The Company Standard
From Glen Cook Wiki
The Company Standard consists of two parts: the banner, and the Lance of Passion. The Company adopts a new banner after taking up service with Soulcatcher.
The Black Company Banner
The banner is 4 feet high and 3 1/2 feet wide (properly speaking, this type of banner is a gonfalon). The original design, used before the Company's service up north, consisted of a field of scarlet with nine hanged men in black and six yellow daggers in the upper left and lower right quadrants, respectively, while the upper right quandrant featured a shattered skull and the lower left boasted a bird astride a severed head. The bird was a little ambiguous, possibly a raven or an eagle. There's no indication in the Annals of when or why the Company adopted this banner. It is not even described until the end of the series, in Soldiers Live.
The banner used after the company signs up with Soulcatcher is based on the symbol she uses in the Northern Empire. It is black and it is embroidered with an unbroken silver circle surrounding a silver human skull with elongated canine teeth and one eye socket glowing red. The skull has no lower jaw, but instead breathes flames through is teeth.
The Lance of Passion
A spear-type lance, 12 feet long from butt to point. The lance head is 18 inches long, 12 of those inches are blade. The cross-piece is four feet long and is tied 5 feet down from the point of the lance head. The Lance is not generally used as a weapon, but it does have an extremely potent sorcerous poison. It is also a key to the Shadowgates.
History
The Lance heads had been forged of metal taken from the sword of a demon king devoured by Kina during the great battle between Light and Shadow. That demon king's soul was imprisoned in the steel, fragmented amongst eight lance heads. He could not be restored while Kina slept.
The shafts of the lances, too were the object of legend. Two were supposed to have been formed from the thigh bones of Kina herself, taken after she had been tricked into endless sleep. One was supposedly the penis of the Regent of Shadow, that Kina had hacked off during the great battle. The rest were supposed to be of wood from the tree in which the goddess of brotherly love, Rhavi-Lemna, had hidden her soul shortly before the Wolves of Shadow ran her down and devoured her, soon after Man was created. Kina had witnessed the concealment and had torn up the tree and had made it into arrows and lance shafts."
- as described in Dreams of Steel (pages 296-297)
