The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company) (29 page)

I worry a lot when I consider a future without them in it. And a future without One-Eye cannot be far away.

O Lord of Hosts, preserve him until the Captured are delivered and all our quarrels are resolved.

46

Men were charging everywhere around the warehouse. Some were continuing frenetic preparations for the Company’s evacuation. Some were getting ready to accompany Narayan and me to the Grove of Doom to collect the Nyueng Bao Key. The Nyueng Bao, Do Trang’s confederates and the handful still attached to the Company somehow, seemed to be doing a lot of nervous moving around just to be moving. They were scared and worried.

Banh Do Trang had suffered a stroke during the night. One-Eye’s prognosis was not encouraging.

I told Goblin, “I’m not saying she had anything to do with it but Do Trang was the first one to realize that the girl was roaming around outside her flesh.”

“He’s just old, Sleepy. Nobody did it to him. You ask me, he’s really way overdue. He hung on here because he cares about Sahra. She’s all right now. It looks like her husband might actually be freed. And he’s too old to run away. Soulcatcher is going to find this place eventually, once Mogaba arrives and starts searching. I wouldn’t be surprised if Do Trang just decided that dying was the best thing he could do for everyone right now.”

I did not want Do Trang to go, for all the reasons none of us like to see those close to us die, but also because he was, in his quiet way, the best friend the Company had had in generations.

Like everyone else, I tried to lose myself in work. I told Goblin, “Even if she’s totally innocent, I want the girl fixed so she can’t wander. Whatever you have to do short of permanently crippling or killing her.”

Goblin sighed. Lately that was all he did when someone gave him more work. I guess he was too tired to squawk anymore.

“Where is One-Eye?”

“Uh—” Furtive look around. A whisper. “Don’t say I said anything. I think he’s trying to figure out how to take his equipment with us.”

I shook my head and walked away.

Santaraksita and Baladitya called out to me. They had accepted their situation and were applying themselves with a will. The Master Librarian seemed particularly excited about facing a real academic challenge for the first time in years. He said, “Dorabee, in all the excitement I forgot to mention that I did get an answer to your question about a written Nyueng Bao language. There was one. And not only was there one, this oldest book is written in an antique dialect of that language. The others were recorded in an early Taglian dialect, although the original of the third volume does so employing the foreign alphabet instead of native characters.”

“Which argues that the invader alphabet had well-defined phonetic values that at the time must have been more precise than those of the native script. Right?”

Santaraksita gawked. After a moment he said, “Dorabee, you never cease to amaze me. Absolutely correct.”

“So have you discovered anything interesting?”

“The Black Company came off the plain, which was called Glittering Stone even then, and mostly minced around from one small principality to the next, squabbling internally over whether or not they were going to sacrifice themselves to bring on the Year of the Skulls. There was plenty of enthusiasm among the priests attached to the Company but not much among the soldiers. Many of those apparently volunteered as a way to escape something called The Land of Unknown Shadows, not because they wanted to bring on the end of the world.”

“The Land of Unknown Shadows, eh? Anything else?”

“I’ve developed some very good information on the price of horseshoe nails four centuries ago and on the scarcity of several medicinal plants that are now found in every herb garden.”

“Earthshaking stuff. Stay with it, Sri.”

I meant to tell him he had to evacuate with the rest of us but decided not to upset him right away. He was having a good time. No point making him face a choice between abduction and being put to death just yet.

Uncle Doj materialized. “Do Trang wants to see you.”

I followed him to the tiny room the old man had built for himself in a remote corner of the warehouse. On the way, Doj warned me that Do Trang was unable to speak. “He’s already seen Sahra and Tobo. I think he was fond of you, too.”

“We’re going to get married in the next life. If the Gunni are right.”

“I am ready to travel.”

I stopped. “What?”

“I’m going with you to the Grove of Doom.”

“You’d better not have some crazy idea about snatching the Key.”

“I agreed to help. I’ll help. I want to be there to make sure the Deceiver keeps his word. The Deceiver, Miss Sleepy. Deceiver. Also, I agreed to turn over that volume of the Books of the Dead. Its hiding place is on the way.”

“Very well. The presence of Ash Wand will be a comfort to me and a vexation to my enemies.”

Doj chuckled. “It will indeed.”

“We won’t be coming back here.”

“I know. When we leave, I’ll be carrying everything I wish to retain. You won’t need to pretend with Do Trang. He knows his path. Do him the honor of an honest farewell.”

I did more. I became all teary for the first time in my adult life. I rested my head on the old man’s chest for a minute and whispered my thanks for his friendship and renewed my promise to see him in the next life. A small heresy but I do not think God has been monitoring me too closely.

Banh lifted a hand weakly and stroked my hair. And after that I got up and went away somewhere to be alone with my grief for a man who, it seemed, had never been that close, yet who was going to have a major impact on the rest of my life. I understood that after the tears stopped, I would never be quite the same Sleepy again. And that that was one legacy Do Trang wanted to leave behind.

47

The biggest problem I expected with the evacuation was one that came up every time the Company picked up and moved out after having been settled in one place for a long time. Roots had to be torn up. Ties had to be severed. Men had to abandon the lives they had created for themselves.

Some just would not go.

Some who did go would tell someone where they were headed.

The nominal strength of the Company was somewhat over two hundred people, a third of whom did not live in Taglios at all but maintained identities at scattered locations where they could aid brothers who were traveling. Overall, it was very much like what the Deceivers used to do. Partly that was intentional, because those people had spent centuries finding the safest ways.

Early on, couriers went out carrying code words to all our distant brothers to warn them that a time of trouble was coming. Nobody would be told what was happening, only warned that something was and that it was going to be big. Once that code word arrived, it would already be too late to drop out of anything.

Behind the couriers, eventually, would come the majority of the men, in driblets small enough not to attract attention, disguised a dozen ways, departing Taglios in what I considered their order of plausible risk. The last to leave town would be those with the heaviest entanglements. All the men would pass through a series of checkpoints and assembly points, each time being informed only of an immediate destination. The key hope, though, was that Soulcatcher would not begin to catch on until those who were going to go were well away.

Those who refused to go would be excused—if they remained loyal to the Company interests in the city. It would be useful to have a few agents on hand after the Company appeared to have gone.

That, too, was something the Deceivers had done for generations.

There would be flashy smoke shows. The demon Niassi would be much more prevalent, putting a damper on Grey efficiency. The men who stayed—I would not know who they were because I would be among the first to leave—would be expected to undertake what was supposed to look like a series of random assaults, break-ins and acts of vandalism that later would begin to appear to be part of a terror campaign meant to peak during the Druga Pavi. If Soulcatcher took the bait, she would spend her time preparing to ambush us there.

If not, every hour bought was an hour farther down the road my brothers would be before the Protector realized that we had done the unexpected again. And even then, I expected her to look in the wrong places for a long time.

48

My party was the first to leave Taglios. We went the morning Banh Do Trang died. With me went Narayan Singh, Willow Swan, the Radisha Drah, Mother Gota and Uncle Doj, Riverwalker, Iqbal Singh with his wife Suruvhija and two children and baby, and his brother Runmust. In addition, we had several goats with small packs and chickens tied to their backs, two donkeys, one or the other of which Gota rode much of the time, and an ox cart drawn by a beast we strove hard to keep looking sadder and scruffier than it really was. Most everyone adopted some form of disguise. The Shadar trimmed their hair and beards and the whole family adopted Vehdna dress. I stayed Vehdna but became a woman. The Radisha became a man. Uncle Doj and Willow Swan shaved their heads and became Bhodi disciples. Swan darkened himself with stain but there was no way to change his blue eyes. Gota had to do without Nyueng Bao fashions.

Narayan Singh remained exactly the same, virtually indistinguishable from thousands of others just like him.

We looked bizarre, but even stranger bands collected to share the rigors of the road. And we would collect together only when we camped. On the road we stretched out over half a mile, one Singh brother out front, the other in back, while River stayed fairly close to me. The brothers carried a pair of devices given them by Goblin and One-Eye. If Narayan, the Radisha or Swan strayed far from a line running between them, choke spells would begin constricting around their throats.

None of the three had been informed of that. We were all supposed to be friends and allies now. But I believe in trusting some of my friends more than others.

On the Rock Road that the Captain had had built between Taglios and Jaicur, we did not catch the eye at all. But a crowd like that, with a baby and an ox cart and regular Vehdna prayers and whatnot, is not swift. Nor did the season help. I became thoroughly sick of the rain.

The last time I traveled down the Rock Road I rode a giant black stallion that covered the distance between Taglios and Ghoja on the River Main in a day and a night without hurrying.

Four days after leaving the city we were still at least that long from the bridge at Ghoja, which would be our first dangerous bottleneck. In the afternoon Uncle Doj chose to announce that we had come as close as the road would carry us to the place where he had hidden the copy of the Book of the Dead.

“Aw, darn,” I said. “I was hoping it would be way farther down the road. How are we going to explain having a book if we get stopped?”

Doj showed me his palms and a big smile. “I’m a priest. A missionary. Blame it on me.” Despite the hardships, he was happy. “Come help me dig it up.”

“What is this place?” I asked two hours later. We had come into something that might have come from one of Murgen’s old nightmares about Kina. Twenty yards of woods formed a palisade all around it.

“It’s a graveyard. During the chaos of the first Shadowlander invasion, before the Black Company came, possibly even before you were born, one of the Shadowlander armies used this as a camp, then as a burial ground. They planted the trees to conceal the tombs and monuments from enemy eyes.” Noting my appalled expression, he added, “Down there they have different customs for dealing with the dead.”

I knew that. I had been there. I had seen it. But never had I seen it so concentrated, nor exuding such an air of depression. “This is grim.”

“A spell makes it seem that way. They thought they would come back and turn the place into a memorial after they won the war. They wanted to keep people away.”

“I’m willing to go along with their wishes. This is too creepy for me.”

“It’s not that bad. Come on. This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

It did, but not a lot longer. It was a matter of pulling the door away from one of the fancier tombs and digging out a bundle wrapped in several layers of oilskins.

“This is a place worth remembering,” Doj said as we went away. “People around here won’t come near it. People from farther away don’t know about it. It’s a good hideout.”

“I can’t wait.”

“You’ll love the Grove of Doom, too.”

“I’ve been there. I didn’t like it, either, but at the time I was too worried about Stranglers to be scared of ghosts or ancient goddesses.”

“It’s another good place to hide.”

I am not suspicious by nature the way Soulcatcher is but I am suspicious occasionally. I am particularly suspicious of reticent old Nyueng Bao who suddenly turn chatty and helpful. “The Captain hid out there once,” I said. “He didn’t find the place congenial, either. What’re you up to?”

“Up to? I don’t understand.”

“You understand perfectly, old man. Yesterday I was just another
jengali,
albeit one you had to tolerate. Today, suddenly, I’m getting unsolicited advice. I’m being offered the benefit of your accumulated wisdom, like I’m some kind of apprentice. You want me to take a turn carrying that?” He was, after all, an old man.

“As the pace and pressures have increased and events have taken unexpected—but usually favorable—twists, I’ve begun reflecting more intently on the wisdom of Hong Tray, on the foresight she showed, even upon her devilish sense of humor, and I believe I’m finally beginning to grasp the full significance of her prophecies.”

“Or of mass quantities of bullfeathers. Tell it to Sahra and Murgen next time you see them. And put a little honest sentiment into your apologies.”

My attempt to be unpleasant did not subdue him. That took the arrival of the afternoon rains, a little early, a lot heavy, supported by a truly ferocious fall of hail. Along the road, dashing out from under the trees where we had left our own party, a score of travelers tried to collect the ice before it melted. Taglians never see snow, and rainy-season storms provide the only time they ever see ice—unless they travel far down into what used to be the Shadowlands, to the higher elevations of the Dandha Presh.