by Glen Cook
Several others, including Willow Swan, quietly began getting ready to travel, too. No names were named, no orders were given. Those who needed to go or thought their presence would be useful began packing. Nobody grumbled. Nobody said much of anything at all. We were all too tired to waste energy doing anything but what had to be done.
No fingers got pointed, either. It took no genius to understand that Tobo had been swallowed up by his own workload, with people wanting something more from him every minute. Sleepy bore the heaviest responsibility. It was her job to see that everything got done. She should have had a checklist. But she had been singleminded in her desire to move faster than resistance could coagulate in front of her.
For that she could not be faulted. The Company had seen no fighting yet, though nearly a quarter of the Taglian empire could be accounted disarmed. It was the most remote and lightly populated quarter but the strategy remained sound.
The wealth Sleepy had brought off the plain would let her exploit the territories we held far more effectively than would Soulcatcher’s capacity for generating terror allow her to exploit what she held.
Of course, if the shadowgate collapsed all that would be moot. Our world would be in greater danger than Khatovar. Unlike the Voroshk, we could not defend ourselves.
Tobo did not bother collecting the few bamboo fireball throwers left. If we became desperate enough to need them that handful would not do any good.
There were eight of us. Tobo and his father, me, Lady, Willow Swan, and Thai Dei because Murgen never got out of rock-throwing range of Tobo’s uncle. Then there were two older-than-average hardcases from Hsien, solid veterans of the warlord conflicts. One we knew as Panda Man because his real name sounded like that. The other was Spook. He was Spook because he had green eyes. In Hsien demons and haunts are supposed to have green eyes.
The Unknown Shadows refuse to conform. Every one of those haunts that I have actually seen had the more traditional red or yellow eyes.
Many of the Unknown Shadows traveled with us. At night, under the moon when it made its infrequent, shy appearances, the ground surrounding us seemed to be a sea in motion. Tobo’s pets did not mind being seen just now.
Before long my two ravens rejoined me. I had seen nothing of them since shortly after we had left the shadowgate.
Tobo told me, “I’ve sent scouts ahead. Now I’m going to ride ahead, too.” He was mounted on Sleepy’s superhorse. “The rest of you follow me as fast as you can.”
He surged ahead. Most of the churning darkness went with him, though we retained enough shadowy outriders that no danger would take us by surprise.
“I’m sorry,” I told Lady.
“Not your fault this time.” She was not happy, though.
“You gotten anything out of Kina yet?”
“No. Nothing but a few infrequent touches while we were up there with Sleepy. They were pretty faint and probably just because we were close to Booboo.”
Damn. “You think we can get back to the gate in time?”
“You think Longshadow will fight for life if he knows that the only thing he can accomplish is to save the people who pulled him down and turned him over to his oldest enemies?”
That was not the answer I wanted to hear.
41
The Nether Taglian Territories:
Leaves of Misfortune
Runmust and Iqbal rode northward slowly, at a pace their whole band found comfortable. Life would not be too hard until the Captain caught up. She would be put out because the rangers did not meet her as soon as possible. She would get over it.
The prisoners were given no opportunity to enjoy life, but they were not tormented directly. The Singhs would not have allowed that even had they known that Sleepy would not mind.
There was no formal arrangement between the Singhs and the dark spirits out of Hsien but Unknown Shadows paced them always. Communications remained crude. Runmust generally just got a really bad feeling when it was time to watch out. The problem was his. A religious failing. He was allowed no congress with demons. His innate human knack for rationalization had not yet exonerated the Unknown Shadows from being spawn of darkness.
Runmust began to have one of those bad feelings. It grew worse fast. Iqbal’s uneasiness said that he had been touched, too. Even some of the soldiers were becoming troubled.
Quick hand gestures. The ranger team halted. Everyone dismounted. Scouts crept forward while the men assigned the duty for the day began moving the prisoners and horses into a gulch off the road.
The warriors of Hsien could be remarkly quiet and patient. Runmust admired their skill in using the available cover in terrain, boasting only tangled, scrubby brush, rocks and lots of gullys. He could not do what they did. Of course, he was twice the size of the biggest and a decade older than the oldest.
Minh Bhu, one of the best, intercepted him in his slow advance, after signing for absolute silence.
Minh brushed leaves aside and smoothed a patch of dirt. He used a forefinger to sketch the ground ahead, indicating the approximate positions of a well-chosen ambush site.
Runmust signaled a general withdrawal. He looked for crows or other creatures traditionally associated with the enemy. He saw nothing. “How could they know we were coming?” he asked when he was far back enough to whisper. “How many of them are there?”
Minh shrugged. “We’re not going to get a head count. There are a lot more of them than there are of us. And as for how did they know, from that hilltop you can see all the country we crossed the last two days. They were probably just sent out to see if this is the route north the Captain picks.” He pointed back south. The dust and sparkle of the main force were obvious.
“Why an ambush?”
“They can see there aren’t many of us. It would look like a chance to take some prisoners.”
“Uhm.” Runmust scanned the slope. Could he turn the tables on those people? He wished he had developed a more intimate relationship with the Unknown Shadows. “Iqbal. Talk to me.”
“We’re outnumbered, we should back away. There’s no reason to get in a fight. Or even make contact. We’ve got important prisoners to protect. So let’s stay away and wait for the Captain.”
Iqbal was a married man. He did not favor major risks.
Even so, Iqbal was right. Withdrawal was the only course that was not crazy. Runmust asked, “What would they do if we did stroll into their trap?” He wished he could catch a couple of them. A few questions answered would tell a lot about enemy plans and what the other side thought was happening.
“They see Sleepy coming. They’ll pull out pretty soon.”
“Why do I keep getting more and more nervous?” Runmust knew the Unknown Shadows wanted him to know something and he just was not hearing it.
In the hills ahead horses began screaming. Men cursed. Several dozen arrows rose into the air, fell where the enemy evidently thought the rangers were hidden. None of the arrows came close.
Muttering curses himself, Runmust waved his men back again. They began slipping away. Wildly sped arrows fell all across the slope. “Idiots,” Runmust muttered. “Recon by fire.” The Protector’s soldiers would charge any outcry. Or any other obvious reaction. They were an opportunity to inflict disaster just waiting to happen.
A Taglian soldier sprang up not ten feet from Runmust, barking in pain as he swatted his ass. Runmust froze, hoping the Taglian was too preoccupied to notice him — though now he heard other Taglians pushing through the dry brush and knew he could not sneak off fast enough to get away untouched.
Iqbal carried a fireball launcher. He was supposed to use it as an emergency signal, not as a weapon. It was believed to contain just one charge. It was ancient. There was no guarantee it would work at all.
Iqbal, unseen by the man who had now spied Runmust, rotated the handgrip trigger on that piece of bamboo.
An intense yellow ball slammed right through the Protector’s man and rattled around in the brush behind him. In seconds a dozen
fires were burning.
Runmust and Iqbal ran. No point doing anything else now.
They had almost reached the gully hiding the animals and prisoners when a random arrow found the unprotected meat of Runmust’s right thigh. Singh flung forward in an uncontrolled dive. His beard protected his face as he ploughed through the brush but he left large tufts behind. He squealed with the unexpected pain.
Iqbal stopped to help.
“Get out of here!” Runmust growled. “You have Suruvhija and the children.” Which moved Iqbal not at all.
The Taglian troops blundered down the hillside, scattered, in no order, without discipline or thought. Officers, sergeants and men, they had no practical experience and very little training. They had come out of the Nijha fortress because Soulcatcher had told them they might achieve a startling triumph. But once the situation on the ground deviated from their expectations they were lost.
Stumbling, dragging the leg with the arrow still embedded, Runmust clung to and leaned on Iqbal. Both men heard the exultant Taglian soldiers plunging through the brush behind them, swiftly bringing the inevitable.
The rangers were men chosen from those who had seen prior action serving the warlords in Hsien and who both understood Company doctrine and accepted it. They set an ambush of their own. The Taglians came to it as though guided by maleficent demons.
The result was a bloodbath. It was a tactical triumph for the Black Company. It was not unalloyed by bad news. In the end, in the heat of the moment, the rangers did fail to acknowledge doctrine. They did not fade away while the Taglians were confused and panicky. They maintained contact in hopes of making sure Runmust and Iqbal escaped.
The Singh brothers did survive. But when the light cavalry, flung forward by Sleepy right after she recognized the fireball signal, arrived they found most of the rangers wounded or dead after having been overrun. The horsemen pursued the fleeing Taglians. They cut down most of the enemy wounded and stragglers.
Sadly, they failed to recapture the Daughter of Night.
A particularly bright Taglian officer had recognized what he had stumbled across and got the girl moving to the rear immediately. Her grub-colored skin had given her away.
When that day’s sun set it was a tossup which side would consider the encounter the greater disaster. The Company had lost a huge treasure and some of its most valuable men, at least for a while. The Taglians had endured a huge massacre with only one sullen, if exotically beautiful, pale, dirty young woman to show for all the deaths.
42
The Nether Taglian Territories:
After Battle
The Captain herself reached the scene of the fighting just an hour after its end. She stomped around. She nagged the survivors with questions. Most of the rangers had survived but only two had managed without suffering serious wounds. Sleepy interrogated prisoners even more emphatically. The cavalrymen had retained sense enough to capture a few Taglians who offered to surrender, presuming they would continue to cooperate to save their skins.
None of the prisoners knew anything about the Daughter of Night. None even knew that name.
The Captain’s prowling took her near Narayan Singh. She kicked the old cripple. “Hellspawn.” She turned, bellowed, “Why didn’t we know about this ambush ahead of time?”
Some bold soul told her the truth. “The Unknown Shadows probably did know. But nobody asked them. Tobo is the only one who knows how to talk to them the way it takes to get them to do the kind of spying you want.”
Sleepy growled. She kicked Narayan Singh again. She paced. “What do we know about this fort?”
Blade came forward. He would save the others. Sleepy’s wrath fell less heavily upon him. Usually. Some thought she was a little afraid of Blade. In fact, she was just not sure of him, though he had been around longer than she had. Like Swan and Sahra, he was not actually a sworn brother of the Company. But he was always there and always involved.
Blade said, “The old Captain established it. It was a remount station for the first courier post. The wall got added because the natives kept trying to steal the horses. Soulcatcher eventually expanded the fort and garrison during the Kiaulune wars because she wanted a stronger presence here in case her enemies tried to sneak north this way. Assuming she did here the way she did everywhere else, she forgot the place as soon as the fighting was over. The garrison might be a hundred fifty or two hundred. Plus hangers-on.”
“Pretty big gang for out here.”
“It’s a big territory. And half of them are out of business now.”
“What’re the fortifications like?”
“I’ve never been there. I hear they’re barely good enough to stop horse thieves. Which means not real impressive. Some kind of rock wall, since that’s the available material around here. I’ve heard there’s a ditch that was never completed. Didn’t you come this way when you ran south? Didn’t you see it?”
“We took a trail west of here. The old trade road. We avoided the courier routes.”
“You might send some cavalry to surround the place before they can move the girl out.”
Sleepy mused, “It’s probably too late to stop them yelling for help.”
Blade said, “I don’t think you need to worry about sneaking. By now Soulcatcher’s got the whole Taglian empire alerted.”
Sleepy grunted. Then she sent for cavalry officers. And after she sent them off she visited Runmust and Iqbal. Those two had been close friends for two decades. She asked Iqbal’s wife, Suruvhija, “What did the surgeon say?”
“They’ll recover. They’re Shadar. They’re strong men. They fought well. God will watch over them.”
Sleepy glanced at Sahra, who was helping tend the wounded. Sahra nodded, meaning Suruvhija was not just wishful thinking.
“I’ll include them in my prayers as well.” Sleepy squeezed Suruvhija’s shoulder reassuringly, thinking the woman was too perfect to be real. At least as men saw wives. But she was Shadar, too, and she believed, and the roles of all members of the family were clearly defined by her religion.
Sleepy took time to talk to Iqbal’s children, too. They were bearing up bravely. As they would, for they were good Shadar, too, despite the strange lands and societies they had seen.
When she was around Iqbal’s children, Sleepy sometimes even vaguely regretted having abandoned the woman’s role. But that never lasted more than a few seconds.
“Blade. Pass the word. I want the whole gang up to this fort before sunset. If that’s possible. Once they see some numbers I’m sure they’ll give up.”
Blade told her, “You know you have to stop before long. The animals need time to graze and recover. And we have a tail of stragglers that has to stretch all the way back to Charandaprash.”
People got hurt or sick or just could not keep up. It irked Sleepy but it was a fact of life. Her strength was down maybe a thousand men already. That would worsen rapidly if she continued to drive hard.
“When they get here the most worn-out ones can take over as our garrison.” That was a tactic as old as soldiering.
She would not admit it but she needed a rest herself. She could not imagine when she would get one, though.
43
The Taglian Shadowlands:
The Shadowgate
Seem like there’s much point dragging my weary ass over there?” I asked Lady. There was just enough dawn-light to show the vague outline of the slope leading up to the shadowgate. Which was still miles and miles from where we had spent the night. This part of the journey was one of those where you spend the whole day trying not to look ahead because every time you do it seems you have not gotten ten feet closer. Way to our left a smoky haze concealed the New City and the lower half of ruined Overlook. A lot of unpleasant memories connected us with those places.
“What do you mean?” My sweetheart was as tired and morning-cranky as I was. And her bones were a lot older than mine.
“Well, we didn’t get killed last night. That mea
ns the gate hasn’t collapsed yet. Old Longshadow’s still holding out.”
“Evidently.”
“Wouldn’t that mean Tobo’s got everything under control? So why beat ourselves up getting on over there?”
Lady smirked at me. She did not have to tell me. We would cross the valley because, in the end, I would want to see everything for myself. Because I would want to get it all into the Annals, right. She had chided me fifty times during the ride south because I was trying to work out a way to write on horseback. I could get so much more done if I could do it while we were traveling.
Then she chirped, “You are getting old.”
“What?”
“A sign of advancing age. You start obsessing about how much you have to get done in the time that you have left.”
I made noises in the back of my throat but did not argue. That kind of thinking was familiar. So was being unable to fall asleep because I was tracking my heartbeat, trying to tell if something was wrong.
You would think a guy in my line of work would make his peace with death at an early age.
We ran into several locals while crossing the valley, the bottom land of which was decent farmland and pasture. We did not receive one friendly greeting. I did not see one welcoming smile. Nobody raised a hand in defiance but I had no trouble feeling the abiding resentment of a tormented nation. There had been no serious fighting in these parts for years but the adult population were all survivors of the terrible times, whether they were natives or immigrants who had come in to settle the depopulated lands and to escape even worse horrors elsewhere. They did not want the evils of the past to return.
This land had suffered grotesquely under the Shadowmaster Longshadow. It had continued to suffer after his defeat. The Kiaulune wars devoured most everything that Longshadow and the Shadowmaster wars had not. And now the Black Company had returned. Out of the place of glittering stone, an abode of devils. The season of despair appeared to be threatening again.
“Can’t say I blame them,” I told Lady.
