She Is the Darkness: Book Two of Glittering Stone: A Novel of the Black Company (41 page)

“Perhaps she is coming into her season.”

The stars were out. The campfire was low. Thai Dei and I and some of my pals
were mellow on One-Eye’s beer and filled to the nostrils with roast pig. I
flipped a bone into the fire. It began to crackle. “This is living,” Bucket
rumbled, punctuating with a belch.

“If you like to camp out,” I said. “The weather’s right. Me, you give me my
druthers, I’d be living like we did in Taglios. Without all the work.”

“What work? I never seen you lift a finger.”

“I had to keep Sarie smiling.”

“Rub it in, shithead.”

Rudy asked, “That guy snore like that all the time?”

He meant Thai Dei, who was splashed against the outside wall of our bunker,

snorting and roaring, out cold. He had put away a lot, for him. The other Nyueng
Bao were shunning him.

“Only when he’s had a good time.”

“First time, huh?”

“That I know about. But I wasn’t there the night he got married.”

Somebody said, “You got the Old Man’s ear. Whyn’t you whisper some sweet
nothings about us heading on up the mountain?”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“ ’Cause when we get to Khatovar all the travelling and fighting and shit will
be over.” Pause. “Won’t it?”

I did not know. “I don’t have a clue. You go twenty feet on up the hill and
you’ve gotten to the limit of what I know.”

“I thought everything was in them old books.”

Everything was. But I did not have the right old books. I glanced at Thai Dei.

It was starting to look like he had the right idea. “I’ve had all the fun I can
stand, guys.” I unfolded sore knees, got up, headed for bed. As I stepped over
Thai Dei I said, “Don’t wake me up for anything less than a shadow breakout. And
make sure you leave some pig for Uncle.”

It was a good thing the bunker roof was low enough to make me get down on my
hands and knees inside. I did not have as far to fall.

I tripped over Sleepy first, then over One-Eye’s spear, which I had no idea why
we had brought along but we had and which I had left lying in the middle of the
rock floor.

I fell onto my pallet without crippling myself.

I know I went dreamwalking but do not remember where I went. I have vague
recollections of Sarie and a trivial brush with a Soulcatcher as eager to avoid
me as I was to avoid her. I woke up with a headache, a big thirst, a desperate
need to hit the latrine and a very short temper.

“Oh, cut the bullshit, you old fraud,” I told Uncle Doj after I slithered out of
the shack. He was giving an indifferent Thai Dei Nyueng Bao hell, using all the
buzzwords that get trotted out when somebody cuts loose and makes an ass of
himself. “Damn, it’s bright out here. Thai Dei, get your ass up. Drink some
water. Shit.” I put away some water myself. I was a little green. If it did not
rain soon I would have to have some more carried up.

“Standardbearer.”

“Uh?” I found myself surrounded by Isi and Ochiba. “You guys pop out of the
ground or something?”

“We’ve been waiting,” Isi said.

“Your people are stubborn about protecting your rest,” Ochiba added.

Their manner was disturbing, somehow. “Good for them. What’s up?” Obviously,

they had not trekked over for the exercise.

Isi had more of the Jewel Cities dialect than Ochiba but even he did not speak
it well. Still, he got the message through. “The Captain and Lieutenant want you
should know that prisoner Smoke is perished.”

“Perished? Perished like in dead?”

“As a stone,” Ochiba managed.

I recalled some pretty frisky stones, met long before these stiffnecks joined
the gang. I did not mention them. Nobody cares about the Plain of Fear nowadays.

“Murdered,” Isi added, because he thought I had missed the point.

My mouth hung open. Finally, I said, “Come on over here where we can talk.” I
grabbed a crow killer and led them across the slope far enough that no one could
eavesdrop. “Let’s have some details.” The weapon proved needless. The black
birds were not out.

“His throat was cut,” Isi said.

How could that happen? “How could that happen? Somebody would have to climb over
Singh and Longshadow and Howler . . . he wasn’t out of the kennel somewhere, was
he?” I would have been even more shocked if he had been killed in Croaker’s
dugout.

“He was imprisoned.”

“I presume we don’t have whoever did it.” My first suspect in any sneak killing
would be Narayan Singh or some tag-end member of his brotherhood. But the
Deceivers did not spill blood. Narayan certainly would not, even in
self-defense.

“No.”

“Do we know who did it?”

“No.”

“I’m coming over.” I headed back into camp, “Shiner! Rudy! Spiff! Kloo! Bucket!”

I bellowed and my officers and sergeants reacted like they thought we were about
to suffer an unexpected visit from Mogaba and the entire Taglian army. I was
loud. My hangover etched my entire universe in uncompromising blacks and whites.

“Sorry,” I said, not meaning it. “It’s not as bad as I sound. A minor emergency
across the way. I’m going over. Raise the state of alert a notch. Tell them to
drop the tonk games till they get their gear in shape.” I drank another pint of
water, then donated an equal quantity to the earth spirits. “Ochiba. Isi. Let’s
go.”

Thai Dei shook the embrace of gravity, grabbed a bamboo pole he used as a staff.

He stumbled after me, stubbornly keeping pace.

Thai Dei defined who and what he was against a bevy of inflexible standards that
ignored his own desires, his likes and dislikes, and his pain.

Uncle Doj cancelled the Mother Gota show, straightened his apparel, touched the
hilt of Ash Wand to make sure the sword had not deserted him, then trudged along
after us. That morning he looked very tired and very old.

“There was no need for you to come over,” Croaker grumbled. He looked old and
tired himself this morning. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“I knew Smoke better than anybody. I thought maybe—”

“Wasting time. Unless you were so close you can raise his ghost.”

I wondered. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Sure it does. Somebody doesn’t want us to spy on them.” I started to protest
that Smoke was a big secret, thought better of that. The Old Man did not want a
debate. Instead, I asked, “What did the others have to say?”

Questions would have been asked, perhaps with great vigor. “Nobody saw nothing.

Nobody knows nothing. But I think Howler has an idea. And I think he’s scared
somebody might find out and come after him.”

“Then the smart thing to do would be for him to tell us what he knows.” Torture
would not get it out of the little shit. He was older than Lady and had been
screaming in pain before she met him.

“So Lady told him. He’s considering the angles.”

“This might be a chance to get him on our side.”

“Like I said, Murgen. You didn’t need to come over. We’re almost as smart as
you. Just takes us a little longer to work these things out.”

“No doubt. Did you hear Bowalk carrying on last night?”

“The changer? No. What’re you talking about?”

“She went bugfuck when Thai Dei and I went past the cage last night.” I told
him.

“She does that sometimes. Lady thinks it might be her animal side getting
stronger. She might be trying to attract a boyfriend.”

Uncle Doj, I noted, had gone to the cage soon after our arrival, independently,

after a few words with JoJo. He did not understand anything Croaker and I were
saying.

“Thai Dei said that’s what it sounded like.”

“Guy might not be as dumb as he looks.” The Old Man focused on Uncle Doj while
he talked. I was not sure who he meant. He asked, “How is our foundling?”

“Sleepy? Sleeping.”

“Over here we burn comedians for firewood.”

“What? I made a statement. The kid sleeps. He eats if you put stuff in his hands
and show him what to do. He stares a lot. But mostly he just sleeps.”

“All right. Go back. Get to work. Start thinking uphill a little more. I don’t
know if it’s nerves or premonition or if I’m just getting antsy but I find
myself more and more in a mood to travel on whether or not someone pushes us
into it.”

“The Radisha will be pleased.”

“I doubt that. All that paranoia about the Company came from somewhere. She
didn’t buy it as bad as Smoke did but she bought it and she still believes it. I
don’t believe the source that sold her has ceased to exist. I don’t think she
really believes Soulcatcher when Catcher tells her she can weasel out of her
infernal bargain without getting hurt.” He was thinking of Kina. These days the
popular wisdom was that Kina had put the fear of the Company into the minds of
the Taglians and their rulers. We always suspected that they did not plan to
keep their half of our agreement and help us reach Khatovar once the
Shadowmasters had been overcome.

The Kina hypothesis was attractive but I had a nit to pick. If the Mother of
Deceptions was determined to bring on the Year of the Skulls why would she keep
the Company away? Did she see the Shadowmasters as tools better suited to
achieving the necessary level of destruction?

I shrugged, told Thai Dei, “I guess we’re just not wanted here.”

“What the hell?” Croaker barked.

The shapechanger had begun trying to get to Uncle Doj. Uncle poked her with his
swordtip till she settled down.

“Dream for me, Murgen,” Croaker said as I started down the hill. “Right now I’m
feeling blind and vulnerable. I need to know what’s going on out there.”

There was something going around. Everyone we ran into crossing to our camp
wanted to know what was going on. It was not a matter of rampant rumor. Nobody
had heard anything outrageous. But every man had developed an unfocused case of
nerves. I felt it myself. Everything seemed portentous, though of what no one
could say. As I entered the squalid village that had sprung up below the
Shadowgate I noted that most of my men were seeing to their arms and equipment,

just in case. I made a mental note to take advantage of their nerves and begin
whipping them into more presentable shape.

It was time to take some raggedy-ass volunteers and begin molding them into
brothers.

Counting soldiers and officials and camp followers at least a hundred thousand
Taglians had been involved in Croaker’s last crusade against the Shadowmaster. I
have not dwelled on it but death did claim most of those folks, some in the
fighting, more by way of disease and accident and hardship. Disease and hardship
and Taglians probably accounted for even greater numbers of Shadowlanders. The
conflict generated a human disaster far greater than the worst of the
earthquakes shaking the region.

Disease remains a problem. Always.

The point is, there has not been a lot of fun and glory down here. The few
thousand men who remain with us, many of them permanently crippled in some way,

are real nervous sorts. They find signs and portents in everything.

Like most who stumble into the mercenary life they were men their society did
not cherish. Maybe they had no families to rejoin. Maybe they had things turned
a little sideways inside their heads. Maybe they were criminals or fugitives
from enemies or wives or debt collectors. It takes a great deal to bring order
and discipline to men of that sort. The Company’s concept of itself as home and
family had worked pretty well the past few generations but during that time the
outfit never got bigger than a few hundred men. Never had it been so big that
each man did not know every other.

I realized that I, for one, despite all pretense to the contrary, had not been
doing everything I could to pull the family together. I had let a lack of
outside pressure lull me into relaxing.

Paranoia is a must. The more so when times seem fat and favorable.

The guys were nervous now. It was time to work them a little harder.

“A reading from the First Book of Croaker,” I told the force assembled. I was a
bit bemused. There must have been six hundred of them. Even the worst of the
halt and lame had come. “In those days the Company was in service to the Syndics
of Beryl . . . ” It should be a good reading. Unless Otto and Hagop came over
those times would be safely in the past, yet would still be close enough that
the men would know that veterans of those events were still amongst them. They
would know that there were forces ranged against us that their predecessors
first encountered then. The very emblem on their badges had been chosen by the
Company then. It was an easy connection to the past, comprehensible, with
current relevance. It was a doorway through which they could be led to accept
the belief that they were part of something that has survived everything for
over four hundred years.

I got no cheers. I did get passionate enough to make even the most cynical
member of my audience suspect that there might be something to what I said.

I made my speech and did my reading from the roof of my bunker. Sleepy sat
beside the doorway throughout, showing all the ambition of a protective
gargoyle. I wondered if some forced exercise might not help bring him back.

The uproar of Bucket arguing with Thai Dei wakened me. “What the hell is going
on?” I yelled.

“Get your ass out here, Murgen!”

I slithered across the rocky floor and into a brilliant night.

I did not need to have anything pointed out. The fireworks were
self-explanatory.

Lady’s weapons plant was burning. Fireballs began to fly. It got worse fast.

Fires started in the forest, in the ruins of Kiaulune and amongst the shanties
of the camps across the way. A few fireballs even reached my neighborhood,

though my guys were heads-up enough to dodge them.

I said, “No way I’m going over there.”

“Somebody ain’t afraid,” Bucket said. A glimmer betrayed Uncle Doj loping away,

Ash Wand in hand, colorful reflections setting its edge aglitter.

“Thai Dei!” I barked. “What the hell is he doing?”

“I do not know.”

The excitement across the way grew so loud we could make out a general roar of
people shouting.

“Shit and double shit,” somebody said. “Can you believe that?”

I reiterated, “I’m not going over there.”

The fireworks continued. Random balls arced across the night. Sometimes a pole
would discharge rapidly, hurling a stream of fiery dots into the darkness.

Lady’s factory was mostly underground but the earth did not confine the
devastation.

For a few minutes the night got lost in the glare.

Back behind me the standard dusk-to-dawn fog of darkness crowding the Shadowgate
rippled away uphill, clinging to the deepest washes and gullies. The shadows did
not like what was happening.

Neither did I. Again I observed, “I’m not going over there.”

Some wiseass remarked, “Any of you other guys think Murgen maybe ain’t going
over there?”

Shithead.

I held out a few hours. I even got some sleep.