Black Gate

As soon as I opened The Black Company last May, I knew I was back home among a band of brothers I’d first met and come to love over thirty years ago.                                                                                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                                                                         – Fletcher Vredenburgh     

When my friend Carl lent me his copy of The Black Company back in 1984 I didn’t know what was about to hit me. I had read some gritty fantasy previously — Michael Moorcock and Karl Edward Wagner in particular had published some pretty dark stories in the 1960s and 70s — but it was all written in the old familiar fantasy style. Both Moorcock and Wagner were rooted in the foundations of swords & sorcery laid by Robert E. Howard, CL Moore, and Fritz Leiber. No matter how callous their heroes, they were ultimately still cut from recognizable heroic cloth.

Cook introduced something new. He set aside the archaic prose flourishes of all those authors, instead drawing on hardboiled fiction to give his stories a contemporary feel. There’s a rejection of the mythic, fairytale setting in the Black Company books, and a wholehearted embrace of a “realistic” world where the battlefield reeks of blood, excrement, and decay. Mercenaries pillage, rape, and slaughter, presented in some detail and matter-of-factly. Even seen through the primary narrator’s somewhat romantic eyes, there’s a businesslike miserableness in these books I hadn’t previously encountered in fantasy. As soon as I finished the book I passed it on to to my friend Jim, he passed it on to George, and on and on it went until all my fantasy-reading friends had read it.

For the uninitiated, the Black Company series tells the story of the Last Free Company of Khatovar. Led by the eponymous Captain and Lieutenant, the Company can fight with the best of them, but prefers to outwit its enemies and win its battles by means of subterfuge and sabotage. The narrator, Croaker, serves as company surgeon and Annalist. For four centuries the Company has taken one contract after another, slowly working its way north from long-forgotten Khatovar. As the first book opens, they are approached by a mysterious masked figure offering a new contract even further north, across the sea. Within the first chapter everything changes for the Company, and they are embroiled in a war like they’ve never fought before.

For readers unfamiliar with The Black Company, but up-to-date on Martin, Abercrombie, and Bakker, this might sound old hat. Trust me when I tell you that it wasn’t. At seventeen, that first book hit me like a hammer between the eyes. Here were characters who essentially went to work for Sauron’s ex-wife. Over the course of the first and second books they became the baddest, most-feared band of killers in her army. The ostensible good guys are as vicious and murdering as anybody on the bad guys’ side. There’s a bit of moral redemption in the third book, but what really drives the protagonists is a deep self-interest in survival. To paraphrase Raymond Chandler, Cook took heroic fantasy out of the realm of faerie and put it into the bleak world where it belonged.

…

Read More Read More

So that’s that. Last night I closed the cover of Soldiers Live (2000), the final volume of Glen Cook’s Black Company series. (Yes, yes, I know there’s a new book, Port of Shadows, coming out this month, but it’s set in the past, before Shadows Linger.) All the Company’s enemies and most of its veterans are laid to rest, mostly in their graves. In the last few pages the Black Company, Last of the Free Companies of Khatovar, leaves one universe for another. Only a single veteran from the pre-Taglian days remains and, after two devastating battles, most of the Taglian recruits are gone as well. And still…the Company remains the Company.

From this point on: Spoilers!

Sleepy leads the Company north from the Plain of Glittering Stone. Her plan is to defeat Soulcatcher’s army, then march on the great city of Taglios and force Mogaba and his fellow commanders to surrender. Outnumbered, Sleepy hopes that the magical advantages afforded by the wizard Tobo will give her the intelligence edge needed to overcome the larger, if less competent, opposing armies.

There are few happy endings in Soldiers Live. Willow Swan, Blade, Murgen, and many of their brethren fall in battle or succumb to their wounds afterwards. Shara is presumably killed in the final great fight near Taglios but her body is never found. We see Sleepy and her command staff caught in a magical trap and later learn they were all burned too severely to be identified. Goblin comes back but he’s been possessed by a demon of Kina. Mogaba, in a new found state of reflection, abandons Taglios in order to prevent its destruction only to be tortured and killed by Tobo. Just as he’s about to resume rule of Taglios, the Prahbrindrah Drah is killed by a stray bolt of magic. Much of the book’s second half is a roll call of the dead, punctuated by vicious battles.

At the heart of Soldiers Live is the fate of Croaker. It is through him that we first meet the Black Company, and through his eyes we leave it. His plan to rebuild the Company would have them traverse the worlds connected by the Plain of Glittering Stone, so Croaker makes a deal with the golem that maintains it. Shivetya is ancient and exhausted, desiring death but trapped in an immortal body. In the end the two swap bodies, allowing the golem to die and Croaker to become a near-divine being, able to access all the ancient history of the sixteen worlds and maintain the gates between them.

…

Read More Read More

And so we near the end of our months-long march through the ten books of Glen Cook’s groundbreaking Black Company series. While best remembered as one of the first military fantasy series, one important takeaway is that it’s not that at all. Yes, the Black Company, the last Free Company of Khatovar, is the main “character” of the books, but the tale told is filled with so much more than just war. War is always on the horizon, just a chapter or two away, but Cook’s 3,500-page saga gives us the Company in times of peace and times of flight. He shows how it grows, evolves, and mutates into something different but still the same, bound by four-and-a-half centuries of tradition. Its soldiers possess an intense fealty to the Company as the thing that sets them apart from the world in which they can find no other place.

The title for Soldiers Live (2000) comes from a cryptic statement made to Sleepy in Water Sleeps by the stroke-incapacitated One-Eye: “Soldiers live. And wonder why.” Sleepy interprets it as the question every soldier asks each time they survive a battle but comrades are laid low by swords and arrows. It became her mantra, taking the place of the larger question she asked of herself in the last pages of Water Sleeps.

For now, I just rest. And indulge myself in writing, in remembering the fallen, in considering the strange twists life takes, in considering what plan God must have if the good are condemned to die young while the wicked prosper, if righteous men can commit deep evil while bad men demonstrate unexpected streaks of humanity.

Soldiers live. And wonder why.

Four years have passed, and the Company is safer than it has ever been. Using one of the Shadowgates on the Plain of Glittering Stone, Sleepy led the Company beyond the reach of Soulcatcher and Mogaba and into another world. Despite the sanctuary it’s found, the Company is a changed thing. Goblin died fighting Kina, One-Eye is increasingly weakened by a series of strokes, and Croaker, Lady, and Murgen haven’t fully recovered from the effects of being trapped in stasis for fifteen years. Willow Swan is balding and the remains of his flowing blond locks are gray. Still, there is peace and, in a nice touch, Croaker has again taken up the Annalist’s pen. It’s through his jaundiced vision the final chapter of this epic will be seen.

…

Read More Read More

Water Sleeps.

In their homes, in the shadowed alleyways, in the city’s ten thousand temples, nervous whispers never cease. The Year of the Skulls. The Year of the Skulls. It is an age when no gods die and those that sleep keep stirring restlessly.

In their homes, in the shadowed alleyways or fields of grain or in the sodden paddies, in the pastures and forests and tributary cities, should a comet be seen in the sky or should an unseasonable storm strew devastation or, particularly, if the earth should shake, they murmur, “Water sleeps.” And they are afraid.

I wish I had managed to finish the ninth Black Company book, Water Sleeps (1999), in a single go because, after two frustrating choppy books, Cook is back on his game. Yes, it’s very different than the bloody, battle-focused earlier books, but Water Sleeps, so far, is a tight story with narrative complexity, brutal twists, and more world-building than any of the others.

The previous volume, She is the Darkness, ended with most of the Black Company’s senior officers  — Croaker, Lady, and Murgen — and several important prisoners — the Prahbrindrah Drah of Taglios, Howler, and Lisa Bowalk — trapped by Soulcatcher and held in stasis on the demon-haunted plain of Glittering Stone.

As Water Sleeps opens, we quickly learn that Croaker et al. have been imprisoned for nearly fifteen years. Murgen’s Standardbearer-in-training, Sleepy, is acting Captain, aided by Murgen’s Nyueng Bao wife, Shara, and the increasingly feeble One-Eye and Goblin. Soulcatcher has declared herself Protector of Taglios, has made the Radisha Drah little more than a puppet, and has rendered her councilors toothless. For a decade and a half, the survivors of the Company have been hunting for a way to free their colleagues from Soulcatcher’s trap, while constantly reminding her that the Black Company never lets a betrayal go unpunished.

Sleepy is not only Captain, she’s also the Company’s Annalist. In her hands, there’s greater attention paid to politics and culture than in the other volumes. Unlike Croaker and Lady, Sleepy doesn’t see Soulcatcher and the other power brokers in Taglios just as obstacles. They are part of a complicated nexus of power centers and religious beliefs. Through her, Cook explores and underscores how they manage to run a vast realm. She’s also the only narrator in any of the books who has religious beliefs. When she explains the three main religions of Taglios — Gunni, Shadar, and her own Vehdna — she does it with a degree of sympathy absent from Croaker’s or Lady’s books.

…

Read More Read More

I think this reread of She Is the Darkness (1997) took me so long because I subconsciously remembered how disappointing it is. The first half (reviewed last week), despite a bunch of problems, is all right because of Cook’s usual talent at creating cool characters and sticking them into tough situations. It also had some epic battle scenes. As the Black Company inched its way toward the Shadowmaster’s fortress, the good managed to outweigh the bad. This was not the case for the book’s second half, despite some crowning moments of awesome. Not at all.

We left off last week’s post with the siege of Overlook about to begin. The Taglian legions raised and trained by Croaker and Lady invest the fortress. The great castle eventually falls not to starvation or the walls being thrown down, but to a coup de main. Overlook is so vast and so undermanned that Lady and her most loyal troops were able to secretly bore their way into its foundations and operate from within. After much planning (and magical scouting by Murgen), Lady is able to capture Longshadow.

Back in Taglios the Prince’s sister, the Radisha Drah, starts hunting down the Black Company’s allies. She has always feared the Company; now that Longshadow is defeated the time is ripe for its destruction. Having assumed a betrayal would come (as it always does for them), Croaker has readied the Company for the for the final trek to Khatovar.

The road to Khatovar lies to the south of Overlook, through something called the Shadowgate. From the gate come the shadows — deadly spectral things Longshadow and the Shadowmasters could control to a certain extent. Beyond the gate lies a great barren circular plain. From the gates (turns out there are more than one) are roads leading to the plain’s center, like the spokes of a wheel. And there stands a ruined fortress even greater than Overlook. Its inner courtyard measures nearly a mile across.

Certain the answer to where or what Khatovar is lies within, Croaker leads the core of the Black Company, along with its most important prisoners, — Longshadow, Howler, and Soulcatcher — into the ruins. But instead of answers, what lies behind the broken walls is a devastating trap. The book ends with the most important military commanders and veterans of the Black Company in stasis, and Soulcatcher racing back to Taglios in order to unveil some yet-undescribed scheme.

…

Read More Read More

A skinny, mangy mongrel raced past and on the dead run clamped jaws on a startled crow. He got a wing.

All the crows in the world descended on him before he could enjoy his dinner.

“A parable,” One-Eye said. “Observe! Black crows. Black dog. The eternal struggle.”

“Black philosopher,” Croaker grumbled.

“Black Company.”

One-Eye and Croaker from She Is the Darkness

It’s summer, I’m busy living a summer life. As Glen Cook books go, She Is the Darkness (1997) is a long one. Um, something, something, something. All that’s to say I’m breaking my review into two parts. It’s not what I’d normally do, but I don’t want to lose the momentum of reading the books back to back. Remember: beyond here lie spoilers.

At the end of the previous book, Bleak Seasons, the Black Company under the restored leadership of Croaker, aka the Old Man, aka the Captain, was girding its loins for the final march on the last stronghold of Longshadow, the last Shadowmaster.

Overlook is pretty much Glen Cook’s version of Barad-dûr. Its walls rise to a hundred feet, and are covered in protective spells. Inside lurk untold numbers of soldiers backed by the terrible sorcery of the erstwhile Taken, Howler, and Longshadow himself.

In the field, ex-Black Company chief-of-staff Mogaba leads Longshadow’s last remaining army. Aided by another defector, Blade, Mogaba cannot imagine himself being beaten, and lies in wait for the Black Company and the soldiers of Taglios to attempt to force the pass over the Dhanda Presh Mountains.

Oh, and the wife of new Black Company Annalist Murgen was murdered by the Deceivers. During an assassination attempt on Croaker in the Palace of Taglios, a group of killers found their way into the living quarters of Murgen’s family and left his wife Sahra and her son dead. While not a completely broken man, Murgen is allowing himself to become addicted to traveling through time and space on the spirit of the comatose wizard, Smoke. Officially, Murgen’s doing this to spy on Longshadow and other things important to the health and welfare of the Black Company, but really it’s to avoid the depression brought on by the killing of Sahra. It continues to be a poorly explained and clunky device.

The death of Sahra is also not as simple as it seems. There’s a terrible secret surrounding it, and even though his late wife’s family, including the thoroughly kickass Uncle Doj, know what happened, Murgen doesn’t uncover it for many months. In a series flush with emotionally raw events, what really happened the night of Sahra’s death is one of the hardest in the whole series.

The entire first half of She Is the Darkness concerns the movement of Croaker’s forces towards the showdown with Mogaba’s and Blade’s. Meanwhile Murgen, flying on the wings of Smoke’s psyche, spies for his commander and fills in all the gaps for the reader, giving us an inside look at the doings of the Company’s enemies. There’s no getting around it, much of the first half of the book’s a slog. It might reflect some sort of logistical and strategic masterpiece if it occurred in real life, but on the page it moves like molasses on a winter day. Nonetheless, the book isn’t a disaster, just frustrating.

…

Read More Read More

With Bleak Seasons (1996), Glen Cook broke a six year hiatus from the series that had made his reputation as an important voice in epic fantasy. The previous book, Dreams of Steel (1990), had ended in chaos, with Lady and Croaker reunited, but their newborn daughter stolen by murderous Deceiver, Narayan Singh. The siege of Dejagore was finally lifted, but Soulcatcher remained at large and the Shadowmaster Longshadow continued to build his mega-fortress, Overlook, and field powerful armies. During that six very long years, I became increasingly doubtful I’d ever learn what happened next, or just what made the siege of Dejagore so horrible.

And then Bleak Seasons appeared — just showed up on a Barnes and Noble shelf one day. I bought and devoured it almost immediately. I couldn’t really say my questions had been answered since it had been so long since the last book I forgot some of them. On top of that, the book was a mess; its narrator literally jumping around in time with no clear rhyme or reason. That it was packed with tons of great stuff made it a frustrating read. All the good bits were enough to tilt it to the good side, and I trusted Cook enough to hope the next book would be a return to form.

My reread of the book over the last two days didn’t change my opinion one bit. Well, except that reading Bleak Seasons right up against Dreams of Steel does make all the cool stuff cooler. The jumping around in time, that remains frustrating and poorly explained and with little obvious justification.

Bleak Seasons opens with a short chapter that clearly tells us four years have passed and terrible things have happened. Based on the timelines in the previous book there would seem to be no way this could make sense unless something drastic had happened.

The second chapter introduces us to the book’s narrator, Murgen. The youngest member of the six Company survivors from the original trilogy, he was standard-bearer and, before the disaster under the walls of Dejagore, Annalist-in-training. He opens with a tour of the city of Dejagore during the siege and an introduction of the factions defending it against the army of the Shadowmaster Shadowspinner.

The Black Company and its Taglian auxiliaries have split into two camps. The first is composed of the Northerners and most of the men recruited on the road to Taglios, and is led by Murgen — because no one else wants to be in charge. The second, and stronger, is led by Mogaba and his fellow Gea-Xle warriors. Mogaba is not happy with the situation and soon it’s clear he has it in for Murgen and friends.

Mogaba, possessed of a will of steel and a willingness to do every single bloody act necessary, is the overall commander of the defense of Dejagore. As supplies dwindle, Mogaba routinely ejects members of the Jaicuri population to almost certain death. Later, it’s learned he has returned his fellow Gea-Xle to the darkest part of the Black Company’s origins as soldiers of Kina, the goddess of destruction.

The Nyueng Bao are a third party; a group of pilgrims from the distant Main River delta in the east who had the misfortune to be caught in Dejagore when the siege started. They are secretive, insular, and, it becomes clear quickly, dangerous. Finally, the native Jaicuri, peaceful by nature and beaten down by years of Shadowmaster rule, just try to stay on the good side of Mogaba’s and Murgen’s soldiers and hope for the best.

…

Read More Read More