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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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