Port of Shadows: A Chronicle of the Black Company - Hardcover

Cook, Glen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250174570 ISBN 13: 9781250174574

Verlag: TOR BOOKS, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Glen Cook, the father of Grimdark, returns to the Chronicles of the Black Company with a military fantasy adventure in Port of Shadows.

The soldiers of the Black Company don’t ask questions, they get paid. But being “The Lady’s favored” is attracting the wrong kind of attention and has put a target on their backs--and the Company’s historian, Croaker, has the biggest target of all.

The one person who was taken into The Lady’s Tower and returned unchanged has earned the special interest of the court of sorcerers known as The Ten Who Were Taken. Now, he and the company are being asked to seek the aid of their newest member, Mischievous Rain, to break a rebel army. However, Croaker doesn’t trust any of the Taken, especially not ones that look so much like The Lady and her sister…

The Chronicles of the Black Company
#1 The Chronicles of The Black Company
#2 The Books of the South
#3 The Return of The Black Company
#4 The Many Deaths of the Black Company

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Born in 1944, Glen Cook grew up in northern California, served in the U.S. Navy, attended the University of Missouri, and was one of the earliest graduates of the well-known "Clarion" workshop SF writers. Since 1971 he has published a large number of Science Fiction and fantasy novels, including the "Dread Empire" series, the occult-detective "Garrett" novels, and the very popular "Black Company" sequence that began with the publication of The Black Company in 1984. Among his science fiction novels is A Passage at Arms.

After working many years for General Motors, Cook now writes full-time. He lives near St. Louis, Missouri, with his wife Carol.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Port of Shadows

By Glen Cook

Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright © 2018 Glen Cook
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-17457-4

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Prologue, 
1. Once Upon a Time, in Dusk, 
2. Long Ago and Far Away: Sometimes Called Bathdek, 
3. In Modern Times: Tides Elba, 
4. Once Upon a Time: The Necromancer at Home, 
5. Long Ago and Far Away: The Frightened Princess, 
6. In Modern Times: Smelling Danger, 
7. Once Upon a Time: All Objectivity Fled, 
8. Long Ago and Far Away: Sisters, 
9. In Modern Times: Bone Candy, 
10. Once Upon a Time: Stormy Night, 
11. Long Ago and Far Away: Oblivion Fall, 
12. In Modern Times: Mischievous Rain, 
13. Once Upon a Time: Gone Without an Echo, 
14. Long Ago and Far Away: A Far Piece, 
15. In Modern Times: Honnoh, 
16. Long Ago and Far Away: The Far Country, 
17. Once Upon a Time: Shadow of the Moon, 
18. In Modern Times: Dark Water Rising, 
19. Once Upon a Time: A Deeper Shade of Horror, 
20. Once Upon a Time: An Absence of Pain, 
21. In Modern Times: Shadow Soup, 
22. Once Upon a Time: Papa's Girls, 
23. Long Ago and Far Away: New Hope for the Dead, 
24. In Modern Times: Lost Treasure Rediscovered, 
25. Once Upon a Time: Baby Time, 
26. Long Ago and Far Away: Generations Drift, 
27. In Modern Times: Twisting Fate, 
28. Once Upon a Time: Shambling Toward Oblivion, 
29. In Modern Times: No Peace, No Rest, 
30. In Modern Times: Dayfall, 
The Last: In Modern Times: Croaker in the Vertiginous Shade, 
Postscript: In This Age of Shadow-Soaked Days, 
Tor Books by Glen Cook, 
About the Author, 
Copyright Acknowledgments, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

Once Upon a Time, in Dusk

The night was silent but for the clop of hooves on wet cobblestones. A sliver of moon winked at the world from behind straggler wisps of cloud, silhouetting the grim spires of Grendirft. No light shone anywhere from that fortress.

The air was still and nearly chill now that the rain had gone away. A hint of corrupting flesh tainted the air of imperial Dusk.

It was not yet late enough in the season for many insects.

The black coach stopped, its right side wheels a yard from an unguarded drop-off into a moatlike canal that existed to carry off wastes rather than to present a defensive barrier. A waste chute debouched into the canal just yards upstream from the coach.

The driver tied off his reins. He climbed down. He assumed a stiff parade rest at the canal's edge, but after a brief wait he turned, opened the coach door, and retrieved a boat hook. He now held that tool like it was a pole arm.

A corpse made a small plop as it hit the water. Momentum brought it to the surface where the coachman waited. He did not have to use the boat hook.

He pulled the girl from the canal carefully. She was slippery. The rain had freshened the water, so her brief immersion did not gift her with the sewer perfume she might have acquired on another night. She wore nothing. Any abuse she had suffered was not obvious. She was fifteen at the oldest. She did not weigh much. The coachman had no trouble getting her into his vehicle. He wrapped her in blankets and propped her in a corner. She looked like she was sick or drunk or asleep when he finished.

"You down there! What are you doing?"

That demand came down from eighty feet above.

The coachman's heart, thumping already, now hammered although he knew no one could get down from there in time to identify or stop him. He had gone through this in dry runs a half dozen times. This was the first time he had been noticed.

He kept the coach moving sedately while departing the area. It was unlikely that anyone would check why a coach had been standing beside the waste canal, despite it being about the time when the Dominator's henchmen disposed of the used-up virgin of the night.

Dusk's gates never closed. What fool would invade the capital of the Domination, especially when the dread lord of the empire was in residence? No one living owned that much audacity.

The coachman was remarkable in having shown the daring he had.

There was no cause for the guards at the Jade Gate to disrupt his departure. A small donative did, however, change hands. That was customary. In return the soldiers were entirely cursory in their inspection.

The coachmen explained, "That's my daughter. Fourteen and blind drunk, to my shame. But you can't help loving them, whatever they do."

The younger soldier chuckled. "See what you got to look forward to, Jink?" he told his companion, then said, "Jink's got him three daughters coming up."

Jink said, "They hit eleven, they go into a cage until I get them married. You probably ought to put yours on a chain," he told the coachman. "Go on, now."

The coachman climbed back up, snapped his reins, heaved a sigh of relief, and got his team moving.

He was racing time.

The girl would not last long.

CHAPTER 2

Long Ago and Far Away: Sometimes Called Bathdek

Excitement began to stir inside Grendirft when the Lord Chamberlain discovered that tonight's visitor to the Dominator had been disposed of as if she was a common used-up diversion instead of one of the Senjaks. The men responsible were new. They had not been trained before being put to work as replacements for predecessors who had descended the waste chute themselves because of their stupid actions.

The Lord Chamberlain battled terror that had him on the verge of tossing up everything he had eaten all week. He maintained just enough control to report the disaster to the girl's next-oldest sister, Bathdek.

"Perhaps He became a little inappropriate. He has had some difficulty keeping hands off ..." Shift blame as much as possible. He might not have long to live, otherwise, and the death he was likely to die would be neither gentle nor swift.

Bathdek's voice was chill. "I understand. It was sure to happen to one of us." She had survived visits with the Dominator herself. The madman was less aggressive with her and her other sisters, who did not fit His preferences as well as Dorotea. "He killed her?" That might cost the mad emperor everything. "And He disposed of her as if she was one of His nameless night toys?" She was almost too outraged to be enraged. "That doesn't seem like something He would do even when He was drunk on poppy milk."

The Lord Chamberlain promised, "I will recover her body."

"You most certainly will. We will need a body next time He demands her company. Else we could all become victims." All predicated on the assumption that He was so far gone that He would not recall the killing.

Her fear was like none that she had known before. If the mad emperor abandoned His compact with the Senjaks, the family might not survive. Nor would He, afterward. He might be the monster sorcerer of all time but He could not stand against the enmity of all the world without the support of the people who had brought Him to absolute and total dominion.

Again the Lord Chamberlain promised, "I will find her. I will bring her back." It should not be that difficult. The body would be in the waste canal.

But her body was not in the waste canal.

Several bodies were in the canal, human and otherwise, floating or not, but none were that of the youngest Senjak sister.

The Lord Chamberlain's panic level was historic. And it became contagious.

CHAPTER 3

In Modern Times: Tides Elba

We were playing tonk....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: TOR BOOKS
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1250174570
• ISBN 13: 9781250174574
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: RUE DE SEVRES; https://www.hachette.fr/; ; 1 AVENUE GUTENBERG; MAUREPAS CEDEX; 78319; Frankreich