The Many Deaths of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

Aridatha said, “We’ve got to have better intelligence.”

  Mogaba took a moment to stifle his sarcasm before confessing, “I’m open to ideas. Any ideas.”

  No inspirations sprouted immediately.

  Aridatha said, “We could always do something mythic. Like damning ourselves by bringing in an ally worse than our enemies. One that will devour us after it finishes doing what we brought it in to do.”

  Mogaba and Ghopal recognized the effort but did not get Aridatha’s joke.

  “It’s an allusion. Or a parable. Or something,” Aridatha explained. “Like all stories about Kina. The Lords of Light created her or brought her in for the demon plain war. And probably would have been better off if the rakshasas had won, ultimately.”

  Mogaba did have a sense of humor. He just had not brought it along tonight. “I guess you had to be there. Anyway, there’s nobody we could bring in. We’re on our own. So suggestions are in demand. Practical suggestions will be particularly welcome.” That was something in the nature of a jest so, perhaps, he had brought part of his sense of humor.

  Ghopal said, “All we can do is send out more spies and set up more remount stations so the spies can get their observations to us faster.”

  “And we have only one courier battalion.” Mogaba sat quietly for half a minute. Then he asked, “How is our support among the priests and bourgeoisie? They’ve had time to think about the royals coming back. They plan to desert us?”

  “We’re the devil as far as they know,” Ghopal replied. “The Protector has been their benefactor. And only a few of the slickest talkers can hope to benefit if we get thrown out. We worked hard to eliminate the Radisha’s friends once we could no longer hide the fact that the princess was gone, not just hiding out feeling sorry for herself.”

  The Great General proposed, “Let’s try the same strategy. Make believe we haven’t lost the Protector. Aridatha. You seem to be distracted.”

  “I keep thinking about the girl. The Daughter of Night.”

  “And?”

  “I saw her once. Five years ago. There’s something about her.… Makes you want to throw her down on her back. And makes you want to worship her at the same time. Makes you feel like you should do anything you can to please her. It’s scary when you step back far enough to realize what happened.”

  “She’s all grown-up that way.” Mogaba explained what Lady had told of events to the south. “That girl got hundreds of men killed. We’ll have to assassinate her remotely somehow. See if some mechanical engine can be contrived.”

  “I have a question,” Ghopal said.

  “Go.”

  “What’s that thing you’re fiddling with? You’ve been playing with it ever since you got here.”

  “Oh. Some kind of snail shell. They’re all over the Palace. Nobody knows where they come from. Nobody’s ever actually seen one crawling around. They’re sort of relaxing when you roll them around in your fingers.”

  Both Singhs eyed the Great General as though thinking his behavior was distinctly odd.

  Ghopal said, “Regarding the Daughter of Night. We might consider poison. There’re some talented poisoners in Chor Bagan, the thieves’ market.”

  The years had changed Mogaba. He did not immediately reject the suggestion as unworthy of men of honor.

  76

  The Taglian Territories: Another Origin Story

  I suggested, “How about a standoff weapon we can launch from outside her influence? Hell, if we take the logs and carpets up high enough we can just keep dropping rocks till we get her.” There was some optimism. We did not have even one carpet since Booboo knocked Howler and Tobo down. What we did have was bits and pieces of half a dozen carpets that Howler had been working on when nothing else took up his time.

  Lady glared at me so intensely I began to wonder how soon I would start melting.

  Killing Booboo was not yet on her list of options. Her emotions were engaged much more deeply than mine, though the problem of the girl was a torment to me, too.

  My entanglement was more with the idea of the child than with the specific daughter.

  Lady wanted to fool herself into believing there might be some way that Booboo could be redeemed.

  “You’re wasting time,” the Prahbrindrah Drah said. The collapse of Soulcatcher’s Middle Army had brought him to life. Suddenly, he believed his restoration was just a matter of marching to Taglios and yelling, “I’m back!” He had leaped into the embrace of self-delusion.

  There was a lot of that going around.

  Murgen joined the conference as the Prince began to bicker with Sleepy about her plans, a situation guaranteed not to persist for long. Sleepy would let him know who was running the show. Murgen announced, “I just finished reading a really long message from Baladitya. Who is well and loving every minute of his new life, thank you very much, Sleepy. Which he did not fail to point out several times.”

  I asked, “What’re you doing getting mail from that old goofball?”

  “He wasn’t writing to me. He doesn’t know me. The message was intended for Tobo.”

  Sleepy, who was thoroughly cranky because nothing was going the way she wanted, grumped, “I’m sure you’re going to share every exciting detail with us, too, even though what we all need is some sleep.”

  “Since you insist.” Murgen grinned. He had no particular job assignment while he was recuperating so he could do just about anything he pleased. “His letter mostly concerned the prisoners Shivetya is holding up there. The First Father and Gromovol’s dad. Who Shivetya took in originally just to protect them from the shadows. Of which there are hardly any left anymore. Them and the Voroshk have almost wiped each other out. Sorry.” He patted Shukrat’s shoulder. Nobody missed that gesture. Murgen approved of Tobo’s girlfriend—if that was what she was.

  I wondered what he was doing bringing Shukrat to a staff meeting.

  Sahra, of course, bristled like a hedge hog. There were no eligible Nyueng Bao girls anywhere within two hundred miles and she had married a foreigner, Murgen, for love herself, against the will of most of her family, but what did that have to do with today?

  Sahra could restrain herself most of the time, these days. In public. If Murgen was around to calm her and remind her that Tobo was not a four-year-old anymore. But she was under tremendous additional strain now, with all her family dead or wounded. She had not yet pulled herself together well enough to make decisions about funeral arrangements for her brother and Uncle Doj.

  He restrained her now, with just a gentle touch.

  “You got a point to make?” Sleepy said. “Or can I get back to work figuring out how to get us through this on terms that suit our needs?”

  Swan muttered something about the little bit needing a good dose of man to relax her. Sleepy snarled. Swan grumbled, “Did I volunteer? I don’t think so. Not recently. So don’t fuck with me.”

  Hurriedly, Murgen told us, “Guys, Shivetya came up with another Kina origin cycle. He got this one from the Voroshk. Evidently they don’t mind talking history if they’re bored. In this version Kina’s husband put her to sleep. When she kept acting up after she won the demon plain war for the gods by sucking the blood out of all the demons. This version of the Goddess has ten arms instead of four. Her husband, known as Chevil in the world of the Voroshk, has four arms and is a lot like the Kina we know. Sometimes he’s called the Destroyer, too. But sometimes he can be cajoled or seduced into going easy. Kina can’t.”

  His audience rustled. In some stories Khadi, one of the gentler Gunni forms of Kina, had had a husband, Bhima, who also counted the Destroyer among his many names.

  All Gunni Gods have bunches of names. They get a little hard for an outsider to keep straight because when they change their names they also change their attributes. It gets particularly confusing when you have two aspects of the same god getting into an ass-kicking contest with each other.

  “And this Chevi has what to do with Kina’s origins?” Sleepy demande
d.

  “Oh, he’s the one who did all the mean things to her, like chopping her up and scattering the pieces all over. But she also kills him. And brings him back to life.”

  “Murgen. I’m considering sending you back to the Taglians for some more rework.”

  “All right. Chevi has more than one wife. But there used to be only one. That was Camundamari, who has several other names, naturally. Camundamari was very dark-skinned. The other gods mocked her and called her Blackie.”

  Interesting. Both Khadi and Kina can mean black in some Taglian usages, though “syam” is the common and conventional word.

  Murgen continued, “When Chevi himself started taunting her she flew into a huge rage, tore her skin off, and turned into Ghowrhi, the Milky One. The shed skin became Kalikausiki, which filled itself up on blood sucked from demons, then became Khat-hi, the Black One.”

  “Kina is a skinwalker!” Suvrin cried, startling everyone. Skinwalkers were a demonic terror little known outside Suvrin’s homeland. Skinwalkers killed a man, sucked out his flesh and bones, put on his skin and stole his life. The details are pretty gruesome. Skinwalker folklore strikes me as a way for ignorant people to explain radical and bizarre changes in personality. Shifts I believe are due to poorly understood diseases. Or maybe just due to getting old.

  Murgen was startled by Suvrin’s outburst. Which seemed excessive to me, too. “Not a skinwalker in the way you mean,” Murgen said.

  Was there something in Suvrin’s background?

  The concept of a monster able to steal someone else’s identity that way is particularly grotesque. I have seen a lot of strange and ugly things. Tobo’s hidden folk are only the latest on a long list. But skinwalkers are one horror that just seems too terrible to be true.

  Like the gods themselves of late there have been no manifestations before reliable witnesses. We were talking ancient legends tonight. Suvrin had referenced one of the most obscure.

  I said, “Believe me, Suvrin, if there were any real skinwalkers down your way you can bet the Shadowmasters would’ve rooted them out and used them up. What a weapon, eh?”

  “I guess,” Suvrin admitted. Reluctantly.

  “That’s wonderful,” Sleepy grumped. “Ghost-story time is over, boys. Now we let Murgen finish. He is going to finish, isn’t he? Because I want to get back to what this meeting is supposed to be all about.” She swung a deadly finger. “Don’t you even think about puking up another wisecrack, Willow.”

  Swan grimaced. He had live ammunition and no ready target. Then he grinned. A time would come.

  I said, “Murgen?”

  “There isn’t much more. Baladitya says most of the high points of the mythology agree. There’s more of a death goddess to her nature over there. She’s always referenced as living in a cemetery.”

  “She does that here, doesn’t she?” I asked. “When Sleepy and Lady and you, especially, talk about your nightmares, that place you go with all the bones? That could be a Gunni style cemetery.”

  The Gunni burn their dead to purify them before their souls line up for reassignment in the next life. But the fires are never hot enough to consume the major bones. If a burning ground is near a major river the leftovers are generally deposited there. But a lot of places are not near a major river. And some are not near a source of firewood. And some families never save up enough to buy wood that is available.

  Bones pile up.

  These places are not often seen by anyone but the priests who attend them, the men in yellow who revere Majayama but watch over their shoulders because Kina and her pack of pet demons supposedly lived beneath the bone piles. Even though Kina is known to be chained up under the glittering plain until the Year of the Skulls.

  I said, “I’ve got a lot of time to think these days. One of the things I’ve been pondering is why there are so many different stories about Kina. And I think I’ve figured it out.”

  My ego got a boost. Even Sleepy seemed interested, despite herself. My wife, perhaps less enthralled, suggested, “Do go on,” in a tone implying that she knew there would be no stopping me anyway.

  “In those days the Company…”

  “Croaker!”

  “Sorry. Just seeing if you were listening. What clued me was the fact that there isn’t any uniform Gunni doctrine. There isn’t much of an hierarchy amongst Gunni priests, either, except locally. There’s no central arbiter of what constitutes acceptable or unacceptable dogma. Kina isn’t alone in being the subject of a hundred conflicting myths. The whole pantheon is. Pick any god you want. When you travel from village to village you’ll find him wearing different names, different myths, getting mixed up with other gods, and on and on and on. We see the confusion because we’re travelers. But up until the Shadowmaster wars almost nobody in these parts ever went anywhere. Generation after generation, century after century, people were born, lived and died in the same few square miles. You only had a few gem traders and the Strangler bands moving around. Ideas didn’t travel with them. So every myth gradually mutates according to local experience and prejudice. Now first the Shadowmasters and then we land in the middle of all this.…”

  We? A glance around showed me just three other people who had not grown up in this end of the world. For a moment I felt ancient and out of place and found myself recalling an old piece of poetry that said something to the effect: “Soldiers live. And wonder why.” Meaning, why am I the one, of all those who marched with the Company when I was young, who is still alive and kicking? I do not deserve it any more than any of those men. Maybe less than some.

  You always feel a little guilty when you think about it. And a little glad it was somebody else, not you.

  “That’s it. We’re travelers. That’s why it all seems alien and contradictory. Wherever we are, most of us are outsiders. Even when we do belong to the majority religion.” A glance around showed me that hardly any of my audience were Gunni, either. “Well, that’s my piece.”

  “All right, then,” Sleepy said. “Back to practical problems. How do we deal with the Daughter of Night and the Goblin thing?”

  “That’s practically the same thing as a skinwalker,” Suvrin said. “Kina put him on like a suit of clothes.” Suvrin had skinwalkers on the brain tonight.

  “The Daughter of Night!” Sleepy snapped. “I want to hear about the Daughter of Night. Not about Kina. Not about skinwalkers. Not about old Voroshk sorcerers, not about old librarians and not about anything else. And, Lady, if you really don’t want the girl killed, then come up with an idea for disarming her that’s better than any idea for taking her out. Because you’re the only one here letting emotion get in the way.”

  77

  Above Ghoja: Seeking the One Safe Place

  Goblin and the girl both rode, though their mounts remained skittish and frightened and Goblin’s had to be kept in blinders so that it could not see its rider. Neither animal was allowed to look back. Goblin himself wore a rag to protect his damaged but nearly healing eyes.

  The handful of soldiers who joined their flight from the middle ground fell away rapidly. Driven by the “love me” spell they gave it everything they had but eventually every man drifted outside the spell’s influence, then vanished immediately.

  Only the two touched by Kina crossed the bridge at Ghoja. They reached the north bank as dawn began to paint the eastern sky. It was still only the morning after the destruction of the Taglian Middle Army. They had killed several post horses but even so had not arrived ahead of rumors of the disaster to Taglian arms.

  “Our enemies have been here before us,” the Goblin-thing said. He wanted to be called Khadidas, Slave of Khadi. The girl simply refused to address him by that appellation. “These people have been warned and threatened but they will raise no hand against you because of who they think you are.” Not because of who she was.

  The Daughter of Night played Protector with a blend of arrogance and small-mindedness nothing like her aunt’s but the garrison commanders found her suf
ficiently convincing. And she ached every second because it was clear that these unbelievers would never yield themselves to the service of the Dark Mother. She knew that they would have tried to destroy her had they known she was not her aunt. This world deserved the Year of Skulls.

  The aura the girl radiated got her through her brief confrontations.

  “I’m exhausted,” she whined to Goblin. “I’m not used to riding.”

  “We can’t stop here.”

  “I can’t go on.”

  “You will go on. Until you are safe.” The Khadidas’s voice left no doubt who it believed to be in charge. “There is a holy place not many leagues further. We’ll go there.”

  “The Grove of Doom.” There was no enthusiasm in the girl’s response. “I don’t want to go there. I don’t like that place.”

  “We will be stronger there.”

  “It’ll be the first place they’ll look for us. If they don’t already have soldiers there waiting.” She knew that was unlikely. Those people were not yet prepared to tell their soldiers that the woman inside the black leather was not the Protector anymore, but they did have the capacity to move their game pieces from afar. They seemed able to thwart the Goddess whenever they liked.

  She said, “They already know what we’re going to do. Because we just talked about it.”

  “We’re going to the Grove. I will be much stronger there.” No argument would be allowed.

  The Daughter of Night was no less devoted to her spiritual mother today but she did not like this creature who bore a fragment of Kina inside him. She found it difficult to articulate even to herself, but she missed Narayan. She missed him because he had loved her. And she, in her self-centered way, had loved him enough in return that now her life was one ongoing trail of loneliness and desolation … leading where? This new hand of the Goddess seemed incapable of any emotion but anger. And he refused flatly to indulge her in any way, or even to acknowledge her humanity.

  She was a tool. That she was a living thing with wants and emotions all her own was just an annoyance, a nuisance, an inconvenience. There was an ever stronger implication that she should learn to abandon her distractive qualities. Or else.