Soldiers Live (21 page)

The Nether Taglian Territories:

After Battle
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.

The Taglian Shadowlands:

The Shadowgate
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 Shadowlands:

Gate Repairs
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.