Bleak Seasons (14 page)

was the final straw, or perhaps the back-breaker was his awareness that even his
Nar compatriots now believed the real Captain might still live. Whatever, the
ultimate and perfect warrior drifted across a boundary from beyond which he
could not return. And we did not discover the truth until we had paid in
treasures of pain.

It took ten days for Dejagore to return to normal if normal was our state before
the great attack. Both sides had suffered terribly. I believed Shadowspinner
would now just lick his wounds and let us get hungry for a while.

“Got something for you, Kid.” I started awake. “What . . . ?” What happened? I
don’t drift off that way.

One-Eye had a big shit-eating grin on but it evaporated when he looked at me
closer. He darted in, grabbed my chin, turned my head right and left. “You just
have one of your spells?”

“Spells?”

“You know what I mean.”

Not exactly. I just had their word for the fact that I went spooky sometimes.

“You’ve got a kind of psychic shimmer. Maybe I caught you just in time.”

He and Goblin kept talking about doing experiments to find out what is happening
but there never seemed to be time to actually do anything. “What do you have?”

“The work parties broke into the old catacombs this morning.”

“Longo told me.”

“Everybody’s charging around in there, all excited.”

“I can imagine. Find any treasure yet?”

One-Eye looked put-upon. For such a blackhearted toad he can manage a truly
impressive show of self-righteous injury.

“I take it not.”

“We found some books. A whole pile. All sealed up neat and everything. Looks
like they’ve been there since the Shadowmasters first came.”

“Makes sense since they always burned the books and the priests. You find any
priests lurking down there?”

“Not hardly. Look, I got to get back.” Before somebody grabbed a treasure out
from under him, no doubt. “I got a couple guys lugging them books up for you.”

“Gods forfend you should have lifted anything yourself.”

“You got a serious attitude problem, Kid. I’m an old man.” One-Eye did a fade.

He has that knack when he is about to find himself in an indefensible position.

A city seldom is buttoned up so tight that no news gets in from outside.

Sometimes it seems almost mystical but the word does come through. In Dejagore
rumor seldom brought in anything Mogaba wanted to hear.

I was studying the discovered books, so intrigued I was letting duties slide.

They were written in Jaicuri but the written form thereof is almost identical to
written Taglian.

Goblin stepped in. “You doing all right? No more dizziness?”

“No. You guys worry too much.”

“No, we don’t. Look, some new rumors are going around. There’s supposedly a
relief column headed our way. Blade, of all people, is in charge.”

“Blade? He isn’t . . . He’s never run anything bigger than a reduced company.

Before we ever got here. Fighting guerrilla style against amateurs.”

“I don’t make them up, I just report them. He did do well.”

“So did Willow Swan and Cordy Mather. But that was accident and luck and
Shadowlander stupidity more than anything those three actually did. Why on earth
is he commanding an army?”

“He’s supposedly Lady’s second in command. Not much doubt anymore that she
survived. She’s also pissed off. And putting together a new army.”

“Bet Mogaba’s jumping for joy. Running around hollering, ‘We’re saved! We’re
saved!’ ”

“You might say he’s jumping.”

Over the following few days we heard a thousand wild stories. If a tenth were
true some really bizarre changes were underway out there in the world.

“You heard the latest?” Goblin asked me one night when I took a rare break from
the books to examine that outer world from the wall. “Lady ain’t Lady after all.

She’s the incarnation of some goddess named Kina. A real badass, too,

apparently.”

“She would be. Thai Dei. You know Kina, don’t you? Tell us about her.” Thai Dei
wasn’t allowed into our warrens but he always turned up whenever I came up for
air.

He forgot all three words of Taglian he had admitted to knowing. The name of
that goddess scrubbed his brain clean.

I said, “That’s what happens when you mention Kina to any of these people. I
can’t even get our prisoners to talk about her. You would think she belonged to
the Black Company.”

“Must be a real charmer,” Bucket opined.

“Oh, she is. She is. There’s one.” I meant a shooting star. We were keeping
count. Also of enemy watchfires. The southerners had scattered in small unit
encampments around the plain recently. I guess they were afraid we might sneak
away.

“You know something about her, then?” Goblin asked.

“From those books you guys found.” The men were bitter. The books and some
sealed jars filled with grain were the only treasures they unearthed. The Gunni
were the majority religion in Jaicur and the Gunni do not bury their dead. They
burn them. The minority Vehdna do bury their dead but do not include any grave
goods. Where their dead are bound they have no need of luggage. In paradise
everything is provided. In hell, too. “One was a compilation of Gunni myths, in
variants from all over. The guy who recorded them was a religious scholar. His
book wasn’t meant to get out where it might confuse ordinary people.”

“I’m confused and there ain’t nothing ordinary about me,” Bucket observed.

“So what’s the scoop, Murgen? How come they won’t tell us about this bitch?

Whoa! Did you see that one? It exploded.”

“All right,” I told them. “The Gunni religion is the most common one around
here.”

“I think we know that, Murgen,” Goblin said.

“Just making the point. Most people down here believe in Kina. Even if they’re
not Gunni, they believe. Here’s the story. The Gunni have Lords of Light and
Lords of Darkness. They’ve been doing their lording since the beginning of
time.”

“Sounds like standard stuff.”

“It is. Only the value systems are different from what we knew back home. The
balance between darkness and light is more dynamic here, and isn’t weighted the
same emotionally as our struggle between good and evil. Moreover, Kina is a sort
of self-elevated outside agency of decay and corruption that attacks both
darkness and light. She was created by the Lords of Light to help defeat a horde
of really nasty demons they couldn’t handle any other way. She helped by eating
the demons. Naturally, she got fat. And apparently wanted dessert because she
tried to eat everybody else, too.”

“She was stronger than the gods who created her?”

“Guys, I didn’t make this stuff up. Don’t ask me to rationalize it. Goblin,

you’ve been everywhere. You ever seen a religion that can’t be picked to shreds
by any nonbeliever with brains enough to tie his own bootlaces?”

Goblin shrugged. “You’re as cynical as Croaker was.”

“Yeah? Good for me. Anyway, there’s a lot of typically murky mythological stuff
about mothers and fathers and vicious, hideous, probably incestuous carryings-on
amongst the other gods while Kina kept getting stronger. She was real sneaky.

That’s one of her attributes. Deceit. But then her main creator, or father,

tricked her and put a sleep spell on her. She’s still snoring away somewhere but
she can touch our world through her dreams.

“She’s got her worshippers. All Gunni deities do. Big, little, good, bad,

indifferent, they all have their temples and priesthoods. I can’t find out much
about Kina’s followers. They’re called Deceivers. The soldiers won’t talk about
them. They flat refuse, like naming Kina might actually waken her. Which, I
gather, is the holy mission of her worshippers.”

“Too weird for me,” Bucket grumbled. Goblin said, “That explains why Lady scares
the shit out of everybody whenever she dresses up. If they really think she’s
turned into this goddess.”

“I figure we should find out everything we can about this Kina.”

“Crack plan, Murgen. How? If nobody will talk?” Yeah. Even the boldest Taglians
threatened to get the vapors if I pressed. It was obvious that they were not
just terrified of this goddess. They were scared of me, too.

One-Eye brought heartening news. “This stuff about the relief force is gold,

boss. Every night now Spinner is sneaking troops out through the hills like he
don’t think we can see them go if it’s dark.”

“Could he be giving up the siege?”

“The troops are all headed north. Home ain’t north.”

I did not offer another alternative. One-Eye would not have come if he was not
sure.

Of course, One-Eye being sure never meant that One-Eye was right. He was
One-Eye.

I thanked him, sent him to do a small chore, found Goblin and asked him what he
thought. The little wizard seemed surprised I would bother. “Did One-Eye stutter
or something?”

“No. But he’s One-Eye.”

Goblin could not contain his big frog grin. That made perfect sense to him.

Nobody relayed the news to Mogaba. I thought it would go easier for everybody if
he didn’t know. But Mogaba heard rumors, too.

Dejagore was a nightmare town filled with factions only loosely united in
defiance of the besiegers. Mogaba’s forces were the strongest. The Jaicuri were
most numerous. We Old Crew, with our auxiliaries, were less numerous and less
powerful. But boy were we strong in our righteousness.

And then there were the Nyueng Bao. The Nyueng Bao remained an enigma.

Ky Dam’s family occupied the same dismal, filthy, smoky, pungent hole until the
deluge drove them out. The perquisites of power did not appeal to the Speaker.

He had a place to get out of the rain. That was enough.

Maybe that was more than he had had back in the swamp.

He did share with a troop of descendants who stopped bickering only when the
outsider came around. And then the children restrained themselves only for a
while.

On successive afternoons Ky Dam summoned me to consult on trivial matters. We
faced each other over tea served by the beautiful granddaughter while the
children quickly lost their awe of me and resumed brawling. We traded
information on friends and enemies. That fevered character in the shadows moaned
and groaned.

I did not like that. He was dying. But he was taking a long, long time getting
it done. Every time he cried out the beautiful one went to him. I ached in
sympathy. She was so haggard.

Second visit I said something to indicate sympathy, one of those things you toss
off without much thought. Ky Dam’s wife, whom I now knew to be named Hong Tray,

glanced up from her tea, startled. She said three soft words to Ky Dam.

The old man nodded. “Thank you for your concern, Stone Soldier, but it is
misplaced. Danh welcomed a devil into his soul. Now he pays the due.”

A burst of rapid, liquid Nyueng Bao erupted from the shadows. A squat old woman
waddled into the light. She was bow-legged, ugly as a warthog, in a vicious
humor. She barked at me. She was Ky Gota, the Speaker’s daughter and my shadow
Thai Dei’s mother. She was a dark legend among her own people. I have no idea
what she was on about but I got the feeling that she laid all the ills of the
world squarely at my feet.

Ky Dam said something gently. It did not get through. Hong Tray repeated his
words, more gently, in a whisper. Silence fell instantly. Ky Gota scurried into
the shadows.

The Speaker offered, “In all our lives we enjoy successes and failures. My great
sorrow is my daughter Gota. She has within her a cancer of agony she cannot
conquer. She insists on sharing it with the rest of us.” A tiny smile touched
his lips. This was self-deprecating humor, meant to inform me that he was
speaking metaphorically. “Her great failure, the wellspring of heartbreak for
all of us, was her hasty choice of Sam Danh Qu as the husband for her daughter.”

He indicated the beautiful flower. The flower betrayed a blush as she knelt to
refill our cups. There was no doubt that all these people understood Taglian
perfectly.

Ky Dam added, “That is the one great error that Gota cannot deny, a culmination
of deficiencies that is like a brand. She was widowed young. She arranged the
marriage hoping to enjoy her elder years luxuriating on the wealth of the Sams.”

The Speaker showed me that little smile again, probably sensing my incredulity.

Wealth and Nyueng Bao are contradictory concepts. The old man continued, “Danh
was clever. He concealed the fact that he had been disinherited because of his
cruelty and wickedness and treachery. Gota was too much in a hurry to
investigate harsh rumors. And Danh’s evil only grew worse after the nuptials.

But that is enough about me and mine. I asked you here because I wish to keep an
eye on the character of the leader of the Bone Warriors.”

I had to ask. “Why do you call us that? Does it mean anything?”

Ky Dam traded looks with his wife. I sighed. “I get it. It’s more of the Black
Company claptrap everybody does. You think we’re something our predecessors were
supposed to have been four hundred years ago, only probably weren’t because oral
history exaggerates ridiculously. Speaker, listen. The Black Company is just a
gang of outcasts. Really. We’re plain old mercenary soldiers caught up in
circumstances we don’t understand and really don’t like. We’re just passing
through. We came this way because our Captain has a bug up his ass about the
Company’s history. Most of the rest of us couldn’t think of anything else we
wanted to do more.” I told him about Silent and Darling and others who had
parted with the brotherhood rather than hazard the long journey south. “I
promise you, whatever scares everybody—and I wish somebody would tell me what
that is—it would have to involve way more work than I’m willing to put into
anything.”

The old man eyed, me, glanced at his wife. She said and did nothing but
something passed between them. Ky Dam nodded.