Soldiers Live (35 page)

The Taglian Territories:

In Camp
Life is never like a canal, flowing gently through a straightforward and
predictable channel. It is more like a mountain brook, zigging and zagging,

tearing things up, sometimes going almost dormant before taking an unexpected
and turbulent turn.

I was setting out some similar proposition to Lady and Shukrat while examining
Tobo to see if he dared put any weight on the broken leg. He thought he was
feeling better and was getting extremely restless, which is usually a sign that
the patient is, indeed, getting better but is not nearly as far advanced as he
wants to believe. We were in my VIP hospital. Soulcatcher and Arkana were
present as well. Shukrat was putting on a show, fussing over Tobo while making
it clear that Arkana no longer existed. Lady was on her knees beside her
sister’s pallet, hands flat on her thighs, motionless. She had stayed that way
for almost an hour. For a while I thought she was meditating. Or she had gone
into some sort of trance. Now I was starting to worry.

The women looked more like mother and daughter than sisters. Poor Lady. Against
the years all men campaign in vain. And of late, time has been particularly
unkind to my love.

Now that we were settled and had little to do but wait for people to mend, Lady
spent time with Soulcatcher every day. She could not explain it herself.

She finally came around, looked back, asked the question that tormented her.

“She’s dying, isn’t she?”

“I think so.” I admitted. “And I don’t know why. It looks like the same thing
that got the Voroshk kid. So I don’t know how to turn it around. Howler doesn’t
know how, either.” Though the screaming sorcerer never had been renowned for his
skills as a healer.

“Goblin must’ve done something to her but it isn’t sorcery.” I added, “Not that
anybody recognizes. And it isn’t any of the diseases I see in the field.” In
most armies more soldiers die of dysentery than fall to enemy arms. I am proud
that that has never been true in my army.

Lady nodded. She resumed staring at her sister. “I wonder what it is. Something
Goblin did. We’d have to wake her up to find out, wouldn’t we?” After a
heartbeat, “The little bastard was right there when Sedvod took sick, too.

Wasn’t he?”

“I’m afraid so.” I passed Tobo to Shukrat. “Take it easy on him, girl. Or we’ll
need to get you two a separate tent.”

Tobo blushed. Shukrat grinned. I turned to Arkana. “You think you’re ready to
take up your dancing career again?”

“Is nothing ever serious with you?”

She caught me by surprise. Frivolity was not a crime often attached to my name.

“Absolutely. None of us are going to get out of this alive so we might as well
grab a laugh while we can.” So One-Eye used to claim. “Cranky this morning?” I
leaned forward and whispered, “I would be, too. Broken bones are no fun. I know.

I’ve had a few. But try to smile. You’re through the worst of it.”

She put on her best scowl. The worst of it was still inside her head. She might
never recover emotionally. She had not been brought up in a place and station
where it was even conceivable that such horrors could overtake her.

“Look at it this way, child. No matter how bad you think it is right now, it can
always get worse. I’ve been in the soldier racket a long time and I promise you,

that’s a natural law.”

“How could my life be worse than this?”

“Think about it. You could be back home. Where you’d be dead. And you would’ve
gone through hell getting that way. Or you could be a prisoner instead of my
guest. Which means that every day could be like your one bad day. There’re
plenty of guys out there who think we let you off too easy. Which reminds me of
another natural law. Once you’re outside the circle of people who agree that
you’re special, you’re just another human body. And that’s hardly ever a good
situation for a woman. You’re actually better off here, where we have women
running stuff, than you would be almost anywhere else.”

Arkana retreated inside herself, evidently thinking that I was threatening her.

I was not. I was just thinking out loud. Maundering. Old men do that.

I told her, “You need to take it out on somebody, put Gromovol’s name at the
head of your list.”

Lady said, “She’s the only connection I have left with ninety percent of my
life. The only connection with my family.”

The stream takes its wild turns.

“You do anything that saves her, the first thing she’ll do when she gets on her
feet is try to cut you off at the knees and make you dance on the stumps.”

Tobo started to say something. I poked him. We had discussed this several times.

His opinion was bloody-minded.

“I know. I know. But every time I turn around it seems like someone else is gone
and we’re getting to be more and more alien . . . ”

“I understand. I’ve felt completely dislocated in time since One-Eye died.

There’s almost nothing left of my past.” The nearest thing was come-lately
Murgen. Lady and I had chosen the way—and now we were refugees from our own
place and time. Though why should I be surprised at this late date? That was
what the Company always was: the gathering of the landless, the hopeless, the
fugitive and the outcast.

I sighed. Was I about to start creating another past as an emotional crutch?

I knelt beside Lady. “I don’t think she’ll last more than another week. I’m
having trouble getting food down her. And more keeping it there. But I’ve
thought of something we can do to stall death. And maybe even get a sound
diagnosis.”

Lady turned a gaze on me so intense I shuddered, recalling ancient times, when I
was a captive in the Lady’s Tower at Charm and about to face the Eye of Truth.

“I’m listening.”

I noted that, even now, she would not touch her sister. There was a strong
selfish underpinning to her emotions. She wanted to save this mad devil sister
entirely for her own sake.

“We can take her to Shivetya. We know he can cure Howler . . . ”

“He says he can. Telling us what we want to hear.”

What Howler wanted to hear. I had no emotion invested in the runt’s well-being.

I thought the world would be improved by his extermination.

Lady’s tone did not support her words. A spark of hope had been struck.

I said, “Let’s have Howler get another carpet put together, then we’ll slip away
to the glittering plain, get him fixed up and find out what Shivetya can do for
Soulcatcher. Even if he can’t do anything we can stash her in the ice cavern
till we have time to research what’s wrong with her. That ought to be a real
challenge for Tobo.”

That was the course I preferred. I figured that once we installed Soulcatcher in
the cave of the ancients Lady would lose interest eventually. The effect on the
world at large would be the same as if we had killed her right away while Lady
could sustain her tether to her roots via the pretense that she would jump in
and resurrect her sister one day soon.

Lady said, “I like that idea. I’ll see how soon Howler can get a carpet put
together.”

“All right.” I peeled back one of Soulcatcher’s eyelids. I saw nothing
promising. I got the feeling that her essence might be absent, out wandering,

lost. Paybacks, Murgen might say, if that was true.

As soon as she left, Tobo said, “You’re up to something besides what you told
her, aren’t you?”

“Me?” I shrugged. “I have some ideas. Some of them I might have to clear with
the Captain.”

Shukrat then said something that rained her dumb blonde image for me. “You know
the reason that Soulcatcher followed you all down here from the north is the
same reason that Lady wants to save her now? I’ll bet that if she really wanted
to badly enough she could’ve killed you all just about any time she wanted.”

I stared. I looked at Tobo. I stared some more.

Shukrat reddened. She murmured, “Neither one of them ever learned how to say, ‘I
love you.’ ”

I understood. It was the same thing Goblin and One-Eye had had going for all
those years, at a somewhat less lethal level. When they were sober. It was the
sort of thing I see all the time amongst my brethren, who cannot, or believe
that they dare not, express their real feelings. I added, “Only those two don’t
even know they need to say it.”

The Shadowlander Military Cemetery:

Laying To Rest
Willow Swan stuck his head into the tent. “Croaker. Murgen. Anybody who’s
interested. Sahra’s ready to do her thing with Thai Dei and Uncle Doj.”

About damned time, I thought but did not say. There were moments, lately, when I
wanted to have the whole damned Nyueng Bao Community lined up and spanked. They
had dragged the two corpses a hundred fifty miles while they argued bitterly
about what to do with them. I did manage to keep my mouth shut but kept wanting
to scream, “They don’t care anymore! Do something! They smell. Bad!” Not the
sort of thing you do with grieving relatives, of course. Not unless you feel
like you have developed a shortage of enemies.

The Nyueng Bao had prepared a pair of ghats in a prominent place near the center
of the Shadowlander military cemetery. Though only a few swamp folk remained
with us those survivors were gathered in cliques, according to the funeral
option they believed best honored the dead.

Who would believe a funeral could become savagely political? But people can find
reasons to squabble about almost anything.

Thai Dei’s send-off was less controversial, of course. He had not believed in
much of anything but his own honor, himself. A ritualistic passage through the
purifying flame for a warrior who would not bend, troubled only a couple of
conservative old-timers who thought the ceremonies too foreign. Uncle Doj was
the great bone of contention.

With Doj the burning group were in dispute with the exposure group, who wanted
to lay the corpse out on a high platform and leave it till its bones were clean.

This was supposed to be the proper send-off for a high priest of the Path of the
Sword—though no one could say how, why or when that idea had arisen. None of the
men from Hsien, some of whom had grown up in Hsien’s martial arts monasteries,

had heard of any such practice there. The people of Hsien buried their dead.

Doj’s cronies insisted that his predecessors had been exposed exactly the way
they wanted to do him now.

As we filed past the ghats, each tossing on an herb packet and a folded piece of
paper carrying a prayer the fire would send along with the dead, Suvrin
suggested, “They might have acquired the custom when they first passed through
my country. Some of the peoples back home, back then, did expose corpses that
they were especially afraid would be seized by skinwalkers.”

Skinwalkers again. One of those monsters no one has ever seen, like vampires and
werewolves. With all the real monsters loose in the world, seen and suffered
often enough, why did so many people trouble themselves about things no reliable
witness ever saw? “Wouldn’t fire work just as well?”

“Burning wasn’t acceptable. It isn’t even in modern times, even though so many
northerners have come across the Dandha Presh.”

I grunted. It must have to do with religion and religion seldom makes sense to
me.

“The common people, the poor, anyone that wouldn’t attract a skinwalker, gets a
normal burial. Just like here.” He indicated the graves around us. “People who
might attract a skinwalker will be exposed. So there won’t be a good suit of
skin to steal.” He gestured. “The above-ground tombs. They must contain priests
and captains who were being stored temporarily, until they could be properly
exposed. Their army must have been hard-pressed. They never got back to deal
with it.”

Actually, I could see several fallen collections of poles with bits of rag and
bone beneath that might have been exposure platforms a long time ago. “Looks
like your skinwalkers never got here to take advantage, either.”

That earned me a scowl.

I was not quite sure why Suvrin was Sleepy’s favorite and probable designated
successor. But I never understood why Murgen picked Sleepy, either. Yet he had
chosen well. She had brought the Company through the Kiaulune wars and the era
of the Captivity. And there had been a lot of raised eyebrows when I had chosen
Murgen to become Annalist. And Murgen had managed despite never having been
quite certain of his sanity.

Sleepy saw something.

Suvrin did not agree. Suvrin insisted that he was going to leave us. But I noted
that he had passed up several wonderful opportunities to do so already.

As was her right, being Thai Dei’s closest surviving relative, Sahra asked
Murgen to join her and Tobo in placing the torches into Thai Dei’s pyre.

Fitting, I thought, although the old men grumbled. Murgen and Thai Dei had been
as close as brothers for a long, long time.

Sahra asked no one but Tobo to help bring the fire to Doj.

Even I saluted the dead swordmaster, though in life I never trusted him.

Lady leaned against me from my left. “I suppose you’ll have to admit that he was
trustworthy now.” Mind reading.

“I don’t have to admit any such thing. He just kicked off before he could screw
us over.”

“No fool like an old fool.”

I stopped arguing. She would win every debate by dint of outliving me. I changed
the subject. “You still feel like you’re getting stronger?” For an age now she
had been able to steal almost no supernatural power from Kina. But long ago she
had been able to parasitize enough to come close to being Soulcatcher’s equal.

She believed Goblin’s attack on the Goddess was why there was so little power
left to steal.

It seemed reasonable to me that Goblin returning as Kina’s tool would mean fresh
power available but it had not worked that way. Not until Goblin and the girl
had entered the Grove of Doom.

“It’s coming. Little by little.” She sounded like she did not want to wait. “I
can do a few parlor tricks now.” The way she thought, that might mean she was
limited to destroying small villages with a single wink. “I need to get closer
to see what helps.”

I did not follow up. I could feel her excitement. She hid it well but if I got
her going she would drive me nuts talking about stuff that was entirely beyond
me.

I could do that, too, either going on with my theories about diseases or about
the Company’s history.

Definitely a match made in heaven.

I told her, “Soon as we’re done paying our respects, how about you see Howler?

Find out if my idea gets him moving on the carpets any faster.”

“If you give him what he wants now he won’t have any incentive to stay with us.”

“Where’s he gonna run to?”

“He’ll find somewhere. He always has.”

And, somehow, that always ended up in our way. “Then I expect we’ll push him
hard to get us a couple, three carpets. And you can hang around playing
apprentice while he does, sister Shukrat.”

“Yech! No way! He’s creepy. He stinks. And he has more hands than some of those
four-armed Gunni gods.”

“He’s little,” Tobo called from the chair we had brought along so he could rest
between ceremonial stints. “Spank him.”

“That’s probably what he wants.”

“Get somebody to carry me around and I’ll go with you,” Tobo told Shukrat. “I
make the Howler nervous. Croaker. What’ll we call him if Shivetya cures his
screaming?”

“Stinky might work. Or the Stinker for formal.”

The flames of the funeral pyres leapt higher. Tobo ignored me now. I let it
drop, too. Time to say goodbye, old man. They never took the oath but Thai Dei
and Doj were brothers in their hearts. They stories were warp and woof of the
Company tapestry.