Water Sleeps (29 page)

T he brotherhood had to begin moving.

Goblin burst into the tent uninvited and gasped out the news that Murgen said my
feted arrival had caught the eyes of official informants and had aroused the
suspicions of the local authorities. Those folks had been disinclined to
investigate the refugee camp before only due to a complete lack of ambition. I
sent Kendo and a dozen men to secure the southern end of the pass through the
Dandha Presh, both to guarantee a favorable welcome for those coming down behind
me and to help keep anyone from strolling off northward with news about where we
were. I sent several small teams off to capture senior officers and officials
before they could become organized. There was no real, fixed, solid governmental
structure here because the Protector favored the rule of limited anarchy.

It was obvious that these former Shadowlands, despite their proximity to the
glittering plain, were no more than an afterthought to the powers in Taglios.

The troubles in the region had been settled with a vengeance. The Great General
had won the reputation he had desired. There were few troops and no officials of
any renown here now. It looked like a safe, remote province suitable for
rusticating human embarrassments deemed not worth exterminating.

Even so, region wide, there were many more of them than there were of us and we
were out of battle practice ourselves. Brains, speed and ferocity would have to
sustain us till we gathered the whole clan and completed preparations to follow
the road up the south side of the valley.

“So, now you’ve had your power fix and you’ve got time to talk, how the hell are
you, Sleepy?” Goblin asked. He looked exhausted.

“Worn to the bone from traveling but still full of vinegar. It’s nice to talk to
somebody where I don’t have to lean over backwards to look them in the eye.”

“Walk in the goddamn door talking that shit. I knew there was a reason I didn’t
miss you.”

“You say the sweetest things. How’s One-Eye?”

“Getting better. Having Gota here will hurry it up. But he’s never going to be
completely right. He’s going to be slow and shaky and have spells where he’ll
have trouble remembering what he’s doing. And he’ll always have trouble
communicating, especially when he’s excited.”

I nodded, took a deep breath, said, “And it’s going to happen again, isn’t it?”

“It could. It often does. It doesn’t have to, though.” He rubbed his forehead.

“Headache. I need some sleep. You can drive yourself crazy trying to deal with
something like this.”

“If you need sleep, you’d better get it now. Things are starting to happen.

We’ll need you fresh when it gets exciting.”

“I knew there was another reason I didn’t miss you. You haven’t been here long
enough to blow your nose and already people and things are flying all over,

getting ready to beat each other in the head.”

“It’s my perky personality. Think I should visit One-Eye?”

“Up to you. But he’ll be heartbroken if you don’t. He’s probably already all
bent out of shape because you came and saw me first.”

I asked how to find One-Eye and left Goblin. I noted that refugees not
associated with the Company were sneaking out of the camp. There were signs of
excitement over in the New Town, too.

Gota, Doj and Swan were nearing the camp from the uphill side. Tobo larked
around them like an excited pup. I wondered where Swan would stand once the real
excitement started. He would stay neutral as long as he could, probably.

“You look better than I expected,” I told One-Eye, who was actually doing
something when I ducked into his tent. “That spear? I thought you lost it ages
ago.” The weapon in question was an elaborately carved and decorated artifact of
extreme magical potency that he had begun crafting back during the siege of
Jaicur. Its designated target then had been the Shadowmaster Shadowspinner.

Later, he had continued improving it so he could use it against Longshadow. That
spear was so darkly beautiful that it seemed a sin to use it just to kill
someone.

One-Eye took his time collecting himself. He looked up at me. There was less of
him than there was when last I had seen him, and even then he had been just a
shell of the One-Eye I remembered from when I was young.

“No.”

Just that one word. None of the usual creative invective or accusations and
insults. He did not want to embarrass himself. The results of the stroke were
more crippling emotionally than physically. He had been master of his
surroundings for two hundred years, far beyond the dreams of men, but now he
could not count on being able to speak a complete, coherent sentence.

“I’m here. I’ve got the Key. And things have begun to happen already.”

One-Eye nodded slowly. I hope he understood. There had been a woman in Jaicur,

she was a hundred nineteen when she died, they said. In all my years I never saw
her do anything but sit in a chair and drool. She understood nothing anyone said
to her. She had to be changed like a baby. She had to be fed like a baby. I did
not want that to happen to One-Eye. He was old and cantankerous and a major pain
more often than not, but he was a fixture of my universe. He was my brother.

“That other woman. That married one. She does not have the fire.” His words were
a ghost of speech. When he talked, his hands shook too badly to hold his tools.

“She’s afraid to succeed.”

“And afraid not to. You are busy, Little Girl.” He beamed because he had gotten
that out without much trouble. “You do what you must. But I have to talk to you
again. Soon. Before this happens to me again.” He spoke slowly and with great
care. “You are the one.” He was tiring, so great was his mental effort. He
beckoned me closer, murmured, “Soldiers live. And wonder why.”

Someone threw the tent flap back. Brilliant light burst inside. I knew it was
Gota without being able to see. Her odor preceded her. “Try not to make him talk
too much. He’s worn out.”

“I have seen this problem before.” Cold, yet civil. More animated than she had
been for some time but still not the caustic, frequently irrational Gota of last
year. “I will be of more value here.” Her accent was much less heavy than usual.

“Go kill someone, Stone Soldier.”

“Been a while since anybody called me that.”

Gota bowed mockingly as she waddled past. “Bone Warrior. Soldier of Darkness, go
forth and conjure the Children of the Dead from the Land of Unknown Shadows. All
Evil Dies There an Endless Death.”

I stepped outside, baffled. What was that all about?

Behind me, “Calling the Heaven and the Earth and the Day and the Night.”

I thought I had heard that formula before but could not recall the place or the
context. Surely it was sometime when a person of the Nyueng Bao conviction was
being particularly cryptic.

The excitement had increased. Someone had stolen some horses already . . . had
acquired them. Let us not leap too far with our conclusions. Several riders were
charging around, unguided by any rational plan. Something should have been in
place for a situation like this. I grumbled, “This’s what happens when nobody
wants to take charge. You three men! Get over here! What in the name of God are
you doing?”

After listening to their hemming and hawing, I gave some orders. They galloped
off with messages. I murmured, “There is no God but God. God is the Almighty,

Boundless in Mercy. Show Mercy unto me, O Lord of the Seasons. Let mine enemies
be even more confused than my friends.” I felt like I was inside the eye of a
storm of screwups.

My fault? All I did was show up. If I was likely to have that effect, someone
should have met me away from witnesses and led me to Sahra’s farm. That might
have given us time to get into shape, with nobody the wiser.

We really had very little formal organization, no declared chain of command, and
no established table of responsibility. We had no real policies other than fixed
enmities and an emotional commitment to release the Captured. We had
deteriorated into little more than a glorified bandit gang and I was
embarrassed. It was partly my fault.

I rubbed my behind. I had a distinct feeling the Captain was going to catch up
on years’ worth of chew-outs. I could make all the excuses I wanted about only
being a stand-in for Murgen while he was buried, but I had been chosen as his
understudy. And the Annalist is often the Standardbearer, too, and the
Standardbearer is generally designated because those in command think he is
capable of becoming Lieutenant and possibly, eventually, Captain. Which meant
that Murgen had seen something in me a long time ago and the Old Man had not
found cause to disagree with him. And I had done nothing with that but have a
good time designing torments for our enemies while a woman who was not a pledged
member of the Company assumed most of its leadership by default. Sahra’s courage
and intelligence and determination were beyond reproach but her skills as a
soldier and commander were less so. She meant well but she did not understand
strategies not designed around her own needs and desires. She wanted to
resurrect the Captured, of course, but not for the benefit of the Black Company.

She wanted her husband back. To Sahra, the Company was just a means of achieving
her ends.

We were about to pay the price of my reluctance to step forward and serve the
interests of the Company.

We were hardly more than the gang of thugs the Protector claimed us to be. I was
willing to bet that any determined resistance we encountered hereabouts was
likely to shatter what little family spirit the Company had left. We would have
to pay for forgetting who and what we were. And my anger, mainly at myself, made
me seem twice life-size. I stomped around screaming and foaming at the mouth and
before long had bullied everyone into doing something useful.

And then a sorry bunch of ragamuffins trudged out of the New Town and headed for
the refugee camp like a reluctant flock of geese, honking and straggling all
over. They numbered about fifty and carried weapons. The steel was more
impressive than the soldiers carrying it. The local armorer did his job well.

Whoever trained recruits did not. They were more pathetic than my gang. And my
guys had the advantage of having knocked people over the head before and so had
little reluctance to hurt someone again. Particularly if that someone threatened
them.

“Tobo. Go get Goblin.”

The boy eyed the approaching disorder. “I can handle that clusterfuck, Sleepy.

One-Eye and Goblin have been teaching me their tricks.”

Scary idea, a frenetic teenager with their skills and their lunatic lack of
responsibility. “That might well be. You might be a god. But I didn’t tell you
to handle it. I told you to go get Goblin. So move it.”

Red anger flooded his face but he went. If I had been his mother, he would have
argued until the wave of southerners rolled over us.

I walked toward the soldiers, painfully conscious that I still wore the rags I
had had on since the day we sneaked out of Taglios. Nor was I equipped with
anything remarkable in the way of weapons. I carried a stubby little sword that
never had been much use for anything but chopping wood. I was always at my best
as the kind of soldier who stands off at a distance and plinks the enemy when he
is not looking.

I found a suitable spot and waited, arms crossed.

N o grand effort had been made to train these troops or clothe them well. Which
reflected the Protector’s disdain for petty detail. What threat could the
fledgling Taglian empire possibly face out here at the edge of beyond, anyway?

There were no threats from beyond the borders.

The officer leading the pack was overweight, which also told me something about
the local military. Peace had persisted for a decade but times were not yet so
favorable that this country could support many fat men.

Huffing and puffing, the officer could not speak first. I told him, “Thank you
for coming. It shows initiative and a mind capable of recognizing the inevitable
swiftly. Have your men stack their weapons over there. Assuming everything goes
the way it should, we’ll be able to let them go home in two or three days.”

The officer gulped some more air while he strove to understand what he was
hearing. Evidently this little person had some mad notion that she had the upper
hand. Though he had no way of telling if I was he, she or it.

I allowed the rags at my throat to fall open long enough for him to see the
Black Company medallion I wore as a pendant on a silver chain. “Water sleeps,” I
told him, sure rumor had had plenty of time to carry that slogan to the ends of
the empire.

Though I failed to intimidate him into ordering his men to disarm instantly, I
did buy a few moments for the rest of the gang to gather. And a grim-looking
band of cutthroats they were. Goblin and Tobo came down to stand beside me.

Sahra shouted at her son from somewhere behind us but he ignored her. He had
decided he was one of the big boys now and that stinking Goblin kept encouraging
his fantasies.

I said, “I suggest you disarm. What’s your name? What’s your rank? If you don’t
get rid of the weapons, a lot of people will get hurt and most of them are going
to be you. It doesn’t have to be that way. If you cooperate.”

The fat young man gulped air. I do not know what he had expected. This was not
it. I was not it. I expect he was used to bullying refugees too battered by fate
to even consider resisting another humiliation.

Goblin cackled. “Here’s your chance, kid. Show us what you got.”

“Here’s one I’ve been practicing when nobody was around.” Tobo kept on talking
but in a whisper so soft I could not make out the words. In a few seconds I did
not care about the words, anyway. Tobo began turning into something that was no
gangly teenage boy. Tobo began turning into something I did not want to be
around.

The kid was a shapeshifter? Impossible. That stuff took ages to master.

At first I thought he was going to become some mythical being, a troll, an ogre,

or some misshapen and befanged creature still essentially human in shape, but he
went on to become something insectoid, mantislike but big and really ugly and
really smelly and getting bigger and uglier and smellier by the second.

I realized I did not smell so good myself. Which is usually a clue that you
smell pretty awful to those around you, since you are not normally aware of your
own odor.

Like most of what he saw from his teachers, Tobo was presenting an illusion, not
undergoing a true transformation. But the southerners did not know that.

I was part of an illusion of my own. Goblin’s huge grin told me who was behind
the little practical joke, too. He was not too far over the top with it, either,

so I might not have noticed had I not been alerted by what was happening with
Tobo.

I seemed to be becoming some more-traditional nightmare. Something like what you
might expect to see if for generations they had been saying that the Black
Company was made up of guys who ate their own young when they could not roast
yours.

“Have your men stack their weapons. Before this gets out of hand.”

Tobo made a clacking noise with his mouth parts. He sidled forward, rotating his
bug head oddly as he considered where to start munching. The officer seemed to
understand instinctively that predators take the fat ones first. He discarded
his weapons where he stood, having no inclination to get any closer to Tobo.

I said, “Men, you might help these fellows dispose of their tools.” My own
people were as stunned as the native soldiers were. I was stunned myself but
remained plenty scared enough to take advantage while we retained the upper hand
psychologically. I went around to the other side of the soldiers, putting them
between horrors. Horrors they were not yet sure were entirely illusions.

Sorcerers conjured some pretty nasty creatures sometimes. Or so I have heard.

That must be true. My brothers had told me about the ones they had seen. The
Annals told me about more.

The southerners began to give up their weapons. Spiff or Wart or somebody
remembered to make them lie down on their bellies. Once a handful got it
started, the rest found themselves short on the will to resist, too.

Sahra could not hold back anymore. She tied into Goblin. “What are you doing to
my son, you crazy old man! I told you I don’t want him playing with—”

A Ssss! and a Clack! erupted from Tobo. A claw on the tip of a very long limb
snipped at Sahra’s nose.

The kid was going to be sorry about that stunt later.

Uncle Doj hustled up. “Not now, Sahra. Not here.” He pulled her away. His grip
evidently caused her considerable distress. Her anger did not subside but her
voice did. The last thing I heard her say was something unflattering about her
grandmother, Hong Tray.

I said, “Goblin, enough with the show. I can’t talk to this man if I look like a
rakshasa’s mother.”

“It ain’t me, Sleepy. I’m just here to watch. Take it up with Tobo.” He sounded
as innocent as a baby.

Tobo was preoccupied, having altogether too much fun playing the scary monster.

I told Goblin, “You’re going to be teaching him that stuff, you’d better put
some time into getting across the concept of self-discipline, too. Not to
mention, you need to teach him not to bullshit people. I know who’s doing what
to whom here, Goblin. Stop it.”

I was not disappointed to discover that Tobo had some talent. It was almost
inevitable, actually. It was in his blood. What troubled me was the time of life
when Goblin and, presumably, One-Eye had chosen to lure his talent into the
open. In my opinion, Tobo was at exactly the wrong age to become all-powerful.

If no one controlled him while he learned to rule himself, he could become
another perpetual adolescent chaotic like Soulcatcher.

“All part of the program, Sleepy. But you need to understand that he’s already
more mature and more responsible than you or his mother want to admit. He’s not
a baby. You have to remember that most of what you see in him is him showing you
what he thinks you expect to see. He’s a good kid, Sleepy. He’ll be all right if
you and Sahra don’t mother him to death. And right now he’s at an age when you
have to back off and let him stub his toes or regret it later.”

“Child-rearing advice from a bachelor?”

“Even a bachelor can be smart enough to know when the child-rearing part is
over. Sleepy, this boy has a big, hybrid talent. Be good to him. He’s the future
of the Black Company. And that’s what that old Nyueng Bao granny woman foresaw
when she first saw Murgen and Sahra together, back during the siege.”

“Marvelous reasoning, old man. And your choice of time to bring that to my
attention is typically, impeccably inconvenient. I’ve got fifty prisoners to
deal with. I’ve got a pudgy little new boyfriend here and I need to convince him
that he ought to help me talk his fellow captains into cooperating with us. What
I don’t have is time to deal with the difficult side of Tobo’s adolescence. Pay
attention. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re no longer a secret. The Kiaulune
wars have started up again. I wouldn’t be surprised if Soulcatcher herself
didn’t turn up someday. Now get me out of this imaginary ugly suit so I can do
whatever I have to do.”

“Oh, you’re so forceful!” Goblin made the illusion go away. He made the one
surrounding the boy fade, too. Tobo seemed surprised that he could be overruled
so easily, but the little wizard softened the blow to his ego by immediately
engaging him in a technical critique of what he had accomplished.

I was impressed by what I had seen. But Tobo as the future of the Company? That
made me real uncomfortable, despite its questionable reassurance that the
Company did have a future.