The Return of the Black Company (55 page)

Charandaprash became quite colorful.

The fighting did not last long after that. But when the silence fell even our reserves were too exhausted to chase anybody. Croaker let the remaining camp followers have that honor, telling them they could keep any loot they took.

Those who tried mostly got themselves killed.

*   *   *

Mogaba’s plans were the hot topic around the big bonfire. It seemed like everyone over the rank of lieutenant was there and every man had a theory. Or two. And not a one of those was sound.

I had gone ghostwalking and had not been able to find Mogaba, even by backtracking through time. But just a hint of a specter of a death stink had sent me running before I could get a real good look around.

Was she going to be out there every time I went?

Croaker kicked nothing into the speculative stew. He just sat around looking smug and more relaxed than I had seen in years.

Lady sat beside him and she looked pretty good, too. Like she had gotten some real sleep for once. I told her, “I want to talk to you when you get a few minutes. I don’t have hardly anything about you to put down.”

She sighed, said, “I don’t think I could tell you anything interesting.”

I could use Smoke to study her backtrail. But that would not tell me what she was thinking.

She asked Croaker, “Why do you look like the cat who stole the cream?”

“Because Longshadow and Howler didn’t come back.” He looked at me. He wanted to know why. But not right now. It could wait. “And because you have.” After her rest she seemed none the worse for wear despite her head-to-head with Kina. Or whatever that was. “Because now they’re just going to hide out in Overlook while Longshadow tries to cobble together something from garrisons and militias made up of men who’d rather not get involved at all.”

He was still the Shadowmaster. He had not played his trumps to their limit. And the walls of Overlook were a hundred feet high. I hoped Croaker did not think all we had to do now was coast.

“You notice he hasn’t really said shit,” Swan grumbled to Blade. He had not had any trouble accepting his buddy back. Some of the men could not believe the whole defection had been a swindle. Especially those who had had relatives among the temple troops Blade had exterminated. “The son of a bitch flat ain’t going to tell nobody what he’s up to. Not even you and me. He’s got tricks up his sleeve and we’ve got to find out about them same as any poor dork that they’re going to happen to.”

He stared at Lady sadly for a moment, unable to see what she saw in the Old Man. I had wondered that a few times myself before Sarie and I fell in love.

It does not have to make sense. Just pray for the freedom to indulge it.

Speaking of limits to freedom, my in-laws were still missing. Except for Thai Dei, of course. He was there even when my shadow was gone.

Blade laughed at Swan’s sourness. He was a changed man after his adventure. He had found his niche. “You really want to know, you’d better borrow those books from Murgen. They say it’s all in there if you know where to look.”

Murgen lied, “Good plan. But Murgen didn’t bring the books along. Except for the one he hasn’t been working on enough lately.”

Swan’s comment was brief and obscene. Like Mogaba, he did not know how to read.

Blade suggested, “Get Murgen Big Ears to tell it to you. He can quote chapter and verse almost as good as Croaker. He’s Croaker’s handpicked boy.”

The old Blade did not have a sense of humor. I was not sure I liked this one better. He was not interested in being funny.

“I’ll do it if the pay is right,” I told them. “Us mercenary types don’t do diddly unless we get paid.”

I did have to put some thought into staying away from Smoke long enough to get some solid notes made. Charandaprash was a critical juncture in Company history. I was not doing it justice.

And when I did go walking with the ghost I would have to concentrate on things I really needed to observe.

I could not go just to get away from the pain.

The pain was not so all-devouring anymore. Maybe a couple of brushes with Kina were the cure for romantic excess.

“Thai Dei,” I said, softly and in Nyueng Bao to show this was merely a personal matter, not business. “What does it mean when a Nyueng Bao woman wears white?”

“Ai?” He seemed surprised. “I don’t understand, brother.”

“I just remembered a dream I had a couple nights ago. Somebody who looked like Sahra was in it. She was wearing white. Nyueng Bao always wear black except sometimes when you’re out here in the world. Or if you’re a priest. Isn’t that so?”

“You dreamed of Sahra?”

“I do all the time. Don’t you dream about My?”

“No. We are taught to let their spirits go.”

“Oh.” I did not believe that. If that was completely true there would be no call to seek revenge. “So what does it mean, wearing white? Or does it mean anything?”

“It means she is recently widowed. A man who lost his wife would wear white as well. She may do so for as long as a year. While she is in white no one may advance a marriage offer—though of course the men of her family will be looking around unofficially. In the case of a man his father and brothers may examine the possibilities but not be allowed to speak on his behalf until he puts off the white.”

This was news to me. “The whole time we were in Dejagore I never saw one Nyueng Bao in white. And Sarie sure didn’t wait any year after Danh died to get interested in me.”

Thai Dei showed me one of his rare smiles. “Sarie was interested in you before Danh died. Sarie was smitten the first time you came to see Grandfather. You have no idea the quarreling that went on. Particularly after Grandmother announced that it was fated that Sarie take a foreign lover.”

So the smile was not one of good humor.

I could imagine Mother Gota’s take.

“But Sarie never wore white. Nor did anybody else.”

“Nor was there a square inch of white cloth in that city that was not worn by a Taglian soldier. Grandfather did not think it politic to take their tunics.” Thai Dei smiled again. That only made his face more skull-like. He added, “We were a small party. After all that time on pilgrimage we knew one another. We knew who had lost a mate. And we knew nothing could be done till we got back to our villages and priests anyway.”

So the woman I saw while I was lost in the delta was a widow. I guess that explained why she was haggard and unhappy.

“You should tell me more about Nyueng Bao. I’d feel less stupid when something like this comes up.”

Thai Dei’s smile died. “There is no longer any need for you to know our customs, is there?”

I was not one of them, even by marriage. He was here because he had assumed an obligation, not because I was family.

I needed to think about that.

33

Croaker let everybody rest thoroughly before he launched what he hoped would be the final assault on the Shadowlander defenses. I had an ague or maybe something I picked up from the proximity of Kina for a while, hot sweats alternating with cold shakes. Consequently I did not get out to scout our enemies.

No matter. The Old Man was able to gossip with his crows.

There were no living Shadowlanders anywhere in the defensive works that Longshadow had deemed so critical. While we were being soft, sitting around on our behinds resting, Mogaba and his captains had gotten their soldiers moving. They had even tried to destroy the stores they could not drag with them but were forestalled in that by the efforts of an alert Shadar cavalry detachment.

Death is eternity. Eternity is stone. Stone is silence.

Stone is broken.

In the night, when the wind no longer moans and the small shadows go into hiding, stone sometimes whispers. Stone sometimes speaks. Stone sometimes sends its children plunging into the abyss. Sometimes a tendril of colorful mist rises to caress the figure pinned to the tilting throne.

Shadows scamper playfully about the plain glittering in the moonlight, devouring one another and growing stronger. Their memories are as old as stone. They remember freedom.

Sometimes the leaning throne slips a millionth of an inch, tilting farther. This happens more and more frequently now.

Stone shudders. Eternity sneers as it devours its own tail. This cold feast is almost finished.

Even death is restless.

34

I could hear One-Eye cursing fate in general and several Vehdna Taglians in particular. One wheel of the wagon had become pinched between boulders and the soldiers were not getting it pried out fast enough to suit the little wizard. He had been in a foul temper all morning. I do believe he thought we would not continue on south after we won at Charandaprash. I do believe he thought the Old Man would be content to occupy the pass, then withdraw to warmer climes and wait for summer.

Where was Longshadow going to go? Home. And because of the earthquake home was a house that would not be completed any time soon. So where was the big hurry? What kind of tunnel-vision fanatic did not even take time out for one good drunk after winning a battle so huge and obviously unwinnable going in?

One-Eye had been saying all this and a lot more from the minute Croaker had told him to move out. One-Eye was not a happy trooper.

He was even more unhappy because I got to ride. My fever and chills thing kept coming and going. The Captain saw that as a good excuse to keep me near Smoke—against whom he continued to caution me regularly. I did not tell him that walking with the ghost was becoming as unattractive as attractive, that it was getting scary out there. I had not talked it over with One-Eye yet, either. I knew I should. I would not like myself much anymore if something happened because I failed to warn them.

But I did not want to cry wolf, either. One-Eye had not mentioned running into anything unusual during his occasional trips out. Maybe I was letting my imagination get the best of me.

I was in pretty good shape for the moment. A little shaken by the ride but neither feverish nor fighting a chill. Might be an opportune time to take a look around.

Outside, One-Eye snarled something at Thai Dei. “Not a good idea, One-Eye,” I snapped in Jewel Cities dialect. “He’d as soon kick your ass as look at you.”

“Ha! That ought to be interesting. See what JoJo does. Might even wake him up.”

Like most Company members One-Eye had a Nyueng Bao bodyguard. His was Cho Dai Cho, as unobtrusive and unambitious a bodyguard as ever lived. He was around only because the tribal elders had decreed it. He did not seem to have much interest in saving One-Eye from himself or anyone else. I had not seen Cho four times in the last month.

*   *   *

I could not find Soulcatcher. I knew she was there and Smoke was not fighting me but the woman was operating under a spell that hid her from even this sort of seeing. I could guess where she was roughly, though, because of the comings and goings of crows in the mountains west of us.

I looked around for One-Eye’s shapeshifter friend Lisa Bowalk but there was no trace of her, either. Nor could I pinpoint Mogaba and the couple of Nar who had chosen to stand by him when he deserted the Company for service to the Shadowmaster.

This was something to think about. If people had begun to suspect we were watching … But there was Longshadow in his crystal dome atop Overlook’s tallest tower, seated at a stone desk, calmly giving orders to messengers, arranging for the defense of his dwindling empire rationally and with vigor and making no effort to hide himself from me.

And down below, in a private apartment, here was an uncomfortable and weakened Narayan Singh cringing in a corner while the Daughter of Night, like a dwarf rather than a child, apparently carried on half of a conversation with her spiritual mother. There was a smell of Kina in the room but not that terrifying sense of presence I had encountered before.

I observed for a while. I ran back the hours. There was no doubt. Narayan Singh was not running anything anymore. He was an adjunct to the Daughter of Night, useful principally as a voice through which she could communicate with the Shadowmaster and the Deceivers. But Singh was beginning to suspect that his usefulness was running its course, that it would not be very much longer at all before the child would be ready to dispose of him.

When the time came she would do it with no more thought or emotion than she would discarding a well-gnawed pork rib.

Her communions with her divine parent were reshaping her fast.

Kina seemed to be in a hurry, perhaps pressed for time, so that she did not have time to wait for the child to mature into her role.

I was very uncomfortable around the kid even though she was a hundred miles away. I got out of there.

I tried tracking Howler down but caught only glimpses as he buzzed here and there on his raggedy-ass, oft-patched smaller carpet. He seemed to have upped his level of precaution dramatically, too. I could spot him only when he was in a really big hurry and, apparently, outrunning his invisibility shield.

Who would he be hiding from? If he did not know about me?

There was still the Radisha, whom I had not spied on for way too long.

In present time she was in the midst of a large audition with the chief priests of the major temples of the city. The subject was, not surprisingly, the war. In particular, the sacrilegious, atheistic, anticlerical stance of the men directing the Taglian effort. The new generation of priests were much less contentious amongst sects than had been their predecessors, who had paid for their stubbornly parochial attitudes with their lives.

“There’s no doubt,” the Radisha admitted to a priest of Rhavi-Lemna, a goddess of brotherly love, “that the Liberator has been sending troops raised among the devout to pursue his feud with Blade.” News from the war zone was still far away. “He’s blatant about it, it’s true, but you people keep going along with it.”

A priest in vermilion grumbled, “Because Blade has been promised the protectorship here when the Shadowmaster triumphs. He’ll exterminate us all. If he’s still alive.”