Soldiers Live (3 page)

An Abode of Ravens:

Headquarters
Outpost was a quiet city of broad lanes and white walls. We had adopted the
native custom of whitewashing everything but the thatch and decorative
vegetation.

On holidays some locals even painted each other white. White had been a great
symbol of resistance to the Shadowmasters in times gone by.

Our city was artificial and military, all straight lines, cleanliness and quiet.

Except at night, if Tobo’s friends got to brawling amongst themselves. By day,

noise was confined to the training fields where the latest bunch of native
would-be adventurers were learning the Black Company way of doing business. I
was remote from all that except for patching up training mishaps. No one from my
era was involved anymore. Like One-Eye I am a relic of a distant age, a living
icon of the history that makes up so much of the unique social adhesive we used
to hold the Company together. They rolled me out on special occasions and had me
give sermons that began, “In those days the Company was in service to . . . ”

It was a spooky night, the two moons illuminating everything while casting
conflicting shadows. And Tobo’s pets were increasingly disturbed about
something. I began to catch straightforward glimpses of some when they became
too distracted to work at staying out of sight. In most cases I was sorry.

The uproar up toward the shadowgate rose and fell. There were lights up there
now, too. A couple of fireballs flew just before I reached my destination. I
began to feel uneasy myself.

Headquarters was a two-story sprawl at the center of town. Sleepy had filled it
with assistants and associates and functionaries who kept track of every
horseshoe nail and every grain of rice. She had turned command into a
bureaucratic exercise. And I did not like it. Of course. Because I was a cranky
old man who remembered how things used to be in the good old days when we did
things the right way. My way.

I do not think I have lost my sense of humor, though. I see the irony in having
turned into my own grandfather.

I have stepped aside. I have passed the torch to someone younger, more energetic
and tactically brighter than I ever was. But I have not abandoned my right to be
involved, to contribute, to criticize and, particularly, to complain. It is a
job somebody has to do. So I exasperate the younger people sometimes. Which is
good for them. It builds character.

I strode through the ground-floor busywork Sleepy uses to shield herself from
the world. Day or night there was a crew on duty, counting those arrowheads and
grains of rice. I should remind her to get out into the world once in a while.

Putting up barriers will not protect her from her demons because they are all
inside her already.

I was almost old enough to get away with talk like that.

Irritation crossed her dry, dusky, almost sexless face when I walked in. She was
at her prayers. I do not understand that. Despite everything she has been
through, much of which puts the lie to Vehdna doctrine, she persists in her
faith.

“I’ll wait till you’re done.”

The fact that I had caught her was what irritated her. The fact that she needed
to believe even in the face of the evidence was what embarrassed her.

She rose, folded her prayer rug. “How bad is he this time?”

“Rumor got it wrong. It wasn’t One-Eye. It was Gota. And she’s gone. But One-Eye
is in a pickle about something else he thinks is going to happen. About which he
was less than vague. Tobo’s friends are being more than normally weird so it’s
entirely possible it isn’t One-Eye’s imagination.”

“I’d better send someone after Sahra.”

“Tobo is taking care of it.”

Sleepy considered me steadily. She may be short but she has presence and
self-confidence. “What’s on your mind?”

“I’m feeling some of what One-Eye is. Or maybe I just naturally can’t stand a
prolonged peace.”

“Lady nagging you about going home again?”

“No. Murgen’s last communion with Shivetya has her worried.” To say the least.

Modern history had turned cruel back in our home world. The Deceiver cult has
rebounded in our absence, making converts by the hundred. At the same time
Soulcatcher tormented the Taglian Territories in a mad and mainly fruitless
effort to root out her enemies, most of whom were imaginary until she and Mogaba
created them through their zeal. “She hasn’t said so but I’m pretty sure she’s
afraid Booboo is manipulating Soulcatcher somehow.”

Sleepy could not stifle a smile. “Booboo?”

“Your fault. I picked it up from something you wrote.”

“She’s your daughter.”

“We have to call her something.”

“I can’t believe you two never picked a name.”

“She was born before . . . ” I like “Ghana.” It was good enough for my
grandmother. Lady would have demurred. It sounded too much like Kina.

And although Booboo might be a nightmare stalking, Booboo was Lady’s daughter
and in the land where she had grown up mothers always named the daughters.

Always. When the time was right.

This time will never be right. This child denies us both. She stipulates that
our flesh quickened her flesh but she is animated by an absolute conviction that
she is the spiritual daughter of the Goddess Kina. She is the Daughter of Night.

Her sole purpose for existing is to precipitate the Year of the Skulls, that
great human disaster that will free her slumbering soulmother so she can resume
working her wickedness upon the world. Or upon the worlds, actually, as we had
discovered once my quest for the Company’s ancient origins had led us to the
time-wracked fortress on the plain of glittering stone lying between our world
and the Land of Unknown Shadows.

Silence stretched between us. Sleepy had been Annalist a long time. She had come
to the Company young. Its traditions meant a great deal to her. Consequently she
remained unfailingly courteous to her predecessors. But internally, I am sure,

she was impatient with us old farts. Particularly with me. She never knew me
well. And I was always taking up time wanting to know what was going on. I have
begun putting too much emphasis on detail now that I do not have much to do but
write.

I told her, “I don’t offer advice unless you ask.”

That startled her.

“Trick I learned from Soulcatcher. Makes people think you’re reading their
minds. She’s much better at it.”

“I’m sure she is. She’s had all that time to practice.” She puffed air out of
expanded cheeks. “It’s been a week since we’ve talked. Let’s see. Nothing to
report from Shivetya. Murgen’s been at Khang Phi with Sahra so he hasn’t been in
touch with the golem. Reports from the men working on the plain say they’re
suffering from recurring premonitions of disaster.”

“Really? They said it that way?” She had her pontifical moments.

“Roughly.”

“What’s the traffic situation?”

“There is none.” She looked puzzled. The plain had seen no one cross for
generations before the Company managed the passage. The last, before us, had
been the Shadowmasters who had fled the Land of Unknown Shadows for our world
back before I was born.

“Wrong question. I guess. How’re you coming with preparations for our return?”

“That a personal or professional question?” Everything was business with Sleepy.

I do not recall ever having seen her relax. Sometimes that worried me. Something
in her past, hinted at in her own Annals, had left her convinced that that was
the only way she could be safe.

“Both.” I wished I could tell Lady that we would be going home soon. She had no
love for the Land of Unknown Shadows.

I am sure she will not enjoy the future wherever we go. It is an absolute
certainty that the times to come will not be good. I do not believe she
understands that yet. Not in her heart.

Even she can be naive about some things.

“The short answer is that we can probably put a reinforced company across as
early as next month. If we can acquire the shadowgate knowledge.”

Crossing the plain is a major undertaking because you have to carry with you
everything you will need for a week. Up there there is nothing to eat but
glittering stone. Stone remembers but stone has little nutritional value.

“Are you going too?”

“I’m going to send scouts and spies, no matter what. We can use the home
shadowgate as long as we only put through a few men at a time.”

“You won’t take Shivetya’s word?”

“The demon has his own agenda.”

She would know. She had been in direct communion with that Steadfast Guardian.

What I knew of the golem’s designs made me concerned for Lady. Shivetya, that
ancient entity, created to manage and watch over the plain—which was an artifact
itself—wanted to die. He could not do so while Kina survived. One of his tasks
was to ensure that the sleeping Goddess did not awaken and escape her
imprisonment.

When Kina ceased to exist, my wife’s tenuous grasp on those magical powers
critical to her sense of self-worth and identity would perish with her. What
powers Lady boasted, she possessed only because she had found a way to steal
from the Goddess. She was a complete parasite.

I said, “And you, believing the Company dictum that we have no friends outside,

don’t value his friendship.”

“Oh, he’s perfectly marvelous, Croaker. He saved my life. But he didn’t do it
because I’m cute and I jiggle in the right places when I run.”

She was not cute. I could not imagine her jiggling, either. This was a woman who
had gotten away with pretending to be a boy for years. There was nothing
feminine about her. Nor anything masculine, either. She was not a sexual being
at all, though for a while there had been rumors that she and Swan had become a
midnight item.

It turned out purely platonic.

“I’ll reserve comment. You’ve surprised me before.”

“Captain!”

Took her a while, sometimes, to understand when someone was joking. Or even
being sarcastic, though she had a tongue like a razor herself.

She realized I was ribbing her. “I see. Then let me surprise you one more time
by asking your advice.”

“Oh-oh. You’ll have them sharpening their skates in hell.”

“Howler and Longshadow. I’ve got to make decisions.”

“File of Nine nagging you again?” The File of Nine—“File” from military
usage—was a council of warlords, their identities kept secret, who formed the
nearest thing to a real ruling body in Hsien. The monarchy and aristocracy of
record were little more than decorative and, in the main, too intimate with
poverty to accomplish much if the inclination existed.

The File of Nine had only limited power. Their existence barely assured that
near-anarchy did not devolve into complete chaos. The Nine would have been more
effective had they not prized their anonymity more than their implied power.

“Them and the Court of All Seasons. The Noble Judges really want Longshadow.”

The imperial court of Hsien—consisting of aristocrats with less real world power
than the File of Nine but enjoying more a demonstrative moral authority—were
obsessively interested in gaining possession of Longshadow. Being an old cynic I
tended to suspect them of less than moral ambitions. But we had few dealings
with them. Their seat, Quang Ninh City, was much too far away.

The one thing the peoples of Hsien held in common, every noble and every
peasant, every priest and every warlord, was an implacable and ugly thirst for
revenge upon the Shadowmaster invaders of yesteryear. Longshadow, still trapped
in stasis underneath the glittering plain, represented the last possible
opportunity to extract that cathartic vengeance. Longshadow’s value in our
dealings with the Children of the Dead was phenomenally disproportionate.

Hatreds seldom are constrained to rational scales.

Sleepy continued, “And hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear from some lesser
warlord begging me to bring Longshadow in. The way they all volunteer to take
charge of him leaves me nurturing the sneaking suspicion that most of them
aren’t quite as idealistically motivated as the File of Nine and the Court of
All Seasons.”

“No doubt. He’d be a handy tool for anybody who wanted to adjust the power
balance. If anyone was fool enough to believe he could manage a puppet
Shadowmaster.” No world lacks its villains so self-confident that they don’t
believe they can get the best end of a bargain with the darkness. I married one
of those. I am not sure she has learned her lesson yet. “Has anyone offered to
fix our shadowgate?”

“The Court is actually willing to give us someone. The trouble with that is that
they don’t actually have anyone equipped with the skills to make the needed
fixes. Chances are, no one has those skills. But the knowledge exists in records
stored at Khang Phi.”

“So why don’t we? . . . ”

“We’re working on it. Meantime, the Court do seem to believe in us. And they
absolutely do want some kind of revenge before all of Longshadow’s surviving
victims have been claimed by age.”

“And what about the Howler?”

“Tobo wants him. Says he can handle him now.”

“Does anybody else think so?” I meant Lady. “Or is he overconfident?”

Sleepy shrugged. “There’s nobody telling me they’ve got anything more they can
teach him.” She meant Lady, too, and did not mean that Tobo suffered from a teen
attitude. Tobo had no trouble taking advice or instruction when either of those
did not originate with his mother.

I asked anyway. “Not even Lady?”

“She, I think, might be holding out on him.”

“You can bet on it.” I married the woman but I don’t have many illusions about
her. She would be thrilled to go back to her old wicked ways. Life with me and
the Company has not been anything like happily ever after. Reality has a way of
slow-roasting romance. Though we get along well enough. “She can’t be any other
way. Get her to tell you about her first husband. You’ll marvel that she came
out as sane as she did.” I marveled every day. Right before I gave in to my
astonishment that the woman really had given up everything to ride off with me.