Soldiers Live (38 page)

Fortress with No Name:

Recruiting Excitement
The squabbling amongst the Voroshk went on and on, seldom subsiding for long. I
suspect there were several occasions when those two old men wanted to punish the
rest of us but were held in check by Shivetya. Tobo paid them no mind. He
remained busy communing with Baladitya or the golem. The latter seemed to be
contributing to the boy’s already excessive arsenal of power.

Whenever it became too much for them, Arkana or Shukrat would retreat to
wherever I happened to be, usually ending up seated on the floor, facing away
from the family. “They’re afraid of you,” Arkana explained. “They think you’re
the real terror and Tobo is all for show. They think you destroyed our world.”

“I didn’t destroy anything.” Curious. Her accent was not nearly as pronounced
out here, when she wanted some protection.

“I know that. You know it. Even they probably know. But they don’t want it to be
their fault. Inside, they’re almost as bad as Gromovol and Sedvod. For a couple
of hundred years now to be Voroshk has meant to be perfect in every way. Without
fault.”

“So how come all the arguing?”

“Because Shukrat wants to stay with you. Because Sedvod died without proper
rites. Because they don’t want to believe that Gromovol did so many really
stupid things, including getting Magadan killed. That’ll really cause terrible
Family political trouble when the news gets back home. Magadan’s father is the
First Father’s brother and they really hate each other.”

Evidently the surviving Voroshk preferred to pretend that their Family still
ruled in a land not wasted by murderous shadows.

“And why are they yelling at you?”

Arkana sighed. She tucked her head down in between her knees, where I could not
get a good look at her expression. “I guess because I really kind of said I
don’t think I want to go home, either.”

Arkana really used the word “really” a real lot. “Despite what happened?”

“They don’t know that part yet. They don’t need to know about it.”

“They won’t hear about it from me. But Gromovol might . . . ”

“Even Gromovol isn’t stupid enough to talk about it. There’s no way he can talk
his way out of that being his fault. By the rules of our own people. If that
came out even his own father would desert him.”

Wearing a somewhat dazed expression Shukrat retreated our way. Arkana moved over
a few feet but otherwise did not acknowledge her existence. Neither did Shukrat
deign to see Arkana. Shukrat settled on the stone floor, arms around her legs
and chin upon her knees. There were tearstreaks on her cheeks.

“Well?” I said. “Do I need to go over there and spank somebody for being rude to
my little girls?”

Shukrat laughed weakly. “You’d have to hit the other end. About ten thousand
times. With a blacksmith’s hammer.”

“Just to get their attention,” Arkana said. Posed as they were now the family
resemblance was clear. Only when they were up and moving under the direction of
their divergent characters did they seem so different.

The girls had a point. Even the destruction of their world had not been enough
to shake those two old boulders loose from their dry riverbed of fixed thought.

I asked, “Arkana, are you pulled together now? Want to come translate for me?” I
could use the tongue of Juniper, of course, but this would give her a chance to
feel like she was useful.

She thought about that for a moment. She exchanged glances with Shukrat. Both
girls looked at me.

I promised, “I’ll only bully them a little.”

The older Voroshk were keeping their fangs sharp by gnawing on Gromovol. If the
kid had not fucked up so badly I might have felt sorry for him. He did not have
the option of returning to our world. He would have to take whatever those two
chose to hand out.

“You’ve been a little hard on my girls,” I told the First Father. “Time to knock
it off. Either one of you bothered to go back and see how things turned out at
home?”

No response. Other than ugly looks.

“So you don’t really know how things stand . . . ” An epiphany. “Arkana,

sweetie. They ran away. Coming after you kids was their excuse. And when they
used it up they couldn’t go back. I’ll bet you Shivetya hasn’t been forcing them
to stay here at all.” I recalled that once there had been three of them.

Somebody must have gone. And maybe did not live to bring back news.

Those old men were cowards? It fit.

For the first time in generations the Voroshk faced something the Family could
not overwhelm as easily as stamping a mouse. And the only way some of them could
deal with that was to run away.

These two would not want to go back now in case there were survivors.

I said, “I’ll be right back.” I trotted over to Tobo, interrupted, gave him the
short version. “How long are you going to be? Do I have time to take a run
through the Khatovar gate with those old men so we can find out what the shadows
really did do over there?”

The boy’s eyes went blank.

When I was about ready to slap him to get his attention back he refocused, told
me, “Shivetya says that would be a huge health risk. Shivetya says you’re right
about the Voroshk. They did run away. Shivetya says more courageous members of
the clan are still active back there. A lot of shadows are active there, too.

Shivetya says the gate is growing closed. With almost every surviving shadow on
that side of it. Shivetya says leave it alone. Shivetya says go ahead with your
scheme. Shivetya says not to worry about Khatovar. You can’t reach it. Trying
will only get you killed. And it will still be there when everything else is
done.”

Was that Tobo speaking or was the demon using his lips? “Shivetya, I fear,

contains an awful lot of stinky brown stuff. For a guy who never eats.”

“You think it’s unreasonable, him being a little selfish about the order things
get done? Considering the scale of his contributions?”

“Humbug.” I stamped back to Arkana. I wondered how anybody was supposed to
murder a goddess—and survive it so the Goddess’s jailer could be hustled down
the dark path right behind her. “Sweetheart, tell those old farts that I want
them to fly out to your homeworld with me. That I want to see what’s happened
there. And that I really do want to see what’s left of Khatovar.”

Arkana took several little sideways steps that moved her around in front of me,

putting her back to Nashun and the First Father. “You really mean that?”

Softly, because that half-wit Gromovol seemed to have become interested in what
was being said, I responded, “As far as they need to know, I do.”

The old men did not do much faking of any reason for avoiding a trip home for a
fact-finding tour. They did make it clear that they would not go.

“What do you plan to do with your lives?” I asked. “Shivetya won’t let you loaf
around here forever.”

They suspected they were about to be sucked into something. And they were right,

of course. I added, “The Company always has room for a few good men.” Or bad
men, as the case might be. I was not so sure about chickenshit and mediocre
men—though having a couple extra sorcerers sounded worthwhile enough to make the
try.

Trouble was, if I did seduce these two, how would I keep them under control?

That sounded like something Lady ought to ponder. It was the sort of question
she had dealt with regularly before I stumbled into her life.

I could hear the clockwork kerchunking inside Voroshk craniums. Their thoughts
were obvious. Tell Croaker anything. Tell Croaker what he wanted to hear. Get
off this cruel and frightful plain. Run away. Find a place where they have not
heard of the Voroshk, where they have no major wizards of their own. Set up shop
there and slap together a whole new empire.

Just as the Shadowmasters had done before them.

“Tell them I’ll come back after they’ve had a day or two to think it over.”

As she retreated with me Arkana told me, “If they agree to join you they’ll give
you more trouble than Gromovol did.”

“Really?” I chose a tone that was supposed to let her know I might not be as
dumb as I looked. “How do you suppose we could keep them from doing that?”

She did have some ideas. “Do what you did to us. Make them strip naked. Take
their rheitgeistiden and their shefsepoken. Make them stay on the ground where
they’re vulnerable. But promise them they’ll get everything back after they show
you that you can trust them. Then you stretch it out.”

“I’m going to adopt you. You’d make a wonderful daughter. Hey, evil-minded
future daughter number two. You heard Arkana. What do you think?”

Grudgingly, Shukrat admitted, “I think she’s right.”

“Excellent! Let’s go ask your wicked future mother’s opinion.”

We found Lady reading what Baladitya was spending his final years recording,

which was, more or less, Shivetya’s biography. “Darling, I’ve decided we need to
adopt these two marvellous children. They’re turning out every bit as
blackhearted as we ever wanted our Booboo to be.”

Lady awarded me a suspicious look, decided I was fooling around but meant what I
said. More or less. “Tell me about it.”

I said, “Go to it, girls.”

Beside the Cemetery:

More Confusion
Expecting the Great General to remain offensive-minded was not enough, Sleepy
knew. She had to outguess him. This one time she could not let Mogaba slide
around her.

She took a twinned approach to planning, setting up two distinct staffs. The
first consisted of Iqbal and Runmust Singh, Riverwalker, Sahra, Willow Swan and
others who had been with her since the Kiaulune wars. She even summoned Blade up
from Jaicur because Blade actually knew Mogaba personally and, at one time, had
been fairly close to him.

The second general staff consisted entirely of officers from Hsien. These men
knew Mogaba only as a bugaboo. And they had no knowledge of the surrounding
territory beyond what they could learn from maps and scouting on their own.

Sleepy hoped to find something useful in the gap between diverging visions.

She kept her cavalry busy, scouting, chasing Mogaba’s scouts, skirmishing with
enemy patrols, trying to locate the bulk of the Great General’s forces.

Mogaba was doing the same. Both sides relied heavily on questioning civilians
passing through. Traffic on the Rock Road had slackened but had not stopped
entirely.

Each staff proposed several likely enemy campaigns. Sleepy had their opposite
numbers play out a counter campaign. And in the end, after two almost sleepless
days, she felt no more illuminated than she had at the beginning.

So she chose to go with intuition. That had served her best during previous
dances with the Great General, anyway.

By the Cemetery:

Still More Confusion
The Great General told his commanders, “I’m growing concerned that all this
maneuvering helps them more than it does us. It’s obvious that they’re without
mystical support. But every hour we maneuver is an hour nearer the time when
they get those advantages back.”

Aridatha Singh asked, “Aren’t we still at a disadvantage in a direct
confrontation?”

“Soldier for soldier, possibly. But we have three times as many soldiers. And
they’re still trying to cover a line running all the way from the Grove of Doom
to this stand near their camp. That’s too much to hold with ten thousand men.”

No questions came. No suggestions arose. The Great General seldom solicited
advice. When Mogaba gathered his captains he planned to issue instructions.

Their job would be to see that those were executed.

“I’m returning to the original plan. I’ll drive straight forward, in the middle,

with the Second Territorial. I’ll engage and hold. Singh, you advance along your
previous route with your same mission. Once you’re behind them form your
division in battle array and advance up the Rock Road. If the rest of us have
done our jobs you’ll only have to sweep up fugitives.”

Mogaba rested a hand upon the shoulder of a young officer named Narenda Nath
Saraswati, scion of an old aristocratic family, of the third generation of that
family to serve under arms since the opening skirmishes of the Shadowmaster
wars. Two days earlier Saraswati had been a regimental chief of staff with an
aggressive attitude. The Great General having been disappointed by the timid
performance of his remaining division, Saraswati’s aggressive nature was about
to earn him a chance to shine.

Mogaba said, “Narenda, as soon as I have the enemy engaged, I want you to take
your whole force forward on a narrow front, along the edge of this wood.” That
division having been shifted to the right since the previous engagement.

“Overrun their camp. That shouldn’t be difficult. They appear to be holding it
with raw recruits. Once you clear the camp, reform and advance so as to strike
the enemy left wing, rear, and reserve. Don’t begin your initial attack until I
do have the enemy solidly engaged.

“One more thing. I want you both to leave your main standards with me. If the
enemy sees those maybe they’ll think I’m concentrating everything in one place.”

He paused. There were no questions. All this had been planned out before. The
necessity now was renewed vigor.

“I’ll go in at midmorning. Behind scouts and skirmishers. Make sure your men are
well-provisioned. I’ll personally strangle any officer who fails to see to the
welfare of his soldiers.”

The Great General’s attitude was well-known, if not universally applauded by his
officers. Corruption was so deeply ingrained in Taglian culture that even after
more than a generation of cultural collision and occasional bloody change there
were still those who failed to understand that theft from the men you commanded
was not an acceptable way to supplement your income.

Whatever their differences, the Black Company, the Protector, the Great General,

all the northerners who gained power, strained to increase the efficiency of
their regime by rooting out graft and corruption. More than anything else, that
made the outsiders incredibly alien.

“Aridatha. Wait. I’ve had a thought. If things go well it’s likely Saraswati
will break the enemy before you can get into position behind them.”

“I was thinking of leaving during the night and going into hiding inside the
Grove of Doom.”

“Good idea. What I’m thinking, then, is, you should come out in a long line so
you can catch most of the fugitives running southward. I’m especially interested
in catching the kind of people who go underground and five years later turn up
with a whole damned new army.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Mogaba growled. That was a promise he hated. It sounded like an excuse being put
into place beforehand. Though Aridatha was never the sort to excuse his own
shortcomings. He was more the sort who found good reasons why others failed.