The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company) (77 page)

“What? Why?”

“Because he hears voices calling him. He’s trying to figure out what to answer them.”

“Darn!” Sleepy broke out in what, for her, was a blistering blue streak. “That wrangle-franging mudsucker! I’m going to…”

Tobo and Baladitya grinned. Sleepy shut up. She remembered times when her Company brothers would get her going to see just how creative she would be in avoiding use of common profanity. She muttered, “I should’ve written you people the way you really are. Not you, Baladitya. You’re actually a human being.” She glared at Tobo. “You I’m beginning to wonder about.”

“For a nonbeliever,” Baladitya said, of himself.

“Yes. Well. There’re more of you lost souls than there are those of us who know the Truth. I must be God’s Beacon in the Land of Our Sorrows.”

Baladitya frowned, then caught on. Sleepy was actually poking fun at her religion’s attitude toward those outside it, all the unbelievers who made up the population of the Land of Our Sorrows. Which, in an earlier age, when the Vehdna were more numerous and more enthusiastic about rescuing the infidel from damnation, had been called the Realm of War.

Only Believers lived inside the Realm of Peace.

Sleepy snapped, “Tobo, stop trying to sneak away. You’re going down there with me. Just in case he really is hearing voices.”

“That sounds to me like a real good reason for everybody else to stay away.”

“Tobo.”

“Right behind you, Captain. Ain’t nobody gonna sneak up on your back.”

Sleepy growled. She never got used to the informality and irreverence, though it had been a firm fixture of Company culture since long before her advent.

The soldiers mocked everything and bitched about the rest. Yet the work got done.

Sleepy conscripted a half dozen more companions while hurrying to the stairway down. All from Hsien. She marveled at the results of her relentless training regimen. Many who had joined the Company had been the dregs of the Land of Unknown Shadows, criminals and fugitives, bandits and deserters from the forces of the warlords, and fools who thought a turn with the Soldiers of Darkness would be a great adventure. Sleek, strong and confident, they put on a show now, after months of intense preparation. The clash of steel, probably closer than they anticipated, would be their final tempering.

Sleepy’s descent led her past dozens of men still carrying treasure toward the surface. From behind her Tobo asked, “You sure you aren’t overdoing the tomb robbing? We’ve already got enough to make the whole mob rich.” A fact not lost on some recruits of less than unstained provenance. But temptation was easy to resist when you knew only your Captain could get you off the plain alive and that the Unknown Shadows would hound you pitilessly if you tried anything after you were off.

“We can’t beat the Protector with eight thousand men, Tobo. We need secret weapons and force multipliers. Gold fills both roles.”

Sometimes Tobo was troubled by his Captain. At some point, during her copious free time, she had gotten too close to a library centered around military theory. At times she tended to regurgitate notions like “strategic center of gravity” and “force multipliers” just when that would leave her listeners uncomfortable and concerned.

Tobo was also concerned because the old folks, the veterans, Croaker and Lady and the others, approved. That meant that
he
was not getting it.

“We’ll take time out here,” Sleepy said when they reached the level of the ice caverns where the Captured had been held. “You men,” she said to those she had had follow, “I want four of you to take a couple of sleepers up top. Longshadow and the Howler. Howler is going to travel with us. With Tobo. A work party will take Longshadow to Hsien for trial. You two. Stay with us.”

The ice caverns seemed timeless, changeless. Frost soon obscured the smaller signs of any traffic. The dead could not be told from the enchanted except on close examination by someone who was knowledgeable.

Sleepy continued, “You men don’t go in there until we call you. You even breathe on those things sometimes, somebody dies.” Which, upon close examination, could be seen to have happened before. The corpses included several of the Captured as well as a handful of the mystery ancients whose presence Shivetya had yet to explain.

There was a great deal the demon would not share.

Sleepy told Tobo, “We want these two to go upstairs without them waking up.”

“I have to break stasis. Otherwise they’ll die as soon as we touch them.”

“I understand that. But I want them kept in a condition where they can’t cause trouble. There won’t be anybody there to control Longshadow if he wakes up all the way.”

“Let me do my job.”

Touchy. Sleepy posted herself between the boy wizard and the cavern entrance in case curiosity overcame the good sense of the soldiers. She marveled at how quickly the ice reasserted itself, at how delicately cobweblike some of the structures around the sleeping old men were. Beyond Howler, now, there was little evidence of the trampling the place had taken when the Captured were released. The cavern floor tilted upward back there, turned, and the cave itself got tight enough to force an explorer to crawl. If you went back far enough you reached a place where the most holy relics of the Deceiver cult had been hidden during an ancient persecution. The Company had destroyed them, giving particular attention to the powerful Books of the Dead.

*   *   *

Sleepy was quiet for a long time after she sent the two sleeping sorcerers to the surface. She and Tobo and two young Bone Warriors resumed their descent into the earth. Sleepy had two things on her mind: The first was the identity of the source of the pale blue light leaking through the ice of the cavern of the old men, to illuminate the human hoard, and second, “What is the center of gravity of the Taglian empire?” She was more interested in the latter. The former was just a curiosity. It did not matter. Probably just the light of another world.

“Soulcatcher,” Tobo replied. “You don’t have to think about that. If you kill the Protector you’re left facing a big snake with no head. The Radisha and the Prahbrindrah Drah step up and announce themselves and the whole thing is over with.” He made it sound simple.

“Except for hunting down the Great General.”

“And Narayan Singh. And the Daughter of Night. But the Protector is the only part we can’t manage using the Black Hounds.”

Sleepy did not miss the way his voice went hollow when he mentioned the Daughter of Night. He had met the witch when she was the Company’s prisoner, before the flight to the Land of Unknown Shadows. Sleepy had not failed to notice the impact the girl had had then.

The Captain missed very little. And forgot nothing. And seldom made an error.

But setting up the old folks to put themselves out of the way, so they would not be peering over her shoulder, proved to be an error of the first order.

*   *   *

The Captain found Blade standing in front of a wall of blackness, rigid, a lantern dangling from his left hand. It was obvious that he had spent a lot of time there. Empty fuel containers littered the steps. The contents of those containers had been meant for Baladitya and the rangers mining the treasure hoards.

The Captain was irked. “Blade! What?…”

Blade gestured for silence. He whispered, “Listen.”

“For what?”

“Just listen.” And when Sleepy had just about exhausted her store of patience, he added, “For that.”

She heard it plainly, though remote, weak, echoing. A cry of, “Help.”

Tobo heard it, too. He jumped. “Captain…”

“Summon your Cat Sith. Or one of the Black Hounds.”

“I can’t do that.” He would not tell her that he had exceeded his instructions by sending most of the Unknown Shadows to help Croaker and Lady.

“Why not?”

“They’d refuse to come down here.”

“Compel them.”

“I can’t. They’re partners, not slaves.”

Sleepy grumbled to herself about damnation and consorting with demons.

“You can’t go any farther than this,” Blade said, answering a question that had not been asked. “I’ve tried a thousand times. There isn’t enough willpower in the Company to move another step downward. I can’t even throw one of these oil jars.”

Sleepy asked, “Are any of them full?”

“Over there.”

Sleepy picked up three full pots. She dropped two at Blade’s feet, told him, “Step back.” The oil from the broken jars could not be intimidated by a supernatural darkness. “Now light it.”

“What?”

“Set it on fire.”

With considerable reluctance Blade tilted his lantern and let a few drops of burning oil spill.

The stairwell filled with flame.

“Damn!” Tobo squealed. “What did you do that for?”

“Can you see now?” Sleepy had an arm up to shield her face from the heat.

The blackness had not been able to overpower the flames.

Tobo told her, “Just two more steps down there’s a floor. With coins scattered around on it.”

Sleepy lowered her arm. She stepped past Blade. Tobo followed. Stunned, Blade again tried to push forward. He staggered. There was none of the resistance he expected.

Why not, suddenly?

Blade was sure there would have been no change had he started a fire himself. “Captain, I’d be very careful.”

The darkness had been waiting.

“Help!”

The voice was louder and more insistent. And clear enough to be recognized.

Tobo echoed Blade. “Captain, be very careful indeed. This isn’t possible. The man has to be dead.”

“Help!”

Goblin’s plaints sounded increasingly urgent.

24

Khatovar: The Unholy Land

We had been in the holy land of my imagination for four days. Nothing had been gained. Something had been lost. An old Company hand named Spiff was dead. Likewise, Cho Dai Cho, alias JoJo, the Nyueng Bao who had been One-Eye’s indifferent bodyguard for so long.

Shadows had gotten them the first night. Killer shadows that had escaped the glittering plain after the forvalaka’s breakout had damaged the Khatovar Shadowgate. Shadows that had depopulated this part of Khatovar.

Once we knew they were there we had little trouble luring and destroying them. We had had plenty of experience. But the alarm method was awfully unpleasant.

It could have been worse. The fact of regional devastation had inspired everyone to a higher state of readiness.

During subsequent nights we eliminated a total of nine shadows. I hoped that augured well for the rest of this world. I hoped they were now that uncommon.

The Black Hounds helped destroy the shadows. They hated their undomesticated cousins from the plain. And feared them greatly. Though these shadows seemed much less aggressive than those we had encountered in the past.

They ranged afar, too, and found no living people south of Khatovar’s equivalent of the Dandha Presh. Of the forvalaka they found little sign, either. Its trail, though, they were able to uncover. Apparently it was so plain my ravens suspected that it had been left that way on purpose.

“You really want to cross those mountains again?” Swan asked.

Lady remarked, “He looks exhausted already, doesn’t he? And we haven’t walked a foot.”

I admitted, “This would be a great time to have one of those flying carpets.”

“There’re a lot of things we could use. Several of the black stallions from Charm would be handy. So would a hundred more fireball throwers. You wouldn’t steal Sleepy’s horse.”

“Well, I couldn’t, could I? It’s the last one left. She’d notice it was missing.”

“But she isn’t missing you and me and the rest of these droppings beneath the roost of the rooks of dim wittedness.”

“That’s a cute image,” Swan said. “Here come the lead birds of the flock.” Murgen. Thai Dei and Uncle Doj were approaching. Like the rest of the band they wanted to know, “What now?” and I had promised to tell them this afternoon.

Murgen asked, “So what’re we going to do, boss?”

“Go get it. We can’t stay here. The shadows wiped out almost all the game.”

They just kill. They will kill bugs if the passion takes them. Large animals they overlook only when they have the opportunity to suck the life out of something human.

Murgen asked, “You think that’s why she didn’t hang around here?”

Only part of it. “She does have to eat.” A glance around told me the fire in their bellies for revenge no longer burned so hot.

Doj said, “But there is food here. And it’s not that hard to find. I’ve seen wild pigs and a species of miniature deer that I didn’t recognize. I’ve seen rabbits and several kinds of smaller rodents. I’d say there was food enough if she wanted it. I’d also say the shadows haven’t been active here for a long time. Otherwise I wouldn’t have seen the animals I have. The monster had to be rejoining her allies. And the shadows had to be sent. To spy on us.”

I said, “Do go on.”

“I’ve considered several alternate frames for the evidence. Maybe it does add up to nothing more than the surface picture. A raid by an insane monstrosity. But I think that is just too simple. I feel there has to be more. Insanity and revenge as motives don’t seem adequate. But if she’s working with someone local…”

I had been supposing almost from the moment I broke out of my coma. I did not have enough information to support my guesswork, though.

I grunted.

“The monster had to know she would be pursued. The Soldiers of Darkness have that reputation. And they’ve tried to kill her before, with much weaker provocation.”

“And Goblin also tried to help her, as I recall. Which she repaid by turning on him before he could do her any good.”

Doj continued, “She had to get through two Shadowgates to reach Hsien. Which she knew, somehow, was where One-Eye could be found. Both Shadowgates, as far as she knew, were damaged. So even if she was safe on the roads she could expect to be vulnerable at the gates. But she didn’t get hurt. And then the distance between the gates would be a long one if she got no help from Shivetya. We have no reason to believe he helped her. On its face it looks like it would’ve been too long and too dangerous and too hungry a journey if One-Eye’s murder was all she hoped to accomplish and could expect no help managing it.”