The Black Company

Evil is relative…You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.

If one chooses sides on emotion then the rebel is the guy to go with. He is fighting for everything men claim to honour, freedom, independance, truth, the right.......all the subjective illusions. All the eternal trigger words. We are minions of the villan of the piece. We confess the illusion and deny the substance.

Any man who barely sustains an armistice with himself has no business poking around in an alien soul.

Consider little children. There are not many of them not cute and lovable and precious, sweet as whipped honey and butter. So where do all the wicked people come from?

Only a conquerer bothers to honor a fallen foe.

You who come after me, scribbling these Annals, by now realize that I shy off portraying the whole truth about our band of blackguards. You know they are vicious, violent, and ignorant. They are complete barbarians, living out their cruelest fantasies, their behavior tempered only by the presence of a few decent men. I do not often show that side because these men are my brethren, my family, and I was taught young not to speak ill of kin. The old lessons die hardest.

I was my usual charming morning self, threatening blood feud with anyone fool enough to disturb my dreams.

Still, the best augurs are those who divine from the portents of the past. They compile phenomenal records.

Ah, the smell of mystery and dark doings, of skulduggery and revenge. The meat of a good tale.

I damned myself for my earlier romanticism. That Croaker who had come north, so thoroughly bemused by the mysterious Lady, was another man. A stripling, filled with the foolish ignorances of youth. Yeah. Sometimes you lie to yourself just to keep going.

One endured with humble dignity the consequences of youthful folly.

The price of order,” I muttered. I tried to run the dog off. It wouldn’t budge. “The cost of chaos,” Tom-Tom countered. Thump on his drum. “Not quite the same thing, Croaker.

A herd of minuscule lightning bugs poured out of One-Eye's nostrils. Good soldiers all, they fell into formation, spelling out the words Goblin is a Poof.

Back to the company. Back to business. Back to the parade of years. Back to the annals. Back to fear.

Nevertheless, four hours after dawn they began dying for their cause.

Closer at hand, the wheeling gulls were as surly and lackadaisical as the day promised to make most men.

The Hanged Man stopped gesturing and struck a pose: man listening.

One-Eye’s handicap in no way impairs his marvelous hindsight. Lightning

Okay, Croaker. What the hell happened?” “I don't know. The falling sickness?” “Give him some of his own soup,” somebody suggested. “Serve him right.” A tin cup appeared. We forced its contents down his throat. His eye clicked open. “What are you trying to do? Poison me? Feh! What was that? Boiled sewage?” “Your soup,” I told him.