Soldiers Live (7 page)

Another thousand steps downward, repeating his message several times. He left
the stair at the level everyone called the Cave of the Ancients because of the
old men interred there. Blade always stopped to visit his friend Cordy Mather.

It was a ritual of respect. Cordy was dead. Most of the others confined in the
cave remained alive, enmeshed in stasis spells. Somehow, during the long
Captivity, Mather had shed the spells confining him. And success had cost him
his life. He had not been able to find his way out.

Most of the old men in the cave meant nothing to Blade or the Company. Only
Shivetya knew who they were or why they had been interred. Certainly they had
irked someone armed with the power to confine them. Several corpses, though, had
been Company brothers when still alive. Several others had been captives before
Soulcatcher buried the Company. Death had found them because, evidently, Cordy
Mather had tried to wake them up. Touching the Captured without sorcerous
precautions inevitably caused the death of the touched.

Blade resisted the urge to kick the sorcerer Longshadow. That madman was a
commodity of incalculable worth in the Land of Unknown Shadows. The Company had
grown strong and wealthy because of him. It continued to prosper. “How you
doing, Shadowmaster? Looks like you’ll be here a while yet.” Blade assumed the
sorcerer could not hear him. He could not recall having heard anything when he
was under the enchantment himself. He could not recall having been aware in any
way, though Murgen said there were times when it looked like the Captured were
aware of their surroundings. “They haven’t pushed the bidding high enough yet. I
hate to admit it but you really are a popular guy. In your own special way.” Not
a generous or forgiving or even empathetic man, Blade stood with hands on hips
staring down at Longshadow. The sorcerer looked like a skeleton barely covered
by diseased skin. His face was locked into a scream. Blade told him, “They still
say, ‘All Evil Dies There an Endless Death.’ Especially when they’re talking
about you.”

Not far from Longshadow is the Company’s other insane sorcerer prisoner, the
Howler. This one presents a greater temptation. Blade saw no value whatsoever to
keeping Howler alive. The little shit has a history of treachery that goes way,

way back and a character unlikely to change because of this confinement. He
survived a similar Captivity before. That one endured for centuries.

Tobo did not need to learn any of the Howler’s evil crap. And Tobo’s education
was the only excuse Blade had heard for letting the little ragbag live.

Blade paid his deepest respects to Mather. Cordy was a good friend for a long
time. Blade owes Cordy his life. He wished the evil fortune had befallen him.

Cordy wanted to live. Blade believes he is proceeding on inertia.

Blade continued his descent into the earth, past the treasure caverns that were
being looted to finance the Company’s homegoing, it was hoped on a spectacularly
memorable scale.

Blade is not much given to emotional vapors or seizures of fear. He has a cool
enough head to have survived for years as a Company agent inside Longshadow’s
camp. But as he moved deeper into the earth he began to twitch and sweat. His
pace slackened. He passed the last known cavern. Nothing lay below that but the
ultimate enemy, the Mother of Night herself. She was the enemy who would still
be waiting once all the other, lesser adversaries had been brushed aside or
extinguished.

To Kina, the Black Company is an annoying buzz in the ear, a mosquito that has
gotten away with taking a sip or two of blood and has not had the good sense to
get the hell away.

Blade slowed again. The light following him kept weakening. Where once he could
see clearly twenty steps ahead now he could see only ten, the farther four
seeming to be behind the face of a thickening black fog. Here the darkness
seemed almost alive. Here the darkness felt as though it was under much greater
pressure, the way water seemed to exert more as you swam deeper beneath its
surface.

Blade found it harder to breathe. He forced himself to do so, deeply and
rapidly, then went on, against the insistence of instinct. A silver chalice took
form in the fog, just five steps below. It stood about a foot tall, a simple
tall cup made of noble metal. Blade had placed it there. It marked the lowest
step he had yet been able to reach.

Now each step downward seemed to take place against the resistance of liquid
tar. Each step brought the darkness crushing in harder. The light from behind
was too weak to reach even one step beyond the chalice.

Blade makes this effort frequently. He accounts it exercise for his will and
courage. Each descent he manages to make it as far as the chalice mostly by
being angry that he cannot push past it.

This time he tried something different. He threw a handful of coins collected
from one of the treasure caves. His arm had no strength but gravity had not lost
its power nor had sound been devoured by the darkness. The coins tinkled away
down the stairwell. But not for long. After a moment it sounded like they were
rolling around on a floor. Then they were silent. Then a tiny little voice from
far, far away cried, “Help.”

The Land of Unknown Shadows:

Traveling Hsien
The physical geography of the Land of Unknown Shadows closely recollects that of
our own world. The essential differences stem from the impact of man.

The moral and cultural topographies of the worlds are completely different,

though. Even the Nyueng Bao still have trouble making any real connection
here—despite the fact that they and the Children of the Dead share common
ancestors. But the Nyueng Bao escaped Maricha Manthara Dhumraksha and his kin
centuries ago, then developed as a cultural island constantly washed by alien
waves.

Hsien proper spans roughly the same territories as what were known as the
Shadowlands at home when things were going well for the Shadowmasters. The
farther reaches of Hsien, that none of us have visited, are more heavily
populated than our own. In olden times every town here boasted its kernel of
resistance to the Shadowmasters. Few of those groups communicated because of
travel restrictions imposed by the master race. Still, when the uprising did
come there were local champions enough to ensure success.

The flight of the last Shadowmasters left a power vacuum. The resistance
chieftains anointed themselves to fill it. Hsien remains in the custody of their
descendants, scores of warlords in constant conflict, few of whom ever get any
stronger. Any who appear to be gaining strength are torn apart by their
neighbors.

The File of Nine is an anonymous, loose assembly of senior warlords, supposedly
drawn one each from the nine provinces of Hsien. This is not true and never has
been—though few outside the Nine know it. That is just one more fiction helping
keep the current state of chaos alive.

Popularly, the File of Nine is seen as a cabal of secret masters who control
everything. The File of Nine would love that to be true but, in reality, they
have very little power. Their situation leaves them with few tools they can use
to enforce their will. Any real effort to impose anything would betray their
identities. So they mostly issue bulls and pretend to speak for Hsien. Sometimes
people listen. And sometimes they listen to the monks of Khang Phi. Or to the
Court of All Seasons. So each must be wooed.

The Black Company is feared mainly because it is a joker in the warlord deck. It
has no local allegiance. It could jump any direction for any alien reason.

Worse, it is reputed to include powerful wizards assisting skilled soldiers led
by competent commanders and sergeants, none of whom are at all handicapped by
excesses of empathy or compassion.

What popularity the Company enjoys essentially arises from its capacity to
deliver the last Shadowmaster to the justice of Hsien. And among peasants, from
the fact that nervous warlords have reined in their squabbles amongst themselves
considerably while they have this unpredictable monster crouched, growing
rapidly, to their south.

All the lords and leaders of Hsien, in the last, would prefer that the Company
went away. Our presence places too much strain on the state of things as they
are and always have been.

I attached myself to the deputation headed for Khang Phi even though I was not
yet completely recovered. I would never be one-hundred percent again. I had some
blurring in my right eye. I had acquired some truly intimidating burn scars. I
would never regain the full range of motion in the fingers of my right hand. But
I was convinced that I could be an asset in our negotiations for the shadowgate
secrets.

Only Sahra agreed with me. But Sahra is our foreign minister. Only she has the
patience and tact to deal with such fractious folk as the File of Nine—part of
whose problem with us is that our women do more than cook and lie on their
backs.

Of course, of Lady, Sleepy, Sahra and the Radisha I suspect only Sahra can heat
water without burning it. And she may have forgotten how by now.

The Company on the move, bound for the intellectual heart of Hsien, was a terror
to behold, judging by the response of peasants along the way. And that despite
the fact that our party, guards included, numbered just twenty-one. Human souls.

Tobo’s shadowy friends surrounded and paced us, in such numbers that it was
impossible for them to remain unseen all the time. Old fears and superstitions
exploded in our wake, then terror ran ahead far faster than we could travel.

People scattered when we approached. It made no difference that Tobo’s night
pals were well-behaved. Superstition completely outweighed any practical
evidence.

Had we been more numerous we would not have gotten past Khang Phi’s gate. Even
there, among supposed intellectuals, the fear of the Unknown Shadows was thick
enough to slice.

Sahra had had to agree, long ago, that neither Lady nor One-Eye nor Tobo would
enter the Repose of Knowledge. The monks were particularly paranoid about
sorcerers. Hitherto it had suited Sleepy to comply with their wishes. And none
of those three were part of our party when we arrived at the Lower Gate of Khang
Phi.

There was a strange young woman in our midst. She used the name Shikhandini,

Shiki for short. She could easily arouse almost any man who did not know she was
Tobo in disguise. Nobody bothered to tell me what or why but Sahra was up to
something. Tobo was, obviously, an extra card she wanted tucked up her sleeve.

Moreover, she suspected several of the Nine of harboring evil ambitions which
would soon flower.

What? Men of power possessed of secret agendas? No! That does not seem possible.

Khang Phi is a center of learning and spirituality. It is a repository for
knowledge and wisdom. It is extremely ancient. It survived the Shadowmasters. It
commands the respect of all the Children of the Dead, throughout the Land of
Unknown Shadows. It is neutral ground, a part of no warlord’s demesne. Travelers
bound toward Khang Phi, or returning home therefrom, are in theory immune.

Theory and practice are sometimes at variance. Therefore we never let Sahra
travel without obvious protection.

Khang Phi is built against the face of a mountain. It rises a thousand
whitewashed feet into the bellies of permanent clouds. The topmost structures
cannot be seen from below.

At the same site in our world a barren cliff broods over the southern entrance
to the only good pass through the mountains known as the Dandha Presh.

A life misspent making war left me wondering if the place had not begun its
existence as a fortress. It certainly commanded that end of the pass. I looked
for the fields necessary to sustain its population. And they were there,

clinging to the sides of the mountains in terraces like stairsteps for
splay-legged giants. Ancient peoples carried the soil in from leagues away, a
basket at a time, generation after generation. No doubt the work goes on today.

Master Santaraksita, Murgen and Thai Dei met us outside the ornate Lower Gate. I
had not seen them for a long time, though Murgen and Thai Dei attended the
funeral ceremonies for Gota and One-Eye. I missed them because I was unconscious
at the time. Fat old Master Santaraksita never went anywhere anymore. That
elderly scholar was content to end his days in Khang Phi, pretending to be the
Company’s agent. Here he was among his own kind. Here he had found a thousand
intellectual challenges. Here he had found people as eager to learn from him as
he was eager to learn from them. He was a man who had come home.

He welcomed Sleepy with open arms. “Dorabee! At last.” He insisted on calling
her Dorabee because it was the first name he had known her by. “You must let me
show you the master library while you’re here! It absolutely beggars that pimple
we managed in Taglios.” He surveyed the rest of us. Merriment deserted him.

Sleepy had brought the ugly boys along. The kind of guys he believed would use
books for firewood on a chilly night. Guys like me, who bore scars and were
missing fingers and teeth and had skin colors the likes of which were never seen
in the Land of Unknown Shadows.

Sleepy told him, “I didn’t come for a holiday back in the stacks, Sri. One way
or another I’ve got to get that shadowgate information. The news I’m getting
from the other side isn’t encouraging. I need to get the Company back into
action before it’s too late.”

Santaraksita nodded, looked around for eavesdroppers, winked and nodded again.

Willow Swan leaned back, looked up, asked me, “Think you can make it to the
top?”

“Give me a few days.” Actually, I am in better shape now than I was that evil
night. I have lost a lot of weight and have put on muscle.

I still get winded easily, though.

Swan said, “Lie all you want, old man.” He dismounted, handed his reins to one
of the youngsters beginning to swarm around. They were all boys between eight
and twelve, all as silent as if they had had their vocal cords cut. They all
wore identical pale brown robes. Parents unable to provide for them had donated
them to Khang Phi as infants. These had surpassed a particular milestone on
their path to becoming monks. We were unlikely to see anyone younger.

Swan picked up a stone two inches in diameter. “I’m going to throw this when we
get up top. I want to watch it fall.”

Parts of Swan never grew up. He still skips stones across ponds and rivers. He
tried to teach me the art coming to Khang Phi. My hand and fingers will no
longer conform to the shape of a proper skipping stone. There is a lot they
cannot accomplish anymore. Managing a pen while writing is chore enough.

I miss One-Eye.

“Just don’t bomp some asshole warlord on the noggin. Most of them don’t like us
much already.” They were afraid of us. And they could find no way to manipulate
us. They kept giving us provisions and letting us recruit in hopes we will go
away eventually. Leaving Longshadow behind. We did not inform them that local
financing would not be needed to underwrite our campaign beyond the plain.

After four hundred years it has become a given: You keep everybody outside just
a little bit nervous. And you do not tell them anything they do not need to
know.

Longshadow. Maricha Manthara Dhumraksha. He has several other names here as
well. None indicate popularity. As long as we have the ability to deliver him in
chains the warlords will tolerate almost anything. Twenty generations of
ancestors cry out for justice.

I suspect Longshadow’s wickedness has grown with the retelling, thereby making
giants of the heroes who drove him out.

Though they are soldiers themselves the warlords do not understand us. They fail
to recognize the fact that they are soldiers of a different breed, drawn on by a
smaller destiny.