Soldiers Live (12 page)

Khatovar:

Invasion
Swan volunteered to slither down to the shadowgate with me. I demurred. “I think
I’ll take my sweetheart. We don’t get many chances to get away together.” And
she would have a steadier hand than I would when it came to working on the
shadowgate. Which, even from the head of the slope, could be seen to need
restoration.

After examining the shadowgate from a closer vantage, I told my beloved, “Bowalk
really tore it up getting through.”

“She had shadows gnawing on her. According to what Sleepy says Shivetya showed
her. Tell me you’d be gentle and not slam the door if you had those things after
you.”

“I don’t even want to think about it. Are we safe? Is anything out there
watching?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I have a little power here on the plain. A dim one-hundredth of what used to
be. But outside the shadowgates I might as well be deaf, dumb and blind. All I
can do is pretend.”

“So Kina is alive, then?”

“Possibly. If I’m not just tapping Shivetya or some residual, ambient power. The
plain is a place of many strange energies. They leak in from the different
worlds.”

“But you believe you’re bleeding Kina again. Don’t you?”

“If I am, she’s not just sleeping, she’s in a coma.”

“There!”

“There what?”

“I thought I saw something move.”

“That was just the breeze stirring the branches.”

“You think so? I’m not inclined to take chances.”

The sarky witch said, “You stand guard. I’ll work on the gate.”

If she did I could not tell. She was less active than I would have been.

We were through. Into Khatovar. I did not feel like I had found my way into
paradise. I did not feel like I had come home. I felt the letdown I had expected
almost from the moment I had become aware that my lust to find Khatovar had been
imposed upon me from without. Khadi’s Gate was a wasteland.

Clete and Loftus started laying out a camp close enough to the gate that we
could make a quick getaway if that became necessary. I was still at the gate
itself, surveying this world where the Black Company had been born.

Definitely the disappointment I had anticipated. Maybe even worse.

Something stirred the hair on the back of my neck. I turned. I saw nothing but
had a distinct feeling that something had just come through the shadowgate.

I caught movement in the edge of my vision. Something dark. A shape both large
and ugly.

One of the Black Hounds.

The back of my neck went cool again. Then again.

Maybe Tobo was coming after all.

The darker of my two ravens settled onto a nearby boulder. After a shower of
hisses directed nowhere in particular, it cocked a big yellow eye my way and
said, “There are no occupied human dwellings within fifty miles. The ruins of a
city lie under the trees below the rocky prominence to the northeast. There are
signs that humans visit it occasionally.”

I gaped. That damned bird was better-spoken than most of my companions. But
before I could strike up a conversation, it took to the air again.

So there were people in this world. But the closest were at least three days
away.

The promontory the bird mentioned was the place where the fortress Overlook had
stood in our own world. The ruins likely occupied the same site as Kiaulune.

Another chill on the neck. The Unknown Shadows continued to come through.

I went down to camp. The engineer brothers were old but efficient. It was
livable right now—as long as we got no rain.

The rain would be along before long. It was clear it rained often here.

Fires were burning. Somebody had killed a wild pig. It smelled heavenly,

roasting. Shelters were going up. Sentries were out. Uncle Doj had appointed
himself sergeant of the guard and was making a circuit of the four guardposts.

I waited till Murgen found something to occupy him, beckoned Swan and Lady.

“Let’s think about what we do now.” I looked my wife in the eye. She understood
what I wanted to know. She shook her head.

There was no Khatovaran source of magical power she could parasitize.

I grumped, “I didn’t expect towers of pearl and ruby beside streets of gold, but
this is ridiculous.” I checked Doj and Murgen. They showed no interest in us
yet.

“Sour grapes.” Swan sneered, heading straight for the critical point. “That’s a
whole world out there. Damned near empty, it looks like. How do you expect to
find one insane killer monster?”

“I got to thinking about that while I was standing up there looking at all this.

Amongst other things. And I think I’ve had an evil epiphany.”

Lady contributed to the Annals and tried to keep up with her successors. She
shook her head, said, “There isn’t much in what she wrote.”

Swan glanced around. Nobody was close. In a soft voice he said, “She hasn’t been
writing the histories since you came back, has she?”

I asked, “What’s that mean?”

“Over the years Tobo and Suvrin and some of their cronies have visited most of
the shadowgates. They visited the Khatovar gate several times.”

“How do you know?”

“I sneak around. I listen when I’m not supposed to hear. I know Suvrin and Tobo
came out here while you were wounded. Just the two of them. And later, while we
were in Khang Phi, Suvrin went out again. Alone.”

“Then I’m right. We’ve been jobbed. How come you didn’t mention this before?”

“It had to do with Khatovar. I figured you were behind whatever was going on.”

Lady made a growling, chuckling sound that told me she had a handle on the
truth. “That devious little witch. You really think so?”

Swan asked, “What am I missing?”

I told him, “I think we’re out here raiding Khatovar not because I’m so damned
clever but because Sleepy wants us old farts out from under foot when she breaks
out into the homeworld. I’ll bet the whole damned force is moving right now. And
Sleepy won’t have a single one of us asking questions or giving advice or trying
to do things our own way.”

Swan took a while to think about it. Then he took a while to look around at the
gang who had elected to defy the command authority to pursue revenge on
One-Eye’s killer. He said, “Either she is really an astute little bitch or we’ve
been around so many sneaky people so long that we see machinations everywhere we
look.”

“Tobo knew,” I said. Tobo had to be part of it. He let his father and Uncle Doj
come out here . . . “You know, I’m so paranoid I’m going to put a guard on the
gate from the other side. And I’ll fill them up with lies about how a demon in
the guise of one of our people might try to sabotage the gate so we can’t get
back out of Khatovar.”

Neither Lady nor Swan argued. Swan did remark. “You are paranoid. You think
Sahra would let Sleepy get away with leaving Thai Dei, Murgen and Doj trapped
out here?”

“I think it’s a mad universe. I think almost anything somebody can imagine
happening can happen. Even the cruelest, blackest sin.”

Lady asked, “And what do you intend to do about it?”

“I’m going to kill the forvalaka.”

Swan said, “Murgen’s noticed that something’s going on. He’s headed this way.”

“I’m going to play the game. Tobo sent a bunch of his pets through after us.

Let’s make sure they can’t get back out unless we let them go. We’ll use them to
find Bowalk. Then we’ll kill her.”

Glittering Stone:

Fortress with No Name
Sleepy reached the fortress at the heart of the plain by the expedient of
refusing to be steered elsewhere. Shivetya’s helpful shortcuts were not going to
divert her from examining the root of her scheme for conquest.

There was one temporal power greater than the greatest sorcery. Greed. And she
owned the wellspring of a flood of what the greedy held most dear: gold. Not to
mention silver and gems and pearls.

For thousands of years fugitives from many worlds had hidden their treasures in
the caverns beneath Shivetya’s throne. Who knew why? Possibly Shivetya. But
Shivetya would not tell tales—unless they advanced his cause. Shivetya had the
mind and soul of an immortal spider. Shivetya had no remorse, no compassion,

knew only his task and his will to end it. He was the Company’s ally but he was
not the Company’s friend. He would destroy the Company instantly if that suited
an altered purpose and he was in a position to do so.

Sleepy meant to cover her back. She approached Baladitya. “Where’s Blade?”

Baladitya had begun gushing discoveries he had made since being handed his
mission. Sleepy felt a twinge of guilt. She remembered Baladitya’s kind of
excitement, long ago and far away. But being responsible for thousands of
people, pursuing a timetable with very little slippage built in, left no
opportunity for simple pleasures. That made her cranky and curt, sometimes.

“He’s down below. He doesn’t come up much anymore.” Irked, Sleepy looked around
for someone young enough to gallop a mile down into the earth. She spied Tobo
and Sahra arguing. Not exactly unusual. But not so frequently lately. They had
been butting heads since Tobo entered puberty.

One of Tobo’s djinn could get down there faster than the youngest pair of legs.

“Tobo!” Sleepy beckoned.

Exasperation flashed across the boy’s face. Everyone wanted something from him.

He did respond. He showed no defiance. He never did. His calm half-caste face
settled into perfect nonexpression. Nor did his stance in any way betray what he
might be thinking. Sleepy seldom saw anyone so inscrutable. And yet he was so
young.

He just stood waiting for her to tell him what she wanted. “Blade is down below
somewhere. Send one of your messengers to tell him I want him up here.”

“Can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have any here. I’ve explained before. The Unknown Shadows hate the
plain. It’s very difficult to get them to come up here. Most of those who do
come refuse to have anything to do with people. I don’t want them to have
anything to do with people. It puts them in a bad temper every time. You have a
whole regiment cluttering up the place. There must be a man somewhere who
doesn’t have something else to do.”

Sarcastic infidel. There were twelve hundred men cooling their heels around the
fortress, waiting to lead the treasure train, doing nothing useful in the
interim. “I was looking for something a little faster.” Once the Company was on
the barren plain, even with Shivetya working wonders, there was little time to
waste.

There had been no good news from Suvrin, either. Tobo should have gone with him.

Or Doj or Lady, at the very least. Someone better equipped to deal with the
Unknown Shadows. But at the very least there should have been word that a
bridgehead had been established.

Baladitya said, “Then you’d better go down there yourself. Because he isn’t
going to respond to any lesser authority.”

“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 were some of the
structures around the sleeping old men. 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.