Soldiers Live, Page 3

  “I’d better send someone after Sahra.”

  “Tobo is taking care of it.”

  Sleepy considered me steadily. She may be short but she has presence and self-confidence. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m feeling some of what One-Eye is. Or maybe I just naturally can’t stand a prolonged peace.”

  “Lady nagging you about going home again?”

  “No. Murgen’s last communion with Shivetya has her worried.” To say the least. Modern history had turned cruel back in our home world. The Deceiver cult has rebounded in our absence, making converts by the hundred. At the same time Soulcatcher tormented the Taglian Territories in a mad and mainly fruitless effort to root out her enemies, most of whom were imaginary until she and Mogaba created them through their zeal. “She hasn’t said so but I’m pretty sure she’s afraid Booboo is manipulating Soulcatcher somehow.”

  Sleepy could not stifle a smile. “Booboo?”

  “Your fault. I picked it up from something you wrote.”

  “She’s your daughter.”

  “We have to call her something.”

  “I can’t believe you two never picked a name.”

  “She was born before...” I like “Ghana.” It was good enough for my grandmother. Lady would have demurred. It sounded too much like Kina.

  And although Booboo might be a nightmare stalking, Booboo was Lady’s daughter and in the land where she had grown up mothers always named the daughters. Always. When the time was right.

  This time will never be right. This child denies us both. She stipulates that our flesh quickened her flesh but she is animated by an absolute conviction that she is the spiritual daughter of the Goddess Kina. She is the Daughter of Night. Her sole purpose for existing is to precipitate the Year of the Skulls, that great human disaster that will free her slumbering soulmother so she can resume working her wickedness upon the world. Or upon the worlds, actually, as we had discovered once my quest for the Company’s ancient origins had led us to the time-wracked fortress on the plain of glittering stone lying between our world and the Land of Unknown Shadows.

  Silence stretched between us. Sleepy had been Annalist a long time. She had come to the Company young. Its traditions meant a great deal to her. Consequently she remained unfailingly courteous to her predecessors. But internally, I am sure, she was impatient with us old farts. Particularly with me. She never knew me well. And I was always taking up time wanting to know what was going on. I have begun putting too much emphasis on detail now that I do not have much to do but write.

  I told her, “I don’t offer advice unless you ask.”

  That startled her.

  “Trick I learned from Soulcatcher. Makes people think you’re reading their minds. She’s much better at it.”

  “I’m sure she is. She’s had all that time to practice.” She puffed air out of expanded cheeks. “It’s been a week since we’ve talked. Let’s see. Nothing to report from Shivetya. Murgen’s been at Khang Phi with Sahra so he hasn’t been in touch with the golem. Reports from the men working on the plain say they’re suffering from recurring premonitions of disaster.”

  “Really? They said it that way?” She had her pontifical moments.

  “Roughly.”

  “What’s the traffic situation?”

  “There is none.” She looked puzzled. The plain had seen no one cross for generations before the Company managed the passage. The last, before us, had been the Shadowmasters who had fled the Land of Unknown Shadows for our world back before I was born.

  “Wrong question. I guess. How’re you coming with preparations for our return?”

  “That a personal or professional question?” Everything was business with Sleepy. I do not recall ever having seen her relax. Sometimes that worried me. Something in her past, hinted at in her own Annals, had left her convinced that that was the only way she could be safe.

  “Both.” I wished I could tell Lady that we would be going home soon. She had no love for the Land of Unknown Shadows.

  I am sure she will not enjoy the future wherever we go. It is an absolute certainty that the times to come will not be good. I do not believe she understands that yet. Not in her heart.

  Even she can be naive about some things.

  “The short answer is that we can probably put a reinforced company across as early as next month. If we can acquire the shadowgate knowledge.”

  Crossing the plain is a major undertaking because you have to carry with you everything you will need for a week. Up there there is nothing to eat but glittering stone. Stone remembers but stone has little nutritional value.

  “Are you going too?”

  “I’m going to send scouts and spies, no matter what. We can use the home shadowgate as long as we only put through a few men at a time.”

  “You won’t take Shivetya’s word?”

  “The demon has his own agenda.”

  She would know. She had been in direct communion with that Steadfast Guardian.

  What I knew of the golem’s designs made me concerned for Lady. Shivetya, that ancient entity, created to manage and watch over the plain — which was an artifact itself — wanted to die. He could not do so while Kina survived. One of his tasks was to ensure that the sleeping Goddess did not awaken and escape her imprisonment.

  When Kina ceased to exist, my wife’s tenuous grasp on those magical powers critical to her sense of self-worth and identity would perish with her. What powers Lady boasted, she possessed only because she had found a way to steal from the Goddess. She was a complete parasite.

  I said, “And you, believing the Company dictum that we have no friends outside, don’t value his friendship.”

  “Oh, he’s perfectly marvelous, Croaker. He saved my life. But he didn’t do it because I’m cute and I jiggle in the right places when I run.”

  She was not cute. I could not imagine her jiggling, either. This was a woman who had gotten away with pretending to be a boy for years. There was nothing feminine about her. Nor anything masculine, either. She was not a sexual being at all, though for a while there had been rumors that she and Swan had become a midnight item.

  It turned out purely platonic.

  “I’ll reserve comment. You’ve surprised me before.”

  “Captain!”

  Took her a while, sometimes, to understand when someone was joking. Or even being sarcastic, though she had a tongue like a razor herself.

  She realized I was ribbing her. “I see. Then let me surprise you one more time by asking your advice.”

  “Oh-oh. You’ll have them sharpening their skates in hell.”

  “Howler and Longshadow. I’ve got to make decisions.”

  “File of Nine nagging you again?” The File of Nine — “File” from military usage — was a council of warlords, their identities kept secret, who formed the nearest thing to a real ruling body in Hsien. The monarchy and aristocracy of record were little more than decorative and, in the main, too intimate with poverty to accomplish much if the inclination existed.

  The File of Nine had only limited power. Their existence barely assured that near-anarchy did not devolve into complete chaos. The Nine would have been more effective had they not prized their anonymity more than their implied power.

  “Them and the Court of All Seasons. The Noble Judges really want Longshadow.” The imperial court of Hsien — consisting of aristocrats with less real world power than the File of Nine but enjoying more a demonstrative moral authority — were obsessively interested in gaining possession of Longshadow. Being an old cynic I tended to suspect them of less than moral ambitions. But we had few dealings with them. Their seat, Quang Ninh City, was much too far away.

  The one thing the peoples of Hsien held in common, every noble and every peasant, every priest and every warlord, was an implacable and ugly thirst for revenge upon the Shadowmaster invaders of yesteryear. Longshadow, still trapped in stasis underneath the glittering plain, represented the last possible opportu
nity to extract that cathartic vengeance. Longshadow’s value in our dealings with the Children of the Dead was phenomenally disproportionate.

  Hatreds seldom are constrained to rational scales.

  Sleepy continued, “And hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear from some lesser warlord begging me to bring Longshadow in. The way they all volunteer to take charge of him leaves me nurturing the sneaking suspicion that most of them aren’t quite as idealistically motivated as the File of Nine and the Court of All Seasons.”

  “No doubt. He’d be a handy tool for anybody who wanted to adjust the power balance. If anyone was fool enough to believe he could manage a puppet Shadowmaster.” No world lacks its villains so self-confident that they don’t believe they can get the best end of a bargain with the darkness. I married one of those. I am not sure she has learned her lesson yet. “Has anyone offered to fix our shadowgate?”

  “The Court is actually willing to give us someone. The trouble with that is that they don’t actually have anyone equipped with the skills to make the needed fixes. Chances are, no one has those skills. But the knowledge exists in records stored at Khang Phi.”

  “So why don’t we?...”

  “We’re working on it. Meantime, the Court do seem to believe in us. And they absolutely do want some kind of revenge before all of Longshadow’s surviving victims have been claimed by age.”

  “And what about the Howler?”

  “Tobo wants him. Says he can handle him now.”

  “Does anybody else think so?” I meant Lady. “Or is he overconfident?”

  Sleepy shrugged. “There’s nobody telling me they’ve got anything more they can teach him.” She meant Lady, too, and did not mean that Tobo suffered from a teen attitude. Tobo had no trouble taking advice or instruction when either of those did not originate with his mother.

  I asked anyway. “Not even Lady?”

  “She, I think, might be holding out on him.”

  “You can bet on it.” I married the woman but I don’t have many illusions about her. She would be thrilled to go back to her old wicked ways. Life with me and the Company has not been anything like happily ever after. Reality has a way of slow-roasting romance. Though we get along well enough. “She can’t be any other way. Get her to tell you about her first husband. You’ll marvel that she came out as sane as she did.” I marveled every day. Right before I gave in to my astonishment that the woman really had given up everything to ride off with me. Well, something. She had not had much at the time and her prospects had been grim. “What the hell is that?”

  “Alarm horns.” Sleepy bolted out of her seat. She was spry for a woman treading hard on the heels of middle age. On the other hand, of course, she was so short she did not have a lot of real getting up to do. “I didn’t order any drills.”

  She had an ugly habit of doing that. Only the traitor Mogaba, when he had been with us, had had as determined an attitude about preparedness.

  Sleepy was too serious about everything.

  Tobo’s unknown shadows began raising their biggest uproar yet.

  “Come on!” Sleepy snapped. “Why aren’t you armed?” She was. She always was, although I never have seen her use a weapon more substantial than guile.

  “I’m retired. I’m a paper pusher these days.”

  “I don’t see you wearing a tombstone for a hat.”

  “I had an attitude problem once upon a time, myself, but...”

  “Speaking of which. I want a reading in the officers’ mess before lights out. Something that tells us all about the wages of indolence and the neglect of readiness. Or about the fate of ordinary mercenaries.” She was in brisk motion, headed for the main exit, overtaking staffers who were not dawdling themselves. “Make a hole, people. Make a hole. Coming through.”

  Outside, people were pointing and babbling. The moonlight and a lot of fire betrayed a pillar of black, oily smoke boiling up from just below the gate to the glittering plain. I stated the obvious. “Something’s happened.” Clever me.

  “Suvrin’s up there. He has a level head.”

  Suvrin was a solid young officer with maybe just a tad of worship for his captain. You could be confident that neither accidents nor stupid mistakes would happen on Suvrin’s watch.

  Runners gathered, ready to carry Sleepy’s instructions. She gave the only order she could till we knew more. Be alert. Even though to a man we believed that there was no way major trouble could come at us from off the plain.

  The thing that you know to be true is the lie that will kill you.

  6

  An Abode of Ravens:

  Suvrin’s News

  Suvrin did not arrive until after midnight. By then even our dullards understood that there was significance to the agitation of the hidden folk and the crows whose presence gave our settlement its local name. Arms had been issued. Men with fireball poles now perched on every rooftop. Tobo had warned his supernatural friends to stay out of town lest taut human nerves snap and cause them harm.

  Everyone of stature available gathered to await Suvrin’s report. A couple of subalterns took turns running up to the headquarters’ roof to check the progress of the torches descending the long scarp from the shadowgate. Local boys, they seemed to feel that their great adventure had begun at last.

  They were fools.

  An adventure is somebody else slogging through the mud and snow while suffering from trench foot, ringworm, dysentery and starvation, being chased by people with their hearts set on murder or more. I have been there. I have done that, playing both parts. I do not recommend it. Be content with a nice farm or shop. Make lots of babies and bring them up to be good people.

  If the new blood remain blind to reality after we move out I guarantee that their naivete will not long survive their first encounter with my sister-in-law, Soulcatcher.

  Suvrin finally arrived, accompanied by the runner Sleepy had sent to meet him. He seemed surprised by the size of the assembly awaiting him.

  “Get up front and talk,” Sleepy told him. Always direct and to the point, my successor.

  Silence fell. Suvrin looked around nervously. He was short, dark, slightly pudgy. His family had been minor nobility. Sleepy had taken him prisoner of war four years ago, just before the Company climbed onto the glittering plain, headed this way. Now he commanded an infantry battalion and seemed destined for bigger things because the Company was growing. He told us, “Something came through the shadowgate.”

  Jabber jabber, question question.

  “I don’t know what. One of my men came to tell me he thought he’d seen something sneaking around in the rocks on the other side of the gate. I went to look. After four years of nothing happening I assumed it would be just a shadow or one of the Nef. The dreamwalkers visit us all the time. I was wrong. I never got a good look at the thing but it seemed to be a large animal, black and extremely fast. Not as big as Big Ears or Cat Sith but definitely faster. It was able to pass through the shadowgate without help.”

  I felt a chill. I tried to reject my immediate suspicion. It was not possible. Nevertheless, I said, “Forvalaka.”

  “Tobo, where are you?” Sleepy demanded.

  “Here.” He sat with several Children of the Dead, officers in training.

  “Find this thing. Catch it. If it’s what Croaker said, I want you to kill it.”

  “That’ll be easier said than done. It’s already squabbled with the Black Hounds. They backed off. They’re just trying to keep track of it now.”

  “Then kill it, Tobo.” There was no “try to” or “do whatever you can” with this Captain.

  I told him, “Ask Lady to help you. She knows those things. But before anybody does anything, we need to set up some kind of protection for One-Eye.” If it was a shape-shifting, man-eating werepanther from our homeworld, it could be only one monster. And that creature hated One-Eye with the deepest and most abiding passion imaginable because One-Eye had slain the only wizard capable of helping it regain its human
form.

  “You think it really is Lisa Bowalk?” Sleepy asked.

  “I get that feeling. But you told me it escaped from the plain through the Khatovar gate. And it couldn’t get back.”

  Sleepy shrugged. “That’s what Shivetya showed me. It’s possible that I just assumed it couldn’t get back onto the plain.”

  “Or maybe it made new friends out there.”

  The little woman spun, barked, “Suvrin?”

  Suvrin understood. “I left them on maximum alert.”

  I said, “Tobo will have to check the seals on the gate. We don’t want it leaking shadows because whatever it was broke through.” Though the boy would not be able to do much to stem a real flood. That honor would have to go to his hidden folk friends. Lack of technical knowledge about shadowgates was the main reason we continued to reside in the Land of Unknown Shadows.

  “I understand that, Croaker. Can I get to work here?”

  I was underfoot. Being considered useless is irksome.

  That condition was familiar to most of us whom Soulcatcher had beguiled and captured and managed to leave buried for fifteen years. Our Company had changed during our slumber. Even Lady and Murgen, who had maintained tenuous connections with the outside world, found themselves marginalized now. Murgen did not mind.

  The culture of the Company has become quite alien. Almost no northern flavor remains. Just a few little quirkss in how things are done, and my own proud legacy, an interest in hygiene that is completely foreign to these climes.

  These southerners did not enjoy a proper terror of the forvalaka. They insisted on picturing it as just another spooky nightstalker like Big Ears or Paddlefoot, which they consider essentially harmless. Near as I can tell they appear harmless only because their victims seldom survive to report any contrary facts.

  “A reading from the First Book of Croaker,” I told the assembly. It was after midnight. There had been no uproar for a while. The shadowgate was not leaking the Unforgiven Dead. Tobo was trying to pinpoint the intruder but was having difficulties. It was moving around a lot, scouting, plainly unsure how it should view the fact that it had fallen right in among us. “In those days the Company was in service to the Syndic of Beryl.”