The salt breeze whispered through the window, cool on my sweaty forehead. I took another sip of wine and kept writing. Not that there was much to write, and that was dry reading. Two brothers injured in training. Rumors in the market of a madman lurking in the sewers. Another dispute with the leatherworker's guild over the quality of goods received. That was the sum total of my contribution to the Annals today. I sanded the page and put the book carefully aside with its companion volumes. Another breath of wind off the harbor whispered in through the window. I squinted into the nearly level rays of the setting sun. I was done for the day. I capped the inkwell, tossed off the rest of the wine, and headed downstairs.

I found my squad playing cards in the south hall. That was where they had been yesterday evening, and the evening before that, and the evening before that. I flopped into a chair next to Kip and wondered why I felt so tired.

"You don't look so good, old man," Mayson observed, smoothly dealing me in. "Been spending too much time with your books. Bad for your health." He clicked his tongue knowingly.

"The day you get away with calling me 'old man', boy, is the day they throw me out of the Company." I retorted, tossing down a trio of queens.

He grinned. We were the same age, or near enough. Joined the Company on the same day, inducted on the same day, blooded in the same battle. We even looked alike, except for skin color and scars.

Unimpressed with my spread, Kip laid down three sevens. Keelstone drew, cursed, discarded. Lilt followed his example. Mayson drew, stalled, fiddled with his cards. We stared at him. He sweated, looked over his cards again, finally discarded. Silkfingers drew, yawned, and laid down a four card run.

"I swear, if you pull this again..." Keelstone growled, fingering his cards.

Back around to me. Draw. Too many face cards to go down, not enough to make a run. I discarded.

"What in the hells are we doing here?" I said suddenly.

"Playing cards." Kip grunted.

"You know what I mean."

"Getting fat off the Archon I say." Keelstone glanced around the circle like he expected someone to disagree.

"We're doing nothing," I said irritably. "We play cards. We drill. I scribble a few lines in the Annals. That's it. Day after gods-damned day."

"We're under contract, Spatter," Silkfingers said quietly. "You know that as well as I do."

Lilt balanced a card on a fingertip. "The Archon's waiting. The Captain's waiting. We're all waiting." He flipped the card into the discard pile.

Kip brightened. "I hear Kitten's squad is going out tonight. We could go along, break up a few taverns with 'em."

"Captain will have your balls if we have to drag you back to Carver one more time this month." I warned.

"Ah, he's not really angry," Keelstone said. "Makes us look good, you know? Brings in the boys."

"Well, you would know, wouldn't you, Keel?" Mayson waggled his eyebrows at him. "All those sweet, soft young bodies, so eager to please-"

Keelstone flicked a card at him, underhand. It caught Mayson in the eye. Mayson retaliated with his entire hand.

"Heard talk of another free company sailing in," Lilt observed. "Might be the Archon is finally going to pull his thumb out of his ass and get on with this war."

Kip snorted. "Not bloody likely."

"He'll try to renegotiate the contract first," I said. "Our combat pay is downright ruinous."

Lilt nodded. "Leave it to the Old Man, aye?"

Silkfingers said. "One battle. One bloody battle this year is all I ask. Swear to the gods."

"Appears you're swearing to the wrong ones." Kip observed.

Keelstone and Mayson's escalating scuffle overturned the table.

"Bugger this." I growled, heading for the door. "I'm going to go find Kitten."

XXX

We were standing outside our first stop, a filthy dockside tavern whose sign had long ago weathered into illegibility. There were eight of us: Kitten's squad plus Kip and myself. We were dressed for the occasion: hard leather and thick linen, all except for Kitten. She wore far less.

She went in first, alone. The noisy room went dead silent when she stepped through the door. We stood in the twilight outside and waited for a minute or two to give things a chance to get moving. When Kitten finally screamed we grinned and piled inside.

Three taverns later, a messenger from the Captain found us. We were slumped around a stack of crates on a wharf, comparing injuries and passing around bottles of wine from the last place we kicked over.

He jogged right up to me. "Annalist, Captain wants you."

I gave him an inquisitive look from behind a bottle of surprisingly fine Dornish red.

"Its about the contract."

I made a quick detour on the way to the Captain's chambers to strip off my boiled leather and wash away a little of the blood. Its wasn't mine. It used to belong to a big blue-bearded Tyroshi sailor until I hit him in the face with a stool.

The Captain and the Lieutenant were waiting for me when I got there.

I threw them a salute. "Sirs."

"Sit down, Annalist," the Captain said. I took the only other chair in the room. "Have a look at this."

The Lieutenant handed over a neatly folded letter. I opened it, my eyebrows climbing as I scanned its contents. They were up to my hairline by the time I got to the seal and signature.

The Captain nodded when I glanced up at him. "We need your counsel. The Lieutenant and I believe that it is no longer in the Company's best interest to remain under contract to the Archon. However, we cannot simply abandon our contract without negatively affecting our future employment prospects in this region."

The Lieutenant didn't mince words. "Find us a way out. Find a loophole in the contract or some precedent in the Annals we can use."

I chewed my lip, thinking. "Are you sure about this? I think there's precedent in the Annals, but those were dire circumstances."

The Captain began to pace. "These are dire circumstances, Annalist. You know what this city is doing to the Company. We sit and wait while the Archon musters up his courage. Meanwhile the Company goes to seed. Its been too long since we've seen action and the men are restless," He rounded on me. "I would have thought you would agree, considering you spent the evening breaking up wineshops."

I winced. "Our current state aside, we can't just throw away a contract because a better one comes along."

"You're wrong. We can and we will."

It was two against one. I didn't want to go along with this, but deep down I had a suspicion that they were right. The Company was slowly falling apart. Still, to go against our word like that was a bitter cup to swallow.

I said. "Captain, I would like to formally request a council."

The Captain nodded. He looked like he'd been expecting something like that. He motioned to the Lieutenant. "Go call them."

XXX

It was close to midnight when the council convened. The Captain presided from his big carved chair at the head of the table. The Lieutenant sat at his right, I sat on his left. The others gathered round. Standardbearer Quith, First Sergeant Glimmer, and our two wizards: Flint and Chains. The Captain laid the letter and the proposal before them.

"Annalist Spatter called this council, as is his right as a brother of the Black Company," the Captain said finally. "He has the floor."

I rose to my feet. "I don't like this situation," I insisted. "I don't. But we've signed the contract and taken the gold. We're bound to fulfill the agreement."

"To hell with the contract," Flint growled. He was a big, rawboned man who looked more like a drover than a wizard. "If the Archon wanted to use us he'd have done it already. He's afraid to send us out and afraid to keep us here. Bugger him."

"If it comes to a vote, Spatter," the Lieutenant said quietly. "I think you're outnumbered."

"The point," I said stiffly. "is that we took an oath."

"To the Company, not to the bloody Archon!" Glimmer barked. Flint and Quith growled assent.

The Captain was unperturbed. "Have you looked in the Annals?"

I had. And I didn't like what I had found. "Book of Croaker. The Company was in the service of the Syndic of Beryl. They were released from that service to take on employment with the Lady of Charm following the death of the Syndic."

Grins all around. The Archon wasn't a popular employer.

I tried to talk them out of it for a while until I realized that I was just trying to convince myself. What was worth more: our honor or our survival? Sure, we were intact, but a free company that spends too long in one place can go to pieces in the next battle. Who's to say it couldn't happen to us? Better to break our word, I decided, than rot away little by little. Nothing's more important than the survival of the Company. When the Captain finally called a vote it was unanimous. The Black Company was pulling out of Tyrosh.

I sat and stared at the letter in front of me while the others planned our departure.

"Where's the messenger that brought this?" I asked the Lieutenant.

"Ship." she said. "Said we had two days to give him an answer, yes or no." She snorted. "Arrogant little prick."

I stared at the letter, my fingers tracing the rampant lion imprinted in the scarlet wax. "I guess he has a right to be, hiring us."

"You said it yourself, this isn't the first time the Company's broken their contract."

"True, but that ended with them facing down the greatest sorcerer of that age."

"Aren't you hopeful," the Lieutenant grinned. "Cheer up, I hear Westeros is lovely this time of year."