists the temptation to sell Lisa
to the creatures within. Moments after departing the castle, they are
both captured by a group of Black Company men including Croaker, who
had been posted to guard the pathway.
Oh.
What eyes. Fire and steel. The Lady will love this one.Feather,
describing Lisa
Croaker realizes
that if his new prisoner Shed is turned over to the new Taken,
he will be subject to the Lady's Eye, and the truth about Raven
and Darling will be exposed. So he quickly comes up with a plan: he
persuades Shed to play dead, and will only turn over Lisa. It
succeeds. When the Taken called Feather arrives on
her flying carpet, she has been diminished by a sorcery attack
of some kind that was just sent up to her from the black castle. The
young sorceress buys their story that Shed was killed trying to
escape. Feather is impressed with the captive and flies off with her.
Shed is returned to the Lily where Pawnbroker keeps close tabs on
him.
The
main force of the Black Company, including the Captain,
the Lieutenant, One-Eye, and Silent, finally makes its
way down the Wolanders. Croaker and Elmo and their advance team
reunite with the rest of their brethren.
The Battle of Juniper
After
the Lady arrives in person, the Battle of Juniper breaks
out. The castle creatures use thunderous sorcery to strike
at the new Taken in the sky, and they use superior combat
skills to cut down the conventional forces. The creatures scramble to
bring the dead and injured into the castle to complete their portal
for their master the Dominator. Even Feather is killed.
The Limper joins the combat on the ground and turns the
tide there with his formidable battlefield sorcery. A frightening
airborne sorcery duel ensues, and the Lieutenant brings powerful
siege engines to bear. A barrage of sorcery bombs is sent careening
from Duretile to plaster the black castle. Soon, the Limper
inspires droves of people, including Elmo and many Black
Company men, to rush into the castle itself.
Before
the battle is done, Silent arrives and hustles dozens of
Company men away from the action toward the harbor. They are deeply
confused but comply on the direct orders of the Captain himself
as conveyed by Silent. They board a ship and read a letter from the
Captain, who has uncovered a plot among the new Taken to betray the
Black Company. He has ordered the senior members away from the battle
to protect them and give them time to flee.
From
the deck, they watch as a colossal human shape made of a fountain of
fire tower out of the black castle. It is the Dominator, coming
through the portal. The Lady, unseen inside Duretile, finally joins
the battle. She sends an awesome sorcery out, and it strikes the
fiery representation of the Dominator. Suddenly, the men witness the
Captain streaking toward them on the Lady's personal flying carpet,
apparently trying to join them. But their patriarch cannot control
the craft, and it smashes through the ship's rigging; the Captain
plunges to his death in the waters. The Company men are stunned:
their numbers are horribly reduced, they have been betrayed by their
employer, and now their trusted leader is dead. They cannot even see
if the Lady or the Dominator won the battle. The only silver lining
is that all the flying carpets have been destroyed, which will
confine whomever the Lady will send to pursue them to horseback.
Shed's escape to Meadenvil
During
the fighting, Shed sneaks out and makes it to the harbor. Narrowly
escaping a hail of deadly arrows shot by Pawnbroker and other Company
soldiers, he takes the same sea route as Raven had taken, south
to Meadenvil. There, Shed finds Asa and is eager to
make a new start for himself in the refreshing city. He arranges to
become a co-owner with Selkirk, the owner of the Ruby
Glass. But Selkirk reveals that recent disappearances were shaking
things up in Meadenvil, and Shed realizes he had been spotted by at
least one surviving black castle creature. Unwilling to let the
monsters endanger a second city, he tracks down Bullock in
a Meadenvil prison. He uses Bullock's information to track down a
newly-formed black castle which the surviving creatures are working
to grow in the secluded countryside. This is the location where Asa
reportedly witnessed Raven's death.
The Company arrives in Meadenvil…
shadowed by the Taken
Concurrently,
the Black Company survivors from Juniper disembark in Meadenvil. They
are unaware that they are being pursued by the Limper and Whisper,
who have disregarded the orders of the Lady, and have taken a cadre
of at least 50 newly-acquired former-Black Company men
(including Shaky) into Meadenvil via the exhausting overland
route on horseback. Their goal was to pursue the Company veterans and
to steal some documents which contained the Limper's True
Name from them. At the port, the new Taken were confronted by
the Prince of Meadenvil and his guard. Exhausted from the
ride, the Limper's former-Company men were almost wiped out. But the
Limper turned the tide with the help of a terrifying demon which
he summoned into the fray, a monster that devoured a sergeant in the
Prince's guard.
Before
Shaky attacks Pawnbroker on the harbor, he revealed that the Lady had
been victorious in Juniper. But she began plundering the Catacombs,
a sacrilege which outraged the populace. When Hargadon led
a revolt against their new occupiers, the Lady unleashed a
devastating sorcery which apparently leveled much of the city.
The Lieutenant barely
gets away from Whisper and the Limper via a sea route at Meadenvil's
port with most of the men. But Croaker, Shed, Silent, Goblin,
One-Eye, and a few others are left behind.
Croaker
and his small Black Company crew want to reunite with the Lieutenant,
but they gamble on confronting whomever is chasing them. First, they
bring Bullock, and intercept Marron Shed at the site of the nascent
black castle outside Meadenvil. Dismayed, they find what looks to be
the remains of Raven. They survive a close encounter with two of the
Dominator's castle creatures, killing their assailants only with
One-Eye's sorcery and overwhelming numbers.
Ambushing the Limper
Still
in the countryside, Croaker prepares an ambush for whichever of the
new Taken is coming for them. It turns out to be the Limper, who is
accompanied by 9 former-Company men who survived the recent combat
with the Prince's forces. With the help of a local
innkeeper (whose brother was the sergeant in the Prince's guard
that was eaten by the Limper's demon at the harbor), the Company
turns the tables on the ancient sorcerer. In the ambush, the Limper's
arm is hacked off by Bullock, and he is beaten unconscious for a
brief time. His remaining men march him into the innkeeper's
establishment, which is the second part of Croaker's trap. At the
last moment, the Limper regains consciousness, and realizes the
danger.
As
more violence breaks out, Croaker impales the Taken with his sword,
but the Limper in turn punches the wind out of him. Despite the
Taken's brutalized condition, he also beats down One-Eye and kills
several of the innkeeper's ravenous dogs that have been set upon on
him, each with single hits. Goblin lures him to a pig shed,
into range of a small hidden ballista that is operated by Pawnbroker,
who is lying in wait. After being pierced by two missiles from the
ballista, the Limper is cut to pieces and battered to a pulp by Pawn,
Croaker, and the vengeful innkeeper. Croaker presumes his prey is
dead, and finally hangs him from a tree, stuffing the last of the
Dominator's black castle "seeds" into his mouth for the
Lady to find and destroy.
The long run begins
Croaker
and his group make their way southward to Chimney, a major city
on the long Salada Peninsula which extends into the western
ocean. They reunite with the Lieutenant and his larger group, the
ones who escaped by sea from the Taken at Meadenvil. The Lieutenant
reports that he found Raven's ship, and Darling is already
safely with them. But when he sought Raven, he arrived just in time
to see his remains consumed in a freshly-lit funeral pyre.
Apparently, Raven had recently died in a slip-and-fall accident in
Chimney's public bath. Darling was genuinely devastated, and her
emotions lend credence to what looks suspiciously like yet another
faked death. Raven would never lie to her. The Lieutenant takes
employment with the private constabulary of one of Chimney's
mercantile factors. He adds his men's names to the roll as soon as
they recuperate.
Nineteen
days after Croaker's arrival in Chimney, there is another warm
reunion. Elmo and 70 other brothers who were assumed dead
surprised the rest of the men by riding into town, having escaped
Juniper on horseback. They even carry the Company's treasure chest.
The whole Black Company now has a new purpose: to be the "bedraggled
joke of a nucleus" for Darling's New White Rose Rebellion.
As they cast off from Chimney, the Company leadership shares a toast
"to the 29 years", which, according to the astronomical
cycle, is when the Great Comet will return and prophesy
fortune in their new movement against the Lady.
