Soldiers Live (22 page)

Nijha:

The Stronghold Falls
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.”

Nijha:

The Darkness Always Comes
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 Shadowgate:

The Repairmen
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.