Soldiers Live (40 page)

The Shadowgate:

Bad News, Bad News
I was outside the shadowgate gossiping with Panda Man and Spook, who were
telling me that keeping an eye on the gate was the best duty they had ever
endured. The work was easy and the locals were friendly. If the damned ugly
spooks from the plain did not keep nagging you . . .

Tobo and Shukrat came through.

Almost immediately Tobo let out a cry of despair. He shouted, “There’s been a
battle!” A moment later he shot into the air, headed north, black cloth
streaming behind him. An instant later still Shukrat shot off in his wake,

gaining slowly.

Panting, Lady asked, “Does that mean we should be worried?”

“That would be my guess. The little shit must’ve gotten something from the
hidden folk.”

“And it was bad enough to set him off like that.” She looked as troubled as I
felt.

No good could come of any battle fought while we were away.

She asked, “Aren’t you going to rush off and see what happened, too?”

“Don’t see the point.” I jerked a thumb in the direction of the carpet, which
was creaking and sagging under the weight of people we dared not trust. “There
isn’t anything I could do, anyway. Look at that.” A ripple, a distortion in the
fabric of reality, seemed to be running over the face of the earth, chasing
after Tobo and Shukrat. “The hidden folk following their hero.”

“Why were they here?”

“Waiting around for Tobo.”

“But they should’ve been with Sleepy. They don’t do us any good hanging around
the shadowgate when . . . oh. They don’t care if they do us any good.”

“Exactly. What they care about is Tobo. Anything they do that benefits the rest
of us they do just to please him. Which is why two-thirds of the time I don’t
have the two ravens that’re supposed to be my permanent shoulder-ornaments and
messengers and far-seeing eyes. They keep forgetting to stick with me. They
wander off to find the kid. Bet you they turn up before we catch up with Sleepy,

though.”

“Sounds like a sucker bet to me.”

After crossing the Dandha Presh I steered a course mimicking that Sleepy had
followed heading north. When Lady asked why I was not heading straight north as
fast as we dared push the carpet, I told her, “Because I thought I saw something
I shouldn’t have on the way down. I have to check on it. I’m hoping it was my
imagination.” But my brief conversation with the guards at the shadowgate
suggested that the nightmare might be real.

She was curious but did not ask. At the speeds we could make airborne a bit of
circuitous flight would not delay us much.

I found what I was seeking on the path Sleepy had taken from Gharhawnes, at
almost exactly the point where she had doubled back to get behind Dejagore. By
then my confederates were extremely crabby.

“There!” I told Lady, catching just a glimpse of something moving fast inside a
stand of scrubby oaks.

“There what?” She had not seen.

“The Nef.”

“The Nef? The Nef are in the Voroshk world. Trapped there.”

“Not according to Spook and Panda Man. They say the Nef come around every
night.”

“All right. But how would they get through the shadowgate?”

“I don’t know.” I was flying in a circle now, giving up altitude. Once down to
treetop level I cruised back and forth. I spotted nothing. Nor did I find a sign
when I descended lower still and began to glide between the tree trunks.

I never found a thing. Not even a hint of a thing.

People began to yell down at me.

All right. They had a point. There were things we needed to do way north of
where we were now.

Beside the Cemetery:

Among the Dead
It had been over for more than a day but the surgeons remained hard at work. Men
still lay in long rows awaiting attention, moaning, screaming, some delirious.

And some dead. A burial detail walked the rows, picking up those who had gone.

Too many of those had died alone amidst the hundreds, without comfort.

The glory of war.

The ultimate fear. Mine, anyway.

I checked quickly to make sure that everyone was conforming to my decrees
concerning cleanliness and sepsis. A few of the wounded would stand a better
chance if the surgeons and their helpers cleaved to the rules. Even when they
were exhausted, as they were now, and the temptation to cut corners became
overwhelming.

Beyond our wounded lay those from Mogaba’s army. They were likely to get no
treatment at all, except what they could manage for themselves. I was sure that
our medical supplies were as strained as our medical staff was. It looked like
this was a much bigger fight than I had expected. Or, at least, a more desperate
encounter with more casualties than expected in a short time.

Runmust Singh on crutches took me in to see Sleepy.

She appeared disoriented. I knew that look of old, having been there myself. She
was on the edge of collapse. She had not done more than catnap since the
fighting started. “You can’t do it all yourself, Captain. You’ll be a lot more
effective if you just trust the rest of us to get things done and get yourself
some rest. If Mogaba comes back now you won’t be able to think fast enough or
straight enough to do anybody any good.”

She eyed me irritably but was too exhausted to squabble. “I take it you didn’t
come here past the dead.”

“I came through the hospital area.” She knew that I would have to do that. After
we talked I would, probably, go back to offer what little help an old man with a
bum hand and a bad eye could.

“Then you don’t yet know that there isn’t anybody left for me to trust while I
take a nap. Swan is dead, Croaker. Blade is dead. Iqbal Singh is dead.

Riverwalker is dead. Add Pham Huu Clee, Li Wan, both the Chun brothers and your
old engineers, Cletus and Loftus. There’s going to be a lot of opportunity for
advancement. Name a name. Almost everybody is dead or injured. Hell, even Sahra
may be dead. We haven’t been able to find her.”

“We’re back,” I said. That ought to take a load off her shoulders.

“Successfully, I might add. What about Suvrin?”

“Suvrin made it through. Suvrin saved the day. Suvrin and I have agreed to take
turns resting as soon as we’re sure Mogaba isn’t coming back. Right now we’re
taking turns holding everything together.”

Based on what I had seen and heard already the Great General would not return
any time soon—unless he came on his own. His soldiers had had enough.

Mogaba would have been back already had he had any troops he could use. Caution
and procrastination were not sins you could pin on the Great General.

I heard Tobo’s voice outside, overhead. He was addressing the folk of the hidden
realm. Before long we would know all we wanted to know about Mogaba’s current
situation. In moments thousands of wraithlike things would be involved in the
search for Sahra—and everyone else still missing.

The kid was taking charge.

Sleepy mumbled, “I shouldn’t have engaged him till Tobo came back.”

Unwittingly, I repeated comments she had heard from Suvrin already. “Mogaba
wouldn’t have given you a choice. He doesn’t have our intelligence resources but
he does make use of the tools he has. That was our failing. Not remembering
that. We should’ve given at least the appearance of having left a sorcerer in
camp.”

Sleepy nodded. “Water down the creek. Which I’ll thank you to remind me whenever
I begin to feel sorry for myself and start picking the thing’s bones to indict
myself for doing things differently.”

“You’re a strange bird, little girl.”

“What?”

“Sorry. One-Eye’s been on my mind lately.” I did not explain. As long as I kept
my genius sealed up inside my head there was a fair chance Kina would not find
out anything she would make me regret. I asked. “What about Goblin and the girl?

If there was fighting in the grove . . . ”

“We don’t know yet. I assume Tobo will inform us. I assume everything is going
to be just peachy now that Tobo is back.” She was striving for sarcasm but it
was not working. She did not have strength enough to speak in anything but a
monotone.

“Lady and Murgen will be here in a few minutes. Let them manage the little shit
while you get your rest.”

I went for an excursion amongst the unburied dead, to make goodbyes. They were
laid out in rows, awaiting disposal. The weather was cold and damp so
putrefaction was not far advanced but there was stench enough of blood and open
bowels. Flies were rare, it being the wrong season. And crows of any sort were a
rarity these days. Buzzards circled but dared not come down because the welcome
they received from the living tended to be discouraging.

Once someone identified one of the fallen, Taglian prisoners moved the body to
the appropriate funeral procedure group. Recruits and additional prisoners were
busy building ghats, burning corpses, digging graves and filling them, or
erecting exposure platforms for the few whose fate it was to leave the earth
that way.

A lot of corpses had been dealt with already but I could see that, despite the
season, we were going to have to dig mass graves for the Taglian fallen. There
would not be time to get each man a decent funeral. Although civilians who had
had men serving with Mogaba had begun to show up already, hoping to reclaim
their dead.

I wondered if, in some mystical fashion, new standing stones were materializing
on the glittering plain, their faces crawling with golden memorial characters.

A subaltern from the Land of Unknown Shadows approached me. It was obvious he
was not pleased about having been assigned to the funeral detail. He must have
embarrassed himself during the fighting. The unpleasant duty would be his
reward. “Sir,” he said, with a salute so crisp it should have gotten his
sentence commuted, “it would be a great help if you could offer me the funerary
preferences of your old comrades.” There was a mildly repulsive fawning edge to
his otherwise businesslike demeanor.

He led me to a spot where he had isolated non-Taglians who did not hail from
Hsien. My former henchmen and a couple of Nyueng Bao occupied that little
square.

“Soldiers live,” I murmured. Now there was only Murgen and Lady left from the
farther shore of the Sea of Torments. “Bury Swan and the engineer brothers.

Inside that cemetery over there. Make sure that their graves are clearly marked.

I’ll want to find them later in order to put up a proper memorial. They deserve
more than a parting mention in the Annals.” I wondered what Swan would think of
lying to rest beside all those Shadowlanders. He and Blade and Cordy Mather had
helped put most of them there.

I had no idea what funeral customs obtained amongst Blade’s people. Neither I
nor anyone else ever learned who those people actually were. “Lay the black man
down in a grave near Swan. Maybe they can be buddies in the next world, too.

Maybe they’ll finally get to start that brewery they always wanted.”

The subaltern was puzzled by that but did not comment. The soldiers of the Land
of Unknown Shadows were growing accustomed to the religious absurdities of the
new world. I walked on, across ground covered by the corpses of men Sleepy had
recruited during the time of Captivity. Their number was disturbing. Before long
she would be as isolated from her own generation as I was isolated from mine.

A great many excellent soldiers from the Land of Unknown Shadows lay upon that
cold, hard ground, too. And, unsurprisingly, so did many men who had joined us
recently, locally. Poorest trained, they had stood the least chance during the
fighting.

I surveyed all that death and hoped Sleepy had reached a watershed here, that
henceforth she would seek solutions that did not require headbutting until
somebody staggered away and collapsed from concussion. Not that all this could
be blamed on her. Based on information available I could fault none of her
decisions. And she was a better tactician than I had been.

Above the Cemetery:

Mogaba Accedes
Twenty-six hours after his order to break contact Mogaba abandoned all hope of
pulling together an attack that would take advantage of the enemy’s despair and
disarray. His own men had been too badly mauled to set aside their own despair
and disarray. Only Aridatha Singh’s division retained its cohesion. Its reward
was the task of screening the retreating army.

Which consisted mainly of survivors of the Second Territorial. Of Saraswati’s
former right wing force not one man in ten could be accounted for anymore.

Enemy cavalry remained very active. The Captain seemed disinclined to let him
get near her again.

A pair of billowing black shapes passed low overhead. They radiated a chilling
psychic scream. Suddenly, instinctually, Mogaba knew that he was being watched
by something he could not turn fast enough to catch staring. He knew that his
best opportunity had ended. He summoned his latest aide-de-camp, who had been in
place only a few hours. The man’s several predecessors were still down there on
the field. “Bring me the Deceiver prisoners.”

“Sir?”

“The prisoners General Singh captured in the Grove of Doom. I want to see them.”

He thought he could offer them a deal. The girl could pretend to be the
Protector for a while. Taglios would be less restive if the Protector appeared
publicly sometime soon.

“Those prisoners were sent north, sir. Under special constraint because of the
danger General Singh told us they present.”

“And he was right. That was the best thing to do. We don’t want them to fall
into unfriendly hands.” Publicly, Mogaba insisted on treating the recent
encounter as a triumph. He expected his officers to do the same.

Mogaba spent a moment considering what options he might have. It took only a
minute to conclude that withdrawal toward Taglios was the best course.

Oh, but he hated that. No matter the true facts, rumor would call it a defeat
and a retreat. That would cost.

The Great General considered his aide. He did not know the man well enough to be
aware of his family status. “Ton-jon, is it?”

“Than Jahn, sir. A remote male ancestor is reputed to have been Nyueng Bao. My
family is Vehdna.”

“Excellent. Perhaps you can share religious anecdotes with the enemy Captain.”

“Sir?” Sounding both baffled and irked.

“I’m sending you south under a flag of truce. To arrange for an armistice. So we
can collect our dead.” If anything the Great General ever did won him favor with
the Taglian people, it was his effort to bring back the fallen sons so their
families could honor them with all the appropriate last rites.

This time would be a bitch. There was no way he was going to recover all the
Taglian dead. “Find me some priests. Every kind we have.” He needed advice about
what to do with so many bodies, this close to home.

The Company, Mogaba was sure, would just fling their share of Taglian corpses
into one big ugly hole, cover them over and forget about them.