Bleak Seasons (10 page)

I stepped into a dark alleyway, planning to set up shop behind a southern
company with Goblin to do his hoodoo on them. And it was like I stepped off the
edge of the world, into an abyss without bottom. Like some great psychic
flyswatter slapped me down into the void. Goblin barked something in the instant
it took to go but I did not understand him.

I had that moment to feel seasick, to be bewildered, to wonder who had ambushed
me with what sorcery, and why it seemed to twist me like a wet rag being wrung
out.

Had Mogaba taken his treachery to another level?

Something had hold of me. It pulled so virulently there was no resisting it. I
lost track of who I was and where. I knew only that I was asleep and did not
want to wake up.

“Murgen!” a far voice called. The pull strengthened. “Murgen, come on! Come
home! Fight it, Kid! Fight it!” I fought.

But it was that voice I fought. It wanted me to come somewhere that much of me
did not want to go. Pain awaited me there.

The pull redoubled as the force dragged at me with inescapable power.

“That did it!” somebody shouted. “We have him back now.”

I knew that voice . . .

It was like coming out of a coma except that I remembered where I had been in
every detail. Dejagore. Every little ache, every horror, every fear. But already
the sharp edges were going dull. The ties were slipping. I was here now.

Here? Which when and where was here? I tried opening my eyes. My lips would not
respond. I tried to move. My limbs refused to be troubled.

“He’s all here.”

“Pull that curtain.” I heard heavy cloth being moved. “Will it keep getting
harder? I thought we were supposed to be over the worst. That he couldn’t recede
so far that we would have this much trouble bringing him home.”

Oh! That voice belonged to Croaker. The Old Man. Only the Old Man is dead,

because I saw him killed. Or did I? Didn’t I just leave Widowmaker, alive long
past his time?

“Well, he didn’t listen. But it can’t do anything but get better now. We’re
around the corner. Over the hump. Unless he wants to stay lost.”

I got an eye open.

I was in a dark place. I’d never seen it before but it had to be in the Palace
at Trogo Taglios. Home. Never have I seen that kind of stone used anywhere else.

And there was nothing astonishing about not being able to recognize parts of the
Palace. The princes of Taglios all add on a bit during their reigns. Supposedly
only the old royal wizard Smoke ever knew his way around the whole place. And
Smoke isn’t with us anymore. I don’t know what happened to him afterward but
several years ago he got torn up when a supernatural creature he disagreed with
tried to eat him. Handy, because about then was when we discovered that he had
been seduced by Longshadow and had gone over to the Shadowmasters.

I was amazed at me. Although I had a headache like the mother of all hangovers
my mind, suddenly, was crystal clear.

“He’s got an eye open, chief.”

“Can you hear me, Murgen?” I tried my tongue, blurted fluent gibberish. “You had
another one of your spells. We’ve been trying to bring you back for two days.”

Croaker sounded put out. Like I was inconveniencing him on purpose? “All right.

You know the drill. Let’s get him up and walking.”

I remembered doing this part several times before. I was less confused now, more
able to grasp quickly the distinction between past and present.

They got my feet under me. Goblin got under my right armpit. Croaker wrapped his
arm around me from the left, lifted. I said, “I remember what to do.”

They did not understand. Goblin asked, “You got a grip on when you are, Murgen?

Ain’t going to drift off into the past on us again?”

I nodded. I could communicate that way. Maybe I could use the deaf and dumb
speech.

“Dejagore again?” Croaker asked.

I had the connections all made inside. Even plenty I didn’t want made. I tried
talking again. “Same night. Again. Later on.”

“Set him down. He’ll be all right now,” Croaker said. “Murgen. You get any clues
this time? Anything we can latch onto to break you out of this cycle? I need you
here. I need you full time.”

“Not one damned thing.” I paused to catch my breath. I was adapting faster this
time. “I don’t even know when it hit me. I was just there, suddenly, like a
poltergeist or something, with no thoughts of any future at all. Then after a
while I was just Murgen with no awareness, no anomalies like I get now.”

“Anomalies?”

Startled, I turned. One-Eye had materialized from somewhere. I saw that curtain
still stirring. It closed off half the room.

“Huh?”

“What do you mean by anomalies?”

When I concentrated I really didn’t know what I meant. I shook my head. “I don’t
know. It’s gotten away from me. When am I?”

Croaker and the wizards dealt a hand of significant looks between them. Croaker
asked, “Do you remember the Grove of Doom?”

“Sure. I’m still shivering.” A chill did touch me. Then I recalled the key
thing. I had no memories of having visited this room before but I should have
had them. Because I was still in my yesterdays. I just wasn’t as far away as I
had been at Dejagore, which was years ago.

Then I tried to remember the future.

I remembered too much. I whimpered.

“Do we need to get him up again?” Goblin asked.

I shook my head. “I’m solid. Let’s think. How long between this spell and the
last one? How long since we got back from the grove?”

Croaker said, “You got back three days ago. I told you to bring your prisoners
to the Palace. You tried. You lost the shadowweaver along the way, in
circumstances so questionable I issued orders for all Company people to stay
especially alert.”

“He was old. He just died of fright,” One-Eye said. “Ain’t nothing mysterious
about that.”

My headache was not improving. I had vague recollections of those events but
they were not as clear as my memories of other events immediately before
previous seizures. “I don’t recall much of it.”

“The red-hand Deceiver got here all right. We meant to start questioning him
that night. But you went back to your apartment, supposedly just walked through
the doorway and collapsed. Your mother-in-law, uncle, wife and brother-in-law
all agree. Probably the first, last and only time that will happen.”

“Probably. The old lady is like One-Eye. She disagrees just to be disagreeable.”

“Hey! Kid . . . ”

“Quiet,” Croaker told him. “So you just fell down and went rigid. Your wife got
hysterical. Your brother-in-law came for me. We took you out of there to ease
the stress on your family.”

Ease the stress? Those people never heard of the word. Besides, Sarie was the
only one of them I considered family.

Goblin said, “Open your mouth, Murgen.” He turned my face to the best light and
stared down my throat. “No damage in here.”

I knew what they thought. Epilepsy. I had considered that myself. I had asked
about it of anyone who would listen. But no epileptic I ever heard of got
bounced into the past from a seizure. Into a past that was never exactly like
the past I had lived already.

“I told you it isn’t a disease,” Croaker growled. “When you find the answer it
will be right there inside your own field and you’ll probably feel stupid about
not having seen it earlier.”

“If there’s anything to be found we’ll find it,” One-Eye promised. Which left me
wondering what he had up his sleeve. Then I knew that I had to know already
because they were going to tell me pretty soon. But I could not recall that
future clearly enough to grasp it.

Sometimes it was spooky being me.

“Was that headless character there again?” Croaker asked.

After figuring out what he meant I said, “Yes. But he was faceless, boss. Not
headless. He had a head.”

“Might represent the source of the problem,” One-Eye suggested. “You ever
remember any features, anything at all, tell somebody. Or get it written down
right away.”

Croaker told me, “I don’t want this to happen to anybody else. Can you imagine
managing a campaign when your people can fade out on you any minute, for days at
a time?”

I felt confident that that would not happen. But I didn’t say so because they
would press me on it and I did not feel like being poked and prodded. “I need
something for a headache. Please. A hangover kind of headache.”

“Did you have this headache the other times?” Croaker demanded. “You never
mentioned it.”

“It was there but not this bad. Just a minor discomfort. A four-beer hangover
kind of headache, if it was beer brewed by Willow Swan and Cordy Mather. That
mean anything?”

Croaker smiled at the reference to the world’s second worst beer. “Between me
and Goblin we watched you almost every minute since you got back from the Grove
of Doom. It seemed likely that this would keep happening. I didn’t want us to
miss anything.”

And that keyed a serious question. Since while I am in this time I can remember
the future occasionally how come I never remember the trips to the past that I
am going to make?

And how could they watch me that closely? I never noticed them. And I try to
stay alert. You never know when a Deceiver might pop out of a shadow swinging
his strangling scarf.

“So what did you get?”

“We didn’t see a thing.”

“I am on the job now, though,” One-Eye said, preening.

“Now that really inspires me with confidence.”

“Everybody’s got to be a wiseass anymore,” One-Eye complained. “I remember when
young people respected their elders.”

“That was in the days when they didn’t get a chance to know the old folks very
well.”

“I have work to do,” Croaker said. “One-Eye, stick with Murgen when you can.

Keep talking about Dejagore and what’s been happening to him. There’ll be clues
there somewhere. Maybe we don’t recognize them yet. If we keep at it something
will pop.” He left before I could say anything.

Something had passed between Croaker and One-Eye about and beyond me. And maybe
we all had cause to be concerned. This time I could not remember much about
where I was. Things seemed to be new, first time, yet some shaking, terrified
little creature way back in the night warrens of my mind insisted I was still
reliving yesterdays and the worst of those were yet to come.

One-Eye said, “I think we’ll just take you home now, Kid. Your wife will have
the cure for what ails you.”

She might. She was a miracle. Even One-Eye, who seems incapable of offering
respect to anyone, treated her and spoke to and of her, as though he considered
her an honored lady.

She is, of course. But it is nice to have others confirm that.

“Now that’s the first thing you’ve said that I wanted to hear. Lead on,

brother.” I didn’t know the way.

I cast a backward glance at Smoke and the covered Deceiver. What in the hell?

My in-laws make very little effort to improve anyone’s opinion of Nyueng Bao.

Mother Gota, in particular, is a major pain in the ass. The old battleaxe barely
tolerates even me and that only because the alternative is to lose her daughter
entirely. She is very nasty toward the Old Man.

Still, Sarie and I rated enough for Croaker to insist we swap quarters when her
folks showed up last month, in town slumming from their glamorous swamps. But
they won’t make it back to paradise if Mother Gota doesn’t control her lip in
the street.

The Old Man never reacts to her constant complaints. He told me, “I’ve had
thirty years of Goblin and One-Eye. One crabby old woman hurting from gout and
arthritis is nothing. You did say she’s only here for a few weeks, didn’t you?”

Right. I did say that. I wondered how those words would taste with soy sauce. Or
maybe a lot of curry.

Now that Lady is in the south most of the time, emptying her cornucopia of rage
onto the Shadowlands, Croaker has no need for a large apartment. Our old space
was little more than a monk’s cell. There is just room enough for him, Lady when
she visits, and a cradle that was given to Lady by a man named Ram who later
died trying to protect her and her baby from Narayan Singh. Ram made that cradle
himself. Most likely he died because, like almost every man who spends much time
around Lady, he fell for the wrong woman.

Croaker gave me his apartment, all right, but it came with limitations. I could
not turn it into the new home of the Nyueng Bao. Sahra and Thai Dei belonged.

Mother Gota and Uncle Doj were welcome for visits. And not one freeloading
cousin or nephew more.

People who accuse the Captain of using his position to feather his nest ought to
take a close look at the nest. The Liberator, Mr. By Golly Military Despot of
all the Taglians and their many conquests and dependencies, lives just the way
he did back when he was only the Company physician and Annalist.

Also, he moved me to provide me adequate work space. He sets great store by
these Annals.

My books are not coming out so good. I don’t always get stuff down the best way.

In his time, when he was on the mark, Croaker was really good. I can’t help
comparing my stuff to his. When he tried to be Captain and Annalist at the same
time his work suffered. And Lady’s writing strikes me as too direct, too curt,

and sometimes mildly self-indulgent. Neither was honest all the time and neither
considered trying to be consistent with the other, with their predecessors, or
even with their own earlier selves. If you read either one closely and you spot
some of their slips, neither will admit any screwup. If Croaker says that it is
eight hundred miles from Taglios to Shadowcatch and Lady calls it four hundred,

who is correct? Both say they are. Lady says the discrepancy is because they
grew up in different places and times where different weights and measures were
in use.

What about character? They for sure see with different eyes there. You will
never catch Croaker portraying a Willow Swan who is not bitching about
something. Lady makes Swan energetic and rattle-mouthed and a lot more mellow.

And the difference could be that both Croaker and Lady know Swan’s interest in
Lady is not brotherly.

And consider how they saw Smoke. You wouldn’t think they they were writing about
the same animal, they looked at that traitor so differently. Then there is
Mogaba. And Blade. Both blackhearted traitors, too. There is nothing in
Croaker’s Annals because he was no longer writing when Blade deserted but in
daily life, constantly, he shows you that he hates Blade with a blue-assed
passion, on no rational basis. Meantime, he seems almost willing to forgive
Mogaba. Lady sees those two the other way around. She would broil Mogaba right
in the same pot with Narayan and probably let Blade go. Blade was another case
like Ram and Swan. I guess you don’t need to agree on everything to be lovers.

They wrote differently, too. Croaker mostly kept his Annals as he went along,

then went back later to fill in after he heard from other sources. He tended to
fictionalize his secondary viewpoints, too, so his Annals are not always
absolutely straightforward history.

Lady wrote her entire book after the fact, from memory, while she was laid up
waiting to have her baby. Her alternate viewpoint material is mainly secondhand
hearsay. I am replacing her more dubious stuff with material I consider more
accurate while I am in the process of putting all the confused stuff into a
uniform format.

Lady is not always pleased with my efforts, he understated.

My major fault is getting trapped in elaborate digressions. I have trouble
leaving things out. I spent some time with the official historians at Taglios’s
royal library and those guys assured me that the real keys to history are the
details. Like the entire course of history can veer sharply because one man gets
dinged by a random arrow during a minor skirmish.

My writing room is fifteen feet by twenty-two. That gives me space for all my
references, for copies of the old Annals, and for a large trestle table where I
work on several projects at once. And there is an acre of floor space left for
Thai Dei and Uncle Doj.

While I write and study and revise he and Thai Dei clack away with wooden
practice swords or squeal and kick and bounce off the walls. Whenever one of
them lands in my space I toss him back. They are amazingly good at what they
do—they ought to be with all that practice—but I think they are more likely to
hurt each other than any seriously large person, like our Old Crew guys.

I like this job. It beats hell out of being standardbearer though I am stuck
with that, too, still. The standardbearer is always the first guy into a scrape
and he always has one hand tied up keeping a bigass pole from falling over.

I worry about not catching details the way Croaker did. And I envy him his
naturally sardonic tone. He claims he did good only because he had the time. In
those days the Black Company was just a raggedyass gang sneaking around the edge
of things and there wasn’t much going on. Nowadays we are in the deep shit all
the time. I don’t like that. Neither does the Captain.

I cannot imagine a man less pleased about having the power that has fallen into
his lap, mostly by default. He keeps it and uses it only because he doesn’t
believe anyone else will take the Company where he is convinced that it has to
go.

I managed to get along for several hours without falling down a well into the
past. I wasn’t feeling badly. Sarie was in an excellent mood despite all her
mother could do to ruin our day. I was lost in my work, as comfortable with
existence as ever I get.

Somebody came to the door.

Sarie showed the Captain into the apartment. Uncle Doj and Thai Dei continued
clacking away. Croaker watched for a minute. “Unusual,” he said. He did not
sound impressed.

“It’s not military,” I told him. “It’s fencing for loners. Nyueng Bao are big on
lone-wolf heroes.” Not so the Old Man. His belief that you need brothers to
guard your back amounts to a religious conviction.

Nyueng Bao fencing technique consists of brief but intense flurries of attack
and defense separated by inactive periods during which the fighters freeze in
odd stances, shifting almost imperceptibly as they try to anticipate one
another.

Uncle Doj is very good.

“I’ll grant you, they’re graceful, Murgen. Almost like hutsch dancers.”

By marrying into Sarie’s clan I bought into Nyueng Bao fighting styles. No
choice, really. Uncle Doj insisted. I am not terribly interested but I go along
to keep the peace. And it is good exercise. “It’s all stylized, Captain. Every
stance and stroke has its name.” Which I consider a weakness. Any fighter that
set in his ways ought to be easy meat for an innovator.

On the other hand, I did see Uncle Doj deal with real enemies at Dejagore.

I changed languages. “Uncle, will you permit my Captain to meet Ash Wand?” They
had taken the measure of one another long enough.

Ash Wand is Uncle Doj’s sword. He calls it his soul. He treats it better than he
would any mistress.

Uncle Doj disengaged from Thai Dei, bowed slightly, departed. In moments he was
back with a monster sword. It was three feet long. He drew it carefully,

presented it to Croaker lying along his left forearm, where the steel would not
contact moist or oily skin. He bowed slightly as he did so.

He wanted us to believe he spoke no Taglian, A vain pretense. I knew him back
when he was fluent.

Croaker knew something about Nyueng Bao customs. He accepted Ash Wand with
proper care and courtesy, as though deeply honored.

Uncle Doj ate that up.

Croaker grasped the two-hand hilt clumsily. On purpose, I suspect. Uncle Doj
darted in to demonstrate the proper grip, the way he does with me during every
training session. That old boy is spry. He has ten years on Croaker but moves
more easily than I do. And he possesses remarkable patience.

“Fine balance,” the Captain said in Taglian. It would not surprise me to learn
that he had picked up Nyueng Bao, though. He has an easy way with languages.

“But this had better be superior steel.” Because the blade was thin and narrow.

I told him, “He says it’s four hundred years old and will cut plate armor. I
guarantee it cuts people just fine. I saw him use it more than once.”

“During the siege.” Croaker studied the blade near the sword’s hilt. “Yes.”

“Hallmark of Dinh Luc Doc.”

Eyes suddenly narrow, usually stolid expression shoved aside by surprise, Uncle
Doj reclaimed his lover quickly. That Croaker might know something about Nyueng
Bao swordsmiths apparently troubled him. Croaker might not be nearly as stupid
as foreigners were supposed to be.

Uncle Doj harvested one of his feeble crops of hair, drew it across Ash Wand’s
edge with predictable results. Croaker observed, “A man could get cut and never
know it.”

“It happens,” I told him. “You wanted something?” Sarie brought tea. The Old Man
accepted even though he doesn’t like tea. He watched me watch her, amused.

Whenever Sahra is in a room I have trouble paying attention to anything else.

She gets more beautiful every time I see her. I cannot believe my luck. I keep
being scared that I will wake up. Cold shivers.

“You have a definite prize there, Murgen.” Croaker had told me so before. He
approved of Sarie. It was her family that troubled him. “How come you married
the whole kaboodle?” For that he shifted to Forsberger. None of the others spoke
that northern tongue.

“You had to be there.” Which is really all you can say about Dejagore. The
Nyueng Bao and Old Crew became alloyed by the living nightmare.

Mother Gota materialized. All four feet ten inches of bile. She glared at the
Captain. “Aha! The great man himself!” Her Taglian is an abomination but she
refuses to believe that. Those who fail to understand her do so on purpose, to
mock her.

She circled Croaker, walking her bowlegged walk. Nearly as wide as she is tall,

without being really fat, ugly, waddling that waddle, she looked like a
miniature troll. And her own people call her The Troll behind her back. And she
has the personality. She could test the patience of a stone.

Thai Dei and Sahra were very late children. I pray my wife will not come to
resemble her mother later, in character or physically. Like her grandmother
would be fine, though.

Cold in here.

“Why so hard you push my Sahra’s man, ho, Mr. So High and Mighty Liberator?” She
hawked and spat to one side, the meaning of that no different to Nyueng Bao than
anyone else. She rattled faster and faster. The faster she yakked the faster she
waddled. “You think maybe he slave be? Warrior not? No time for grandmother to
make of me, him always away to do for you?” She hawked and blank spat again.

She was a grandmother all right. But none were mine and none were alive anymore.

I didn’t remind her. No need attracting her attention.

An hour earlier she had climbed all over me because I was a no good bonehead
lackwit layabout who wasted all his time reading and writing. Hardly the sort of
thing a grown man does with his time.

Nothing ever satisfies Mother Gota. Croaker says that is because she hurts all
the time. He pretended he could not fathom her broken Taglian. “Yes, it really
is lovely weather. For this time of year. The agricultural specialists tell me
we will make two crops this year. Do you think you’ll be able to double harvest
your rice?”

Hawk and spit, then a lapse into ferocious Nyueng Bao liberally spiced with
imaginative epithets, not all of them native to her birth tongue. Mother Gota
hates being humored or ignored more than she hates everything else.

Somebody pounded on my door. Sarie was busy doing something somewhere that kept
her from being close enough to her mother to become embarrassed. I went. I found
One-Eye stinking up the hallway. The little wizard asked, “How you doing, Kid?

Here.” He shoved a smelly, ragged, grubby bundle of papers into my hands. “The
Old Man here ?”

“What kind of sorcerer are you if you don’t know the answer to that?”

“A lazy sorcerer.”

I stepped aside. “What’s this mess?” I lifted the bundle.

“Them papers you been after me about. My notes and Annals.” He ambled over to
the Captain.

I stared down at the mess in my hands. Some of the papers were moldy. Some were
waterstained. That was One-Eye. Four years late. I hoped the little rat did not
hang around. He would shed lice and fleas. He takes a bath only if he gets drunk
and falls in a canal. And that damned hat . . . I am going to burn it someday.

One-Eye whispered to the Captain. The Captain whispered back. Mother Gota tried
to eavesdrop. They changed to a language she did not know. She sucked in a
bushel of air and went to work.