Soldiers Live (50 page)

Taglios:

Khadidas
Tobo was there to help when I wakened my old friend Goblin, who had become the
unwilling vessel of the Khadidas.

It was not that difficult once Tobo’s controlling spells had been cancelled.

Tobo shook Goblin while I stood by. And once the little shit began to stir Tobo
stood by while I nagged.

The little man’s eyelids snapped open. The eyes behind them were not the eyes of
the hedge wizard Goblin. I was looking straight into large chips of the
darkness. Those eyes seemed to want to suck me in.

The mouth of the Khadidas opened, preparing to vent some infamy or blasphemy. I
interposed One-Eye’s ragged old hat between Kina’s slave and myself. The effect
was electric. The Goblin body convulsed as though I had whacked it with a hot
poker. I slapped the hat down on its head.

“Lift,” I told Tobo, who had placed himself at the head of Goblin’s cot, out of
the Khadidas’s field of vision. I held the hat in place while Tobo raised Goblin
into a sitting position. “It works. Better than I hoped.”

“Better than I thought it would, for sure.”

“One-Eye always did underplay it when he did something right.” The wicked light
had left Goblin’s eyes. Now he just looked empty. Not even a thousand-yard
stare, there. More like nobody at home at all.

“Do the spear.”

I did the spear. But, man, was I reluctant to trust the wisdom of a dead man
when it came to putting that potent a tool into the hands of a devil.

I stood it up in front of Goblin, its butt between his heels. I wrapped his
hands around the black shaft. Then I shoved One-Eye’s filthy felt relic down
onto his head even more solidly. Then I gripped his hands hard, squeezing them
onto the silver-and-black wood.

Life began to enter his eyes.

I told Tobo, “Not as dramatic as watching a baby being born but dramatic
enough.” Even a dummy like me did not need a map to see that we were conjuring
up the real Goblin.

A Goblin in pain so deep I was aware immediately that only Lady could begin to
understand.

I settled myself on a stool. Tobo eased Goblin onto a chair with an upright
back, then planted himself on the edge of the cot. Goblin kept turning from one
of us to the other, tears streaming but unable to speak, however hard he tried.

He reached out to Tobo in a silent plea for contact.

“Careful of that hat,” I said. “I’m already thinking about nailing it to his
head.” And thinking about how wonderful a friend One-Eye had been, too. Because
he had foreseen some possibility like this and had invested his final years in
making a rescue feasible.

I choked up for a moment, thinking I never had a friend who would go that far
for me. Then I recalled that Sleepy had spent fifteen years working to exhume
the Captured. And now, barely five years later, all those people but Lady and I
were gone. Belly up. Up in smoke. Finished.

Soldiers live.

Not once had Sleepy ever behaved like she believed that she had wasted her life.

But I am sure she had thought it sometimes. Regarding some individuals.

I said, “You ought to keep at least one hand on the spear, Goblin.” We had done
nothing to rid him of the Khadidas. The monster had been pushed back into the
pit where it had lain till it had sprung forward to seize control, but now
behind feeble barriers. The monster was much stronger than Goblin. We would have
to work hard to keep it suppressed.

“What’re we going to do with you?” I asked. And felt a twinge of guilt. Because
I had plans for him already. Plans that might change the world.

“What do you think, Goblin? You going to help us help you hang on?”

Goblin was getting some muscle control back. He managed a weak, “Yeah,” as he
nodded his head, too.

“I’m going to leave everything in the hands of you two gentlemen,” Suvrin said.

He nodded politely to Goblin. “I scarcely knew this man. And then mainly from
the perspective of being the butt of practical jokes he and One-Eye played.

Meaning I might not be disinterested even if I tried. What is that stuff around
the bottom of that thing on his head?”

“Glue. That thing is a hat. You must’ve seen One-Eye wearing it. The old fart
rigged it up with some spells, planning for something like what did happen.”

“You told me.”

“All right. The glue is because we don’t want the hat to come off. Ever. If we
could come up with a way that would leave him free to feed himself and scratch
his butt we’d glue his hands to One-Eye’s spear, too.”

There is something about becoming Captain that takes the humor out of a man. It
had gotten to Suvrin already. He never cracked a smile. He asked, “You gotten
any useful information out of him? Not yet? When?”

“I don’t know. He’s coming around. Really. Remember, in practical terms he’s
been dead for six years. He’s having trouble figuring out how to use his body
again. Especially his tongue. Meanwhile, the Khadidas is still inside of him
trying to take over again.”

“And Lady?”

I was more concerned about my wife than I was about Goblin. She was acting
strange. It did not seem like I knew her anymore. I had resurrected all my
earlier worries about her connection with Kina. Kina was the master manipulator
and planner. Kina schemed schemes ages long and many layers deep.

But Kina was slow. Very slow. Which was why she favored plots that required
years to ripen. She could not handle swiftly changing fortunes.

“Lady is a puzzle right now,” I confessed. “But a benign one.”

Goblin made a gurgling sound. The Khadidas was working hard to keep him from
talking.

Suvrin asked, “Do you know anything about the leading men of Taglios?”

“Not the current crop. Except for types. My advice would just be, don’t ever
turn your back on any of them. You could talk to Runmust Singh. If he survived
the latest fighting.” I had a feeling he might have been with Sleepy in that
ambush. “Or you could just ask Aridatha to loan you a couple of advisors.”

Suvrin seemed unusually amenable to consulting for a Captain of the Company.

He told me, “We need to resume our lessons. So I can study the Annals.”

I responded, “We need some peace for that. Maybe a few years. We could build a
new Company while we’re at it.”

Goblin gurgled again and nodded.

The little creature was like a puppy in some ways.

I told Suvrin, “I need to talk to Goblin a while.” Once our hesitant new
commander stepped out, I said, “We need to work out ways around the Khadidas’s
interference.”

Nod.

“And that’s how we’ll do it, I guess. Unless it can control more than your
speech.” I peered at the little man. He did not respond. I realized that I had
not posed a yes or no question. “Can it do that?”

No.

“All right, then. The most critical question of all. Is the Khadidas in direct
contact with Kina?”

No. And yes. And a shrug. So we proceeded to play a game of a thousand questions
during which I seemed to go the wrong direction, no matter where I went, making
him gurgle in frustration. His best efforts to speak seldom produced more than
one recognizable syllable.

Eventually, despite my density, I got it. The Khadidas could communicate with
the Goddess only when it was in control of the Goblin flesh. It could not do so
when it was not in control.

That made sense. Some. Though I had been cautioned to remember that the Goblin I
was interviewing was actually a ghost that had not been able to leave when its
body died and had been reanimated by the breath of the Goddess.

“That is exciting news, Goblin. Look, I have a plan.” Difficult as it was, I
dredged a form of it up from its hidden place deep down inside me, hoping the
Goddess had no way of listening in. My plan depended entirely on my
understanding of the Goblin I had known for so long, hoping he had not altered
drastically during the past two decades. A man might change a lot in that much
time—if he had to spend part of it dead and enslaved by the Mother of Deceivers.

On the surface Goblin seemed to like my plan, as I presented it. Seemed willing
to participate. Even seemed enthusiastic about plunging One-Eye’s spear into the
blackest of hearts.

I told him, “I don’t want to waste one minute I don’t have to. You understand?”

Nod. Even a gurgled, “Yes!” With enthusiasm. With outright eagerness.

“I’ll be back soon.” I felt almost bad, not telling a dead man all of the truth.

Around Taglios:

Aerial Recon
I found Arkana and asked if she wanted to go flying, nodding to indicate that
she really did want to make a tour of the upper air. For the benefit of the
curious I mentioned wanting to check rumors that troops loyal to the
Protectorate were headed toward the city. One force had crossed the Main at
Vehdna-Bota. Another was gathering out east, near Mukhra in Ajitsthan, where
Mogaba had enjoyed considerable popularity among the tribes. Since those rumors
were beginning to make a lot of people nervous nobody would be surprised that I
would want to take a look.

And that is what we did while we were aloft, because it was work that had to be
done. Doing the work, though, gave me time to talk to Arkana.

She replied, “I can see one big problem with your plan. Maybe. What happens to
the plain and the shadowgates? You asked me if I wanted to go home. The answer
is yes. I don’t think to stay, though. Just to see what happened there. To bury
my dead, I guess you could say. But I don’t see how that could keep from
complicating everything else if I had to do it first because there wouldn’t be
any way later.”

“You’re right. And I need to do what I’ve got to do as soon as I can. Before
Kina catches on.” If she had not foreseen the possibilities already. Or learned
of them from Goblin. Or Shivetya. Or from Lady, who was smart enough to guess
what I was thinking. Sometimes. “Particularly before my wife catches on. Or
starts thinking I’m chasing around.”

We were approaching the River Main, heading for Vehdna-Bota. There were pillars
of smoke north of the ford, away from the small settlement. But not many.

Arkana told me, “That’s not much of an army.”

“Not in any hurry to get into harm’s way, either, looks like. There’s plenty of
daylight left they could use for traveling.”

Not in any hurry. When we went down for a closer look we found men scattering
like startled roaches.

“Somebody covering his ass,” I said. “Making a show of honoring his obligations.

That bunch will never actually get to Taglios.”

We went back up. We talked, not just about what had to be accomplished. Arkana
seemed able to relax, now. Seemed to have made peace with the bad times. Some
manage that with comparative ease. Others remain crippled for life. Those are
not the sort who remain soldiers. They become ex-soldiers and get intimate with
wine or poppies.

I asked about her leg.

She laughed. “I can be one of the old folks now. I can use it to predict the
weather.”

“It’s all right otherwise?”

“Yes.”

“I do good work.”

“Lots of practice.”

“You get that in this racket.”

We flew back toward Taglios, chatting in a relaxed way, me thinking that this
was what it would have been like had Booboo grown up with her parents. Me
fooling myself. Lying to myself. No child would grow up even as normal as Arkana
if they had Lady for a mother and me for a father.

Maybe I had found the way. Adopt them after they have gotten through their
formative years.

We were passing south of Taglios, going to scout the forces gathering in
Ajitsthan, when Arkana spotted a billowing figure climbing toward us. “That’s
Shukrat.”

“Have you two made peace? Real peace?”

“Sort of. Mainly because we’ve only got each other. From back home. If it wasn’t
for that we wouldn’t even be talking. Partly it’s because of family stuff.

Things our parents did to each other. And partly it’s us. She’s too cute and too
sweet and dumb as a bucket of rocks. But all she’s ever had to do is make big
eyes or bounce a little and look helpless.”

“And you were the smart one. Always expected to figure it out for yourself.”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re growing up to be the prettier one, too. Shukrat’s going to be all
freckles and frump before long.”

We slowed so Shukrat could catch up. She came up on my other side. I asked,

“What’s up, other daughter?”

“Croaker, I wanted to talk about what happened to those men on that island. That
scares me. Really bad. I really like Tobo. A lot.” I was sure she was bright red
behind her facial wraps. She did blush easily. “But I don’t think I want to be
involved with anyone capable of doing that.”

“We’re all capable of that, Shukrat. Put in the right place at the right time
and given a motive. It’s the people around us that keep us from doing it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Tobo cares about you. Probably a lot more than he’s willing to admit.

He’s a passionate kid.

“Because he’s what he is he’s always had the capacity for huge evil, Shukrat.

You know, nobody starts out to be a villain. Not the Shadowmasters. Not my wife
or her sister. Not even the Voroshk. But being powerful can turn you villainous.

Because there’s nothing to stop you from doing whatever you want to do. Except
for something inside you. For Tobo, for a long time, that something was his love
and respect for his parents. He fought with Sahra every day but there was no way
he was ever going to do something that would disappoint her. While she was
alive. After she disappeared the brake on his dark side became his father. But
now Murgen is gone, too. So there’s only one more person whose good opinion is
important enough to him to keep him from letting himself go.”

Shukrat had to think about that for a while. She was nowhere as dim as Arkana
claimed but there were times when it took her a while to get her mind wrapped
all the way around complex issues.

“You’re saying me caring about him is what will keep him from doing that stuff
again?”

“Yes. I think that. But I also think you have to confront him with your
knowledge and make him understand that you won’t accept any excuses for behavior
like that. Don’t nag. Don’t carp. State your case firmly and clearly, then shut
up. Don’t negotiate. You have to mark out an absolute limit he’ll always know is
there. And stick with it. You always have to know it’s there, too.”

Shukrat nodded.

While I waited to see if she got it I told Arkana, “I might turn out to be
pretty good at this fatherly advice stuff.”

“You’re definitely long-winded enough.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“For the record, I think you’re right. What you said to her.”

“You know what she’s talking about?”

“She warned me. In case I wanted to watch out for General Singh. Not long after
you warned me about it. I had to go see what you were excited about, didn’t I?”

The girl rose in my estimation every damned day.

The force gathering at Mukhra was much more of a threat than that at
Vehdna-Bota. It would mean major new trouble if Aridatha, as the new Great
General, was unable to sell the concept of peace to Mogaba’s old allies.