Soldiers Live (19 page)

The Nether Taglian Territories:

The Barrens
Soulcatcher hastened along the bank of a creek that was almost as still and deep
as a canal, looking for a way to cross. She had miscalculated when she had
chosen to cut across these moors and downs to reach the shabby stronghold at
Nijha. Clinging to the road would have meant a longer walk but there would have
been bridges for times like these.

When she encountered obstacles of this sort she had no choice but to guess which
way to turn. She did not know the country. She was blind. There were no bats or
owls to send scouting. There were no shadows tonight. She had sent all those to
safety, along with her crows. She knew she was capable of dealing with the
hobgoblins following her around.

Something rose from the water behind her. It had a shape like a horse. A voice
whispered in her ear, telling her to come and ride. She barely glanced at it,

and then only in total scorn. These things might be smarter than shadows but
they could not be by much. How stupid did they think she was? She did not have
to be familiar with the folklore of Hsien to understand that the water horse
would drag her under.

She ignored the monster, not knowing it was an afanc, actually of centaur shape
rather than equine. A half hour later she ignored one of its cousins, which took
the semblance of a giant beaver. Then there was one resembling a crocodile,

though this creek was four hundred miles from anywhere warm enough to support
those giant reptiles. They all whispered to her. Some of them even knew her true
name.

She found a plank footbridge evidently put in place by the seldom-seen,

horse-stealing natives of these highlands. As she started across, something
whispered to her from underneath. She did not understand its words but their
menace was plain enough.

“You don’t want me crossing, come up and do something about it.” The voice she
chose was that of a small child who was severely annoyed, but not frightened.

Something came up. It was huge and dark and ugly. In spots it glowed with a
leprous inner light. It had way too many teeth. They stuck out of its mouth at
all angles. It would have trouble when it came time to eat.

All those teeth and fangs snapped open as the monster prepared to lunge.

Soulcatcher’s gloved right hand drifted forward. A spray of sparkling dust
floated onward to meet the evil spirit.

It screamed.

Soulcatcher leapt off the bridge an instant before it shattered to kindling. She
backed away, watched the fiend thrash and melt. From behind her mask came a soft
wee sound like a little girl’s skip-rope song, with a refrain that went, “It was
fun to watch you die.”

The Taglian Territories:

Somewhere North of Charandaprash
The Daughter of Night actually seemed to be thriving now that the Protector was
stalking them no longer. Narayan was worried.

“You’re always worried,” she chided. She was happy. Her voice was musical. The
light of the campfire made her eyes sparkle—when it did not make them glow red.

“If someone is after us you worry about getting caught. If we’re safe you worry
about me not being a perfect replica of this image of the Daughter of Night
you’ve invented inside your head. Narayan, Narayan . . . Papa Narayan, what I
want more than anything is somehow to fix it so you don’t have to do this
anymore. You’ve been the one for so long . . . You deserve to put it all down
now and relax.”

Narayan knew that was not possible. Never would be. He did not argue, though.

“Then let’s bring on the Year of the Skulls. Once Kina returns we can loaf for
the rest of our lives.”

The girl shivered, seemed puzzled. Then she shuddered violently. She grew more
pale, leaving Narayan wondering how she managed that when she was always as pale
as death to begin. She stared out into the night, obviously troubled.

Narayan started to dump dirt—piled there for that purpose—onto the fire.

The girl said, “It’s too late.”

A huge shape rose behind her—then faded away as though dispersed by the wind.

“Kid’s right, old man,” said a voice Singh had not heard for years and was
hearing again far sooner than he had hoped.

Iqbal and Runmust Singh—no relation to Narayan—appeared at the edge of the
firelight, wavering, as though they were a mist coalescing. Other men appeared
behind them, soldiers in a style of armor Narayan had never seen. Amongst the
soldiers he saw drooling red-eyed beasts of species he had never seen before,

either.

Singh’s heart redoubled its wild pounding.

The girl observed, “Now we know why my aunt quit chasing us.”

Runmust Singh agreed. “Now you know. The Black Company is back. And we’re not
happy.” Runmust was a great shaggy Shadar whose sheer size was oppressive.

Iqbal Singh smiled, perfect teeth glistening in the middle of his brushy beard.

“This time you’ll have to deal with your mother and your father.” Iqbal was as
shaggy and nearly as huge as his brother but somehow less intimidating. The girl
remembered him having a wife and several children. But . . . Did he mean her
birth mother? Her natural father? But they were supposed to be dead.

Her knees went watery. She never had seen her natural parents.

The living saint was unable to keep his feet. Kina was going to test him yet
again. And he had no energy left to spend in the fight for his faith. He was too
old and too feeble and his faith had worn too thin.

Runmust gestured. The soldiers closed in. They were careful men who made certain
they did not get between their captives and the crossbows threatening them. They
put the girl’s hands into wool-stuffed sacks, then bound her wrists behind her.

They gagged her gently, then pulled a loose woolen sack over her head. They were
aware that she might work some witchery.

Narayan they placed up on an extra horse, then tied him into the saddle. They
were doing him no kindness. They were in a hurry. He would be too slow if they
made him walk behind them. They were more gentle with the girl but her immediate
fate was identical.

Their captors were not gratuitously cruel but the girl was sure that would
change when they found themselves with adequate leisure time. The strange young
soldiers in the clacking black armor seemed highly intrigued by what they could
see of her pale beauty.

This was not the way she had imagined herself becoming a woman. And her
imagination had been extremely active for several years.

The Taglian Territories:

The Dandha Presh
We were high in the pass through the Dandha Presh when the news arrived. The
grinding weariness dragging my ancient bones down slipped my mind. I was at the
head of the column. I stopped walking, moved aside, watched all the tired mules
and men trudge past. Man and animal, we hoped the main force had not stripped
Charandaprash of food and fodder.

The Voroshk had sunk deep into exhaustion and despair. Tobo traveled with them,

talking all the time, trying to teach them through their pain and apathy. The
kids had not had to walk anywhere ever before.

Their flying logs followed right behind.

Lady finally came up. I joined her. I sensed that rumor had reached her already,

even though nobody seemed to have any breath to waste on conversation. Rumor is
magical, maybe even supernatural.

I told her anyway. “Runmust and Iqbal have captured Narayan and Booboo. They
never stopped heading our way after Soulcatcher left off chasing them.”

“I heard.”

“You as nervous as I am?”

“Probably more.” We trudged along for a while. Then she said, “I never got a
chance to be a mother. I never got a chance to learn how. After Narayan
kidnapped her I just went back to being me.”

“I know. I know. We have to keep reminding ourselves not to get emotionally
entangled in this. She isn’t going to think of us as Mom and Dad.”

“I don’t want her to hate us. And I know she will. Being the Daughter of Night
is her whole life.”

I thought about that. Eventually, I told her, “Being the Lady of Charm was your
whole life once upon a time. But here you are.”

“Here I am.” Her lack of enthusiasm would have disheartened a lesser man than I.

She—and I—were of an age now where we spent too much time wondering how things
might have gone had we made a few different choices.

I had plenty of regrets. I am sure she had more. She gave up so much more.

Willow Swan went puffing past with some remark about old folks slowing everybody
down. I asked, “You guys keeping an eye on Goblin?”

“He don’t fart without we don’t know about it.”

“That goes without saying. The whole countryside knows.”

“He’s not getting away with anything, Croaker.”

I was not confident about that. Goblin was a slick little bastard. If I had the
time I would stay right beside him myself, step for step.

Lady said, “Goblin hasn’t done anything suspicious.”

“I know. But he will.”

“And that attitude is beginning to win him some sympathy. I thought you ought to
know.”

“I know. But I can’t help recalling One-Eye’s warning, either.”

“You noted yourself that One-Eye would try to get his last lick in from beyond
the grave.”

“Yeah. Yeah. I’ll try to take it easier.”

“We need to move a little faster.” The rear guard was almost up to us.

“We could lag behind and sneak off into the rocks for a while.”

“Maybe you’re not as worn out as you thought, then. Get a move on.” And after a
moment, “We’ll talk about that tonight.”

Some motivation, then.

Taglios:

The Great General
Thus far Mogaba had contained the worst reaction to the seething rumor cauldron
that Taglios had become. His most useful tool was the carefully placed
half-truth. His representatives did not deny that something big and dangerous
was going on down south. They did, however, suggest that it was an uprising by
the same sort of Shadowlander troublemakers who had supported the Black Company
during the Kiaulune wars. They were milking that connection from the past,

trying to intimidate opponents and encourage friends. There was no Black Company
anymore.

Rumor had not yet discovered the Prahbrindrah Drah and his sister. Mogaba would
offer the suggestion that those people were imposters when stories did begin to
circulate.

“This is actually going better than I expected,” the Great General told Aridatha
Singh. “None of the garrison commanders have refused their marching orders. Only
a handful of the senior priests and leading men have tried to pretend
neutrality.”

“I wonder if that state would persist if we lost the Protector.”

Mogaba had been trying to find out for some time. The Prahbrindrah Drah had yet
to produce an heir. His only living relative was his sister, who had run Taglios
and its dependencies for years in fact, if not in name. At one point she had
proclaimed herself her brother’s successor. Though the culture militated against
a female ruler she might be allowed to take over again if her brother preceded
her in death. No one knew what would happen if brother and sister were both
gone, as most of the population believed them to be.

The question was entirely an intellectual exercise, these days. Power in Taglios
belonged to the Protector almost exclusively.

Mogaba never pressed his questions beyond a purely speculative level. None of
his respondents suspected a deeper purpose. Nor did anyone volunteer to
participate in an effort to get rid of the Protector, though it was no secret
that most Taglians would prefer to do without Soulcatcher’s protection.

Communications with Soulcatcher had ceased. The crow population had suffered a
dramatic decimation, whether from disease or enemy action remaining unclear.

Their numbers had been dwindling for decades, until murders in the wild were
almost unknown. Bats could not carry significant messages. Owls would not. And
there was no one at the Taglian end trained to manage and communicate with
shadows. That was a rare talent indeed and the Black Company had exterminated
the brotherhood who had shared it back when they were still running things their
way.

Soulcatcher had scoured the Shadowlands, whence those people had sprung, length
and breadth. She had turned up just a few old women and very young children who
had survived all the wars and purges. They seemed to be a people unrelated to
any other in the south, had been unknown there before the advent of the
Shadowmasters, and among themselves had a oral tradition of having come from an
entirely different world. Those old women and babies had lacked any useful
knowledge or talent.

When his duties granted the time, Mogaba walked the main route from the Palace
to the city’s southern entrance. The walls had been under construction for
decades and remained unfinished but the southern gate complex, the most
important, had been completed and put into use ages ago. By channeling traffic
through its bottleneck the state managed to tax all incoming travelers.

He was looking for the perfect place to put an end to the Protectorate. Four
explorations had not revealed it yet. The obvious sites were just that: obvious.

Soulcatcher would be alert. She was intimate enough with human nature to realize
that rumors fed by the crisis in the south would reawaken opposition to her
rule.

There seemed to be no way to manage it in the streets. And the longer it was
delayed the more certain she was to become suspicious of her captains. It would
be impossible for them to conceal their nervousness.

It would have to be instantly upon her arrival or immediately upon her entering
the Palace. Or never.

They could forget the whole thing, go back to being her faithful hounds, and
wait with her for the disaster from the south.

When Mogaba thought of the Company he shuddered and was most sorely tempted to
abandon the plot against the Protector. Soulcatcher would be a potent weapon in
that war.

The gate. The south gate. It had to happen there. The complex had been
engineered for exactly that sort of thing, although on a larger scale.

When he returned to the palace he found Aridatha Singh waiting. “There was a
messenger, General. The Protector has reached Dejagore. She took time out to
review the troops assembling there, though it would seem the enemy isn’t that
far behind.”

Mogaba made a face. “We don’t have much time left, then. She won’t lag long
behind our couriers.” Unspoken, but understood, remained the fact that they were
running out of time to chose their final commitment.

Then Mogaba grunted. He had realized, suddenly, that the Protector could pluck
the whole opportunity right out of their hands. Easy as snapping her fingers.