Port of Shadows

Port of Shadows is a novel of the Black Company by Glen Cook, published by Tor in 2018. The Company is a mercenary unit that has spent centuries fighting in other people's wars and keeps a written record of everything it does.

Its soldiers are famous for not asking questions while the money lasts, and being the Lady's favoured troops has brought them attention they would rather not have. Croaker, the Company's historian and physician, carries the largest target of all, having been taken into the Lady's Tower and returned unchanged, which has earned him the interest of the court of sorcerers known as the Ten Who Were Taken. The Company is asked to seek the help of its newest member, Mischievous Rain, to break a rebel army, and Croaker's distrust only deepens when one of the Taken resembles the Lady and her sister so closely.

Cook writes the series as dark military fantasy, narrated by a man more interested in who survived and what it cost than in the great causes behind the fighting. This volume fits into the Company's long history as a self-contained episode rather than a conclusion.