Soldiers Live

by Glen Cook

  I was five or six sleeps into my exile when the Nef returned, first appearing inside my dreams.

  143

  Fortress with No Name:

  Sleeping with the Demon

  Soulcatcher kept reminding me that she was in touch with the demon. That, in fact, as long as she remained attached to the white crow she would be little more than Shivetya’s tool. This information did not seem newsworthy or particularly important until I suffered the visit from the Washene, the Washane and the Washone.

  I had not been especially sensitive to them in the past. I knew them better from description than encounter. This time around made clear why that was.

  Their ugliness invaded my dreams but only as a sense of presence little more concrete than that of the Unknown Shadows. Golden glimmers of hideous beast-mask faces in the corner of dream’s eye, and scattered single syllable fragments of attempted communication, were all that I recalled after I awakened, sweating and shaking and filled with undirected terror.

  Shivetya’s gaze, directed my way, seemed more amused than ever.

  I soon learned that his amusement had limits.

  I had made him a promise. He could look inside me and see that I intended to keep it. But he could also see that I meant to stall for as long as it took me to arrange my own life to my satisfaction.

  He had been patient for ten thousand years. Now, suddenly, his patience began to wilt.

  I became aware of it first while I was sleeping. On a night when the Nef were almost getting through, my dreams filled unexpectedly with a presence that pushed in like a whale driving through a pod of dolphins. A big, unseen thing that approached like the darkness itself but without containing a thread of evil. Just a vast, slow thing that was.

  I knew what it was and understood that it was trying to make a mind-to-mind contact the way it had with others before me. But my mind had a hard shell around it. It was difficult for ideas to get through.

  Good thing Goblin and One-Eye were no longer around. They could have gotten hours of joy out of a straight line like that.

  A couple sleeps more, though, and my mind had become a sieve. Me and Shivetya were yukking it up like a couple of old tonk buddies. The white crow was put out because she did not have a job translating anymore. I guess the demon had the sheer mental brute force to make contact with anyone.

  I learned from the golem in the way that Baladitya had learned before me. I learned by being taken inside the demon’s living dream, where past was almost indistinguishable from present. Where the wondrous pageant of the plain’s history, and the history of the worlds it connected, were all remembered, in as much detail as Shivetya had cared to witness at the time. There was a great deal about the Black Company. He had chosen the Company as the instrument of his escape a very long time ago, long before Kina chose Lady to become her instrument inside the enemy force and the vessel that would birth the Daughter of Night, who was the intended instrument of her own liberation. Long before any of us were the least aware of all the pitfalls we were going to encounter on our road to Khatovar. But Shivetya chose better than did Kina. The Goddess failed to look closely enough at Lady’s character. Lady was too damned stubborn and selfish to be anyone’s tool for long.

  There were just seven of us when some inexplicable urge made me decide to retrace the Company’s olden journeys. And of those seven, now there is just me.

  Soldiers live.

  The Black Company is in Suvrin’s hands now. Such as it is. It is headed south now, according to Shivetya’s dreams, satisfactorily avenged, planning to cross the glittering plain back to the Land of Unknown Shadows. There are only a handful of Taglians and Dejagorans and Sangelis left to miss our world. The Company will become a new thing in a new world. And pudgy little Suvrin will be its creator.

  Never before had there been anyone of the Black Company who had survived so long that he could see how vast are the changes time will sculpt even upon a band determined to stay one with its past.

  When my thoughts ranged those bleak marches Shivetya always filled my head with ripples of amusement. Because those were almost invisible changes when compared with those that he had witnessed in his time. He had seen empires, civilizations, entire races, come and go. He remembered the gods themselves, the ugly builders of the plain, and all the powers that had come into and changed his estate and then had faded away again. He even recalled a time when he was not alone in the fortress with no name, a time when his devotion to duty caused his mates to nail him to his throne so they could desert without him interfering.

  At long last I began to understand what had happened to Murgen in those long ago days when he had had so much trouble clinging to his place in time. Murgen was crazy, some, and Soulcatcher was involved, some — those were the days when Soulcatcher had found her way onto the plain — and Murgen never had a clue himself what was happening but behind everything else was Shivetya, carefully setting up his path into retirement. And, of course, Shivetya does not see time like the rest of us. Unless we demand his attention right here at the vanguard he floats everywhere, everywhen, reexperiencing rather than remembering.

  Gods, how I envied him! The entire histories of sixteen worlds were his to know. Not just to study and interpret but pretty much to live whenever the mood took him.

  I did have a question. The question of supreme importance if I was going to set the demon free. He had to answer it to my satisfaction if he wanted me to fulfill our agreement.

  What would happen to the glittering plain if he was no longer here to manage it?

  144

  Fortress with No Name:

  Arkana’s Tale

  Shivetya was never as powerful as Kina but he was a whole hell of a lot faster on his mental feet. It had taken the sleeping Goddess years to impact the world outside and create a vast paranoia concerning the Black Company. Shivetya it took just weeks. It would not have taken that long had he not reached out for a specific someone with a mind shell thicker than mine: Shukrat.

  The demon was disinclined to connect with Tobo. Tobo had been his good buddy before but Tobo’s behavior recently hinted at potentially troublesome character flaws.

  Shukrat finally began to get the idea that there might be a problem causing the prolonged absence of Arkana and her beloved adopted daddy. Even when she did start to worry, though, she did not want to leave Tobo. Tobo was less popular with the Children of the Dead than he was with the Unknown Shadows. The men from Hsien might not give their utmost to pull him through.

  The boy’s health kept suffering one setback after another complication. The fact that the army was moving would not help his recovery.

  Shivetya could show me the Company’s southward progress. And did regularly. But I would not look in on Lady. My wife’s condition was more grim than Tobo’s. There was nothing I could do about it but it upset me so I just did not go where the pain was going to get me. Sometimes the blind eye is the least terrible way of suffering what we cannot make right.

  Then there was Arkana.

  The little blonde had run off in accordance with her own stated doctrine. Home to the world of the Voroshk. She used the key we had brought to enter the plain to make her exit. Because Shivetya was interested the once shattered Voroshk shadowgate was almost completely whole again.

  In Arkana’s homeworld the war with the shadows continued, but sporadically. The shadows had been reduced to a tenth of their original number. The Voroshk had suffered as badly. Their world had been all but destroyed. Not one in a hundred peasants had survived an invasion so enthusiastic it is almost impossible to find a shadow on the plain these days.

  Shadows kill. They prefer people but will prey on anything they run into. Even things you find under rocks. People are smart enough to figure out ways to get through the night. Not much else can.

  The few survivors in the Voroshk world were starving. They had lost so many draft animals they could not plant. Their livestock had all been taken, if not by the shadows then by the Voroshk
themselves. The Voroshk had no intention of sharing the common suffering.

  Arkana had gone, had seen, had changed her uncertain mind. This was not what she wanted. But she had waited too long to turn back.

  She was seen. Family closed in fast. And deprived her of her post and clothing. She became a prisoner of her relatives, who began formulating big breeding plans immediately.

  The shadowgate disaster had left the Voroshk with few women of childbearing age.

  Arkana got elected to become queen ant for a whole new mob.

  She would do what she had to do to survive. She would bide her time once again. Her uncles had confiscated her key to the shadowgates but were unaware what it was. And she was not talking. They were the sort of men who would abandon the disaster they had created and go coursing off in search of new worlds to conquer. So much easier than rebuilding.

  It was a good thing Shivetya had power enough to will the shattered gate to heal itself, though that might imply that the nonfunctional gates had failed because of benign neglect. In fact, recalling what Tobo and Suvrin had reported concerning their explorations, all the shadowgates were crippled somehow.

  Shivetya did not like anyone very much these days.

  I let him know, “I have a couple of things left to do.” Since my mind was no longer a mystery, he knew what already. And he did have a little patience left.

  A pretty indulgent partner in crime, that old devil.

  145

  Glittering Stone:

  Then Shukrat Came

  Shukrat arrived while I was sleeping, dropping in through the hole in the roof. So entangled with Shivetya was I now that I knew she was there without noticing or paying much mind. My friend the white crow came and did the wake-up dirty deed. I sat up, rewarding the bird with some rude remark or other.

  “Just trying to be helpful. You aren’t leaving me much to do these days.”

  “Funny how being a prisoner reduces your options, isn’t it? What goes around comes around and all that? But we can still be friends, can’t we? Hi, cuter daughter. You finally got here.”

  Shukrat was exhausted but game. “So what’s going on, Pop? Where’s Arkana?”

  “Well. Arkana got a wild hair, ran off home and now is knee-deep in shit.” I explained.

  Shukrat’s reaction was, “Yuch!”

  “Hey, you could be the most popular girl in town yourself if you give them the chance.”

  “They might try. They’ll be sorry if they do. I didn’t waste all my time with Tobo playing games. How come you know all that if she took your key and you can’t go out poking around?”

  “Shivetya and I have been getting to know one another. There isn’t much else to do around here when you’re waiting for your slower child to start wondering if you haven’t maybe gotten yourself into some trouble.”

  “I see you did some writing, too.”

  “I’m running short on time, daughter,” I said, revealing a secret never even shared with my wife. “I’ve had so much luck, for so long, that the law of averages is overdue to catch up. Any day. There’s only one risk left that I’m willing to take. So I want to have all my shit in order before something happens. I want to check out knowing I did everything the Company could ask, and then some.” My expectation that I do not have much time left has become an ever more powerful influence on my thinking since our return from the Land of Unknown Shadows. It has approached the level of obsession since I have been back here in the fortress with no name.

  Shukrat proceeded with normal, journey-ending business while we talked, unloading her flying post. She swung down a large hemp sack that rattled as she said, “Let me get some rest, first, then we’ll go rescue Scruffy Butt. Not because I give a damn what they do to her, you understand. Just as a favor to my Pop.”

  “I understand. I appreciate it. Maybe she can do the same for you, someday.”

  “Oh, yeah, that would be good.”

  “What’s in the sack?”

  She thought about being evasive, realized that there was no point. “Snail shells. Tobo didn’t want me to travel unprotected. He worries about me.”

  “How is he?”

  “He has good days and he has bad days. More bad than good. In his health and in his mind. It scares me. Nobody can tell me if he’s going to make it. Or if he’ll be sane if he does. I’m afraid it might all depend on his mother.”

  “What? Sahra turned up?”

  “No. She’s definitely dead. I think. But her ghost, and her mother’s ghost and her grandmother’s ghost, keep following him wherever he goes. Whenever his fever gets to him he sees them. And they talk to him. They nag him, he says. He doesn’t like it. But my opinion is, he damned well ought to start listening to them. Because he gets these brain fevers every time he starts to do something that his mother wouldn’t have liked while she was alive. Even if it’s only something like forgetting to clean his teeth.”

  “You really believe he’s being haunted by his female ancestors?”

  “Doesn’t matter if I do, Pop. He believes it. Even when he’s fever-free and completely sane he’ll say his mother intends to stay around until he no longer needs her guidance. Then she’ll be free to join Murgen. Tobo really resents the implication that he isn’t mature and his behavior is keeping her from her rest. And Sahra, apparently, is just as resentful of his immaturity, because she’d rather be somewhere besides here baby-sitting a grown man.”

  “Why do I get the feeling there’s something more?”

  “Because you’re right. There is more. He thinks those women might run out of patience. He’s afraid they’ll just drag him along with them.”

  “You mean kill him?”

  “No! His mother, Pop. Not kill him. Take him along. Out of his body. The way they say his father used to do. Only they wouldn’t let him come back. If that happened his body would die eventually. And before you tell me Sahra wouldn’t let her baby die, you need to remember this ghost isn’t the Sahra you knew. This Sahra has been on the other side for a while, running with ghosts who have been there a lot longer than she has. And at least one of those was able to see Tobo’s various potential futures way back before Murgen and Sahra ever got together.”

  Sounded to me like Shukrat was just as much a believer as Tobo was.

  “All right. Rest, little girl. I’ll come up with a plan while you do.”

  Look at me. Manly man. Older than dirt, limping, one bad eye, short one hand, reads and writes, but a manly man for all that.

  146

  The Voroshk World:

  Stronghold Rhuknavr

  The Voroshk shadowgate was being watched from the other side. Shukrat’s uncles hoped she would find her way home, too, and they were eager to obtain another breeder.

  We did not work hard to avoid being discovered by the watchers. But we did come by night and Shukrat did leak some of her most unusual companions through to distract the sentries.

  Tobo did not stint when he gave her Unknown Shadows to help her out in her adventures down this way. Unlike when he gave me those two wanna-be ravens that were never around and had not been seen now in months. He assigned her some of the biggest, the darkest, the smartest, that would stand by her and do what she said.

  The Black Hounds darted around and over the two watchers, keeping them from flying just long enough for us to get through the shadowgate and add ourselves to the equation. Shukrat was able to put them both to sleep despite the state of high excitement the Unknown Shadows had aroused.

  In moments we understood why.

  “They’re just kids!” I said, while undressing one. “This one can’t be more than eleven or twelve.”

  The one Shukrat stripped was even younger. “These two are the youngest Tologev brothers. Somebody really is desperate if he’s sending kids this young out alone when there’re still shadows roaming around.”

  I thought that was just fine. The thinner the Voroshk were spread, the better.

  The two boys we left behind, up in
trees for their own safety. We confiscated their posts and clothing.

  It was a long flight. We did not show ourselves during the day. Along the way Shukrat showed me the ruins of Khatovar. I did not feel inclined to explore. I did not have time. There were changes going on inside me. I had to hold them off until I got Arkana free.

  The white crow mocked me and accused me of cheating on Lady. She refused to believe I was not. I no longer argued. She was still bitter because she had not been able to take me away from her sister.

  Arkana was being held in a minor Voroshk fortress called Rhuknavr. We flew in low, to within a mile, then awaited midnight while floating high up in the tops of trees that were old when Khatovar fell. We put out a dozen shadowtraps Shukrat had crafted according to Shivetya’s instructions. Once she released the Unknown Shadows, though, the traps were not necessary.

  At my insistence Shukrat made doubly sure that the Unknown Shadows clearly understood we were about to butt heads with people who had considerable experience dealing with creatures of darkness. Their advantage over the killer shadows was that they were not just driven clumps of hunger and hatred. They were cunning and wicked and able to reason, although unfortunately weak on the concept of cooperation.

  I asked Shukrat, “You think we might have better luck in the daytime, after everybody inside there relaxes?”

  “They’re not that alert. They haven’t had an incident here for a long time.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just do. Now that I’m close enough to feel them.” Meaning, probably, that she was hiding the whispers of the Unknown Shadows already.

  “Uhm? Are you close enough for them to feel you?”

  “No. Because I’m alone. And because I’m dressed. And because they aren’t trying to feel for me.”

  “I see.” If it was not our unseen associates it must be something like the way I had begun to sense Shivetya. “Bird. Pay attention.” It was not my intent to waste any resource. The white crow was a valuable resource. “So where is my other baby, Shukrat? Be as exact as you can because my feathered friend needs to know how to get there to tell her that we’re coming and she should be ready to go.”