Soulcatcher hastened along the bank of a creek that was almost as still and deep as a canal, looking for a way to cross. She had miscalculated when she had chosen to cut across these moors and downs to reach the shabby stronghold at Nijha. Clinging to the road would have meant a longer walk but there would have been bridges for times like these.
When she encountered obstacles of this sort she had no choice but to guess which way to turn. She did not know the country. She was blind. There were no bats or owls to send scouting. There were no shadows tonight. She had sent all those to safety, along with her crows. She knew she was capable of dealing with the hobgoblins following her around.
Something rose from the water behind her. It had a shape like a horse. A voice whispered in her ear, telling her to come and ride. She barely glanced at it, and then only in total scorn. These things might be smarter than shadows but they could not be by much. How stupid did they think she was? She did not have to be familiar with the folklore of Hsien to understand that the water horse would drag her under.
She ignored the monster, not knowing it was an afanc, actually of centaur shape rather than equine. A half hour later she ignored one of its cousins, which took the semblance of a giant beaver. Then there was one resembling a crocodile, though this creek was four hundred miles from anywhere warm enough to support those giant reptiles. They all whispered to her. Some of them even knew her true name.
She found a plank footbridge evidently put in place by the seldom-seen, horse-stealing natives of these highlands. As she started across, something whispered to her from underneath. She did not understand its words but their menace was plain enough.
“You don’t want me crossing, come up and do something about it.” The voice she chose was that of a small child who was severely annoyed, but not frightened.
Something came up. It was huge and dark and ugly. In spots it glowed with a leprous inner light. It had way too many teeth. They stuck out of its mouth at all angles. It would have trouble when it came time to eat.
All those teeth and fangs snapped open as the monster prepared to lunge.
Soulcatcher’s gloved right hand drifted forward. A spray of sparkling dust floated onward to meet the evil spirit.
It screamed.
Soulcatcher leapt off the bridge an instant before it shattered to kindling. She backed away, watched the fiend thrash and melt. From behind her mask came a soft wee sound like a little girl’s skip-rope song, with a refrain that went, “It was fun to watch you die.”
The Daughter of Night actually seemed to be thriving now that the Protector was stalking them no longer. Narayan was worried.
“You’re always worried,” she chided. She was happy. Her voice was musical. The light of the campfire made her eyes sparkle—when it did not make them glow red. “If someone is after us you worry about getting caught. If we’re safe you worry about me not being a perfect replica of this image of the Daughter of Night you’ve invented inside your head. Narayan, Narayan . . . Papa Narayan, what I want more than anything is somehow to fix it so you don’t have to do this anymore. You’ve been the one for so long . . . You deserve to put it all down now and relax.”
Narayan knew that was not possible. Never would be. He did not argue, though. “Then let’s bring on the Year of the Skulls. Once Kina returns we can loaf for the rest of our lives.”
The girl shivered, seemed puzzled. Then she shuddered violently. She grew more pale, leaving Narayan wondering how she managed that when she was always as pale as death to begin. She stared out into the night, obviously troubled.
Narayan started to dump dirt—piled there for that purpose—onto the fire.
The girl said, “It’s too late.”
A huge shape rose behind her—then faded away as though dispersed by the wind.
“Kid’s right, old man,” said a voice Singh had not heard for years and was hearing again far sooner than he had hoped.
Iqbal and Runmust Singh—no relation to Narayan—appeared at the edge of the firelight, wavering, as though they were a mist coalescing. Other men appeared behind them, soldiers in a style of armor Narayan had never seen. Amongst the soldiers he saw drooling red-eyed beasts of species he had never seen before, either.
Singh’s heart redoubled its wild pounding.
The girl observed, “Now we know why my aunt quit chasing us.”
Runmust Singh agreed. “Now you know. The Black Company is back. And we’re not happy.” Runmust was a great shaggy Shadar whose sheer size was oppressive.
Iqbal Singh smiled, perfect teeth glistening in the middle of his brushy beard. “This time you’ll have to deal with your mother and your father.” Iqbal was as shaggy and nearly as huge as his brother but somehow less intimidating. The girl remembered him having a wife and several children. But . . . Did he mean her birth mother? Her natural father? But they were supposed to be dead.
Her knees went watery. She never had seen her natural parents.
The living saint was unable to keep his feet. Kina was going to test him yet again. And he had no energy left to spend in the fight for his faith. He was too old and too feeble and his faith had worn too thin.
Runmust gestured. The soldiers closed in. They were careful men who made certain they did not get between their captives and the crossbows threatening them. They put the girl’s hands into wool-stuffed sacks, then bound her wrists behind her. They gagged her gently, then pulled a loose woolen sack over her head. They were aware that she might work some witchery.
Narayan they placed up on an extra horse, then tied him into the saddle. They were doing him no kindness. They were in a hurry. He would be too slow if they made him walk behind them. They were more gentle with the girl but her immediate fate was identical.
Their captors were not gratuitously cruel but the girl was sure that would change when they found themselves with adequate leisure time. The strange young soldiers in the clacking black armor seemed highly intrigued by what they could see of her pale beauty.
This was not the way she had imagined herself becoming a woman. And her imagination had been extremely active for several years.
We were high in the pass through the Dandha Presh when the news arrived. The grinding weariness dragging my ancient bones down slipped my mind. I was at the head of the column. I stopped walking, moved aside, watched all the tired mules and men trudge past. Man and animal, we hoped the main force had not stripped Charandaprash of food and fodder.
The Voroshk had sunk deep into exhaustion and despair. Tobo traveled with them, talking all the time, trying to teach them through their pain and apathy. The kids had not had to walk anywhere ever before.
Their flying logs followed right behind.
Lady finally came up. I joined her. I sensed that rumor had reached her already, even though nobody seemed to have any breath to waste on conversation. Rumor is magical, maybe even supernatural.
I told her anyway. “Runmust and Iqbal have captured Narayan and Booboo. They never stopped heading our way after Soulcatcher left off chasing them.”
“I heard.”
“You as nervous as I am?”
“Probably more.” We trudged along for a while. Then she said, “I never got a chance to be a mother. I never got a chance to learn how. After Narayan kidnapped her I just went back to being me.”
“I know. I know. We have to keep reminding ourselves not to get emotionally entangled in this. She isn’t going to think of us as Mom and Dad.”
“I don’t want her to hate us. And I know she will. Being the Daughter of Night is her whole life.”
I thought about that. Eventually, I told her, “Being the Lady of Charm was your whole life once upon a time. But here you are.”
“Here I am.” Her lack of enthusiasm would have disheartened a lesser man than I.
She—and I—were of an age now where we spent too much time wondering how things might have gone had we made a few different choices.
I had plenty of regrets. I am sure she had more. She gave up so much more.
Willow Swan went puffing past with some remark about old folks slowing everybody down. I asked, “You guys keeping an eye on Goblin?”
“He don’t fart without we don’t know about it.”
“That goes without saying. The whole countryside knows.”
“He’s not getting away with anything, Croaker.”
I was not confident about that. Goblin was a slick little bastard. If I had the time I would stay right beside him myself, step for step.
Lady said, “Goblin hasn’t done anything suspicious.”
“I know. But he will.”
“And that attitude is beginning to win him some sympathy. I thought you ought to know.”
“I know. But I can’t help recalling One-Eye’s warning, either.”
“You noted yourself that One-Eye would try to get his last lick in from beyond the grave.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I’ll try to take it easier.”
“We need to move a little faster.” The rear guard was almost up to us.
“We could lag behind and sneak off into the rocks for a while.”
“Maybe you’re not as worn out as you thought, then. Get a move on.” And after a moment, “We’ll talk about that tonight.”
Some motivation, then.
Thus far Mogaba had contained the worst reaction to the seething rumor cauldron that Taglios had become. His most useful tool was the carefully placed half-truth. His representatives did not deny that something big and dangerous was going on down south. They did, however, suggest that it was an uprising by the same sort of Shadowlander troublemakers who had supported the Black Company during the Kiaulune wars. They were milking that connection from the past, trying to intimidate opponents and encourage friends. There was no Black Company anymore.
Rumor had not yet discovered the Prahbrindrah Drah and his sister. Mogaba would offer the suggestion that those people were imposters when stories did begin to circulate.
“This is actually going better than I expected,” the Great General told Aridatha Singh. “None of the garrison commanders have refused their marching orders. Only a handful of the senior priests and leading men have tried to pretend neutrality.”
“I wonder if that state would persist if we lost the Protector.”
Mogaba had been trying to find out for some time. The Prahbrindrah Drah had yet to produce an heir. His only living relative was his sister, who had run Taglios and its dependencies for years in fact, if not in name. At one point she had proclaimed herself her brother’s successor. Though the culture militated against a female ruler she might be allowed to take over again if her brother preceded her in death. No one knew what would happen if brother and sister were both gone, as most of the population believed them to be.
The question was entirely an intellectual exercise, these days. Power in Taglios belonged to the Protector almost exclusively.
Mogaba never pressed his questions beyond a purely speculative level. None of his respondents suspected a deeper purpose. Nor did anyone volunteer to participate in an effort to get rid of the Protector, though it was no secret that most Taglians would prefer to do without Soulcatcher’s protection.
Communications with Soulcatcher had ceased. The crow population had suffered a dramatic decimation, whether from disease or enemy action remaining unclear. Their numbers had been dwindling for decades, until murders in the wild were almost unknown. Bats could not carry significant messages. Owls would not. And there was no one at the Taglian end trained to manage and communicate with shadows. That was a rare talent indeed and the Black Company had exterminated the brotherhood who had shared it back when they were still running things their way.
Soulcatcher had scoured the Shadowlands, whence those people had sprung, length and breadth. She had turned up just a few old women and very young children who had survived all the wars and purges. They seemed to be a people unrelated to any other in the south, had been unknown there before the advent of the Shadowmasters, and among themselves had a oral tradition of having come from an entirely different world. Those old women and babies had lacked any useful knowledge or talent.
When his duties granted the time, Mogaba walked the main route from the Palace to the city’s southern entrance. The walls had been under construction for decades and remained unfinished but the southern gate complex, the most important, had been completed and put into use ages ago. By channeling traffic through its bottleneck the state managed to tax all incoming travelers.
He was looking for the perfect place to put an end to the Protectorate. Four explorations had not revealed it yet. The obvious sites were just that: obvious. Soulcatcher would be alert. She was intimate enough with human nature to realize that rumors fed by the crisis in the south would reawaken opposition to her rule.
There seemed to be no way to manage it in the streets. And the longer it was delayed the more certain she was to become suspicious of her captains. It would be impossible for them to conceal their nervousness.
It would have to be instantly upon her arrival or immediately upon her entering the Palace. Or never.
They could forget the whole thing, go back to being her faithful hounds, and wait with her for the disaster from the south.
When Mogaba thought of the Company he shuddered and was most sorely tempted to abandon the plot against the Protector. Soulcatcher would be a potent weapon in that war.
The gate. The south gate. It had to happen there. The complex had been engineered for exactly that sort of thing, although on a larger scale.
When he returned to the palace he found Aridatha Singh waiting. “There was a messenger, General. The Protector has reached Dejagore. She took time out to review the troops assembling there, though it would seem the enemy isn’t that far behind.”
Mogaba made a face. “We don’t have much time left, then. She won’t lag long behind our couriers.” Unspoken, but understood, remained the fact that they were running out of time to chose their final commitment.
Then Mogaba grunted. He had realized, suddenly, that the Protector could pluck the whole opportunity right out of their hands. Easy as snapping her fingers.
We overtook Sleepy in the hills beyond the north shore of Lake Tanji. Lady hurried ahead. She knew better but could not help herself.
Runmust Singh’s rangers were still somewhere out ahead of the main force. They were close enough for their campfires to be seen across the barrier hills but recent hard rains had flooded the ravines and creeks between here and there. Which was the only reason we had caught Sleepy so soon. The flooding had slowed her down.
“It won’t be long,” she told us. “Unless we get more rain. These washes drain fast.”
I knew. I fought the Shadowmasters across these hills, many years ago.
My wife was exasperated. She turned on Tobo, who, with his father, was renewing acquaintances with Sahra. “When are you going to learn enough about those damned posts so we can use them?” A little flooding would slow nobody if we could fly.
Tobo told Lady the truth, which was the last thing she wanted to hear. “It might be months yet. Maybe even years. If we’re all so anxious to become more mobile, why don’t we wake the Howler up and make a deal for some flying carpets?”
Debate was immediate and brisk with almost everyone feeling a need to offer an opinion. Goblin, Doj, Lady, Tobo, Sahra, Willow Swan, Murgen, Goblin again. Even Thai Dei looked like he had a viewpoint, though he kept it to himself.
I realized that Sleepy had not stated her opinion. In fact, her eyes had glazed over. She was far, far away. Her intensity was disturbing.
One by one, the others fell silent. A foreboding emotional murk began to gather. I looked for Unknown Shadows but saw nothing. What was going on?
Tobo spoke up first. “Captain? What’s the matter?” Sleepy had begun to lose color. I got up to go find my medical kit.
Sleepy came out of it. “Tobo.” Her voice was so intense silence spread in all directions. “Did you remember to restore the shadowgate so it won’t collapse if Longshadow dies?”
The silence deepened. Suddenly we were holding our breaths. And staring at Tobo. And every one of us knowing the answer even if we had not been there and did not want it to be true.
Sleepy said, “They’ve had him in Hsien for as long as we’ve been here. He was a frail old man. He won’t last.”
Without saying a word Tobo started getting ready to travel. Groaning, I clambered to my feet and began getting my stuff together, too. Tobo began telling his father and Uncle Doj how to manage the Voroshk. “You have to keep them engaged. Keep them trying to learn. Keep them away from Goblin. You’ll need to force-feed the sick one. I don’t think he’s going to last much longer.”
I was not sure I overheard that last remark. He spoke very softly.
He was right. The kid was slipping away. I could not stop it.
I looked hard at Lady, who had shown no sign of getting ready to do what had to be done. I told her, “You need to come. Following Tobo you’re our best gate mechanic.” I offered a hand.
Murgen, I noted, was paying his son’s instructions no attention. He was getting ready to travel, too.
Lady’s expression hardened. She accepted my hand. Upright, she stared northward. The fires in Runmust’s camp were not visible now. Rain was falling between here and there.
Several others, including Willow Swan, quietly began getting ready to travel, too. No names were named, no orders were given. Those who needed to go or thought their presence would be useful began packing. Nobody grumbled. Nobody said much of anything at all. We were all too tired to waste energy doing anything but what had to be done.
No fingers got pointed, either. It took no genius to understand that Tobo had been swallowed up by his own workload, with people wanting something more from him every minute. Sleepy bore the heaviest responsibility. It was her job to see that everything got done. She should have had a checklist. But she had been singleminded in her desire to move faster than resistance could coagulate in front of her.
For that she could not be faulted. The Company had seen no fighting yet, though nearly a quarter of the Taglian empire could be accounted disarmed. It was the most remote and lightly populated quarter but the strategy remained sound.
The wealth Sleepy had brought off the plain would let her exploit the territories we held far more effectively than would Soulcatcher’s capacity for generating terror allow her to exploit what she held.
Of course, if the shadowgate collapsed all that would be moot. Our world would be in greater danger than Khatovar. Unlike the Voroshk, we could not defend ourselves.
Tobo did not bother collecting the few bamboo fireball throwers left. If we became desperate enough to need them that handful would not do any good.
There were eight of us. Tobo and his father, me, Lady, Willow Swan, and Thai Dei because Murgen never got out of rock-throwing range of Tobo’s uncle. Then there were two older-than-average hardcases from Hsien, solid veterans of the warlord conflicts. One we knew as Panda Man because his real name sounded like that. The other was Spook. He was Spook because he had green eyes. In Hsien demons and haunts are supposed to have green eyes.
The Unknown Shadows refuse to conform. Every one of those haunts that I have actually seen had the more traditional red or yellow eyes.
Many of the Unknown Shadows traveled with us. At night, under the moon when it made its infrequent, shy appearances, the ground surrounding us seemed to be a sea in motion. Tobo’s pets did not mind being seen just now.
Before long my two ravens rejoined me. I had seen nothing of them since shortly after we had left the shadowgate.
Tobo told me, “I’ve sent scouts ahead. Now I’m going to ride ahead, too.” He was mounted on Sleepy’s superhorse. “The rest of you follow me as fast as you can.”
He surged ahead. Most of the churning darkness went with him, though we retained enough shadowy outriders that no danger would take us by surprise.
“I’m sorry,” I told Lady.
“Not your fault this time.” She was not happy, though.
“You gotten anything out of Kina yet?”
“No. Nothing but a few infrequent touches while we were up there with Sleepy. They were pretty faint and probably just because we were close to Booboo.”
Damn. “You think we can get back to the gate in time?”
“You think Longshadow will fight for life if he knows that the only thing he can accomplish is to save the people who pulled him down and turned him over to his oldest enemies?”
That was not the answer I wanted to hear.
Runmust and Iqbal rode northward slowly, at a pace their whole band found comfortable. Life would not be too hard until the Captain caught up. She would be put out because the rangers did not meet her as soon as possible. She would get over it.
The prisoners were given no opportunity to enjoy life, but they were not tormented directly. The Singhs would not have allowed that even had they known that Sleepy would not mind.
There was no formal arrangement between the Singhs and the dark spirits out of Hsien but Unknown Shadows paced them always. Communications remained crude. Runmust generally just got a really bad feeling when it was time to watch out. The problem was his. A religious failing. He was allowed no congress with demons. His innate human knack for rationalization had not yet exonerated the Unknown Shadows from being spawn of darkness.
Runmust began to have one of those bad feelings. It grew worse fast. Iqbal’s uneasiness said that he had been touched, too. Even some of the soldiers were becoming troubled.
Quick hand gestures. The ranger team halted. Everyone dismounted. Scouts crept forward while the men assigned the duty for the day began moving the prisoners and horses into a gulch off the road.
The warriors of Hsien could be remarkly quiet and patient. Runmust admired their skill in using the available cover in terrain, boasting only tangled, scrubby brush, rocks and lots of gullys. He could not do what they did. Of course, he was twice the size of the biggest and a decade older than the oldest.
Minh Bhu, one of the best, intercepted him in his slow advance, after signing for absolute silence.
Minh brushed leaves aside and smoothed a patch of dirt. He used a forefinger to sketch the ground ahead, indicating the approximate positions of a well-chosen ambush site.
Runmust signaled a general withdrawal. He looked for crows or other creatures traditionally associated with the enemy. He saw nothing. “How could they know we were coming?” he asked when he was far back enough to whisper. “How many of them are there?”
Minh shrugged. “We’re not going to get a head count. There are a lot more of them than there are of us. And as for how did they know, from that hilltop you can see all the country we crossed the last two days. They were probably just sent out to see if this is the route north the Captain picks.” He pointed back south. The dust and sparkle of the main force were obvious.
“Why an ambush?”
“They can see there aren’t many of us. It would look like a chance to take some prisoners.”
“Uhm.” Runmust scanned the slope. Could he turn the tables on those people? He wished he had developed a more intimate relationship with the Unknown Shadows. “Iqbal. Talk to me.”
“We’re outnumbered, we should back away. There’s no reason to get in a fight. Or even make contact. We’ve got important prisoners to protect. So let’s stay away and wait for the Captain.”
Iqbal was a married man. He did not favor major risks.
Even so, Iqbal was right. Withdrawal was the only course that was not crazy. Runmust asked, “What would they do if we did stroll into their trap?” He wished he could catch a couple of them. A few questions answered would tell a lot about enemy plans and what the other side thought was happening.
“They see Sleepy coming. They’ll pull out pretty soon.”
“Why do I keep getting more and more nervous?” Runmust knew the Unknown Shadows wanted him to know something and he just was not hearing it.
In the hills ahead horses began screaming. Men cursed. Several dozen arrows rose into the air, fell where the enemy evidently thought the rangers were hidden. None of the arrows came close.
Muttering curses himself, Runmust waved his men back again. They began slipping away. Wildly sped arrows fell all across the slope. “Idiots,” Runmust muttered. “Recon by fire.” The Protector’s soldiers would charge any outcry. Or any other obvious reaction. They were an opportunity to inflict disaster just waiting to happen.
A Taglian soldier sprang up not ten feet from Runmust, barking in pain as he swatted his ass. Runmust froze, hoping the Taglian was too preoccupied to notice him—though now he heard other Taglians pushing through the dry brush and knew he could not sneak off fast enough to get away untouched.
Iqbal carried a fireball launcher. He was supposed to use it as an emergency signal, not as a weapon. It was believed to contain just one charge. It was ancient. There was no guarantee it would work at all.
Iqbal, unseen by the man who had now spied Runmust, rotated the handgrip trigger on that piece of bamboo.
An intense yellow ball slammed right through the Protector’s man and rattled around in the brush behind him. In seconds a dozen fires were burning.
Runmust and Iqbal ran. No point doing anything else now.
They had almost reached the gully hiding the animals and prisoners when a random arrow found the unprotected meat of Runmust’s right thigh. Singh flung forward in an uncontrolled dive. His beard protected his face as he ploughed through the brush but he left large tufts behind. He squealed with the unexpected pain.
Iqbal stopped to help.
“Get out of here!” Runmust growled. “You have Suruvhija and the children.” Which moved Iqbal not at all.
The Taglian troops blundered down the hillside, scattered, in no order, without discipline or thought. Officers, sergeants and men, they had no practical experience and very little training. They had come out of the Nijha fortress because Soulcatcher had told them they might achieve a startling triumph. But once the situation on the ground deviated from their expectations they were lost.
Stumbling, dragging the leg with the arrow still embedded, Runmust clung to and leaned on Iqbal. Both men heard the exultant Taglian soldiers plunging through the brush behind them, swiftly bringing the inevitable.
The rangers were men chosen from those who had seen prior action serving the warlords in Hsien and who both understood Company doctrine and accepted it. They set an ambush of their own. The Taglians came to it as though guided by maleficent demons.
The result was a bloodbath. It was a tactical triumph for the Black Company. It was not unalloyed by bad news. In the end, in the heat of the moment, the rangers did fail to acknowledge doctrine. They did not fade away while the Taglians were confused and panicky. They maintained contact in hopes of making sure Runmust and Iqbal escaped.
The Singh brothers did survive. But when the light cavalry, flung forward by Sleepy right after she recognized the fireball signal, arrived they found most of the rangers wounded or dead after having been overrun. The horsemen pursued the fleeing Taglians. They cut down most of the enemy wounded and stragglers.
Sadly, they failed to recapture the Daughter of Night.
A particularly bright Taglian officer had recognized what he had stumbled across and got the girl moving to the rear immediately. Her grub-colored skin had given her away.
When that day’s sun set it was a tossup which side would consider the encounter the greater disaster. The Company had lost a huge treasure and some of its most valuable men, at least for a while. The Taglians had endured a huge massacre with only one sullen, if exotically beautiful, pale, dirty young woman to show for all the deaths.
The Captain herself reached the scene of the fighting just an hour after its end. She stomped around. She nagged the survivors with questions. Most of the rangers had survived but only two had managed without suffering serious wounds. Sleepy interrogated prisoners even more emphatically. The cavalrymen had retained sense enough to capture a few Taglians who offered to surrender, presuming they would continue to cooperate to save their skins.
None of the prisoners knew anything about the Daughter of Night. None even knew that name.
The Captain’s prowling took her near Narayan Singh. She kicked the old cripple. “Hellspawn.” She turned, bellowed, “Why didn’t we know about this ambush ahead of time?”
Some bold soul told her the truth. “The Unknown Shadows probably did know. But nobody asked them. Tobo is the only one who knows how to talk to them the way it takes to get them to do the kind of spying you want.”
Sleepy growled. She kicked Narayan Singh again. She paced. “What do we know about this fort?”
Blade came forward. He would save the others. Sleepy’s wrath fell less heavily upon him. Usually. Some thought she was a little afraid of Blade. In fact, she was just not sure of him, though he had been around longer than she had. Like Swan and Sahra, he was not actually a sworn brother of the Company. But he was always there and always involved.
Blade said, “The old Captain established it. It was a remount station for the first courier post. The wall got added because the natives kept trying to steal the horses. Soulcatcher eventually expanded the fort and garrison during the Kiaulune wars because she wanted a stronger presence here in case her enemies tried to sneak north this way. Assuming she did here the way she did everywhere else, she forgot the place as soon as the fighting was over. The garrison might be a hundred fifty or two hundred. Plus hangers-on.”
“Pretty big gang for out here.”
“It’s a big territory. And half of them are out of business now.”
“What’re the fortifications like?”
“I’ve never been there. I hear they’re barely good enough to stop horse thieves. Which means not real impressive. Some kind of rock wall, since that’s the available material around here. I’ve heard there’s a ditch that was never completed. Didn’t you come this way when you ran south? Didn’t you see it?”
“We took a trail west of here. The old trade road. We avoided the courier routes.”
“You might send some cavalry to surround the place before they can move the girl out.”
Sleepy mused, “It’s probably too late to stop them yelling for help.”
Blade said, “I don’t think you need to worry about sneaking. By now Soulcatcher’s got the whole Taglian empire alerted.”
Sleepy grunted. Then she sent for cavalry officers. And after she sent them off she visited Runmust and Iqbal. Those two had been close friends for two decades. She asked Iqbal’s wife, Suruvhija, “What did the surgeon say?”
“They’ll recover. They’re Shadar. They’re strong men. They fought well. God will watch over them.”
Sleepy glanced at Sahra, who was helping tend the wounded. Sahra nodded, meaning Suruvhija was not just wishful thinking.
“I’ll include them in my prayers as well.” Sleepy squeezed Suruvhija’s shoulder reassuringly, thinking the woman was too perfect to be real. At least as men saw wives. But she was Shadar, too, and she believed, and the roles of all members of the family were clearly defined by her religion.
Sleepy took time to talk to Iqbal’s children, too. They were bearing up bravely. As they would, for they were good Shadar, too, despite the strange lands and societies they had seen.
When she was around Iqbal’s children, Sleepy sometimes even vaguely regretted having abandoned the woman’s role. But that never lasted more than a few seconds.
“Blade. Pass the word. I want the whole gang up to this fort before sunset. If that’s possible. Once they see some numbers I’m sure they’ll give up.”
Blade told her, “You know you have to stop before long. The animals need time to graze and recover. And we have a tail of stragglers that has to stretch all the way back to Charandaprash.”
People got hurt or sick or just could not keep up. It irked Sleepy but it was a fact of life. Her strength was down maybe a thousand men already. That would worsen rapidly if she continued to drive hard.
“When they get here the most worn-out ones can take over as our garrison.” That was a tactic as old as soldiering.
She would not admit it but she needed a rest herself. She could not imagine when she would get one, though.
Seem like there’s much point dragging my weary ass over there?” I asked Lady. There was just enough dawn-light to show the vague outline of the slope leading up to the shadowgate. Which was still miles and miles from where we had spent the night. This part of the journey was one of those where you spend the whole day trying not to look ahead because every time you do it seems you have not gotten ten feet closer. Way to our left a smoky haze concealed the New City and the lower half of ruined Overlook. A lot of unpleasant memories connected us with those places.
“What do you mean?” My sweetheart was as tired and morning-cranky as I was. And her bones were a lot older than mine.
“Well, we didn’t get killed last night. That means the gate hasn’t collapsed yet. Old Longshadow’s still holding out.”
“Evidently.”
“Wouldn’t that mean Tobo’s got everything under control? So why beat ourselves up getting on over there?”
Lady smirked at me. She did not have to tell me. We would cross the valley because, in the end, I would want to see everything for myself. Because I would want to get it all into the Annals, right. She had chided me fifty times during the ride south because I was trying to work out a way to write on horseback. I could get so much more done if I could do it while we were traveling.
Then she chirped, “You are getting old.”
“What?”
“A sign of advancing age. You start obsessing about how much you have to get done in the time that you have left.”
I made noises in the back of my throat but did not argue. That kind of thinking was familiar. So was being unable to fall asleep because I was tracking my heartbeat, trying to tell if something was wrong.
You would think a guy in my line of work would make his peace with death at an early age.
We ran into several locals while crossing the valley, the bottom land of which was decent farmland and pasture. We did not receive one friendly greeting. I did not see one welcoming smile. Nobody raised a hand in defiance but I had no trouble feeling the abiding resentment of a tormented nation. There had been no serious fighting in these parts for years but the adult population were all survivors of the terrible times, whether they were natives or immigrants who had come in to settle the depopulated lands and to escape even worse horrors elsewhere. They did not want the evils of the past to return.
This land had suffered grotesquely under the Shadowmaster Longshadow. It had continued to suffer after his defeat. The Kiaulune wars devoured most everything that Longshadow and the Shadowmaster wars had not. And now the Black Company had returned. Out of the place of glittering stone, an abode of devils. The season of despair appeared to be threatening again.
“Can’t say I blame them,” I told Lady.
“What?”
I explained.
“Oh.” Indifferently. Some attitudes never wither. She had been a powerful lord a lot longer than she had been just another tick on the underbelly of the world. Compassion is not one of the qualities that endeared her to me.
We found Tobo impatient with our dawdling. “I see the old gal’s still here,” I said of the shadowgate. Lady and I produced our keys and let the crew cross over, Murgen first so he could make sure his boy still had all his arms and legs and fingers and toes.
“It is,” the wonder child confessed. “But probably only because Longshadow still hasn’t left the plain.”
“What?” Lady was irritated. “We made promises. We owe the Children of the Dead.”
“We do,” Tobo said. “But we won’t be allowed to kill ourselves. Shivetya knew we forgot to disarm Longshadow’s booby trap so he kept Longshadow from leaving.”
“How do you know that?”
“I sent messengers. That was the news they brought back.”
Lady’s mood had not improved. “The File of Nine will be smoking. We don’t need them as enemies. We may have to flee to the Land of Unknown Shadows again.”
“Shivetya will release Longshadow the second we finish refurbishing our gate.”
My companions were nervous. Willow Swan was pale, sweating, dancing with anxiety and, most of all, un-Swanlike, silent. He had not, in fact, spoken all day.
Thinking about the shadows can do that to you if you have witnessed one of their attacks.
Tobo asked, “You two ready to go to work?”
I shook my head. “Are you kidding?”
Lady said, “No.”
Tobo told us, “I can’t finish this alone.”
I replied, “And you can’t finish it with assistants so tired they’re guaranteed to make mistakes. I have a premonition. Longshadow will keep till tomorrow.”
Tobo admitted that he would. Shivetya would see to it. But he did so with poor grace.
Lady said, “Let’s go set up camp.” Murgen, Swan and the others probably should have been doing that instead of standing around being anxious.
Once we crossed the barrier Lady wondered, “Why is Tobo in such a hurry?”
I snickered. “I think it might have to do with Booboo. He hasn’t seen her for a long time. Sleepy says he was completely smitten.”
While I spoke her expression transformed from curious to completely appalled. “I’d hope not.”
Murgen suggested, “There were two rather attractive Voroshk girls. One of them might have something to do with it.”
The dreamwalkers came during the night. Their presence was so powerful that even Swan, Panda Man and Spook saw them. I heard them speak clearly although I never understood a word.
Lady and Tobo did get something out of them.
They put their heads together over breakfast. They decided that the Nef wanted to warn us about something.
“You think so?” I sneered. “There’s a new interpretation.”
“Hey!” Tobo chided me. “It has something to do with Khatovar.”
“Like what, for example?”
The youth shrugged. “Your guess is better than mine. I’ve never been there.”
“Last time we saw the dreamwalkers they were headed out into Khatovar in the middle of all the shadows on the plain. You think they saw something they think we ought to know?”
“Absolutely. Any idea what?”
Lady asked, “Have you had your Unknown Shadow friends try to talk to the Nef?”
“I have. It doesn’t work. The Nef don’t communicate with the plain shadows, either.”
“Then what was the Unknown Shadows’ problem last night? The Black Hounds kept carrying on so bad they woke me up several times.”
“Really?” Tobo was puzzled. “I never noticed.”
Nor did I. But I am deaf and blind to most supernatural stuff. Plus, for once, I had not been tossing around listening for my heart to stop.
“Let’s get to work.”
“Booboo isn’t going anywhere, kid.”
Tobo frowned. Then got it. He did not become embarrassed or defensive. “Oh? Oh. You don’t know? She’s already gone. There was a fight with the garrison from Nijha. Runmust’s troop got overrun. The Taglians captured the Daughter of Night. Sleepy has cavalry trying to run them down now.”
I shook my head and grumped, “It won’t do her any good. A million horsemen won’t be enough now.”
“Aren’t you pessimistic.”
“He’s right,” Lady opined. She lapsed into an old northern language I had not heard since I was young and which I never had understood completely. She seemed to be reciting a song as a poem. It had a refrain that went something like, “Thus do the Fates conspire.”
We were on the inside of the shadowgate, hard at it. Tobo was making tiny, elegant adjustments to the strands and layers of magic that made up the mystic portal. The training I had received had elevated me to the level of a semiskilled bricklayer. Compared to me Tobo was the sort of master artisan who created panoramic tapestries by weaving them instead of embroidering them. I was nothing but the lead finger man on the bow-tying team.
Even Lady was little more than a hodcarrier on this job. But hodcarriers are needed, too.
“Thanks for the compliment,” Tobo said after I tried out my similes. “But I’m mostly doing embroidery and plain old-fashioned knot tying on broken threads. Parts of this tapestry were plain outright crippled. It’ll never be completely right, even if it’s stronger than when it started.”
“But you can weasel Longshadow’s booby trap out of there?”
“It’s kind of like lancing a boil and cleaning it out, but yes. He actually made a pretty crude job of it. Obviously, he didn’t know much about shadowgates. He did know that there was no one in our world who knew more. What he didn’t understand was that there were more keys.”
“Of course he knew,” I said. “That’s why he sent Ashutosh Yaksha, his apprentice, to infiltrate the Nyueng Bao priests at the temple of Ghanghesha.”
Tobo looked puzzled, like he did not recall that story.
“He knew they had a key there and he wanted it. So he could get back to Hsien. If you don’t know that story you’d better corner your uncle. Because that’s what he told Sleepy.”
Tobo smiled weakly. “Well, maybe. I suppose.”
“What do you mean, you suppose?”
Lady paused what she was doing. “Don’t play Doj’s games, Tobo. You won’t be fooling anybody. I was there. Inside the white crow. I know what the man said.”
“That’s probably it. Doj told Sleepy a bunch of stories. Some were probably true but some he probably made up. Stuff he thought might be true because it sounded plausible based on what he did know. Master Santaraksita spent years searching the records at Khang Phi. The history of our world’s Nyueng Bao isn’t much like what Doj might’ve wanted you to believe.”
“Which was it?” I mused aloud. “Was he lying or making it up?” I have known plenty of people who would not admit ignorance even in the most obvious circumstance.
Tobo said, “Master Santaraksita says our ancestors left Hsien as fugitives, sneaking out like snakes using a secretly manufactured key. They were trying to get away from the Shadowmasters. There was supposed to be a regular, gradual evacuation across the plain. Because they were persecuted followers of Khadi they did favor the organizational structure we’ve seen in other bands of believers but those people weren’t mercenaries and they weren’t missionaries. They weren’t a Free Company. They weren’t a band of Stranglers. They were just running away because the Shadowmasters insisted they had to give up their religion. Master Santaraksita says their priests probably made up a more dramatic history after they’d been settled in the river delta for a while. After several generations spent wandering. Before they arrived the only people in the swamp were Taglian fugitives and criminals and a few remote descendants of the Deceivers Rhaydreynek tried to wipe out. Maybe the Nyueng Bao wanted to impress them.”
Tobo’s hands never stopped moving while he talked. But their movements had nothing to do with what he was saying. He was mending things that I could not see.
“How much did Doj lie?” I was determined to pin that on him. I never did trust that old man.
“That’s the intriguing part. I don’t know. I don’t think he really knows. He did tell me that a lot of what he told Sleepy originally he said just because it sounded believable and like something she wanted to hear. When you get right down to it, except for his skill with Ash Wand, Uncle Doj is a bigger fraud than most priests. Most priests actually believe what they preach.”
Lady said, “Sounds like he’s spent time hanging around with Blade.”
Tobo continued, “The key my ancestors used to cross the plain was created secretly in Khang Phi. It went back to Hsien so the next group of fugitives could use it. They never got the chance.”
“But they had the golden pick.” Which was the key that Sleepy eventually found and used to get onto the plain so she could release us Captured from underneath Shivetya’s fortress.
“That must have been the key that belonged to the Deceivers who hid the Books of the Dead back in Rhaydreynek’s time. They must’ve hidden the pickax under the temple of Ghanghesha. The temple has a long history. It started out as a Janaka shrine. The Gunni took over and used it as a retreat. Then the survivors of Rhaydreynek’s pogrom chased the Gunni out. But they faded away. Nyueng Bao folklore talks about bitter fighting over doctrine in the early days. A century later Gunni holy men from the cult of Ghanghesha began to come back to the swamp. Eventually most Nyueng Bao forgot Khadi and adopted Ghanghesha. A few generations back the pick turned up when the temple was being repaired. Somebody realized that it had to be an important relic. It wasn’t till more recent times, when Longshadow, and later Soulcatcher, found out about it, that anyone realized how important it had to be.”
“What about the pilgrimages?”
“Originally people from Hsien were supposed to meet our people at the shadowgate with news from home and more refugees. But the Shadowmasters found out. Plus on this side my ancestors lost touch with the past. Contrary to legend, and unlike the way things are now, there wasn’t that much pressure from outside. Hanging on to old ways and old ideas wasn’t that important a way to maintain the identity of the Nyueng Bao.
“Whatever Doj says, most Nyueng Bao aren’t devoted to tradition and keeping the old ways. Most don’t remember anything anymore. You saw that while we were in Hsien. The Nyueng Bao aren’t anything like those people over there.”
Lady and I exchanged looks. Neither of us assumed Tobo was telling any more of the truth than Doj ever had. Though the boy was not necessarily lying consciously. I glanced at Thai Dei. He gave nothing away.
I said, “I’ve been wondering why Doj never found any Path of the Sword guys over there.”
“That’s easy. The Shadowmasters wiped them out. They were the warrior caste. They kept fighting till there weren’t any of them left.”
I had, for years, wondered why a sword-worshipping cult would be part of a people descended from a band of worshippers of Kina, who, in my world, did not believe in shedding blood. I still did not know. But now I knew that nobody else was likely to know, either.
I told Lady, “I’m surprised Sleepy never picked up on the fact that the supposed priest of this Nyueng Bao band went around carving people into steaks.”
“Deceiver people at that,” she added. “He slaughtered them by the score at Charandaprash.”
Tobo is a clever young man. He understood that we did not find his version of history more convincing than Doj’s.
I still was not sure whether he believed what he was saying.
It did not matter.
Lady poked me. She whispered, “Murgen and Willow Swan have drawn my attention to an interesting phenomenon. You’ll want to see for yourself. Tobo, drop doing what you’re doing and look at this, too.”
By then I knew it would be something I did not want to see. Thai Dei, Murgen and the others were debating the best places to take cover already.
I turned. Lady pointed. A trio of Voroshk flyers, appearing only slightly larger than dots, hovered above the rim of the plain. They were way up high and a long way away, motionless.
I asked, “Anybody want to guess how well they can see us?”
Lady said, “They can tell we’re here but that’s it. Unless they have a farseeing device.”
“What’re they doing?”
“Scouting around, I imagine. Now that their gate is gone they can get onto the plain whenever they want. During the day they’re safe as long as they stay off the ground. And they probably won’t have much trouble with shadows even at night if they stay high up. We’ve never seen shadows go higher than ten or fifteen feet above the surface of the shielding.”
“Think they’re looking for us? Or are they just looking?”
“Both, probably. They’ll want revenge. And maybe even a safe new world.”
The Voroshk did not move while we were talking. I pictured similar trios ranging to all points of the plain, perhaps hoping they could open the way without us. “Tobo, can they get off of the plain?”
“I don’t know. They won’t be able to here. Not without one of my keys. I’ll install something that’ll kill them if they try.”
I admired his confidence. “Suppose they have somebody as slick as you are? What’s to keep him from undoing your spells the way you’re undoing Longshadow’s?”
“Lack of training. Lack of the knowledge we got out of Khang Phi. You have to know a little about these things to redo them.”
Lady asked, “Can they break through the gateway into Hsien?” The knowledge was there.
“I don’t know. They got the forvalaka through. Maybe they could shove their own people through on a slow, one-at-a-time basis. They never tried before. But they’ve never been desperate before. And time isn’t on their side.”
“What about Shivetya? What’s his take on this?”
“I’ll find out. I’ll send a messenger in just a minute.”
One of the soldiers from Hsien—Panda Man, I think—asked, “What about the men with Longshadow? If he hasn’t left the plain. One is my cousin.”
Tobo drew a long, deep breath. “My work is never done.”
Lady said, “If you’re going to do something you’d better do it fast. They have a key. It’s at risk.”
“Damn! You’re right. Captain, I’m going to borrow your ravens. Lady, lean out the gate and yell for Big Ears and Cat Sith. They’ll hear you. Tell them I want them. It’s an emergency.”
“One damned thing after another,” I grumbled. “It never lets up.”
“But you’re alive,” Swan said.
“Don’t you be jumping around on the other side of your own argument.” We amused ourselves with some good-natured bickering while Tobo sent supernatural messengers off to Shivetya, the guards at the Hsien shadowgate, Longshadow’s keepers, and our folks up north.
Along the way Murgen asked his son, “What’s to keep those jokers up there from just flying off the plain? I remember times when crows came and went.” And he used to do so himself, all the time.
“They could do that because they come from our world. Crows from any other world we wouldn’t have seen at all. Even if they were there. Yes. The Voroshk can fly out any time they want. But when they do they’ll end up in Khatovar. Every time. If they want to get off the plain into another world they’ll have to come onto it through their shadowgate and leave it through another shadowgate. Shivetya restructured it that way.”
It can be confusing. I guess that happens where realities overlap, with a deathless demigod in the middle who feels compelled to make it hard for the human species to realize its darkest potential.
There were fewer than fifty soldiers to hold Nijha’s walls, most of them injured already and all of them thoroughly terrified after having endured a night overrun by the Unknown Shadows.
The defenders were accorded the honors of war and allowed to march out without their weapons, taking their families and what possessions they could carry. They were admonished to clear the road whenever the Black Company passed.
If the Nijha stronghold had surrendered any faster Sleepy would have worried that she was walking into a trap. As it was, she did send Doj in first to make sure Soulcatcher had left her no special little gifts.
She had not.
“Put Narayan somewhere where he can’t embarrass me,” Sleepy ordered after the stronghold had been declared secure. “I’ll decide what to do with him in a day or two.” She would have preferred handing him over to Lady and Croaker right away. “Battalion, regiment, and brigade commanders and all senior staff are to assemble in the local headquarters building in one hour.”
Sahra asked, “You think there’ll be room? I really thought this place would be bigger.”
“So did I. Even though we knew it was a glorified remount station. Gosh, I wish Tobo was here instead of down there.”
“So do I.” Sahra hated having her whole family so far away. She had become accustomed to having a real family again during our years in Hsien. “I’ve been thinking. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to keep Tobo and Murgen from going to the same dangerous places?”
“Like the shadowgate?”
“Like that. Or anywhere else where one bad blow could take them both away.”
Sleepy understood Sahra’s agony. Sahra had lost two children and one husband to malignant fortune already. The husband did not trouble her much. His removal had improved her life. But rare is the mother who will not ache forever over the loss of her little ones.
All part of the wondrous cruel experience of the siege of Jaicur, or Dejagore, that has twisted so many members of the Company and burdened them with vulnerabilities and obsessions that will shape their minds and souls for as long as they survive.
“That’s a good idea,” Sleepy said. “Although you can count on getting resistance from the men. Can you imagine Runmust and Iqbal being willing to go anywhere where they’re not elbow to elbow with each other?”
Sahra sighed. She shook her head slowly. “If the Gunni are right about the Wheel of Life then I must have been something more wicked than a Shadowmaster in a previous life. This one never stops punishing me.”
“Let me tell you, it’s harder being Vehdna. You don’t have other lives to blame it on. You just go crazy trying to figure out why God is so angry with you in this one.”
Sahra nodded. The moment had passed. She was in control again. “You’d think I would’ve made my peace with this life by now, wouldn’t you?”
Sleepy thought that she had, about as well as she could, but did not say so. She did not want to push Sahra back onto the path of self-examination. That could get tiresome fast.
“We have a major staff meeting. I want your help. I want you to think in broader terms. I’m rethinking my strategy. The distances are turning out to be too great for a headlong rush. We’re getting weaker fast while our enemies are getting stronger. I want your thoughts on different approaches.”
“I’ll be all right. I have to have these spells once in a while just to get by.”
Darkness came to Nijha. With it came an almost supernatural silence. Within the crude walls the senior commanders were clustered with Sleepy and Sahra. Outside, the soldiers were cooking, repairing harnesses and equipment, or, mainly, just sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. A night’s rest was never enough to recover fully from a hard day’s march. Weariness accumulated, and more so when a force covered a lot of miles in a hurry.
For the first time since his liberation Goblin found himself unsupervised, overlooked, forgotten. He did not trust his observations for a while. These were sneaky people. Possibly they were testing him.
Eventually it became evident that he really was running free, unmonitored. This was early in the game and way remote but no better opportunity was ever likely to arise.
Narayan stirred warily, though his despair was such that he could generate little concern about his own continued well-being. Already he had been separated farther, if not longer, from the Daughter of Night than ever before since her birth. If he lost her there would be no reason to go on. It would be time to go home to Kina. There would be nothing more he could do. And there was little chance he would get any opportunity ever again, anyway. He was alive now only because these people were saving him as a plaything for the girl’s birth parents. Again.
His days and hours were numbered and once again his faith was being tested sorely.
He heard a faint, breathy sound that seemed vaguely familiar. And it should be, he thought. His heart began to hammer. That was a Deceiver recognition sign meant for use in darkness exactly like this, where the usual hand signals would not work. He murmured countersigns. The effort set off a coughing fit.
The exchange continued until Narayan was satisfied that he had been located by a religious brother. He asked, “Why have you come? It won’t be possible to rescue me.” He used the secret Deceiver cant, which amounted to the final test. It would, at least, advise him of the status of his visitor. Not many recent converts were yet that advanced in their studies.
“The Goddess herself has sent me to relay her love and her esteem and her appreciation of all your sacrifices. She bid me to assure you that your rewards will be great. She wants you to understand that her resurrection is nearer than any nonbeliever suspects. She wants you to know that your efforts and your trials and your steadfast faith have made the difference. She wants you to know that her enemies soon will be overwhelmed and devoured. She wants you to know that she’s watching over you and that you’ll stand at her side when we celebrate the Year of the Skulls. She wants you to know that of all those who have ever served her, even of her many saints, you were her most favored.”
The encampment below the shadowgate became the hub of a flood of Unknown Shadow traffic as Tobo tried to head off the Voroshk threat. He remained especially worried about Longshadow’s keepers till Shivetya somehow assured him that they were invisible to Voroshk eyes.
“Do you trust him?” Lady asked. She being the most naturally paranoid of any of us at the shadowgate. “He might try to make a better deal with the Voroshk.”
“What better deal? We’re going to give him what he wants. Without trying to control him or even to get much out of him.”
“Bet he thinks we’re too good to be true, then.” She was in a mood.
I asked, “What happened to the golden pickax? The Deceiver key to the shadowgates.”
After a pause to make up his mind about what to admit, Tobo said, “I left it with Shivetya. We may need it again. When it’s time to kill Kina. I couldn’t think of any other place where it would be safer from her followers.” He was troubled as he looked the rest of us over. He was thinking he should have kept that to himself. The golden pickax was an extremely holy Strangler relic that could also be used to help set Kina free.
He was afraid that at least one of us was sure to tell somebody what we had just heard.
It was a long night followed by what promised to be a longer day.
For the uninvolved members of the band these were trying times. There was nothing for them to do but play cards and wonder if the people of the New City would be crazy enough to attack us.
Panda Man and Spook mostly watched the game. They did not do well when they played. Tonk is one of the simplest games ever invented, rules-wise, but a huge part of it is the table talk that goes along with the actual picking up, discarding and laying down of cards. A group accustomed to one another is an entirely different animal from one where the players barely speak the same language. Wherever the Company stops for fifteen minutes a tonk game soon develops. The tradition began ages before my time. It will persist long after I am gone.
Gone. I tried to imagine what life might have been like had I left the Company sometime in the past. My imagination was not up to the task. I confess. I do not have the strength of personality to abandon everything I know, even when all that is just a meandering, unhappy path that, too often, wanders through the outlying marches of hell.
I was a zombie most of the day, carrying that hod for my young bricklayer while most of me was elsewhere, boldly adventuring across those fields of might-have-been.
Sometime late in the afternoon I told Lady, “I probably should tell you this more often. I love you and I’m glad Fate conspired to bring our lives together.”
I stunned her into silence. I know Swan and Murgen gaped and spent some time trying to figure out if I thought I was dying.
The Voroshk had not overlooked us. They were cautious. They showed themselves briefly several times during the day. Their customary arrogance seemed in abeyance.
Once I left my own preoccupations behind I asked Tobo, “What do you suppose they’re up to?” We had talked about it before but I am never entirely comfortable taking a sorcerer’s motives at face value.
“Looking for hope. Or anything that will give them an edge. I expect that, right now, their world is more like hell than almost anything any priest ever imagined. Most of the surviving shadows from the plain must be running loose there. One family of sorcerers, however wonderful their weapons, just has no chance to stop what’s happening. Not before the devastation reaches the scale of an end of the world catastrophe.”
Once upon a time I might have felt bad for the Voroshk and the people of Khatovar. This time when I examined my soul I found not much more than indifference within me.
“How much longer before you’ve finished making all your modifications?” Lady demanded. She was anxious to head north. From oblique remarks I gathered that she wanted to rejoin the main force before disaster struck it. What she could do to avert a disaster was beyond me. She did not have enough magic currently to start a fire without adding flint and steel to the mix.
’Ten minutes, tops,” Tobo replied. “There’s this one last braided strand that needs reweaving and we’ll have us not just a completely healthy shadowgate, it’ll be the toughest there ever was. Tough enough that what happened to the Khatovar gate can’t happen here. In fact, it’s already all those things. What this spell rope is going to do is create a little pocket of darkness that’s invisible from outside so killer shadows can be turned into invisible sentries. They’ll be there ready to jump out at anybody who tries to get through who isn’t already approved by us or Shivetya.”
“Neat,” I said. Lady scowled. She was determined to believe that we were placing too much trust in the golem.
She seemed unable to recognize that trust was not a large part of this equation.
She said, “We’re going to have company in a minute.”
I looked up. Two Voroshk sorcerers were coming down the slope, following the old road, inside what would have been protection if they had not blown up their own shadowgate. A third post-rider remained a dot above the horizon, a remote witness. I asked, “You think they did more damage getting through the barrier and onto the road?”
After only a glance, Tobo said, “No. I think they came in the far end and flew here, following the roads. The other one paced them from above.”
Admirable stupidity, I thought. The two at ground level had no chance of getting back out before dark. Did they think we would protect them from the night? If so they were huge daydreamers.
The Voroshk dismounted a hundred yards away. They walked toward us like walking was a foreign experience. Riding the flying fencepost had to be a huge status symbol back in Khatovar. So huge, walking was never done where your inferiors could see you.
“How long now?” Lady asked Tobo.
“Fifteen seconds. After that I’ll fake it for a bit. Then we all step back through the gate. Are Dad and the others alert?”
Alert was not strong enough a word. A variety of missile weapons were ready. So was one fireball projector but it would not see use while the Voroshk remained on the plain side. The barriers could be damaged by fireballs. Arrows and crossbow bolts, however, could pass through and the wounds they made would heal in moments.
Not that arrows were likely to accomplish much against these chunky old men.
They did seem overweight. They projected an aura of fatness behind the constant stirring of their black cloaks.
“There. I think that should do it,” Tobo said.
Click. Click. Click. That swiftly we three backed through the shadowgate into our own world. Tobo sealed the way. We waited. The kid said, “One of these will be the father of our two troublemakers.”
Probably. The Voroshk did appear interested in communicating. They knew someone on our side spoke the language of the forvalaka.
Their luck was in. Of all the Black Company people who could have been there with Tobo they got me and Lady.
They would get no happiness out of that, though. Their kind rubbed me the wrong way. I would make nothing easy for them.
These Voroshk, who actually introduced themselves—as Nashun the Researcher and the First Father—both spoke the language of Juniper. Nashun the Researcher had by far the best command. Neither had social skills of a sort likely to put a smile on the face of many mothers. It was clear that the demonstration of manners toward persons outside the family was an exercise with which they had little familiarity.
After the introductions I stated the obvious. “You people sure got yourselves into big trouble.”
You could feel the Voroshk closing their eyes and sighing inside all that black material.
“We will survive,” the boss Voroshk declared. He strained to keep anger and arrogance out of his voice. He had less success with confidence, which made me wonder if he did not really mean it.
“No doubt. What I saw of your family’s capabilities impressed me. But honestly, you realize that your family’s survival will require more than just fending off the shadows.”
Nashun made a dismissive gesture with one gloved hand. “We come to you because we want our children back.”
He spoke clearly and slowly enough that Lady caught that. She made a surprised little noise that might have been half a laugh.
“You’re out of luck. They may prove useful. Nor have we any incentive to give them back.”
Their anger seemed a palpable force.
Tobo felt it. He said, “Warn them that any power they use to try to break through will bounce back at them. Tell them that the harder they try the worse they’ll get hurt.”
I translated. Our visitors were not impressed by anything a boy said. Neither did they experiment. They did recall events at their own shadowgate. The Researcher said, “We are prepared to make an exchange.”
“What do you have to trade?”
“You still have people on this plain.”
“Go for it. They’re covered. When the dust settles you’ll be picking up dead family members.” Of that I was confident. Because Tobo trusted Shivetya completely. “You’re powerful but ignorant. Like an ox. You don’t know the plain. It’s alive. It’s our ally.”
Smoke should have rolled out of their ears. Goblin sometimes did that in the old days. But these men had no sense of humor.
Their desperation overcame their anger.
“Explain,” Nashun hissed.
“You know nothing about the plain but you’re arrogant enough to believe that your power will be supreme there. In a realm of the gods. Evidently you don’t even know your own world’s history. The people you’re facing, that you believe you can threaten, are spiritual descendants of soldiers sent out from Khatovar five hundred years ago.”
“What happened before the Voroshk does not signify. However, you demonstrate ignorance of your own.”
“It is of consequence. You want something from the last Free Company of Khatovar. And you don’t have anything to offer in exchange. Except, possibly, that disdained history and a little contemporary knowledge.”
Neither man commented.
Lady told me, “Ask them why they want these kids back so bad. They’re safe over here.”
I asked.
“They are family,” the First Father said.
His voice had a quality which made that seem not only plausible but possibly even true.
I said, “They’re a long way away. They’ve been travelling northward steadily since they arrived. One is deathly ill.”
“They have their rheitgeistiden. They can get down here in a few hours.”
“I think this guy is for real,” I told Lady. “He’s really got some mad-ass notion that I’d give those kids their toys and turn them loose, just on his say-so. They sure don’t have to work to survive in Khatovar.”
The Researcher picked up the one word. “I mentioned your ignorance. Listen, Outsider. Khatovar is not our world. Khatovar was one city of darkness, where damned souls worshipped a Goddess of the night. That evil city was expunged from the earth before the Voroshk arose. Its people were hunted down and exterminated. They have been forgotten. And they will remain forgotten. Never will any Soldier of Darkness be permitted to return.”
Once upon a time, on a lazy day, ages before he had become the vessel he was now, Goblin had told me that I would never get to Khatovar. Never. It would forever remain just beyond the horizon. I could get closer and closer and closer but I would never arrive. So I had imagined I had set foot in Khatovar. But I had only been to the world where Khatovar had existed once upon a time.
“Time itself has evened the score. That which Khatovar sent out came back. And the world that killed Khatovar will die.”
“Did you catch that?” Lady asked.
“Huh? Catch what?”
“He used the world evil. We don’t hear that much in this part of the world. People don’t believe in it.”
“These guys aren’t from this part of the world.” I returned to the language of Juniper. “Given a complete, working breakdown on the construction and operation of your flying logs, and of the material from which your clothing is made, I’d say we could give you what you want.”
Lady did her best to keep the others up-to-date on what was being said. She did not always get it right.
Nashun the Researcher could not grasp the enormity of my demand. He tried speaking three different times, failed, finally turned to the First Father in mute appeal. I was sure his hidden face was taut with despair.
I told my guys, “It might be wise to back away from the shadowgate. These people are about out of patience.”
I felt wonderfully wicked. I always do when I frustrate overly powerful, responsible-to-no-one types who think all existence was created only for their pleasure and exploitation.
I told the Voroshk, “It’ll be dark soon. Then the shadows will come out.” And, as the Voroshk exchanged glances, I borrowed from Narayan Singh. “When dealing with the Black Company you would do well to remember: Darkness always comes.”
Lady’s expression was one of less than one hundred percent approval when I turned away. “That could’ve gone better.”
“I let my feelings intrude. I should know better. But talk wasn’t going to get us anywhere, anyway. They think too much of themselves and too little of everyone else.”
“Then you’re giving up the dream of returning to Khatovar.”
The Voroshk made their first furious attempt to bust through the shadowgate.
I did warn them.
They did not want to listen.
It was worse than I had imagined it could be.
It was worse than Tobo had predicted.
The countermagical blast hurled both sorcerers all the way up the slope to the edge of the plain, bouncing and tumbling all the way. By some miracle neither broke the barrier protecting the road. Maybe Shivetya was watching over then.
One still had shown no sign of recovering when I gave up watching. I told Tobo, “I reckon it’s time to go, now. Those guys might have gotten the message this time.”
I did not look back. The trials the Voroshk faced left me confident that they would never become a problem to my world.
As we descended the hill I asked, “Anybody think there might be a connection between the Shadowmasters and the Voroshk? They seem to have gotten their start about the right time. And the Shadowmasters tried to sever all connections with the past in Hsien. It was just too big a job. I wonder what we’d find out if we talked to some ordinary farming stiff over there?”
“I can ask Shivetya,” Tobo said. “And the prisoners.” But he did not sound particularly motivated.
Sahra kept calling for more torches. As though bringing in enough light would nullify the disaster. By the time the Captain arrived there were fifty torches, lamps and lanterns illuminating what had been a stable before the Company arrived.
“Strangled?” Sleepy asked.
“Strangled.”
“I’m tempted to use the word ‘ironic’ but I fear there’s no irony in it at all. Doj. That white raven of Croaker’s was hanging around outside. Find it. There were little people hanging around here, some of them supposedly watching Singh. I want to know what they saw.”
Sleepy had a good idea what she would hear from the Unknown Shadows. It would be a variation on reports she had had before. She said, “I’ll want to send the news south, too.”
Nothing happened around the Black Company without some hobyah there to witness it. The soldiers from Hsien understood that perfectly. They took it for granted. They tended to be well-behaved. But someone without experience of life in Hsien would not take the Unknown Shadows as seriously.
A minute later, Sleepy asked, “I don’t suppose anyone’s seen Goblin, have they? I don’t reckon anyone knows who was supposed to be watching him?”
Riverwalker said, “He was right over there till a minute ago.”
Sleepy looked, considered, muttered, “No doubt right up to the second I decided to consult the Unknown Shadows about what they saw.” Which would have been the same moment he would have realized that his recent history was no mystery to anyone. The moment when he realized that Sleepy had been paying out the hangman’s rope while seeing what she could learn.
Riverwalker asked. “Want him rounded up? In one piece?”
“No.” Not now. Not when the best wizard she had was an old, old man whose skills, outside using a sword, were too weak even to put hexes on people and animals. “But I wouldn’t mind knowing where he is.” Doj could manage that. The Unknown Shadows communicated with him. Sometimes. When the mood took them. “What you do need to do right now is get extra guards around the Voroshk. Goblin showed a lot of interest in them while we were traveling. I don’t want anything happening to them and I don’t want them wandering off.” It did not occur to her to reinforce the company responsible for the comatose sorcerer Howler. But Fortune stood behind her there.
Goblin, it developed, had grabbed a couple of fast horses and some loose supplies and had gotten himself out of Nijha, headed north, all without attracting any particular notice. Sleepy very nearly indulged in profanity when she received the report. Someone pointed out that the little wizard always had had that knack. Sleepy growled, ’Then somebody should have been watching for him to take advantage of it.”
Uncle Doj told her, “I can’t stop him or control him but I can make life miserable for him.”
“How?”
“His horses. The Black Hounds can have a lot of fun with them. And when he tries to lead them to water . . . ” He chuckled wickedly.
“Send them.” Sleepy beckoned Sahra. “I kept leaning both ways during the meeting. Looking for a sign. I’ve just had it. We’re not going to rush in anymore. We’ll move ahead slowly, into more hospitable country, and stop somewhere where we can support ourselves without much trouble. We’ll wait till everyone catches up. And issue a call for volunteers willing to support the Prabrindrah Drah and the Radisha.” If anyone even remembered them.
“Wait especially for my son. Yes.” Sahra was angry and unhappy but too tired to fight much. “Now that Murgen is no longer the major tool.”
“Especially for Tobo, yes. Tonight it was clear that without Tobo we’re in trouble bad.”
Sahra said nothing more. She was tired of fighting a battle in which even the men she wanted to protect refused to honor her concern.
The Taglian field army slowly assembled astride the Rock Road in lightly settled country midway between Dejagore and the fortified crossings over the River Main at Ghoja. Another, less powerful force, consisting of troops from the southern provinces, assembled outside Dejagore. And a third gathered outside Taglios itself. There seemed no reason to suspect that the force at Dejagore should have any trouble denying that city to a force such as that the Black Company was bringing up. Mogaba expected his enemies to swing west once they descended from the highlands, possibly marching as far as the Naghir River, which they could follow north, then swing eastward again and try to get over the Main at one of the lesser downriver crossings. He intended to let them march and march and wear themselves down. He intended to let them do whatever they wanted till he slammed the door shut behind them. Once he had them north of the Main he could build a ring around them and slowly squeeze.
The Great General was feeling quite positive. Taglios was restive but not rebellious. Even the most remote garrison commanders were bringing their soldiers to the assembly points with their units at near strength even though some harvesting would commence in the far south before the end of the month.
Harvest season inevitably precipitated higher desertion rates.
Best of all, the Protector was staying away. Her tinkering and interference always made his task more difficult. And, of course, it was always his fault when a bastardized plan fell apart.
The Great General gathered his senior staff and inner circle, which included a dozen generals as well as Ghopal and Aridatha Singh. He told them, “The plan appears to be coming together perfectly. With a couple of nudges and timed withdrawals I think we can lead them to the ford at Vehdna-Bota. I still wish we had better communications with the Protector. But she can’t find enough crows anymore. Some plague is wiping them out. I seldom hear from her more than once a day. And then, often as not, she’ll waste time on weather news or a flu epidemic in Prehbehlbed.” Nor were there any shadows about, nor any of the Protector’s lesser spies. Mogaba did not mention that. Taglians were dedicated conspirators. Let them continue to think that there might be eyes in the corners, watching.
Only his own conspiracy need go forward.
The Great General had more to preoccupy him than how to isolate and destroy his enemy. He suspected there was a definite question about the identity of Taglios’ most dangerous foe.
Something about this incarnation of the Black Company had Soulcatcher so concerned that she insisted on focusing all her attention there. Something about this incarnation of the Black Company had touched almost everyone of substance within the Taglian empire, though news of their return had barely had time to spread and there were no eyewitness reports available at all. All customary enmity and internal friction seemed to be dwindling at a time when, normally, factionalism should be exploding as old antagonists tried to use the situation to their advantage.
And Mogaba had found that he was thinking less and less about the practicalities of eliminating the Protector, more and more obsessively about destroying the Black Company. Not just defeating them but obliterating them. To the last man, woman, child, horse, mule, flea and louse.
After decades of unhappy fortune Mogaba was naturally wary of everything—including his own emotional state.
He had begun keeping a personal journal the day he had made the decision to betray Soulcatcher, to track his thoughts and emotions during the subsequent, stressful days. It was a journal he opened only in brilliant sunlight. It was a journal he would destroy before actually taking action against the Protector because there were names in it he did not want betrayed if he failed—and was lucky enough to die before she captured him.
Lately he had noticed an evolution in his thinking about the Company. An accelerating evolution. A frightening evolution.
He had become suspicious of his own reason.
Following a general meeting to consider policy for the empire the Great General met with the men responsible for the capital city.
“Kina is active again,” Mogaba murmured. Ghopal and Aridatha listened politely. He was referencing events from before their time, that they knew only by repute. “She’s doing that thing where she gradually shapes everyone’s prejudices.”
They offered him blank looks.
“Not history buffs, eh?” Mogaba explained. “The strangest part was, nobody ever wondered why they were terrified. They just didn’t remember that three years earlier they’d never heard of the Black Company.”
Ghopal said, “What you’re saying is, the Strangler Goddess has a particular fear of the Black Company. She wants the whole world to climb all over them and destroy them. Even if blood has to be spilled.”
“Isn’t this an interesting quandary,” Aridatha said. “If we can overcome the Black Company, we’ll still have to deal with the Protector. If we knock her down, too, then we’ll still have to handle the Stranglers and Kina, in order to prevent the Year of the Skulls. Wave after wave. No end to it.”
“No end to it,” Mogaba agreed. “And I’m getting to be quite an old man.” He had begun to nurture an outrageous notion almost as soon as he had determined that he was being manipulated. “There are a couple of old records I want to check. I want you both back here same time tomorrow.”
The Great General did not lack courage. The next evening he led Ghopal and Aridatha into the brightly lit room. He presented a more convincing case for his belief that Kina had awakened, drawing heavily upon excerpts from copies of Black Company Annals residing in the national library.
Aridatha Singh said, “I believe you. I just wonder what happened to wake her up again.”
“Ghopal?”
“I’m not sure I understand. But I don’t think I have to. Aridatha does. I trust his wisdom.”
“Then I’ll talk to Aridatha. But you listen.” Mogaba chuckled.
Aridatha listened to his idea, the reasoning behind it, frowning all the while. Ghopal seemed aghast. But he kept his mouth shut. Aridatha went off alone with his thoughts. After a while he nodded reluctantly and said. “I have a brother in Dejagore. I’ll find a reason to go visit. I know some people who might listen to what you have to say if it’s me doing the talking.”
“What?”
Aridatha said, “You recall a few years ago when the Company underground here started kidnapping people? Willow Swan, the Purohita, and so on? I was one of the people they snatched.”
Ghopal wanted to know why, and Mogaba wondered how he had gotten away.
“I got away because they let me go. They only picked me up because they wanted to show me off to somebody they were holding already.” Aridatha took a long, deep breath and revealed his great secret. “My father. Narayan Singh. They were showing him their power.”
“Narayan Singh? The Narayan Singh? The Strangler?” Ghopal asked.
“That Narayan Singh. I didn’t know. Not till then. Our mother told us our father was dead. She believed it, I think. The Shadowmasters conscripted him into their labor battalions during their first invasion, before the Black Company ever arrived from the north. I was the youngest of four children. I’m pretty sure the older ones knew the truth. My brother Sugriva moved to Dejagore and changed his name. My sister Khaditya changed hers, too. Her husband would die of mortification if he knew.”
“You’ve never mentioned this before.”
“I think you can understand why.”
“Oh. I do. That’s a cruel burden to bear.” Mogaba already found himself responding to the Deceiver connection. With exactly the sort of paranoid fear everyone did to any Deceiver connection. It was inevitable. Aloud, he said, “I wonder how those people ever trust each other?”
Aridatha replied, “I suspect you’d have to be inside and a part of it all to understand. I think the biggest part of it, though, would be their faith in their Goddess.”
The Great General looked at Ghopal Singh. “If the Greys have objections I need to hear them now.”
Ghopal shook his head. “Only one Grey is going to know about this. For now. The others wouldn’t understand.”
“Aridatha. You have someone you trust to take charge while you’re gone?” The City Battalions did not know they were part of a conspiracy to free Taglios from its protector. It was necessary to keep firm control there.
“Yes. But no one in the know. If you have unusual requests you’ll have to justify them based on what’s going on in the city.” The soldiers understood that their role was to keep the peace if the population became too restive for the Greys alone.
Mogaba asked, “Are there enough provocations to make any excuses sound good?”
Ghopal showed a large array of teeth. Shadar were proud of their well-kept teeth. “That’s almost amusing. Since the news reached the street that the Black Company really is back, there’s actually been less related graffiti. As though real Company sympathizers don’t want to risk identification and the non-Company vandals responsible for most of it suddenly don’t want to be identified with any terror that’s for real.”
“Terror?”
“You were right, what you said last night. There’s a growing fear of the Company out there. Like you said, it was in olden times. I don’t understand but it’s helping keep the peace just when I expected a lot more trouble.”
“If you need provocations and the villains don’t provide them, feel free to create your own. Aridatha, you know what needs doing. Do it. As quickly as possible. Before events move so fast they rob us of more chances.” Though it could happen almost momentarily, Mogaba had abandoned any real hope of catching the Protector unaware as she returned to the city.
At the moment it seemed she did not plan to return until the Black Company invasion was settled.
Soulcatcher, in full leather and fuller ire, stalked the perimeter of the encampment midway between Ghoja and Dejagore. A dozen frightened officers followed, each silently appealing for mercy to his choice of god or gods. The Protector in a rage was a disaster no one wanted to experience. Her excesses made no more sense than do those of a tornado.
“They haven’t moved. For six days now they’ve hardly taken a step. After hurtling northward like the storm itself, so fast we were killing ourselves trying to pull something together fast enough to stop them. What’re they doing? What changed suddenly?” As always when she was under stress Soulcatcher was a babble of conflicting voices. That added to the uneasiness of the men tagging after her. None had had any experience with her before her arrival in camp. The actuality was more unnerving than the stories predicted. She seemed every bit as cruel and capricious as any god. Several graves beyond the perimeter attested to the violence of her temper.
These sycophants would never find out but those who died had been chosen only after extended supernatural espionage. Not one had been a devoted servant of the Protectorate. Each had said so aloud. Additionally, none had been particularly competent leaders and that had been clear to their soldiers and compatriots. They had attained their positions through nepotism or cronyism, not ability.
Soulcatcher was culling her officer corps. She was disappointed that necessity prevented her from doing more. That corps was terrible. But she would take no responsibility for that. Of course.
How poor would it have been without the efforts of the Great General? Probably an awful, corrupt joke without a punchline. Without Mogaba’s dedicated nurturing there would have been little to assemble here.
How to keep it here? The desertion rate was supportable now but showing signs of rising. Was that the enemy strategy? Wait until the Taglian armies melted because of the demands of the approaching harvest? Would they charge north again then? It sounded like a Black Company sort of thing to do. Indications were, they had the wealth to maintain a force in the field a long time.
Mogaba’s messages indicated his own suspicions concerning a similar strategy. He was tailoring his own approach toward getting his enemy to take the long way around, into a trap.
Soulcatcher did not believe there would be any chance to trap the Black Company. Their intelligence resources were much too wonderful. While her own continued to fade. All species of crows were becoming endangered. Mice, bats, rats, owls, those sorts of creatures had no range. There seemed to be no modern sources of quality crystal or worthy mercury with which to create a scrying glass or bowl. The shadows she still controlled were few and feeble and frightened and she refused to risk them in enemy territory, often because each time she did a few more would not come back. And for now she was cut off from her only source of replacements.
She glanced skyward, saw vultures circling to the north, over woods which ran from right to left for as far as she could see. The growth followed a shallow stream. Her sister had won a small victory over the Shadowmasters there, ages ago, soon after the Black Company had suffered the disaster that led to the siege of Dejagore.
“I’m going to walk up there and see what those vultures find so interesting.”
No one gave in to the urge to protest.
Maybe the vultures would dine on her.
“None of you need to come with me.”
Relief was obvious.
Lady was in a towering rage. I could not recall ever having seen her so close to losing control. “How the hell could they let that happen? Somebody was supposed to stay in that little shit’s pocket every second!”
No one bothered to respond. She did not want answers. Not really. She wanted somebody to hurt.
Tobo was quietly busy talking to things that were there only when you looked away. Big things, little things, human-looking things and things that had escaped from madmen’s nightmares. Goblin was going to be found. Goblin was going to be tracked and harassed and hurt if at all possible, all the live-long day. Insofar as this fragment of the Company was concerned Goblin was going to be the main mission from this day forward. He was to be hunted down and exorcised—or exterminated—before he could engineer any more disasters on Kina’s behalf.
Though long out of practice and definitely out of the habit, Lady hurled a deadly spell at an inoffensive scrub pine. The tree began to wilt almost immediately.
“What the hell was that?” I demanded. “I thought you couldn’t . . . ”
“Be quiet. Let me think.” So astonished was Lady that she forgot to be angry about Goblin.
I was quiet. I gave her all the thinking room a girl could want.
Was there a silver lining inside our latest black cloud?
My at-the-moment not very lucky wife called, “Tobo. Next message you send north, ask if the little shit got away with one of the gate keys. Or anything else unusual.”
Tobo made little gestures to the air, then replied, “I checked on that already. He got away with nothing more than two horses and one saddle. Not even a sausage. He’s probably eating bugs. The only unusual thing mentioned is that nobody noticed him. An eventuation almost certainly artificial in origin.”
“Because?”
“Because he’s being damned hard to notice right now. The Black Hounds shouldn’t be having trouble finding and following him. But they are. He’s as elusive as a ghost. Each time they do make contact it’s because he’s been following the road, without deviating, and they can just wait for him to show up.”
“Following the road where?”
“North. Toward the junction with the Rock Road. Though because he isn’t talking his plans are unclear.”
Tobo still had a sense of humor about what was going on.
I asked Lady, “How did you manage to murder that tree?”
She mused, “A good question. Without a good answer. I never felt any sharpened Kina presence.”
“You think it might have to do with Goblin? We know Kina must’ve put a piece of herself into him or he wouldn’t even be alive.”
“I would’ve sensed something before. I think. Tobo. Did you feel anything weird about Goblin?”
“Of course.” The boy was curt. He was trying to work. Old folks kept interrupting. “He wasn’t Uncle Goblin anymore. But he wasn’t any more powerful than he was before, either.”
I said, “Maybe it was something that didn’t come out until he got the chance to kill Narayan.”
Debate on the why increasingly focused on the fact that crippled old Narayan had been in no shape to run or do anything on behalf of his Goddess and, if left in our hands, would have been compelled to reveal whatever he knew eventually. And while most of us would view his murder as a betrayal by his Goddess, what we knew of Deceiver doctrine suggested that he might actually see it as a reward. Having been strangled for the Goddess, Narayan would go directly to Deceiver paradise where, no doubt, his rewards would be commensurate with his service.
I tend toward the cynical view where religion is concerned.
After a silence so extended I decided she was not listening, my beloved responded, “You might just be smarter than you look. She’d expect us to be suspicious enough to watch every breath Goblin took. So she’d want him to seem as normal as possible until he got a solid chance to get away.” She began to pace. “Poor Goblin. That would’ve been mostly him, maybe even really trying to help his old friends as much as he could. And he’ll still be partly Goblin, but a prisoner inside his own body.” The hollowness of her voice indicated that she might have been through that herself, once upon a time.
“Which tells us nothing of his purpose. Or of Kina’s.”
“She’s in prison. She wants out. That doesn’t take any special figuring.”
“But there’ll be a grand plan. Old Goblin didn’t get his soul eaten up just so he could be flung across the pond of the world like a skipping stone. He’s going to go somewhere and he’s going to do something and if he gets away with it all the rest of us are going to end up really sorry.”
Lady grunted. She was still mostly angry.
I said, “He headed north. What’s up there that would interest Kina?”
Tobo interrupted his sweet talk with his pets. “Booboo.” He sounded as unhappy as I felt. “He’s going to take Narayan’s place watching over the Daughter of Night.”
“Yeah. Only there’ll be a big chunk of Goddess in him so he’ll be a lot more dangerous than Narayan ever was.”
Lady glared around her with an expression that made me think she did not have much trouble seeing Tobo’s friends. “Do you think my sister can be made to hear one of those?”
You could have heard a stack of pans drop. Even the animals quieted down.
I asked, “You have something in mind?”
“Yes. We send her a message. Tell her what’s going on with Goblin. It’s as much in her interest to stop him as it is in ours.”
“And she has a personal interest,” Tobo reminded us.
I understood immediately but Lady needed it explained. “Goblin is the reason Soulcatcher has a bad leg.”
“Oh. Of course. I remember now.”
She ought. She was there, spying on everything through the eyes of a white crow, during the kidnapping of the Radisha. That same night Goblin managed to trick Soulcatcher into springing a booby trap. The result had been serious and irreversible damage to her right heel.
Tobo said, “She gets around pretty well now. She wears a special boot and brace and is supported by several specialized spells. She only limps when she’s really tired.”
“Ah. She’ll definitely want to chat with Goblin, then. She’s always been a sore loser.”
“Just a thought,” I offered. “What happens if Soulcatcher turns Goblin into her own version of the Taken? And maybe Booboo, too? Word is, there were times when she showed a few powers of her own.”
“Make a slave out of a Goddess?” Lady was incredulous. I raised an eyebrow. She protested, “What I did wasn’t the same thing at all. What I did was pure parasitism. I wormed in so she couldn’t get me out without hurting herself.”
“And now you’re getting a little of that back?”
“But it doesn’t feel the same. Tobo. Can you send a message to my sister or not?”
“I can try. In fact, I can do it. Easily. The real question would be whether or not she’d listen.”
“She’ll listen or I’ll kick her butt.”
It took all of us a moment to realize she was joking. She did so so rarely.
Tobo began concentrating on the task of getting an extended message to Soulcatcher.
Again I cautioned, “There’s a risk in this.”
Lady just made one of her grumpy noises. She was turning into a cranky old witch.
Soulcatcher glanced back before entering the wood. “So where are they all?” And in a firm male voice she demanded, “What happened to all the suck-ups?”
Another voice, “Somebody should’ve wanted to kiss up.”
A puzzled voice asked, “They always do, don’t they?”
“Are we losing it here?”
“I don’t like it.”
“This isn’t fun anymore.” Petulant, spoiled child voice.
“Most of the time we’re just going through the motions. There aren’t any challenges here.”
“Even when there are it’s almost impossible to get impassioned enough to care.”
Most of those voices were businesslike but jaded.
“It’s hard to keep going on fuel like hunger for revenge alone.”
“It’s hard to be alone, period.”
That remark brought on an extended silence. Soulcatcher did not have a voice for expressing the emotional costs of being who she was. Not out loud. Ferocious mad-killer sorcerers do not whine because nobody likes them.
The growth along the creek had a sharp boundary. In another time the land must have been groomed by human occupation. Soulcatcher listened. The wood, which was a little more than a mile wide, seemed remarkably silent. There should have been a racket from work parties harvesting firewood and timber for use around the camp. But there was nothing. And she did not recall authorizing a holiday. Something had frightened the soldiers away.
Yet she sensed no danger.
After a moment, though, she did detect a supernatural presence.
She glanced upward. Those vultures continued to circle. They were lower now. They seemed to be wheeling above the presence she sensed.
Warily, she probed farther and deeper. She had remarkably well-honed senses when she cared to concentrate.
This presence was like nothing in her experience. Something like a powerful shadow, yet with a strong implication of working intelligence. Not a demon or some such otherworldly entity, though. Something that felt like it was a part of nature but still having about it a hint of not belonging to this world. But how? Not of this world but not otherworldly? . . . Something very powerful but not driven by malice. At the moment. Something timeless, accustomed to patience, mildly impatient right now, again a smart-shadow thing like those stalkers down south had been.
Soulcatcher extended her senses to their maximum. This thing was waiting for her. For her alone. It had repulsed everything but those vultures. She had to be careful. Despite her ennui she did not want to trigger a fatal ambush.
There was nothing.
She stepped forward.
She did so while assembling a quiver of sudden and deadly spells. She squinted behind her mask, looking for this thing that wanted to see her.
It grew stronger but less focused as she moved toward it. For a moment it seemed that it was all around her—even while being in one place somewhere ahead of her. When she did arrive where her senses told her it ought to be, she saw nothing.
That place was a small clearing just off the Rock Road, across the shallow stream. She saw several Vehdna grave markers and a few Gunni memorial posts with time-gnawed prayer wheels on top. This must be where her sister fought the Shadowlander cavalry during her flight from Dejagore. In a time so long ago that she still had believed Narayan Singh to be her friend and champion.
Sunlight tumbled through the leaves overhead. It dappled the clearing. Soulcatcher settled on a rotten log that protruded from what might once must have been an earthwork. “I’m here. I’m waiting.”
Something large moved at the edge of her vision. She got the impression of a black feline. But when she turned she saw nothing.
“So that’s the way it’s going to be, eh?”
“Thus it must be. Ever.” The response seemed to come from nowhere in particular and it was not clear whether she heard it with her ears or inside her head.
“What do you want from me?” Soulcatcher used a deep masculine voice heavy with menace.
The presence was amused, not intimidated. “I bring a message from your old friend Croaker.”
Croaker was no friend. In fact, she was distinctly piqued with that man. He had not been entirely cooperative when she had tried to seduce him and now he had refused to stay buried after she had tried to kill him. Still, he was the reason she had a head on her shoulders these days. And that tiny edge would be why this communication was arriving in his name.
“Go ahead.”
The whatever-it-was did as she bid. As she listened she poked around in an effort to fathom its true nature. While searching for some handle she could grasp to make it over into an agent of her own.
It sensed what she was doing. It was amused. Not troubled. Not frightened. Not inclined to react. Just amused.
Soulcatcher reviewed the story carefully once the spook had finished relating it. It sounded plausible. If incomplete. But why expect those people to be entirely forthcoming in such a situation?
Try as she might she could discover no obvious trap. They sounded worried down there. This news could explain their sudden shift of strategy.
Goblin possessed by Kina. Narayan Singh dead. The Daughter of Night running loose . . . Not running loose at all! In the hands of her troops, on the Rock Road somewhere south of Dejagore, very probably looking for an opportunity to get loose.
Goblin might arrange that.
She bounced up off the rotten log, ennui gone. “Tell Croaker he can consider communications opened. I’ll take steps to deal with the situation. Go! Go!”
A flicker. Like a shadow passing through and deserting at the same time. It left a deeply felt chill and one more uncertain glimpse of an impossibly large, catlike form moving away at an impossible pace.
From the nearby Rock Road came the rattle and clop of a large party headed south. Camels seemed to be involved. That meant civilians. There were no camels in her armies. She hated camels. They were filthy animals with nasty tempers even on their best days.
She leapt across the creek and hurried to the edge of the woods, emerging not a hundred feet from where a caravan was doing the same. Civilian it was, but most of the wagons and camels and mules would discharge their cargo in her camp.
The caravaners spied her. They were startled. And frightened.
Her blood was moving again. She always enjoyed the impact she made when she appeared unexpectedly.
As she turned and raised her gaze to the circling vultures she thought she glimpsed a familiar face among the merchants and teamsters. Aridatha Singh? Here? How? Why? But when she looked more closely she saw no Aridatha. Maybe it was just someone who looked like Singh. Maybe it was her reawakened zest reminding her that it had been a long time since she had enjoyed a man. Aridatha Singh had a definite masculine allure. Few women failed to notice that, though he seemed entirely unaware of the effect he had.
Time enough to think about that after she alerted Dejagore and got troops of cavalry out to round up her niece, that willful, difficult child.
There must be some way to gain control of her and add her talents to the arsenal of the Protectorate. Possibly she might even take Goblin—despite the fact of his possession.
Goblin never had been much of a wizard.
How sweet revenge was when it arrived after a long delay.
Then let that bitch Ardath and all her dogs come on! A lot of ancient debts would get paid off.
As she approached the encampment ditch she glanced back to consider the vultures again.
The carrion birds had broken their circle. Only a few remained in sight, cruising the sky in search of something rank and tasty again.
Soulcatcher found a voice she had not used since she was young. With it she began to sing a song of springtime and young love, in a language recalled from the springtime of life, when love still lived in the world.
The sentries were extremely frightened.
I have a question,” Murgen said. The stronghold at Nijha was in sight. “Who’s going to tell Sleepy we’re in bed with the Protector?”
I replied, “I don’t reckon anybody has to. Not putting it that way, anyhow.”
“She’s a reasonable woman,” Lady opined. “She’ll understand what we did and why.”
Tobo laughed. Murgen just grinned weakly. The boy wizard said, “You must not have been paying attention. Or you must’ve mistaken the Sleepy I know for somebody else.”
I told him, “She’ll get over it. How’s Soulcatcher doing on cutting Booboo off?”
“She has pickets out in a line south of Dejagore. The line keeps spreading out wider, to either side of the Rock Road. She doesn’t entirely trust me to send her solid information. And I’m not giving her everything I know because I don’t want her guessing how well I can keep an eye on her. She’s not talking about this to her captains, by the way. My guess is she’s afraid she’ll start losing them if they begin worrying about Kina.”
What a bold lot we were. When first the Company arrived in the Taglian Territories a fixed part of Taglian culture was that the Goddess was never named lest her attention be attracted. If a name just had to be used people would reference the watered-down avatar from Gunni myth, Khadi.
The fact that the name Kina is now widely used in daily speech is one more indication of the magnitude of the impact the Company has had these past few decades.
Maybe those old-timers had been right to be terrified of us. We have shaken a civilization to its foundations. And its future does not look bright.
They asked for it. All we ever wanted was to pass on through.
“We won’t have to deal with Sleepy for a few days yet,” Tobo told us. “She’s moving out of the highlands onto the plain, following the south bank of the Viliwash right now. She’s only moving a few miles a day. The countryside there has enough of a surplus to support her easily. She’s started trying to recruit. In the name of the Prahbrindrah Drah. The Prince and his sister are showing themselves off.”
I had a feeling they would not sell well in those parts. That was territory that had been conquered by the Black Company in Taglios’ name. “What about Booboo?”
“Almost up to the Protector’s picket line now. Sticking to the Rock Road. The Black Hounds have instructions to make sure she gets caught.”
Lady grumped, “I thought she was caught already. That she was a prisoner.”
“That’s true. But right now she seems content to have it that way. I understand that her guards aren’t nearly as attentive to her security as they ought to be.”
Having read Sleepy’s Annals I was not surprised. Booboo seemed capable of having a mind-numbing impact on nearby male-type people.
“Then that’s something you need to let my sister know. Otherwise she could get a surprise that would leave all of us unhappy.”
We were approaching the Nijha wall. I said, “You experts ought to give this place the once-over. See if our bitty old buddy left any evidence behind.” That earned me frowns and scowls. Here came a chance to rest and I was talking about more work. Not for me but for them. I changed the subject and asked Lady, “You said Sleepy burned the Books of the Dead? The real ones? You were a direct witness?”
“I was a witness through the white crow. She burned all three of them. Shivetya himself has their ashes. He’s been having Baladitya dispose of them a pinch at a time by having them carried away by anyone who’s traveling the plain.”
Tobo said, “I moved a lot of them back when Suvrin and I were exploring the plain. What’s up?”
“An old man natural’s curiosity, I guess. Everyone, and the Deceivers seemed to agree, thinks the Daughter of Night—or whoever inherits her job if she fails—will have to have the Books of the Dead to complete the rituals of the Year of the Skulls. No books, no resurrection. Right?”
I did not get an answer. There was no answer anyone could give. In actual fact nobody really knew. Possibly not even my befuddled daughter or poor old Deceiver and now very dead Narayan Singh.
Lady stipulated, “The old witch is still in there trying, isn’t she?”
“Isn’t she?”
Lady and Tobo found nothing of interest at the Nijha post. Goblin had not shed his skin or left any secret Deceiver hex signs. He had just started running while the getting was good, as soon as somebody realized that he might be responsible for Narayan’s murder.
Uncle Doj rejoined us at Nijha. So did some stragglers who had accumulated there. Sleepy would not have much trouble with desertions. These men knew no one outside the Company and spoke not a word of Taglian or any other local language.
With the stragglers added we would number more than a hundred when we resumed traveling. Of the original group we lacked only Spook and Panda Man, who had been awarded the dubious honor of staying behind to watch the shadowgate.
Once she finished looking for other evidence, Lady cornered Doj. “Where’s the body?”
“Huh?” The old swordmaster was baffled.
“Narayan Singh. What did you do with his corpse?”
Tobo and I exchanged looks. That question had not occurred to either of us. It might be a good idea to make doubly certain just who had died. Narayan Singh had been a veritable Prince of Deceivers, beloved of Kina.
One of the injured men left to garrison Nijha volunteered, “They threw him in the old cesspit, then filled it with dirt and rock from the new latrine, ma’am. Which was built according to your specifications, sir.”
I have had a reputation as a martinet along those lines ever since I joined the Company. And when health, hygiene and waste disposal are handled my way the Company tends to experience significantly fewer disease problems than do people who do not do things my way. It remains impossible to reason with some men, though, so I just give orders and make sure they are carried out.
“Dig him up,” Lady directed. And when nobody rushed to grab up picks and shovels she began to glow darkly and swell up and even to develop fangs.
Then people started looking for tools.
“That was interesting,” I told her.
“Been working on it since I ambushed myself and that tree. It doesn’t take much effort or power but it ought to be visually impressive.”
“It definitely was that.”
The exhumation satisfied Lady. There was a body. It resembled Narayan Singh, even including his bad leg. And it was unnaturally well preserved considering where it had been buried.
“Well?” I asked after she had gone so far as to open the body up. I do not know what she expected to find.
“It does seem to be him. Considering who he served, who seemed to love him, I was almost certain there wouldn’t be a body. Or it wouldn’t be Narayan’s if there was.”
The truth was, she had not wanted it to be Narayan. She did not want Singh evading her vengeance this easily.
“There’s no dramatic unity in real life,” I told her. “Save it up and take it out on Goblin.”
She offered me a wicked look.
“I mean on the thing that’s taken possession of Goblin.” The real Goblin would be my oldest surviving friend.
She carved Narayan’s corpse into little pieces. She left a trail of those for the bugs and buzzards over the next several days. But the man’s head, heart and hands she kept in a jar of pickling brine.
I did not ask why or if she had a plan. Narayan’s escape had left her in much too black a mood for small talk.
A couple of times I did overhear her cursing the fact that there were no great necromancers left in the world.
She would call Narayan back from paradise or hell to make him pay for taking our daughter.
The smaller Voroshk girl, the captive, came out to see us. In not bad Taglian she told us, “Sedvod just died.” She stared at Tobo the whole time.
I went to check. The sick boy had, indeed, passed on. And I still had no idea why.
I figured the Goblin thing probably deserved the blame.