Soldiers Live (33 page)

Taglios:

The Palace
Mogaba was not yet aware of the disaster that had befallen the Army of the
Middle when he found the two women in his quarters. Lady he recognized. The
young blonde he did not. She would, he presumed, be a sorceress, too. Fear
cramped his stomach. His heartbeat doubled. But he betrayed nothing outwardly.

He had had to mask his emotions in the presence of madmen and a madwoman for
decades. The madmen were gone. With luck the madwoman would follow. And he would
persist.

He bowed slightly. “Lady. To what do I owe the unexpected honor?”

“To disasters. Of course.”

The Great General glanced at the younger woman. She was completely exotic, like
no woman he had ever seen.

Though white and blonde she did not resemble Willow Swan otherwise. There was an
alien feel to her.

She must be from wherever the Black Company had hidden the last several years.

He said, “I’m sure you didn’t come this far just to stand around looking
cryptic.”

“The Daughter of Night and the thing inside what used to be Goblin somehow
overwhelmed the Protector. The girl put on Soulcatcher’s leathers. She’s
pretending to be her. She’s squandered ninety-five percent of your Middle Army.

She’s headed this way. We aren’t in any condition to chase her. My husband
thought you should know. He wants me to remind you that the Daughter of Night
exists only to bring on the Year of the Skulls. I want you to know that Kina is
real. Doubt any of the other gods you want but not this one. She’s out there.

We’ve seen her. And if she gets loose none of our other squabbles will mean a
thing.”

Mogaba did not need to be reminded that the Year of the Skulls would be an
atrocity far huger than any of Soulcatcher’s random cruelties. Catcher was mere
Chaos. Kina was Destruction.

“We have a plan for handling the Protector. It should work as well against
someone pretending to be the Protector. Possibly better.” He did not ask what
had become of Soulcatcher. He was content to hope that phase of his life was
complete.

“The girl doesn’t have Soulcatcher’s finely honed powers but she does have
plenty of raw talent. She’s somehow surrounded herself with an aura that makes
anyone within a hundred feet want to love her and do anything to please her.

This has manifested itself before, in smaller ways, so I fear we can expect it
to grow as she comes to understand it and exercise it.”

“That isn’t good. That’s not good at all. That’ll make sniping difficult. Any
way around it?”

From the blonde’s slight start, Mogaba judged Lady’s, “Not that we know of yet,”

to be less than honest. But in her place he would have reserved something, too.

And what they had obviously was not reliable. Otherwise they would have used it
themselves.

The Great General said, “Thank you for the warning. We’ll make use of it. Was
there anything more?” Down deep he nurtured the tiniest hope that there could be
a reconciliation. A hope he knew was unrealistic. But everyone nurtured
impossible dreams. Even the gods were pursuing the impossible.

Mogaba stated the facts as they had been reported to him. He made that point
clear. “We aren’t their friends. They just want someone else to assume part of
the cost of eliminating the enemies they have to go through in order to get at
us.”

Ghopal Singh asked, “What about the truth of the report? Are they just trying to
trick us into attacking the Protector? If they could get us to make the attempt
and we were to fall at a time when they were close behind the Protector they’d
reach the gates just when Taglios was falling into chaos.”

Aridatha groaned. “We went to them, Ghopal. Remember me chasing halfway to the
other end of the world to tell them we were going to try to get rid of the
Protector? Remember me helping them take over Dejagore as a sign of good faith?”

“Circumstances have changed.”

Mogaba interjected, “Ghopal, I’ve given this a lot of thought. I think it’s
true. The Protector is out of the game. Possibly only momentarily. Hell,

probably. She’s made unlikely comebacks before. What hurts my feelings, of
course, is that those people don’t consider us much worth worrying about in
terms of the greater struggle.”

Aridatha grumbled, “Which might not be that unreasonable when you think about it
dispassionately.”

Ghopal asked, “And you’re equally sure that the Middle Army has been destroyed?”

Even military insiders had not yet fully digested the news about the losses of
Dejagore and the Southern Army that had clung to it’s skirts. A lot of people
were still waiting to hear how Dejagore responded to it’s change of masters.

The nature of that response would have repercussions throughout the Taglian
empire.

Would the return of the royals be celebrated? Or resented? The Dejagoran
response was likely to set the fashion for all the cities and towns that came
under the Company sway.

“I’m sure of it,” Mogaba told Ghopal. “But I’m less sure of the condition of the
invaders afterward. I got the distinct impression that their defeat of the
Middle Army was neither cheap nor easy.”

Aridatha said, “We’ve got to have better intelligence.”

Mogaba took a moment to stifle his sarcasm before confessing, “I’m open to
ideas. Any ideas.”

No inspirations sprouted immediately.

Aridatha said, “We could always do something mythic. Like damning ourselves by
bringing in an ally worse than our enemies. One that will devour us after it
finishes doing what we brought it in to do.”

Mogaba and Ghopal recognized the effort but did not get Aridatha’s joke.

“It’s an allusion. Or a parable. Or something,” Aridatha explained. “Like all
stories about Kina. The Lords of Light created her or brought her in for the
demon plain war. And probably would have been better off if the rakshasas had
won, ultimately.”

Mogaba did have a sense of humor. He just had not brought it along tonight. “I
guess you had to be there. Anyway, there’s nobody we could bring in. We’re on
our own. So suggestions are in demand. Practical suggestions will be
particularly welcome.” That was something in the nature of a jest so, perhaps,

he had brought part of his sense of humor.

Ghopal said, “All we can do is send out more spies and set up more remount
stations so the spies can get their observations to us faster.”

“And we have only one courier battalion.” Mogaba sat quietly for half a minute.

Then he asked, “How is our support among the priests and bourgeoisie? They’ve
had time to think about the royals coming back. They plan to desert us?”

“We’re the devil as far as they know,” Ghopal replied. “The Protector has been
their benefactor. And only a few of the slickest talkers can hope to benefit if
we get thrown out. We worked hard to eliminate the Radisha’s friends once we
could no longer hide the fact that the princess was gone, not just hiding out
feeling sorry for herself.”

The Great General proposed, “Let’s try the same strategy. Make believe we
haven’t lost the Protector. Aridatha. You seem to be distracted.”

“I keep thinking about the girl. The Daughter of Night.”

“And?”

“I saw her once. Five years ago. There’s something about her . . . Makes you
want to throw her down on her back. And makes you want to worship her at the
same time. Makes you feel like you should do anything you can to please her.

It’s scary when you step back far enough to realize what happened.”

“She’s all grown-up that way.” Mogaba explained what Lady had told of events to
the south. “That girl got hundreds of men killed. We’ll have to assassinate her
remotely somehow. See if some mechanical engine can be contrived.”

“I have a question,” Ghopal said.

“Go.”

“What’s that thing you’re fiddling with? You’ve been playing with it ever since
you got here.”

“Oh. Some kind of snail shell. They’re all over the Palace. Nobody knows where
they come from. Nobody’s ever actually seen one crawling around. They’re sort of
relaxing when you roll them around in your fingers.”

Both Singhs eyed the Great General as though thinking his behavior was
distinctly odd.

Ghopal said, “Regarding the Daughter of Night. We might consider poison.

There’re some talented poisoners in Chor Bagan, the thieves’ market.”

The years had changed Mogaba. He did not immediately reject the suggestion as
unworthy of men of honor.

The Taglian Territories:

Another Origin Story
I suggested, “How about a standoff weapon we can launch from outside her
influence? Hell, if we take the logs and carpets up high enough we can just keep
dropping rocks till we get her.” There was some optimism. We did not have even
one carpet since Booboo knocked Howler and Tobo down. What we did have was bits
and pieces of half a dozen carpets that Howler had been working on when nothing
else took up his time.

Lady glared at me so intensely I began to wonder how soon I would start melting.

Killing Booboo was not yet on her list of options. Her emotions were engaged
much more deeply than mine, though the problem of the girl was a torment to me,

too.

My entanglement was more with the idea of the child than with the specific
daughter.

Lady wanted to fool herself into believing there might be some way that Booboo
could be redeemed.

“You’re wasting time,” the Prahbrindrah Drah said. The collapse of Soulcatcher’s
Middle Army had brought him to life. Suddenly, he believed his restoration was
just a matter of marching to Taglios and yelling, “I’m back!” He had leaped into
the embrace of self-delusion.

There was a lot of that going around.

Murgen joined the conference as the Prince began to bicker with Sleepy about her
plans, a situation guaranteed not to persist for long. Sleepy would let him know
who was running the show. Murgen announced, “I just finished reading a really
long message from Baladitya. Who is well and loving every minute of his new
life, thank you very much, Sleepy. Which he did not fail to point out several
times.”

I asked, “What’re you doing getting mail from that old goofball?”

“He wasn’t writing to me. He doesn’t know me. The message was intended for
Tobo.”

Sleepy, who was thoroughly cranky because nothing was going the way she wanted,

grumped, “I’m sure you’re going to share every exciting detail with us, too,

even though what we all need is some sleep.”

“Since you insist.” Murgen grinned. He had no particular job assignment while he
was recuperating so he could do just about anything he pleased. “His letter
mostly concerned the prisoners Shivetya is holding up there. The First Father
and Gromovol’s dad. Who Shivetya took in originally just to protect them from
the shadows. Of which there are hardly any left anymore. Them and the Voroshk
have almost wiped each other out. Sorry.” He patted Shukrat’s shoulder. Nobody
missed that gesture. Murgen approved of Tobo’s girlfriend—if that was what she
was.

I wondered what he was doing bringing Shukrat to a staff meeting.

Sahra, of course, bristled like a hedge hog. There were no eligible Nyueng Bao
girls anywhere within two hundred miles and she had married a foreigner, Murgen,

for love herself, against the will of most of her family, but what did that have
to do with today?

Sahra could restrain herself most of the time, these days. In public. If Murgen
was around to calm her and remind her that Tobo was not a four-year-old anymore.

But she was under tremendous additional strain now, with all her family dead or
wounded. She had not yet pulled herself together well enough to make decisions
about funeral arrangements for her brother and Uncle Doj.

He restrained her now, with just a gentle touch.

“You got a point to make?” Sleepy said. “Or can I get back to work figuring out
how to get us through this on terms that suit our needs?”

Swan muttered something about the little bit needing a good dose of man to relax
her. Sleepy snarled. Swan grumbled, “Did I volunteer? I don’t think so. Not
recently. So don’t fuck with me.”

Hurriedly, Murgen told us, “Guys, Shivetya came up with another Kina origin
cycle. He got this one from the Voroshk. Evidently they don’t mind talking
history if they’re bored. In this version Kina’s husband put her to sleep. When
she kept acting up after she won the demon plain war for the gods by sucking the
blood out of all the demons. This version of the Goddess has ten arms instead of
four. Her husband, known as Chevil in the world of the Voroshk, has four arms
and is a lot like the Kina we know. Sometimes he’s called the Destroyer, too.

But sometimes he can be cajoled or seduced into going easy. Kina can’t.”

His audience rustled. In some stories Khadi, one of the gentler Gunni forms of
Kina, had had a husband, Bhima, who also counted the Destroyer among his many
names.

All Gunni Gods have bunches of names. They get a little hard for an outsider to
keep straight because when they change their names they also change their
attributes. It gets particularly confusing when you have two aspects of the same
god getting into an ass-kicking contest with each other.

“And this Chevi has what to do with Kina’s origins?” Sleepy demanded.

“Oh, he’s the one who did all the mean things to her, like chopping her up and
scattering the pieces all over. But she also kills him. And brings him back to
life.”

“Murgen. I’m considering sending you back to the Taglians for some more rework.”

“All right. Chevi has more than one wife. But there used to be only one. That
was Camundamari, who has several other names, naturally. Camundamari was very
dark-skinned. The other gods mocked her and called her Blackie.”

Interesting. Both Khadi and Kina can mean black in some Taglian usages, though
“syam” is the common and conventional word.

Murgen continued, “When Chevi himself started taunting her she flew into a huge
rage, tore her skin off, and turned into Ghowrhi, the Milky One. The shed skin
became Kalikausiki, which filled itself up on blood sucked from demons, then
became Khat-hi, the Black One.”

“Kina is a skinwalker!” Suvrin cried, startling everyone. Skinwalkers were a
demonic terror little known outside Suvrin’s homeland. Skinwalkers killed a man,

sucked out his flesh and bones, put on his skin and stole his life. The details
are pretty gruesome. Skinwalker folklore strikes me as a way for ignorant people
to explain radical and bizarre changes in personality. Shifts I believe are due
to poorly understood diseases. Or maybe just due to getting old.

Murgen was startled by Suvrin’s outburst. Which seemed excessive to me, too.

“Not a skinwalker in the way you mean,” Murgen said.

Was there something in Suvrin’s background?

The concept of a monster able to steal someone else’s identity that way is
particularly grotesque. I have seen a lot of strange and ugly things. Tobo’s
hidden folk are only the latest on a long list. But Skinwalkers are one horror
that just seems too terrible to be true.

Like the gods themselves of late there have been no manifestations before
reliable witnesses. We were talking ancient legends tonight. Suvrin had
referenced one of the most obscure.

I said, “Believe me, Suvrin, if there were any real skinwalkers down your way
you can bet the Shadowmasters would’ve rooted them out and used them up. What a
weapon, eh?”

“I guess,” Suvrin admitted. Reluctantly.

“That’s wonderful,” Sleepy grumped. “Ghost-story time is over, boys. Now we let
Murgen finish. He is going to finish, isn’t he? Because I want to get back to
what this meeting is supposed to be all about.” She swung a deadly finger.

“Don’t you even think about puking up another wisecrack, Willow.”

Swan grimaced. He had live ammunition and no ready target. Then he grinned. A
time would come.

I said, “Murgen?”

“There isn’t much more. Baladitya says most of the high points of the mythology
agree. There’s more of a death goddess to her nature over there. She’s always
referenced as living in a cemetery.”

“She does that here, doesn’t she?” I asked. “When Sleepy and Lady and you,

especially, talk about your nightmares, that place you go with all the bones?

That could be a Gunni style cemetery.”

The Gunni burn their dead to purify them before their souls line up for
reassignment in the next life. But the fires are never hot enough to consume the
major bones. If a burning ground is near a major river the leftovers are
generally deposited there. But a lot of places are not near a major river. And
some are not near a source of firewood. And some families never save up enough
to buy wood that is available.

Bones pile up.

These places are not often seen by anyone but the priests who attend them, the
men in yellow who revere Majayama but watch over their shoulders because Kina
and her pack of pet demons supposedly lived beneath the bone piles. Even though
Kina is known to be chained up under the glittering plain until the Year of the
Skulls.

I said, “I’ve got a lot of time to think these days. One of the things I’ve been
pondering is why there are so many different stories about Kina. And I think
I’ve figured it out.”

My ego got a boost. Even Sleepy seemed interested, despite herself. My wife,

perhaps less enthralled, suggested, “Do go on,” in a tone implying that she knew
there would be no stopping me anyway.

“In those days the Company . . . ”

“Croaker!”

“Sorry. Just seeing if you were listening. What clued me was the fact that there
isn’t any uniform Gunni doctrine. There isn’t much of an hierarchy amongst Gunni
priests, either, except locally. There’s no central arbiter of what constitutes
acceptable or unacceptable dogma. Kina isn’t alone in being the subject of a
hundred conflicting myths. The whole pantheon is. Pick any god you want. When
you travel from village to village you’ll find him wearing different names,

different myths, getting mixed up with other gods, and on and on and on. We see
the confusion because we’re travelers. But up until the Shadowmaster wars almost
nobody in these parts ever went anywhere. Generation after generation, century
after century, people were born, lived and died in the same few square miles.

You only had a few gem traders and the Strangler bands moving around. Ideas
didn’t travel with them. So every myth gradually mutates according to local
experience and prejudice. Now first the Shadowmasters and then we land in the
middle of all this . . . ”

We? A glance around showed me just three other people who had not grown up in
this end of the world. For a moment I felt ancient and out of place and found
myself recalling an old piece of poetry that said something to the effect:

“Soldiers live. And wonder why.” Meaning, why am I the one, of all those who
marched with the Company when I was young, who is still alive and kicking? I do
not deserve it any more than any of those men. Maybe less than some.

You always feel a little guilty when you think about it. And a little glad it
was somebody else, not you.

“That’s it. We’re travelers. That’s why it all seems alien and contradictory.

Wherever we are, most of us are outsiders. Even when we do belong to the
majority religion.” A glance around showed me that hardly any of my audience
were Gunni, either. “Well, that’s my piece.”

“All right, then,” Sleepy said. “Back to practical problems. How do we deal with
the Daughter of Night and the Goblin thing?”

“That’s practically the same thing as a skinwalker,” Suvrin said. “Kina put him
on like a suit of clothes.” Suvrin had skinwalkers on the brain tonight.

“The Daughter of Night!” Sleepy snapped. “I want to hear about the Daughter of
Night. Not about Kina. Not about skinwalkers. Not about old Voroshk sorcerers,

not about old librarians and not about anything else. And, Lady, if you really
don’t want the girl killed, then come up with an idea for disarming her that’s
better than any idea for taking her out. Because you’re the only one here
letting emotion get in the way.”