I left Smoke. Nobody was anywhere near the wagon except Mother Gota and Thai Dei. I joined them. They said nothing. I ate without speaking myself, drank a lot of water, climbed back into the wagon and took a long nap. I dreamed. The dreams were not pleasant. Soulcatcher was there and she seemed to be having a wonderful time. Messing with us, no doubt, because that is where she found her fun.
I woke up and ate again, barely aware that I was devouring some of Mother Gota’s worst cuisine. I swilled water as though this was my first chance in weeks. I was vaguely aware that Thai Dei seemed troubled whenever he looked at me. I tried to figure that out but I could not concentrate.
It was late. The camp itself was quiet. The soldiers were still forward. Night sentries prowled watchfully, warned that there were Stranglers in the enemy camp. They gossiped softly as they paused to warm their hands by the fires. Farther back, some survivors from among the camp followers gathered their pitiful belongings and stole away before they got rounded up and herded forward again.
Vicious fighting continued on the heights. Mogaba intended to contest every foot of ground.
Not all the camp followers had been able to get away. Fires on Lady’s flank once again began to mask our camp with smoke. Did the Captain have some new devilment in mind?
I asked him when he turned up a while later. “I hope they think so up there,” he said. He could not stop grinning. “For the rest of his life I want Mogaba looking over his shoulder, jumping at shadows, thinking there’s another trap about to open under his feet. Maybe there’ll be one sometime.” He laughed again.
All the senior officers began gathering at a fire laid like a Gunni festival bonfire. Politically neutral priests of all faiths performed rites of thanksgiving. Even Lady came in, accompanied by her officers and admirers. She looked like a demigoddess, more real than any Taglian deity but the dreaded Kina. In the modern era only Kina seemed interested in mundane affairs.
But she had a personal interest.
Hard to tell who among the crowd was most boggled. Blade settled beside the Old Man. He could not stop grinning. He could not stop babbling at his old buddy Swan. Pity Cordy Mather was back home with the Woman. He would have gotten a kick out of this, too.
I had not seen Blade for years. Back then he had been a taciturn cynic. Nothing like this. And One-Eye had not had time to get a still running yet.
Blade bellowed at Croaker. Croaker bellowed right back. Swan told me, “Don’t mind them two. They haven’t gotten over the hand-holding stage yet.”
“I guess there must have been a lot of strain while the con was running.”
The Old Man heard Swan but ignored him. “Tomorrow it’s good old-fashioned hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle. The last thing Mogaba will expect from me. Prince, you get first go. Have your men show us how good they are.”
I took a long drink of water, wishing One-Eye had managed to get something made for tonight. But that would not have gone over. None of the Taglian religions tolerated beer, nor did Lady or the Prince, who did not want drunken soldiers screwing things up. But what they did not see they could not condemn. So I might just suggest to One-Eye that he get a move on.
I asked, “You’re actually going to tell us what’s going on?”
A lax humor entered the Captain’s eyes. “Nope.” He leaned close, whispered, “Don’t let this get out. I don’t want anybody easing up. But they’re not sending shadows out to spy.” He pointed as a fireball headed up the pass. We had not seen much of Lady’s big magic here yet.
“How come?”
“They’re saving them.” He grinned again. This grin took in everyone around us. He spoke to the assembly. “I think you all know what you’re expected to do next. Get some rest.”
How did everybody know what they were expected to do next? The little he had told anyone had been extremely vague.
Croaker looked at Lady. She seemed at the point of collapse. This was tiring work but her exhaustion went beyond what you would expect.
Some hard guy, my Captain. Sometimes his feelings were obvious. He hurt for the woman he loved. “Swan. Hang around. I want to talk to you.”
I was politely invited to move my unwelcome ass along and get some rest of my own.
I wanted to sleep. I was tired despite having done so little that was physical. But when I retired to One-Eye’s wagon I lay there tossing and turning. Outside Mother Gota was engaged in an endless litany of complaint. Evidently I was only a minor character in her cast of troubles. Uncle Doj was a star. Hong Tray was a star. Sahra was a star for having gone along with Hong Tray. Or for having gotten Hong Tray on her side. Witches, both of them. Thai Dei did not say much more than usual. He might have wanted to enter a fact or two but his mother never gave him the chance.
Same old same old where Mother Gota was concerned. Most of the time I did not hear her anymore. I wondered if she could be insulted into silence.
She did get me thinking about the woman I loved.
I turned and tossed and wrestled with the pain. I thought it might be getting a little less potent. And, of course, I had to worry about that. Was it right? Was it a betrayal of Sarie?
I reminded me that I am a grown man used to a hard life and should not be getting caught up in this sort of obsessing, however great a treasure Sahra had been.
I did drift off into that state where you are not entirely asleep but you are not awake, either. Where you can rewrite your dreams as you go along.
Suddenly I was back in the past, whipped through time by a gust of laughter and a mocking voice that asked me where I had been. I was not expecting this after all this time but it did not take me off guard, either. I was experienced at this sort of thing now.
Not surprised, I was not lost or disoriented. I had walked with the ghost enough to have developed some resilience. I tried to take hold just as I would have had I been out with Smoke.
The aura of amusement surrounding me gave way to startlement. I did a sort of transdimensional fast spin and right there caught a glimpse of the prime suspect, Soulcatcher, kneeling over some array of sorcerous objects near a fire somewhere in the gorsy approaches to Charandaprash. My turn to be amused. Even if I was not in control I now knew who was manipulating me.
Now, how could I put another move on her and find out why?
The laughter of crows enveloped me. Like it did not matter if I knew who was doing what.
That sounded like Soulcatcher, the way she was described in Croaker’s Annals. A force for chaos, seldom giving one rat’s ass what happened as long as something did.
I tried to recall where those Annals were right now. Another look at Soulcatcher might be worthwhile. Or maybe even a long heart-to-heart with the Old Man. He knew Soulcatcher better than anyone alive, her sister included. I do not believe Lady had a clue about her sister’s thinking anymore. Maybe she did not care.
Maybe I was seeing things that were not there. What did I know about what Lady was thinking, really? I had not exchanged a hundred words with her in the past three years. Before that our exchanges were limited to information destined for the Annals.
The laughter of crows became the laughter of Soulcatcher. A voice said, “I do not think I want to play today after all.”
A great invisible hand grabbed me and threw me into a windy darkness. I spun like a thrown walnut even though I was nothing but a dream.
I tried controlling it same as I would have had I been walking with the ghost. Once again I was able to take a measure of control. The sensation of spinning went away. As it faded a feeling of place and time returned, along with an ability to see. It was not good seeing. It was fuzzing and short range, like Hagop talked about his vision getting as he got older. But I was in a jungle. Was it familiar? It was a jungle. I have seen a few and they are all pretty much the same if you cannot see more than twenty feet clearly. Bugs out the wazoo. Muted, the screeching of a thousand birds. A couple of those were inside my circle of vision. I noted that they seemed to see me just fine. I was the reason for all the excitement.
I rotated quickly. Jungle for sure. But not short on water. A nasty black pool lay only inches from where my heels would have rested had I had any heels.
Monkeys scampered along a branch overhead, rattled by the screeching of the birds but, apparently, unable to see me. At least not at that range. One came swinging past a foot from my point of view. She saw me. She was so startled she lost her grip, shrieked in surprise, fell into the black pool, where she started hollering in terror.
The crocodile almost got her. Almost. She got out of the water an instant before the jaws snapped. Nothing like some big teeth moving fast to motivate you.
The crocodile’s effort, however, betrayed it to the crocodile hunters who materialized an instant later, casting barbed spears.
Life is cruel.
Those crocodile hunters were unusually nervous. They wondered why the birds were going crazy. They wondered why the monkeys had gone berserk, why one had fallen into the black pool. Understanding them was no problem. They spoke Nyueng Bao as though it was their native tongue. Which it was.
I was somewhere in the delta.
Faintly, faintly, behind the raucous birds I could sense the amusement of crows.
I had no sense of direction.
There was no Smoke to take me home.
I was not just dreaming. I had control but did not know what to do with it . . . Up. Up was always good with Smoke. The higher you went the more the earth looked like an incredibly detailed map. Then you needed only find a landmark you knew. I went up.
I was in the nastiest, most untamed part of the delta. The whole world was black water, bugs and densely packed trees. That was very nearly my idea of hell.
I had to go way up above where the buzzards soar to see anything else. In the meantime psychic chills twisted the imaginary me; fear gnawed hard and deep. Rising with me was a momentary certainty that I would never find any landmark.
The sun was a landmark. If you had eyes to see it.
I could not see much very well. Not even the birds that shied away.
So I could not find a landmark the logical way. Well, there was a different green over that way.
The different green proved to be empty rice paddies. I zigged this way, zagged that, found a village, found the path that ran out of the village and followed it. I moved at wild speeds. Still, I knew, it was going to take me a long time to get back to where I started.
Damned Soulcatcher!
I heard the voices mocking crows.
I saw a village that looked familiar.
Some would say all Nyueng Bao hamlets look alike. They do, pretty much, from what I have seen. But their temples vary radically according to the wealth and status and age of the town. I had seen this temple before, weeks ago when I was searching for Goblin. I had, in fact, glimpsed a girl who looked so much like Sahra that I wanted to cry when I left Smoke’s world.
I paused there, drifted around, watched the villagers about their early morning business. Everything seemed typical of a Nyueng Bao hamlet, from all I had heard. Even though it was the middle of winter there was work to do. People were getting set to do it.
It was a very prosperous town. Very old, too, probably. The temple was large and looked like it had been there for ages. A pair of mighty two-headed elephants formed pillars to either side of a door as tall as three Nyueng Bao men. The two-headed elephant represented the god of luck among the Gunni. I recall One-Eye saying luck took that form because it was powerful and two-faced.
Oh. That must be the girl I had seen before. The ringer for Sarie. She came out of the temple looking exhausted, sad. Could this be the same woman? The earlier one had looked like a slightly younger version of Sarie. This one looked like an older one, after having gained ten pounds and several years. She had that incredible face but both her hips and breasts were slightly heavier than Sahra’s had been and she was ill-kempt, something Sarie never was, even in the worst of times. This woman was dirty, ragged, in despair.
But she did look so much like Sarie that I wanted to go to her and take her pain away, whatever it might be.
I drifted closer, almost enjoying my own self-pitying pain, wondering why the woman wore white when almost all Nyueng Bao except priests dressed in black. Except on special occasions.
I could ask Thai Dei when I got back. If I ever found the way.
I was so near the woman I could have taken her into my arms and kissed her had I been in flesh. I wanted to, she resembled Sarie so much in her face.
Had Sarie had cousins? I know she had uncles because at least one died during the siege of Dejagore. She might have had aunts who stayed behind, too. The party of pilgrims had included only a fraction of the delta population.
The woman in white looked square where my eyes would have been. Her eyes widened. Her skin went pale. She let out a shriek, then collapsed. Several old men in colored robes rushed out of the temple. They began trying to bring the woman around, gabbling at one another too fast for me to follow. She regained her composure as they helped her to her feet. “I thought I saw a ghost,” she said in response to insistent questions. “It must be the fasting.”
Fasting? It did not look like she had been missing many meals to me.
So she had sensed my presence, eh? Worth remembering. But I had a battle to get back to. I was no use to anyone down here, all but lost. I found the road out of town, followed it in a direction I believed would eventually bring me to Taglios. From Taglios it would be an easy course to chart south.
I did not have to make the trip the hard way. Not long after I found the river my whole universe began to rock. After its third unnatural shaking I began to feel pain. Twice more and I went into darkness, passed through, and came up to awareness inside One-Eye’s wagon. The little shit was holding me up by the shirt and slapping me while he growled something about waking my ass up.
I was sitting up beside Smoke when I opened my eyes. I was soaked with sweat. I was shaking.
One-Eye demanded, “What the hell is the matter with you?”
“I’m not sure. Soulcatcher, I think. It was sort of like when I used to fall through time to Dejagore. Only I kind of squirted like a sugarmelon seed, right off to somewhere in the delta. I knew what was happening but I couldn’t control it. In a way it was like walking with the ghost. But I couldn’t see very far . . . ” I realized I was babbling, in Taglian yet. I managed to bite down on it.
“We’ll talk about it later. I’ve got work to do.”
I opened my mouth to protest.
“You want to talk, go see Croaker. Or do whatever else you want. But get out of the way. I’m not kidding about the work.”
Angry, I clambered out of the wagon. It was daytime out there, just as it had been in the swamp. There was a lot of smoke. There was plenty of noise from the front, where the situation seemed to be static. There was not much chance the Old Man would take time out to hear about my misadventure. It did not affect what was happening right now.
I went over to the campfire. It had gone out. In fact, it had gone cold.
Where were Thai Dei and his mother? Where was Uncle Doj?
Not here.
I found water and drank, wondering how long it would be before the water supply became as critical as the food. I napped. Eventually One-Eye completed his business. He came out and sat beside me. “Now tell me about it.”
I told him.
“You might have learned something important this time, Kid.”
“Like what?”
“I’ll let you know after I talk to Croaker.”
I was an afrit buzzing behind Mogaba’s shoulder. He and his captains were rattled.
Longshadow exhorted them to stop embarrassing his warrior empire.
“Somebody pour mud in that idiot’s mouth,” one of Mogaba’s few loyal Nar growled. “What a cretin.”
I agreed.
A cretin with a hearing impairment, apparently. He did not respond to the most direct provocation I had yet heard from any of those who served him.
Mogaba pretended to hear nothing himself. He watched the cliffs. Vicious, incessant fighting continued there. Our troops worked the attack in shifts. Mogaba’s men were unable to do so themselves. He had almost no reserves. There was little hope in his eyes as he sent his commanders back to their units. But he was a soldier’s soldier. He would fight until he fell.
Just like he had tried to do at Dejagore.
He had us by the short hairs if his troops went to eating each other in order to outlast us.
Our siege towers crept forward like tall, slow ships. Our elephants and surviving camp followers pulled them using cables passed through blocks attached to the steel spikes the elephants had planted earlier. When the towers finally stopped soldiers brought mantlets up to fill the gaps between. Protected by the mantlets engineers began erecting a wooden wall.
Missiles left the towers in swarms.
Mogaba had no engine powerful enough to penetrate the coverings on the towers. He had to do something.
The Shadowmaster forbid his doing the one thing that would have helped. Longshadow was worse than any spoiled child, stubborn as a rock. Things were going to be done his way and that was that. Mogaba was not going to take one step forward.
Mogaba was very near his limit but not yet ready to defy Longshadow. He was aware that Lady was over on our side just waiting for a chance to make his life miserable. That would happen seconds after the Shadowmaster took his toys and went home.
If he could not attack, Mogaba decided, he would pull back, leaving his forward works manned by minimal forces. They were to withdraw in such a way that we should not notice them moving out of harm’s way.
But I was watching.
Mogaba told Howler, “You’d better keep your carpet ready. I’m doing this with both hands tied. I won’t last long.”
Longshadow turned. If looks could kill.
Howler’s stance turned ugly, too. He did not want to be labeled a coward in front of witnesses.
A sudden uproar exploded on the far side of the pass. I darted over to the Deceiver camp. And there was Uncle Doj with Ash Wand, butchering Stranglers wholesale. Nasty old Mother Gota covered his back, moving about as slickly as he did.
Not bad for an old gal who practiced only when she could not duck out of it.
How had they gotten over there?
Then the real shit splashed down.
The Prahbrindrah Drah finally launched the attack the Old Man had dropped into his lap.
A dozen war elephants spearheaded the Prince’s assault.
Shadowlander troops rushed to man their forward works. Arrows fell in sheets.
Mogaba showed us. He jelled his defense. He murdered our elephants. His men showed their superior discipline. They sent the Prince staggering back with losses as appalling as those I had anticipated before we saw any of the Captain’s trickeries.
Mogaba launched a vicious counterattack he claimed was just a heavy pursuit. The wooden walls between our siege towers held until Longshadow recognized what Mogaba was doing and ordered him to pull back.
Immediately, as though he knew what was happening even without any reports, Croaker launched an attack on his flank. Only minutes later Lady attacked on the left.
Fighting on the heights grew even more savage. I lost track of my feisty in-laws. Narayan Singh and the Daughter of Night fled the Deceiver encampment and went into hiding beneath Mogaba’s watchtower.
There were no surprises from our side. Our divisions took turns attacking. Mogaba’s men repelled them but had to come out into the missile storm to do it. Workmen edged the towers forward again, inch by inch. Longshadow persisted in his irrational behavior. He began to look not only a lackwit but actively suicidal. He kept poor Mogaba operating with his hands tied and his ankles in chains, yet dumped buckets of blame on him because it looked like he was going to fail.
And the heights were aflame.
That facet of the fighting was almost over.
I told Croaker, “I found out why Longshadow refuses to turn Mogaba loose when even he’s got to see that that’s best. He’s scared Mogaba might do a Blade of his own.”
“The Shadowmaster is a blind fool,” Blade said. “He doesn’t know how to look at people.”
I said, “What?”
“Mogaba has to destroy Croaker. He can’t do anything else and live with the image of himself he’s created for himself.”
Croaker made a rude noise.
Blade continued, “Mogaba has his own troubles keeping in touch with reality anymore. This confrontation has become what his life is all about. There’s no future if there’s no victory.”
Croaker was not flattered. “I feel pretty much the same way.” He told me, “Longshadow is right about one thing. The whole world is out to get his ass. What’s morale like over there?”
I winced. Was I supposed to tell him in front of people who knew nothing about Smoke?
“Lower than a snake’s butt,” One-Eye said. I glowered at him.
“They likely to break?”
“Only if Mogaba runs. They may not like him a whole lot but they believe in him.”
I stared at Lady. Her eyes were closed. She might be grabbing the chance to nap. Seldom on stage doing anything obvious, she was working harder than anybody else. She had to be completely alert every second.
I wondered if Longshadow and Howler had any notion how exhausted she must be, if they would try to turn things around by taking advantage of that. I shivered.
The Captain nodded to himself. “We go at three in the morning. Meantime, everybody rest.” His general’s mask faded whenever he looked at Lady. In those moments his feelings, were pretty obvious.
I drifted off into a reverie, recalling the nightmares Lady had described in her book, all so obsessed with death and destruction, much like the ones I kept having. I was sure she was suffering those again. She was fighting sleep most of the time, trying to avoid them. I visualized Kina as Lady had described her, black and tall, naked, glistening, with four arms and eight teats, vampire fangs and nifty jewelry made from babies’ skulls and severed penises. Not exactly a girl just like good old mom. I wondered if Lady had been dreaming any of the times I had glimpsed something that might have been Kina.
I started. For an instant I thought I had caught a whiff of Kina’s perfume, which was the stench of rotting corpses.
There would be plenty of that here soon enough. Only the cold kept it from being really bad already.
I squeaked. Thai Dei was shaking me. Where had he come from? He looked troubled. Croaker was staring at me, too. So were the others. I had drifted right off into a nightmare, never realizing I was gone. The Captain asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Bad dream.”
Lady was just leaving with Swan and Blade. She stopped, looked back at me. Her nostrils moved restlessly, as though she could smell that stench, too. She eyed me hard.
“Excuse me?” I had missed another question while Lady and I exchanged looks.
“Your in-laws, Murgen. Where are your in-laws?”
“I don’t know. This morning they turned up over there in the Deceiver camp and went berserk.” I spoke softly because I was not sure there was any language I could get past Lady and her tagalongs. “Uncle Doj sliced up about fifty Deceivers while Mother Gota covered his back. It was a sight. You don’t want to get that old woman mad.” I shifted to Nyueng Bao. “Thai Dei. Where are Doj and your mother?”
He shrugged. That could mean he did not know or that he was not going to say.
“Thai Dei doesn’t know, either.” But where had Thai Dei been lately? He had not been underfoot for nearly a day.
Referring to what I had said about Uncle Doj and Mother Gota, Croaker said, “I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate. Old people can’t—”
“I’m not exaggerating. Blood and shit were everywhere. That old boy’s sword moved so fast you could hardly see it. All those assholes wanted to do was get out of his way. Singh grabbed the girl and ran for it. He’s hiding out under Mogaba’s tower right now. Even the Daughter of Night was a little rattled by the way things were going.”
“What about your in-laws?”
Stubborn bastard. “They’ve disappeared, all right? I haven’t looked for them. Maybe the soldiers got them.” I doubted that, though.
The old man nodded. He glanced at Thai Dei. “I’ll get the angle on them yet. Get some sleep. Be long hours tomorrow.”
Seemed to me like I ought to be plenty well rested.
Thai Dei looked like he really wished he understood a few more languages.
I was right. The heights were the key to the pass. But no genius was needed to figure that out, was it?
Renewed fighting began with a shower of firebombs. For the first time our entire front discharged bamboo poles uphill. Lady foamed at the mouth, cursing the waste.
Once again the Prahbrindrah Drah had been awarded the honor of the first charge.
It was hard to believe that Mogaba’s soldiers had not been obliterated by the preparatory barrage but the Prince ran into fierce, stubborn resistance. The Shadowlanders fought ferociously now because they saw no other options. Their training took over, the way it is supposed to do in deadly situations. The Prince pushed hard but got nowhere.
Mogaba had managed to create a small reserve mostly out of imagination. He shuttled them here and there, applying mind, spirit and will to his own salvation. But he was accursed. And his curse was his lunatic employer.
Longshadow was nothing if not flexible when his own ass was in a sling. Till now the whole point of existence had been to hold the pass against the Black Company. The world would end if we crossed the Dandha Presh. But when the fireballs started zipping around his ears, sizzling black pockmarks out of the tower, he developed a new idea. He told Howler, “Get your carpet ready. General. Summon the Deceiver Singh, the child, and your five most valuable officers.” Of a sudden he seemed entirely calm, totally rational, completely in control, apparently the sort of supreme ruler any man would prefer.
Howler stared at him half a minute before he nodded. The little wizard wore a mask of his own but that did not hide his contempt.
“Withdrawal at this point would be premature,” Mogaba said. I was about ready to concede that the man was a saint. A devil saint, but a saint nonetheless. His patience seemed almost infinite. Longshadow was worse than a spoiled child. I wondered how he had become so powerful. “The situation can be retrieved if you’ll just let me do it.”
“You will do as I tell you, General.”
“I suppose. Just as I have for four years. Which has brought us to this. The finest army of this age is being brought to despair by men who have only to design strategies that exploit the egotism, fears and fantasies of one wizard whose knowledge of things material does not extend to which end of a spear you grasp. I find that they are, by the by, astonishingly well informed about your character flaws.”
Mogaba brushed Howler with a jaundiced glance. Paranoia and suspicion were not exclusive to our side. Neither were private agendas.
Longshadow sputtered in outrage.
Mogaba did not let up. “I will not summon my captains. I will not abandon my positions or desert my troops simply because your courage has deserted you. If you wish to go, go. Let us fight. We may die in fires sent up by the Senjak woman but at least no man of mine will be cut down from behind.”
Longshadow sputtered. He was about to go berserk.
“Find some backbone, man. Find the guts to let the professionals do their jobs. Make your soldiers want to fight for you.” Mogaba turned his back on the Shadowmaster. “Messenger.” He sent word to the heights above that he was not pleased with the way things were going there.
A tall Shadar with an exceptional arm was lobbing firebombs fearfully close to Mogaba’s tower. He had Narayan and the Daughter of Night very nervous down below.
For a while I thought Mogaba was going to carry his point and get away with his rebellion. He scattered messengers everywhere, steadying his troops. And Longshadow actually calmed down after a few minutes instead of flying into an inarticulate rage. He was reflective for quite some time. I feared that Mogaba had gotten through and convinced him of the truth that there was no better ground to meet us, no better men to fight us, no better commander to crush us. I feared his well honed instinct for self-preservation had kicked in.
Then some darkness gradually enveloped the Shadowmaster. I could have sworn that it did not come from within him.
Longshadow squealed like a wounded hog. He stomped and shrieked in a tongue no one understood and fell to his knees. He shuddered all over, having some sort of seizure. This was not like his usual fits of rage. He moaned and wept and talked in a way that made me wonder if even he understood what he was saying. Everyone on the tower gaped. Howler looked around like he expected incoming trouble of the cruelest kind. I took a swift look at Lady but found her doing nothing. She was just more alert than usual, sensing something but not knowing what it might be.
Whimpering, Longshadow climbed to his feet. He faced Mogaba. He began to stomp and shriek while he did something with his skinny, gloved fingers.
Mogaba suddenly dropped like he had gotten crowned by an axe handle.
Longshadow raged at the waiting messengers. He sent one to summon Singh and the child, others after his preferred officers. Those couriers went without any enthusiasm, which you would expect of guys who had just heard they were going to be allowed to stay behind and die so their nutcase boss could make his getaway.
Only the man sent for Narayan Singh actually did his job. The rest decided to get a head start hiking south. They saw no reason to accept betrayal.
Our guys on the heights managed to get a few firebombs into the structure of the observation tower. A sniper plinked away with a bamboo pole. His marksmanship left plenty to be desired. But those little balls of fire would not fly as predictably as an arrow.
Longshadow had Mogaba carried onto Howler’s carpet. Howler said nothing though I thought it was obvious he agreed with Mogaba that the day was not yet lost.
Hell, it seemed to me they were a lot more afraid of Lady than they needed to be. I thought one big sorcerous shitstorm would take care of her. But maybe she had them fooled. Maybe Howler remembered the old days too well to go head-to-head with her now.
No matter. They were not willing to employ their strengths.
The carpet Howler had brought to Charandaprash was far larger than the one that he had had damaged earlier. It could haul a dozen people and all their gear.
Longshadow stopped raging. He seemed baffled by his own behavior, once actually whispering, “What have I done now?” He knew that he had screwed up but he was the kind of guy who, after he shoots his mouth off, cannot back down or admit any failing. The world is full of those people. All of us would be better off if their fathers would strangle them as soon as they showed signs of being that way. This particular fool was willing to sacrifice an army rather than admit his error.
A dozen men were on the platform when Singh and the child arrived. Mostly they were messengers not yet sent out. A few were officers. As Narayan and the Daughter of Night boarded the carpet even the dumbest soldiers realized that the big boys were running. After Longshadow stepped aboard and started to rave again, those about to be left decided not to stay. They joined the rush as Howler lifted the carpet. The carpet shuddered, sank to one side, banged off the edge of the platform, started sliding sideways toward the cliff.
Instantly firebombs came down. Soldiers dodged. The carpet wobbled worse. Men fell off. A firebomb scored. As the flames spread Howler gained better control. The carpet headed south, staggering like a drunken comet.
The men on the heights opened up with their bamboo gizmos. Howler dodged madly through the shitstorm. He did not dodge everything. Longshadow’s desperate sorceries barely kept them from being eaten alive.
What was wrong with Lady? This was her chance. The villains were preoccupied with saving their own butts. If she brought them down now the thing would be done. And Narayan Singh and the kid would be ours for the collection.
Came a sound like ten thousand competing whispers, like a million, like a hundred million, swelling into the rush of a cyclone. It passed me, invisible, and chased up the pass. A horror-struck silence occupied its wake. It must have been a hundred times as terrifying outside the ghostworld. Soldiers from both sides put down their arms to watch.
Howler loosed a wail of despair heard above all the other racket. That woke up the gawkers on the cliffs who really had nothing better to do than blow fireballs at flying wizards. The fireworks show resumed, redoubled.
Howler headed for the ground. His companions’ help was inadequate. He could not fly and fight at the same time. The carpet hit hard. Soldiers were thrown all over the slopes, Mogaba among them. Most just ran for it. Mogaba, when he recovered consciousness, began stumbling back toward his troops, oblivious to the shitstorm around him. He must have had divine dispensation because no harm found him.
Despite the flatness of the ghostworld I felt a surge of elation. We had them! This battle was won. This war was moments from being over! Lady’s whispering witchery would gnaw away at Howler and the Shadowmaster while the guys on the cliffs inundated them with fireballs.
The expanse and depth of the Captain’s ambush, crafted over years, all predicated upon the Shadowmaster’s character, was only now emerging from the shadows. It overwhelmed me, not just because it had worked but because every contingency had been foreseen. Only he and his gods knew what else he had been ready for. There were tons of materiel down there still unused.
It was over. The road was open. I started back to One-Eye’s wagon. We would have to move fast to make sure the Company stayed in a position to take advantage. First thing might be to get all our Company brothers together.
How long before I learn not to rack my eggs up as guaranteed fryers?
The Old Man was not trying to provoke the response he got. Neither was Lady, though she might have feared it. I do not believe Croaker had any idea anything of the sort was possible.
I was almost to the wagon when the ghost realm filled with a stench like somebody just kicked open all the tombs that ever were. I had not encountered much in the way of smells there before and all those had been nothing compared to this.
Fear hit me. Panic was a scant half step behind. I got out of there fast, before the fear made it impossible for me to recall how to escape.
Back up the canyon the Daughter of Night stood atop a boulder, oblivious to the fireballs streaking past, her little arms uplifted to greet oncoming darkness, summoning, her lips taut in an evil smile.
Something was coming. Something that I had glimpsed before.
I tumbled out of the wagon, sort of hung on to the seat with one hand, dangling like a monkey. It was far later than I had thought. Not only was it dark out, dawn seemed to be coming again.
No. This was no dawn. This light came from neither sun nor moon. It came from the pass. Had the firebombs ignited some Shadowlander supply dump?
I wished that was it. I knew better. That was no mundane fire.
I ran toward Lady’s headquarters, stumbling more than making good time. My body was drained. Whatever was happening. Lady would be involved. And being near her might be the safest place.
I did not have far to run but the show was about over before I arrived. Surrounded by her intimates Lady was trying to get the Howler still but failed through no fault of her own.
A new player had come to the game.
Initially its shape and color were unclear. Then it collided with Lady’s power. Power killed power in light. That light showed me something I did not want to see.
It was black. It was a hundred feet tall. It had four arms. It was the thing that haunted Lady’s dreams and, sometimes, ghosted into mine. It was the darkness that had claimed Croaker’s daughter.
Lady battled that colossus before a hundred thousand eyes and, by doing so, confused a lot of people.
The Deceivers had to be whooping it up. Things had gotten tough for them but here was concrete proof that the Year of the Skulls could be achieved. That it might be at hand. That their goddess had grown strong enough to reach into our world to protect her chosen daughter and the living saint, Narayan Singh.
That image of Kina was a lot like Longshadow’s pets, though. It was not immune to fireballs from Lady’s bamboo poles. The panic its appearance caused lured plenty of those into the air. Soon it resembled some mythological creature on a moth-eaten tapestry.
The thing ended before I could catch my breath. Kina guttered, vanished. It persisted only long enough for her child and her protectors to make their getaway. Still listing and smoldering, Howler’s carpet passed from sight. The hundred million whispers began to fade.
Lady collapsed. They lifted her onto the stretcher. Swan and Blade manned its ends. Her most loyal soldiers surrounded them, men who had been with her for years. I told Swan, “You don’t have to worry about them up there. They’re headed for Overlook with their tails between their legs. Mogaba is unconscious and probably hurt. Nobody is in charge anymore.”
Swan gave me an incredulous look. “What the hell you telling me for? Find your damned Captain and tell him.”
“Good idea.” I went.
The Prahbrindrah Drah’s division suffered horribly yet again. Mogaba’s men refused to forget the first law of survival: never turn your back. It is hard to kill a soldier who clings to his training when every instinct and emotion tells him to throw down his arms and ran away or to curl up in a ball to shut out the terror.
The whole point of drilling soldiers till they whine about the stupidity of it all is so those soldiers will do the right thing automatically when the terror comes. Combat is fear and management of fear far more than it is organized murder. Those who manage fear best will seize the day.
The Old Man observed for so long, without intervening in the Prince’s situation, that his own staff started grumbling. I asked him why he was holding off.
“I want him to show Taglios what he’s made of. I want to see that myself. I don’t want there to be any doubts about him when he takes charge.”
It had a nice ring but still sounded suspect. I was developing a very suspicious attitude where Croaker was concerned.
Later he had Lady’s division, supported by Willow Swan’s Guards, replace the Prince’s division. Lady made rapid gains until Mogaba managed to reassert his control on the other side. She was so exhausted the witcheries she could manage amounted to little more than distractions.
I wondered why Croaker did not just back off until she recovered. I no longer spent much time trying to unravel his thoughts, though. Dark designs or otherwise, I did not know the man anymore.
He withdrew Lady’s division shortly before noon. He moved archers up on the flanks, arrayed his own two divisions for the advance, in the follow on mode where one force fights to exhaustion, then the next advances through its positions to attack the hopefully decimated enemy. But before the drums began their grim chant he took a white flag forward. I tagged along, carrying the standard. The damned thing needed to go on a diet. It seemed to be getting heavier.
I was put out. I was here only because Croaker insisted. I wanted to be out riding Smoke, finding out what Longshadow and Howler and Soulcatcher and whoever were up to, The Radisha needed checking, too. I had not looked in on her in far too long.
At least she would not be aware of events here for a while.
Mogaba surprised me by coming down to meet us. He limped. He sported an array of bandages. I imagine that if he had not been so dark he would have shown a fine crop of bruises. One of his eyes was swollen shut. His lips were compressed against the pain. But he betrayed no more emotion than an ebony statue. He said, “You managed to exploit our vulnerabilities very skillfully.”
Warily and wearily, Croaker said, “The asshole hamstrung you. Do we have to waste any more lives?”
“This battle may be decided but the war goes on. Its outcome may yet be determined here.”
That had the ring of truth. If we did not get moving forward real soon we were not going to be able to hold this army together.
Croaker’s smile suited his Widowmaker armor, which he seemed unwilling to shed lately. “Time and again I’ve told you to study the Annals. Time and again I’ve reminded you that you’ll regret it if you don’t.”
Mogaba also smiled, as though he knew something. “They aren’t holy writ.”
“What?”
“Your precious Annals. They aren’t holy. They’re just histories, made up of legends and outright lies in about equal parts.” He glared at me. “It will cost you dear if you put your faith in the past, Standardbearer.”
Now the Captain smiled gently. A battle fought with smiles?
Croaker had shown a lot of originality but Mogaba did not recognize that. He did not because he had not read the books. He would not confess it publicly but he had not read the books because he could not read. In Gea-Xle, whence he came, reading was not a warriorly skill.
Right now there was no doubt who held the initiative on the psychological front. Croaker said, “So I have to kill a bunch more of you before you’ll face the truth?”
“Truth is mutable and subject to interpretation. In this case its final form remains undetermined. Perhaps you brought a good recipe for rock.” Mogaba turned away, his piece said. He limped uphill. The set of his shoulders said his pride ached just having to show us his pain. He muttered to himself, something about the Shadowmaster no longer being there to hobble him.
I said, “Hey, chief, he don’t got Longshadow on his back no more.”
“He doesn’t have him to stand in front of him anymore, either. Look out!”
Thai Dei jumped up and got a shield over my head just in time to keep me from drowning in a shower of arrows. “Wow! The weather really turned bad fast.”
The boys uphill had a laugh at our expense. We made a spectacle backing away, three of us trying to stay under one undersized shield.
That crafty shit Mogaba had come down only to buy a few minutes for his troops. They attacked as soon as he reached them. Their nerve was no longer what it had been but their discipline remained firm.
Arrows from the flanks and towers and fireballs from everywhere made their effort look ill-advised. Nonetheless, they pushed us back like they thought this attack was their last hope. The situation began to look desperate. But then Lady decided she had rested enough.
Charandaprash became quite colorful.
The fighting did not last long after that. But when the silence fell even our reserves were too exhausted to chase anybody. Croaker let the remaining camp followers have that honor, telling them they could keep any loot they took.
Those who tried mostly got themselves killed.
Mogaba’s plans were the hot topic around the big bonfire. It seemed like everyone over the rank of lieutenant was there and every man had a theory. Or two. And not a one of those was sound.
I had gone ghostwalking and had not been able to find Mogaba, even by backtracking through time. But just a hint of a specter of a death stink had sent me running before I could get a real good look around.
Was she going to be out there every time I went?
Croaker kicked nothing into the speculative stew. He just sat around looking smug and more relaxed than I had seen in years.
Lady sat beside him and she looked pretty good, too. Like she had gotten some real sleep for once. I told her, “I want to talk to you when you get a few minutes. I don’t have hardly anything about you to put down.”
She sighed, said, “I don’t think I could tell you anything interesting.”
I could use Smoke to study her back-trail. But that would not tell me what she was thinking.
She asked Croaker, “Why do you look like the cat who stole the cream?”
“Because Longshadow and Howler didn’t come back.” He looked at me. He wanted to know why. But not right now. It could wait. “And because you have.” After her rest she seemed none the worse for wear despite her head-to-head with Kina. Or whatever that was. “Because now they’re just going to hide out in Overlook while Longshadow tries to cobble together something from garrisons and militias made up of men who’d rather not get involved at all.”
He was still the Shadowmaster. He had not played his trumps to their limit. And the walls of Overlook were a hundred feet high. I hoped Croaker did not think all we had to do now was coast.
“You notice he hasn’t really said shit,” Swan grumbled to Blade. He had not had any trouble accepting his buddy back. Some of the men could not believe the whole defection had been a swindle. Especially those who had had relatives among the temple troops Blade had exterminated. “The son of a bitch flat ain’t going to tell nobody what he’s up to. Not even you and me. He’s got tricks up his sleeve and we’ve got to find out about them same as any poor dork that they’re going to happen to.”
He stared at Lady sadly for a moment, unable to see what she saw in the Old Man. I had wondered that a few times myself before Sarie and I fell in love.
It does not have to make sense. Just pray for the freedom to indulge it.
Speaking of limits to freedom, my in-laws were still missing. Except for Thai Dei, of course. He was there even when my shadow was gone.
Blade laughed at Swan’s sourness. He was a changed man after his adventure. He had found his niche. “You really want to know, you’d better borrow those books from Murgen. They say it’s all in there if you know where to look.”
Murgen lied, “Good plan. But Murgen didn’t bring the books along. Except for the one he hasn’t been working on enough lately.”
Swan’s comment was brief and obscene. Like Mogaba, he did not know how to read.
Blade suggested, “Get Murgen Big Ears to tell it to you. He can quote chapter and verse almost as good as Croaker. He’s Croaker’s handpicked boy.”
The old Blade did not have a sense of humor. I was not sure I liked this one better. He was not interested in being funny.
“I’ll do it if the pay is right,” I told them. “Us mercenary types don’t do diddly unless we get paid.”
I did have to put some thought into staying away from Smoke long enough to get some solid notes made. Charandaprash was a critical juncture in Company history. I was not doing it justice.
And when I did go walking with the ghost I would have to concentrate on things I really needed to observe.
I could not go just to get away from the pain.
The pain was not so all-devouring anymore. Maybe a couple of brushes with Kina were the cure for romantic excess.
“Thai Dei,” I said, softly and in Nyueng Bao to show this was merely a personal matter, not business. “What does it mean when a Nyueng Bao woman wears white?”
“Ai?” He seemed surprised. “I don’t understand, brother.”
“I just remembered a dream I had a couple nights ago. Somebody who looked like Sahra was in it. She was wearing white. Nyueng Bao always wear black except sometimes when you’re out here in the world. Or if you’re a priest. Isn’t that so?”
“You dreamed of Sahra?”
“I do all the time. Don’t you dream about My?”
“No. We are taught to let their spirits go.”
“Oh.” I did not believe that. If that was completely true there would be no call to seek revenge. “So what does it mean, wearing white? Or does it mean anything?”
“It means she is recently widowed. A man who lost his wife would wear white as well. She may do so for as long as a year. While she is in white no one may advance a marriage offer though of course the men of her family will be looking around unofficially. In the case of a man his father and brothers may examine the possibilities but not be allowed to speak on his behalf until he puts off the white.”
This was news to me. “The whole time we were in Dejagore I never saw one Nyueng Bao in white. And Sarie sure didn’t wait any year after Danh died to get interested in me.”
Thai Dei showed me one of his rare smiles. “Sarie was interested in you before Danh died. Sarie was smitten the first time you came to see Grandfather. You have no idea the quarreling that went on. Particularly after Grandmother announced that it was fated that Sarie take a foreign lover.”
So the smile was not one of good humor.
I could imagine Mother Gota’s take.
“But Sarie never wore white. Nor did anybody else.”
“Nor was there a square inch of white cloth in that city that was not worn by a Taglian soldier. Grandfather did not think it politic to take their tunics.” Thai Dei smiled again. That only made his face more skull-like. He added, “We were a small party. After all that time on pilgrimage we knew one another. We knew who had lost a mate. And we knew nothing could be done till we got back to our villages and priests anyway.”
So the woman I saw while I was lost in the delta was a widow. I guess that explained why she was haggard and unhappy.
“You should tell me more about Nyueng Bao. I’d feel less stupid when something like this comes up.”
Thai Dei’s smile died. “There is no longer any need for you to know our customs, is there?”
I was not one of them, even by marriage. He was here because he had assumed an obligation, not because I was family.
I needed to think about that.
Croaker let everybody rest thoroughly before he launched what he hoped would be the final assault on the Shadowlander defenses. I had an ague or maybe something I picked up from the proximity of Kina for a while, hot sweats alternating with cold shakes. Consequently I did not get out to scout our enemies.
No matter. The Old Man was able to gossip with his crows.
There were no living Shadowlanders anywhere in the defensive works that Longshadow had deemed so critical. While we were being soft, sitting around on our behinds resting, Mogaba and his captains had gotten their soldiers moving. They had even tried to destroy the stores they could not drag with them but were forestalled in that by the efforts of an alert Shadar cavalry detachment.
Death is eternity. Eternity is stone. Stone is silence. Stone is broken.
In the night, when the wind no longer moans and the small shadows go into hiding, stone sometimes whispers. Stone sometimes speaks. Stone sometimes sends its children plunging into the abyss. Sometimes a tendril of colorful mist rises to caress the figure pinned to the tilting throne.
Shadows scamper playfully about the plain glittering in the moonlight, devouring one another and growing stronger. Their memories are as old as stone. They remember freedom.
Sometimes the leaning throne slips a millionth of an inch, tilting farther. This happens more and more frequently now.
Stone shudders. Eternity sneers as it devours its own tail. This cold feast is almost finished.
Even death is restless.
I could hear One-Eye cursing fate in general and several Vehdna Taglians in particular. One wheel of the wagon had become pinched between boulders and the soldiers were not getting it pried out fast enough to suit the little wizard. He had been in a foul temper all morning. I do believe he thought we would not continue on south after we won at Charandaprash. I do believe he thought the Old Man would be content to occupy the pass, then withdraw to warmer climes and wait for summer.
Where was Longshadow going to go? Home. And because of the earthquake home was a house that would not be completed any time soon. So where was the big hurry? What kind of tunnel-vision fanatic did not even take time out for one good drunk after winning a battle so huge and obviously unwinnable going in?
One-Eye had been saying all this and a lot more from the minute Croaker had told him to move out. One-Eye was not a happy trooper.
He was even more unhappy because I got to ride. My fever and chills thing kept coming and going. The Captain saw that as a good excuse to keep me near Smoke against whom he continued to caution me regularly. I did not tell him that walking with the ghost was becoming as unattractive as attractive, that it was getting scary out there. I had not talked it over with One-Eye yet, either. I knew I should. I would not like myself much anymore if something happened because I failed to warn them.
But I did not want to cry wolf, either. One-Eye had not mentioned running into anything unusual during his occasional trips out. Maybe I was letting my imagination get the best of me.
I was in pretty good shape for the moment. A little shaken by the ride but neither feverish nor fighting a chill. Might be an opportune time to take a look around.
Outside, One-Eye snarled something at Thai Dei. “Not a good idea, One-Eye,” I snapped in Jewel Cities dialect. “He’d as soon kick your ass as look at you.”
“Ha! That ought to be interesting. See what JoJo does. Might even wake him up.”
Like most Company members One-Eye had a Nyueng Bao bodyguard. His was Cho Dai Cho, as unobtrusive and unambitious a bodyguard as ever lived. He was around only because the tribal elders had decreed it. He did not seem to have much interest in saving One-Eye from himself or anyone else. I had not seen Cho four times in the last month.
I could not find Soulcatcher. I knew she was there and Smoke was not fighting me but the woman was operating under a spell that hid her from even this sort of seeing. I could guess where she was roughly, though, because of the comings and goings of crows in the mountains west of us.
I looked around for One-Eye’s shapeshifter friend Lisa Bowalk but there was no trace of her, either. Nor could I pinpoint Mogaba and the couple of Nar who had chosen to stand by him when he deserted the Company for service to the Shadowmaster.
This was something to think about. If people had begun to suspect we were watching . . . But there was Longshadow in his crystal dome atop Overlook’s tallest tower, seated at a stone desk, calmly giving orders to messengers, arranging for the defense of his dwindling empire rationally and with vigor and making no effort to hide himself from me.
And down below, in a private apartment, here was an uncomfortable and weakened Narayan Singh cringing in a corner while the Daughter of Night, like a dwarf rather than a child, apparently carried on half of a conversation with her spiritual mother. There was a smell of Kina in the room but not that terrifying sense of presence I had encountered before.
I observed for a while. I ran back the hours. There was no doubt. Narayan Singh was not running anything anymore. He was an adjunct to the Daughter of Night, useful principally as a voice through which she could communicate with the Shadowmaster and the Deceivers. But Singh was beginning to suspect that his usefulness was running its course, that it would not be very much longer at all before the child would be ready to dispose of him.
When the time came she would do it with no more thought or emotion than she would discarding a well-gnawed pork rib.
Her communions with her divine parent were reshaping her fast.
Kina seemed to be in a hurry, perhaps pressed for time, so that she did not have time to wait for the child to mature into her role.
I was very uncomfortable around the kid even though she was a hundred miles away. I got out of there.
I tried tracking Howler down but caught only glimpses as he buzzed here and there on his raggedy-ass, oft-patched smaller carpet. He seemed to have upped his level of precaution dramatically, too. I could spot him only when he was in a really big hurry and, apparently, outrunning his invisibility shield.
Who would he be hiding from? If he did not know about me?
There was still the Radisha, whom I had not spied on for way too long.
In present time she was in the midst of a large audition with the chief priests of the major temples of the city. The subject was, not surprisingly, the war. In particular, the sacrilegious, atheistic, anticlerical stance of the men directing the Taglian effort. The new generation of priests were much less contentious amongst sects than had been their predecessors, who had paid for their stubbornly parochial attitudes with their lives.
“There’s no doubt,” the Radisha admitted to a priest of Rhavi-Lemna, a goddess of brotherly love, “that the Liberator has been sending troops raised among the devout to pursue his feud with Blade.” News from the war zone was still far away. “He’s blatant about it, it’s true, but you people keep going along with it.”
A priest in vermilion grumbled, “Because Blade has been promised the protectorship here when the Shadowmaster triumphs. He’ll exterminate us all. If he’s still alive.”
“Which brings us to the crux again, doesn’t it? Even though my brother has become a competent commander and a corps of experienced officers has developed, neither the soldiers themselves nor the people believe we can defeat the Shadowmaster without the guidance of the Black Company. We’re still in a position where we’re compelled to let darkness wrestle darkness, hoping our kind of darkness triumphs and we can control it after it does so.”
Rhavi-Lemna was a reasonable goddess. It would not be natural for her priests to be firebrands. But the Gunni have a hundred gods and goddesses, great and small, and some of them are a lot less tolerant. Someone shouted, “We should kill them now! They’re a greater danger to our way of life than any masked sorcerer eight hundred miles away.”
There were still many Taglians who had not served in the armies nor traveled south to see what legacy the Shadowmasters had left in the lands retaken from their rule. Men who did not believe simply because they preferred something else to be true.
This was an unending squabble that might not be settled in my lifetime. There was a war on and as long as we did not yet have it won the “Kill them now!” school of thinking would remain a distinct minority. But the “Kill them later!” school had plenty of members.
“There aren’t more than fifty or sixty of them,” the Radisha countered. “How hard can it be to dispose of them once they’ve outlived their usefulness?”
“Pretty damned hard, I imagine. The Shadowmasters haven’t managed. Neither have the Deceivers.”
“Steps are being taken.”
Interesting. I had not seen any sign of that.
Time to cruise days gone by, then.
Away I went. Skipping like a seven-year-old girl, toes coming down every hour or so as I headed toward the last time I checked on the Woman. There was not much there. A lot of the same stuff. One idea after another bounced off Cordy Mather in the deeps of night, every one rejected by Mather, and the more vigorously so the better the Woman seemed to like them.
Of more interest was the fact that she had started looking for Smoke. In fact, she was getting suspicious, though not yet in any major way. Mather kept telling her we were all right and must have made some arrangement to look out for Smoke. We would not just let the old boy starve.
“They hate him, dear. He did everything he could to undercut the Black Company.”
“They would find a crueler way to get even. After they woke him up. So he could appreciate the pain.”
Cordy echoed my thoughts perfectly. Starvation would do fine but I wanted him conscious while he went.
Waking up to find himself in our hands might just be enough. He would have a shit hemorrhage.
All the way back to my last visit I found nothing particularly exciting. The Woman never said anything interesting except when she was finished using Mather and then she said nothing original. Yet I could not help thinking that something was going on.
She was the Radisha Drah. Her whole life had been spent aware that everything she said or did might be observed by someone who did not wish her well.
I skipped back to today but did not find anything to hurry back to the Old Man.
There would be some excitement when the news from Charandaprash arrived. People would stop thinking as clearly and carefully. I would be back.
I took a dive into Smoke’s old hiding place before I left. The old Annals were right where I had hidden them.
Interesting to note, though, as I departed, that there were crows all over the Palace district.
One-Eye was still cursing when I came out. Cursing again, I learned, as I let myself down from the rear of the wagon. A different wheel was stuck. We had moved several miles. I was bone dry. I lifted the lid on One-Eye’s waterbarrel. There was not much there. The little that remained was pretty nasty. I drank it anyway.
I walked around to where One-Eye was abusing a fresh crew of victims. “You little shit. Quit barking at the help. They’ll stuff that damned hat down your throat and I’ll end up having to walk. Where’s the Old Man?”
“Crows all over, eh?” Croaker mused. “Interesting. Guess it doesn’t surprise me.”
“Hers?” There were crows around us right now. Naturally. He would not let Lady run them off.
“Probably.”
“Are they all nowadays?”
“Take it for granted. You won’t be unpleasantly surprised. Tell me about Longshadow.” The last sentence was not verbal at all but in the finger speech we had learned way back when Darling, the White Rose, was with the Company. We employed it sparingly anymore and I had not thought of using it to get around the crows. It was so obvious when you considered it. There would be no way for the critters to relay the signs.
Nobody believed that the birds understood what they relayed now. They just carried the words.
My fingers were no longer as nimble as once they had been. I had a hard time telling him that Longshadow had done a turnaround and was all business now, calm and sane and decisive.
“Interesting,” he said. He looked up the pass. The Prince’s troops, in the vanguard, had sprung a Shadowlander ambush. The fighting was getting heavy. The column was crushing up behind it. This could get bad.
I looked at the slopes rising to either hand. If Mogaba had a lot of men up there he could embarrass us easily.
“He doesn’t,” Croaker said, as though I had spoken my thoughts.
“You’re getting spooky.” He wore most of the fancy Widowmaker armor most of the time now. There was hardly ever a time when he did not have a crow on his shoulder. He seemed to know his favorites because he always had tidbits for them.
“When I have to play a role I try to live it.” He began talking with his fingers again. “I want you to find Goblin. It is critical.”
“Huh?”
He signed, “I would do it myself but there is no time.” Aloud, he added, “These delaying tactics are working very well for Mogaba. This pass is just too damned tight.” He turned away, strode up the stalled column. The Prahbrindrah Drah was about to get talked to like a new recruit.
Suddenly, over his shoulder, he shot, “Where’re your in-laws, Murgen?”
“What?”
“Where are they? What’re they up to?” He used colloquial Taglian, which meant he did not care what Thai Dei heard. Or specifically wanted him to know about the query.
“I haven’t seen them.” I glanced at Thai Dei. He shook his head. “Maybe they went home.”
“I don’t think so. If that was the case the rest of these clowns would be gone with them. Wouldn’t they?”
I did not think so but there was no need arguing the point. Croaker would never be comfortable with the Nyueng Bao. I told him I would keep an eye out and would let him know if I learned anything, then moved along.
I ran into Sleepy on the way back to One-Eye’s wagon. “Hey, kid. How you doing?” I had not seen him since I gave him his assignment that night in Taglios. He had been working with Big Bucket, helping oversee the special forces teams. He looked tired but still not old enough to be a soldier.
“I’m tired and hungry and beginning to wonder if being buttfucked by my uncles really was worse than this.”
Anybody who could sustain a sense of humor after what Sleepy had suffered was all right by me.
I wondered if he would ever go back and kill them. I doubted it. That sort of thing was acceptable in this bizarre southern culture.
Sleepy asked, “You talk to the Captain yet?”
“I talk to him all the time. I’m the Annalist.”
“I mean about the standardbearer job. You said you might . . . ”
“Oh. Yeah.” His excitement was obvious. But becoming standardbearer meant those above you thought you were destined for big things in the Company. The standardbearer often became Annalist. Frequently he became Lieutenant because he was always near the center of things and knew everything that was going on. The Lieutenant almost always becomes Captain when the job comes open.
Croaker was an anomaly of epic proportion, elected at a time when there were only seven of us, none more qualified, and nobody else would take the job.
“I bounced it off him. He didn’t say no. He’ll probably leave it up to me. And that means it’s a someday sort of thing because right now everybody in this army is working twenty hours a day. There’s no time to teach you anything.”
“We’re not doing anything. I could just hang around you and—”
Big Bucket’s voice rose above all the other tumult of an army on the move, telling Sleepy to get his dead ass back up here, they’ve decided nobody else can crack this nut but us.
“Good luck. And don’t get in a hurry, kid,” I told him. “Hell. Do like I’m doing with the Annals. Wait till the siege of Overlook. We’ll have plenty of time then. Including learning to read and write.”
“I’ve been learning. Believe it or not. I know fifty-three common characters already. I can puzzle out almost anything.”
Written Taglian is fairly complicated because there are more than a hundred characters in the common alphabet and another forty-two in the High Taglian used only by Gunni priests. A lot of the characters duplicate what they mean but distinguish caste. Caste is very important among the Gunni.
“Keep at it,” I told Sleepy. “You’ll make it on determination.”
“Thanks, Murgen.” The kid began scooting uphill, sliding through the press like he was greased.
“Don’t thank me,” I mumbled. Most standardbearers are not as lucky as I have been. It is not a job with an extended life expectancy.
I spotted Lady across the pass, as always surrounded by her admirers and most of the Nar who had not deserted the Company. I headed that way.
Men moved to let me through. Things like that happen when you can leave someone as a good taste or foul odor in history’s mouth. Croaker really made the importance of the Annals an article of faith with everyone in the Company.
Lady looked around. Her ordinarily impassive expression betrayed an instant of irritation. I said, “Looks like we’re going to be stalled here till Bucket’s crew convince Mogaba’s people they’d really rather go home and get in out of this weather.”
That was looking kind of bleak. A wind was building. It was colder than the wind had been for days. Heavy clouds were piling up overhead. Looked as if we were going to get some snow.
“Yeah. Let’s hope,” Swan said. “We need to get down out of these rocks.” He was not talking to me, really. “I hate mountains.”
“I’m not too fond of cold and snow, either,” I said. Of Lady I asked, “You really need to keep avoiding me?”
“What do you want to know?”
“How can you be getting your powers back? I thought that business in the Barrowland stripped you forever.”
“I’m a thief. Otherwise, none of your business.”
Her entourage sneered at me, mostly because they thought that would make points with her.
“Have you been dreaming again?”
She thought about that one before admitting, “Yes.”
“I thought so. You’ve been looking a little ragged.”
“You want to play you have to pay the price. What about you, Annalist?”
I found I was reluctant to reveal anything. Especially in front of those guys. I forced myself. “Yeah. Something that might have been Kina turned up in my dreams a couple times. Almost like an intrusion from outside. I wondered if that might have been the same time she was bothering you.”
That interested her. You could see the thoughts begin moving behind her eyes, the consideration, the calculation. She told me, “If it happens again, note the time. If you can.”
“I’ll try. How did you manage to go head-to-head with Kina the other night and come out in one piece?”
Without missing a beat Lady shifted to Groghor, a language on its last death rattle. “That was not Kina.” I learned it from my grandmother, whose people had all been wiped out in the consolidation wars that had built the Lady’s empire. Granny was dead and so was my mother and I had not used the tongue except to cuss people out since I signed on with the Company.
“How do you . . . ?” I sputtered. “How could you know that I . . . ?”
“The Captain has been kind enough to have your work copied and forwarded to me. You mentioned Groghor somewhere. I am a little rusty. I have not spoken this language in more than a century. Pardon my lapses.”
“You’re doing fine. But why bother?”
“My sister never learned the language. Nor did this bunch, half of whom are probably spies for someone.”
“What’s the deal? You said that wasn’t Kina. Sure fooled me if it wasn’t. Sure fit the description.”
“That was my beloved sister. Pretending to be Kina. I expect she surprised Kina’s worshippers as much as she surprised the rest of us.”
“But . . . ” The Daughter of Night had seemed happy enough.
“I can touch the real Kina, Murgen. Believe me. It’s why I don’t sleep well. The real Kina is still in her trance. She can only touch the world in dreams. And I have to stay a part of those dreams.”
“So Kina is definitely real, then?”
“There is something that fits the bill of particulars, Murgen. I’m not sure that when it’s awake it thinks of itself as Kina or as a goddess. It does want to bring on the Year of the Skulls. It does want to get free of its chains. But these are just emotions I have gained from it over the years. It is far too alien for me to know it well.”
“Like Old Father Tree?”
She had to think to remember the tree-god thing that had ruled the Plain of Fear and defied her when she was still the Lady.
“I never touched that mind.”
“Why would your sister pretend to be Kina?”
“I have never known why my sister does any of the things she does. She has never been rational. Two does not follow One in her scheme, nor does Three come before Four. She is capable of spending incredible energies and vast fortunes on the execution of a prank. She is capable of destroying cities without ever being able to explain why. You can know what she is doing but not why or you can know why she is doing something but not what. She was that way when she was three years old, before anyone knew she was cursed with the power, too.”
“You believe you’re cursed?”
She actually smiled. When she did her beauty shone through. “By an insane sister, for sure. I wish I had even the foggiest notion why she’s just out there, doing nothing but watching and constantly reminding us that she’s there.”
“Reminding us?”
“Don’t you get a little tired of those damned crows?”
“Yes, I do. I thought revenge was her thing.”
“If that was all she wanted she would have squashed me a long time ago.”
There was a stir behind me. Scores of eyes were staring at us as everyone in earshot tried to figure out what was going on. It had to be some secret if we were going to talk it over in a language nobody knew.
Willow Swan looked like his feelings were hurt.
“Excuse me, sir,” said a voice from behind me. “The Liberator’s compliments and would you be so good as to get your ass on about the job he gave you? He said to suggest that he wants the answer before sundown.”
That was not in a language no one else understood. It cheered Swan right up. Even Lady chuckled.
I do believe I blushed. “I’ll want to pursue this further,” I told Lady, who did not seem thrilled by the prospect. To the messenger, who happened to be the nephew of a prominent Taglian general, I said, “Just for that I think I’ll go do what the Old Man wants.”
It took me a long time to find Goblin but there was no hurry. The Shadowlanders up the pass were being particularly stubborn. Big Bucket was having to use a lot of firebombs to root them out.
I found it hard to believe. Goblin was on the other side of the Dandha Presh. His Shaded Road was an expedition that had pushed a commando force across the Shindai Kus. Croaker had talked about the possibility once, ages ago, before we ever even went after Dejagore, but I always thought it was completely impractical. So much so that the possibility had not occurred to me even when I had found Goblin on the shore of the Shindai Kus.
Goblin was still Goblin. The desert only baked it in. “I’m one step and ten seconds short of exhaustion,” he complained to the man nearest him, a Company brother named Bubba-do who was not too bright and who, I noted, kept Goblin on his left side, which was where he had the bad ear. “But I’m here. I’m in place. I’m on time. And nobody knows we’re here.”
Lights flared in the mountains above. Tiny balls of fire rose over the high Dandha Presh. Bubba-do said, “Looks like da Captain won his bet.”
“I’m worried. This damned thing’s been going too good. I’ve been fighting these people for years. I know how they think. I know Mogaba.” So did Bubba-do but that did not matter in Goblin’s view. “He ain’t going to let himself get whipped by Croaker. Whole point of him going over to the Shadowmaster was he wanted to prove he was a better soldier and general.”
Goblin went on and on. His men ignored him most of the time. After he had heard scouting reports about the surrounding terrain he allowed his men to build several small, carefully hidden fires. That side of the Dandha Presh was colder than the northern slope. It was impossible to manage without heat if you were not moving.
“I should’ve found a farm. Maybe a small town. Someplace where we could get inside.”
“That would mean killing a bunch of people so they couldn’t rat on us and that probably wouldn’t do any good anyway because somebody probably would’ve got away.”
It was almost dark. The excitement in the mountains was getting colorful. I began to wonder if Mogaba himself was not up there directing the resistance.
“You got company,” somebody said. Instantly everybody at Goblin’s fire found a chore that had to be handled right away somewhere else. Everyone but Goblin’s Nyueng Bao bodyguard, who was a man so unobtrusive I had yet to learn his full name. It was Thane, Trine, something like that. This man merely moved to a place more comfortable on a taller rock and laid his sword across his lap, ready for business.
The reason the others wanted to be elsewhere was evident a moment later. I had found one of my missing targets.
A huge, cruel-looking black panther stalked out of the darkness, settled near the fire. Goblin reached out and scratched her behind the ears.
What the hell? This particular panther had no love for him. Though her squabble with One-Eye was an order of magnitude bigger.
“So you decided to help out after all, eh?” Goblin said. “It never was that hard to get along.” Off he went on an odyssey of the imagination, describing in fantastic detail why she was a natural ally of the rest of us despite One-Eye’s having had to do in Shapeshifter. Shifter really had given him no choice, now, had he? Anyway, it was only a matter of time before they completed their research into the character of release spells. Last time he saw One-Eye they were just three terms and a postulate short of putting a wrap on it.
The wind had a real bite as I went looking for Croaker. There were bits of snow zinging around. Nobody had moved since this afternoon. Fireballs flickered across the sky up ahead. There were almost no fires. There was nothing to burn. Men huddled with one another for warmth. Hardly anyone lifted their eyes as I passed. I could have been the Shadowmaster himself and nobody would have cared. Had I been carrying hot food I would have been hailed as a messiah.
Croaker did not have a fire, either. But he had a girlfriend to keep him warm. Something nobody else had. The rat bastard.
“You want to go for a walk?”
Hell, no, he did not. Neither would you if you if you were bundled up in some blankets with a beautiful woman on a freezing night. “Use your imagination here, Murgen. Do I look like somebody who wants to be interrupted?”
“All right. Be that way. I’ve finally located the man you asked about. He seems to be where he’s supposed to be. But—”
“Then go keep an eye on him.”
“There’s a complication.”
“Keep an eye on him. He’s not likely to get into much before I can come check on him. Later.”
With him and Lady both scowling at me I decided I would take the hint and go away. Shaking my head. There are things you can accept intellectually but still not imagine. Those two in the throes of passion fell into the latter category.
If he was in no hurry I was not, either. I had a snack and a nap and a dream about Sarie before I got back to work. It was not a dream I wanted. It was Sarie looking aged and haggard and wearing white. But that was a better dream than the visit to ice hell that followed.
That one did not change much with time, nor did any more details develop. But I never got comfortable with it.
Goblin had all his illusions in place but he did not bother the first fugitives to hurry out of the Dandha Presh. Those would be the men least likely to be trouble in later times. He did have a few individuals captured so he could get a better idea of what had happened to the north. He told the panther, “A shithead like Longshadow don’t deserve followers like Mogaba.”
The panther rumbled deep in her throat.
“You got to wonder about Mogaba. Why the hell don’t he just walk?”
Mogaba had everything under control. His fighting withdrawal was going well for him.
The hundred men with Goblin were all young Taglians interested in becoming part of the Black Company, I gathered. Clever Goblin had sold them the notion that this operation was an entrance exam. The nasty little shit.
He had to feel lonely out there. His bodyguard, Thien Due, knew only a few words of Taglian and had no more inclination to gossip than Thai Dei did. The panther’s conversational skills were limited. The commandos were all under twenty-five. Goblin spoke Taglian well enough but did not speak the language of the young.
In the dialect of the Jewel Cities he muttered, “I miss One-Eye. He may not be worth two dead flies but . . . Nobody heard that, did they? Us old farts got to stick together. We’re the only ones who know what it’s all about.
“Or do we?
“Yeah. I think we do.”
“Were you saying something, sir?” one of the young sergeants asked, rushing up.
“Talking to myself, lad. Guaranteed intelligent conversation. I was thinking out loud about Mogaba. How everybody on the other side’s got their own thing going. Ten minutes after they whip us everybody over there is going to be measuring everybody else for a dagger in the back.”
“Sir?” The young Shadar seemed scandalized by the suggestion that our side might yet lose this war.
“If they blow it, with everything they’ve got going for them, and we come out on top, the same shit is gonna happen on our side.”
Goblin began using his illusions and commandos to begin picking off Shadowlander fugitives, to teach job-appropriate skills while the work was still easy, and to keep the boys from getting bored.
Larger Shadowlander forces began to come down, hurrying, in disarray, walking into Goblin’s setup like they had rehearsed it. Snipers picked off obvious officers. Missile fire drenched the troopers. When they organized for a counterattack they found themselves fighting illusions and shadows.
From my vantage I began to wonder what Goblin was expected to accomplish. He was causing trouble out of all proportion to his numbers but what he was doing was unlikely to have any permanent impact. Unless, of course, him being here meant he was not somewhere else. Which was just the sort of thing that might occur to Croaker. Cook up some cockamamie mission for Goblin so he would not be around getting drunk and feuding with One-Eye and generally obstructing progress.
Still . . . The Shadowlanders could not find him. He kept giving them ghosts. Word rolled back up into the mountains. Panic rode its back. That effect was all out of proportion to Goblin’s numbers, too.
There was one major theme to Goblin’s ambushes. He was directing his strongest efforts toward eliminating officers. He seemed to have a way to identify those in plenty of time to slide his commandos into position.
The forvalaka. The woman in cat form. She was scouting for him. But how was she communicating?
I spend a lot of time being puzzled by things going on around me.
“I feel like I’m a mushroom on a mushroom farm,” I told Croaker. “Kept in the dark and fed a diet of horseshit.”
Croaker shrugged, said the famous words. “Need to know.”
“He didn’t get Mogaba, if that was the plan. That son of a bitch must take a bath in grease every morning, he’s so slick. He did get that Nar Khucho.”
Croaker grunted.
“Not much of a triumph,” I agreed. “He was already on a stretcher with one leg amputated. But I had to let you know and I’m going to have to put it into the Annals because he did belong to the Company once.”
Croaker shrugged, grunted. That was how we did it.
“He’s got nobody left, then,” I said. “He’s over there all alone, without one friend.”
“Don’t cry for him, Murgen. He’s there because he chose to go there.”
“I’m not crying for him. I had to go through the siege of Dejagore with that guy in charge. Far as I’m concerned anything that happens to him won’t be pain enough.”
“You thought any more about turning the standard over to somebody else?”
“Sleepy’s been bugging me. I told him we’d look at it once we get set up around Overlook.”
“You think he’s the right one, go ahead and start breaking him in. See about his literacy level, too. But I want you staying with the standard for the time being.”
“He’s learning his Taglian. He says.”
“Good. I’ve got work.”
Son of a bitch was not going to let me in on anything.
Goblin’s efforts were the straw that broke the Shadowlander force. They cracked. The survivors scattered. Goblin and his crew faded into the wilds, headed south.
Fear spread before them, far exceeding their capacity for creating despair.
I liked how things were going over there now. The little wizard and his boys were running free in a land not yet prepared to resist. A land not sufficiently recovered from its earthquake horrors to be able to resist.
Still, I felt like we were rushing toward some great doom.
We had done that before. Everything had fallen into our laps till we found ourselves decimated and besieged in Dejagore.
Croaker took the cavalry and me and raced ahead of the army. Fleeing Shadowlanders fell to our lances. Opposition was spotty. Our foragers spread out. The idea was to scavenge whatever supplies were available quickly so we could keep the main force concentrated once it came out of the mountains.
I kept thinking how we had done this same thing after our unexpected victory at Ghoja Ford years ago. But when I mentioned that to Croaker he just shrugged and said, “This is different. There aren’t any armies they can bring up. There aren’t any new sorcerers they can bring out of the woodwork. Are there?”
“They don’t need to. Between them Longshadow and the Howler can eat us alive. If they decide to do it.”
We entered a moderate sized town that was absolutely empty of people. Nor had there been many there before our appearance in the region. The earthquake had not been kind.
We did find enough shelter to get in out of the cold. We got fires going, which was maybe not a brilliant idea tactically. Nobody warm wanted to go outside again.
This was a problem that would be universal among our troops. Hunger would be the only force capable of keeping the men moving.
It had been a week since I parted with Smoke. I missed him more than I had thought possible a week ago. I had convinced myself that I no longer needed him to deal with my pain. But that had been while he was always there and I was always out roaming the ghostworld.
When you are riding around the east end of hell, trying to keep your mind off the fact that you are freezing your ass off while starving to death, you tend to think about your other troubles.
My big one came back with a vengeance.
The only good of the venture, so far, was the humor to be found in watching Thai Dei try to keep up on that ridiculous swaybacked grey. The man was one stubborn little shit.
At least once every four hours Croaker asked me about my in-laws. I did not know anything. Thai Dei claimed he knew nothing. I reserved judgment on his veracity. Croaker took a jaundiced view toward mine.
Word came in that a Shadowlander deserter had been picked up who knew the location of an ice cave stuffed with edibles.
“You buy it?” I asked.
“Sounds like somebody thought he was going to get his throat cut and made up a story. But we’ll check it out.”
“Just when I was getting used to being warm.”
“You used to being hungry, too?”
Out we rode, and onward and onward we rode, day after day, through fields and forests and hills marred by quake effects and abandoned by the population. The Captain and I rode those giant black stallions, him outfitted in his cold Widowmaker armor and me lugging the bloody standard while Thai Dei tagged along behind like he was trying to become some sort of clown sidekick. We found the prisoner’s ice cave. Near as we could tell, it was a real treasure trove. The earthquake had dropped an avalanche down its throat. The good people of the province had been trying to open it back up. We relieved them of all that hard work and left a troop to await the coming of reinforcements hungry enough to dig for their supper. We continued on toward Kiaulune and Overlook, managing to sustain ourselves and avoid trouble until we were just forty miles north of the stricken city.
The countryside there was unmarred by disaster, quiet, orderly, almost pretty but a little too wintry for my taste. Suddenly, without warning, despite the Old Man’s crows, we ran into Shadowlander cavalry and not a man among them was in a good mood. Their charge broke us into half a dozen clumps. Whereupon a horde of infantry types tried to horn in. Lucky for us they were regional militia, poorly armed, completely inexperienced peasants. Unfortunately, it is true that some totally untrained and inexperienced dickhead can get lucky and kill you just as dead as a martial arts priest like Uncle Doj can.
I managed to get the standard set atop a knoll, the Old Man there with me inside a circle of friendly folks. “The one day you don’t wear the damned costume,” I yelled. ’They wouldn’t have had the balls for this shit if you’d dressed up.” Who knows? It might have been true.
“It was getting heavy. And it’s cold and it stinks.” He shrugged into the hideous, grotesque armor. As he lowered the nasty winged helmet onto his head a pair of monster crows dropped onto his shoulders. Traceries of scarlet fire began crawling all over him. A few thousand more crows began zooming around overhead, every one bitching his little heart out.
After a chance to take in the crows, Widowmaker and the Company standard most of our attackers decided to take the rest of the day off.
The stories had to be really bad down here.
The cavalrymen were made of sterner stuff. They continued fighting. They were veterans. And Longshadow probably had them convinced we were going to roast their wives and rape their babies, then turn the rest of them into dog food and shoe leather.
But we scattered them. Before the soldiers could get carried away chasing them, the Old Man headed south again, declaring, “We have bridges to capture and chokepoints to clear.”
A few men did not heed the recall. I asked, “What about them?”
“They have a chance to serve as a valuable object lesson. Those that survive can catch up.” He was feeling hard.
He did not think about arranging care and protection for the wounded. That was not something he had overlooked ever before.
It might be that there were no Company brothers among the wounded even though we had nearly a dozen with us.
That consideration often seemed to lie at the root of his decisions, yet never so blatantly that outsiders were conscious of it. I hoped he would keep it low key. We had troubles enough.
I had seen Shadowcatch a hundred times in Smoke’s dreams. I had spent cumulative days prowling Overlook. I thought I knew the city and the fortress about as well as anyone who lived there. But I was not prepared for a reality unfiltered by Smoke’s thoughtless mind.
The remains of Kiaulune were plain hell. Famine and disease had claimed almost everyone who had not been killed by the earthquake. Longshadow, taking unwanted advice, had tried to help. Too late. But he had allowed refugees to establish themselves in the shadow of Overlook and had been making provision to care for them. In turn, those people were replacing the lost workers who had been building Overlook before the earthquake.
Very little work had gotten done since the disaster. Even Longshadow had been forced to stipulate that survival demands superseded his desire to complete his invulnerable fastness.
There were no children. Some arrangement had been made to care for them elsewhere. A clever step, uncharacteristic of the Shadowmaster. That idea had to have originated with someone else. In fact, I could think of no one in Longshadow’s coterie to whom such a thing would occur.
It looked as though the little construction effort put out lately had been directed principally at providing housing.
This would not keep up once the pressure was off. To Longshadow all the people of the Shadowlands were his to use and dispose of as he saw fit. He just wanted to keep them alive long enough to be used.
“Hell really is leaking into the world,” Croaker observed. He stared at the bleak, stinking, unwalled remains of Kiaulune. He paid no attention to the gleaming magnificence beyond the city.
I did. “We’re too damned close here, boss. We don’t have Lady to cover us.”
That did not seem to trouble him. The only time he paid Overlook any attention was when he paused once to glare and say, “You didn’t get it done in time, did you, you son of a bitch?”
From the limited point of view of someone seeing the fortress with mundane eyes the place seemed immeasurably huge. Mostly the towering walls had been constructed of a grey-white stone but in places blocks of different colors had been worked in, along with silver, copper and gold, to scrawl the whole with cabalistic patterns.
What forces had Longshadow gathered to defend those ramparts since last I walked with the ghost? Did it matter? Could any army scale those incredible walls if the construction scaffolding was cast down?
Most of that was still in place.
Croaker mused, “You may be right. I shouldn’t rub their noses in the fact that I’m out here personally.” He turned a little more and looked past Overlook, at the escarpment in the distance. “Have you ever gotten up there?”
I looked around. No one was there to hear. Not even a crow. “No. I can get about halfway across the space between Overlook and a place on the road where there’s a landslide that seems to be what they call the Shadowgate around here. Not much to look at. But that’s all the farther Smoke will go.”
“I’ve never done better. Let’s get out of here.”
We withdrew and pitched camp north of Kiaulune. The soldiers were not comfortable there. None of them wanted to set up housekeeping so close to the last and craziest Shadowmaster.
I tended to agree.
Croaker said, “You could be right. I’d feel better myself if Smoke was down here and you could do some scouting.” Then he grinned. “But I do believe that we have a guardian angel better than Lady looking out for us.”
“What? Who?”
“Catcher. She’s as goofy as a squirrel with three nuts but she’s predictable. You been able to get close to her?” Like he was sure I would try.
“Not really. Smoke won’t go.”
“You have to remember how determined she is to use me to get even with Lady for having kept her from getting even before. That means she has to take care of me.”
“Oh.” Dumb me. I had not thought about how he could be using Catcher. “You’re willing to bet your life on Catcher?”
“Hell no. She’s still Soulcatcher. She could get interested in something else and just walk out on everything here.”
“But she does have a score to settle with Longshadow, too.”
“That she does.” He grinned. He was pleased about the way things were going.
I was worried about Soulcatcher. She seldom did anything overt but in her own mind she would be one of the major players. Eventually she would do something dramatic.
Was there anything Croaker had not foreseen and made part of his plan? He did not think so, I am sure.
I did not agree. Because I had rock-hard evidence that he was not ready for everything. There is no way he could have anticipated me starting to have the same sort of nightmares as Lady though I am just as certain that he did expect hers to continue.
Here near Kiaulune my nightmares were powerful and frequent. I could not take a nap without a visit to the cavern of the old men. Frequently I went to the plain of bones and corpses. On occasion I slipped off to the land of myth. Or so I interpreted it. It was a vast grey place where gods and devils met in divine battle and the most ferocious thing on the field was a gleaming black monster whose footfalls shook the earth, whose claws rent and tore, whose fangs . . .
The hideous cold place with the slimy old men was there every time, though. Every time. It was repellent in the extreme, yet attractive. Each time, as I walked the cold shadows, I found another familiar face among the old men.
I thought I had it handled. I really did. But that was because I did not think Kina would bother being subtle with a dim candle like me. I ignored the fact that she was the goddess of Deceivers. And forgot that Lady had told me that all that appeared to be Kina did not have to be Kina.
The dead place came to smell sweeter. It became more relaxing, safer, more comfortable, just as walking with the ghost had become comforting. I had a suspicion my enjoyment of that comfort was one reason the Old Man brought me down here ahead of everyone. He wanted me to go cold turkey.
I wanted to tell him I had it handled because I believed I did. But as we lay there in the hills waiting for the rest of the army to trudge up the road I spent a lot of cold days and colder nights huddled by a fire, spooking out Thai Dei, fiddling with my notes and napping. A lot. Because when I slept I could go away from the center, where the pain remained in a hard little core that would not die. Sometimes I even seemed to fly the way I had with Smoke, though not far, nor to anywhere interesting. I was the opposite of Lady, who fought her dreams all the way.
It was a gentle seduction. Kina gradually replaced Smoke.
I noticed that the Captain watched me sidelong in the mornings, warily, when I arose reluctantly. Thai Dei did not say anything but he seemed worried.