Soldiers Live (15 page)

The Taglian Territories:

The Blind Measures of Despair
Narayan groaned when the girl wakened him. He regained control quickly, however.

The Protector was out there somewhere, never closer than she had been these past
two days. The Daughter of Night’s valiant efforts, using talents she did not
understand, had been just enough to prevent their capture. But it was a close
thing every day. And the game might not last much longer. He and the girl had
nothing left. If the Protector brought in some of the shadows she controlled . .

.

“What is it?” he breathed. He fought the pain that was with him always nowadays.

“Something’s happened. Something big. I can feel it. It’s . . . I don’t know.

It’s like my mother woke up, took a look around, then went back to sleep.”

Narayan did not understand. He said so.

“It was her. I know. She touched me.” From confusion the girl moved swiftly
toward assurance and confidence. “She wanted me to know that she’s still there.

She wanted me to hang on. She wanted me to know things will be getting better
soon.”

Narayan, who had known the girl’s birth mother well, suspected the child took
after her aunt, the Protector, far more. The Protector was changeable. The
Daughter of Night’s moods could shift with a change in the breeze. He wished she
were more stable, like her mother. Although Lady could become obsessively
focused. For example, she was determined to even scores with him and the
Deceiver cult. She had been Kina’s tool but had no love or respect whatsoever
for the Goddess.

“Did you hear me, Narayan? She’s there! She’s not going to lay low much longer.”

“I heard. And I really am as excited as you are. But there are wonders and
wonders. We still have to get away from the Protector.” He indicated the sky to
their west. Crows swarmed not half a mile down the long, scrubby slope.

Soulcatcher had her obsessions, too. This chase had gone on forever,

successfully for neither party thereto. Did the Protector have no other work to
do? Who was managing Taglios and its territories? Deviltry was sure to flourish
in her absence.

From the beginning of the chase Narayan had been confident that Soulcatcher
would get bored and would turn to something else. She always did.

But not this time. This time she was dogged.

Why?

No telling with the Protector. She might have had a vision of the future. She
might be unable to think of a more amusing hobby. She was twisted inside. Her
motives might not always make sense even to her.

The crows began to fan out to the north of what must be Soulcatcher’s position.

They seemed to be interested in a slice of pie arc. They drifted on the breeze,

not working hard, slowly moving away. Narayan and the Daughter of Night watched
without moving. Crows were sharp of eye. If the two most holy Deceivers could
see them, the crows could see the Deceivers in turn—if the girl’s erratic talent
failed for even a moment.

A single bird glided to the southeast, rather drunkenly, Narayan thought. Soon
no black bird could be seen in any direction.

Narayan said, “Let’s move on now. While we can. You know, I think that haze down
south might be the Dandha Presh. We’ll be in the mountains in another week. She
won’t have a hope of catching us there.”

He was whistling in the dark. And they both knew it.

The Daughter of Night led the way. She was far more mobile than Narayan.

Frequently she grew impatient with Narayan’s inability to keep up. Sometimes she
cursed him and hit him. He suspected that she would desert him if she had any
other resource. But her horizons never did extend far beyond the boundaries of
their cult and she understood that the living saint had far more influence with
the Deceivers than did any ill-schooled female messiah whose status as such was
accepted only because it bore the living saint’s chop of authenticity.

Narayan’s lagging actually saved them. The girl was squatting in brush, looking
back with ill-concealed irritation. “There’s a clearing. It’s big. Not much
cover. Shall we wait until dark? Or should we work our way around?” It was much
too difficult for her to keep them invisible when they were in the open.

Narayan sometimes wondered what she might have become had she grown up with her
birth mother. Lady would have turned her into a dark terror by now, he was
certain. Not for the first or even the hundredth time he wished Kina had allowed
him to sacrifice Lady the day he had claimed the newly born Daughter of Night.

His life since would have been much easier had the woman died then. “Let me
look.”

Narayan crouched. Pain clawed his bad leg as though someone was slashing him
with a dull knife. He peered out at a stony waste almost devoid of life—except
for a stunted, twisted stump of a tree smack in the middle. It stood just over
five feet tall. There was a familiar feeling to it. He had not seen it before
but knew he should recognize it. “Don’t move,” he told the Daughter of Night.

“Don’t even breathe fast. There’s something not quite right out there.”

He froze. The girl froze. She never questioned him in these things. He was right
every time.

It came to him eventually. He whispered. “That’s the Protector, that stump.

Wrapped inside an illusion. She’s used the trick before. I heard about it when I
was a prisoner of the Black Company. It was one of the devices she used when she
was stalking them and they kept telling each other to look out for it. Look
carefully at the root of that branch that twists around twice and ends in a
cluster of little twigs. See the crow hiding there?”

“Yes.”

“Back away carefully. Slowly. What? . . . Freeze!”

The girl froze. She remained unmoving for many minutes, until Narayan began to
relax. She murmured, “What was it?” Neither the stump nor the crow had done
anything alarming.

“There was something . . . ” But he was no longer sure. It had been there in the
corner of his eye for an instant but not there when he looked directly. “Over by
that big red boulder.”

“Hush!” The girl stared in another direction. “I think . . . There. Something .

. . I can’t see anything but I can feel it. I think it’s watching the tree . . .

”

Grrr!

Both felt rather than heard the growl from behind them.

Such was their self-discipline, after years on the run, that neither so much as
flinched. Something large and dark and not quite there trotted past. The living
saint’s mouth opened wide but no scream came forth. The girl drifted closer to
him without making any sudden movement.

What seemed like a series of large black cutouts of an unfamiliar animal
flickered across the open ground. It looked nothing like a dog. It had too many
limbs. But in its brief moment beside the stump it lifted a hind leg and loosed
a river.

And then, of course, it was not there anymore. But Soulcatcher was, in her own
form. And she was in a towering rage.

“Something has changed,” Narayan gasped through his pain.

“Something more than Mother.”

Something more than the Mother of Night.

Something that, from that moment onward, left them feeling as though they were
being watched every moment—even when they could see nothing around them
anywhere.

Khatovar:

The Lords of the Upper Air
My ravens worked hard. Within the same hour I learned that Sleepy had broken out
into our homeworld and that the forvalaka had left the Voroshk and was rushing
our way. I began issuing orders immediately. Bowalk could not possibly arrive
for hours but I wanted to make sure that each of my companions was exactly
positioned and that all of my resources could be brought to bear almost
instantly. Willow Swan followed me around reminding me that most of the fussing
I was doing was exactly the sort of half-ass officiousness I resented from
Sleepy.

“You want to make your future home in Khatovar, Swan?”

“Hey, don’t kill the messenger.”

I grunted unhappily, went and collected my sweetheart. “It’s time we got dressed
up. Get ready for the show.”

“Ooh!” she said. “I’ve always had a weakness for men in black with birds on
their shoulders.”

Our preparations were complete. Our dozen surviving fireball projectors were
positioned, I felt, to perfection to bring the forvalaka under saturating fire
as she attacked me. If that did not destroy her itself it would drive her to me,

directly onto One-Eye’s black spear. I looked forward to our confrontation. That
was unusual for me. I am not one of those men who enjoys the killing side of
this business.

The ravens had the monster just an hour away. People were having a last meal so
we could get the fires all put out before it arrived. There was a pig that Doj
had killed. It went fast. Not many vegetarians in my crew.

Murgen joined Lady and me where we were playing paper, rock, knife with Willow
Swan. “Goblin’s here. He just came over the rim of the plain. There’s two guys
with him. That’s a good look for you.” He had not yet seen the new Widowmaker
armor in action.

“Bless the Captain and her infinite wisdom,” I grumbled. “That was quick. Let’s
keep an eye on the little shit.” Like that needed repeating. I asked Lady,

“Should I put him to work?”

“Absolutely. Right out front. One-Eye was his best friend, wasn’t he?”

“Murgen, when he gets down here, after we talk to him, I want him positioned
down there where I put the pair of two-inchers. We don’t know if either of those
has anything left in them. Then have those guys fall back to cover the approach
to the shadowgate. You and Thai Dei stay with Goblin.”

Murgen offered me a carefully blank look.

“If you have to, stick him. Or bop him over the head. If he gives you a reason.”

“Which might be?”

“I don’t know. You’re an intelligent adult. Don’t you think you can tell if he
needs smacking around?”

“Don’t you think that that’s what those guys with him are there for?”

I had not thought of that. It did seem probable. “Are they men we know well
enough to trust completely?”

“I couldn’t make out who they were yet when I came over here.”

“Then the instruction stands.”

I studied Goblin intently. I had not seen him since before I had gone
underground. He had aged a lot. “Last I knew of you, you’d deserted.”

“I’m sure One-Eye explained all that.” The voice was the same but there was an
indefinable difference in the man that, probably, had more to do with time and
the betrayals of memory than it did with any evil new within him, but I have
never gone far wrong by being suspicious.

Goblin’s stature approached the extreme low altitude end of normal humanity. And
he was wide, despite not having eaten well in recent years. And he had almost no
hair at all anymore. Nor did he smile readily. He seemed infinitely tired, as
though he labored under a weight of weariness that stretched all the way back
into antiquity.

My long nap in the cave of the ancients had not been all that restful, either.

“One-Eye was a notorious liar. The way I heard it—fifteen years after the
fact—was that it was all your idea and he just got dragged along.”

“The Captain was satisfied.” He did not argue and he did not make light. And
that was the last clue I needed. There was no humor left in this Goblin. That
was the big change.

“Good for her. You’ve arrived just in time. The forvalaka is only minutes away.

We’re going to kill it this time. You didn’t lose any of your skills while you
were trapped, did you?”

Something stirred in the deeps of his eyes. It seemed cold and angry but might
have been just his irritation because so many pairs of eyes peered at him so
intently, so suddenly.

“Captain?”

That had to be one of the real old hands. Everyone else was out of the habit,

though many still called Lady “Lieutenant” because Sleepy never filled that
position officially. Sahra did much of the work despite her official status as
an outsider.

Why did we set such store by these tiny distinctions?

“What?”

“There’s movement out there. Probably the Black Hounds coursing the forvalaka.

Which means the monster is getting close.”

“Full alert. Murgen, show Goblin his post.” I clattered and clanked. The armor
was mainly costume but it was real and it was heavy.

“Captain!” From farther away. “Down there!” A man stood out of his concealment,

pointing.

I gawked.

“Shit!” Lady exploded. “Why the hell didn’t your crows tell us about that?” She
dove for cover.

Three flying things were headed toward us from the west, in a V formation. My
man had spotted them so far away that, despite their speed, we had time to
observe their approach. Eagle-eye there was a guy who deserved a bonus.

The flyers had made the mistake of approaching at an altitude calculated to
avoid the notice of the Unknown Shadows. That left them completely vulnerable to
detection by the naked eye because it silhouetted them against the clear blue
sky on the one day the weather chose to be neither overcast nor rainy.

Lady snapped. “You concentrate on the shape changer, darling. This is a
diversion. I’ll deal with it.” She shouted orders. I boomed a few of my own.

She was wrong, of course. The forvalaka was the diversion for those flying
Voroshk—though Bowalk would be convinced that the reverse was true. Once they
moved closer the airborne sorcerers appeared to be rippling lumps clinging to
long fenceposts. They were wrapped in and trailed acres of something resembling
black silk cloth.

They must have had some reason to believe that we would not be able to see them.

They made no effort not to be noticed.

When they slowed their approach I suspected immediately they wanted to
coordinate timing with the forvalaka—and I was right.

A burst of screams and dark fury erupted a scant hundred yards from our most
forward post. Unknown Shadows were all over the forvalaka. Exactly as they were
supposed to be, suddenly and briefly, at that point.

The moment Bowalk stopped charging to rip at the spooks they faded away.

For that moment she made a wonderful target.

The fireball projectors opened up.

Unfortunately, most that worked sped their blazing, unpredictable missiles
toward the Khatovaran sorcerers. Only two light bamboo pieces remained trained
on the monster. And one of those gave up the ghost after projecting just one
bilous green ball that flew in erractic skips and jerks but did graze the beast
along the flank scars she had gained during our previous encounter. She took a
solid hit in the shoulder from the other projector.

She could scream.

I did not look away. Lady kept talking, keeping me informed. She told me the
flyers had been surprised completely. That made me suspect that there had been
little honesty between Lisa Daele Bowalk and the Voroshk sorcerers.

They should have known. All of them.

The Voroshk were not entirely unprepared for trouble. They had surrounded
themselves with protective spells which did shunt the lightest fireballs
aside—usually from the path of the leader into those of the trailing two. But
those spells could not turn everything and they weakened quickly.

I was bracing to receive the charge of the forvalaka when one of the flyers
streaked across in front of me, behind Bowalk, tumbling, all that silk aflame. A
scream ended abruptly as the sorcerer impacted somewhere to my right.

My strategy was to channel the forvalaka toward me and One-Eye’s spear, hurting
it as much as possible as it approached. I had mounted the black spear in the
end of a twelve foot bamboo pole to give myself a little added reach. Once
Bowalk was pinned, the people with the fireballs could finish her off. Assuming
One-Eye’s spear had not lost its potency with his death.

And assuming the people with the fireballs were not busy with the distraction
overhead. I risked a glance. The lead flyer was circling back. Whatever he had
intended to do he had not, because he had been forced to concentrate on his
defenses instead. The remaining Voroshk had come to a halt several hundred yards
east of us, smoldering, drifting on the breeze, evidently still alive but just
barely. Before I shifted my attention back to the forvalaka I noted that that
flyer was gaining altitude very slowly.

A swarm of javelins and arrows buzzed around the werepanther. The darts were all
poisoned. Just in case a few did penetrate her skin.

Wonder of wonders! A lot of arrows were sticking. A sort of black haze seemed to
cover the monster, making the boundary between her and the rest of the universe
appear poorly defined.

Lady was yelling. A lot. Fire discipline was critical. We would be able to
create no new fireball-spitting bamboo poles until we were safely back in our
own world. Half of those we started this fight with were out of action already.

The guys had not been in a real fight for years but they did remember what was
what. The fireballs stopped going up even before my wife started yelling again.

Several men did take the opportunity to put fireballs into the forvalaka,

though. Poor Lisa had no friends.

She was not as invulnerable as I had expected. She began to stagger drunkenly
well before I had hoped she would respond to the poisons. The endurance and
stamina of her kind were legendary and in our experience were exceeded only by
the ferocious vitality of the sorcerers who had belonged to the circle that had
been known as the Ten Who Were Taken. Of whom Soulcatcher and the Howler were
the last. Of whom there would be no survivors much longer.

I was determined. I had a whole list of people who were going to blaze the way
to hell for me.

Now the monster was up again, evidently shaking off the effects of missiles and
fireballs and chemicals. She was gathering herself for the charge that would get
her in amongst us and render her safe from our most dangerous weapons just when
she could start using her jaws and claws.

I do not know what the Voroshk tried to do. I know the fireballs flew again,

there was a shudder in the ground like somebody had hit it a few yards away with
a ten-thousand-pound hammer, then the forvalaka launched herself my way in a
sort of weak, half-hearted leap, one hind paw dragging in the dust. Smoke came
off her at a dozen points. The stench of burnt flesh preceded her.

I glimpsed the last Voroshk streaking across the sky behind the monster. He was
tumbling.

Bowalk batted at my makeshift pike as she flew toward me. Her effort was weak
and slow. The head of One-Eye’s spear entered and passed through the flesh of
her right shoulder, which had been injured badly already. I felt it bounce off
bone. She screamed. Her weight ripped my weapon out of my hand even though I had
the butt of the bamboo pole set firmly against the ground.

Her momentum spun her around. She managed to slap me with a paw and send me ass
over appetite before she landed and became preoccupied with the black spear. My
armor withstood her claws. I barely knew up from down for a moment but I did
keep my head attached to the end of my neck.

I regained possession of my bamboo pole but not of the spear. The forvalaka was
writhing around, screaming and snarling and snapping at the spear while my
comrades were careful to stay out of her way. The occasional arrow or javelin
continued to dart in, when there was no risk of a miss.

The Voroshk remained out of the struggle. One burned on the slope east of us.

One rose higher and higher, now yielding streamers of smoke. The last circled
cautiously, either looking for an opening or just observing. Each time he
started to dart in, a score of bamboo poles pointed his way, offering to welcome
him. I suspect most were dead. But he could find out the truth of that only the
hard way.

A huge black sword of a design similar to Doj’s Ash Wand came with the
Widowmaker costume. I drew it as the forvalaka tried to come at me. I felt
almost foolish behind the excitement and fear. It had been decades since I had
used a sword anywhere but in practice sessions with Doj. I did not know this one
at all. It might be little more than a showpiece. It might snap the first time I
struck a blow.

The shapeshifter staggered forward a few steps. Someone hit it a glancing shot
with a fireball. Javelins and arrows continued to arrive. It snapped at the
wound where One-Eye’s spear stood forth, again. The arrows and javelins all fell
out eventually but not that black spear. It was working its way slowly deeper.

I stepped in, struck. The tip of my blade bit several inches into the big cat’s
left shoulder. She barely stumbled. The wound bled for seconds only, then
closed, healing before my eyes.

I struck again, near the same site. Then again. Not despairing. Her vitality was
no surprise. But her wounds were not healing as fast as once they had. And that
spear was worming its way deeper. And she seemed to be losing the will to fight.

Shouts!

The healthy Voroshk was boring in on me, coming fast, his protection turning
first the fireballs rising to meet him, then the arrows and bolts. I pranced
around and braced myself to flail away when he got close enough. He raised one
hand as if to throw something. But before he could, my white crow appeared out
of nowhere and hit him from behind. In the head. His chin slammed against his
chest.