The Return of the Black Company (65 page)

Croaker looked thoughtful. “How about you? You feeling like you’re getting enough rest? With these dreams?”

“It isn’t bothering me yet.” I lied. Though I did not need sleep. I needed an emotional respite. I needed a few weeks alone somewhere with my wife.

“Where are your in-laws?” The eternal question. Uncle Doj was still missing.

“Good question. And before you ask, I still don’t have a clue what they’re up to. If they’re up to anything.”

“I worry about so many Nyueng Bao being so close to us.”

“Bad can’t happen, Captain. Not ever. They’re with us as a debt of honor.”

“As you always tell me, you had to be there.”

“That’d sure help you understand.”

He glared at the great white fortress. “You think we could let refugees get through?”

“Huh?”

“Put another burden on Longshadow. More mouths to feed.”

“He wouldn’t let them in.” I was still amazed that Longshadow had provided himself with such a small garrison. There were never more than a thousand people inside Overlook, including servants and families and those refugees who had gotten in before the destruction of the scaffolding. There was no mundane way the fortress could have been defended against multiple attacks.

But Longshadow had not planned to deal with the mundane. He had expected to be safe behind countless adamantine spells for as long as he liked.

“I don’t think it’ll be much longer, Murgen. Not much longer at all.”

Fireballs flew around over there. A rising breeze lifted some of those box kites the quartermasters had dragged all the way from Taglios. In this sort of wind they could lift twenty-five pounds to the top of the wall.

That was not what Croaker had brought them along for, he said. But he did not expound.

“I admire your confidence, boss. Yeah. Next year in Khatovar.”

“Next year in Khatovar” had become the sarcastic slogan of the Old Crew these past few years. Most would just as soon have faded away and gone back north. The constant stress of being in service to Taglios suited nobody but Lady. Despite her bouts with exhaustion she seemed to thrive emotionally where raging paranoia was the only sane way of facing reality.

Croaker was not amused. His goals for the Company were not acceptable butts for humor.

His sense of humor had been assassinated by this campaign. Or, at least, it had gone as comatose as Smoke.

“Thai Dei. How about we go for a walk?” When the Old Man got in a mood it never hurt to be somewhere else.

49

One-Eye is supposed to be my backup as Annalist, at least till Sleepy gets back and learns the ropes. Those few times I have handed him the job, or Croaker did when he was doing the Annals, he proved conclusively that we need Sleepy desperately. The old fart cannot live beyond the moment most of the time. Not that I blame him at his age.

So I was surprised when he bothered to tell me, well after the fact, that he had witnessed something interesting while he was out scouting with Smoke. No, he never wrote anything down and he could not recall all the details now but better late than never, right?

Maybe. Old Smoke was not anchored in time.

He and I drifted back to a moment not many hours after Narayan had visited Howler on the wall and their little chat got interrupted by Lady’s gang of insensitive brutes.

*   *   *

Singh and the Daughter of Night had reached safety in her quarters. The child did not talk much. Narayan was obviously extremely uncomfortable in her presence now, though she was a tiny thing even for her age. She ignored him, settled at a small worktable and turned up the wick on a small oil lantern. The stunner, for me, was seeing her set about the same sort of work that I did almost every day.

Astounded, I watched as her little hand slowly, laboriously recorded words in a language I did not recognize and which, I discovered, she did not read. For as soon as I saw what she was doing I darted around through time looking for an explanation.

The writing got started a week ago.

*   *   *

It was the middle of the night. Narayan had stayed up late, praying, calming his soul, trying to reach the state the Daughter of Night achieved when she touched the goddess. He had tried a hundred times. He failed this time as well.

Failure no longer ached inside him. He was resigned. He just wished he could be allowed to understand.

Hardly had he fallen into his dark dreams before the Daughter of Night was tugging at his shoulder. “Wake up, Narayan. Wake up.”

He cracked an eyelid. The child was more animated than he had seen since before she learned that she was to be the instrument of Kina, the hands of the goddess in this world.

He groaned. He wanted to swat her, wanted to tell her to go back to her pallet, but he remained wholly dedicated to his goddess, prepared to execute her will. The will of the Daughter had to be considered an extension of the will of the Mother, however difficult that might make life.

“Yes? What is it?” He rubbed his face and groaned.

“I need writing materials. Pens. Ink. Brushes. Inkstones. Penknives. Whatever is involved. And a big bound book of blank pages. Quickly.”

“But you can’t read or write. You’re too little.”

“My mother will guide my hand. But I must begin my task quickly. She fears we may not have much time left here, in safety.”

“What are you going to do?” Narayan asked, wide awake now and completely baffled.

“She wants me to make copies of the Books of the Dead.”

“Make copies? They’ve been lost for thousands of years. Even the priests of Kina doubt that they exist anymore. If they ever did.”

“They exist. In another place. I have seen them. They will exist again. She will tell me what to write down.”

Narayan considered the notion for a while. “Why?”

“The Books must be brought back into this world to help us bring on the Year of the Skulls. The first Book is the most important. I don’t know its title. But by the time I finish writing it down I will be able to read it and to use it to bring forth the other Books. I will be able to use those to open the way for my mother.”

Narayan gulped air. He was illiterate. Most Taglians were. Like many who were illiterate, he was possessed of a vast awe of those who did read and write. He had seen great sorceries since associating himself with Longshadow, yet considered literacy the greatest witchery of all. “She is the Mother of All Night,” he murmured. “There is None Greater.”

“I want those materials, Narayan.” That was no four-year-old talking.

“I will find them.”

*   *   *

Back in the hours after their escape from Lady’s soldiers, while fighting persisted only a short distance away, the child wrote slowly and Narayan paced and shivered. Finally, she looked up, considered him with those disturbing eyes. “What has happened, Narayan?” She seemed to see right through him.

“Events have surpassed my understanding. The small, smelly one called me to the wall to show me the heads of my brothers displayed on spears. A gift from your birth mother.” He picked at himself, reluctant to go on. I thought maybe the worst torture we could visit on him when we caught him would be a bath. “I cannot fathom what purpose moved the Goddess when she allowed all those faithful sons to fall into the woman’s hands. Almost none of our people remain alive.”

The child snapped her fingers. Singh shut up instantly.

“
She
killed them? The woman who gave this flesh life?”

“Apparently. I made a bad mistake in not making sure of her when I brought you away to your true mother.”

Not once did the child ever call Lady her mother. She never mentioned her father at all.

“I am sure my mother had an overpowering reason for allowing that to happen, Narayan. Have the slaves clear out. I will consult her.” Several Shadowlander women attended the child most of the time. She treated them like furniture. They were not in fact slaves.

Singh shooed the women while keeping one eye on the girl. She really did seem disconcerted by his complaints.

Singh shut the door behind the last servant. The woman had made no effort to conceal her relief at being away from the little monster. The people of Overlook did not like the Daughter of Night. Narayan settled into a squat. The child was in a trance already.

Whatever other place she went off to she did not stay long. She grew pale while she was there, though, and when she returned she was more troubled than when she had gone.

The odor of death filled the ghostworld while she was away. I gutted it out. Kina did not come.

The girl told Singh, “I don’t understand this, Narayan. She says none of it was her doing. She neither caused their deaths nor allowed them to happen.” The child sounded like she was quoting, though when she did speak she always sounded older than her years. “She was unaware that it had happened.”

Now they both faced a crisis of faith.

“What?” Narayan was startled, frightened. Fear was a constant of life these days.

“I asked her, Narayan. And she didn’t know. The deaths were news to her.”

“How could that be?” You could see the fear shove its cold claws deeper into the Deceiver’s guts. Now the enemies of the Deceivers could murder them wholesale without their goddess even knowing? Then what protection did the Children of Kina possess?

“What fell powers do these killers from the north command?” the child asked. “Are Widowmaker and Lifetaker more than created images? Can they be true demigods walking the earth in the guise of mortals, powerful enough to spin cobwebs of illusion before my mother’s eyes?”

You could see the doubts gnawing at both of them. If those red and yellow rumel men out there could be taken so easily and killed without alerting their protectress, what could save a living saint or even a Deceiver messiah?

“If that is the case,” Singh said, “we had better hope this place is as impregnable as that madman Longshadow wants to believe. We had better hope that he can exterminate all the Taglians already inside.”

“I do not think he’s finished, Narayan. Not yet.” But she did not explain what she meant.

50

You who come after me, and who read these Annals once I am gone, will have difficulty believing this but there are times when I do dumb things. Like the day I decided to stroll over to Lady’s forward command post to see the fighting with my own eyes instead of watching it from the comfort and safety of the ghostworld or my dreams.

I suspected I had pulled a stupid before I ever got there. I kept stumbling over corpses, most of them just lumps in the snow, slowly emerging. There would be another feast for crows, another celebration of corruption, after the weather turned.

And it was turning.

It was raining, steadily though not heavily. The rain was melting the snow. In places a mist almost as thick as fog hung in the air. I could not see a hundred feet. This was a new experience for me, walking in the rain on thick snow, through a fog.

Actually, it was a journey through silent beauty.

I could not appreciate that because I was so miserable.

Thai Dei was more miserable. The delta was warm even during the winter.

Sleepy was up there enjoying the earlier spring overwhelming Taglios and its environs. I hated and envied the kid now. I should have gone myself.

He had delivered my message to Banh Do Trang. I was a fly on the wall when it happened. The old man took the letter calmly, without reaction or comment—except that he did ask Sleepy to wait in case there was a reply. My message began its journey to the temple of Ghanghesha. Banh Do Trang carried the message himself.

Meantime, I was so far away I was in another world. Freezing my ass off.

“Why are we here?” I asked suddenly. I am not sure why. It seemed like a good question at the time.

Thai Dei took it literally. The man could not help himself. He had no imagination. He shrugged. And he kept on being as alert as was humanly possible while trying to keep cold water from running down the back of his neck.

I have never seen anyone as capable of carving his life into exclusive slices. And of giving each slice all the attention it deserved.

He was alert because dumb boy me had decided to take a shortcut through the ruins of Kiaulune. The Prahbrindrah Drah had rooted out all the enemy, had he not?

Maybe. But if that was true who were the snipers we had encountered twice already, slingers who operated from the remains of what had been tenements before the earthquake? My right thigh hurt where a lucky ricochet had gotten me. I was not hot for revenge, just for getting out of there.

I said, “I don’t mean why are we here freezing our butts off. I mean why are we here in this end of the world freezing our nuts off while lunatics without sense enough to surrender sling rocks at us and Croaker and Lady figure it’s a cinch to impregnate an impregnable fortress.”

Thai Dei indulged himself. “Sometimes you don’t have any idea what you’re going on about, do you?” He regained his self-control and returned to character. “You follow the path of honor, Murgen. You strive to pay the debt of Sahra. As do we all. My mother and I follow you because your debt is our debt.

You lying dicklicker. “Sure. Thanks. And we’ll collect, won’t we? But this weather just drains the fire out of me. How about you?” Like most young men dream of spending their summers in Kiaulune.

“The fog is disheartening,” he admitted.

An arrow wobbled between us, sped by someone who did not know what he was doing at targets he could not see well. “These are some pretty stubborn little bastards,” I said. “Mogaba must have them convinced that we’re going to eat them alive.”

“Perhaps they have seen no evidence otherwise.”

I gleaned the arrow. “You all of a sudden gonna turn talkative and philosophical on me?”

Thai Dei shrugged. He had become more loquacious lately. It was as though he did not want me to forget that he was closer than my shadow.

We entered an area that had been a square before the earthquake. The fog made it impossible to discern any landmarks. “Shit!” was my philosophical take on the situation.