The web of darkness would span all Dejagore soon. “One-Eye. Goblin. You guys have any new ideas?”
“Get religion?” Goblin suggested. “Since you won’t let us go den up?”
One-Eye mused, “You might amble over and see if Mogaba will change his mind about letting us operate his engines.” The Taglian crews were ineffective. “We might be able to distract Spinner.”
“You did take shadows into account when you spelled the entrances to the underground?” I knew. They had. That was always our biggest concern. But I had to reassure myself. You keep checking on Goblin and One-Eye.
Small groups were returning after long, dangerous journeys through the night, searching for rope that had survived.
“Yeah. For what that’s worth. You ready to go down and start starving yet?”
Bad signs followed ill omens. The situation was grim indeed if One-Eye and Goblin could spare no time to quarrel.
A sudden susurrus swept the city and the plain beyond.
A blazing diamond of light rose out of the Shadowlander camp. It spun slowly. A core of darkness centered it. From that, blackness pulsed out into the all spanning web it anchored.
Nobody was looking at the hills when the pinkish light returned. No one noticed until it flared so brilliantly that it rivalled the brightness here at hand.
It burned behind two bizarre mounted figures. It cast their hideous shadows upon the night itself. Crow shadows circled them. Two huge ravens perched upon the shoulders of the larger figure.
Nobody breathed for a while. Not even Shadowspinner, I’d bet. And I was sure he had no more idea what was happening than I did.
The pink flare faded. A cable of pink reached toward Dejagore, like a snake probing, stretching. As one end neared us the nether end broke loose. That whipped our way too fast for the eye to follow and in an instant screamed into Shadowspinner’s bright diamond. Sun brilliant flash splashed out of that sorcerous construct’s far side like suddenly flung barrels of burning oil.
Immediately the dark web overhead began to shrink back into the remnants of the diamond.
The air vibrated with the Shadowmaster’s anger. “Goblin! One-Eye! Talk to me, boys. Tell me what the hell just happened.”
Goblin couldn’t talk. One-Eye burbled, “I ain’t got the faintest fucking idea, Kid. But we’re downwind of one seriously pissed-off Shadowmaster who’s probably going to blame you and me for his ulcers.”
A tremor disturbed the night, more psychic than physical. I am magically deaf and dumb and blind, except for perceived effects, but I felt it.
One-Eye was right.
The pink light was gone. I saw no more sign of those bizarre riders. Who were they? What? How?
I didn’t get a chance to ask.
Little brown fellows carrying torches so they could see where they were running burst out of the Shadowlander camp. That could not bode well for me, my pals, or anyone else inside the wall.
“Poor Spinner,” I cracked. “You got to feel for the man.”
“Huh?” Sparkle was the only man close enough to hear.
“Don’t you hate it when some no-brain vandalizes a work of art?”
Sparkle didn’t get it. He shook his head, grabbed a javelin and threw it down at a short person with a torch.
He missed.
Around where those Shadowlanders had gained a foothold on the wall, and on the earthen approach ramps, a big racket began to develop. The Shadowmaster, piqued, had told his boys to get back to work. And don’t be so damned gentle anymore.
“Hey, Bubba-do,” I shouted at a soldier, “who’s got tonight in the pool?”
There is the Black Company for you. We’ve got a pool on what night the city will fall. I guess the winner gets to die with a smile on his ugly mug.
Goblin and One-Eye had chosen to stay close to me. The real Goblin and One-Eye. I checked every few minutes to make sure. Their attention was on the hills, not the excitement across town or any of their own schemes. Strange lights moved out there.
A band of southerners sent out earlier returned at a gallop, half their number missing. They flew as though devils worse than their boss were after them. They dared ride the way they did only because Stormshadow had been obsessive when she leveled the plain and because there was light from the city.
Fires were burning. Only a few so far, but fires.
Sparkle told me, “They’re pulling out down below.”
I leaned over and looked. Nobody tried to pick me off. Maybe they thought I was another ghost.
Sure enough, the Shadowlanders were going, leaving us all those wonderful grapnels without ropes, for us to dump on our “maybe we can use these someday” pile.
One-Eye said, “Guess we can put up our swords and go back to our tonk games now.”
Overlooking the fact that Dejagore was being invaded elsewhere, I observed, “This is the second time you’ve come out with that silliness. What moron is going to play with you? Can’t be anybody that dumb still alive.” One-Eye cheats at cards. And he cheats badly. He gets caught every time. Nobody will play with him.
“Hey, Murgen. Listen. I’ve reformed. Really. Never again will I dishonor my talent to . . . ”
Why listen? He’s said it all before, countless times. The first thing we do after we swear a recruit into the Company is warn him not to play cards with One-Eye.
A party of Shadowlanders withdrawn from my sector headed for the hills. They all had torches. It looked like the Shadowmaster himself might be driving them.
“Cletus! Longinus! You guys far enough along that you can drop a barrage on that crowd?” The brothers were repairing their engines as fast as they could. Two were ready, cocked and loaded. Not much of a barrage. One-Eye asked, “Why do that?”
“Why not? We might get lucky. And can we piss off Shadowspinner more than he already is? He’s already vowed to kill us all.”
The ballistas thumped. The shafts they hurled did not hit the Shadowmaster. Distractedly, he replied with a spear of energy that dissolved several cubic yards of wall far from any of my guys.
The racket from across town kept getting louder. Some seemed closer than the far wall.
“They’re inside,” Sparkle said.
“A lot of them,” Bucket agreed. “This could get to be a big cleanup job.” I liked that positive thinking.
I shrugged. Mogaba liked to keep the cleanups for himself and the Nar and their Taglians.
Fine with me. Mogaba can eat all the pain he can swallow.
I really wanted to take a nap. This long day just kept getting longer. Oh, well. Soon enough I would get to sleep forever.
A short while later I got word that small groups of southerners were in the streets murdering anybody they could catch.
“Sir?”
“Sleepy. What’s up, youngster?” Sleepy was a Taglian Shadar we swore into the Company just before I decided to take up this pen. He always looked like he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He also looked like he was about fourteen years old, which was possible. He was paranoid in the extreme, apparently for good reason. He was a good-looking youth. And pretty boys are fair game amongst Taglian men of all three major religious groups. The Stranglers use their more attractive sons to lure victims to their deaths.
Different land, different customs. You may not like them but you do have to live with them. Sleepy liked our ways better than his own.
“Sir,” he said, “the Nar aren’t trying to keep the southerners from heading this way. They don’t bother them at all anymore after they get through and off the wall as long as they don’t head into Mogaba’s barracks area.”
“Is that deliberate?” Bucket asked.
Someone muttered, “Now ask a stupid question.”
“What do you think?” One-Eye snapped. “This is the last straw. If that bigheaded, self-important dick shows his face around here . . . ”
“Save it, One-Eye.” This was hard to accept. But I could see Mogaba being capable of channeling the enemy our way so as to resolve questions of precedence inside the Company. His morality would allow him to picture it as a brilliant solution to several problems. “Instead of standing around bitching about it how about we do some thinking? Best way to fix Mogaba would be to shove his plan up his ass, no grease.”
While the others tried to manage that difficult exercise—thinking—I questioned Sleepy more closely. Unfortunately, he could not add much but the general routes the southerners were using to push deeper into the city.
You couldn’t blame the Shadowlanders. Most soldiers of most times jump at the chance to go where resistance is weakest.
Maybe we could use that to pull some into some sort of killing pocket.
I even got a chuckle out of my predicament. “I bet Croaker would have seen this coming a month ago, as paranoid as he was about supposed friends and allies.”
A nearby crow squawked agreement.
I should have considered the possibility. I really should have. Farfetched is not the same as impossible. I should have had something planned.
One-Eye became as serious as ever he gets. “You know what this means? If the kid is right?”
“The Company is at war with itself?”
The little guy waved that off like it was just another annoying gnat of reality. “Suppose Mogaba is giving them a golden bridge so they can get rid of us for him? They still have to get through the pilgrims to reach us.”
I didn’t need to think long to see what he meant. “That asshole. He going to make them kill Shadowlanders in self-defense. He’s going to use them up killing his enemies for him.”
“Maybe he’s a bigger snake than anybody thought,” Bucket growled. “It’s for sure he’s changed a lot since Gea-Xle.”
“This ain’t right,” I muttered, although swords would enter the fight on our side whether or not they wanted to. Other than a few small skirmishes with lost invaders during past attacks the worst that had happened to the Nyueng Bao was that their pilgrimage had gotten them trapped in the middle of somebody else’s war. From the first clash of steel they had worked hard to maintain their neutrality.
Shadowspinner has his spies in the city. He would know the Nyueng Bao had no interest in antagonizing him.
“What do you think they’ll do?” Goblin asked. “The Nyueng Bao, I mean.” His voice sounded odd. How much beer had he put away?
“How the hell would I know? Depends on how they see things. If they think Mogaba dragged them into it on purpose it might get unhealthy to belong to the Company. Mogaba could see this as a chance to squish us into a crack between a rock and a hard place. I’d better go see their Speaker and let him know what’s happening. Bucket. Make up a twenty man patrol and go looking for southerners. See if Sleepy is right. One-Eye, go with him. Spot for him and cover our guys. Sparkle, you watch things here. Send Sleepy after me if it gets too much to handle.”
Nobody argued. When things get tight the guys do become less fractious.
I descended the stairway to the street.
I played the game the way I thought the Nyueng Bao would want. Ever since childhood I have suspected you get along better if you respect people’s ways and wishes regardless of your apparent relative strengths.
That doesn’t mean you let people walk on you. It doesn’t mean you eat their pain for them. You need to demand respect for yourself, too.
Dejagore’s byways are close and fetid. Typical of a fortified city. I went to an obscure intersection where under normal circumstances I could expect to be seen by Nyueng Bao watchers. They are a cautious people. They watch all the time. I announced, “I would see the Speaker. Harm is headed his way. I would have him know what I know.”
I didn’t see anybody. I didn’t hear anybody. I expected nothing else. Someone who strolled into my territory would see and hear nothing, either, but death would be nearby.
The only sounds came from fighting several blocks away.
I waited.
Suddenly, in that instant when my attention finally wandered, Ky Dam’s son materialized. He made no more noise than a tiptoeing moth. He was a wide, short man of indeterminate age. He carried an unusually long sword but it remained sheathed across his back. He stared at me hard. I stared back. It cost me nothing. He grunted, indicated that I should follow. We walked no more than eighty yards. He indicated a doorway. “Keep smiling,” I told him. I couldn’t resist. He was always around somewhere, watching. I never saw him smile. I pushed the door inward.
Curtains hung two feet inside. Very weak light slipped through a rent. I closed the door carefully once I understood that I would be entering alone, before I parted the curtains. Wouldn’t do to let light splash into the street.
The place turned out to be about as pleasant as you can get in a city.
The Speaker sat on a mat on a dirty floor near the one candle offering light. There were about a dozen people visible, of all ages and sexes. I saw four children, all small, six adults of an age to be their parents, and one old woman of granny age who glowered like she had a special bunk in Hell reserved for me even though she’d never seen me before. I saw nobody who could pass as her husband. Maybe he was the guy outside. Then there was a woman as old as Ky Dam, a fragile flower time-diminished to little more than skin-covered sticks, though an agile intelligence still burned in her eyes. You would get nothing past this woman.
Of material things I saw little but the clothing the people wore, a few ragged blankets, a couple of clay cups and a pot maybe used for cooking. And more swords nearly as long and fine as that carried by the Speaker’s son.
In the darkness beyond the candlelight someone groaned. It was the sound of someone delirious.
“Sit,” Ky Dam invited. A second mat lay unrolled beside the candle. In the weak light the old man seemed more frail than when he visited the wall.
I sat. Though I wasn’t used to it and my tendons weren’t supple enough, I tried to cross my legs.
I waited.
Ky Dam would invite me to speak when it was time.
I tried to concentrate on the old man, not the people staring at me, nor the smell of too many folks living in too small a space, of their strange foods, nor even the odor of sickness.
A woman brought tea. How she made it I don’t know. I never saw any fire. I didn’t think about that at the moment, though, so startled was I. She was beautiful. Even in dirt and rags, incredibly beautiful. I brought the hot tea to my lips and scalded them to shock myself back to business.
I felt sorrow instantly. This one would pay dearly when the southerners took the town.
A small smile touched Ky Dam’s lips. I noticed amusement on the face of the old woman, too, and recognized there a similar beauty only externally betrayed by time. They were used to my initial reaction. Maybe it was some kind of test, bringing her out of the shadows. Almost too softly to be heard, the old man said, “She is indeed.” Louder, he added, “You are wise beyond your years, Soldier of Darkness.”
What was this Soldier of Darkness crap? Every time he addressed me he stuck me with another name.
I tried a formal head bow of acknowledgment. “Thank you for that compliment, Speaker.” I hoped he would realize that I was incapable of keeping up with the subtleties of proper manners amongst the Nyueng Bao.
“I sense in you a great anxiety held in check only by chains of will.” He sipped tea calmly but eyed me in a way that told me hastiness would be tolerated if I thought it really necessary.
I said, “Great evils stalk the night, Speaker. Unexpected monsters have slipped their leashes.”
“So I surmised when you were kind enough to permit me atop your section of wall.”
“There is a new beast loose. One I never expected to see.” In retrospect I realize we were speaking of two different things. “One I do not know how to handle.” I strove to keep my Taglian pronunciations clear. Men conversing in a tongue native to neither sorely tempt the devils of misunderstanding.
He seemed puzzled. “I do not understand you.”
I glanced around. Did all his people live like this all the time? They were packed in way tighter than we were. Of course, we could enforce our claims to space with our swords. “Do you know about the Black Company? Do you know our recent history?” Rather than await an answer I sketched our immediate past. Ky Dam was one of those rare people who listened with every ounce of his being.
I finished. The old man said, “Time has, perhaps, made of you shadows of the Soldiers of Darkness. You have been gone so long and have journeyed so far that you have strayed from your Way completely. Nor are the followers of the warrior prince Mogaba hewing any nearer the true path.”
I did not hide my thoughts well, Ky Dam and his woman found me amusing again. “But I am not one of you, Standardbearer. My knowledge has drifted far from the truth as well. Perhaps there is no real truth today because there is no one who knows it anymore.”
I didn’t have a clue what the hell he was talking about. “You have wandered long and far, Standardbearer. But you may yet come home again.” His expression darkened momentarily. “Though you wish that you had not. Where is your standard, Standardbearer?”
“I don’t know. It vanished during the big battle on the plain outside. I jammed its butt into the earth when I decided to put on my Captain’s armor in order to pretend that he had not fallen, so the troops would rally, but . . . ”
The old man raised a hand. “I think it may be very close tonight.”
I hate this obscurity crap old people and wizards like to perpetrate. I am convinced that they do it only because it gives them a feeling of power. Screw the missing standard. It was not germane, now, tonight. I said, “The Nar chieftain wants to be Captain of the Black Company. He does not approve of the ways of those of us from the far north.”
I paused but the old man had dried up. He waited. I said, “Mogaba is flawless as a warrior but he has shortcomings in some areas of leadership.”
Ky Dam then proved to be less than the totally inscrutable and eternally patient old-timer you are led to expect in these situations.
“You came to warn me that he has chosen to lessen his problems by letting southerners do his knifework, Standardbearer?”
“Huh?”
“One of my grandsons was in a position to overhear while Mogaba debated tonight’s actions with his lieutenants Ochiba, Sindawe, Ranjalpirindi and Chal Ghanda Ghan. Because Taglian conspirators were present the Nar failed to squabble in their native tongue though Mogaba showed limited facility with the Taglian.”
“Excuse me? Sir?”
“What your honor compels you to report to me, although you only harbor suspicions now, is far worse than you fear. Overruling strong objections by his Nar lieutenants, Mogaba set forth a plan for tonight which will allow southerners who reach the ramparts and do not dally there to have their ways behind the wall. Taglian legionnaires will discourage them from attacking any direction but through our quarter into yours.”
“You knew already? That what you’re saying? Before I got here you had an actual witness?”
“Thai Dei.”
A young man rose. He was an unpleasant-looking skinny little guy who held a toddler in his arms.
Ky Dam said, “He does not speak Taglian well but he understands it good enough. He overheard the plot being hatched. He overheard the arguments of those who found it dishonorable. He saw an angry Mogaba go so far as to continue during the visit of a man believed to be an instrument of the Shadowmasters.”
That hit me. It meant that, as of that moment, there existed a tacit agreement between Mogaba and Shadowspinner good until me and mine had been obliterated. “This is cruel treachery indeed, Speaker.”
Ky Dam nodded. Then he told me, “There is more, Stone Soldier. Both Ranjalpirindi and Ghanda Ghan are intimates of the Prahbrindrah Drah. Speaking with the Prince’s voice they assured Mogaba that, once the siege has been broken and your band has been eliminated, the Prince will announce his personal support of Mogaba’s captaincy of your company. In exchange Mogaba will abandon your previous Captain’s quest to become chief warlord of Taglios. With all powers necessary to prosecute the war against the Shadowlands.”
“Man, that was some job of eavesdropping.” Thai Dei almost smiled.
“And some job of treachery put together by Brother Mogaba.”
I could see why Ochiba and Sindawe would argue against it. It was a betrayal almost beyond comprehension.
Mogaba had, indeed, gone through some dark changes since Gea-Xle.
I asked, “What does he have against you people?”
“Nothing, Politically he should be indifferent to us. We have never been a factor in Taglian affairs. But we mean nothing to him in any other way, either. He is eager to spend us like found coin. If the southerners attack you after fighting his forces, then us, huge numbers of his enemies and us resource gulping undesirables will have been eliminated.”
“Once I admired this man greatly, Speaker.”
“Men change, Standardbearer. And this one more than most. He is an actor and but one wicked purpose impels all his acting.”
“Speaker?”
“This Mogaba is the center of, and the reason for, everything that Mogaba does. Mogaba will sacrifice his best friend upon an altar to himself, though probably not even a god could convince the friend that that possibility exists. Mogaba’s every wicked order draws another veil off the black blotch devouring his soul. He has changed as the most perfect pomegranate will change when the mold gets inside its skin.”
Here we go, talking old-timer sideways again.
“Standardbearer! Though I know of the black danger to my people already I am honored that you believed us worthy of a warning, however pressing your other concerns. That was an act of generosity and friendship. We do not forget those who have extended their hands.”
“Thank you. I am pleased by your response.” You’d better believe. “And if Mogaba allows you to be attacked . . . ”
“The problem is upon us already, Stone Soldier. Southerners are dying right now, only yards away. Once it became evident that we were trapped here we all learned every nuance of the ground upon which we might fight. This is not our swamp but the principles of battle remain the same. We have been prepared for this night for many weeks. It remained to be seen only who would chose to become our enemy.”
“Huh?” I could be stupid as a stone when I ran into something cold.
“You should rejoin those who look to you for leadership. Do so secure in the knowledge that you have the friendship of the Nyueng Bao.”
“An honor.”
“Or curse.” The old man chuckled.
“Does that mean your people will actually talk to mine?”
“That might be a little too much.” He chuckled again. His wife smiled, too. What a wild joker he was! The man was a laugh riot. He said, “Thai Dei. Go with this man. You may speak if spoken to, but only as my mouth. Bone Warrior. This is my grandson. He will understand you. Send him to me if you have a need to communicate. Do not be frivolous.”
“I understand.” I tried to get up, embarrassed myself by failing to get my legs untangled. One of the kids laughed. I dared glance around for a reaction from the dream woman who brought the tea, sure I was not fooling Ky Dam. A baby slept in her lap. A toddler dozed under her left arm. She was awake, watching. She looked tired, frightened, confused and determined. About like the rest of us. Whenever that moaning came from the darkness she winced and looked that way. The pain was a part of her.
I bowed myself out. The Nyueng Bao Thai Dei led me back to familiar territory.
“I don’t know,” I told Goblin when he asked about my Nyueng Bao shadow. “He don’t talk much.” I had not gotten a word out of him yet. “His all-purpose vocabulary seems to be the noncommittal grunt. Anyway, the visit wasn’t necessary. The Nyueng Bao know more about the coming shit rain than we do. The old man admits it’s all Mogaba’s fault and says we’re off the hook.”
Goblin made as though to look over his shoulder like he was trying to check his own behind.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Strap on your chastity belt. What’s happening?” I didn’t see Bucket or Sparkle.
“Not much yet. Spinner and his bunch just got to the hills.”
And all kinds of excitement broke out out there. A strong pink light cast silhouettes on the night again. Goblin said, “They look exactly like the Lifetaker and Widowmaker costumes Lady made for her and Croaker. Hey! How come you look like you got bit on the ass by a ghost?”
“Because maybe I did. They do look exactly like what you say. Only if you remember I took the Widowmaker armor off Croaker after that arrow got him. I put it on and pretended to be him. And failed because I started too late.”
“So?”
“So last week somebody stole the Widowmaker armor. Right out of my quarters while I was laying there asleep. I thought I had it hidden where nobody but me could ever find it. But somebody came in, stepped over me, got it dug out, and got out of there with the load and I never saw or heard a thing. And neither did anybody else.” And that was definitely scary.
“Is that why you were asking all those weird questions the other day?” Goblin squeaked. He could sound like a stomped mouse when he was distressed.
“Yeah.”
“How come you never said anything?”
“Because whoever took the armor had to use sorcery to get past me. I figured it was one of you guys and I wanted to find out which one so I could cut him off at the ankles before he knew it was coming.”
One-Eye came puffing up the stairs. Not bad for a guy two hundred years old. “What gives? How come the grim faces?”
Goblin filled him in.
The little black wizard grumped, “You should have told us, Murgen. We might have picked up a hot trail.”
Not likely. The only evidence I had found was one small white feather and a glob of what looked like bird shit. “It don’t matter now. I know where the armor is. Out there.” I pointed at the hills, which lay beneath what looked like a premature pink dawn. “What did you do?”
“We killed off a bunch of goddamned southerners, that’s what we did. Mogaba must be selling them tickets over there. The little suckers are thicker than lice. Anyway, we got out before we used up our luck. Them Nyueng Bao are really going bug fuck.” He gave Thai Dei the fish-eye. “Looks like they’re trying to make the Shadowlanders want to go chomp on Mogaba’s rear. Serve the asshole right, he gets ate up by his own plot. What the hell is going on out there?” He meant the pink-soaked hills.
Goblin replied, “That’s something we weren’t looking for.”
A gout of darkness reared against the pink. Human figures tumbled within it. They flared, burned like bright, brief-lived stars. Moments later an earth tremor rocked the city. I lost my footing briefly.
One-Eye observed, “For once you’re right, runt. There’s a player in the game we didn’t know about.”
A pair of crows a few yards off went into hysterics. They jumped into the darkness, kept laughing as they flapped away.
“Surprise, surprise,” I muttered. “What with all that booming and crashing and crap in those hills. Come on, guys! Tell me who. The rest even a dummy like me can figure out. So just tell me who.”
“We’re gonna work on that,” One-Eye promised. “Maybe we’d even start now if you went away and left us alone. Come on, runt.”
While him and his frog-faced buddy got to work I turned my attention to the excitement still festering inside Dejagore.
Possibly thousands of Shadowlanders had crossed the wall now. A lot of fires were burning. I asked Ky Dam’s grandson, “Will the light be trouble for your people?”
He shrugged.
This fellow was no gossip.
There was no night now. Fires burned everywhere. They burned in the Shadowlander camp, set by Mogaba’s beleaguered artillerymen. They burned in the city, set by the Shadowmaster’s soldiers. Conflagrations blazed in the hills, hinting of surprise volcanos or powers of a magnitude unseen since the Company went up against the dark lords of Lady’s empire. It was too much light for the middle of the night. “How long till dawn? Anybody know?”
“Too long,” Bucket grumbled. “You really think anybody is actually worrying about keeping time tonight?”
Way back, centuries earlier in the evening, One-Eye or Goblin or somebody expressed dawn as a goal too remote for hope. The general level of optimism remained that low.
Reports came in, none of them good. Innumerable southern soldiers were inside the city. They had orders to drive toward us, wipe us out, then continue on around inside and atop the wall, the long way, till they got back where they had started. But the Nyueng Bao were not cooperating. Neither were my guys. So the invaders were blundering around doing any damage they could till somebody killed them.
Against the Jaicuri, cowering in their homes hoping to be overlooked despite all their experience with the Shadowmasters, the southerners enjoyed some success.
You could not fault them for not going all out after us. They did not want to get killed either. And Mogaba should not have been surprised when some of the villains he let through turned on him.
Our guys held their positions. The doppelgangers and illusions drove the southerners crazy. They never knew which threat was real. But the big reason our side held up well was that there was no choice. We had nowhere to run.
Shadowspinner was no help to his people. He was out in those hills intent on undoing that mystery personally. Clearly he regretted having made the choice.
Once again a band of riders came flying back, silhouetted by pink light. The Shadowmaster did not appear to be with them. “Goblin! One-Eye! Where the hell are you now, you little shits? Has something happened to Shadowspinner?”
Goblin materialized, his breath heavy with the smell of beer. He and One-Eye had a few gallons stashed somewhere nearby, then. He dashed my hopes. “The Shadowmaster is alive, Murgen. But maybe he’s messed his drawers.” He giggled.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered. The little toad had gotten deep into the home brew. If One-Eye had, too, I might have one truly interesting rest of the night. It was possible those two would forget everything and pick up the feud they have had going for a hundred years. Last time they got drunk and went after each other they tore up a whole city block in Taglios.
All the while the Speaker’s grandson hung back in the shadows and watched like one of those goddamned crows. There were a lot more of those around now.
Old Wheezer came puffing up from the street. He had to take a break before he got to the top. He hacked and coughed and spat blood. He was from the same part of the world as One-Eye. They have nothing else in common except a taste for beer. Wheezer had been to the barrel a few times, too. He came on up top as I surveyed the city and tried to guess how bad things really were. We were getting very little pressure right then.
Wheezer hacked and wheezed and spat. A new generation of pink lights erupted at the feet of the hills. They cast two shadows against the sky. There was no doubt they were shadows of Widowmaker and Lifetaker, the dread alter egos Lady created for herself and Croaker so they could scare shit out of Shadowlanders.
“This isn’t possible,” I told my tame wizards. One-Eye was back. He used one hand to support Wheezer, who seemed to be suffering an asthma attack along with the effects of his tuberculosis. In his other hand One-Eye clutched something polelike wrapped in rags. I continued, “That can’t be Croaker and Lady because I saw them go down with my own eyes.”
A handful of horsemen drifted toward town. Among them was a blob of darkness that had to be Shadowspinner. He was staying busy. Pink fireflies swarmed around him. He had trouble fending them off.
As though they realized their boss would be in a foul temper when he got back, the southerners’ attack suddenly picked up.
“I’m not sure,” Goblin mused. He sounded like he had been scared sober. “I can’t get any sense of the one in the Lifetaker armor. There’s a shitload of power there, though.”
“Lady had no power left,” I reminded him.
“The other one does feel like Croaker.”
Couldn’t be.
Wheezer finally gasped, “Mogaba . . . ”
Several men spat at mention of the name. Everybody had an opinion about our fearless war chief. Listening to them you might have concluded that Mogaba was the most lusted after man in town.
A writhing pink thread reached for Shadowspinner’s party. The Shadowmaster batted it away from himself but it slew half his party. Parts of bodies flew in all directions.
“Shee-it!” somebody said, pretty much capturing the popular feeling.
Wheezer barked, “Mogaba wants to know if we can free up a few hundred men to counterattack the enemy who are inside the city.”
“How stupid does that bastard think we are?” Sparkle grumbled.
Goblin asked, “Don’t that camel’s wife know we’re on to him?”
“Why should he think we might suspect him? He’s got such a tall opinion of his own brain . . . ”
“I think it’s funny,” Bucket crowed. “He tried to screw us and only ended up with his own ass in a sling. Even better, maybe the only way he can pry it out is to have us do it for him.”
I asked Goblin, “What’s One-Eye up to?” One-Eye looked like he was praying over one of the ballistas with Loftus. Rags lay scattered around their feet. A gruesome black spear lay in the engine’s trough.
“I don’t know.”
I checked the nearest gate. The Nar there could see us. Mogaba would know I was lying if I claimed we were too beat up to send help. I asked, “Anybody think of a reason we should help Mogaba?” To hold my sector, besides the Old Crew itself, I had six hundred Taglian survivors from Lady’s division and an uncertain and changeable number of liberated slaves, former prisoners of war and ambitious Jaicuri.
Everyone replied in the negative. Nobody wanted to help Mogaba. As I approached the engines I asked, “How about if we do it just to save our own butts? If we let Mogaba get stomped we could end up facing the rest of the Shadowlander mob by ourselves.” I glanced at the gate. “And those people over there can see everything we do.”
Goblin looked, too. He shook his head to lessen the beer buzz. “We’ll have to think about that.”
“What are you doing, One-Eye?” I was beside him now.
One-Eye indicated the spear proudly. “Little something I’ve been working on in my spare time.”
“It’s ugly enough.” Nice to know he could do something useful without being told.
He had begun with a black wooden pole and had worked it for a lot of hours. It was covered with incredibly ugly miniature scenes along with writing in an unfamiliar alphabet. Its head was as black as its shaft, darkened iron finely traced with silver runes. There was some color on the shaft, too, although so fine as to be almost invisible. “Very nice.”
“Nice? Sigh. You heathen.” He pointed. Loftus looked. So did I.
Shadowspinner’s party, sadly depleted, surrounded by swarms of pink sparkles and mocking crows, was getting close.
One-Eye snickered. “This here is my Shadowmaster blaster, bastar’!” He howled. He must have put away a lot of that beer. “Nothing he couldn’t stop on a lazy afternoon, but this ain’t no lazy afternoon, is it? Loftus shoots, this stick won’t be in the air five seconds. That’s all the time he’ll have to figure out what’s coming and what to do to unravel the spells that are there to keep him from turning it. And look how busy that asshole is already. Loftus, my man, get ready to carve you a big victory notch on this thing.”
As anybody with any sense does, Loftus ignored One-Eye. He laid his weapon with an artist’s care.
One-Eye babbled, “Most of the spells are designed to penetrate his personal protection, counting on him not having time to do anything actively. Because I wanted to concentrate on piercing one point in a passive . . . ”
I shut him out. “Goblin. Any chance this will work? The runt’s not exactly a heavyweight.”
“It’s workable, tactically. If he really worked that hard on it. Say One-Eye is an order of magnitude weaker than Shadowspinner. That really only means that it takes him ten times as long to get the same work done.”
“An order of magnitude?” So that was One-Eye’s problem.
“More like two orders really, probably.”
He lost me. And I didn’t have time to wring an explanation out of him.
Loftus was satisfied he was leading his target perfectly, he had the range, whatever. “Time,” he said.
“Loose,” I suggested. The ballista offered its distinctive thump. Silence spread along the wall. The black shaft darted across the night. The occasional spark floated behind it. One-Eye said five seconds of flight. The truth was more like four but they took forever.
There was ample firelight to illuminate the Shadowmaster. Shortly he would disappear behind one of the enfilading towers. He stared back at the hills as he rode. Those bizarre riders out there were on the plain now, daring someone, anyone, to answer their challenge.
I gasped.
Widowmaker carried the Lance. The standard itself was not apparent but that was the lance on which it had ridden from the day the Black Company left Khatovar. Every single Annalist has kept close track although the reason for doing so has been forgotten. I focused on Shadowspinner in time to see One-Eye’s treasure arrive.
Later Goblin told me Spinner sensed the threat as the missile hit the peak of its arc. Whatever he did then, it was the right thing. Or he was lucky. Or a higher power decreed that this was not his night to die.
The spear changed course by scant inches. Instead of striking Shadowspinner it hit his mount’s shoulder. And ripped through the beast as though it was no more substantial than air. The wound glowed red, flickered. The red spread. Shadowspinner bellowed in rage as the animal threw him. He fell in a heap, lay there twitching long enough for One-Eye to start nagging Loftus about hitting him with a barrage of regular shafts, then he scuttled off like a crab to escape the stallion’s pounding hooves.
I recognized that animal then. It was one of those magically bred monster horses Lady brought south with the Company, out of her old empire. They vanished during the battle.
The horse screamed and screamed.
A normal animal would have perished in moments.
I stared at those two riders out there. They walked toward the city slowly, offering their challenge. Now I could see that they, too, were mounted on Lady’s stallions. I told Goblin, “But I saw them killed.”
One-Eye grumbled, “We got to check this boy’s eyes.”
Goblin said, “I told you before, that’s not Lady. You look real close, you can see differences in the armor.”
The troops were seeing that. There was a stir among the Taglians.
“And you don’t know about the other one? What’re they talking about over there?”
“No. It could be the Old Man.”
Sparkle went to see why the Taglians were excited.
Shadowspinner’s horse collapsed but continued screaming and kicking. Wisps of greenish steam rose from its wound. That continued to grow. The beast’s death was a long time coming.
The sorcerer would have died more slowly and gruesomely still had One-Eye’s shaft struck home.
Sparkle came to say, “They’re all excited because that armor is an exact match for some goddess named Kina in her battle avatar. That’s the way she’s always portrayed in paintings about her war with the demons.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, only that Kina was some sort of death goddess in these parts.
I wondered when the Shadowmaster would snipe back at One-Eye.
“He won’t,” Goblin assured me. “The moment he gave it attention enough to be effective those two out there would cut his legs off.”
I watched Shadowspinner limp out of sight.
His embarrassment spurred his soldiers to increase their efforts again. Somebody would pay for his indignity in pain. Understandably they preferred that we pick up that tab.
Some of them seemed to recognize the Lifetaker armor, too. I heard the name Kina shouted more than once below the wall.
“Thai Dei. Time for a message to your grandfather. I want to bring part of my force through his area so I can help drive the southerners out of the city.”
The Nyueng Bao stepped out of the shadows just long enough to listen. He stared at those riders, troubled. Then he grunted, descended to the street and trotted off into the night.
“Listen up, people. We’re going to go save our fearless dick-head leader. Bucket . . . ”
I stepped into a dark alleyway, planning to set up shop behind a southern company with Goblin to do his hoodoo on them. And it was like I stepped off the edge of the world, into an abyss without bottom. Like some great psychic flyswatter slapped me down into the void. Goblin barked something in the instant it took to go but I did not understand him.
I had that moment to feel seasick, to be bewildered, to wonder who had ambushed me with what sorcery, and why it seemed to twist me like a wet rag being wrung out.
Had Mogaba taken his treachery to another level?
Something had hold of me. It pulled so virulently there was no resisting it. I lost track of who I was and where. I knew only that I was asleep and did not want to wake up.
“Murgen!” a far voice called. The pull strengthened. “Murgen, come on! Come home! Fight it, Kid! Fight it!” I fought.
But it was that voice I fought. It wanted me to come somewhere that much of me did not want to go. Pain awaited me there.
The pull redoubled as the force dragged at me with inescapable power.
“That did it!” somebody shouted. “We have him back now.”
I knew that voice . . .
It was like coming out of a coma except that I remembered where I had been in every detail. Dejagore. Every little ache, every horror, every fear. But already the sharp edges were going dull. The ties were slipping. I was here now.
Here? Which when and where was here? I tried opening my eyes. My lips would not respond. I tried to move. My limbs refused to be troubled.
“He’s all here.”
“Pull that curtain.” I heard heavy cloth being moved. “Will it keep getting harder? I thought we were supposed to be over the worst. That he couldn’t recede so far that we would have this much trouble bringing him home.”
Oh! That voice belonged to Croaker. The Old Man. Only the Old Man is dead, because I saw him killed. Or did I? Didn’t I just leave Widowmaker, alive long past his time?
“Well, he didn’t listen. But it can’t do anything but get better now. We’re around the corner. Over the hump. Unless he wants to stay lost.”
I got an eye open.
I was in a dark place. I’d never seen it before but it had to be in the Palace at Trogo Taglios. Home. Never have I seen that kind of stone used anywhere else. And there was nothing astonishing about not being able to recognize parts of the Palace. The princes of Taglios all add on a bit during their reigns. Supposedly only the old royal wizard Smoke ever knew his way around the whole place. And Smoke isn’t with us anymore. I don’t know what happened to him afterward but several years ago he got torn up when a supernatural creature he disagreed with tried to eat him. Handy, because about then was when we discovered that he had been seduced by Longshadow and had gone over to the Shadowmasters.
I was amazed at me. Although I had a headache like the mother of all hangovers my mind, suddenly, was crystal clear.
“He’s got an eye open, chief.”
“Can you hear me, Murgen?” I tried my tongue, blurted fluent gibberish. “You had another one of your spells. We’ve been trying to bring you back for two days.” Croaker sounded put out. Like I was inconveniencing him on purpose? “All right. You know the drill. Let’s get him up and walking.”
I remembered doing this part several times before. I was less confused now, more able to grasp quickly the distinction between past and present.
They got my feet under me. Goblin got under my right armpit. Croaker wrapped his arm around me from the left, lifted. I said, “I remember what to do.”
They did not understand. Goblin asked, “You got a grip on when you are, Murgen? Ain’t going to drift off into the past on us again?”
I nodded. I could communicate that way. Maybe I could use the deaf and dumb speech.
“Dejagore again?” Croaker asked.
I had the connections all made inside. Even plenty I didn’t want made. I tried talking again. “Same night. Again. Later on.”
“Set him down. He’ll be all right now,” Croaker said. “Murgen. You get any clues this time? Anything we can latch onto to break you out of this cycle? I need you here. I need you full time.”
“Not one damned thing.” I paused to catch my breath. I was adapting faster this time. “I don’t even know when it hit me. I was just there, suddenly, like a poltergeist or something, with no thoughts of any future at all. Then after a while I was just Murgen with no awareness, no anomalies like I get now.”
“Anomalies?”
Startled, I turned. One-Eye had materialized from somewhere. I saw that curtain still stirring. It closed off half the room.
“Huh?”
“What do you mean by anomalies?”
When I concentrated I really didn’t know what I meant. I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s gotten away from me. When am I?”
Croaker and the wizards dealt a hand of significant looks between them. Croaker asked, “Do you remember the Grove of Doom?”
“Sure. I’m still shivering.” A chill did touch me. Then I recalled the key thing. I had no memories of having visited this room before but I should have had them. Because I was still in my yesterdays. I just wasn’t as far away as I had been at Dejagore, which was years ago.
Then I tried to remember the future.
I remembered too much. I whimpered.
“Do we need to get him up again?” Goblin asked.
I shook my head. “I’m solid. Let’s think. How long between this spell and the last one? How long since we got back from the grove?”
Croaker said, “You got back three days ago. I told you to bring your prisoners to the Palace. You tried. You lost the shadowweaver along the way, in circumstances so questionable I issued orders for all Company people to stay especially alert.”
“He was old. He just died of fright,” One-Eye said. “Ain’t nothing mysterious about that.”
My headache was not improving. I had vague recollections of those events but they were not as clear as my memories of other events immediately before previous seizures. “I don’t recall much of it.”
“The red-hand Deceiver got here all right. We meant to start questioning him that night. But you went back to your apartment, supposedly just walked through the doorway and collapsed. Your mother-in-law, uncle, wife and brother-in-law all agree. Probably the first, last and only time that will happen.”
“Probably. The old lady is like One-Eye. She disagrees just to be disagreeable.”
“Hey! Kid . . . ”
“Quiet,” Croaker told him. “So you just fell down and went rigid. Your wife got hysterical. Your brother-in-law came for me. We took you out of there to ease the stress on your family.”
Ease the stress? Those people never heard of the word. Besides, Sarie was the only one of them I considered family.
Goblin said, “Open your mouth, Murgen.” He turned my face to the best light and stared down my throat. “No damage in here.”
I knew what they thought. Epilepsy. I had considered that myself. I had asked about it of anyone who would listen. But no epileptic I ever heard of got bounced into the past from a seizure. Into a past that was never exactly like the past I had lived already.
“I told you it isn’t a disease,” Croaker growled. “When you find the answer it will be right there inside your own field and you’ll probably feel stupid about not having seen it earlier.”
“If there’s anything to be found we’ll find it,” One-Eye promised. Which left me wondering what he had up his sleeve. Then I knew that I had to know already because they were going to tell me pretty soon. But I could not recall that future clearly enough to grasp it.
Sometimes it was spooky being me.
“Was that headless character there again?” Croaker asked.
After figuring out what he meant I said, “Yes. But he was faceless, boss. Not headless. He had a head.”
“Might represent the source of the problem,” One-Eye suggested. “You ever remember any features, anything at all, tell somebody. Or get it written down right away.”
Croaker told me, “I don’t want this to happen to anybody else. Can you imagine managing a campaign when your people can fade out on you any minute, for days at a time?”
I felt confident that that would not happen. But I didn’t say so because they would press me on it and I did not feel like being poked and prodded. “I need something for a headache. Please. A hangover kind of headache.”
“Did you have this headache the other times?” Croaker demanded. “You never mentioned it.”
“It was there but not this bad. Just a minor discomfort. A four-beer hangover kind of headache, if it was beer brewed by Willow Swan and Cordy Mather. That mean anything?”
Croaker smiled at the reference to the world’s second worst beer. “Between me and Goblin we watched you almost every minute since you got back from the Grove of Doom. It seemed likely that this would keep happening. I didn’t want us to miss anything.”
And that keyed a serious question. Since while I am in this time I can remember the future occasionally how come I never remember the trips to the past that I am going to make?
And how could they watch me that closely? I never noticed them. And I try to stay alert. You never know when a Deceiver might pop out of a shadow swinging his strangling scarf.
“So what did you get?”
“We didn’t see a thing.”
“I am on the job now, though,” One-Eye said, preening.
“Now that really inspires me with confidence.”
“Everybody’s got to be a wiseass anymore,” One-Eye complained. “I remember when young people respected their elders.”
“That was in the days when they didn’t get a chance to know the old folks very well.”
“I have work to do,” Croaker said. “One-Eye, stick with Murgen when you can. Keep talking about Dejagore and what’s been happening to him. There’ll be clues there somewhere. Maybe we don’t recognize them yet. If we keep at it something will pop.” He left before I could say anything.
Something had passed between Croaker and One-Eye about and beyond me. And maybe we all had cause to be concerned. This time I could not remember much about where I was. Things seemed to be new, first time, yet some shaking, terrified little creature way back in the night warrens of my mind insisted I was still reliving yesterdays and the worst of those were yet to come.
One-Eye said, “I think we’ll just take you home now, Kid. Your wife will have the cure for what ails you.”
She might. She was a miracle. Even One-Eye, who seems incapable of offering respect to anyone, treated her and spoke to and of her, as though he considered her an honored lady.
She is, of course. But it is nice to have others confirm that.
“Now that’s the first thing you’ve said that I wanted to hear. Lead on, brother.” I didn’t know the way.
I cast a backward glance at Smoke and the covered Deceiver. What in the hell?
My in-laws make very little effort to improve anyone’s opinion of Nyueng Bao. Mother Gota, in particular, is a major pain in the ass. The old battleaxe barely tolerates even me and that only because the alternative is to lose her daughter entirely. She is very nasty toward the Old Man.
Still, Sarie and I rated enough for Croaker to insist we swap quarters when her folks showed up last month, in town slumming from their glamorous swamps. But they won’t make it back to paradise if Mother Gota doesn’t control her lip in the street.
The Old Man never reacts to her constant complaints. He told me, “I’ve had thirty years of Goblin and One-Eye. One crabby old woman hurting from gout and arthritis is nothing. You did say she’s only here for a few weeks, didn’t you?”
Right. I did say that. I wondered how those words would taste with soy sauce. Or maybe a lot of curry.
Now that Lady is in the south most of the time, emptying her cornucopia of rage onto the Shadowlands, Croaker has no need for a large apartment. Our old space was little more than a monk’s cell. There is just room enough for him, Lady when she visits, and a cradle that was given to Lady by a man named Ram who later died trying to protect her and her baby from Narayan Singh. Ram made that cradle himself. Most likely he died because, like almost every man who spends much time around Lady, he fell for the wrong woman.
Croaker gave me his apartment, all right, but it came with limitations. I could not turn it into the new home of the Nyueng Bao. Sahra and Thai Dei belonged. Mother Gota and Uncle Doj were welcome for visits. And not one freeloading cousin or nephew more.
People who accuse the Captain of using his position to feather his nest ought to take a close look at the nest. The Liberator, Mr. By Golly Military Despot of all the Taglians and their many conquests and dependencies, lives just the way he did back when he was only the Company physician and Annalist.
Also, he moved me to provide me adequate work space. He sets great store by these Annals.
My books are not coming out so good. I don’t always get stuff down the best way. In his time, when he was on the mark, Croaker was really good. I can’t help comparing my stuff to his. When he tried to be Captain and Annalist at the same time his work suffered. And Lady’s writing strikes me as too direct, too curt, and sometimes mildly self-indulgent. Neither was honest all the time and neither considered trying to be consistent with the other, with their predecessors, or even with their own earlier selves. If you read either one closely and you spot some of their slips, neither will admit any screwup. If Croaker says that it is eight hundred miles from Taglios to Shadowcatch and Lady calls it four hundred, who is correct? Both say they are. Lady says the discrepancy is because they grew up in different places and times where different weights and measures were in use.
What about character? They for sure see with different eyes there. You will never catch Croaker portraying a Willow Swan who is not bitching about something. Lady makes Swan energetic and rattle-mouthed and a lot more mellow. And the difference could be that both Croaker and Lady know Swan’s interest in Lady is not brotherly.
And consider how they saw Smoke. You wouldn’t think they they were writing about the same animal, they looked at that traitor so differently. Then there is Mogaba. And Blade. Both blackhearted traitors, too. There is nothing in Croaker’s Annals because he was no longer writing when Blade deserted but in daily life, constantly, he shows you that he hates Blade with a blue-assed passion, on no rational basis. Meantime, he seems almost willing to forgive Mogaba. Lady sees those two the other way around. She would broil Mogaba right in the same pot with Narayan and probably let Blade go. Blade was another case like Ram and Swan. I guess you don’t need to agree on everything to be lovers. They wrote differently, too. Croaker mostly kept his Annals as he went along, then went back later to fill in after he heard from other sources. He tended to fictionalize his secondary viewpoints, too, so his Annals are not always absolutely straightforward history.
Lady wrote her entire book after the fact, from memory, while she was laid up waiting to have her baby. Her alternate viewpoint material is mainly secondhand hearsay. I am replacing her more dubious stuff with material I consider more accurate while I am in the process of putting all the confused stuff into a uniform format.
Lady is not always pleased with my efforts, he understated.
My major fault is getting trapped in elaborate digressions. I have trouble leaving things out. I spent some time with the official historians at Taglios’s royal library and those guys assured me that the real keys to history are the details. Like the entire course of history can veer sharply because one man gets dinged by a random arrow during a minor skirmish.
My writing room is fifteen feet by twenty-two. That gives me space for all my references, for copies of the old Annals, and for a large trestle table where I work on several projects at once. And there is an acre of floor space left for Thai Dei and Uncle Doj.
While I write and study and revise he and Thai Dei clack away with wooden practice swords or squeal and kick and bounce off the walls. Whenever one of them lands in my space I toss him back. They are amazingly good at what they do—they ought to be with all that practice—but I think they are more likely to hurt each other than any seriously large person, like our Old Crew guys.
I like this job. It beats hell out of being standardbearer though I am stuck with that, too, still. The standardbearer is always the first guy into a scrape and he always has one hand tied up keeping a bigass pole from falling over.
I worry about not catching details the way Croaker did. And I envy him his naturally sardonic tone. He claims he did good only because he had the time. In those days the Black Company was just a raggedyass gang sneaking around the edge of things and there wasn’t much going on. Nowadays we are in the deep shit all the time. I don’t like that. Neither does the Captain.
I cannot imagine a man less pleased about having the power that has fallen into his lap, mostly by default. He keeps it and uses it only because he doesn’t believe anyone else will take the Company where he is convinced that it has to go.
I managed to get along for several hours without falling down a well into the past. I wasn’t feeling badly. Sarie was in an excellent mood despite all her mother could do to ruin our day. I was lost in my work, as comfortable with existence as ever I get.
Somebody came to the door.
Sarie showed the Captain into the apartment. Uncle Doj and Thai Dei continued clacking away. Croaker watched for a minute. “Unusual,” he said. He did not sound impressed.
“It’s not military,” I told him. “It’s fencing for loners. Nyueng Bao are big on lone-wolf heroes.” Not so the Old Man. His belief that you need brothers to guard your back amounts to a religious conviction.
Nyueng Bao fencing technique consists of brief but intense flurries of attack and defense separated by inactive periods during which the fighters freeze in odd stances, shifting almost imperceptibly as they try to anticipate one another.
Uncle Doj is very good.
“I’ll grant you, they’re graceful, Murgen. Almost like hutsch dancers.”
By marrying into Sarie’s clan I bought into Nyueng Bao fighting styles. No choice, really. Uncle Doj insisted. I am not terribly interested but I go along to keep the peace. And it is good exercise. “It’s all stylized, Captain. Every stance and stroke has its name.” Which I consider a weakness. Any fighter that set in his ways ought to be easy meat for an innovator.
On the other hand, I did see Uncle Doj deal with real enemies at Dejagore.
I changed languages. “Uncle, will you permit my Captain to meet Ash Wand?” They had taken the measure of one another long enough.
Ash Wand is Uncle Doj’s sword. He calls it his soul. He treats it better than he would any mistress.
Uncle Doj disengaged from Thai Dei, bowed slightly, departed. In moments he was back with a monster sword. It was three feet long. He drew it carefully, presented it to Croaker lying along his left forearm, where the steel would not contact moist or oily skin. He bowed slightly as he did so.
He wanted us to believe he spoke no Taglian, A vain pretense. I knew him back when he was fluent.
Croaker knew something about Nyueng Bao customs. He accepted Ash Wand with proper care and courtesy, as though deeply honored.
Uncle Doj ate that up.
Croaker grasped the two-hand hilt clumsily. On purpose, I suspect. Uncle Doj darted in to demonstrate the proper grip, the way he does with me during every training session. That old boy is spry. He has ten years on Croaker but moves more easily than I do. And he possesses remarkable patience.
“Fine balance,” the Captain said in Taglian. It would not surprise me to learn that he had picked up Nyueng Bao, though. He has an easy way with languages. “But this had better be superior steel.” Because the blade was thin and narrow.
I told him, “He says it’s four hundred years old and will cut plate armor. I guarantee it cuts people just fine. I saw him use it more than once.”
“During the siege.” Croaker studied the blade near the sword’s hilt. “Yes.”
“Hallmark of Dinh Luc Doc.”
Eyes suddenly narrow, usually stolid expression shoved aside by surprise, Uncle Doj reclaimed his lover quickly. That Croaker might know something about Nyueng Bao swordsmiths apparently troubled him. Croaker might not be nearly as stupid as foreigners were supposed to be.
Uncle Doj harvested one of his feeble crops of hair, drew it across Ash Wand’s edge with predictable results. Croaker observed, “A man could get cut and never know it.”
“It happens,” I told him. “You wanted something?” Sarie brought tea. The Old Man accepted even though he doesn’t like tea. He watched me watch her, amused. Whenever Sahra is in a room I have trouble paying attention to anything else. She gets more beautiful every time I see her. I cannot believe my luck. I keep being scared that I will wake up. Cold shivers.
“You have a definite prize there, Murgen.” Croaker had told me so before. He approved of Sarie. It was her family that troubled him. “How come you married the whole kaboodle?” For that he shifted to Forsberger. None of the others spoke that northern tongue.
“You had to be there.” Which is really all you can say about Dejagore. The Nyueng Bao and Old Crew became alloyed by the living nightmare.
Mother Gota materialized. All four feet ten inches of bile. She glared at the Captain. “Aha! The great man himself!” Her Taglian is an abomination but she refuses to believe that. Those who fail to understand her do so on purpose, to mock her.
She circled Croaker, walking her bowlegged walk. Nearly as wide as she is tall, without being really fat, ugly, waddling that waddle, she looked like a miniature troll. And her own people call her The Troll behind her back. And she has the personality. She could test the patience of a stone.
Thai Dei and Sahra were very late children. I pray my wife will not come to resemble her mother later, in character or physically. Like her grandmother would be fine, though.
Cold in here.
“Why so hard you push my Sahra’s man, ho, Mr. So High and Mighty Liberator?” She hawked and spat to one side, the meaning of that no different to Nyueng Bao than anyone else. She rattled faster and faster. The faster she yakked the faster she waddled. “You think maybe he slave be? Warrior not? No time for grandmother to make of me, him always away to do for you?” She hawked and blank spat again.
She was a grandmother all right. But none were mine and none were alive anymore. I didn’t remind her. No need attracting her attention.
An hour earlier she had climbed all over me because I was a no good bonehead lackwit layabout who wasted all his time reading and writing. Hardly the sort of thing a grown man does with his time.
Nothing ever satisfies Mother Gota. Croaker says that is because she hurts all the time. He pretended he could not fathom her broken Taglian. “Yes, it really is lovely weather. For this time of year. The agricultural specialists tell me we will make two crops this year. Do you think you’ll be able to double harvest your rice?”
Hawk and spit, then a lapse into ferocious Nyueng Bao liberally spiced with imaginative epithets, not all of them native to her birth tongue. Mother Gota hates being humored or ignored more than she hates everything else.
Somebody pounded on my door. Sarie was busy doing something somewhere that kept her from being close enough to her mother to become embarrassed. I went. I found One-Eye stinking up the hallway. The little wizard asked, “How you doing, Kid? Here.” He shoved a smelly, ragged, grubby bundle of papers into my hands. “The Old Man here ?”
“What kind of sorcerer are you if you don’t know the answer to that?”
“A lazy sorcerer.”
I stepped aside. “What’s this mess?” I lifted the bundle.
“Them papers you been after me about. My notes and Annals.” He ambled over to the Captain.
I stared down at the mess in my hands. Some of the papers were moldy. Some were waterstained. That was One-Eye. Four years late. I hoped the little rat did not hang around. He would shed lice and fleas. He takes a bath only if he gets drunk and falls in a canal. And that damned hat . . . I am going to burn it someday.
One-Eye whispered to the Captain. The Captain whispered back. Mother Gota tried to eavesdrop. They changed to a language she did not know. She sucked in a bushel of air and went to work.
One-Eye stopped talking and stared at her. This was their first encounter, close up and personal.
He grinned.
She did not faze him. He was two hundred years old. He had had obnoxious down to a fine art generations before Mother Gota was born. He gave her a thumbs up, sidled over to me grinning like a kid who had stubbed his toe on the pot at the end of the rainbow. In Taglian he asked, “Want to make a formal introduction here, Kid? I love her! She’s great! Everything I’ve ever heard. She’s perfect. Give us a kiss here, lover.”
Maybe it was because Mother Gota was the only woman in Taglios shorter than him.
That was the only time I ever saw my mother-in-law at a loss for words.
Thai Dei and Uncle Doj seemed taken aback, too. One-Eye stalked Mother Gota around the room. Finally, she fled.
“Perfect!” One-Eye crowed. “She’s absolutely perfect! The woman of my dreams. Are you ready, Captain?”
Was he high on something?
“Yeah.” Croaker separated himself from his barely tasted tea. “Murgen, I want you to come with us. It’s time to teach you some new tricks.”
I started to shake my head. I don’t know why, Sarie slipped her arm around me. She was back now, avoiding her mother by being where I was. She felt my reluctance, squeezed my arm. She looked up at me with those gorgeous almond eyes, asking why I was troubled.
“I don’t know.” I figured we were going to interrogate the red-hand Deceiver. That was not work I would enjoy.
Uncle Doj astonished me by asking, “May I accompany you, husband of my niece?”
“Why?” I blurted.
“I wish to inform my curiosity about what it is you people do.” He spoke to me slowly, as though to an idiot. I do suffer from a severe birth defect, by his thinking. I was not born Nyueng Bao.
At least he does not call me Bone Warrior and Stone Soldier anymore.
I never did figure that out.
I translated for the Old Man. He didn’t bat an eye. “Sure, Murgen. Why not? But let’s get going before we all die of old age.”
What the hell? This was the guy who was sure the Nyueng Bao were up to no good.
I looked at the mass of paper One-Eye passed off on me. It smelled of mildew. I would try to make something of it later. If anything could be made of it. Knowing One-Eye it could well be written in a language he no longer remembered.
One-Eye’s Annals were as terrible as I expected. And then some. Water, mold, vermin and criminal neglect had left most of his recollections irretrievable. One recent memoir, though, did survive except for a page in the middle which was just plain missing. It will serve to illustrate what One-Eye considers to be an adequate chronicle.
He made up the spellings of most of the place names. I corrected to standard where I could, from the maps, figure out where he had been.
In the fall of our third year in Taglios the Captain decided to send the Khusavir Regiment to Prehbehlbed, where the Prahbrindrah Drah was campaigning against a bevy of minor Shadowlander princes. Me and several Company comrades were told to go along to give the new regiment backbone. The traitor Blade was in the region.
The regiment proceeded through Ranji and Ghoja, Jaicur and Cantile, then Bhakur, Danjil and other recently captured towns until, after two months, we overtook the Prince at Prai-phurbed. There half the regiment split off to escort prisoners of war and booty back to the north. The rest of us went west to Asharan, where Blade caught us by surprise and we had to barricade the gates and throw a lot of the natives off the wall because they might be spies. With my talent we were able to hold out even though the green troops were terrified.
In Asharan we found a large store of wine and whiled away the hours of the siege.
After a few weeks Blade’s men began to desert because of the cold and hunger and he decided to go away.
It was a very cold winter. We suffered a great deal and often had to threaten the natives to get enough food and firewood. The Prince kept us moving, mostly far from the heavy fighting, because the regiment was not experienced. In Meldermhai three men and I got drunk and missed marching when the regiment moved out. We had to travel almost a hundred miles counting only upon ourselves in order to catch up. Once we took four horses from a local lord after we stayed over the night in his manor. We took his brandy, too. The noble complained to the Prince and we had to give the horses back.
We spent a week at Forngaw, then the Prince ordered us south to High Nangel, where we were supposed to join the Fourth Horse in trying to drive Blade’s bandits into the Ruderal canyon, but when we got there we found only one old woman in the whole territory and nothing to eat but rotting cabbages, most of which the peasants had buried in the earth before they fled.
Then we went up to Silure by way of Balichore and in the forest there we found a tavern almost like those in the north. While we were drunk an enemy witch sent an attack of poisonous toads against us.
Next day we had to walk several miles through swamps and melting snow and cold mud in a low place where warm water runs out of the earth and keeps everything from freezing. After a few leagues we came to the fortress of Tracil, where a regiment recruited from former Shadowlander soldiers were besieging their Tracili cousins. They had been there a long time so it was difficult to find provisions anywhere nearby, even when we offered to pay.
I worked three days in the field hospital there, where, because of the cold, they treated many cases of frostbite. The cold killed more soldiers than did the enemy.
From Tracil we marched up to Melopil with the Prince’s own guards and laid siege to the local king’s fortress, which stands on an island in the middle of a lake. The lake was frozen. It was very cold and the ice was very thick and every time we tried to go forward against the enemy their missiles came bouncing over the ice.
Shadowlanders were slaughtered with great vigor along with our men by engines atop the walls until the garrison inside got the gates closed. Then the Howler came up from Shadowcatch on his flying carpet and the magicks flew around like lightning in a thunderstorm and we had to run away. Many were captured by the enemy.
After two weeks passed orders came to march to join the siege at Rani Orthal. On the way we found some wine and that ended in disaster, for the natives stole our packs while we slept.
Forces gathered from all over, on both sides, and I began to fear a major battle. That would draw the Howler to Rani Orthal.
After the city was surrounded the enemy made several attacks on our breastworks and trenches, which resulted in heavy losses for them. After two weeks, when it was starting to show spring, we launched a surprise attack at night which carried the outer works right up to the stone wall. The soldiers killed everybody, so angry were they, and so frightened to be fighting at night. When they reached the top of the wall they threw down everyone, even the women and children.
Then the Howler came up from Shadowcatch and with him a small swarm of shadows and we had to abandon everything we had captured.
The Howler and shadows went away when the sun rose and the Prahbrindrah Drah himself went forward to tell the enemy we were going to attack come evening and this time no mercy would be shown, but the attack never took place because the enemy king decided to throw in his lot with Taglios. The city gates were opened and the town given over to the soldiers for one night but the men were allowed no weapons except their daggers.
The soil in those parts is very poor. The crops are not of a delicate nature. They eat much cabbage and roots, and rye is the common grain.
When we were in garrison at Thruthelwar for a month I befriended the landlord’s son, a boy of about eleven, and found him intelligent but ignorant of both religion and of reading and writing. His father reported that the Shadowmasters have banned all religious practice and all education throughout their empire and there were rewards out for books, especially older books, which were burned as soon as they were turned in, and likewise there were rewards for priests who tried to serve their faith, who were also burned as soon as they were turned in. This rule must have pleased Blade very much.
After a month in garrison orders came for the regiment to return to Jaicur, where Lady was gathering an army for a summer campaign in the east. At Jaicur I left the regiment and travelled north to Taglios, where I was received with great joy by my old companions of the Black Company.
The record of that campaign appears to be One-Eye’s most careful and detailed. The remaining fragments suggest stories much less coherent.
The captive red-hand Deceiver awaited us in a room guaranteed proof against sorcerous espionage. One-Eye swore he had woven the spells so well even Lady in her heyday could not have picked through them to eavesdrop.
Croaker grumbled, “What Lady could do back when doesn’t concern me. I’m worried about the Shadowmaster now. I’m worried about Soulcatcher now. She’s lying low but she is out there and she does want to know everything about everything. I’m worried about the Howler now. He wants a big bite of the Company.”
“It’s all right,” One-Eye insisted. “The Dominator himself couldn’t bust in here.”
“What do you want to bet that’s exactly what Smoke thought about his spyproof room?”
I shuddered. So did One-Eye. I had not witnessed Smoke’s destruction by the monster that got into his hidden place through a pinhole in his protection, but I had heard. “Whatever became of Smoke?” I asked. The monster had not killed him.
Croaker lifted a finger to his lips. “Right around the corner.” I thought we were going back to the room where Goblin, One-Eye and the Old Man wakened me from my last seizure. I just assumed they had the red-hand Strangler there, behind that curtain. Not so. We arrived at what seemed to be a different place entirely.
And the Deceiver was not alone.
The Radisha Drah, sister of the ruling Prince, the Prahbrindrah Drah, leaned against a wall and stared at the prisoner in a way that suggested she enjoyed a conviction that the Liberator was soft on villains. Small and dark and wrinkled, like most Taglian women who make it past thirty, she was one hard woman, and too bright besides. They say the only time she ever lost her composure was the night Lady killed all the senior members of Taglios’s various priesthoods, ending religious resistance to her participation in the war effort as a key player.
There has been a lot less intrigue since that demonstration. Our allies and employers now seem inclined to leave our destruction to us.
If you polled the Taglian nobilities and priesthoods you would find that most of the upper classes believe the Radisha makes the princely decisions. Which is near the truth. Her brother is stronger than is commonly supposed but he prefers to be off soldiering.
Behind the Radisha stood a table. Upon the table lay a man. “Smoke?” I asked.
My question was answered. Smoke was still alive. And still in a coma. He had all the muscle tone of a bowl of lard.
Behind him was the other side of a curtain identical to the one I saw when I awakened. Then this was the same room, approached from a different direction.
Strange.
“Smoke,” Croaker agreed, and I realized I was being made privy to a major secret.
“But . . . ”
“This character said anything interesting?” Croaker asked the Radisha, cutting me off. She must have been amusing herself with the prisoner. And there must be some reason the Captain did not want her paying too much attention to Smoke.
“No. But he will.”
The Strangler faked a sneer. A brave man but a fool. He, of all people, would know what torture could do.
Once again I got that spine chill.
“I know. Let’s do it, One-Eye. Murgen kept us waiting long enough.”
The Annals. He held it off just so I could get it into the Annals.
He did not have to bother. I am not a big torture enthusiast.
One-Eye started humming. He patted the prisoner’s cheek. “You’re going to have to help me out here, sweetheart. I’ll be as kind as you let me. What’s this thing you Stranglers got going here in Taglios?” One-Eye looked to the Captain, “When’s Goblin coming back, Chief?”
“Get on with it.”
One-Eye did something. The Strangler spasmed against his bonds, his scream not much more than a breathless squeak. One-Eye said, “But I found him the perfect woman, Boss. Ain’t that right, Kid?” He leered evilly, bent over the Deceiver. That brown raisin of a man wore nothing but a filthy loincloth.
So that was why One-Eye was so excited about Mother Gota. He wanted to use her as a practical joke on Goblin. I should have been angry, I guess, maybe for Sahra’s sake, but I could work up no indignation. That woman begged for abuse.
One-Eye crooned, “You understand your position here, sweetheart? You were with Narayan Singh when we caught you. You have the red hand. Those things tell me you’re one of those very special Deceivers that the Captain really wants.” He indicated Croaker. The word for Captain he used was jamadar, which has strong religious connotations to the Deceivers.
Lady got taken in by them but she fixed them by marking their top men permanently with the red hand. That made them stand out in the crowd these days.
One-Eye sucked spit between the stumps of his teeth. Somebody who did not know him might have believed he was thinking. He said, “But I’m a swell guy who hates to see people hurting so I’m gonna give you a chance not to end up like this cockroach over here.” He jerked a thumb at Smoke. Fire crackled between the fingers of his other hand. The Strangler screamed the kind of scream that rips your nerves out raw and salts their ends. “You can make this last forever or you can get it over quick. All up to you. Talk to me about what the Deceivers are up to here in Taglios.” He leaned closer, whispered, “I can even fix it so you can get away.”
The prisoner gaped for a moment. Sweat ran into his eyes, stung him. He tried to shake it away.
“I bet that she’d think that Goblin is just as cute as a bug,” One-Eye said. “What do you think, Kid?”
“I think you’d better get on with it,” Croaker snapped. He was not happy dealing in torture and had no patience left for the games Goblin and One-Eye play with one another.
“Oh, keep your damned pants on, Chief. This guy ain’t going nowhere.”
“But his friends are up to something.”
I glanced at Uncle Doj to see what the thought of the bickering. His face was stone. Maybe he didn’t understand Taglian anymore.
One-Eye barked, “You don’t like the way I do my job, fire me and do it yourself.” He prodded the prisoner. The Deceiver tensed in anticipation. “You. What’s up here in Taglios? Where are Narayan and the Daughter of Night? Help me out here.”
I tensed up myself. I felt a big chill. What was it?
The prisoner gulped air. Sweat covered his entire body. He could not win. If he knew anything and talked as he must eventually his own kind would show him no mercy later.
“Sufficient unto the day the evil thereof,” Croaker told him, sensing his thoughts.
My sympathies all lay with the Old Man. Even if he ever does get his daughter back he won’t find what he is looking for. She has been a Deceiver from the day she was born, raised to be the Daughter of Night who will bring on Kina’s Year of the Skulls. Hell, they consecrated her to Kina while she was still in the womb. She would be what they wanted her to be. And that would be a darkness to break her parents’ hearts.
“Talk to me, sweetheart. Tell me what I need to know.” One-Eye tried to keep it one on one, just him and his client. He gave the Strangler a moment to reflect. The rest of us watched without expression, maybe a thimbleful of pity among us. This was a black rumel man. In Strangler terms, generally, that meant he was guilty of more than thirty murders, without remorse—unless he strangled a black rumel man and thus gained acclaim by the most direct route.
Kina is the ultimate Deceiver. She enjoys betraying her own on occasion.
An argument One-Eye did not think to present to our pet Deceiver.
The Strangler screamed again, tried to gurgle something.
“You’ll have to speak up,” One-Eye told him.
“I can’t tell you. I don’t know where they are.”
I believed him. Narayan Singh was not staying alive by announcing his itineraries in a world where everybody really is out to get him.
“Pity. So just tell us why we have Deceivers here in Taglios, after all this time.”
I wondered why he kept going back to that. The Stranglers had not dared to operate in the city for years.
One-Eye and the Old Man must know something. But how?
The prisoner screamed.
The Radisha observed, “The ones we catch are always ignorant.”
“Don’t matter,” Croaker said. “I know exactly where Singh is. Or at least where he’ll be when he stops running. As long as he doesn’t realize that, I know he’ll always be right where I want him.”
Uncle Doj’s eyebrow twitched. Must be getting exciting for him.
The Radisha glared, frowned, stared. She liked to believe that hers was the only working brain in the Palace. Us Black Company types are just supposed to be hired muscle. You could almost hear the creaks and groans as her mind turned over. How could Croaker know something like that? “Where is he?”
“Right now he’s busting his butt trying to join up with Mogaba. Since we can’t stop him—because he’s moving as fast as any message we could send after him—let’s forget him.”
I considered offering a word of suggestion about crows. Croaker talks to crows. And crows fly faster than even a Deceiver can run. I was not paid to think and I was not there to talk.
“Forget him?” The Radisha seemed startled.
“Just for the moment. Let’s find out what his cronies are up to here.”
One-Eye resumed work. I glanced at Uncle Doj, who had stayed out of the way and quiet longer than I had thought possible. He noticed my glance. In Nyueng Bao he asked, “May I question the man?”
“Why?”
“I would test his belief.”
“You don’t speak Taglian well enough.” Little dig there.
“Then translate.”
Just for fun, or maybe to nudge Uncle Doj, Croaker said, “I don’t mind if he does, Murgen. He can’t do any damage.” His remark demonstrated clearly his familiarity with Nyueng Bao dialect. There had to be a message in that, meant for Uncle Doj particularly when taken with his earlier observation about Ash Wand’s provenance.
What the hell? I was confused. And getting more than a little paranoid myself. Had I come back to my own world after my most recent seizure?
In Taglian as passable as I recalled him having, Uncle Doj shot quick, amiable questions at the Deceiver. They were questions of the sort most people answer without thought. We learned that the man had a family but his wife had died in childbirth. Then he realized he was being manipulated and controlled his tongue.
Uncle Doj stamped around like a merry troll, chattering, and winkled out much of the prisoner’s past but not once did he get any closer to the facts of any new Strangler interest in Taglios the city. Croaker, I noticed, paid more attention to Uncle Doj than he did the prisoner. The Captain, of course, lives in the eye of a tornado of paranoia.
Croaker leaned close to me. In a midnight whisper he said, “You stay when the others leave.” He did not tell me why. He went on to say something to One-Eye in a tongue even I did not understand.
He spoke at least twenty languages, he had been with the Company so long. One-Eye probably spoke a bunch more but shared them with nobody but Goblin. One-Eye nodded and continued about his business.
Pretty soon the runt wizard began edging Uncle Doj and the Radisha toward the door. He did it so gently and smoothly that they never complained. Uncle Doj was a guest to begin with and the Radisha did have pressing business elsewhere and One-Eye went about it so unlike his usual abrasive self that he had them thinking it was their own idea. In any event, they left.
Croaker went with them, which helped, but he was back in five minutes. I told him, “Now I’ve seen everything. There are no wonders left. I can get out of this chicken outfit and go ahead with my plan to start a turnip ranch.” Which was only halfway a jest. Whenever the Company stops moving guys begin developing plans. Human nature, I guess.
The turnip is unknown here but I have seen vast tracts of land perfect for cultivating turnips, parsnips and sugar beets. And Otto and Hagop are not far away so seed should be available soon. Maybe they will even bring some potatoes.
Croaker grinned, told One-Eye, “This weasel isn’t going to tell us anything we can use.”
“You know what it is, Chief? I’ll bet you. He’s stalling. He’s got something he’s trying to hold onto just a little while longer. That’s what goes through his head every time I hurt him. He thinks he will endure it just one more time. And then just one more time.”
“Let him get thirsty for a while.” Croaker shoved the Deceiver’s chair over against a wall, tossed a piece of ragged linen over him as though he was discarded furniture. “Murgen, listen up. Time is getting tight. Things are going to start happening. I need you in the first rank, healed or not.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
He didn’t feel like joking. “We’ve discovered some interesting things about Smoke.” Suddenly he was speaking the Jewel Cities dialect, unknown outside the Company here, unless Mogaba was lurking around. “We stalled because of your lapses and what they might signify, but we have to move on. It’s time to take chances. There are some new tricks you need to learn, old dog.”
“You trying to scare me?”
“No. This is important. Pay attention. I don’t have time to work Smoke anymore. Neither does One-Eye. The arsenal is eating up all his time. And I don’t trust anybody else but you to help with this.”
“Huh? You’re going too fast for me.”
“Pay attention. And by that I mean keep your ears and eyes open and your mouth shut. We may not get much time. The Radisha could decide to come back and torment the Deceiver again. She likes that sort of thing.” He told One-Eye, “Remind me to see if we can’t get Cordy Mather assigned here permanently. She doesn’t get underfoot when he’s around.”
“He’s supposed to be back in town soon. If he’s not here already.”
“That there is my intelligence chief,” Croaker told me, pointing at One-Eye and shaking his head. “Blind in one eye and can’t see out the other.”
I glanced at the cloth-covered villain. He had begun snoring. A good soldier seizing his rest when it was available.
Hours passed. Croaker left, then returned. Now he slapped me on the back. “See how easy it is, Murgen? Ever seen such a big trick that was this simple?”
“Nothing to it,” I agreed. “Like falling off a log.” Or like falling into a bottomless pit, maybe, which I have had enough involuntary practice doing.
Nothing is ever as simple as somebody tells you it is going to be. I knew this would be no exception when I tried it myself, amazing as it was. “At least now I understand how you got so damned spooky, knowing things you shouldn’t.”
Croaker laughed. “Go ahead.” Showing off his astonishing discovery had put him into a grand mood. “Try it.”
I gave him a look he chose to interpret as my not really understanding what he meant. Nothing to it. Like falling off a log. Maybe. Only One-Eye is not a very good teacher.
“Do what One-Eye showed you. Decide what you want to see. Tell Smoke. But be damned careful how you do that. You have to be precise. Precision is everything. Ambiguity is deadly.”
“That’s the way the magic goes in every story I ever heard, Captain. The ambiguities screw you every time.”
“You think so? You might be right.” I must have touched a nerve. He became thoughtful suddenly. “Go ahead.”
I was reluctant. “This whole thing is too much like what keeps happening to me when I fall down the rabbit hole to Dejagore. Could Smoke be doing that to me somehow?”
Croaker shook his head. “No way. It’s not the same. Go ahead. I insist. You’re wasting time. Go look at something you always wanted to know about for the Annals. We’ll be right here to cover you.”
“How about I go look for Otto and Hagop ?”
“I know where they are. They just passed the First Cataract. They’ll be here in a few days. Try something else.” Hagop and Otto had spent the last three years travelling back north with a Taglian delegation and letters from Lady to those she had left behind. Their mission was to learn anything possibly known there about the Shadowmaster, Longshadow. One of the dead Shadowmasters, Stormshadow, had turned out to be a refugee from Lady’s old empire, Stormbringer, previously thought dead. And two other big and nasty sorcerers long believed perished also have turned up and remain burrs under our saddles, the Howler and Lady’s mad sister, Soulcatcher. And there was Shapeshifter, too, but we took care of him.
That Otto and Hagop managed to survive so incredible a journey was, to me, a major miracle. But Otto and Hagop are blessed.
“I expect they’ll have whole new collections of scars to talk about.”
Croaker nodded. He seemed a little grim now. A little anxious. Time to get on with my training.
An unexplained tragedy of the past caught my imagination. There had been some grotesque, horrible, senseless killings in a village called Bond that never got connected with anyone or anything, to my recollection. I was sure they had to be important somehow and was baffled that, even today, the slaughter remained unsolved and unresolved.
I gripped Smoke’s hand, blanked my mind, spoke careful instructions in a whisper. And away I went, out of my body, so suddenly I almost panicked. For a moment I thought I recalled doing all this before. But I could not remember what was going to happen.
The Old Man was right. This was not the same as my unwanted plunges into my own past. In this nightmare I was aware and in control. I was a disembodied vision racing toward Bond but my mission remained clear in my mind. That was a big distinction. When I floated over Dejagore I lacked identity and control till I merged with my self of the past. Then I forgot the future.
Bond is a hamlet on the south bank of the River Main, facing the Vehdna-Bota ford. For centuries the Main has been the traditional boundary of the Taglian heartland. The peoples who live below the river share the languages and religions of Taglios but are considered only tributary cousins by the Taglians themselves.
The nonagrarian part of Bond’s economy revolved around a small remount station for the military courier post. A minimal garrison of Shadar cavalrymen managed the station and kept watch on ford traffic. Bond was the kind of duty soldiers dream about. There were no officers and very little work. The river was low enough to ford only about three months a year. But the garrison got paid all year round.
Smoke’s soul slipped back to that long ago disaster. I stayed with him, carrying a load of fear despite all of Croaker’s reassurances.
It was very dark that night in that Bond gone by. Horror stalked out of the night and those nightmares where men are more often prey than predator. A monster padded through the hamlet, headed toward the army stable. I watched from a place where I could offer no warning.
One solitary soldier had the watch. He was nodding. Neither he nor the horses sensed their danger, The latch rose inside the stable door. No animal mind knew enough to pull a string. The soldier started awake just in time to see a dark shape with scarlet eyes hurtling toward him.
The monster fed, then padded into the night. It killed again. Screams wakened the garrison. The soldiers seized their arms. The monster, like an oversize black panther, loped to the river, swam to the northern shore.
I knew something now. The killer was a shapeshifter, the acolyte of the sorcerer Shapeshifter, whom we had destroyed the night we captured Dejagore. She got away, trapped in the animal shape.
Why just this one incident in more than four years?
I wanted to follow the panther, to discover what had become of it, but Smoke could not be coaxed to go. The comatose wizard had no will or ego I could detect but, apparently, he did have limits or constraints.
Funny, though. I felt no real emotion until I returned to the reality of the Palace. Then it hit me in a wave, hard, leaving me breathless. I asked, “Is whatever I see out there true?”
“We haven’t seen any evidence otherwise.” Croaker’s caution meant he had reservations. Always suspicious, our Captain. “You look bad. You see something nasty?”
“Very.” One-Eye was gone. And the Strangler had fouled himself. I wrinkled my nose. “I can use Smoke to look anywhere?”
“Almost. Some places he can’t or won’t go. And he can’t go back to any time before he went into the coma. You can catch the Annals up now, eyewitness style, if you will. But always remember to be careful about pointing him right.”
“Wow.” The implications had begun to sink in. “This is worth more than a veteran legion.” Now I knew how we had pulled off some really startling coups lately. If you can perch on your enemy’s shoulder nothing is going to go his way.
“It’s worth a lot more. And that’s why you’re going to keep your mouth shut even around your dearly beloved.”
“Does the Radisha know?”
“No. You, me and One-Eye. Maybe Goblin if One-Eye just had to share it with somebody. And that’s the limit. One-Eye found it by accident when he was trying to pull Smoke out of his coma. Smoke has been to Overlook. He’s walked around inside. He’s actually met Longshadow. We wanted to ask him some questions. We decided they could wait. You don’t tell anybody. Understand?”
“There you go being suspicious of my in-laws again.”
“I’d cut your throat.”
“I get the message, boss. Don’t brag it up to my Deceiver drinking buddies. Shit. This could win us the war.”
“It won’t hurt. As long as it’s secret. I have business with the Radisha. Practice using him. Don’t worry about working him too hard. You can’t.” He squeezed my shoulder, left the room with a stride that seemed both determined and fatalistic. Must be facing another budgetary conference. Depending on whether you were the Liberator or the Radisha the military either never had enough or always wanted too much.
So. There was just me and one halfway-dead wizard and one stinky Strangler under a linen rag. I considered using Smoke to find out what Stinky’s buddies were up to in Taglios but reasoned that the Captain would not have had him interrogated if Smoke had been able to provide useful answers. Maybe you not only had to be precise in your instructions, you had to have some idea what you were seeking. You could not find your own elbow if you could not guess what directions to give to get you there.
The point? Old Smoke was a miracle but he had major limitations. And most of those would exist right inside our own heads. We would become the beneficiaries or victims of our own imaginations.
What should I go see, then?
I was excited now. I was up for an adventure. So, what the hell? Why not go straight for the biggie? How about taking a peek at the Shadowmaster himself, Longshadow, number one boy on the Black Company shit list?
Longshadow could have pranced right out of my fantasies. He was a deadly freak. He was tall and thin and twitchy, given to flights of rage and subject to sudden spells resembling malarial shakes. He wore a sort of loose black floor-length chemise that concealed a deathly gauntness. He ate infrequently and then only picked. He could have been a famine victim.
Threads of silver and gold and glistening black, embroidered or woven into his robe, protected him with dozens of static sorceries. At first blush he seemed a hundred times more paranoid than Croaker. But he did have reason. There was just a whole world full of folks who wanted to roast his skinny ass and he had no friends closer than Mogaba and Blade.
The Howler was not a friend. He was an ally.
One of Longshadow’s obsessions was the Black Company. I did not understand. The kind of enemies we were should not have troubled him at all. We were no world-killers.
His face, which he kept masked except when he was alone, was skull-like. His waxy, pallid features were frozen in a permanent expression of fear. There was no guessing his birth race. His eyes were a washed out grey with splotches of pink around the edges but I don’t think he was an albino. I exploited Smoke’s ability, fluttered about through time to find out all the interesting stuff fast. I did not catch Longshadow completely out of costume once. The man did not bathe. He did not change clothing. He wore gloves all the time.
The last of the four Shadowmasters, now the Shadowmaster, he was the unquestioned tyrant of the city Shadowcatch and a demigod within his fortress Overlook. His slightest whim could set a hundred terrors and ten thousand men scrambling to appease him. And still he was a prisoner doing life without hope of parole.
Overlook is, but for one, the southernmost work of Man. I tried pushing past that fortress. Somewhere in the mists beyond Overlook is Khatovar, toward which we have marched for years. Just a glimpse would be marvelous.
Smoke refused to go any farther south.
Smoke had been crazy about Khatovar while he was still healthy. Khatovar was the reason he deserted the Radisha and Prahbrindrah Drah, years ago. His fear of Khatovar must have impressed itself upon his very flesh and soul.
Longshadow’s fortress was gargantuan. Overlook dwarfed every human construction I have ever seen, including the Lady’s monstrous tower at Charm. Already two decades in the building, Overlook’s construction had become the main industry of Shadowcatch—the city that was called Kiaulune before the coming of the Shadowmasters. Kiaulune meant Shadow Gate in the local dialect.
The builders worked day and night. They knew no holidays. Longshadow was determined that his fortress be complete before his enemies overtook him. If he won that race he believed he would become master of the world. No power of heaven or hell or earth ought to be able to reach him inside a finished Overlook. Not even the darkness that brushed him every night with its terror.
Overlook’s outer walls reared a hundred or more feet high. Where are you going to find a ladder that tall?
Brass and silver and gold characters shone on the steel plates that sheathed the rude stone of the wall face. Battalions of workmen did nothing but keep those runes polished and gleaming.
I could not read them but I knew they anchored massive defensive spells. Longshadow’s spellwork overlaid everything that was part of Overlook, layer upon layer. If he was allowed enough time every exterior surface of the fortress would be hidden beneath and behind impenetrable tangles of sorceries.
Once the sun went down Overlook became a conflagration of light. Bright crystal chambers topped every tower, making the place seem a forest of lighthouses. The crystal domes were places whence Longshadow could observe safe from his terrors. The overpowering lights left no places for shadows to hide.
He feared that which he mastered far more than anything else in the world. Even the Black Company, for him, was a buzzing mosquito of a nuisance.
Even unfinished Overlook daunted me thoroughly. What sort of hubris-driven madmen were we to chart a course that must run through and beyond that stronghold?
But Longshadow had enemies not as easily daunted as I. For some of those no earthly fortress, nor even time itself, meant much. They would devour him now or later, the moment his guard fell.
He had chosen to play for the ultimate stakes in a game where the risks were as grim as the potential winnings were great. It was too late to get out. He would be victor or victim.
Longshadow lived inside the crystal chamber that topped Overlook’s tallest central tower. He slept seldom, for fear of the night. He spent hours and hours just staring southward at a plain of glittering stone.
A screech ripped the air over the grim city. The people of Shadowcatch ignored it. If they thought about their master’s strange ally at all it was, probably, to hope that a fate would catch up and rob Longshadow of this potent weapon. The inhabitants of Kiaulune were a broken people, spiritless, without hope, worse even than the Jaicuri at their lowest ebb during the siege of Dejagore.
Almost all of them were too young to recall a time when there was not a Shadowmaster there exercising more power over their lives than had their lost gods.
Even Longshadow could not extirpate rumor. Even at the heart of his empire some people had to travel and travelers always carry tales. Some stories are even true. The people of Shadowcatch knew that a doom from the north was coming.
The name of the Black Company lay at the heart of every rumor. That made no one happy. Longshadow was a very devil but many of his people feared his fall would be but the precursor to a far bleaker season.
Man, woman and child, the people of Shadowcatch were privy to the one true secret of the universe: there is always a darker shadow lurking beyond the one whose face you can see.
Longshadow reached out and inflicted pain and fear because he himself was the victim of a thousand terrors.
It was ugly out there. So ugly I wanted to go back somewhere where it was warm and there was someone to hold me and tell me that the dark was not always the lurking place of terror. I wanted my Sarie, my light in the night that rules the world. “Smoke, take me home.”
Croaker did warn me. Be precise, he said. He warned me several times, in fact.
I was ripped this way and dragged that, to and through the place of blood and burning, papers browning, blackening, curling in such slow motion. Blood pooled deep where I lay in my own vomit. The slap of running feet was like the slow booming footfalls of giants.
I heard screams that had no end.
Croaker warned me. I was thoughtless. What he did not tell me, or maybe he did not understand, was that the concept “home” could in one man’s mind become defined by emotional pain.
Torn. Shredded. Smoke took me to Taglios only for that minute in the real now that is like the end of all time. I reeled and flung away from there with such revulsion that I threw myself and the hateful shreds and a disoriented Smoke all the way to Hell.
He had no will and no identity so he could not and did not laugh as I floated down into the lake of pain.
Hell has a name. Its name is Dejagore. But Dejagore is only Hell’s lesser face.
From the greater Hell I escaped. One more time.
No identity and no will.
The wind blows but nothing moves in the place of glittering stone. Night falls. The wind dies. The plain yields up its heat as shadows waken. Moonlight settles upon the silence of stone.
The plain runs east and west, north and south, without discernible bounds, viewed from within. Though its ends be uncertain it has a definite center. That is an epic structure built of the same stone as the pillars and plain.
Within that fastness nothing moves, either, though at times mists of light shimmer as they leak over from beyond the gates of dream. Shadows linger in corners. And way down inside the core of the place, in the feeblest throb of the heart of darkness, there is life of a sort.
No will. No identity. Now no Smoke.
Now just pain. So much Smoke drifted away. Now just slavery to the memories.
Now at home in the house of pain.
There you are! So here we are again. You were missed . . . faceless thing that, nevertheless, seems to be smiling, pleased with itself.
It has been a night full of adventures. Has it not? And the fun continues. Look. There. The Black Company and their auxiliaries have begun making life especially unpleasant for Shadowlanders so bold as to have taken up residence inside Dejagore’s wall.
See how they use the doppelgangers and imaginary soldiers to lure the southerners into deadly traps, to get them to betray themselves.
Oh. And come back to the wall. This is a small thing but it could become the stuff of epics.
The fighting has all shifted to the east side of the city. Hardly anybody is over there now. A few men to watch from the ramparts is all. And some unenthusiastic Shadowlander scouts down there in the darkness, not really paying attention. Otherwise how could they miss this spidery little figure rappelling down the outside of the wall?
Why on earth would a two-hundred-year-old, fourth-rate sorcerer want to climb down a rope to go where very unfriendly little brown men might decide to dance on his head?
The wounded stallion of mysterious sorcerous breed has stopped screaming. At last. It is dead. Green misty stuff still rises from its death wound. The wound still glows at its edges.
Out there? Yes. Look at them. Two very devils they are, aren’t they, cloaked in their pink mists? They don’t seem to be coming to devour the city, though, do they?
What is that? The Shadowlanders out there are scattering like the fox is in the henhouse. Their cries are filled with pure terror. Amongst them something dark moves swiftly. Look. It pulled a man down there. Didn’t it?
There is so little light now that the focus of battle has shifted. The old man is as black as the heart of the night itself. Think any mortal eye will notice him sneaking around among the dead? Where is he headed? Shadowspinner’s dead horse?
Who would expect that? It’s the act of a madman.
The creeping darkness is moving toward the dead horse, too. See how its eyes flash red when the fires in the city flare up. Look at that fool, running toward it instead of away. There go his guts. Stupidity can be fatal.
The little black man has vanished because he has stopped moving. There he is. He heard something. There he goes, trotting toward the dead stallion. He wants his spear back. And maybe that does make some crazy sense. He worked hard making it.
He has stopped again, eye huge as he sniffs the night and catches an almost-forgotten odor. At the same moment the deadly darkness catches wind of him.
A pantherine roar of triumph stills hearts all across the plain. The darkness begins moving faster and faster.
The little black man grabs his spear and runs for the wall. Will he make it? Can two stubby, ancient legs carry him there fast enough to escape the death racing toward him? The thing is huge. And it is filled with joy. The little man reaches the rope. But he is still eighty feet down from safety. And he is old and winded. He whirls. His timing is perfect. The head of his spear reaches out just as the monster leaps. The beast twists in the air, evading the killing thrust but taking a cruel wound from its snout back through its left ear. It howls. Green mist boils off its redly-glowing wound. The beast loses all interest in the old man, who begins his long climb to the ramparts. That bizarrely carved spear is slung across his back now, held there by a mundane length of cotton string.
No one notices. No one cares. The fighting has gone elsewhere.
At times they are running, sometimes just slinking away through the shadows before death overhauls them.
Look there. Shadowspinner, the king enemy himself, all but crippled, paying no attention to anyone or anything but those two pink-limned archetypes come out of the hills to devour him.
And Mogaba? Watch him be the master tactician. Watch him be the ultimate warrior exploiting the enemy’s every weakness now that there is no chance to accomplish the deviltry that moved him earlier in the evening. See that? No southerner, however great his reputation, dares come near Mogaba. Even their great heroes are like novice children when he steps forward himself.
He is way bigger than life, this Mogaba.
He is the triumphant centerpiece of his own imagined saga.
Something has gone out of the southerners.
They wanted to conquer. They knew they had to conquer because their master Shadowspinner would not tolerate anything less. He has a particular lack of understanding when it comes to failure. His followers are established solidly inside the city. Mild stubbornness will give them success.
But they are on the run.
Something has grabbed hold of them and convinced them that it is not possible for even their souls to survive if they stay inside Dejagore.
The southerners seem to have just closed their eyes and shoved their heads into a beehive, don’t they? What? Why so reluctant? Come see. This is amusing. Everywhere you look the southerners are falling back. Some—
“You all right, Murgen?” I shook my head. I felt like a kid who had spun around about twenty times, intentionally trying to make himself dizzy before jumping into some silly competition.
I was in an alley. Runt boy Goblin was beside me, looking extremely concerned. “I’m fine,” I told him.
Then I fell to my knees, stuck my hands out to grab the alley walls so I would not spin around anymore. I insisted, “I’m all right.”
“Of course you are. Candles. Keep an eye on this dork. He tries to take over, get deaf. He’s got too tender a heart.”
I tried not to let my ego become engaged. Maybe I was too tender, too much a sucker. The world sure isn’t kind to the man who tries to be gentle and thoughtful.
Its spin slowed down till I no longer had to hold on. A scuffle broke out behind us. Someone cursed in a nasal, liquid tongue. Somebody else growled, “This asshole is fast!”
“Whoa whoa whoa!” I yelled. “Let the man alone! Let him come up here.”
Candles didn’t knock me over the head or contradict me. The short, wide Nyueng Bao guy who had shown me to Ky Dam’s hideout marched up to me. The fingers of his right hand rubbed his right cheek. He seemed utterly astonished that somebody had laid a hand on him. His ego suffered again when he spoke in Nyueng Bao and I said, “Sorry, old-timer. No speakee. Gonna got to be Taglian or Groghor with me.” In Groghor, which my maternal grandmother spoke because Grandpa captured her from those people, I asked, “What’s happening?” I knew maybe twenty words in Groghor, but that was twenty more than anyone else within seven thousand miles.
“The Speaker sends me to lead you to where the invader is most vulnerable. We have watched closely and know.”
“Thank you. We appreciate it. Lead on.” Shifting languages, I observed, “Marvellous how these guys suddenly talk the lingo when they want something.” Candles grunted.
Goblin, who had sneaked forward for a look around, returned just in time to offer me directions to the same weak point the Nyueng Bao had in mind. The squat man seemed a little surprised we could find our butts with our hands, maybe even a touch disgruntled.
“You got a name, short and wide?” I asked. “If you don’t have one you prefer I guarantee you these guys will hang one on you and I promise you won’t like it.”
“Hear hear,” Goblin agreed, chuckling.
“I am Doj. All Nyueng Bao call me Uncle Doj.”
“All right, Uncle. You going up there with us? Or did you just come over to direct traffic?” Already Goblin was whispering instructions to the guys creeping up behind us. No doubt he had left a few soft spells of sleepiness or confusion amongst the southerners as he was scouting.
Little discussion was needed. We would drive into their soft spot, kill anything that moved, split them in half, butcher anybody who didn’t run away, then we would back away before Mogaba began feeling too confident.
“I will accompany you although that stretches the Speaker’s instructions to extremes. You Bone Warriors surprise us continually. I wish to watch you at your work.”
I never considered killing people to be my profession but did not care to argue. “You speak Taglian very well, Uncle.”
He smiled. “I am forgetful, though, Stone Soldier. I may not remember a word after tonight.” Unless the Speaker jogged his memory, I supposed.
Uncle Doj did a great deal more than watch us hack and stab southerners. He turned into a one-man cyclone flailing around with a lightning sword. He was as sudden as the lightning but as graceful as a dancer. Each time he moved another Shadowlander fell.
“Damn,” I told Goblin a while later. “Remind me not to get into a quarrel with that character.”
“I’ll remind you to bring a crossbow and let him have it in the back from thirty feet is what I’ll do. After I put a deafness and a stupidity spell on him to even things up a little.”
“Don’t be surprised if it’s me distracting you someday when One-Eye sneaks up and offers you a cactus suppository.”
“Speaking of the runt. Tell me. Who’s being conspicuously absent without leave lately?”
I sent messages to the various units suggesting that we had done our part to relieve Mogaba’s troops. We should all go back to our part of town, patch ourselves up, take naps, like that. I told the Nyueng Bao elder, “Uncle Doj, please inform the Speaker that the Black Company extends its gratitude and friendship. Tell him he is free to call upon that at any time. We will extend ourselves as much as possible.”
The short, wide man bowed far enough that his movement had to mean something. I bowed back, almost as deeply. That must have been the right move because he smiled slightly, bowed shallowly for himself, hustled off.
“Runs like a duck,” Candles observed.
“I’m glad that duck was on our side, though.”
“You can say that again.”
“I’m glad that duck . . . Argh!” Candles had me by the throat.
“Somebody help me shut him up.”
That was just the start of what became a wild night of blowing off tensions. I got no chance to participate myself but I heard it was a banner night for the Jaicuri whores.
“Where the hell have you been?” I snarled at One-Eye. “The Company just fought through its nastiest episode in, oh, just days, and you were obviously absent every stinking second.” Not that his presence would have made any difference.
One-Eye grinned. My displeasure did not bother him a bit. He had outlived or outstubborned a parade of snotnoses like me. “Shit, Kid, I had to get my Shadowmaster sticker back, didn’t I? I’ve got a lot of work in that thing . . . What’s the matter?”
“Huh?” For a moment I saw a little black louse scuttling across a grey landscape from a height unattainable anywhere in Dejagore, even atop the citadel, where Old Crew guys were not welcome anymore. “Never mind, runt. I’d like to kick your ass but it wouldn’t do any good now. So you were out there. What became of Widowmaker and Lifetaker?” While I was arranging a quieter life for our leader those two vanished without a trace.
I wondered how Mogaba would write all this if he was keeping the Annals.
“One-Eye?”
“What?” Now he sounded irritated.
“You want to answer me? What happened to Widowmaker and Lifetaker?”
“You know something, Kid? I don’t have the faintest freaking idea. And I don’t care. I only had one thing on my mind. I wanted my spear back so I could use it next time that sucker ain’t looking. Then I had to worry about dodging a gang of raggedyass Shadowlanders who tried to jump me. They went away somewhere. All right?”
And none of us could fathom that. Because they vanished just when the Shadowlander confidence was rockiest. Shadowspinner had his tail between his legs and his boys could have been broken.
I grumbled, “If that was the Old Man and Lady they would’ve kept coming till they broke the whole show wide open. Wouldn’t they?”
I glared at an albino crow perched not twenty feet away. Its head was cocked. It stared at me with malign intelligence.
There were a lot of crows tonight.
Other agendas were being pursued. I was just one pawn caught up in tides of intrigue. But if we were careful the Company need not get swept away.
Mogaba and the Nar and their Taglian troops stayed busy for days. Maybe the Shadowmasters decided to make Mogaba pay for his failure to fulfill his end of the implicit bargain.
Which was just one more example of the way people down here go bugfuck when they are involved with the Black Company.
It could make a guy nervous if he thought about everybody within a thousand miles seeming to wish he’d never been born.
My guys enjoyed Mogaba’s situation. And he could not squawk about their attitudes. We gave him exactly what he asked. We saved his ass and set him up so all he had to do was chase a few Shadowlanders out of town.
I had to see him almost every day at staff meetings. Again and again we showed ourselves to the soldiers, pretending to be brothers marching shoulder to shoulder against our evil foe.
Not once was anybody fooled except maybe Mogaba.
I never took it personal. I took a stance I believed the Annalists of the past would approve, just picturing Mogaba as not one of us.
We are the Black Company. We have no friends. All others are the enemy, or at best not to be trusted. That relationship with the world does not require hatred or any other emotion. It requires wariness.
Perhaps our refusal to remonstrate, or even to acknowledge Mogaba’s treachery, was the final straw, or perhaps the back-breaker was his awareness that even his Nar compatriots now believed the real Captain might still live. Whatever, the ultimate and perfect warrior drifted across a boundary from beyond which he could not return. And we did not discover the truth until we had paid in treasures of pain.
It took ten days for Dejagore to return to normal if normal was our state before the great attack. Both sides had suffered terribly. I believed Shadowspinner would now just lick his wounds and let us get hungry for a while.
“Got something for you, Kid.” I started awake. “What . . . ?” What happened? I don’t drift off that way.
One-Eye had a big shit-eating grin on but it evaporated when he looked at me closer. He darted in, grabbed my chin, turned my head right and left. “You just have one of your spells?”
“Spells?”
“You know what I mean.”
Not exactly. I just had their word for the fact that I went spooky sometimes.
“You’ve got a kind of psychic shimmer. Maybe I caught you just in time.”
He and Goblin kept talking about doing experiments to find out what is happening but there never seemed to be time to actually do anything. “What do you have?”
“The work parties broke into the old catacombs this morning.”
“Longo told me.”
“Everybody’s charging around in there, all excited.”
“I can imagine. Find any treasure yet?”
One-Eye looked put-upon. For such a blackhearted toad he can manage a truly impressive show of self-righteous injury.
“I take it not.”
“We found some books. A whole pile. All sealed up neat and everything. Looks like they’ve been there since the Shadowmasters first came.”
“Makes sense since they always burned the books and the priests. You find any priests lurking down there?”
“Not hardly. Look, I got to get back.” Before somebody grabbed a treasure out from under him, no doubt. “I got a couple guys lugging them books up for you.”
“Gods forfend you should have lifted anything yourself.”
“You got a serious attitude problem, Kid. I’m an old man.” One-Eye did a fade. He has that knack when he is about to find himself in an indefensible position.
A city seldom is buttoned up so tight that no news gets in from outside. Sometimes it seems almost mystical but the word does come through. In Dejagore rumor seldom brought in anything Mogaba wanted to hear.
I was studying the discovered books, so intrigued I was letting duties slide. They were written in Jaicuri but the written form thereof is almost identical to written Taglian.
Goblin stepped in. “You doing all right? No more dizziness?”
“No. You guys worry too much.”
“No, we don’t. Look, some new rumors are going around. There’s supposedly a relief column headed our way. Blade, of all people, is in charge.”
“Blade? He isn’t . . . He’s never run anything bigger than a reduced company. Before we ever got here. Fighting guerrilla style against amateurs.”
“I don’t make them up, I just report them. He did do well.”
“So did Willow Swan and Cordy Mather. But that was accident and luck and Shadowlander stupidity more than anything those three actually did. Why on earth is he commanding an army?”
“He’s supposedly Lady’s second in command. Not much doubt anymore that she survived. She’s also pissed off. And putting together a new army.”
“Bet Mogaba’s jumping for joy. Running around hollering, ‘We’re saved! We’re saved!’ ”
“You might say he’s jumping.”
Over the following few days we heard a thousand wild stories. If a tenth were true some really bizarre changes were underway out there in the world.
“You heard the latest?” Goblin asked me one night when I took a rare break from the books to examine that outer world from the wall. “Lady ain’t Lady after all. She’s the incarnation of some goddess named Kina. A real badass, too, apparently.”
“She would be. Thai Dei. You know Kina, don’t you? Tell us about her.” Thai Dei wasn’t allowed into our warrens but he always turned up whenever I came up for air.
He forgot all three words of Taglian he had admitted to knowing. The name of that goddess scrubbed his brain clean.
I said, “That’s what happens when you mention Kina to any of these people. I can’t even get our prisoners to talk about her. You would think she belonged to the Black Company.”
“Must be a real charmer,” Bucket opined.
“Oh, she is. She is. There’s one.” I meant a shooting star. We were keeping count. Also of enemy watchfires. The southerners had scattered in small unit encampments around the plain recently. I guess they were afraid we might sneak away.
“You know something about her, then?” Goblin asked.
“From those books you guys found.” The men were bitter. The books and some sealed jars filled with grain were the only treasures they unearthed. The Gunni were the majority religion in Jaicur and the Gunni do not bury their dead. They burn them. The minority Vehdna do bury their dead but do not include any grave goods. Where their dead are bound they have no need of luggage. In paradise everything is provided. In hell, too. “One was a compilation of Gunni myths, in variants from all over. The guy who recorded them was a religious scholar. His book wasn’t meant to get out where it might confuse ordinary people.”
“I’m confused and there ain’t nothing ordinary about me,” Bucket observed.
“So what’s the scoop, Murgen? How come they won’t tell us about this bitch? Whoa! Did you see that one? It exploded.”
“All right,” I told them. “The Gunni religion is the most common one around here.”
“I think we know that, Murgen,” Goblin said.
“Just making the point. Most people down here believe in Kina. Even if they’re not Gunni, they believe. Here’s the story. The Gunni have Lords of Light and Lords of Darkness. They’ve been doing their lording since the beginning of time.”
“Sounds like standard stuff.”
“It is. Only the value systems are different from what we knew back home. The balance between darkness and light is more dynamic here, and isn’t weighted the same emotionally as our struggle between good and evil. Moreover, Kina is a sort of self-elevated outside agency of decay and corruption that attacks both darkness and light. She was created by the Lords of Light to help defeat a horde of really nasty demons they couldn’t handle any other way. She helped by eating the demons. Naturally, she got fat. And apparently wanted dessert because she tried to eat everybody else, too.”
“She was stronger than the gods who created her?”
“Guys, I didn’t make this stuff up. Don’t ask me to rationalize it. Goblin, you’ve been everywhere. You ever seen a religion that can’t be picked to shreds by any nonbeliever with brains enough to tie his own bootlaces?”
Goblin shrugged. “You’re as cynical as Croaker was.”
“Yeah? Good for me. Anyway, there’s a lot of typically murky mythological stuff about mothers and fathers and vicious, hideous, probably incestuous carryings-on amongst the other gods while Kina kept getting stronger. She was real sneaky. That’s one of her attributes. Deceit. But then her main creator, or father, tricked her and put a sleep spell on her. She’s still snoring away somewhere but she can touch our world through her dreams.
“She’s got her worshippers. All Gunni deities do. Big, little, good, bad, indifferent, they all have their temples and priesthoods. I can’t find out much about Kina’s followers. They’re called Deceivers. The soldiers won’t talk about them. They flat refuse, like naming Kina might actually waken her. Which, I gather, is the holy mission of her worshippers.”
“Too weird for me,” Bucket grumbled. Goblin said, “That explains why Lady scares the shit out of everybody whenever she dresses up. If they really think she’s turned into this goddess.”
“I figure we should find out everything we can about this Kina.”
“Crack plan, Murgen. How? If nobody will talk?” Yeah. Even the boldest Taglians threatened to get the vapors if I pressed. It was obvious that they were not just terrified of this goddess. They were scared of me, too.
One-Eye brought heartening news. “This stuff about the relief force is gold, boss. Every night now Spinner is sneaking troops out through the hills like he don’t think we can see them go if it’s dark.”
“Could he be giving up the siege?”
“The troops are all headed north. Home ain’t north.”
I did not offer another alternative. One-Eye would not have come if he was not sure.
Of course, One-Eye being sure never meant that One-Eye was right. He was One-Eye.
I thanked him, sent him to do a small chore, found Goblin and asked him what he thought. The little wizard seemed surprised I would bother. “Did One-Eye stutter or something?”
“No. But he’s One-Eye.”
Goblin could not contain his big frog grin. That made perfect sense to him.
Nobody relayed the news to Mogaba. I thought it would go easier for everybody if he didn’t know. But Mogaba heard rumors, too.
Dejagore was a nightmare town filled with factions only loosely united in defiance of the besiegers. Mogaba’s forces were the strongest. The Jaicuri were most numerous. We Old Crew, with our auxiliaries, were less numerous and less powerful. But boy were we strong in our righteousness.
And then there were the Nyueng Bao. The Nyueng Bao remained an enigma.
Ky Dam’s family occupied the same dismal, filthy, smoky, pungent hole until the deluge drove them out. The perquisites of power did not appeal to the Speaker. He had a place to get out of the rain. That was enough.
Maybe that was more than he had had back in the swamp.
He did share with a troop of descendants who stopped bickering only when the outsider came around. And then the children restrained themselves only for a while.
On successive afternoons Ky Dam summoned me to consult on trivial matters. We faced each other over tea served by the beautiful granddaughter while the children quickly lost their awe of me and resumed brawling. We traded information on friends and enemies. That fevered character in the shadows moaned and groaned.
I did not like that. He was dying. But he was taking a long, long time getting it done. Every time he cried out the beautiful one went to him. I ached in sympathy. She was so haggard.
Second visit I said something to indicate sympathy, one of those things you toss off without much thought. Ky Dam’s wife, whom I now knew to be named Hong Tray, glanced up from her tea, startled. She said three soft words to Ky Dam.
The old man nodded. “Thank you for your concern, Stone Soldier, but it is misplaced. Danh welcomed a devil into his soul. Now he pays the due.”
A burst of rapid, liquid Nyueng Bao erupted from the shadows. A squat old woman waddled into the light. She was bow-legged, ugly as a warthog, in a vicious humor. She barked at me. She was Ky Gota, the Speaker’s daughter and my shadow Thai Dei’s mother. She was a dark legend among her own people. I have no idea what she was on about but I got the feeling that she laid all the ills of the world squarely at my feet.
Ky Dam said something gently. It did not get through. Hong Tray repeated his words, more gently, in a whisper. Silence fell instantly. Ky Gota scurried into the shadows.
The Speaker offered, “In all our lives we enjoy successes and failures. My great sorrow is my daughter Gota. She has within her a cancer of agony she cannot conquer. She insists on sharing it with the rest of us.” A tiny smile touched his lips. This was self-deprecating humor, meant to inform me that he was speaking metaphorically. “Her great failure, the wellspring of heartbreak for all of us, was her hasty choice of Sam Danh Qu as the husband for her daughter.” He indicated the beautiful flower. The flower betrayed a blush as she knelt to refill our cups. There was no doubt that all these people understood Taglian perfectly.
Ky Dam added, “That is the one great error that Gota cannot deny, a culmination of deficiencies that is like a brand. She was widowed young. She arranged the marriage hoping to enjoy her elder years luxuriating on the wealth of the Sams.” The Speaker showed me that little smile again, probably sensing my incredulity. Wealth and Nyueng Bao are contradictory concepts. The old man continued, “Danh was clever. He concealed the fact that he had been disinherited because of his cruelty and wickedness and treachery. Gota was too much in a hurry to investigate harsh rumors. And Danh’s evil only grew worse after the nuptials. But that is enough about me and mine. I asked you here because I wish to keep an eye on the character of the leader of the Bone Warriors.”
I had to ask. “Why do you call us that? Does it mean anything?”
Ky Dam traded looks with his wife. I sighed. “I get it. It’s more of the Black Company claptrap everybody does. You think we’re something our predecessors were supposed to have been four hundred years ago, only probably weren’t because oral history exaggerates ridiculously. Speaker, listen. The Black Company is just a gang of outcasts. Really. We’re plain old mercenary soldiers caught up in circumstances we don’t understand and really don’t like. We’re just passing through. We came this way because our Captain has a bug up his ass about the Company’s history. Most of the rest of us couldn’t think of anything else we wanted to do more.” I told him about Silent and Darling and others who had parted with the brotherhood rather than hazard the long journey south. “I promise you, whatever scares everybody—and I wish somebody would tell me what that is—it would have to involve way more work than I’m willing to put into anything.”
The old man eyed, me, glanced at his wife. She said and did nothing but something passed between them. Ky Dam nodded.
Uncle Doj materialized. The Speaker told me, “Perhaps we misjudge you. Even I allow prejudice to guide me at times. There is a chance I will know better when next we speak.”
Uncle Doj made a small gesture. Time for me to leave.
Goblin caught me hitting the Jaicuri books. “Murgen!” I started. “Huh?”
“About goddamn time.”
“What? What’re you talking about?”
“I been standing here watching you for ten minutes. You never turned a page. You never blinked an eye. I couldn’t tell if you was breathing.”
I started to make an excuse.
“Won’t sell. I had to yell four times and slap you on the back of the head to get your attention.”
“So I was thinking.” Only I could not recall even one thought.
“Yeah. Right. Mogaba wants your scrawny ass over to the citadel.”
“A lot of southerners have sneaked off to meet this relief column,” I told Mogaba. “At first I thought they were trying to trick us. Pull back and hit us when we tried to take advantage. But Goblin and One-Eye promise me they’ve just kept going. There can’t be a relief army, though. Where would the soldiers come from? Who would lead them?” Would Mogaba believe that I had not heard the more interesting rumors? He heard more than I did. And Croaker’s survival probably figured in a lot of those.
What would he do if the Old Man turned up alive?
I was pretty sure Mogaba thought about that a lot.
I was thanked and told to return to my people with no other comment. I did not find out why he sent for me.
Mogaba did just what I feared. He launched a recon in force, maybe trying to find new weak spots. He employed only his own most trustworthy men. And I was content to sit atop my part of the wall, watching. And wondering why Mogaba was so sure we would desert if we got outside.
I tend to ignore Mogaba here. He was a much greater part of everyday life than I show. He was misery on the hoof. My dislike makes it impossible to write about the man rationally so I discuss him only when I must.
Of all the Nar, in those days, only Sindawe ever made the effort to be civil.
Anyway, Mogaba thought he had a chance to hurt the Shadowmaster but the planners outside were getting the hang of how his head worked. He did not let a lack of success discourage him. There was that about Mogaba. He never became discouraged. No setback ever shook his conviction that he was invincible. If his plans fizzled he just recalculated.
Mogaba’s soldiers began to desert without benefit of escape from the city, coming to hide out with friends among our Taglians. They complained that Mogaba was too profligate with soldiers’ lives.
Mogaba responded by ordering special rations and preferential access to prostitutes for his most dedicated men.
We found those sealed jars of grain left over from the Shadowmasters’ first siege. Whether to share generated considerable debate. One-Eye insisted that Mogaba would not be satisfied just to share. He would want to know all about our find. He would want to see for himself. Did we want him wandering around our warrens?
No.
So what does the little shit do? He turns right around and starts selling fresh-baked bread for twenty times what a loaf cost before the siege.
I found a nice quiet spot for just One-Eye and me, atop the wall on a lazy afternoon. There were fresh rumors of a battle up north but that was not our topic. I asked, “What did you tell me about why we shouldn’t let Mogaba share the stores we found?”
“Huh?” This was not the hassle he expected.
“You were extremely persuasive. All that stuff about not letting the man get into our hideout.”
He grinned, proud of himself. “So?”
“You stand by what you said?”
“Sure.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing selling his men bread when we’re not supposed to have no grain to grind for flour?”
He frowned. The connection eluded him. “Making a profit?”
“You really figure Mogaba is so stupid he won’t notice that bread? You really figure he won’t ask questions?”
“You got too rigid a way of looking at things, Kid.”
“You keep up your crap you’re really going to think rigid. You get me killed I’m going to haunt your ass forever.”
“You probably would. There’s times I think you’re halfway a haunt already.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“These spells you have. When you have them it’s like there’s somebody else looking out from behind your eyes. It’s like there’s some other soul swirling around you.”
“I never noticed.” Would I notice?
“If we had us a skilled necromancer or a spirit talker we might be surprise what we found. You wasn’t born twins, was you?” His stare was fierce.
A chill stalked my spine. The hairs on my neck stirred. I did feel spooky, sometimes. But he was just trying to change the subject.
Goblin joined us uninvited. “There’s something going on with the Shadowlanders, Murgen.”
A crow nearby made a sound like laughter. I asked, “They aren’t setting up for another big attack? I thought Mogaba screwed their main ramp.”
“I couldn’t get close enough to catch any details. Mogaba is staying out where people can see him. But I think there was a battle. And I think Shadowspinner’s creeps got whipped. We may have friends out there ready to bust us out.”
“Calm down. Don’t start packing your gear.” One-Eye snickered. “That’s the runt all over, counting his chickens when he ain’t even stole no eggs yet.”
I grumbled, “You remember what we were just discussing? Stupid moves? And you’d dare get down on Goblin?” Of course he would. That was his great mission. “What’s going on?” Goblin demanded. Uncle Doj materialized. His presence ended the discussion. That man could be spookier than any shade, he moved so fast and quiet. “Speaker says tell you southerners carrying tools instead of weapons are assembling south of the city.”
“And what’s that over there?” From our perch most of the activity was hidden behind the curve of the wall but it looked like a big engineering party had begun to gather north of the city as well. “You see any prisoners or slaves out there . . . ? Huh?
What’s that?”
That was the sparkle of sunlight off metal in the hills. The sparkle repeated itself. People were moving out there, not carefully enough.
Shadowspinner’s men had no need to sneak. I told Goblin, “Pass the word. Full alert come sundown.”
Uncle Doj considered the hills. “You have good eyes, Bone Warrior.”
“Know something, Stubby? I’d a whole lot rather be called Murgen.”
The squat man smiled thinly. “As you wish, Murgen. I have come on behalf of the Speaker. He says tell you hard times are coming. He says prepare your hearts and minds.”
“Hard times?”
One-Eye laughed. “The party is over, Kid. Now we got to pay for loafing around and getting fat while the houris slithered all over us.”
“Keep it in mind next time you’re tempted to do some profiteering.”
“Huh?”
“You can’t eat money, One-Eye.”
“Killjoy.”
“That’s me all over. Tell Wheezer to hike over to the citadel and tell Sindawe the southerners are up to something.” Sindawe might be all right. I could talk to him without having to conquer an urge to squeeze his throat. And this would cover me on keeping Mogaba informed.
What would happen if the Shadowmaster just up and walked away, leaving us to sort ourselves out?
Sounded like the smart thing for him to do.
Wheezer barely made it to the top. Then he spent five minutes hacking and wheezing before he could talk. That old man had no business soldiering at his age. He ought to be off living off his grandchildren. But like the rest of us he had nothing outside the Company. He would die under the deathshead standard. Under what passed for a standard today.
It was sad. Pathetic, even.
Wheezer was an anomaly. Usually the mercenary life is brutal and short, pain and fear and misery only occasionally interrupted by a fleeting moment of pleasure. What keeps you sane is the unfailing comradeship of your brethren. In this company.
In lesser bands . . . But they are not the Black Company.
Croaker and I both put a lot of effort into sustaining that brotherhood. In fact, it looked like time to resurrect Croaker’s habit of readings from the Annals so the men would remember that they were part of something more enduring than most kingdoms.
I told Wheezer, “You better take a couple hours off.”
He shook his head. He would go on the best he could until he could go on no more. “The Nar lieutenant. Sindawe. Sends greetings. He said we better look out tonight.”
“He mention why?”
“He sort of hinted . . . that Mogaba might try . . . some big stunt after . . . dark.”
Mogaba was always trying some big stunt. Shadowspinner ought to let him set himself up. One raid too many, at the wrong time, and Mogaba would find out personally why Spinner was called a Shadowmaster.
Wheezer said something in his native tongue. Only One-Eye understood him. Sounded like a question. One-Eye muttered a few clicky syllables in reply. I figured the old man wanted to know if it was all right to talk in front of the Nyueng Bao. One-Eye gave him the go ahead.
Wheezer said, “Sindawe said tell you guys the rumors about a big battle are probably true.”
“We owe Sindawe, guys,” I said. “That sounds to me like him telling us he won’t back Mogaba a hundred percent anymore.”
Thai Dei and Uncle Doj sucked up our conversation like Nyueng Bao sponges.
Tension built for hours. With no real evidence we began to feel this night would be critical. Mostly the guys worried about new nastinesses from Mogaba. We didn’t expect trouble from the Shadowmaster any time soon.
I kept an eye on the hills.
One-Eye snapped, “There it is!” He shared my anticipations. Pinkish light flared. Lightning crackled around a bizarre rider.
“She’s back,” somebody said. “Where’s the other one?”
I did not see a Widowmaker right away.
Panic swept the plain. The apparition had taken the scattered Shadowlander camps unawares. Sergeants shrieked orders. Messengers galloped around. Soldiers stumbled into one another.
“There he is!” Bucket yelled.
“There who is?”
“Widowmaker.” He pointed. “The Old Man.” The Widowmaker figure shimmered back in the hills, larger than life.
Goblin grabbed my arm. I don’t know where he came from. “Look over there.” He indicated the Shadowlander main camp. We could not see the camp itself but a pale, gangrenous glow rose from its approximate location. The light intensified steadily.
“Spinner wants to play,” I observed.
“Yeah. He’s sending a big one.”
“A big what? Do we need to get our heads down?”
“Wait and see.”
I waited. And I saw. A nasty ball of green fire streaked toward the hills. It hit near where Lifetaker first showed herself. Earth flew. Stone burned. All to no avail. Lifetaker was long gone.
“He missed.”
“What an eye!”
“Lifetaker didn’t play fair. She didn’t stand still.”
“He made a stupid choice of tools,” One-Eye sneered. “You can’t expect somebody to just hang around and wait for you.”
“Maybe that was his best go. He hasn’t been healthy.”
I sidled away. In a few minutes Goblin and One-Eye would start bickering.
The confusion on the plain worsened. The southerners were more rattled than seemed reasonable. What I could get from their chatter suggested that they had been caught just starting something big of their own and their disarray left them virtually unable to defend themselves. In hushed tones, too, I heard Kina mentioned.
Lifetaker, who resembled that goddess of corruption, vanished. Maybe she lost interest. She did not reappear. Shadowspinner pasted the hills with any sorcery he could slap together. Other than starting a few brush fires he had no obvious impact.
The fox was in the henyard. Southerners scooted all over, their panic feeding on the panic of others. When one got close my guys took turns sniping. Goblin said, “They keep cussing about their feet getting wet.” I heard that, too. It made no sense.
“Holy shit!”
I don’t know who said it but I could not have agreed more.
Scores of brilliant white fireballs erupted straight up above the Shadowlander main camp. They obliterated the darkness completely. They seemed a tool of more use to a Shadowmaster’s enemies than to the villain himself.
A huge uproar followed.
Uncle Doj vanished. One moment he was beside me, the next a shadow running through the street below, then gone.
One-Eye told me, “This time I’m sure it’s Lady.”
His tone alerted me. “But what?”
“But the other one ain’t the Captain.”
Widowmaker had been visible for less than one minute. “Tell me it ain’t so,” I muttered.
“What?”
“That we got two sets. Each one only half the real thing.”
A crow nearby cackled.
I asked, “What kind of sorcery would do that? Split them in two?”
“I wish I could tell you something you want to hear, Kid. But I’ve got a very bad feeling there’s stuff going on we don’t even want to know about.”
One-Eye was a prophet. Although I did want to know. And thanks to the Nyueng Bao I heard a story.
The light across town faded. The attendant racket subsided. Part of that drifted toward the hills. The rest fell back toward Mogaba’s part of town.
The crackle of small sorceries rippled across the plain. The whole expanse glistened silver. “That was a strange one. One-Eye, what say we build a watchtower on top of one of the enfilading towers? That way we could get high enough to see what Mogaba and Spinner are doing.”
“You got Nyueng Bao to spy for you over there.”
“Suppose I don’t ask you to do any work yourself?”
“The idea sounds a lot better already. But I still think the Nyueng Bao could be your eyes, you play it right. You don’t need to get as paranoid as Croaker. Just look at what they bring you so you see whose purpose it might serve. Consider what might be missing the same way.”
“Sometimes I’m as lazy as you are,” I told One-Eye. “Only with me it’s mental. That sounds like a lot of thinking. And I’d rather see stuff with my own eyes anyway.”
“Just like the Old Man,” he grumbled. “You got to read them Annals all the time, how about you read some that was written by somebody besides Croaker? I was looking forward to a little relief from his righteousness.”
So we were back to the black-market bread scheme.
Goblin turned up. “Pretty exciting stuff happening over there.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“I got up on the wall over there. For a while. Mogaba’s guys weren’t worried about getting caught letting me peek. He led this raid in person.”
“Just tell us about it,” One-Eye grumbled. “You all the time got to flap on about stuff that . . . Awk!” A huge bug landed in One-Eye’s mouth. Goblin’s smirk hinted that he might have been involved in the insect’s errant navigation.
“That Doj character can tell you more than me. Some of his guys snuck out there behind Mogaba’s gang.”
“Why?”
“I think Mogaba was trying to bushwhack Spinner. But he stumbled into Lady instead.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“When that bunch of flareballs went up? There she was. Her and about fifteen guys. They were right outside the camp gate, practically crawling over Mogaba’s mob. Least that’s what I heard. I didn’t see it myself.”
“So where’s Uncle Doj?”
“Probably checking in with the Speaker.”
Probably. “Yeah? Look, we’ve got a bunch of deserters from the First. See if some will sneak back to find out more.”
“Here comes chunky boy now.”
We talked right in front of Thai Dei, like he was deaf. Or like we didn’t care squat what he heard.
Uncle Doj brought a couple other Nyueng Bao. They surrounded another chunky boy, this one a wide little Taglian. He seemed more prisoner than companion though no weapons were in evidence.
It amazed me that Uncle Doj could climb to the ramparts without breathing hard. Maybe he used some wild sorcery that stole Wheezer’s breath.
That sounded like something out of the Gunni myth book. “What have you got, Uncle?” I stared at the squat Taglian. He was indifferent to my gaze.
“An outsider. The Speaker sent Banh and Binh to watch the black men, who wanted to attack the Shadowmaster himself. But they ran into others from the outside pursuing a similar goal. This one left his party and joined those running for the wall when the flares went up. The outsider group may have been betrayed intentionally so this one could become separated in the confusion.”
I continued to study the outsider. He was a Gunni, more stockily built than anyone in these parts. Maybe he worked at that. He seemed possessed of a powerful arrogance.
I asked, “Is there anything special about him?” Uncle Doj seemed strongly interested in him, too.
“He bears the mark of Khadi.”
That took a moment. Oh. Yeah. In the books from the catacombs. Khadi was an alternate or regional name for Kina. There were quite a few of those. “If you say so. I don’t see it myself. Point it out.”
Uncle Doj’s eyes narrowed. He drew a deep breath, exasperated. “Even now you refuse to reveal yourself, Soldier of Darkness?”
“Even now I don’t have any fucking idea what you’re raving about. I am tired of hearing it.” I was developing suspicions, though. “Instead of sputtering and fussing and offering cryptic grumbles why don’t you say something I can understand? Pretend I’m what I say I am and can’t call down the lightning to part your hair. Who is this guy? Who do you think I am? Come on, Uncle. Talk to me.”
“He is a slave of Khadi.” Uncle Doj glared at me, daring me not to understand that. He did not want to be more explicit.
That made no sense to me. But I am not a superstitious man. Did he believe his one mouth had the power to raise the she-devil alone? “Kina must be one badass bitch,” I told One-Eye. “She’s got Uncle drizzling down his leg. You. You got a name?”
“I am Sindhu. I am of the staff of the warrior woman you call Lady. I was sent to observe the situation here.” He continued to meet my gaze. His eyes were colder than any lizard’s.
“Sounds reasonable enough.” If taken with a block of salt. “Lady? This is the Lady who was second in command in the Black Company?”
“That Lady. The goddess has smiled upon her.”
I asked Uncle Doj, “Is he a liaison man, then? Between us and Lady?”
“He may tell you so. But he is a spy for the toog. He will not speak truth when a lie will do.”
“Uncle, old buddy, you and me and the old man need to sit down and try to talk the same language for a while. What do you think?”
Uncle Doj grunted. Which could mean anything. “The toog will not speak truth when a lie will do.” Sindhu was amused.
The man struck me as a complete false face. I said, “Goblin, find this guy some place to sleep.” I shifted languages. “And don’t let him out of your sight.”
“I have chores enough already.”
“Somebody’s sight. All right? I don’t like him at all. I don’t think I’m going to like him even this much tomorrow morning. He smells like trouble.”
One-Eye agreed. “Big trouble.”
“Why don’t we just chuck his hairy ass off the wall, then?” Goblin can be pragmatic in the extreme.
“Because I want to find out more about him. I think we’ve crawled right up to the edge of the mystery that has hung us up ever since we got here. Let him run free. We’ll play dumb and keep track of every breath he takes.” I was sure I could count on the Speaker’s help with that.
My two wizards scowled and grumbled. Hard to blame them. They always end up carrying the load.
I was snoring heroically down deep in our warrens, having gone to Nod confident I could sleep in. Tomorrow nobody would have the ambition to get up to any mischief.
I was down there so far and so far out of the way that not five people knew where to find me. I was on a mission to catch up on my sleep. If the end of the world came the guys could celebrate without me.
Somebody shook me.
I refused to believe it. It had to be a bad dream.
“Murgen. Come on. You got to come see this.”
No I didn’t.
“Murgen!”
I cracked an eyelid. “I’m trying to get some sleep here, Bucket. Go away.”
“You ain’t got time. You got to come see.”
“I got to come see what?”
“You’ll see. Come on.”
There would be no winning this. He would pester me till I lost my temper, then get his feelings hurt. But the long climb to the sunshine was not an inducement to rise.
“All right. All right.” I got up and got myself together.
They didn’t need to drag me out but I understood the impulse. Things had changed. Radically.
I stared at the plain, mouth open. Only, what plain? Dejagore was surrounded by a shallow lake that featured the tops of burial mounds as small islands. Each mound boasted its handful of disconsolate animals. “How deep is it?” I asked. And, “There any chance we can catch some of those critters for the pot?” With all that water down there no southerner would be guarding against sorties.
“Right now, five feet,” Goblin said. “I had men go down and measure.”
“Is it still coming up? Where is it coming from? Where is Shadowspinner?”
Goblin pointed. “I don’t know about Spinner, but there’s the water. Still coming in.”
I have good eyes. I made out the water boiling and foaming as it roared out of the hills. “The old aqueduct came down there, didn’t it?” Two major canals had irrigated the hill farms and fed aqueducts to Dejagore before the fighting started. The Company cut those when the southerners were on the inside. Now the city survived on rainwater and the contents of large, deep, very stagnant cisterns we knew nothing about back then.
“Exactly. Clete and his brothers figure they diverted the entire river into the canal. Same thing south of town.”
Dejagore sits on a plain below the level of the country beyond the hills. Modest rivers run both west and southeast of the hills.
“I presume the boys are studying the engineering aspects?” I asked.
“Them and three dozen Taglians who had some skills the guys could use.”
“Any conclusions yet?”
“Like?”
“Like how high will the water get? Are we going to drown?” If that was Shadowspinner’s plan it indicated major changes in his thinking. Before, he wanted Dejagore recovered intact. This seemed a more practical and final answer to his problems, though more destructive of property—which, of course, was more valuable than any number of lives.
“They’re trying to figure that out right now.”
I grunted. “I take it Spinner pulled out after Lady left.”
“No,” One-Eye responded. “They hung around to swim. They don’t get to a lot of beach parties where they come from.”
“Man’s not as stupid as we thought,” I mused.
“Huh?”
“He floods the plain, even if he don’t drown us he locks us up so tight he don’t have to use hardly any men to keep us under control. He can chase Lady all he wants. We can’t help her and she can’t help us. For him it’s better than getting reinforcements out of the Shadowlands. Longshadow’s soldiers couldn’t be trusted behind his back.”
Thai Dei showed up. He always turned up soon after I came out, which indicated how closely we were being watched.
Thai Dei was a waste of manpower. He didn’t carry many messages. He didn’t understand any of our languages well enough to be a good spy for the Speaker. But he was always, always just a few steps away.
There would be a reason. The Speaker would do nothing without consideration. I just did not grasp his view of the world.
The longer I stared at the flood the more questions I came up with that needed answers soon. Most critical? How high would the water rise? How long would it take to do so? The rate of rise would slow down substantially as each vertical foot required more water volume because of the fall back of the hills, evaporation from the larger surface area, and absorption by more covered soil.
I told Goblin and One-Eye, “Dig up every educated man in town and give him to the brothers.” I thought about building boats and heightening towers and securing stores. I thought about our vast and wonderful warrens and the likelihood that thousands of manhours would go for naught. I thought about how we would have to prepare ourselves mentally for lots worse if we were going to survive. I thought about Ky Dam and his talk of hard times to come.
Thai Dei stepped over when nobody else was near. “Grandfather would speak with you. Soon, if possible.” His manners were impeccable. He did not call me Stone Soldier even once.
The old man must want something badly. “As you wish.” I noticed the outsider Sindhu on the battlements off toward the Western gate. I could feel him watching me. “One-Eye.”
“What?”
“You don’t need to bark. If you want to bark I’ll see if I can’t have the Shadowmaster turn you into a dog.”
One-Eye was startled. “Huh?”
“You guys keeping an eye on our guest?”
“Geek and Freak are taking turns. He ain’t done much yet. Wandered around town. Talked to people. Tried visiting with the Taglians, here and over with Mogaba. Ours wouldn’t have anything to do with him. The al-Khul Company ran him off with their swords drawn.”
“Would anybody talk about him?”
One-Eye shook his head. “It’s the same old shit. Maybe even worse. You better make it clear him being here wasn’t your idea.”
Thai Dei, listening, murmured something that sounded cabalistic. He followed with a gesture resembling that meant to avert the evil eye.
“Hey,” One-Eye said. “Something can bother these guys after all.”
“I’m going to go listen to their boss talk. You’re in charge, but only because everybody else around here is less trustworthy than you.”
“Thanks a shitload, Kid. You make a guy feel like he’s on top of the world.”
“Try to have something left when I get back.”
The vertigo hit me in the same alleyway as before—just yesterday? I remembered it as the darkness closed in. This was more of a sneaking, gentle, enveloping blackness than the thunderbolts that got me before.
My thoughts scrambled but I did recall several minimal episodes since the big blackout, just moments when I was out of my head and I came back as soon as somebody said something.
This one was stronger. Thai Dei’s hands closed on my left bicep. He spoke but his words were sounds that had no meaning. The light faded. My knees went watery. Then there was no sensation at all.
There was a place that was brighter than day, although it was daytime. Huge mirrors gathered sunlight and splashed it onto one tall, gaunt individual in black. The gaunt man stood upon a windswept parapet high above a darkening land.
A scream ripped through the air. A dark rectangle slanted toward the tower from high above and far away.
The gaunt figure fitted a stylized mask to its face. Its breathing increased pace, as though it needed more air to face visitors. Another scream tore the air. The gaunt man muttered, “Someday . . . !” The ragged flying carpet settled a short distance away. The masked man remained motionless, glaring at every hint of shadow around the device. The wind tugged at his robe.
Three persons rode the flying carpet. One was a tiny thing bundled in dark, stinking rags crumbling with mildew. He was masked, too, and shook continuously. He could not control the occasional scream. He was the Howler, one of the world’s oldest and most wicked sorcerers. The carpet was his creation. The gaunt man hated him.
The gaunt man hated everybody. He had little love for himself. He mastered his hatreds for short periods only, entirely through the implacable exercise of will. He had a powerful will as long as he was not threatened physically. The ragball gurgled as it stifled a scream. Howler’s nearest companion was a short, skinny, filthy little man in a ragged loincloth and grubby turban. He was frightened. His name was Narayan Singh, living saint of the Deceiver cult, alive only because of Howler’s intercession.
Longshadow considered Singh less than a flop of buffalo dung. Nevertheless, he had potential as a tool. The reach of his cult was long and lethal.
Singh’s opinion of his own new ally was of no supreme elevation, either.
Beyond Singh was a child, a pretty little thing, though filthier than the jamadar. She had huge brown eyes. Eyes like the windows of hell. Eyes that knew all evil of old and would revel in it now and forever more.
Those eyes troubled even Longshadow.
They were whirlpools of darkness that pulled, pulled, twisted, hypnotized . . .
A sudden, sharp pain in my left knee sent wires of agony searing through my flesh. I groaned. I shook my head. The stink of an alleyway penetrated my awareness. I seemed blind. But my eyes, apparently, were adapted to brilliant sunlight. Hands gripped my left arm, pulling, lifting. My vision began to return.
I looked up.
A gaunt face looked back, startling me. I retained a legacy of fear from my vision, though what that had been was fading already. I tried to hang on but the pain in my knee and Thai Dei talking shattered my concentration.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Just hurt my knee.” I tried to stand. When I took a step the knee almost folded. “I’ll manage, damn it!” I pushed his hands away.
The vision was gone except for a memory that it had happened.
Had it been the same with my other blackouts? Were there visions that flew away so thoroughly that I could not recall having had them? Did they have any connection with reality? Vaguely, I recalled seeing lots of familiar faces.
I would discuss it with Goblin and One-Eye. They ought to know what to make of it. They picked up a little loose change interpreting dreams.
Thai Dei started gabbling the moment we entered the Speaker’s presence. Ky Dam considered me speculatively, his expression deepening oddly as Thai Dei chattered.
The old man appeared to be alone when we walked in but as Thai Dei talked and Ky Dam became unusually attentive other Nyueng Bao came out of the shadows to study me. Hong Tray and Ky Gota were the first. The old woman settled by her husband. Ky Dam said, “I hope you do not mind. Sometimes she is able to part the veil of time.”
Gota said nothing. I suspected that that was unusual.
The beautiful woman appeared. She got right onto the tea service business. Tea is a big thing with the Nyueng Bao. Did she serve any other function in the family?
The guy in the shadows wasn’t moaning and groaning today. Had he left us?
“Not yet,” the Speaker said, reading my glance. “But soon.” Again, he sensed a question. “We sustain our share of the marriage vow even though he betrayed his. We will stand before the Judges of Time without stain on our karma.”
I had a notion what he meant only because I was studying the Jaicuri scriptures. “You are a good people.”
Ky Dam was amused. “Some might argue. We do strive to be an honorable folk.”
“I understand. We so strive in the Black Company.”
“Excellent.”
“I came because Thai Dei said you want to talk.”
“I did.”
I waited. My gaze kept straying to the woman making tea.
“Standardbearer.”
I started . . . “No,” I said softly, unaware that I was speaking aloud. I had not fallen into one of those black fugues. I’d just become distracted momentarily. Couldn’t blame a man for that. Not with a woman like that to distract him.
I said, “Thank you, Speaker. For not labelling me with one of those unappealing names you tend to employ.”
I could not resist a small smile that told him I knew he wanted something badly enough to keep me in a generous mood.
He nodded in turn, acknowledging my awareness.
Damn. I was turning into an old man myself. Maybe we could sit here grinning and grunting and nodding and arrange the whole future of the world. “Thank you,” I said when the pretty woman presented my tea.
That surprised her. She looked me in the eye for a moment, startling me. Her eyes were green. She neither smiled nor acknowledged me in any other way.
“Remarkable,” I said, to nobody in particular. “Green eyes.” Then I controlled myself and waited while the Speaker sipped some tea before he started circling in on his problem.
He told me, “Green eyes are rare and greatly admired among Nyueng Bao.” He took a ritual sip. “Hong Tray may part the veil occasionally but her visions are not always true, or not always fixed. Or they may be visions that have not yet come to pass. She does not see recognizable people so it is hard to determine when the visions might be taking place.”
“Uhm?” The woman in question sat with eyes downcast, slowly turning a jade bracelet that hung loose upon her left wrist. Her eyes were green, too.
“She foresaw the flood. We believed that would prove to be a false vision because we could imagine no way so much water could be brought to Jaicur.”
“But we’re in the middle of a lake now. The world’s widest moat. The Shadowlanders won’t bother us anymore.”
It took the old man a minute to understand that I was not serious. “Oh.” He chuckled. Hong Tray looked up and smiled. She had gotten the joke first. “I see. Yes. But it will serve the Shadowmaster, not us. Any attempt to leave will require rafts or boats, easily spotted, which cannot move enough men to force a breakthrough.”
The old boy was a general, too.
“You got it.” Shadowspinner had found an ingenious solution to his manpower problem. Now he could challenge Lady confident that we would not jump on his back.
“The reason I wished to confer is that in her vision Hong Tray saw the water rise to within ten feet of the battlements.”
“That would make seventy feet of water.” I glanced at the old woman. She seemed to be studying me in a way that had nothing to do with curiosity. “That’s a shitload.”
“There is another problem.”
“Which is?”
“We tried to calculate how many structures will rise above the waterline.”
“Oh-oh. I see.” I saw. Dejagore enjoyed a vertically oriented architecture, as walled cities do, but not many buildings overtopped the wall. And most surviving structures, even many that were partially burned, were occupied by someone. There would not be much housing available if the city flooded.
Luckily for us Old Crew our quarter boasted a lot of tall tenements.
“Oh-oh indeed. In this area there are enough such structures to house our few pilgrims. But elsewhere it will go hard for the Jaicuri when the black men and their soldiers finally understand how much space they will need.”
“No doubt.” I thought a moment. Hell. People could camp out on the wall. Them getting in the way would not be a problem militarily.
Still, whatever we did, life would become pure hell if the water rose that high. “Presents a dilemma, doesn’t it?”
“Possibly a larger dilemma than you suspect.”
“How so?”
“If preparations are not initiated immediately much that might prove useful will be lost. But if you tell Mogaba this then it is likely the strong will rob the weak and leave them to suffer. There is now no need to exercise restraint because of potential attack.”
“I see.” Actually, I had foreseen the scramble for stores and high ground. But I did overlook the fact that Shadowspinner extricating himself also freed Mogaba to manage internal frictions in a manner more to his liking. “You have something in mind?”
“I wish to examine the possibility of a temporary alliance. Until Jaicur is relieved.”
“Has Hong Tray foreseen that as well?”
“No.”
I was surprised by the black despair that collapsed upon me.
“She has seen nothing one way or the other.”
I brightened. A very little.
“I am reluctant to undertake such an obligation,” Ky Dam confessed. “It was not my idea. It was Sahra’s.” He indicated the beautiful tea server. “But she trusts you for no reason she will explain and, moreover, her arguments make sense.”
Hong Tray wore a bemused expression. There was, in the way she looked at me, a hint that she foresaw much that she did not share.
I shivered.
Ky Dam continued, “We have no hope if we assume a traditional Nyueng Bao stance and depend upon ourselves alone. You have little hope if your Mogaba does not feel he needs your arms anymore.”
I stared at the beautiful one, though that was bad manners. She blushed. The attraction was so powerful, suddenly, that I gasped. I felt as though I had known her several lifetimes already.
What the . . . ? This did not happen to me. Not anymore, anyway. I was no sixteen-year-old . . . Hell, I never felt like this when I was sixteen.
My soul was trying to tell me I knew this woman as well as a man ever knew any woman when, in truth, I had only just heard her name spoken for the first time.
There was something else over there, with her. That was more than one lovely daydream. I knew another one just like her, somewhere else . . .
The darkness came.
It was sudden and absolute and I had no time to decide if I was running away or being pulled down.
There was a long, long time in the dreamless dark. A time without an I. A time neither warm nor cold, a time with no happiness or fear or pain in a place no tortured soul would want to leave. But a pin pricked a hole in the envelope. The tiniest thread of light found its way in and fell upon an imaginary eye.
Movement.
A rush toward a point, which swelled and became a passageway into a world of time and matter and pain.
I knew who I was. I staggered under the crushing weight of a host of congruent memories surfacing all at once.
A Voice spoke to me but I could not comprehend its words. I floated like gossamer through golden caverns where old men sat beside the way, frozen in time, immortal but unable to move an eyelid. Madmen, they, some were covered with fairy webs of ice as though a thousand winter spiders had spun threads of frozen water. Above, an enchanted forest of icicles grew downward from the cavern ceiling.
Because I had memories of memories within memories I recalled having read words very much like those somewhere in something I did not believe had yet been written.
“Come!”
The power of the call was like the punch of a thunderbolt.
Darkness came. I tumbled away, ceased being I. Nevertheless, before I faded from that cavern I sensed a startled presence coming alert and striving to direct its attention my way.
Somehow I had gone somewhere where no mortal was welcome to travel and still come away.
Memory fled. But pain went along on the journey.