The wind whines and howls with bitter breath. Lightning snarls and barks. Rage is an animate force upon the plain of glittering stone. Even shadows are afraid.
The scars of cataclysm disfigure a plain that has known only an age of dark perfection. A jagged fissure lies like a lightning slash across its face. Nowhere is that fissure so wide that a child could not step across but it seems bottomless. Trailers of mist drift forth. Some bear a hint of color. Any color clashes with the thousand blacks and greys.
At the heart of the plain stands a vast grey stronghold, unknown, older than any written memory. One ancient tower has collapsed across the fissure. From the heart of the fastness comes a great deep slow beat like that of a slumbering world-heart, cracking the olden silence.
Death is eternity. Eternity is stone. Stone is silence.
Stone cannot speak but stone remembers.
The Old Man looked up. His quill twitched, betraying his irritation at being interrupted. “What is it, Murgen?”
“I went for a walk with the ghost. That earth tremor we felt a while ago?”
“What about it? And don’t give me none of that around-the-bush crap One-Eye’s always handing out. I don’t have time for it.”
“The farther south you go the worse the destruction is.”
The Old Man opened his mouth, closed it to think some before he said anything else.
Croaker, the Old Man, the Captain of the Black Company, the right-now-by-god military dictator of Taglios and all its tributaries, dependencies and protectorates, does not look the part. He is in his middle fifties, possibly closer to sixty. He stands more than six feet tall. He has grown slightly heavy during four years spent mainly in garrison. He has a high forehead with a feeble crop of hair farther back. Lately he has been affecting a beard on his chin. It is grizzled. So is what hair still lurks upon his head. His icy blue eyes are deeply set, giving him a hard, scary look, like some kind of psychopathic killer.
He does not know. Nobody ever told him. Sometimes he is hurt because people back off. He does not understand why.
Mostly it’s his eyes. They can be really spooky.
He considers himself just one of the guys. Most of the time.
If he understood it he would use his impact to its limit. His belief in the value of creating illusions in the minds of others borders on religious conviction.
He stood up. “Let’s go for a walk, Murgen.”
In the Palace it is always best to be moving if you want to keep your conversations your own. The Palace is vast, a honeycomb networked with a labyrinth masking countless secret passageways. I have been mapping those but could not winkle them all out in a lifetime even if we were not heading south any day.
The point is, there is always a chance our friends will be listening to anything we say.
We have been very successful at driving our enemies out beyond arm’s reach.
Thai Dei picked us up at the doorway. The Old Man grimaced. He has no personal prejudice against my bodyguard and brother-in-law but he abhors the fact that so many Company brothers have acquired similar companions, none of whom are bound to his direct command. He does not trust the Nyueng Bao. He never has, never will and cannot explain clearly why.
He does understand that he was not there in hell’s forge when the bonds were hammered into existence. He will stipulate that. He has done his time in other hells. He was suffering one at that time.
I made a small gesture to Thai Dei. He dropped back a step, symbolically acknowledging our need for privacy rather than actually accepting it. He would hear everything we had to say anyway.
So every word we said would be spoken in the dialect of the Jewel City Beryl, which lies six thousand miles beyond the edge of any world Thai Dei can even imagine.
I wondered why Croaker bothered walking when he was going to use an alien tongue. No Taglian would understand a word. “Tell me,” he said.
“I walked with the ghost. I went south. I made the routine checks. I was just following the daily ritual.” I understood his desire to walk. Soulcatcher. Soulcatcher understood the Jewel Cities dialects. She would have more trouble eavesdropping if she had to find us first.
“Thought I told you to ease up. You’re spending too much time out there. It’ll hook you. It’s too easy to shake loose from the ache. That’s why I don’t go anymore.”
I masked my pain. “That’s not a problem, boss.” He would not believe me. He knew just how much Sarie meant to me, how much I missed her. How much I hurt. “I’m handling it. Anyway, what I want you to know is, the farther south you look the worse the damage done by that earthquake gets.”
“Am I supposed to be concerned? Dare I hope that you’ll tell me the Shadowmaster’s house fell in on his head?”
“You can hope all you want but you won’t hear it from me. Not now. His faults don’t include being a bad architect.”
“I had a feeling you wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to hear. You’re no fun at all that way.”
Part of my job as Annalist is to remind my superiors that they are not gods. “It didn’t happen this time. Overlook came through almost unscathed. But Kiaulune was destroyed. Thousands were killed. The way disasters go, thousands more will die from hunger, disease and exposure.” The heart of winter was fast approaching.
Kiaulune is the southernmost city of men. Its name means Shadow Gate. When he came out of nowhere two decades ago and made himself master of the province, the Shadowmaster Longshadow changed the name to Shadowcatch. Only the peoples of the Shadowlands, who are inclined to avoid the Shadowmaster’s displeasure, actually employ names enforced upon them by their enslavement.
“Is that good news?”
“It’ll sure slow down construction work on Overlook. Longshadow won’t like it but he’s going to have to take time out to help his subjects. Otherwise he’ll run out of people to do his work for him.”
Our parade continued slowly through busy hallways. This part of the Palace had been given over to the war effort completely. Now people were packing. Soon we would be heading south, bound toward a major and possibly final collision with the armies of the Shadowmasters. Most of our forces were in transit already, a slow and difficult process. It takes ages to move large numbers a great distance.
The men in these offices had been laying the groundwork for years.
Croaker asked, “Are you saying we don’t need to get in any big hurry?”
“There’s no need now. The quake crippled him.”
“There wasn’t any pressing need before the quake. We could’ve gotten there before he finished his oversized sand castle.”
True. We were starting the campaign now mostly because the Captain and his woman were so thirsty for revenge.
Add the name Murgen to that list. My taste for vengeance was newer and bloodier. My wife was a more recent victim.
Longshadow and Narayan Singh would pay for Sarie’s death. Especially Narayan Singh.
You living saint of the Stranglers, your nightwalking companion now hunts you, too.
“Something that hurts him doesn’t really change anything at our end.”
I agreed. “True. Though it does give us more flexibility.”
“Yet it makes sense to jump them while they’re stunned. How widespread was the damage? Was it just Kiaulune?”
“There’s heavy damage everywhere south of the Dandha Presh. It gets worse as you go farther south. Those people won’t have much energy to spend trying to stop an invasion.”
“All the more reason to stay on schedule. We’ll stomp them while they’re down.”
The Old Man was bitter and vindictive. Comes with the job, I guess. And because of all the evils done to him.
“You ready to travel?” he asked.
“Personally? Me and my whole household have our preparations made. You name the day and we’ll be on the road.” My own bitterness leaked through.
I kept telling myself not to let the need for vengeance sink roots too deep. I dared not let it become an obsession.
Croaker pursed his lips, sour for a moment. My household includes not only Thai Dei but Sarie’s mother, Ky Gota, and Uncle Doj, who is not really anybody’s uncle but is a family attachment nonetheless. Croaker refuses to trust them. But he does not trust anybody who has not been a brother of the Company for years.
Proof was immediate. “Murgen, I want you to add the Radisha to the list of people you check regularly. I’m betting that as soon as we clear the city wall she’ll start fixing to break our hearts.”
I did not argue. It seemed likely.
All through our history the Black Company has suffered the ingratitude of our employers. Usually those blackguards received ample cause to regret their villainy. This time there was a good chance we could subvert the effort before the Radisha Drah and her brother, the Prahbrindrah Drah, could deal us any major treachery.
Right now the Radisha and Prince have to restrain themselves. As long as Longshadow survives, the Company will remain their lesser fear.
I asked, “You looked at those books yet?”
“Which books?”
He could be exasperating. I snapped, “The books I risked my precious ass to steal back from Soulcatcher the other night. The lost Annals that are supposed to tell us why every damned fool lord and priest in this, end of the world is scared shitless of the Black Company.”
“Oh. Those books.”
“Yeah. Those . . . “ I realized that he was ragging me.
“I haven’t had time, Murgen. Although I did find out that we’re going to need a translator. They aren’t written in modern Taglian.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“We’re taking the ghostwalker south with us.”
The sudden shift surprised me. Lately he has been so paranoid he will not mention Smoke, by name or otherwise, for any reason, even in a non-Taglian language.
There is always a crow around somewhere.
I replied. “I assumed we would. The resource is too valuable to leave here.”
“We don’t want anyone to know if we can help it.”
“Uhm?”
“The Radisha already wonders how come we find him so interesting that we’ll take care of him and keep him alive. She no longer thinks there’s any chance he’ll recover. If she puts much thought into it she might start adding things up.” He shrugged. “I’ll talk to One-Eye. You two can smuggle him out when nobody’s looking.”
“One more thing to do in my copious spare time.”
“Hey. Enjoy it while you can. Soon we’ll get to sleep for ages.”
He is not a religious man.
“I got to do everything,” One-Eye grumbled. “Anything that’s got to be done, just stick it on old One-Eye. He’ll take care of it.”
I sneered. “That’s only if you can’t find Murgen first.”
“I’m too old for this shit, Kid. I ought to be retired.”
The little black man had a point. According to the Annals he is about two hundred years old, still alive mostly because of his own clever sorcery. And good luck beyond what any human being deserves.
The two of us were inside a dark circular stairway, lugging a body down on a litter. Smoke did not weigh much but One-Eye made the job a pain in the ass anyway. “You about ready to trade off?” I asked. I had the uphill end. I am more than six feet tall. One-Eye goes five feet if you stand him on a thick book. But he is a stubborn little shit who can never admit that he is wrong.
For some reason One-Eye had it in his head that the downhill end of a litter would be the easy one to handle on a stairway.
“Yeah. I think. When we get down to the next landing.”
I grinned in the darkness. That would leave us with just one story to go. Then I grumbled, “I hope that damned Sleepy is on time.”
Though barely eighteen Sleepy is a four year veteran of the Company. He went through the fire of Dejagore with us. He still has a tendency to be late and a little irresponsible but, hell, he is still awful young.
Youth made him the best man to be driving a wagon around Taglios in the middle of the night if you did not want to attract attention. A Vehdna Taglian, he could pass as an apprentice easily. He could not be expected to know what he was doing. Apprentices do what they are told. Their masters seldom feel obliged to explain to them.
The kid would have no clue what he was up to tonight. If he arrived on time he would not guess his part for years. He was supposed to wander off before the wagon acquired its mysterious burden.
One-Eye would take over after we loaded Smoke. He would explain, if he found himself in a position where that became necessary, that the corpse back there was Goblin. No one would know the difference. Smoke had not been seen at all for four years and seldom publicly before that. And Goblin had not been around for a while because the Old Man sent him off on a mission weeks ago.
Anybody running into One-Eye would know who he was right away. He is the most recognizable member of the Company. His ugly old black hat gives him away even in the dark. It is so damned filthy it glows.
I exaggerate only slightly.
People would believe One-Eye because everyone in Taglios knows the nasty little runt runs with a toad-faced little white wizard called Goblin.
The trick would be to distract them from Smoke’s skin color. Or One-Eye could put a glamor on him and make him actually look enough like Goblin to deceive the Taglian eye.
Eventually somebody would discover that Smoke no longer was in the Palace. Probably later. By accident. When somebody stumbled through the network of confusion spells surrounding the room where Smoke had lain hidden for years.
“Somebody” would be the Radisha Drah. She and Uncle Doj are the only people besides me and Croaker and One-Eye who know Smoke is still alive, if unutterably lost in the land of coma.
He is more useful now than he ever was when he was conscious and the secret court wizard.
Smoke had been as thoroughly craven as it is possible for a human to be.
We reached the landing. One-Eye damned near dropped his end of the litter. He was in a hurry to take a break. “Let me know when you’re ready,” I told him.
“You don’t got to go smart-assing me, Kid.” He muttered a few words in a dead tongue, which was totally unnecessary and entirely for show. He could have said the same thing in Taglian and have achieved the same result. Which was that a globe of shimmering swamp gas materialized above his ugly hat.
“Did I say anything?”
“You don’t got to talk, Kid. You’re grinning like a shiteating dog.” But he was puffing too hard to keep it up. “Old fart’s heavier than he looks, isn’t he?”
He was. Maybe because he was all lard after four years asleep, getting his sustenance as soup and gravy and any other sludge I can spoon down him.
He is a mess to take care of. I would let him croak if he was not so damned useful.
The Company wastes no love on this man.
Maybe I like him better unconscious than conscious, though we never butted heads personally. I have heard so many horror stories about his cowardice that I cannot say much in his favor at all. Well, he was a modestly effective fire marshal when he was awake. Fire is an enemy Taglios knows far more intimately than any remote Shadowmaster.
If he had not been such a chickenshit and gone over to Longshadow he would not be in the sad shape he is now.
For reasons unclear even to One-Eye, Smoke’s comatose spirit is anchored to his flesh very loosely. Making a connection with his ka, which is what they might call it around here, is easy. It takes instructions well. I can connect with him, detach from my flesh and ride him almost anywhere, to see almost anything. Which is why he is so special to us today. Which is why it is so critical to keep everything about him under wraps.
If we succeed in this dark war, victory will come largely because we can “walk with the ghost.”
“I’m ready to go,” One-Eye said.
“You come back fast for an old fart.”
“You keep running your jaw, Kid, you’re never gonna get a chance to find out what it’s like to be old enough to deserve respect but not to get none from pups like you.”
“Don’t go picking on me because Goblin ran out on you.”
“Where the hell is that stunted mouse turd, anyway?”
I knew. Or thought I knew. I walk with the ghost. One-Eye did not need to know, though, so I did not clue him in. “Lift the damned litter, limberdick.”
“I just know you’re going to enjoy life as a polecat, Kid.”
We hoisted the litter. Smoke made a gurgling sound. Foamy spit dribbled from the corner of his mouth. “Hustle up. I need to get his mouth cleaned out before he drowns himself.”
One-Eye saved his breath. We clumped down the stairs. Smoke began making strangling noises. I kicked the door open and went through without looking outside first. We got into the street.
“Put him down,” I snapped. “Then cover us while I take care of him.” Who knew what might be watching? Taglian nights conceal countless curious eyes. Everyone wants to know what the Black Company is doing. We take it as a given that some of those are people we do not even know yet.
Paranoia is a way of life.
I knelt beside the litter, tipped it a little and turned Smoke’s head. It flopped like he had no bones in his neck. Smoke gurgled and hacked some more.
“Hush,” One-Eye said.
I looked up. A tall Shadar watchman was headed our way, carrying a lantern. One of the Old Man’s innovations, the night-time foot patrols have crippled enemy espionage efforts. Now our creativity was about to turn around on us.
The turbaned soldier walked past so close his grey pants actually brushed me. But he sensed nothing.
One-Eye is no master sorcerer but he does a hell of a job when he concentrates.
Smoke made that noise again.
The Shadar stopped, looked back. His eyes widened. They were about all that could be seen between his turban and his massive beard. I do not know what he saw but he touched his forehead and swept his fingers in a quick half circle ending over his heart. That was a ward against evil common to all the peoples of Taglios.
He moved on hurriedly.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Never mind,” One-Eye said. “Let’s get him loaded.” The wagon was waiting right where Sleepy was supposed to leave it. “He’s going to report something. He’ll have his whole family here in a few minutes.”
The watchmen were equipped with whistles. Our man remembered his and started tooting as One-Eye lifted his end of the litter. In seconds another whistle answered. “He going to keep that shit up?” One-Eye asked.
“I’ll lay him on his side. The phlegm should drain off. But you’re the guy who knows the medical stuff. If he’s coming down with pneumonia you better start working on him now.”
“Go teach granny to suck eggs, Kid. Just shove the little bastard in the wagon, then get your ass back through that door.”
“Shit. I think I forgot to wedge it open.”
“I’d call you a dumb shit but you keep ragging me about stating the obvious. Unh!” He swung his end of the litter into the bed of the wagon. Good boy Sleepy had remembered to leave the tailgate down, exactly as he had been instructed. “I remembered for you.”
“You were the last one out anyway.” Damn, would I be glad when Goblin came back and One-Eye could get back to feuding with him. I shoved my end of the litter.
One-Eye was scrambling up to the driver’s seat already. “Don’t forget to get that gate up.”
I twisted Smoke’s shoulders so his mouth would drain, raised the tailgate and dropped the oak pins into their slots. “You check on him as soon as you’re clear.”
“Shut up and get out of here.”
Whistles were shrieking all around us now. Sounded like every watchman on duty was closing in.
Their interest was going to attract that of others. I ran for the postern door. Steel tires began to rattle on cobblestones behind me.
One-Eye was going to get a chance to test our cover story.
It is a long trail from that postern to the apartment I call home. On the way I stopped by Croaker’s cell to let him know what had happened while we were getting Smoke out of the house. He asked, “You see anything besides the Shadar?”
“No. But the uproar is going to attract attention. If they hear that One-Eye was involved people interested in us will start poking around. They’ll be sure something was going on even if One-Eye sells his story to the watchmen.”
Croaker grunted. He stared at the papers he had been trying to read. He was bone-tired. “Nothing we can do about it now. Go get some sleep. We’re going ourselves in a day or two.”
“Uhn.” I did not look forward to traveling, especially during wintertime. “I’m not really looking forward to this.”
“Hey. I’m older and fatter than you are.”
“But you’ll be going toward something. Lady is down there.”
He grunted unenthusiastically. Any more you had to wonder about his commitment to his woman. Ever since the trouble with Blade . . . None of my business. “Good night, Murgen.”
“Yeah. Same to you, chief.” He did not want to be civil, that was fine with me.
I headed for my apartment, though there was nothing for me there but a bed that would give me no rest. With Sarie gone the place was a wasteland of the heart.
I closed the door behind me, looked around like maybe she would jump out laughing and tell me it was all a bad joke. But the joke was not over yet. Mother Gota still had not finished cleaning up the mess left by the Strangler raid. And, pushy though she was, she had not touched anything in my work area, where I was still sorting the burned remains of several of these Annals.
I must have gone drifting with my thoughts. Suddenly I was aware that I was not alone. I got a knife out in half a heartbeat.
I was not in trouble. The three people staring at me belonged by family right. They were my in-laws, Sarie’s brother Thai Dei with his arm in a sling, Uncle Doj and Mother Gota. Of the three only the old woman ever said much. And nothing she said was ever anything I wanted to hear. She could find the bad side of anything and complain about it forever. “What?” I asked.
Uncle Doj countered, “Did you drift away again?” He sounded troubled. “When did you go? Dejagore?”
“It wasn’t that. That hasn’t happened for a while.” All three continued to stare at me like I had something hanging out of my nose. “What?”
Uncle Doj said, “There is something different about you.”
“Shit. Goddamned right there is. I lost a wife that meant more to me than—” I clamped down on the rage. I turned toward the door. No good. Smoke was in a wagon headed south. They continued to stare at me.
It was like this every time I came back after going out without letting Thai Dei tag along. They did not like me getting out of their sight.
That and their stares gave me a little shiver of the sort of feeling Croaker got every time he looked at one of the Nyueng Bao. Sarie being gone left a vacuum bigger than the one that emptied my heart. She had been the soul that made this weird bunch work.
Uncle Doj asked, “Do you wish to walk the Path of the Sword?”
The Path of the Sword, the complex of ritualized exercises associated with his two-handed longsword style of fighting could become almost as restful and free of pain as was walking with the ghost. Although Uncle Doj has been teaching me since I became part of the family, it is still difficult for me to get into the sort of trance the Path requires.
“Not now. Not tonight. I’m tired. Every one of my muscles aches.” Yet another way I was going to miss Sarie. That green-eyed angel had been an artist at massaging out the accumulated tensions of the day.
We were speaking Nyueng Bao, which I use fairly well.
Now Mother Gota demanded, “What you doing, you, you hide from your own?” in her abominable Taglian. She refuses to believe she does not speak the language like a native.
“Work.” Even without the Old Man’s paranoia I would have kept Smoke to myself. Hell, I’m taking a huge risk just mentioning him in these pages even though I’m scribbling them in a language hardly anyone down here even speaks, let alone reads.
Soulcatcher is out there somewhere. Our precautions against her discovering Smoke are more elaborate than those keeping the Radisha and the Shadowmaster away.
Catcher was in the Palace not long ago. She stole those Annals that Smoke hid before his disaster. I am pretty sure she did not notice Smoke himself. The network of confusion spells around him is supposedly extremely subtle on its fringes, so that even a player as powerful as Soulcatcher would not notice the misdirection unless she was really focused on finding something like it.
I told them, “I just talked to the Captain. He said the headquarters group will leave tomorrow or the next day. You’re still determined to go?”
Uncle Doj nodded. He did not seem emotional when he reminded me, “We too have a debt to repay.”
The few material possessions the three shared were packed and piled by the apartment door already. They had been ready to go for days. I was the one who needed to focus and finalize my preparations. I had lied to Croaker when I had said I was ready to travel.
“I’m going to bed now. Don’t wake me up for anything but the end of the world.”
Sleep is not an escape from pain. In sleep there are dreams. In sleep I go places more horrible than those I walk when I am awake.
In dreams I still go back to Dejagore, to the death and disease, the murder and the cannibalism and the darkness. In dreams Sarie still lives, whatever the horror of the place she walks.
That night my dreams did not restore me to the wonder of Sarie’s company.
I remember only one. It came first as a shadow, an all enveloping malice full of playful cruelty, as though I was sinking into the soul of a spider that enjoyed tormenting its victims. The malice did not take note of me. I passed through to its other side. And there the dream wrenched sideways, twisted, and took on life, though it was a life entirely of black and white and greys.
I was in a place of despair and death. The sky was lead. Bodies rotted around me. The stench was strong enough to drive the buzzards away. The sick vegetation was coated with what looked like thick grasshopper spit. Only one thing moved, a distant flock of mocking crows.
Even amidst my horror and revulsion I felt that the scene was familiar. I tried to hang on to that thought, to pursue it, to sustain my sanity by ferreting out why I would know a place I had never been. I stumbled and tripped across a plain of bones. Pyramids of skulls were my milemarks.
My foot slipped on a baby’s skull that spun and went rattling off to the side. I fell. And fell. And then I was in another place.
I am here. I am the dream. I am the way to life.
Sarie was there.
She smiled at me, then she was gone, but I clung to her smile as the only thing capable of letting me keep my head above the waters of a sea of insanity.
I was in that other place. It was a place of golden caverns where old men sat beside the way, frozen in time, alive but unable to move so much as an eyelash. Their insanity slashed the air like a million dueling razors. Some were covered with glittering webs of ice, as though a million fairy silkworms had spun them into cocoons of delicate threads of frozen water. An enchanted forest of icicles hung from the cavern roof.
I tried to dash forward, past the old men, to get out of that place. I ran as you run in dreams, slowly going nowhere.
And then the horror worsened as I realized that I knew some of those mad old men.
I ran harder, into the treacly resistance of animate evil laughter.
I swung wildly at whoever was touching me, flung my hand under my pillow to recover the dagger hidden there. A powerful blow slammed my wrist as it came into the light. A strong voice snapped, “Murgen.”
I focused. Uncle Doj stood over me. He looked grave, troubled. Thai Dei stood near the foot of my bed, where he could take me from behind if I jumped up at Doj. Mother Gota stood in the doorway, agitated.
Uncle Doj said, “You were screaming in a language none of us knows. We found you wrestling with the darkness when we arrived.”
“I was having a nightmare.”
“I know.”
“Hunh?”
“That was obvious.”
“Sarie was there.”
For one instant Mother Gota’s face became a mask of rage. She muttered something softly and too quickly for me to follow, but I did catch the name Hong Tray and the word “witch.” Sahra’s grandmother Hong, long dead, was the only reason her family had accepted our relationship. Hong Tray had given her blessing.
Ky Dam, Sahra’s grandfather, also gone now, had claimed his wife possessed the second sight. Perhaps. I had seen her forecasts work out during the siege of Dejagore. Mostly they had been very sybilline, very vague, though.
I had heard Sarie described as a witch, too, on one occasion.
“What is that smell?” I asked. The shakes had left me. Already I could recall details of the nightmare only through determined effort. “There a dead mouse in here?”
Uncle Doj frowned. “This was not one of your journeys through time?”
“No. It was more like a trip to hell.”
“Do you wish to walk the Path of the Sword?” The Path was Doj’s religion, his main reason for being, it sometimes seemed.
“Not right away. I want to get this down while I still remember it all. It might be important. Some of it seemed familiar.” I swung my feet to the floor, aware that I was still being scrutinized intently.
There was a lot more of that now that Sarie was gone.
It was not yet time to make a point of it.
I went to my writing area, settled and got to work. Uncle Doj and Thai Dei found their wooden practice swords and began to loosen up on the other side of the room.
Mother Gota continued to talk to herself as she got busy cleaning up. As long as she was in the mood I even let her help with my mess, offering suggestions from the corner of my mouth just often enough to keep her simmering.
The great dark ragged square settled slowly through the air, rocking unpredictably in winter’s icy breath. A screech of pain soared up above the complaints of the wind. Twice the tattered carpet tried to set down atop the tower where the Shadowmaster stood waiting. Twice the wind threatened it with disaster. The carpet’s master howled again and descended fifty feet to a larger and safer landing area atop Overlook’s massive wall.
The Shadowmaster cursed the weather. This winter gloom was almost as bad as night. Here, there, shadows came to life in unpredictable corners. All his labor and genius could not take away every cranny where they might lurk. In his ideal world he would halt the sun itself directly above the fortress where it could sear the heart out of the night and slay the terrors that lurked within.
Longshadow did not go down to meet his henchman the Howler. He would make the deformed little cripple come to him. In conversation he could pretend that they were equals but that was not true. A day would come when the Howler would have to be disposed of altogether. But that time was a long way off yet. Those damnable nuisances from the Black Company had to be buried first. Taglios had to be chastised with fire and shadow. Its priests and princes had to be expunged. Senjak had to be taken and milked of her every dark secret, then she had to be destroyed, utterly and for all time. Her mad, flighty sister Soulcatcher had to be hunted down, murdered, and her flesh thrown to wild dogs.
Longshadow giggled. Much of that he had said aloud. When he was alone he did not mind verbalizing his thoughts.
His list of people to be rid of grew almost daily.
Here were two more now.
The first two faces to rise from the stairwell were those of the Strangler Narayan Singh and the child his Deceivers called the Daughter of Night. Longshadow met her eye only for a moment. He turned to look out over the devastation north of Overlook. A few fires still burned in the ruins.
The child was barely four but her eyes were windows to the very heart of darkness. It seemed almost as if her monster goddess Kina sat behind those hollow pupils.
She was almost as frightening as those living wisps of darkness that, because he could command them, gave him the title Shadowmaster. She was a child only in flesh. The thing inside was ages older and darker than the dirty, skinny little man who served as her guardian.
Narayan Singh had nothing to say. He stood at the edge of the parapet and shuddered in the chill wind. The child joined him. She did not speak, either, but she showed no interest in the ruined city. Her attention was on him.
For half a heartbeat Longshadow feared she could read his mind.
He stirred his long, bony frame toward the stairwell, concerned that Howler was leaving him alone too long with these bizarre creatures. He was startled to find the Nar general Mogaba, his leading commander, coming up the steps behind the little sorcerer, engaged in a vigorous conversation in an unfamiliar tongue.
“Well?”
The Howler was floating in the air, as he often did even when not piloting his carpet. He spun himself around. “The story is the same from here to the Plain of Charandaprash. And east and west as well. The quake spared no one. Though the damage becomes smaller the farther north one travels.”
Longshadow turned instantly, stared south. Even in winter’s advancing gloom that plain up there seemed to glitter. Now it even seemed to mock him, and for a moment he regretted the impulse that had led him to challenge it so many years ago. He had gained all the power he had dreamed of then and had not known a moment of peace since.
By its very existence the place beyond Shadowgate taunted him. Root of his power, it was also his bane.
He saw no evidence that the quake had disturbed anything there. The gate, he believed, should be proof against all disasters. Only one tool could open the way from the outside in.
He turned back to find the child smiling, one white tooth showing like a diminutive vampire fang. She combined the scariest effects of both her mothers.
Howler shrieked a shriek he cut short partway through. “The destruction leaves us no choice but to defer the labors of empire till the populace can sustain them once more.”
Longshadow raised a bony, gloved hand to his face, to adjust the mask he always wore in company. “What did you say?” He must have heard wrong.
“Consider the city before you, my friend. A city which exists only to build this fortress ever taller and stronger. But those who live there must eat in order to have the strength to work. They must have shelter from the elements, else they weaken and die. They must have some warmth and water that does not lead them to their deaths with dysentery.”
“I will not coddle them. Their only purpose is to serve me.”
“Which they can’t do if they’re dead,” the black general observed. “The gods have taken a dislike to us lately. This earthquake hurts us more than all the armies of Taglios have in all the years of this war.”
That was a hearty exaggeration, Longshadow knew. His three fellow Shadowmasters were dead. Their great armies had perished with them. But he got the message. The situation was grim.
“You came to tell me that?” It was presumptuous of the general to come to Overlook unbidden. But Longshadow forgave him. He had a soft spot in his heart for Mogaba, who seemed much like his own younger self. He indulged the Nar where he would have endured far less from his other captains.
“I came to ask you one more time to reconsider your orders forcing me to remain immobile at Charandaprash. After this disaster, more than ever, I’ll need flexibility to buy time.”
It was an old, old argument. Longshadow was weary of it. “If you cannot carry out your orders as given, General, without questioning everyone and nagging me continuously, then I’ll find someone who will. That fellow Blade comes to mind. He’s done wonderful things for us.”
Mogaba inclined his head, said nothing. He particularly did not note that Blade’s successes came because he was allowed exactly the sort of freedom of decision and movement that Mogaba had been petitioning for for almost two years.
Longshadow’s outburst was not unexpected. But Mogaba felt obligated to try, for the sake of his soldiers.
The Strangler Singh took a step toward the Shadowmaster. His odor preceded him. Longshadow shrank back. The little man said, “They are moving against us. There is no longer any doubt.”
Longshadow did not believe that because he did not want it to be true. “Winter has only just begun.” But when he glanced at the Howler the crippled little sorcerer nodded his rag covered head.
He stifled a shriek stillborn. “It’s true. Everywhere I look Taglian forces are on the move. None are large but they are everywhere, following every possible road. Singh’s attempt to assassinate their top people seems to have set them off.”
Singh’s failed attempt, Longshadow did not say aloud. His own espionage resources were feeble now but they had gotten that much back to him. The alliance with the Stranglers was very unpopular and therefore very precarious. The Deceivers were loved no more in the Shadowlands than they were in the Taglian Territories.
Mogaba moved his feet but held the remark eager to force its way past his teeth. Longshadow knew exactly what it was. The general wanted to be allowed to strike the Taglian bands before they could gather into a large force on the Plain of Charandaprash.
“Howler. Find Blade. Tell him to deal with as many of these small forces as he can. General.”
“Sir?” Mogaba had to strain to keep his voice neutral.
“You may send some of your cavalry north to harass the enemy. But only some and only cavalry. If I find you interpreting me as having turned you loose you will indeed be turned loose. On the other side of the Shadowgate.” It had been a long time since he had sent someone through to watch him die a cruel death. He just had no time for himself anymore. Nor could he open the way these days, without the Lance. The only other key had been stolen long ago by one of his dead colleagues. He did not have the necromantic power to call up their shades and compel the villain to reveal where the thing was buried. “Have I made myself clear?”
“Absolutely.” Mogaba stood a hair straighter. The concession was not much but it was something. The terrain north of Charandaprash was not suited to cavalry maneuvers, though, so he would have to use his horsemen as mounted infantry. Still, it was an opportunity. “Thank you, sir.”
Longshadow glanced sideways at the child, who almost never spoke. He surprised a look of complete disdain that vanished even as his gaze shifted, disappearing so quickly it seemed nothing more than a flicker of imagination.
The Shadowmaster let his gaze travel on to the plain of glittering stone. Once he had been driven by an obsessive need to learn about that place. Now he just hated it and wished it would go away, but he needed it, too. Without it he would be feeble, no match for the likes of Howler or the woman Soulcatcher, whose madness and enmity were entirely unpredictable. She seemed a complete child of chaos.
“Where is the one called Soulcatcher?” he asked. “Has there been no sign?”
Howler, who had had a report from a skrinsa shadowweaver whose circle directed a colony of spy bats, lied, “Nothing. Though there was something strange that happened in Taglios about the time Jamadar Singh’s brothers infiltrated the Palace. Could have been her.” A shriek twice as long and piercing as normal ripped itself from the little sorcerer. He began to shake and shudder and spit.
Even the child took a step back.
Nobody offered to help.
Four days passed before Croaker was ready to leave Taglios. He spent most of that time arguing with the Radisha. Their sessions were private. I was not allowed to sit in. The little I heard from Cordy Mather later suggested they had butted heads vigorously. And Cordy had not gotten to hear a tenth of what was said.
I do not think Cordy is real pleased with his role around here anymore. More and more the Radisha treats him the way some powerful men treat their mistresses. He is supposed to be the commander of the Royal Guards and he has done a damned good job there but the more he plooks the Woman the more she seems to think he is just a toy, not to be trusted with anything substantive.
If he had not been feeling irritable about it he would not have mentioned the conflict.
“Same old same old?” I asked. “Expenses?” Over the years Croaker got the Radisha to buy millions of arrows, hundreds of thousands of spears and javelins, tens of thousands of lances and saddles and sabers. He filled warehouses with swords and shields. He acquired mobile artillery accompanied by ammunition caissons. He accumulated dray horses, mule and ox teams by the dozens of hundreds. He had war elephants and work elephants. Lumber enough to raise new cities. A thousand unassembled box kites big enough to lift a man . . .
“Same old,” Mather admitted. He tugged angrily at his tangled brown hair. “He apparently expects this to go bad.”
“This?”
“The winter offensive. That’s what the squabbling was about. Starting to accumulate replacement stuff now in case this goes bad.”
“Hmm.” That sounded like the Old Man. He could never make enough preparations. Which was probably why, as the passion of his response to the Strangler raid waned, he seemed ever less eager to throw everything into the fray.
But knowing Croaker the arguments could be a diversion, too. He might just be trying to scare the Radisha into being reluctant to pull any political stunts while he was away.
“He was close to the line.”
“What do you mean?
“There’s a point where the Woman just won’t argue anymore.”
“Oh.” Enough said. I understood. If the Old Man went any further he would have to exercise his warlord’s powers and place the Princess under arrest. And would that ever stir up a nest of vipers.
“He’d do it,” I told Mather. I assumed word would get back to the Woman. “But not over war materiel. I don’t think. If the Prahbrindrah Drah and Radisha don’t live up to their promises to help the Company get back to Khatovar, though . . . The Captain could turn unpleasant.”
Taking us back to the Company’s origins in fabled Khatovar had been Croaker’s main passion for nearly a decade now. If you pressed him a little, sometimes an almost fanatical determination shimmered behind the usual coterie of masks he presents to the world.
I hoped Cordy would take that message to his bedmate. Also, I was kind of poking an anthill with a stick to see if, in his funk, he would reveal the royal thinking about our quest.
It was not something the Prince and his sister discussed, mostly because the Prahbrindrah Drah had taken a liking to life in the field and just did not see his sister anymore. Walking with the ghost told me nothing.
But Smoke was evidence in his own way. It was his terrified determination to keep the Company away from Khatovar that had led him to defect to the Shadowmaster and thereby put himself into a position where he might be stricken. As Lady noted in her contribution to these Annals, the rulers of Taglios, both religious and lay, have no more love for us than they do for the Shadowmasters. But we have been gentler. And if we vanish from the stage prematurely they will have only a short time to regret our passing.
Longshadow has no use whatsoever for priests. He exterminates them wherever he finds them. Which may be one more reason why Blade deserted to his cause. Mather’s old friend has the most pernicious case of priest hatred I have ever encountered.
“How do you feel about Blade?” I asked. The question would divert Mather from wondering about my agenda.
“I still don’t understand. It just doesn’t make any sense. Did he catch them doing it?”
“I don’t think so.” I knew. I had walked with the ghost. Smoke can take me almost anywhere. Even the past, back almost to the very moment when the demon burst in upon him and drove him into hiding in the farthest shadows of his mind. But even after having used Smoke to go observe the actual furious encounter between Blade and the Old Man, alcoholically enhanced, and indeed over Blade’s too obvious interest in Lady, I still did not understand. “But I’ll tell you, with the Prince and Blade and Willow Swan and about every other guy in town drooling all over themselves every time Lady walks by, I don’t know as I blame him for finally blowing up.”
“Just about as many guys looked at your wife the same way. She was probably the most beautiful woman any of them ever saw. You didn’t blow.”
“I think that’s a compliment, Cordy. Thanks. For me and Sarie both. You want me to be honest, I think it was more than Lady. I think the Old Man thinks Blade was planted on us somehow.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah. But you got to know his background.” Cordy was born in my end of the world. He knew the way things were. “He spent years dealing with the Ten Who Were Taken. Those monsters laid out schemes that took decades to unfold.”
“And some are still around. Why Blade in particular?”
“Because we don’t know anything about him. Except that you dragged him out of an alligator pit. Or something.”
“And you do know about me and Willow?”
“Yes.” I did not explain that my Company brothers Otto and Hagop had gone all the way back to the empire and, in passing, had rooted around in the pasts of army deserters Cordwood Mather and Willow Swan.
That did not leave Mather feeling comfortable.
Too bad.
It never hurt to have our paranoia worry somebody else so much they behaved themselves.
I glanced at Thai Dei. He was always there. But I never forgot that. He might be my bodyguard and brother-in-law and might owe me for saving the lives of some of his family and I might even like him fairly well but I never talked about anything substantial in front of him using Taglian or Nyueng Bao unless there was no other choice.
Maybe the Old Man’s paranoia was rubbing off on me. Maybe it came from how Thai Dei and Uncle Doj and Mother Gota sometimes seemed almost indifferent to Sahra’s murder. They acted as though the death of Thai Dei’s son To Tan was ten times more important . . . They had chosen to stay with me, to take part in the journey south to extract revenge, then seemed to give the matter little more thought. For me Sarie’s memory is a holy thing, due its moments every day.
Me thinking about Sarie is not a good thing, though. Every time I do I want to run to Smoke. But Smoke is not there for me now. One-Eye did get him out of town and even with the little wizard unlikely to be in a hurry the ghostwalker was getting farther and farther away.
Croaker sent word that he wanted to see me. I went to his hole in the wall, started to knock but heard voices inside. I paused, glanced at Thai Dei. He was not big and not handsome and was always so impassive you could not begin to guess what he was thinking. At the moment, though, he did not appear to have heard anything he should not. He just stood there scratching around the splints on his broken arm.
Then there was a raucous outbreak that sounded like crows squabbling.
I pounded on the door.
The noise stopped instantly. “Enter.”
I did so in time to see a huge crow flap out the one small window in Croaker’s cell. A twin of the first perched atop a coatrack that looked like it had been rescued from the gutter. Croaker did not much care about material things.
“You wanted me?”
“Yeah. Couple of things.” He spoke Forsberger from the start. Thai Dei would not get it but Cordy Mather would if he happened to be listening. And so would the crows. “We’re going to pull out before sunrise. I’ve decided. A few of the top priests are starting to think I won’t do them the way Lady did, so they’re trying to push a little here and there, test the waters. I figure we’d better hit the road before they get me tied up in knots.”
That did not sound quite like him. When he made deaf-mute signs as he finished I knew the speech was for other consumption even if it was factual.
Croaker pushed a folded scrap of paper across. “Take care of that before we go. Make sure you don’t leave any evidence to tie it to us.”
“What?” That did not sound good at all.
“Be ready to move. If you really have to drag the in-laws along have them ready to go, too. I’ll send word.”
“Your pets tell you anything I need to know?” Like I did not know that they were not his pets at all but spies or messengers from Soulcatcher.
“Not lately. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be the first to know.”
This was one of those points where the paranoia grabbed me. I could not be sure of the actual relationship between Croaker, Soulcatcher and those crows. I had to take him completely on faith at a time when my faith in everything was being tested severely on every hand.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Make sure you’ve got everything you need. It won’t be long.”
I opened the scrap of paper by the light of one of the few lamps illuminating the corridor between Croaker’s apartment and mine. I made no attempt to keep Thai Dei from seeing it. He is illiterate. Plus the note was written in the formal language of Juniper, as though to a bright six-year-old. Which was lucky for me since I have only a vague familiarity with the language, from documents dating back to the time the Company spent there, before I joined.
Soulcatcher was dead in those days. I suppose that is why Croaker chose to use that language. It was one he felt she was unlikely to know.
The message itself was simple. It instructed me to take the Annals I had recaptured from Soulcatcher, who had stolen them from where Smoke had had them hidden from us, and conceal them in the room where we had kept Smoke hidden.
I wanted to go back and argue. I wanted to keep them with us. But I grasped his reasoning. Soulcatcher and everyone else with an interest in keeping us and those Annals apart would assume that we would keep them close till we could decipher them. Out there in the field we would not have time to worry about protecting them. So we might as well hide them in a place that, right now, only the Radisha knew existed.
“Shit,” I said softly, in Taglian. No matter how many languages I learn I always find that word useful. It has pretty much the same meaning in every tongue.
Thai Dei did not ask. Thai Dei almost never does.
Behind me, more than the next lamp away, Croaker came out of his cell with a black blob perched on his shoulder. That meant he was going to see somebody native. He thought the crows intimidated the Taglians.
I told Thai Dei, “This is something I have to handle myself. Go tell Uncle Doj and your mother that we’ll be leaving sometime during the night. The Captain has decided.”
“You must accompany me partway. I cannot find my way in this great tomb.” He sounded like he meant it, too.
Nyueng Bao keep their feelings well hidden but I saw no reason why someone who had grown up in a tropical swamp should feel at home inside an immense pile of stone. Especially since all his past experience with cities and big buildings had been negative in the extreme.
I hurried to get him back into territory he knew well enough to walk alone. I had to get into Croaker’s cell fast, before he and his feathered friend returned. That is where we were keeping the books right now. We did not want anyone to know we had them though Soulcatcher surely suspected if she was aware that they had been stolen from where she had hidden them.
What a convoluted game.
I felt my wrist to make sure I still wore the loop of string that was really an amulet One-Eye had given me so I would be immune to all the spells of confusion and misdirection around the chamber where we kept Smoke.
Even before I collected the books, noting that Croaker had shooed all crows, closed the window and covered it with a curtain, I was thinking how best to conceal them once I had them where Croaker wanted them to go.
It would not be long after we left that the Radisha would start wondering who was taking care of the wizard now. My bet was that she would start looking for him. She was stubborn enough to find her way to the room.
Though she had shown little interest in Smoke lately she had never given up hope of bringing him back. If we enjoyed many successes against the Shadowmaster she would want his help even more.
Everything we did seemed to have potentially unpleasant consequences.
When the Old Man decides to move he moves. It was still tomb dark when I left the Palace and found him waiting with two of the giant black stallions that had come down from the north with the Black Company. Specially bred during the Lady’s heyday, with sorcery instilled into their very bones, they could run forever without getting tired and could outrace any mundane steed. And they were almost as smart as a really stupid human.
Croaker grinned down at my in-laws. They were completely nonplussed by this development. How were they supposed to keep up?
Kind of pissed me off, too. “I’ll handle it,” I said in Nyueng Bao. I handed Thai Dei my stuff, climbed the monster Croaker had brought for me. It had been a long time since I had ridden one but this one seemed to remember me. It tossed its head and snorted a greeting. “You too, big boy.” I took my stuff from Thai Dei.
“Where’s the standard?” Croaker demanded.
“In the wagon with One-Eye. Sleepy put it there before—”
“You let it out of your control? You don’t ever let it out of your control.”
“I was thinking about giving Sleepy the job.” Standard-bearer was one of the hats I wore. And not one of my favorites. Now that I am Annalist I should be passing it on. Croaker has mentioned that himself on occasion. “Give me your stuff now,” I told Thai Dei once I had mine settled in front of me.
Thai Dei’s eyes got big as he realized what I intended.
I told Mother Gota and Uncle Doj, “Stay on the stone road all the way and you’ll catch up with the army. If you’re stopped show the soldiers your papers.” Another innovation of the Liberator. More and more people involved in the war effort were being given bits of paper telling who they were and who was responsible for them. Since hardly anybody was literate the effort did not seem worthwhile.
Maybe. But the Old Man always has his reasons. Even when those are simply to confuse.
Croaker realized what I was doing just as I extended my hand to help Thai Dei climb. He opened his mouth to raise hell. I said, “Don’t bother. It ain’t worth a fight.”
Thai Dei looks like a skull with a thin layer of dark leather over it at the best of times. Now he looked as though he had just heard a death sentence pronounced. “It’ll be all right,” I told him, realizing he had never been on a horse. The Nyueng Bao have water buffalo and a few elephants. They do not ride those, except as children sometimes, helping with the plowing.
He did not want to do it. He really did not. He looked at Uncle Doj. Doj said nothing. It was Thai Dei’s call.
Croaker must have started looking smug or something. Thai Dei stared at him for a moment, shuddered all over, then extended his good hand. I pulled. Thai Dei was as hard and tough as they came but he weighed almost nothing.
The horse gave me a look nearly as ugly as the one I had gotten from my boss. The fact that they are capable of a job does not make the beasts eager to do it.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Croaker said.
“Go.”
He headed out. The pace he set was savage. He rode like he could feel no pain. He grumbled and fussed at me to keep up. He grumbled even more after we collected a cavalry escort south of the city. The regular horses had no hope of matching the pace he wanted to set. He had to keep waiting for them to catch up. Usually he was well ahead, surrounded by crows. The birds came and went and when we exchanged words he always knew things like where Blade was, where our troops were, where there was resistance to the Taglian advance and where there was none. He knew that Mogaba had sent cavalry north to blunt our advance.
It was weird. The man just plain knew things he should not. Not without walking with the ghost. And One-Eye was still ahead of us, making much better time than I would have believed possible had we not been trying to catch him.
Croaker got over his snit after the first day. He became social again. Headed for the Ghoja Ford, he asked, “You remember the first time we came here?”
“I remember rain and mud and misery and a hundred Shadowlanders trying to kill us.”
“Those were the days, Murgen.”
“They were as close to hell as I want to get. And that’s said from the viewpoint of a man who’s been a whole lot closer.”
He chuckled. “So thank me for this nice new road.”
“Thank you for the nice new road.” The Taglians called it the Rock Road or Stone Road. The first time we traveled it, it had been nothing but a snake of mud.
“You really think Sleepy is right for the standardbearer job?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I’m not ready to give it up yet.”
“This is the same Murgen who complained that he’s always the first guy into every scrape?”
“I said I’ve been thinking. I find I’ve got some extra motivation.” Our other companions told me I was handling Sarie’s loss pretty well. I thought so myself.
Croaker looked back at Thai Dei, who was clinging desperately to a swaybacked dapple mare we had picked up thirty miles back. He was handling his problem moderately well, too, for a guy who could use only one hand.
Croaker told me, “Don’t let motivation get in the way of good sense. When all the rest is said and done we’re still the Black Company. We get the other guys to do the dying.”
“I’m in control. I was a Black Company brother a lot longer than I was Sarie’s husband. I learned how to manage my emotions.”
He did not seem convinced. And I understood. He was concerned not about me as I existed right now but as I would in a crunch. The survival of the whole Company might hinge on which way one man jumped when the shitstorm hit.
The Captain glanced back. Despite their best efforts our escort had begun to string out. He paid no attention to them. He asked, “Learned anything about your in-laws?”
“Again?” He never let up. And I did not have an answer for him. “How about ‘love is blind’?”
“Murgen, you’re a damned fool if you really believe that. Maybe you ought to go back and reread the Books of Croaker.”
He lost me there. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve got me a lady, too. Still alive, granted. We’ve got plenty tied up in each other. We made us a baby together. Any two fools can do that by accident, of course, but it’s usually a benchmark in a relationship. But what we have as man and woman, father and mother, doesn’t mean I trust Lady even a little in any but that one way. And she can’t trust me. It’s the way she’s made. It’s the life she lived.”
“Sahrie never had any ambitions, boss. Except maybe to get me to actually go into the farming I’m always talking about so I wouldn’t get skragged gloriously in some typically heroic military manner like falling off a horse and drowning while I was crossing a creek during the rainy season.”
“Sahra never worried me, Murgen. What bothers me is this uncle who doesn’t act like any other Nyueng Bao I’ve ever seen.”
“Hey, he’s one old guy who has a thing about swords. He’s a priest and his scripture is sharp steel. And he’s got a grudge. Just keep him pointed toward the Shadowmaster.”
Croaker nodded grimly. “Time will tell.” He did grim very well.
We crossed the great stone bridge Lady had ordered built at Ghoja. Crows filled the trees on the southern bank. They squabbled and carried on and seemed to find us highly amusing.
I said, “I worry more about those things.”
Croaker did not respond. He did order a halt to rest the animals. So many had gone south ahead of us that there were no well rested remounts available. Amidst all the saluting and hasty turning out of an honor guard and whatnot, I stared southward and said, “That little clown is making damned good time.” I had asked already and had learned that One-Eye was still a day ahead.
“We’ll catch him before we get to Dejagore.” Croaker eyed me as though he feared the city name would strike me with the impact of some terrible spell. I disappointed him. Thai Dei, who could follow the conversation because we were speaking Taglian, showed no reaction, either, though the siege had been as terrible for his people as for the Company. Nyueng Bao seldom betray any emotion in the presence of outsiders.
I told Thai Dei, “Give your horse to the groom and let’s see if we can’t find something decent to eat.” Living on horseback is not a gourmet’s delight.
For the same reason there were no fresh remounts, there were very few delicacies at the Ghoja fortress, but because we belonged to the Liberator’s party we were given a newly taken gamecock that was so full of juice and substance my stomach nearly rebelled at taking it in. After eating we got to stay inside, out of the cold, and get some sleep. I should have stuck to Croaker in case his talks with local commanders turned up anything that belonged in the Annals, but after a short interior debate I chose sleep instead. If he heard anything worthwhile the Old Man would tell me. If necessary I could come back with Smoke later.
I dreamed but did not remember the dreams long enough to note them down. They were unpleasant but not overpowering or so terrible Thai Dei had to awaken me.
We were back on the road before sunrise.
We overtook One-Eye passing through the hills that surround Dejagore. When I first glimpsed his wagon and realized it had to be him I started to shudder and had to fight an urge to kick my mount into a faster pace. I wanted to get to Smoke.
Maybe I had more of a problem than I wanted to admit.
I did not show it enough to be noticed, though.
One-Eye never slowed down a bit.
There had been some changes since my days of hell in Dejagore or Jaicur, as its natives called it, or Stormgard, as it was named while it was the seat of the deceased Shadowmaster Stormshadow. Poor witch, she had been totally unable to guard the Shadowlands against the storm of the Black Company.
The plain outside the city had been drained of all water and cleared of wreckage and corpses, though I thought I could still smell death in the air. Prisoners of war from the Shadowlands still labored on the city walls and inside the city itself. Why seemed problematic. There were almost no Jaicuri left alive.
“Interesting notion, planting the plain in grain,” I said, seeing what looked like winter wheat peeping through last year’s stubble.
“One of Lady’s ideas,” Croaker replied. He still watched me as though he expected me to start foaming at the mouth any minute. “Anywhere there is a permanent garrison one of the responsibilities of the soldiers is to raise their own food.”
When it came to the logistics of war Lady was more the expert than Croaker. Till we came to Taglios he was never part of anything bigger than the Company. Lady had managed the warmaking instruments of a vast empire for decades.
The Old Man simply left most of that stuff to Lady. He would rather lie back scheming his schemes and piling up the tools Lady could use.
The crop notion was not new. Lady had done the same around most of her permanent installations in the north.
You got to go with what works.
Helps keep the neighbors more tractable, too, if you are not stealing their daughters and seed grain.
“You sure you’re all right?” Croaker demanded.
We were nearly at the foot of the ramp to the north barbican. One-Eye was no more than a hundred feet ahead now, perfectly aware of our presence, but not slowing down a bit. I guess I was starting to push ahead.
“I’ve got it under control, Captain. I don’t fall off into the past anymore and I hardly ever wake up screaming. I hold it down to a little shaking and sweating.”
“Anything starts getting to you, I want to know. I expect to be here a while. You’re going to need to be able to take it.”
“I won’t screw up,” I promised.
I did not wait long after Thai Dei and I took up quarters in one of the same buildings we had occupied during the siege. Reconstruction had not reached that part of town yet. Some of the old litter still lay around. “At least they got rid of all the bones,” I told Thai Dei.
He grunted, looked around like he expected to see ghosts.
“You be all right here?” I asked. Nyueng Bao do believe in ghosts and spirits and ancestors who follow you around nagging if you have not gotten them buried properly. A lot of Nyueng Bao pilgrims passed over here without benefit of the appropriate ceremonies.
“I must be. I must have everything ready when Doj comes.”
That was a major speech for Thai Dei.
Uncle Doj was a priest of some sort. Presumably he would take this opportunity to complete what he had not had time to do four years ago.
“You go ahead. I have things to do.” Far places to see. Pain to be given the slip, though I did not admit that directly even to myself.
Thai Dei started to put his few possessions aside.
“No. It’s more of that secret Company stuff that I’m expected to do alone.”
Thai Dei grunted, almost pleased to have his time be his own.
It always was his but he would not listen when I insisted he did not owe me. If it were not for me he would not have lost his sister and son.
Arguing with a Nyueng Bao is like arguing with water buffalo. You cannot get through and after a while the Nyueng Bao loses interest in listening. Might as well save your energy.
“Wondered how long it would be,” One-Eye said when I tracked him down. He had brought the wagon into our old part of town but had not taken Smoke out. He had it backed into a tight alleyway where, I presumed, the wagon would vanish inside camouflaging spells as soon as he dealt with his team.
“Unhitch them animals, Kid, and get them over to the transient stable while I straighten up here.”
Arguing with One-Eye gets to be a little like arguing with Nyueng Bao. He goes completely deaf. He did so in this instance. He went about his business exactly as though I was not there. In the interest of efficiency I took care of the animals.
I believe I did a little grumbling about wishing Goblin was back.
That little toad of a wizard Goblin is One-Eye’s best friend and worst enemy. He was so hard to find I thought, at first, that I was having trouble getting Smoke to understand what I wanted to do. Then I tried going back to where I had seen him last, in the river delta on the edge of Nyueng Bao country. My plan was to follow him forward in time to where he was now. And that worked just fine till Goblin’s ship entered a fog bank and never came out again.
Smoke could not find him.
It took me a while to comprehend that Smoke might have been primed to shy away from what Goblin was doing. Maybe to keep One-Eye from finding out and interfering. It would be just like the little shit to blow a whole operation because he did not think before pulling some nasty practical joke on his friend.
I did some experimenting. Sure enough, Smoke had been given some special instructions. The Old Man had not given up visiting him completely.
Once I knew that, I had little difficulty getting past Croaker’s safeguards. I fear One-Eye would have had little more trouble.
I found Goblin standing on a sandy beach far down the uncharted coast of the Shindai Kus, a terrible desert that fills a vast chunk of land between the northern and southern regions of the Shadowlands. The impassable mountains called the Dandha Presh only get shorter out there before they finally wade into the ocean.
Goblin was looking out to sea. A ship rode her anchor inshore. Boats were plunging in the surf. Goblin was yammering a litany of complaints. From the faces of his companions it was safe to guess that they had heard it all before.
What the hell was Goblin doing out there on that bleak coast?
I dropped back in time to listen in from the beginning.
Goblin was tormented by hatreds. So what does the Captain do? He sends nobody else but Goblin himself off to chart the unknown coast. Goblin hated swamps. So naturally the first leg of the journey took him downriver through the delta, which was one huge swamp two hundred miles across, without one decent channel, obviously totally unfit for human habitation because only Nyueng Bao lived there.
Goblin hated sea travel almost as much as One-Eye did. So what did he get after cutting through the swamp, damned near building a canal to manage that? A goddamn ocean with waves taller than any self respecting tree. He hated deserts. So what did he find after he finally got his little fleet past the end of the swampy coast? Country so barren scorpions and sand fleas could not make a living there. You baked during the day and froze at night and you never got away from the sand. The wind blew it into everything. He had sand in his boots right now . . .
“I wasn’t born for this,” Goblin complained. “Nobody deserves this. Me less than most. What did I ever do to the Old Man? All right, so maybe me and One-Eye drink a little and get rowdy sometimes, but so what? It’s just youthful high spirits if Sleepy does it.”
Naturally he overlooked the fact that when he and One-Eye get drunk they always start squabbling and tend to begin throwing sloppily woven spells around, busting things up far worse than Sleepy ever could.
“A man has to cut loose sometimes, you know what I mean? Nobody ever gets hurt, do they?” That was not an exaggeration, that was an outright fabrication. “Hell, in a world where there was any shred of justice I’d be retired somewhere where the wine is sweet and the girls appreciate a man with experience. I gave the Company the best centuries of my life.”
Goblin hated being in charge. That meant having to think and make decisions. And it meant taking responsibility. Goblin hated all those things, too. He just wanted to cruise through life doing only what was necessary to get by while somebody else did the thinking and made the decisions.
Goblin hated hard work, too, and in this desert everybody was going to have to bust ass to stay alive.
I had Smoke take me up high, with the eagles had any been able to survive out there to see what had Goblin so excited.
He had not exaggerated about the desert.
Near the coast the Shindai Kus was all golden sand. The surf brought that in from the deep. Continuous gales carried that sand inland, using it to scour the skin off hills that, as they grew up and marched to the east, became the Dandha Presh. On the coast few of the hills stood more than a hundred feet above the sand. None of those showed the least sign of water erosion. It had not rained there for a thousand years.
I started to descend. Goblin and two others were walking inland slowly, testing the surface. Something exploded out of the sand ahead. An impossible something. A monster that could not exist in this world, a devil thing the size of an elephant but with more legs and hair than a tarantula plus some squidlike tentacles and a scorpion’s tail thrown in for good measure. It staggered around groggily. Obviously it had lain there a long time, awaiting the footsteps that called it forth.
Goblin’s companions fled. The little wizard cursed and said, “Another thing I hate is things that jump up out of the sand.” While the monster was still woozy he hit it with some of his best stuff.
Something like a yard wide, a three legged stained glass throwing star appeared in his hand. He used it like a throwing star. The monster bellowed in outrage as the star clipped a couple tentacles and several legs off its right side. It tried to charge Goblin, who elected for the better part of valor and hauled ass.
The monster sort of dragged itself around in a big circle, leaving ruts in the golden sand. It lost interest in the men on the beach. For a while it tried to put its severed limbs back on but the graft would not take. Finally, it just sort of shuddered fatalistically and began to dig itself back down into the sand with the limbs it still had.
“And another thing,” Goblin complained, “I hate the whole concept of the Shaded Road.”
Shaded Road was some secret project kept from me because I had had no need to know. I had overheard the name mentioned once or twice.
“I’m even beginning to wonder how much I like Croaker. This shit is pure insanity. I hope the son of a bitch gets to spend his afterlife in a place like this.”
No more need to check up on Goblin. He was fine. Like any good soldier, if he was bitching he was perfectly all right.
I went back to Dejagore.
I came back into myself inside One-Eye’s wagon. I was starving and thirsty. Smoke smelled bad. “One-Eye! I have to get something to eat. Where’s the transients’ mess?”
The little black man stuck his disgusting hat into the wagon. I could barely make out his equally ugly face. It must be getting dark out already.
“For us it’s in the citadel.”
“Isn’t that wonderful. Maybe I won’t eat the meat.” Mogaba and his cronies, still on our side then, had sat out the siege in the citadel, dining on the occasional hapless citizen of Jaicur.
“Pretend it’s chicken, it ain’t so bad,” One-Eye said, just to turn my stomach. His nose wrinkled. “Smells in here.”
“I told you. You’d better get him cleaned up.”
He tried out his baleful stare. It did not work. I said, “You have to live with him.”
I thought Croaker would want to catch up with Lady. They had not seen one another for a while. But he seemed content to rest at Dejagore, communing with his dark messengers more and more.
The crows troubled those of the Old Crew whose duties tied them to Dejagore. Candles and Wheezer came to me complaining. I told them, “He’s the boss. I guess he can like crows if he wants.” I studied Wheezer closely, unable to believe his disease had not killed him yet. He coughed almost continuously now.
“It’s what the natives think about them,” Candles said. “They’re bad omens to everybody but Stranglers.”
“I have a feeling they’ll be really bad omens for anybody who starts complaining about them. Wheezer, you on permanent assignment here?”
The old man hacked his way around an affirmative answer.
“Good. I don’t think you ought to be in the field at this time of year.”
“What good will it do to leave me back here to die alone?”
“You’re going to outlive me, you stubborn old fart.”
“I’m part of this thing now. You people all the time tell us about our history and now we got a chance to find the beginning place . . . I’m going to be there.”
I nodded, accepting that. That was his right.
That made me reflect on how different we were from other mercenary bands I have seen. There was almost no bullying or brutality among the men. Historically you would not have gotten in if you were the sort of shit who made himself feel good by causing pain to those around you. And if you did chances were you would not survive long.
The history and culture and brotherhood stuff is laid on early and often and if you survive long enough to give it a chance you usually go for it.
Croaker, of course, was the ultimate disciple of the Company thing. And he was able to sell everyone else. Except Mogaba. And Mogaba’s main problem with the brotherhood was that Mogaba was not in charge.
Not really relevant, except to indicate that we are not a band of misfit brutes. We are a sensitive bunch of misfits who try to care about our brothers. Most of the time.
One-Eye appeared and invited himself into the conversation, ignoring Wheezer even though the old lunger was from his own homeland. “Hey, Kid, I just saw the Troll trundling along Glimmers Like Dewdrops Street. You sure you don’t know where Goblin is? I got to get those two together.”
The Troll is what her own people call Mother Gota behind her back. She is even nastier to them than to us outsiders. We have an excuse. We were not born Nyueng Bao.
I told One-Eye, “They made real good time considering the way she walks.” My mother-in-law walks like she is terminally bowlegged and has no joints in her legs, rolling like a fat merchantman in heavy seas.
The little black man slipped a glance sidelong at Thai Dei, who was handy as always when not specifically told to stay away. Thai Dei showed signs of actual emotion. One-Eye was hoping he was not offended to the point where he was going to go flailing around . . .
I whispered, “Even he calls her the Troll sometimes. But do be more circumspect.” Louder, I asked, “What about Uncle Doj?”
“Didn’t see him.”
“Thai Dei. You’d better find your mother.” Uncle Doj would find us. When it suited him.
Everybody watched Thai Dei go. When he was out of earshot I murmured, “I never missed her for an instant.” I hoped Thai Dei would find some way to prolong my joy.
One-Eye snickered.
I said, “You ask me, she’s the perfect woman for you, not Goblin.”
“Bite your tongue, Kid.”
“I mean it.”
“You got a sick sense of humor. And you got the Old Man aggravated.”
“Huh? How?”
“Way he told it, you’re a couple days overdue with your standard reports.”
“Oh oh.” That was not entirely true but it was close. “I’ll get on it right away.”
“Still wearing your bracelet?”
“Uh . . . ” I got it. “Yeah.”
“Good. You’ll need it.”
Candles and Wheezer had no idea what we were talking about. But Candles did offer a good bit of advice as I departed. “Mind the crows,” he told me.
The crows did seem to be interested in me lately. I did not like that, but it did make sense from a viewpoint other than my own. I was very close to Croaker. Soulcatcher would want to keep an eye on me, too.
The old saw applied. Forewarned was forearmed.
I needed to catch up on events since last I had had time to spend with Smoke. I should have been surveying the front instead of checking up on Goblin. Croaker did not want to know about Goblin. Whatever the little shit was doing, it was so secret nobody was supposed to know.
The string on my wrist allowed me to approach One-Eye’s wagon without becoming disoriented or distracted, just as it had done in the maze of the Palace. The crows following me, though, began to get confused while we were still a quarter mile away. They lost me.
I wondered if that was all good. That sort of thing was sure to arouse Soulcatcher’s curiosity if she had time free from her other schemes.
I wondered if Smoke’s attitude toward Soulcatcher would be different out here, if I could get him to stalk her now that he was away from the Palace. Always, while we were there, his soul stubbornly refused to play along whenever I tried to spy on Lady’s mad sister.
I climbed into the wagon and made myself comfortable. It looked as though One-Eye had been doing a little ghostwalking of his own. Food and water were available in large quantities. I have to eat and drink a lot when I go out a lot. Ghostwalking sucks the fluid and energy out of you fast. I can see the trap there. The world Smoke walks is so comforting you could easily forget that you have to come back to eat. You could end up just like Smoke.
After a long drink and a sugar bun I lay down on the smelly mat and closed my eyes, reached out and took hold of Smoke’s soul. He seemed vaguely troubled. Usually he is blandly empty.
I could find no proximate cause for his discomfort. Maybe One-Eye was not taking care of his physical needs well enough. I had best check. After I ran my circuit.
I went out and watched the Taglian brushfire crackle through feeble Shadowlander defenses. The southerners were still groggy from the earthquake. Many places their collapse was so swift it had no chance to become a rout.
Confused reports began to reach Mogaba at Charandaprash. He relayed them to Longshadow. The Shadowmaster remained convinced that we could not manage a major winter offensive, that this was just another of Croaker’s clever attempts to direct attention away from what he was really doing.
Longshadow was getting his reports without help from Howler. The misshapen, tortured little sorcerer seemed to be on vacation. I could not find him.
Narayan Singh and the Daughter of Night were holed up in a Strangler tagalong encampment near Mogaba’s main force at Charandaprash. I am not sure why but the child caught my interest. I began to roam back and forth in time, studying her. I grew troubled. I had found something the Old Man needed to know.
His daughter had some way of scrying distant events, though not as intimately as Smoke did. So far nobody, not even Singh, was listening to her, but they would when Narayan realized that all her vague oracles hit their marks.
She seemed to go into a trance each time. I wanted to study that more closely but Smoke rebelled. And this time I am not sure I blamed him. That child had an aura about her that made you shudder and think of tombs and things best left buried even out there in the emotionless space that Smoke walked.
Lady was far to the south of Dejagore, pushing herself and her soldiers. She looked extremely haggard, though hardly showing her age since she makes One-Eye look like a pup. Willow Swan, with the Royal Guards, was in her train, as was the Prahbrindrah Drah, who claimed he had to be there in order to coordinate his efforts with hers. I do not think he fooled anyone but himself. Lady was short enough of temper that she did not put up with any moon eyed crap from anybody.
Swan was troubled. The Prince was baffled. I eavesdropped on several conversations where they tried to reason out what was bothering Lady. They came up with no ideas and Lady offered no clues herself. Once again she was content to keep the bleakness and pain of her interior world to herself.
I supposed after a life as long as hers, as alone, as tormented when she was the wife of the Dominator, coming out and petitioning the help of lesser beings seemed pointless, though she was one of us maggots herself, now. More or less.
In defiance of all that was known by amateurs and experts alike, her lost powers had been coming back for years. She was not the Lady who had built the empire up north, so strong she kept ten like the Howler on leashes, as hounds to bay before her and do her dark bidding, but she was strong enough to trouble Howler and Longshadow and, I am sure, her sister Soulcatcher.
That was another wedge that had come between Croaker and Lady. The Old Man does not trust the side of her that loves the darkness. She had been too intimate with it for too long.
He fears losing her. I am afraid he is driving her away because he is not dealing with his fears very well.
Lady was becoming the terror of all who resisted her advance, that was certain. That advance was crueler than the earthquake wherever anyone fought back.
I found my Company brethren in the thick of the action everywhere, leading this band or that. Their Nyueng Bao bodyguards stayed busy. Though they were weak after years of being hunted down by Croaker and Lady, the Deceivers were aptly named. Those who remained alive were the most skilled of their kind and they shunned no opportunity to strike at the Company in honor of their goddess.
Though Mogaba had several thousand horsemen moving north they were not yet involved in the fighting. Of Shadowlander forces in the regions being swamped only Blade’s bunch had not been caught flatfooted. And Blade, after a couple of brisk and for him very satisfactory encounters with regiments raised by Taglian religious leaders, was making little effort to hold any territory. He was falling back toward Charandaprash at a pace just fast enough to make certain our forces did not get behind him.
His whole area of operations was becoming infested with the religious bands. Ever since their falling out Croaker had been allowing the priests to go after Blade virtually independent of the rest of the military. Blade hated priests and never hid that fact. Working with the Shadowmaster gave him an opportunity to express his hatred fully. In turn, the priesthoods were determined to silence him forever.
The Old Man seemed perfectly happy to allow the priests, who had a strong tradition of intrigue and interference in secular events, to spend their treasure and energy and most devout followers trying to rid him of someone he detested.
As he retreated Blade kept drawing those guys in and destroying them. For a general with no formal training he did a great job of taking advantage of his enemies’ blind spots.
All across the south forces from both sides drifted toward the Plain of Charandaprash. The big show would take place there before much longer. Certainly before winter turned.
I came and went with Smoke. Time passed, almost without meaning. The Old Man got us onto the road again. I scarcely noticed. I was too busy with Smoke. Croaker did not like me being in the wagon all the time but there was so much going on so many places that he had to put up with it in order to get the information he wanted. Though his attitude could shift with the breeze.
For a while I pretended to be sick, to give the crows and my in-laws a reason for my being in the wagon all the time. Crows are stupid. They did not catch on. But I think Uncle Doj got the idea there was something up almost before we cleared Dejagore’s south gate.
I was never a boozer or hophead. In this part of the world all the major religions frown on alcohol so there is not a lot available though One-Eye never has trouble finding the little there is. If none is around he will make some. All my life addictions scared the shit out of me. When I see a guy whose pain has driven him behind the veil of alcohol or any drug I want to flee the same weakness I fear can be found inside me.
I was becoming addicted to the freedom from pain to be found in the in between. When I was out there with Smoke the horrors of Dejagore and the agony left behind by Sarie’s murder became no more than distant, nagging aches. That weak side of me kept promising that even the faraway aches would fade if Smoke and I just kept working.
I was both happy and completely miserable at the same time. My in-laws were little help. Thai Dei, as ever, said almost nothing. Uncle Doj merely urged me to be strong. “Death and despair are what we endure all our lives. This world is all one of pain and loss illuminated only briefly by moments of happiness and wonder. We must live for those times, not bemoan their passing.”
“We must live for revenge,” Mother Gota snapped. “You old fool.” She was contemptuous as she glared at me. Nor did she spare my feelings. “My mother was a madwoman in her last days. We will be well rid of this weakling.”
Being a weakling and not much caring for this world anymore, I did not feel obliged to keep the peace. “I bet that back in the swamp they thank their lucky stars every night that you decided not to come home.”
Thai Dei became pure stone as I put him in a spot where his obligations had to butt heads.
Uncle Doj chuckled. He rested a hand on Thai Dei’s arm. “A shaft well sped, youngster. Gota, I must remind you that we are here on sufferance. The Stone Soldier accepts us for Sahra’s sake. His master does not.”
Though I have a pretty good handle on Nyueng Bao these days I knew I had missed some key part of that. I did understand that he was telling her not to piss Croaker off because he might toss them out. And that was something he could perfectly well do. He considered them little more than camp followers. And Croaker hates camp followers. He considers them worse than leeches.
I had to wonder if Uncle Doj was not interested in something more than just revenge for the murders of Sahra and Thai Dei’s son To Tan.
I am not certain where we were. I think about eighty miles south of Dejagore and passing over into territories only recently taken into our hands, where our appearance was endured with the same stoicism as the earthquake. Not much cleaning up had gotten done because the Shadowmaster’s henchmen had employed the locals in a vain attempt to blunt our advance. Brave fools. Now there was no one to bury them.
Total paranoia hit me there.
I was unaware of the fact because I was in the wagon but we were just making camp. I was out scouting the maneuvers of Mogaba’s cavalry and sitting in on his planning session for making our lives much more unpleasant at Charandaprash. I had a sneer in my heart. He would not have a single surprise for us. From having watched Lady and all the special forces she and Croaker had put together I knew we would have plenty for Mogaba.
Bright man, he expected that. He got to know Croaker pretty well before he deserted to the Shadowmaster.
Then the paranoia hit. Smugness evaporated. Had I been in flesh I would have begun to shake as though suddenly thrown into an icy river. I knew I was not alone.
I would have panicked except for the dullness of emotion out there. I did do a sort of sudden spin around on the spirit level.
For a second I thought I saw a face, not directed my way.
It was a face out of a collective nightmare, as big as a cow, the color of ripe eggplant. Its smile was all fangs. And it was smiling at whatever it saw.
Its eyes were plates of fire that, at the same time, seemed to be pools of darkness capable of drowning souls.
I withdrew, very carefully at first, but in full flight toward the safety of reality when the face seemed suddenly startled and began to turn. I emerged too terrified to be hungry or thirsty. I was shaking and babbling and making no sense at all. The Old Man was close by. One-Eye had him in the wagon by the time I got myself under control.
“What the hell happened, Murgen? You have some kind of fit? You going to start going away again on me?” He touched me, felt the shakes that still went right down to the heart of me. “One-Eye . . . ”
I croaked out, “I just saw Kina. I don’t know if she saw me.”
Death is eternity. Eternity is stone. Stone is silence. Stone speaketh not but stone doth remember. Deep within the dark heart of the grey fastness stands a massive throne of worm-eaten wood. This throne has shifted sideways and tilted dramatically. A dark shape sprawls upon the throne, locked in enchanted slumber, nailed down by silver daggers driven through its limbs. Its once vacant face is drawn in agony.
The figure draws a deep breath. Silence yields to a great slow rumbling beat.
This is immortality of a sort but its price is paid in diamonds of pain, in treasure by the bucket.
In the night, when the wind no longer blows and small shadows no longer creep, the fortress reclaims its silence.
Silence is stone. Stone is eternity. Eternity is death.
South of Shadowlight, which offered no resistance, the land rose and became gorsy, stony, and as wrinkled as my mother-in-law’s face. Snow lurked wherever sunlight seldom fell. Trees were scattered but of a variety that clung stubbornly to some of its fruit throughout the winter. That fruit was tough and dry but it grew tastier as we moved farther from civilization and anyplace where we could acquire more palatable foods. The route the Captain insisted we follow was one that had received very little preparation. And there were no navigable waterways up which barges could carry supplies.
We had cattle along. The animals could sustain themselves poorly off the vegetation. Those of us willing to eat flesh could gnaw on their stringy meat. But we were just getting started here and already I was convinced that Croaker had made the wrong choice, attacking now.
Those soldiers who were vegetarians suffered terribly.
The morning wind had a real bite. This definitely was no season for travel. We could end up in real trouble if Mogaba held us up for long.
That might be a good strategy for him to pursue. Just hold us at Charandaprash while all our forces came together, with all their camp followers, then continue to hold us there while we exhausted our resources. Then he could slaughter the starving remnants as they tried to flee.
Though he never mentioned it in so many words, part of Croaker’s plan was to replenish our army by seizing supplies Mogaba had laid in for his. The Captain very much counted on victory now, soon, however cautiously he talked.
He had put us in a position where there was no other choice.
The region around Shadowlight remained prosperous even after the earthquake but already that was four hard days’ march behind us. Our foragers were eating up half what they gathered just bringing it in.
Longshadow remained unconvinced that our advance was for real. He had a distinct problem imagining minds working differently from his own. Mogaba entertained doubts himself though the Deceivers and his own agents kept him informed of all the disasters to the Shadowmaster’s cause. Few of the quake-battered towns and cities made more than token attempts to resist. The Captain had chosen his moment well, if emotionally.
Dark grey-indigo mountains spanned the southern horizon. Charandaprash was just days away. The Captain slowed our advance to a very deliberate pace so the soldiers would have more time to hunt and forage. Our part of the army began coming together in larger and larger forces. Mogaba’s cavalry did not seem much inclined to skirmish yet. Ahead of us streamers of smoke sometimes rose as fleeing enemy caravans failed to run fast enough to outdistance our own horsemen.
Our headquarters party clung to the road. Always, now, there seemed to be corpses lying beside it. They came in all varieties, few of them being our own people.
Croaker had forced me out of One-Eye’s wagon. I was no longer allowed inside while we were moving. So I led the way, mounted atop that giant black stallion, always presenting the Black Company standard. Crows were around constantly. I expect Soulcatcher, wherever she took their reports, was thoroughly amused. The standard was one we had adapted from one she had assigned us decades ago, based upon her own fire-breathing skull of a seal.
Uncle Doj walked beside me. He carried a lance as well as Ash Wand, his holy sword. He had assumed the job of bodyguard while Thai Dei was elsewhere with his mother. We two encountered all the corpses first. “There’s another one that looks like a Deceiver,” I said, indicating a badly hacked body wearing nothing but a ragged loincloth, despite the weather.
“It is good,” Uncle Doj told me. He rolled the corpse over. The man had been run down by someone with an especial dislike for his cult. He had been mutilated badly, mostly while he was still alive.
I did not feel a shred of pity. Men just like him murdered my Sarie.
We encountered nothing but signs of outstanding success. But those did not inspire my confidence in the future.
Roads converged. Forces massed up even more. Every hour we drew nearer Charandaprash, Mogaba and his four badass divisions of well-trained and motivated veterans. Getting closer to soldiers who had been getting ready for us for years. Getting closer to soldiers who were not the clumsy, indifferent militias that had made up most of our opposition so far. The Old Man talked confidently in front of the Taglians, who did not know any better, but I knew he had his doubts.
We would have a numbers advantage but our men had not been drilled until they were automatons. Our men did not fear their officers more than they feared death itself. Our men did not know the price you paid if you stirred the anger of a Shadowmaster. Not in the intimate way the defenders of Charandaprash knew.
Our men had not rehearsed again and again, learning every boulder on the ground where they would be expected to fight.
A breeze whipped smoke and the stench of death into my face. A soldier shouted. I glanced back. The Captain, wearing the hideous black Widowmaker armor Lady had created for him, was coming up. Ravens surrounded him. For the thousandth time I wondered about his connection with Soulcatcher.
“You sent for me?”
“There’s something you ought to see, I think.” I had not seen it myself yet, but did know what to expect.
He gestured. “Let’s go.”
We rode up a small rise. We stopped to look at the bodies of six small brown men far too old to have been soldiers. They lay inside a bowl that had been hollowed out of the hard ground, around a fire that still yielded a puny thread of smoke.
“Where are the men who killed them?”
“They didn’t hang around. You don’t take chances with these people.”
Croaker grunted, not pleased but understanding the thinking of the ordinary soldier. He removed his ugly winged helmet. Crows took the opportunity to perch on his shoulders. He seemed not to notice. “I’d say we’ve gotten somebody’s attention.”
I had run into little brown men like these before, years ago when first we had come into the south and more recently in the Deceivers’ holy Grove of Doom, where I had ambushed many of their top people. A group of these skrinsa shadowweavers had had the misfortune to be there on behalf of the Shadowmaster.
These men would have been doing the same as those others, using a gaggle of little shadows to spy and run messages. Croaker pointed. Several of the old men had had chunks ripped right out of them. He observed, “Lady did say you shouldn’t get in the way of her bamboo toys.”
We had overtaken Lady, more or less. She was following a line of advance several miles to our left. If Croaker and she had stolen a kiss they had managed it by magic. Croaker was in too big a hurry to assume complete control of his assembling center corps of two divisions.
He carried a bamboo pole slung across his back. So did I. And so did every other man in the main force, now. Some carried a bundle. “Oh?”
“She’ll pitch a fit if this gets to be a habit.” Croaker was amused.
“She never was a ground-pounder.”
Your average infantryman does not give a rat’s ass about the design function of a weapon. He is concerned about staying alive and about getting his job done with the least risk taken. The bamboo doohickeys were meant for combating killer shadows? So fucking what? If using them made taking out nasty little wizards easier, guess what was going to happen?
Pop!
We sighted Lake Tanji an hour before night fell. The sudden view was so stunning I stopped dead in my tracks. The lake was miles across and cold grey. It dwindled away to my right, the direction our road ran. To our left the land was very rugged. Arms of increasingly substantial hills ran down to the water. The Dandha Presh itself seemed to rise directly from the far shore, all greys in the evening light, dark down low and lighter at the peaks, where snowfields sparkled. A playful god had scrawled a thin cloudline across the panorama, halfway up the mountains, so that the peaks rode a magic carpet.
Grey, grey, grey. Right then the whole world seemed grey.
“Impressive,” the Captain said.
“Not at all like seeing it through Smoke’s eyes.”
He frowned at me even though not even a crow was near enough to hear. “Look there.”
A village burned along the shore several miles ahead. A ball of blue light streaked out of the conflagration, over the water, narrowly missed a small boat. The men aboard the boat tried to row harder but began to catch crabs and get in one another’s way. A swarm of points of light darted at them, not only blue but green, yellow, pink and a stunning shade of violet. A man jumped up and flailed around after a ball hit him in the throat. He fell overboard. His antics rocked the boat dangerously. It shipped water, raised its stern into the air momentarily.
A ball of light zipped through its bottom, leaving a shimmering hole.
Most of the balls missed. Those continued across the lake, slowing gradually. Eventually they just drifted on the breeze and faded away.
The excitement brought a flock of crows fast. They circled overhead. Two big ones dropped onto Croaker’s shoulders. The others scattered in pairs. The boat sank.
It had been bound for an island that was little more than a rock outcrop boasting a dozen scraggly pine trees and some halfhearted brush. A crow that got close suddenly folded up and went ballistic, hit the water and floated without twitching.
Croaker glared. “Murgen. Move down the foreslope, out of the wind. Find a place to dig in for the night. Line troops only on this side of the ridge. I want a double watch kept. I want two battery wagons up, trained on that island.”
His shoulder ornaments were agitated now. I did not mention them. He was starting to go spooky and he did not answer questions anyway.
One of the ravens squawked. Croaker grunted back. He dismounted, grabbed an extra bamboo pole from a nearby soldier, headed downhill. His mount followed the trail he broke.
The soldiers who had begun to gather followed Croaker’s example. They formed a skirmish line as they advanced. I could not unsling my own bamboo pole because I was mounted and burdened with the standard. I followed the men on foot. Uncle Doj formed a one-man rearguard.
Two Shadowlander militiamen broke cover suddenly. They stumbled toward the water’s edge. Arrows swarmed.
Standing orders were to take no prisoners. The Shadowlanders had been warned. They had been given four years’ grace. They had made their choices.
Afterward the soldiers began to settle in groups, finding what shelter they could, starting their cooking fires. More and more came up to the line. Our staff group gathered in the lee of a shattered boulder, everybody grumbling and shivering. Pessimists started talking about the chances of snow.
I planted the standard. Uncle Doj and I got ready to make supper. There were no servants in this army. Servants ate up food soldiers could fix for themselves.
Supper would be rice and dried fruit. Croaker and I would add a few strips of jerked beef. Uncle Doj would add some fish meal to his rice. Many of the soldiers would eat no flesh because of religious proscriptions.
I said, “Maybe we can find out if there are any fish in this lake.”
The Old Man looked out there. “Looks like there could be trout.” But he did not say anything about maybe catching them.
The battery wagons came up. Each had a bed four feet wide by ten feet long packed with bamboo tubes. They were the ultimate product of Lady’s arsenals. The Captain supervised their positioning. He wanted them set just right.
Under this overcast it would not be long before it was dark enough for shadows to prowl.
East of the lake, where Lady’s left wing division was advancing through very rugged country, a single point of light shot into the air, sped southward, lost velocity and began to lose altitude slowly. Balls in several colors followed quickly.
The soldiers stirred nervously.
A whiff sound came from a nearby wagon. A green fireball streaked out over the lake, its light reflecting off the water. The breeze had died. The lake’s surface was growing calm.
I was more nervous than any of the soldiers. I had seen what those stinking little shadowweavers could do. I had seen men scream out their lives while something invisible gnawed at them.
The soldiers had heard the stories. The sentries would stay awake tonight.
The green ball did not dip toward that island. I sighed. Maybe there was no danger after all.
The wagon crews loosed another ball at regular intervals. Not a one dipped toward that island. I regained my confidence. The men began to relax. Eventually I rolled up in my blankets and lay there watching fireballs streak across the sky.
It was a comfort knowing no shadow attack would go undetected.
I listened to the wagon crews lay bets on what color fireball would pop out next. There was no known pattern. They were getting bored. Soon they would be bitching about getting stuck with the duty while everybody else got to sleep.
I was having a bizarre dream about Cordy Mather and the Radisha when somebody poked me. I groaned, cracked an eyelid. I knew I did not have to stand a watch. I had helped with the cooking. I cursed, pulled my blankets over my head and tried to get back to the Palace, where Mather was arguing with the Radisha about her plans to shaft the Black Company after the Shadowmaster fell. It almost felt like I was actually there rather than dreaming.
“Wake up.” Uncle Doj prodded me again.
I tried to cling to the dream. There was more to it. Something nebulous but dangerous about the Radisha. Something that had Mather upset in a major way.
I thought I might be working out something important ins my sleep.
“Wake up, Bone Warrior.”
That did it. I hated it when Nyueng Bao called me that, never explaining what they meant. I grunted, “What?”
“Trouble is coming.”
Thai Dei stepped out of the darkness. He spoke! “One-Eye told me to warn you.”
“What’re you doing up here?” His arm had not yet healed completely.
I glanced at the Captain. He was awake. He had a bird perched on one shoulder, beak moving at his ear. He eyed Thai Dei and Uncle Doj but said nothing. He clambered to his feet wearily, collected a couple of bamboo poles and trudged around to where he could see the lake. I followed him. Uncle Doj tagged along behind me. It amazed me that a man so short and wide could move so quietly and gracefully.
I saw nothing new out there in the darkness. Occasional flecks of light continued to streak the tapestry of the night. “Like fireflies.” There were a million stars. The guys who expected snow were going to be disappointed.
“Hush,” Croaker said. He was listening to something. The damned bird on his shoulder?
Where was the other one?
A crimson ball zipped away from one wagon just like scores before it. But when this one neared the island it dipped violently and swerved to the right, scattering the rippling water with ten thousand rubies. At water level the ball became a splash of blood that faded immediately.
There was no reflection off the water anywhere nearby.
“Shadows.”
A half-dozen balls streaked out. They defined a river of darkness snaking across the lake. Then balls started flying around over the remnants of the village that had been burning while that boat sank.
The discharges there reached panic level quickly. The Captain ordered, “Swing one of the wagons around. Give them some support down there. And let’s see if we can’t get a couple more wagons up here fast.”
Some individuals were plinking at the village already, for whatever help that would provide. Croaker told the crew of the second wagon, “Cut loose on that island. Everything you’ve got. Murgen. I want everybody awake and up here. The shit-storm is about to hit.”
I ran off to tap-dance on a couple of snorers famous for their bugle calls.
Both wagons cut loose about the same time. Their trigger cranks squealed and rattled as they whirled. Bamboo tubes discharged color in furious series. How many balls could a wagon launch? A shitload.
Cavalry tubes carried fifteen charges. Standard infantry and infantry long carried thirty and forty charges respectively. The hundreds of tubes on each wagon were longer still.
The fireflies went mad. Every single ball launched darted downward after a shadow. Each made its dip nearer shore.
“Lots of shadows,” Croaker observed laconically. This was a new thing but a thing we had feared for years. Shadows attacking in waves and a flood instead of sneaking around like spies and assassins.
The Old Man seemed calm. Me, I damned near drizzled down my leg. I ran, but only far enough to get hold of the standard and a bundle of bamboo. I planted the former beside the Old Man, got the business end of a pole pointed southward, found the handgrip trigger mechanism and started turning. Each quarter turn sent another fireball streaking. I told Thai Dei, “Grab you some bamboo, brother. You too, uncle. This isn’t going to be anything you can stop with a sword.”
Balls were arcing over from the far slope now. There were enough in transit to define the wave of darkness headed our way. Fireballs plunged into that darkness like bright hail, flared, faded. This was the nightmare tide we had dreaded for so long, the hellpower of the Shadowmaster unleashed.
Balls consumed shadows by the thousand. The flood came on. Unlike mortal soldiers those things could do nothing but follow commands. Sorcery compelled them.
My pole went dry. I grabbed another one. Uncle Doj and Thai Dei began to grasp the situation. They found poles and got into the act, though Thai Dei was not very fast one-handed.
The dark tide came off the water and headed upslope. As it drew closer I began to make out individual shadows.
I saw these things first way back when we first came to Taglios, in the days when there were four Shadowmasters and together they could reach a lot farther than could Longshadow now. The skrinsa shadowweavers came north to kill us. They failed. But in their time they used small shadows, few bigger than my fist. I never saw one bigger than a cat.
Some in this flood dwarfed cattle. Those absorbed fireballs with no apparent effect. I saw dozens survive multiple hits. I muttered, “Maybe Lady wasn’t as clever as she thought.”
Croaker replied, “Think what it would be like without her cleverness.”
We would be dead already. “Got you.”
Closer. Closer. The dark wall was but a hundred yards distant now, the shadows far fewer in number and moving slower but relentless nevertheless.
Now the wagons could not depress their aim low enough to hit the shadows. They shifted their attentions to that island.
Uncle Doj shouted, drew Ash Wand. I have no idea what he thought that would do to the huge clot of darkness racing straight toward us while a swarm of small shadows scurried around it like frightened offspring. No sword held any power against this darkness.
I tried to burn a hole through the clot’s heart, poised on the brink of panic.
Death ravened closer and closer.
Balls from the rear began falling around us as little shadows slithered in amongst the rocks.
The screams began.
The dark mass became a bonfire as fireballs hammered it. It slowed, slowed some more, but never stopped coming. It reared like a boar grizzly issuing his challenge. I spun my hand grip hard, yelled some kind of nonsense. That killer slice of hell’s breath strained to get at me but could not. It was as though the thing, at the last instant, had encountered some invisible and unbreakable barrier.
The darkness radiated a dank psychic horror I imagined went with the grave, a hunger known only by things undead, an odor of the soul I remembered from too many bad dreams about bone-strewn wastelands and old men bound up in cocoons of spun ice. My terror grew stronger. I yanked at my handgrip long after my pole went dry, long after there was no more reason to crank.
The shadow kept trying to get to me until the barrage of fireballs consumed its last whisper of darkness.
The excitement faded quickly. Only balls launched toward the island found many targets.
The rock outcrop was taking a pounding from Lady’s division, too, the troops over there having figured out what was happening. I thought the volume of fire so heavy it might actually consume the island.
Then Croaker ordered fire reduced to precautionary levels. “No sense wasting our tools. We’re going to run into this sort of thing again.” He stared at me for half a minute. Then he asked, “How did we get surprised like this?” He used that Juniper tongue.
I shrugged. “Don’t ask me.” I chose Forsberger because I did not know the other well enough. “I was busy carrying the standard.” Meaning I was cut off from Smoke most of the time these days for what he considered sufficient reason. He was going to have to count on One-Eye to provide his warnings.
“Shit,” he said, without much venom. “Goddamn shit. Don’t get clever with—”
A grand shriek rolled across the lake. Lady’s troops loosed a furious barrage at something that darted up from the island and raced away southward. Croaker grunted. “The Howler!”
“We got them scared now, boss. The Shadowmaster is sending the big boys out to play.”
Croaker showed me a twitch of the lip. Not much. His sense of humor had gone to hell lately. Maybe he lost it when he was Soulcatcher’s prisoner. Or maybe when he came back to find out that he was a father but chances were he would never see his kid.
Howler escaped.
We stood down eventually but hardly anyone got any more sleep.
Dawn did come. It found our dead already burned or buried by soldiers who had been unable to sleep. I did not have to look at one tormented face.
There was no shortage of tormented landscape. It looked as though small lightnings had been on a year-long rampage around the lake. Already some of the more daring troopers were down at the water’s edge collecting dead fish.
Of the things that had attacked us there was no trace at all.
Croaker suggested, “You might spend a little more time with Smoke.” Which, of course, was more than a suggestion, though given reluctantly. He had given up counting on One-Eye for anything but grief.
I glanced around. My in-laws were nowhere in sight. I told him, “One-Eye did send warning.”
“It wasn’t what I’d call timely. It must have taken Howler and Longshadow days to set last night up. We should have been ready.”
“Maybe not being ready will work out for the best, though.”
“Why? How?”
“If we’d ambushed their ambush they would’ve started wondering how we knew about it. The way it worked out they’ll just sit around cussing Lady for thinking ahead.”
“You got a point. But I still want a little more warning. Just don’t go getting hung up on ghostwalking.”
“What about the standard? I don’t know where Sleepy is these days and there isn’t another sworn brother handy.” Nobody who was not Company was going to touch our most holy of relics. The standard, actually the lance from which the standard hangs, is the only artifact we have which has remained with the Company since its beginnings. The oldest Annals have all been recopied time and time again, undergoing translation after translation.
Croaker told me, “I’ll manage it. You get sick and have to ride for a while.” He did and I did. Wearing his full Widowmaker armor he became terrible to behold once he took up the standard. A dark aura seemed to envelop him.
Much of that had to do with spells Lady had built into and onto the armor, layer after layer, for years. Even though Widowmaker was pure powerless invention, the vision was supposed to suggest something way beyond the ordinary, was supposed to stir the observer’s superstitions. So was the Lifetaker character Lady had created for herself. But hers had grown into its legend. Or had been something more than invention to start.
When Lady donned that armor she resembled one of the avatars of the goddess Kina. Some of her soldiers and more of her enemies half believed that when she donned the Lifetaker garb she became possessed by the dark goddess. I did not like that idea and did not accept it but Lady never discouraged it.
It did touch near a suspicion I have entertained from the time I first read Lady’s volume of the Annals.
Could it be possible she was still a tool of that Mother of Night? Maybe unwittingly?
Uncle Doj and Thai Dei scowled suspiciously when I told them I was sick again and was going to ride in One-Eye’s wagon for a while. I am sure Uncle Doj now knew Smoke was aboard and wanted to find out why the comatose wizard was important enough for us to carry off to war. He did not press me, though. He remained sensitive to Croaker’s scrutiny.
“How you doing, Kid?” One-Eye asked as I clambered aboard. He sounded depressed. Maybe he had a good ass-chewing from the Old Man. Again.
“You missed some big fun last night.”
“Not hardly. And I can tell you that I’m too damned old for this crap. Croaker don’t get us to Khatovar pretty damned soon I’m gonna drop out and take up leek farming.”
“I’ve got some good turnip seed. And rutabagas. I could use a manager . . . ”
“Work for you? Bullshit. Anyway, I know where I can get me some good ground cheap. Up in the Dhojar Prine. I could take Goblin along and make him lead field hand.”
He was just making chin music and we both knew it. I suggested, “You want to run a big operation you’re going to need a good woman to help. My mother-in-law would just love to remarry.”
Sourly, he told me, “I had it all scoped out to fix Goblin up with her. That would’ve been my all-time masterpiece. But he had to go and disappear.”
“Gods just can’t take a fucking joke, can they?”
“No shit. You should get more sleep. You look like you’ve been up all night. And you’re getting a little testy.”
Like a demon summoned by the naming of its name Mother Gota came waddling around the side of One-Eye’s wagon. One-Eye squeaked in surprise. I gulped air. She was supposed to be a long way back up the road.
But, then, Thai Dei was supposed to be back there recuperating, too.
The old woman was lugging so many weapons she looked like a dwarfish arms merchant. She looked up. Her usual grim scowl was missing. She smiled at One-Eye, showing us her absent teeth.
One-Eye gave me a look of hopeless appeal. “They can’t take a joke. Not even a little one, not even once. Don’t stress him, Kid. I got the cough fixed but now he ain’t taking his soup so good.” Ignoring the Nyueng Bao woman, he settled himself on the driver’s seat, cracked a whip.
I wasted no time. I made myself comfortable and went ghostwalking.
I like the word “consternation.” It sounds like what it means.
There was a shitload of consternation surrounding Mogaba when I arrived. He and his gang had gotten an incoherent report from Howler, who was not exactly in pristine condition when he reached Charandaprash. He and his carpet both had been hit by Lady’s marksmen.
An important point was that Howler and the Shadowmaster had cooked up the night’s festivities without ever having consulted Mogaba. Mogaba was pissed off, the way generals get whenever their expertise is disdained.
Blade’s force had joined Mogaba’s. Croaker had talked about trying to cut him off but nothing had developed. There had been no time for planning and launching a strong enough force.
Usually the boss does manage to separate the wishful from the possible, whatever his own feelings.
Upon arriving, Blade took charge of the division forming Mogaba’s left flank, meaning he would be head to head with the Prahbrindrah Drah when the field armies collided. It was interesting to note that all the division commanders of the Shadowlander main force, along with the head general himself, were renegades who had gone over from our side.
They were all competent soldiers but I doubted that Longshadow cared. What mattered to him most was that they would be strongly motivated to avoid defeat and capture.
I scurried ahead to Overlook, to be there when Howler reported from the front. It ought to be entertaining. Longshadow turned into a raving, foamy-mouthed madman when things really went wrong.
I had to adjust my position in time only slightly to watch the screaming sorcerer arrive on a carpet that was a herd of holes held together by a handful of threads. It was a wonder it did not fall apart under him.
Longshadow listened to Howler’s report. He was angry but he did not fault his ally. Which was odd. He was not one to assume much blame himself. Howler observed, “She was a step ahead this time.”
“Did any of our assets survive the skirmish?” Skirmish?
“No.”
“Time to keep the skildirsha behind the Dandha Presh, then. For now we’ll use them only for communications and reconnaissance. What of the skrinsa? Any out there?”
“Not living. Not that I transported.”
“Excellent.”
This was scary. Longshadow always dealt with bad news by turning into a raving lunatic.
The Howler said, “Husband those who still live. Order them to begin teaching their craft to any with the capacity to learn it. If your mighty general fails and the Company breaks through at Charandaprash, shadowweavers will be priceless.”
Longshadow grunted, fiddled with his mask. “You knew the woman. Senjak. Does she have the power to break our armies?”
“She would have in olden times. It’s possible she may be strong enough now. Unless we go up there to preoccupy her while our troops exterminate hers.”
I found it interesting that they believed Lady was in charge, whatever appearance we presented. Possibly that was because Howler had been under her thumb for so long, virtually her slave. He might not be capable of believing her anything less than the master. Too, they seemed unable to recognize the fact that our better motivated troops had beaten theirs regularly without any sorcerous, mystical or divine assistance.
Longshadow asked, “Are there a great many of them coming?”
“Yes. Although they have broken with past practice. Many are camp followers weakened by trying to live off a land already scoured by military foragers.”
True. And even the soldiers were less than one hundred percent. However much groundwork we had laid, the last leg of the journey passed through barren country.
“But their force is larger?”
“The combat force is, yes, slightly. But it consists of less disciplined troops. The evidence all says she’s made this move out of political expediency. The Taglian priesthoods have recovered from the blow she struck them four years ago. They have started testing her. She’s just diverting them. Singh’s spies say all the senior Taglians expect this campaign to end in defeat.”
“Get some rest. Prepare the other carpet. If I must go up there then I must accept the risk fully. I’ll want to arrive there before Mogaba succumbs to the temptation to take the fight to his enemies.”
Even now, after natural disaster had stalled construction on Overlook indefinitely, Longshadow was determined to stall for time instead of taking the offensive.
I am no military genius but I have read the available Annals a few times. Nowhere in there did I ever find mention of anybody who won a war sitting on his ass.
Much as I hate the man personally, professionally I can feel sorry for Mogaba. For about fifteen seconds. Before we cut his throat.
Smoke seemed untroubled and comfortable after my visit to Overlook so I left the ghostworld long enough to fill both our stomachs with food and water. He had fouled himself. One-Eye was uninclined to stop and clean him up so I did the honors while the vehicle creaked and bounced and tossed me around. The thankless chore done, I decided to relieve myself before I suffered a similar embarrassment while I was out.
It had happened before.
I found the whole Ky gang trudging along within rock-throwing distance of the wagon. One-Eye scowled down at me. He did not like having them hang so close. Especially Mother Gota, who kept trying to strike up a conversation. I grinned and headed off into the brush.
Somebody almost mistook me for a Shadowlander straggler but my luck held and I got back to the wagon in one piece. One-Eye bitched, “I’d like to lay my paws on the dickhead who decided this was a road. This damn seat is beating my ass into a paste.”
“You could get married, retire, drop out and raise turnips.”
“You got a serious attitude problem, Kid. You come on anything interesting?”
“Not really. But I’m going out again. Soon as you stop chattering.”
“Goddamn kids. You try to be nice—” The left rear wheel fell into a hole, shaking the entire wagon and shutting him up for as long as it took him to marshall an array of curses to direct at his team. I got myself comfortable with Smoke.
Since the unconscious wizard seemed especially amenable today I decided it might be time to test his limits, to see if I could push him nearer things he had refused to approach in the past.
I started with what lay south of Overlook, after just a glance in to see that nothing new was happening with Howler and Longshadow.
Kiaulune in the aftermath of disaster had no appeal. Overlook, while bright, was a mask for madness and despair. Beyond lay rocky grey slopes almost steep enough to be called an escarpment. A road ran from Kiaulune past Overlook and up the boulder-strewn slope. It was a road that had seen little traffic ever, yet it remained clearly defined. Only a few stubborn, hardy weeds had taken root there. Except for one small slide way up the hill no rocks seemed willing to remain on the road’s surface.
I tried to take Smoke in that direction.
I enjoyed no more success than I ever had, which meant I managed to cross half the distance from Overlook to the slide before Smoke refused to go any farther.
Someday the Black Company would go up that road. No one else ever went but we would go. That was the road to Khatovar. That was the road that would lead us to our origins.
From Kiaulune I rode Smoke north in a sweeping search for Soulcatcher, Lady’s mad, wicked sister. I found no obvious sign immediately but she was skilled at not being seen. I closed in on the Old Man himself, began using Smoke’s ability to move through time as well as space to backtrack the crows that follow the army and hang around him.
I fooled the coward for just a moment. For long enough to carry myself into view of Lady’s nemesis.
She was out in the wastes, all alone except for her pets. She was eating, something I had never seen or heard of Soulcatcher doing. She was gorgeous. Gorgeous like only evil can be. For an instant I felt that same twinge I had experienced the first time I saw Sahra.
Thought of Sahra startled me. Out here was my time free of that pain . . .
The instant I lost my focus Smoke’s cowardly soul seemed to sense how near Soulcatcher it was. It pushed away as though repelled. I did not resist. I needed to be away from there, too.
Soulcatcher was a madwoman, bold beyond reason, likely to do almost anything if it amused her. She must be having great fun lately.
If Smoke’s visions could be trusted she was less than a mile away right now, here in the middle of the army, undetected, so close she could strike anyone anywhere instantly whenever the urge came upon her. And such urges did.
The Old Man needed to know . . .
Or did he?
He might, reasoning that crows had a limited endurance.
I went away from there and took Smoke back to the Palace in Taglios. He seemed comfortable with that. We went to the room where he had been hidden so long. Dust was gathering there. The lost Annals were still out of sight where I had concealed them.
In another part of the Palace the Radisha was going about the daily business of ruling an empire, she and all the powerful priests and lords and functionaries going along with the pretense that she was just standing in momentarily for her brother, the Prahbrindrah Drah. As long as everybody agreed not to notice the Prince’s extended absence, the engines of state continued to function reasonably well.
In truth, though never stated publicly, the state operated much more efficiently without the Prince present to filter and soften his sister’s will.
I found the Woman and buzzed around her like an invisible mosquito, forward and backward in time, sticking my long nose into her every conversation excepting those she had with Cordy Mather when no one else was around. Much.
I heard enough to know Mather was getting used. But it was use most men willingly endure, at least for a while.
Her conversations with several senior priests were interesting, though never as explicit as I would like. The Radisha had matured in the seldom friendly environment of the Palace, where a thousand plots great and small were afoot every day, at the best of times, and there were always ears eager to pick up anything you said.
She did not plan to keep her word to the Captain and Company. Surprise, surprise. But she was not yet pursuing any vigorous course of betrayal. Like everyone else she was certain Croaker’s winter campaign was either a tactic not directed at the Shadowmaster at all or if pursued genuinely would result in a debacle for Taglian arms. This despite our having seized victory in the face of certain defeat on several occasions earlier.
We just might be able to make her sorry she was not a more ambitious backstabber.
What other avenues needed exploration? Goblin? He could manage without me watching over his shoulder.
Out of curiosity and because I was not yet ready to return to the world, I traced each of my in-laws back for the last few weeks. I learned nothing that would support the Old Man’s paranoia. But they were a cautious folk, just three of them out here amongst folk no Nyueng Bao had reason to trust or love. Thai Dei and Uncle Doj said very little about anything, just like they did when I was around. Mother Gota was little different, too. She just complained about different things.
Her opinion of me was not completely flattering. Hardly an hour passed when she failed to take the opportunity to damn her mother for having wished me onto the family Ky.
There were times when I was not too fond of Hong Tray for having wished all her family on me.
What should I see now? I was not ready to go back yet. Narayan Singh and the Daughter of Night? They were at Charandaprash with Mogaba, collecting the scabby remnants of the Deceiver cult under the Shadowmaster’s standard. Not much mischief they could get up to there.
Lady, then. Then I would report to the Captain. I had not been tracking her but wherever she was I was likely to find somebody the Company needed to watch, like the Prahbrindrah Drah or Willow Swan.
The Prince was not in Lady’s camp. He was capable of letting duty overrule wishful thinking. He was with his own division, paying attention to business.
Charandaprash was no longer that far away. Around the lake, over a few hills and valleys, then there we would be, staring across the stony plain at the mouth of the only practical pass through the Dandha Presh.
Swan was close to Lady, of course. He looked worried whether I rolled back through the days or stayed hovering right now. Lady was having problems she would not share with him or anyone else. She looked as though she had been getting no sleep. I knew she slept very little at the best of times. For her to abandon sleep like this now, as we neared our most important confrontation in years, one that could become a defining event in the Company’s history, suggested that she had no faith in the future at all.
Running through time did give me a clue or two, though. She was indeed doing without sleep. And whenever she did take a nap she did not rest well. She seemed to be having dreams as ugly as some of mine.
For some reason crows never came close to her. But they were always around, somewhere in the distance, watching.
Lady was not interesting. She did nothing but work. She did not bother to look overwhelmingly beautiful anymore, unlike her sister. Was she, like some women do, going all dowdy because she had herself a man?
She was just fine as far as Willow Swan was concerned. Even after four years of no luck at all he was happy to tag along, using his assignment as commander of royal guards as an excuse to stay near the front.
So what was worth reporting here? That Lady had to get some rest?
Maybe. Exhaustion could impair her judgment at a critical moment.
I started to back away, drifting up and over Lake Tanji, which was pretty damned impressive even from Smoke’s point of view.
I shivered in the cold wind . . .
There was no wind out there with Smoke. There was no warm, no cold, no hunger, no pain. There was just being and sight.
And fear.
For there in the gathering darkness above the lake’s southern shore was a dark ghost of a form with many arms and teats and wicked black lips drawn back to reveal a vampire’s grin.
You can panic out there. I did.
“You all right?” One-Eye asked as I came to the front of the wagon. It was dark out. He had turned his team loose to forage nearby, had a fire burning, and was now back on his driver’s seat polishing a spear that looked as though it had been carved from ebony, inlaid with silver highlighting a hundred grotesque figures. “You were thrashing around and yelling back there.”
“Thanks for coming to see what was wrong.”
“The old woman said you do that all the time. Didn’t seem worth worrying about.”
“Probably wasn’t. I just rolled over on your still parts.” Not true but I had a feeling he would have some around somewhere. Even during the worst of the siege of Dejagore he and Goblin had managed to produce something they pretended was beer.
He bought it long enough to give himself away. If this damned wagon stayed in one place very long something better used as food or horse fodder would turn into something else stinky but liquid and alcoholic.
“What’s the spear for?” I asked. “Haven’t seen it out for a while.” He had created it for the specific purpose of killing Shadowmasters.
“Talked to some of our brothers who’ve been with Lady’s division. Came by while you were snoring. Big Bucket and Red Rudy. Said they’ve seen a big black cat a couple three times lately. Figured I ought to be set with my best.”
He did not sound concerned but he was. That spear was a masterpiece of his art.
The cat was probably a shapeshifter named Lisa Daele Bowalk who could not shed her animal form because One-Eye had killed her teacher before she learned how. She had tried to get him before. He was confident that she would try again.
“Catch her if you can,” I told him. “I got a notion we could use her if we let Lady work on her for a while.”
“Right. That’ll be the main thing on my mind.”
“I’m going to see the Old Man.”
“Tell him I want to go home. It’s too damned cold out here for an old man like me.”
I chuckled, the way I was supposed to. I got down to the ground despite my stiffness and headed the general direction I presumed Croaker would be, based on the size of the fires.
Good thing One-Eye and I made a habit of using old languages. Thai Dei stepped out of the shadows before I had walked twenty feet. He said nothing but he was there guarding my back, wanted or not.
The journey continued. Wagons broke down. Animals came up lame. Men injured themselves. Elephants complained about the weather. So did I. It snowed a couple of times, not blankets of big soft wet flakes but the wind-whipped pellet kind that stings your skin and never amounts to anything but a few traces when it is done.
On the plus side, Mogaba’s cavalry never really got in our way. They were no problem as long as our foragers and scouts did not range too far ahead. I guess Mogaba was more interested in knowing where we were than in wasting soldiers trying to stop us before we came to his strong point.
Then one afternoon nobody received the routine order to halt and camp. The soldiers stumbled forward doggedly, cursing the bite of the wind while reminding one another that generals are seldom of sound mind and unbesmirched ancestry. They would not be generals if they were.
I went looking for the Captain.
There he was, his big crows on his shoulders. More circled him, bickering. He was smiling, the one happy fool in the army. The generals’ general. “Hey, boss. We going to keep humping it all night?”
“We’re less than ten miles from Charanky whatsit. I think it would be nice to be camped there when Mogaba gets up in the morning.”
He lived in his own reality, no doubt about that. Had to be a general. He actually believed he could play with Mogaba’s mind.
He had not seen Mogaba at Dejagore. Not enough.
I said, “We’ll be so beat he can come over and dance on our heads.”
“But he won’t. Longshadow has a ball and chain tied to his tail.”
“So he kicks ass and lies to his boss later.”
“That what you’d do?”
“Uh . . . ” I might.
“Longshadow will be here watching him. Go get some sleep. When the sun comes up I want you perched on Mogaba’s shoulder.” Uncle Doj was only steps away, taking everything in. We were speaking Forsberger but I wondered if that was enough of a security measure.
Those crows were never far away.
What I got from the exchange was that Croaker did have a plan. Sometimes it was hard to believe that.
“I’m not tired right now.” I was hungry and thirsty, though. Any extended period spent with Smoke leaves me that way. I took advantage of the staff officers’ mess.
Messengers began to come and go. Croaker grumbled, “Guess it’s time to start telling people what they need to do.”
“There’s an original concept. After all these years.”
“Do we really need another smartass Annalist, Murgen? Get some rest.”
He began gathering senior officers for a meeting. I was not invited.
I went back to One-Eye’s wagon, where I ate some more, drank a lot of water and then went ghostwalking again.
Me and the fire chief eavesdropped on Croaker and his commanders but I should not have wasted the time. I learned very little. Croaker did all the talking, referring to a detailed map showing everyone where he wanted each unit to light in front of Mogaba. The only real surprise was that he wanted the Prahbrindrah Drah’s division stationed in the center while his own two divisions positioned themselves on the right flank excepting one specially trained combat team he wanted on the extreme left, outside Lady’s left flank.
Interesting. Our right wing just happened to face and lap the Shadowlander division Blade had been given to command. Croaker really wanted Blade.
Narrow-eyed, Lady asked, “Why did you decide to arrange the army this way? We’ve talked about this for three years . . . ”
Croaker told her, “Because this is where I want you all.” Lady had trouble keeping her temper. In a long life she had not had to do that much.
Croaker smelled the smoke. “When I don’t explain to you nobody else finds out what I’m planning, either.” He offered some tidbit to one of his crows.
That helped. A little. But the Prahbrindrah Drah and most of the rest had no idea of the significance of Croaker’s crows.
I left Smoke, drank again, snacked, made sure the sleeper got some soup. He did not need nearly as much sustenance as I did. Maybe he was sucking on me out there, like some kind of psychic spider.
I slept. I had bad dreams that I recalled only in shards when I awakened. The Radisha was there. Soulcatcher was there. I suppose the old men in the caverns were there, too, though none of that stuck. Somewhere a bleak fortress.
I gave up trying to remember, went out with Smoke to try to see our approach as the enemy would.
Fireballs scattered colored pearls across the night. Torches speckled distant slopes with islands and snakes of light. The Shadowlander commanders watched without remark except when Blade suggested that the Captain was making his force appear more formidable by burning lots of torches.
They were not concerned. A lot of the junior officers expected Longshadow to turn them loose after they stomped us. They saw themselves heading north in early spring, with the whole summer to plunder and punish.
But a few were veterans of armies we had embarrassed in the past. Those men showed us more respect. And betrayed a more intense desire to cause us pain. They did not believe it would be easy but they did believe we would be defeated.
Mogaba himself seemed more taken with his plans for a counterinvasion than he was interested in further preparing to withstand us here.
I did not like it but I saw no real reason to believe they were overconfident.
Still, all those fireballs and torches were heartening.
That vast mass in motion out there had been inspired by the Black Company. And I had no trouble recalling when there were just seven of us, as unprepossessing a bunch of thugs as ever walked the earth. That was barely more than five years ago. Triumph or failure, this campaign would survive as a mighty drumbeat in the Annals.
I went back to my flesh and slept again. When I awakened our vanguards were already approaching the Plain of Charandaprash. Mist had formed in all the low places and gullies.
We stopped amidst a grand hubbub. I leaned out of the wagon.
The mists had become an all enveloping fog. People with torches hustled hither and yon, their torches glowing like witch lights. None came near me. All the forces had come together and now the world was very crowded.
Croaker appeared. I told him, “You look totally beat.”
“My ass is banging off my heels.” He climbed aboard, checked Smoke, settled down and closed his eyes.
“Well?”
“Uhm?”
“You’re here. How come? And what about your goddamned pets? They watching?”
For a moment I thought he had gone to sleep that quickly. He did not answer immediately. But: “I’m hiding out. From the birds, too. One-Eye scared them off.” About two minutes later, he added, “I don’t like it, Murgen.”
“What don’t you like?”
“Being Captain. I wish I could’ve stayed Annalist and physician. There’s less pressure.”
“You’re managing all right.”
“Not the way I hear it. I wasn’t Captain I wouldn’t have any long-term worries, either.”
“Hell. And here I thought you were having the time of your life baffling the shit out of everybody.”
“All I’ve ever wanted was to take us home. But they won’t let me.”
“It’s for sure nobody’s ever going to open any doors for us. Especially not the Radisha. What to do about us seems to be on her mind a lot lately.”
“It ought to be.” He smiled. “And I haven’t forgotten her.” He paused a moment, then said, “You’re up on your Annals. What was the bloodiest mess we ever got ourselves into?”
“Right here is my guess. Back in the beginning, four hundred years ago. But that’s only by implication in the surviving Annals.”
“History may repeat itself.” He did not sound thrilled. Not at all. He was not a bloodthirsty man.
Neither am I, despite the hatreds I obsess over here. But my scruples do have blind areas. I do want to see several thousand villains suffer for what happened to Sahra.
Croaker asked, “Do you know of any way to authenticate the lost Annals you took back from Soulcatcher?”
“What?” What a horrible question. It never occurred to me before. “You saying you think they might not be real?”
“I couldn’t read them but I could see that they weren’t originals. They were copies.”
“They might not have told the true story?”
“Smoke believed every word in the ones he had. And oral history supports his view of the Company as the terror of the ages, though there aren’t any specifics. But I do have to wonder because there just aren’t any contemporary accounts from independent observers.”
“Something happened. Even if these books we have now are fabrications. What’re you thinking?”
For a moment Croaker seemed tired of fighting. “Murgen, there’s something going on that’s more than you and me and Lady, the Taglians and the Shadowmasters and all that. Strange things are happening and they don’t add up any other way. I started to wonder when you kept falling into the past.”
“I think Soulcatcher had something to do with that.”
“She may well have. She’s got her fingers in everywhere else. But I don’t think she’s all of it. I think we’re all—even Soulcatcher—being manipulated. And I’m even beginning to think that it’s been going on for ages. That if we had the true firsts of the missing Annals and could read them we might see ourselves and what’s happening in a whole different way.”
“Are you talking about the thing Lady goes on about in her book? Kina? Because I’ve seen her myself, a couple of times, when I was out walking the ghost. Or what I think was her based on myth and what Lady wrote.”
“Kina. Yes. Or something that wants us to think it’s Kina.”
“Wouldn’t that be the same thing, as far as we’re concerned?”
“Uhm. I think she’s having those dreams again.”
I thought so myself. “Looked like that to me, too. She’s getting pretty haggard.”
“I thought a lot about this during the trip down here. Not much to do but think when you’re riding all day. My guess is, things have started going too fast for Kina. This is a critter that’s used to shaping long, slow shadow plays, manipulations that can take decades to unfold. Maybe even generations in our case. Her big scheme might have begun way back before our fore-brethren headed north. But now we’re coming home to roost and everything is happening too fast for her. The more she tries to guide events the more hamhanded she gets.”
“For instance?”
“Like what she did to Smoke.”
“I really figured that was something Soulcatcher did.” Although there had been no evidence to pin that on her, either.
“I suppose that’s possible, too. It’s even possible they were both after him and they got in each other’s way.”
I recalled what I could of the incident from Lady’s book. I decided to stick with my Soulcatcher theory. Deceiver mythology did not credit Kina with that much ability to reach into the mundane world. The whole point of the cult was to bring on a time of such dramatic horror that the walls preventing Kina from touching our world could be ripped down from our side.
I explained that.
Croaker just shrugged. “Listen to this. I’m almost certain there wasn’t supposed to be any Black Company left after Dejagore. Except for Lady. She was the only one who was supposed to survive. And her number was supposed to be up when the Stranglers took our baby.”
I considered that. “If that guy Ram hadn’t fallen for Lady . . . ”
“That would’ve been the end of everything. Kina would’ve had her Daughter of Night over on this side and the Year of the Skulls beginning to unfold without anyone to interfere.”
I looked interested. That was easy. I was. I wanted him to keep going. Before he finished I might actually have some idea why he did everything he did.
He said, “The wild cards messed up Kina’s hand.”
“Wild cards? You mean Soulcatcher?”
“She’s the biggest. But there’s Howler and there was Shifter and there’s still Shifter’s apprentice out there somewhere. All of them not part of the plan.”
It was a hypothesis. It was well beyond any thinking I had done. Or in a different direction.
“You be careful, Murgen. Stay in close touch with your feelings. Don’t let the ghostwalking seduce you. This thing manipulates us through our emotions.”
“Why should I worry? I just write stuff down.”
His response was cryptic. “The standardbearer could be more important than the Daughter of Night before this is all over.”
“How’s that?”
He changed the subject. “You looked for the forvalaka lately?” He meant the shapeshifter trapped in animal form, the apprentice he had mentioned a moment ago.
I thought about it, told him, “I’ve looked a few times but haven’t seen it since I doubled back on the massacre at Vehdna-Bota.”
“I see. No hurry but when you get a chance, find out where she is now. We couldn’t be so lucky that she’s gotten herself killed.”
“Oh, she hasn’t. One-Eye says she’s right out there in the wilds, following us. We were talking about her the other night. He’s convinced her only reason for living is to get even with him for killing Shifter before he taught her how to change back.”
Croaker chuckled. “Yeah. Poor old boy. One of these days he’s going to discover that he isn’t the center of the universe. May all our surprises be pleasant ones. And all of Mogaba’s surprises real gut-rippers.” He chuckled again, wickedly. As he climbed down from the wagon he said, “Almost showtime.”
He did see warfare more in terms of showmanship than in those of deadly games.
Once again I fluttered around Mogaba’s head. Me, Murgen, angel of espionage.
Howler and Longshadow had arrived soon after dawn. They believed it would take both their concerted efforts to keep Lady from ripping Mogaba a new poop chute. Lady’s powers seemed to swell as she moved farther south.
An idea hit like religious epiphany. I knew the fear that haunted the Captain. He suspected that Lady had regained her powers by making a pact with Kina.
I have suspected that myself, off and on.
The way sorcery works, the way I understood it, her loss of powers during the battle at the Barrowland should have been irreversible. It had to do with some unfathomable mystical gobbledegook about true names. Gunni mythology contained numerous stories about how gods and demons and devils went around hiding their true names in rocks or trees or grains of sand on the beach so their enemies would not be able to glom onto them and gain a hold. The whole business made no sense but that did not keep it from working.
Lady’s true name had been named during the final showdown with her husband. She survived but, according to the mystical rules, was now an ordinary mortal. With looks to kill for. What made her interesting to people in her former trade was that she was a living storehouse of wicked lore. She had not lost any of her knowledge, only the ability to employ it.
I was surprised that she had not been a bigger target than she had so far.
Her name had no power over her anymore. Being powerless herself, apparently, she could not take advantage of those true names she knew. Otherwise she would have dealt with the Howler and her sister a long time ago. And she would not give those names away even to One-Eye and Goblin. She would die first.
It takes a strange sort to become a wizard or sorceress.
She had her own agenda still, that was certain. One-Eye or Goblin were not much but some things were like dropping a rock down a well.
From conversations overheard I knew Longshadow would part with three or four thumbs to get hold of what Lady knew.
Funny. Whenever he sent Howler to capture her the scheme machine never quite clicked. You would almost think Howler did not want his senior partner to become any more senior.
Someday I will have to get Lady to explain the whole true names thing in a way that even a dummy like me can understand. Maybe I can get her to explain the whole business of sorcery so that those of us who study these Annals will have at least a vague idea of what is going on.
Knowing will not keep us from crapping our small clothes when we run into sorcery but, still, it would be nice to have a notion what is behind all the deadly lights.
The Shadowlander soldiers were all in place. They gnawed field rations sleepily, hard at work at what soldiers do most. While we all waited I hung around those who spoke languages I could understand. The philosophers among them examined the intellects and characters of generals who put their troops into formation and made them stand ready when nothing was going to happen. Nothing. The damned Tals were too damned tired to do anything. They had spent the whole damned night on the move.
“Tal” was a sort of pun. Though short for “Taglian” it also meant “turd” in the Sangel dialects common south of the Dandha Presh.
I felt like I had soldiered with those guys. They spoke my language.
Mogaba had built himself a giant observation tower a safe distance behind the lines. It was wooden. I thought he was going to find it uncomfortable pretty soon. Longshadow and Howler had joined him up there. The atmosphere was not festive but it was far from grim. Nobody was worried about us.
Longshadow threatened to become cheerful. This battle was the culmination of all his planning. When it was over nothing could stop him from making himself master of the world. Except maybe a few allies who did not quite share his ambitions.
I was hurt. A guy likes to be taken seriously. Mogaba had these people, from top to bottom, believing they were invincible.
In the soldiering business you are often what you think you are.
Confidence generates victory.
Howler did not scream once while I watched. Longshadow did not throw one tantrum.
Much as they fussed about Lady you would think they would be more tense.
The rising sun began burning off the mist except around our camp. The wind was a feeble breeze coming from Lady’s flank. Fires smoldered there, keeping the camp obscured. The Shadowlanders could see only the camp followers who had been strong armed into feeding the fires and four wooden towers now rising above the smoke and mist. They were your basic siege towers, being assembled from precut parts brought up from barges on the Naghir River only with a lot of effort and plenty of good old fashioned cussing.
I did not understand. What was the point out here? We were not going to be clambering over any castle walls.
Knowing Croaker, the project was under way just to get Mogaba wondering why.
I dove Smoke into the smoke. The activity inside was not what I expected. The soldiers were asleep. Those who were up and about were mostly camp followers. They fed the fires, assembled the towers, smoothed the ground in paths leading toward Mogaba’s lines, cursed the moment Croaker was born. They had not followed the army so they could do its work.
The soldiers who drove them to their tasks were not kind. The Old Man was clever enough to have had the work crews assembled according to religion, then managed by soldiers who did not cherish their beliefs.
Some details of Croaker’s plan had begun trickling down through the ranks but there was no way anyone could put the pieces together into a whole. He would not let the whole picture get out where a genius could puzzle it out from its fragments.
Now the challenge was to keep the only man who knew what it was alive until . . . Ah, me, Murgen. Where is your Black Company confidence?
It never existed except as show.
Ha. Here was Willow Swan, tall, blond and beautiful, trying harder than I to understand. An intuition might win him points with Lady. But he was grumbling in confusion to his companions.
I found Lady not far away. She was not worried about what was going on. She was focused on business. She had taken station atop a knoll that raised her above the smoke. She stared up the pass, ready if the other side tried something.
I took Smoke back to One-Eye’s wagon. Time for breakfast.
“About goddamned time, Kid!” One-Eye complained. “You’ve got to start taking shorter trips. You’re gonna end up getting lost out there.”
Everybody kept telling me that. It did not seem to be happening, though, so my share of those fears were fading away. I asked, “Anything interesting happening?”
“There’s a war on. Come on. Get out of the way. I need the old fart so I can do my part. Go get some exercise. Eat something. Make him some soup so you can feed him when I’m done.”
“You feed him when you’re done, bat-breath. You’re the man with the job.”
“You got a real attitude problem, Kid.”
“We about to try something?”
“No. We hiked five hundred goddamn miles in the middle of goddamn winter because they say the brush down here is so goddamn great for cookouts.”
“Everybody acts like they’re drugged.”
“Could be on account of they’re drugged. I don’t know. Just my opinion. I could be wrong. Get out of my way. I got work to do.”
The smoke was awful. And it got worse nearer the front of the army. Scant yards made a huge difference. After my first foray in that direction I decided curiosity could wait. I hung around the wagon. I ate and ate and ate. I used up most of One-Eye’s water. Served him right, the way he abused me.
I thought about Sahra. I knew I would be thinking of her a lot now. Danger has a way of making you dwell on the things most important to you.
The proximity of Narayan Singh haunted me, too. The living saint of the Deceivers was less than a mile away, tending his own cookfire while the Daughter of Night looked on dreamily, well bundled against the morning chill and damp.
I started. Damn! That little reverie was almost real.
I got restless waiting to get back to Smoke. I wanted to see if Singh was making breakfast. I needed to get away from all these thoughts about Sarie.
When would the scars form around the pain? When would it stop hurting so much that I had to run away?
I stared into the fire and tried to banish the thoughts. That was like picking at a scab. The harder I tried to think about something else the more I focused on Sarie. Eventually the fire filled my entire horizon and I seemed to see my wife on the other side, rumpled and beautiful and somewhat pallid as she went about the mundane business of cooking rice. It was like I was looking back through time to a moment I had lived before.
I made a noise like a dog strangling and jumped to my feet. Not again! I was over those falls into the past . . . wasn’t I?
One-Eye clambered down from the wagon. “All done, Kid. You can have him if you need him but you really ought to give it a break. Ain’t nothing going to happen for a while, anyway.”
“What’re we burning in these fires? I’m having visions or something here.”
One-Eye sucked in a couple gallons of air, held his breath a while, then blew it out, shook his head, disappointed. “You’re imagining things.”
“I never did.”
I never did. That was worth thinking about. I glanced around to see who was listening. Mother Gota was at the family cookfire but her Forsberger was not good enough to give her a clue.
She had appointed herself full-time family cook. Which meant that, even with the demands made by my travels with Smoke, I was in no danger of getting fat. She still lugged her personal arsenal. She acted like she knew how to use it those rare times she troubled to practice with Thai Dei and Uncle Doj. She did not talk to me much anymore. I was not the reason she was here. I was an inconvenience and an embarrassment.
She knew none of this would have happened if love and Hong Tray had not gotten in the way of common sense and ancient custom.
I was just as happy she stayed out of my way. I had my own feelings to tame. Among them was the conviction that life might have been much better for me had Sarie’s mother never come to stay with us. Sahra might even be alive still. Though there was no way I could work that out so that it fit any logic.
Much as Smoke called I decided to endure the pain. I had to get used to it sometime. So why not try walking around the camp again? I could stay away from the worst smoke.
Thai Dei materialized almost as soon as I started moving. “Your sling and splints are gone,” I said. “Are you back on the job?” He nodded.
“Sure it isn’t a little soon for that? You could break that arm again if you don’t give it time enough to heal.”
Thai Dei shrugged. He was tired of being a cripple. That was that. Tough as he was, he was probably right.
“What happened to Uncle Doj?” I had not seen the old boy for a while. If Thai Dei was back Doj might give in to an impulse to go after revenge on his own. His Path of the Sword thinking would find that perfectly reasonable. Thai Dei shrugged.
He was lucky he did not have to talk for a living. There would be even less of him than there is now.
“Help me out here, brother. I’m going to get real upset if that old man gets himself killed.” Uncle Doj was not ancient. He had maybe ten years on the Old Man and was more spry than Croaker.
“He would not do that.”
“Glad to hear it. Trouble is, anybody can. While we’re at it, remind him to try not being so weird in front of people who don’t know us. The Captain didn’t survive Dejagore with us.”
Thai Dei was positively loquacious all of a sudden. “He lived his own hell.” Which was true but not a point I would expect Nyueng Bao to note.
“He sure did. And it twisted him. Same as Dejagore twisted us. He doesn’t trust anybody anymore. That’s a lonely way to be but he just can’t help it. And he especially don’t trust people whose beliefs and business and motives are completely opaque to him.”
“Uncle?”
“You have to admit that Uncle Doj is odd even by Nyueng Bao standards.”
Thai Dei grunted, conceding the point privately.
“He makes the Captain very nervous.” And the Captain was a very powerful man.
“I understand.”
“I hope so.” Ordinarily even Doj has to pry words out of Thai Dei so I felt rewarded. He remained talkative. I learned a good deal about his childhood with Sahra, which was pretty unremarkable. He believed there was a curse on their family. His father had died when he and Sahra were children. His wife My had drowned when their son To Tan was only a few months old, early in the pilgrimage that had brought the Nyueng Bao into Dejagore just in time for the siege. Sahra had married Sam Danh Qu, who had put her through several years of hell before he died of that fever in the early days of the siege. Then the children had all died, Sahra’s under the swords of Mogaba’s men in Dejagore, To Tan during the Strangler raid that had ended with my wife dead and Thai Dei’s arm broken.
Evidently nobody in this family ever died of old age. This dying family. Mother Gota would bear no more children. Thai Dei had the capacity to become a father again but I did not expect that to happen. I expected Thai Dei to get killed avenging his sister and son.
Thai Dei stopped being communicative when To Tan’s name came up.
The army lined up so: Lady’s division to the left, the Prince’s in the center, the Captain’s two to the right, stacked one behind the other. All our cavalry assembled in the gap between the front and trailing divisions.
Why? The reserve division belongs behind the center. That has been customary since the dawn of time.
And why did Croaker station all his specially trained units behind or beyond Lady’s division?
Either the Old Man thought he could dive Mogaba berserk trying to winkle out the answers or he was letting his hatred for Blade and his paranoia define his tactics.
And why were the camp followers, voluntarily or otherwise, being gathered together right on the front line? Croaker hated camp followers. That he had not run them off weeks ago was a wonder to all who knew him.
I could not find Uncle Doj. Still.
I felt it begin before any growl of drum or snarl of trumpet. I ran for the wagon, leaping rocks and fires in the mist.
I had Smoke take me up where Mogaba watched from his high tower, sensed uncertainty immediately. He knew Croaker. He knew that half what the Old Man did would be done to mess with his mind. But which half?
The knowing itself would cause a hesitation at every point of decision.
I loathed Mogaba the traitor but admired Mogaba the man. He was tall, handsome, intelligent. Just like me. But he was the perfect warrior, too.
He had no company but couriers and the two big wazoos. And they were doing a great imitation of two guys sleeping. Their strategy was to wait for Lady to make a move so one could grab her while the other one blindsided her.
Mogaba’s platform provided a less than perfect view though probably the best attainable. A portion of his left flank was masked by a jumble of boulders while to his right a steep knee of stone concealed his flank there along with a portion of the Taglian left wing.
I took Smoke up amongst the crows for a vulture’s eye view. The smoke was thinning out. People were stumbling uphill, unable to make an orderly advance over the rocky ground.
Now I understood why the troops had been issued calthrops.
Calthrops are like large kids’ jacks, only the tips are sharp and sometimes poisoned. The calthrop is a handy tool if you have to run for it, particularly if the guys after you are going to be on horseback. You scatter calthrops where horses have to follow narrow paths and you have yourself a guaranteed head start or even grounds for a nasty ambush.
Aha! I spied the missing complimentary in-law.
Uncle Doj was dressed up in his best outfit, his holy fencing duds, like he maybe did not want us going to a whole lot of trouble when we laid him out. Hell. I would have to check with Thai Dei on Nyueng Bao funeral customs. A lot of Nyueng Bao had died around me but I never took part in what went on later.
I still resented being left out when they took care of To Tan and Sahra without me.
Uncle Doj strutted uphill till he was just fifty feet from the first line of Shadowlanders. He stopped and bellowed a challenge to Narayan Singh.
Guess who did not come out to fight? Nobody even answered. Nobody even bothered to relay the message to the Deceiver camp.
Uncle Doj began issuing a series of formal insults, belittling the Deceivers and all their allies. Trouble was, they were formal insults from a stylized school of challenge and response. He did not know how to make his presentation in a manner accessible to people who did not speak Nyueng Bao.
Poor Uncle. Forty years of intense preparation brought him to the ultimate moment and all those guys over there saw was a crazy old man.
Doj began to get it.
He began to get angry for real. He started yelling his challenges in Taglian. A few Shadowlanders understood him. His message soon reached the Deceivers. It was not well received.
I found the show as amusing as anything could be out there.
None of this was part of the Captain’s plan.
Uncle kept hollering.
Over in the Deceiver camp the miniature messiah of the Stranglers told his cronies, “We will not respond. We will wait. Darkness is our time. And darkness always comes.” After a pause he asked, “Who is that man?”
A wide, creepy looking guy told him, “He was in Dejagore. One of the Nyueng Bao pilgrims.” The man speaking was named Sindhu. He had come into Dejagore during the siege to spy for Lady and for the Deceivers. He was a real villain. I had been sure he was dead.
The Sahras die but the Sindhus and Narayan Singhs go on. Which is why I cannot be a religious man. Unless the Gunni are right and there is a wheel of life and eventually everybody gets what they deserve.
Sindhu continued, “He was a priest of some kind and their Speaker. A member of his family eventually wed the standardbearer of the Black Company.”
“It becomes clear. The Goddess is scribbling one of her subtle death plays.” He glanced at the Daughter of Night. The kid sat so still it was spooky. Spookier than usual. No four-year-old could do that.
Narayan Singh seemed vaguely troubled. His goddess enjoyed the occasional death joke at the expense of her most devout followers. He did not want to become one of her pranks.
“Darkness is our time,” he said again. “Darkness always comes.”
Darkness always comes. Sounded like Kina’s motto. I took another look at Lady and Croaker’s brat. She bothered me bad. She was spookier every time I looked. If it had not been so hard to care out there I could have cried for Lady and the Old Man.
Actually, I almost could. Maybe I was becoming capable of feeling while I worked.
I drifted away, found that Mogaba was taking stronger exception to Uncle’s antics than was Singh. But he remembered Uncle Doj from the bad old days. “I want that man silenced,” he said. “The soldiers are watching him instead of their enemies.”
When he drew no response from the Deceivers, Uncle Doj began insulting the Shadowlanders and their masters. A javelin streaked his way. In a motion too swift to follow he drew Ash Wand and brushed the missile aside. “Cowards!” he called. “Renegades! Are any of you Nar men enough to come out?” He exposed his back contemptuously, headed for friendly lines before a missile storm could devour him. A masterful move, it did not look like a withdrawal at all.
All hell broke loose. Horns shrieked. Drums grumbled. A stumbling, shambling, inept, mean-spirited and poorly armed rabble headed uphill wailing, sixty thousand hungry and hard up camp followers attacking the servants of shadow. Our soldiers drove them at swordspoint.
I was stunned. I was awed. The Captain had his hard moments but I never figured him for hard enough to let camp followers accumulate and tag along so he could use them as a human avalanche. But on reflection, yes, for weeks he had been warning the soldiers not to let anyone they cared for join the march. Those who discussed it at all thought it meant that the Old Man did not expect to be successful.
Those people were going to get slaughtered. But they would hurt some Shadowlanders and grind the rest down, which would work to our advantage.
The soldiers were merciless. They whipped the camp followers into a terrified frenzy. When they hit Mogaba’s center and right they actually penetrated the Shadowlander front rank.
Blade’s division remained untouched.
While everyone was concentrating on our attack, Croaker’s special forces left Lady’s shadow and hastened into the wastes flanking the pass. Mogaba had sentries concealed in amongst those rocks, of course. Fighting broke out immediately.
Our elephants moved forward behind the troops pushing the camp followers. The Shadowlanders were too busy to bother them. The elephants used huge mallets to drive big iron spikes into the earth.
Came a shrill of brassy Shadowlander trumpets. For no reason I could discern Blade’s division suddenly moved out, left oblique, downhill, at an angle that would take it around our right flank. I marvelled at how well his men maintained formation crossing that rough ground.
Now I got to witness one of Longshadow’s epic rages. “You have gone too far this time!” he thundered at Mogaba, once he controlled himself enough to manage a coherent sentence. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, making moves like that without consulting me? At least explain your thinking!” While he yelled he stamped around the rough platform, shaking, clawing at his mask till I thought he might show the world the face he kept hidden except when he was alone.
“I have no idea what he’s doing.” Mogaba ignored the Shadowmaster’s rage. He leaned on the platform rail, stared at Blade’s division and looked as confused as ever I had seen. “Be quiet.”
Howler punctuated the racket with a series of shrieks.
Longshadow became incoherent again.
Taglian trumpets blared. Shadar cavalrymen galloped out of the gap between the Old Man’s two divisions and rushed into that between Blade’s division and the rest of the Shadowlander army. Their movement was a lot less impressive than Blade’s. They did not even pretend to maintain formation once they were moving.
Blade ignored them. He continued his march.
Mogaba became as excited as ever I have seen him. He did not have a clue what Blade was up to.
Longshadow and Howler nearly came to blows.
What the hell was going on?
Sudden drums announced the advance of Croaker’s lead division. It headed straight into the space vacated by Blade’s force. The cavalry drifted onward, screening the division’s outside flank. Then the reserve division faced right and began to follow Blade. And I gawked.
Events were unfolding as though carefully choreographed yet nobody knew what was going on. Confusion was universal. In some more remote areas, like Lady’s command post, people had no idea at all.
The Captain might have had some idea but he seemed to be running in three directions at once, trying to obtain control, keep control, keep in touch. He was unable to keep a grasp on the bigger picture.
I could give him no help. By the time I could return to flesh, get myself moving, find him at the front a mile from One-Eye’s wagon, the whole situation would have changed radically.
On our left and in our center our soldiers continued to drive the camp followers ahead of them. That was turning into a horror show of proportions sure to be recalled for generations.
Croaker’s lead division engaged the Shadowlanders directly, attempting to secure the position Blade had abandoned. Mogaba’s reserves rushed in. They fought very well. They pushed Croaker back. Barely. I got the feeling the Old Man was not ready to make a total effort to gain the position.
One company of Shadar, towering over their enemies, did get within bowshot of the Strangler camp. For several minutes a handful of archers laid down a desultory barrage that did no apparent damage.
At the same time Howler managed to get through to Longshadow. “We do not have the luxury of spending time squabbling among ourselves! The woman could strike any moment. If you’re not paying attention . . . ”
Several strong sallies in the same vein led the Shadowmaster to understand that indulging in a fit left him vulnerable to sorcerous attack. And his sidekick could not protect him all the time. He was having a rash of his own screaming fits.
Still shaking, unable to articulate clearly, Longshadow concentrated his attention on Lady.
Lady was just standing there, waiting.
Mogaba tried to get Longshadow’s attention. The Shadowmaster remained focused on Lady. Mogaba persisted. He got Longshadow to turn around only after it looked like the crisis had passed. The terror applied by our troops no longer was sufficient to keep the camp followers moving uphill. The Captain’s division had withdrawn to its jump-off position. Blade’s force had halted two miles west of the battlefield. It was surrounded by our cavalry and the reserve division. The Shadowlanders in the unit were as baffled as everyone else. But they were good soldiers. They carried out their orders.
Mogaba told Longshadow, “We have been deceived, not in any way we anticipated. With one clever stroke Croaker has decimated us. It is now unlikely that I can hold this ground if you won’t modify your general orders.”
Longshadow grunted an angry interrogative.
Mogaba told him, “Our best hope now is to attack while the Taglians are disorganized and scattered, before our own soldiers realize how suddenly desperate our situation has become.”
Longshadow did not see it that way. “Once again you forget that your mission is to carry out my wishes, not to question them. Why must you be so negative?” He stared at Blade’s force, only part of which was visible from where he stood. Clearly he was troubled by negative thoughts of his own. “You repelled their attack easily.”
Mogaba restrained his anger with difficulty. I wished someone, anyone, had an idea of Longshadow’s antecedents. Sometimes the man was as naive as he was powerful.
Mogaba threw an arm up as though indicating Blade. “We were taken in. An entire legion has just been lost because you were so eager to enlist another ranking defector.”
Dumb old me, I did not understand what he was saying. I had not made the intuitive leap.
Longshadow did not yet understand that there was a leap to be made. He saw only a triumph in the opening bout of the contest. “How many have we killed? See! The dead fell in windrows. They lie there in veritable hills. Count them in their thousands. These crows will feast for an age to come.”
But the man inside was troubled. He continued to stare toward Blade’s force.
Mogaba barked, “Maybe one out of a hundred of those dead was a soldier. Those were all camp followers, the thieves and whores and hungry mouths that become parasitic on any army that permits it. They were useless tagalong scum. Croaker used them to keep us occupied while he stole a quarter of our strength and all of our hope. His veterans now outnumber ours significantly. And most of them are fresh.” He indicated the heights to his right, where Croaker’s special forces continued to gain ground. “They’ll soon take the high ground. They came prepared to take it.”
“And you aren’t prepared to defend it?”
“I anticipated Croaker’s effort. Only a fool would ignore those heights. But I didn’t anticipate the firebombs he’s using.”
Those were the finest product of One-Eye’s weapons shops back in Taglios, transported here at great cost in treasure and labor, which now looked worthwhile. It was hard to hold your ground in the face of those bombs.
The Captain and his staff were headed for Blade’s division. Something was up. I streaked that way.
Blade came outside the wall of his soldiers, faced the Captain across a hundred yards of rocky ground. Our men were posted outside bowshot, relaxed but alert, awaiting developments. They were only slightly less baffled than the traitor’s soldiers, who were drawn up as if for review now, not for combat.
Blade and Croaker met midway between. They exchanged a few words. Silly me, I expected the Old Man to settle the feud he had been prosecuting so vigorously for so long. Instead, he threw his arms around Blade and started laughing.
It had been a long time for the Captain. His laughter had a definite mad edge.
They started jumping up and down, holding on to one another.
Then Blade spun away. He bellowed at his soldiers, “Stack your weapons and surrender. Or you’ll be exterminated.”
I was so dense that only now, as Blade’s soldiers began obeying orders, as they had been taught, did I recognize the swindle.
Blade’s defection had been staged. Croaker’s years-long mad pursuit of him had been cosmetic except where he had used Blade to rid himself of obnoxious religious fanatics.
Nothing like having your enemies do your dirty work for you.
More, Blade had worked hard to make the Shadowmaster unpopular with his subjects. Whole territories had surrendered without even token resistance.
And now Blade had delivered a quarter of the Shadowmaster’s finest troops.
Nowhere in the Annals was there a con to match this con. And this one Croaker created for himself. He would laugh up his sleeve for a long time, knowing Mogaba could not have imagined him capable of such an unprecedented move. Mogaba did not think Croaker capable of taking a deep breath without consulting the Annals.