Somebody said, “Shit, we been here waiting for you for a whole fuckin’ month. Some of us. The slowest ones got here last week.”
“How’s One-Eye doing?” I asked as Sahra wriggled through the throng.
“He’s fucked up,” a voice volunteered. “How’d you know...?”
I exchanged hugs with Sahra. She said, “We were starting to worry.” A question clung to the edge of her statement.
“Tobo. Your grandmother and Uncle Doj are waiting in the woods back up the road. Run up and tell them to come on down.”
“Where’re the rest?” somebody demanded.
“Swan is with them. The rest are behind us somewhere. We broke up into three groups after we reached the highlands. There were crows around. We didn’t want to give them anything obvious to watch.”
“We did the same thing after we left the barges,” Sahra told me. “Did you see many crows? We saw only a few. They might not have been the Protector’s.”
“The white one keeps turning up.”
“We saw it, too. Are you hungry?”
“You kidding? I’ve been eating your mother’s cooking since we left Jaicur.” I looked around. People were watching who were not Black Company. They might only be refugees, too, but the enthusiasm of my reception was sure to cause talk.
Sahra laughed. It sounded more like the laughter of relief than that of good humor. “How is Mother?”
“I think there’s something wrong, Sahra. She’s stopped being nasty, bitter old Ky Gota. Most of the time she’s lost inside herself. And those times when she is completely aware, she almost has manners.”
“In here.” Sahra lifted a tent flap. It was the largest tent in the encampment. “And Uncle Doj?”
“A step slower but still Uncle Doj. He wants me to turn Nyueng Bao and be his apprentice. Like I have a lot of free time being Murgen’s apprentice. He says it’s just because he doesn’t have anybody else to pass his responsibilities on to. Whatever they are. He seems to think I should sign on before he tells me what for.”
“Did you get the Key?”
“We did. Uncle Doj has it in his pack. But Singh got away. Not unexpectedly. Did he turn up here? We picked up rumors along the way that gave me the idea that he was ahead of us and gaining ground. You do still have the girl?”
Sahra nodded. “But she’s a handful. I think bringing her south again put her in closer touch with Kina. Common sense tells me we should break our promise and kill her.” She settled on a cushion. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m completely worn out. Keeping these people under control when there’s so little for them to do... it’s a miracle that we haven’t had any major incidents... I bought a farm.”
“You what?”
“I bought a farm. Not far from the Shadowgate. They tell me the soil is lousy, but it’s a place where most of the men can stay out of sight and keep out of trouble and even stay busy building housing or working the ground so we’ll eventually be self-supporting. Half the gang is over there now. Most of these guys here would be, too, except that Murgen said you were going to arrive today. You made good time. We didn’t expect you for several more hours.”
“Does that mean you’re all caught up on what’s going on in the world outside?”
“I have a particularly talented husband who doesn’t always share everything with me. And I don’t always share him with the others. And we both probably shouldn’t be that way. There’re a thousand things we need to talk about, Sleepy. I don’t know where to start. So why not just with, how are you?”
60
The 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.
61
No 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.