Bleak Seasons (19 page)

“You trust Blade?”

“More than most. Like me, he has nowhere else to run. But I trust no one
completely. Our allies least of all. Neither Howler nor the Deceiver joined us
out of love for our cause.”

“Indeed.” Apparently amused, Longshadow seemed to relax. “I must explain,

General.” Mogaba’s surprise told me that this was an extraordinary eventuality.

“I do not stay bottled up here because of the plain. I can leave Overlook for
short periods. I will if I must. The Shadowgate wards are fresh and strong and
reliable and entirely under my control. But if I do venture out I will have to
so do by stealth.” Mogaba grunted again.

“The reason I stay here is that there are some less obvious players in this
game.”

Mogaba frowned. Sounded like a crock to me, too.

“Howler springs from that clan once known as The Ten Who Were Taken.”

“I know.”

“Stormshadow matriculated from that slave school as well. Another graduate was
Senjak’s sister. They called her Soulcatcher.”

“I believe we’ve met.”

“Yes. She embarrassed you at Stormgard.” Actually, that was Lady that time.

Wasn’t it?

Mogaba nodded. I was surprised. Time seemed to have given him the ability to
manage his temper.

“Some years ago circumstances deceived Howler and I. We took Soulcatcher
prisoner under the impression that we had captured her sister. She was
masquerading as Senjak at the time so the mistake was more her fault than ours.

She escaped during some confusion that arose later. Although we did not treat
her severely she bears us a unreasonable ill will. She has done us mischief
before now and awaits the opportunity to do us major harm.”

“You think if you left Overlook she might invite herself inside and forget to
leave the door unlocked?”

“Exactly.”

Ha! Imagine hijacking that incredible fortress.

Mogaba sighed. “So whether I like it or not it will have to be decided on the
Plain of Charandaprash.”

“Yes. Will you win?”

“Yes.” Mogaba never did lack confidence. “As long as Croaker remains the man I
knew, scarred by that streak of softness.”

“If?”

“He hides behind a hundred masks. His soft streak may be another of those.”

“So this man concerns you despite your desire to discount him.”

“We continue to play to his strengths, not to attack his weaknesses. We allow
him time to think, to plan, to maneuver, so he does not need to be subtle. His
forces advance everywhere. Along the frontier the people are more afraid of the
Black Company than of you. For pure viciousness there is nothing to match his
war against Singh’s kind. The Croaker I remember would have taken prisoners. He
would have pardoned Stranglers willing to abandon their religion.”

Right, I thought sarcastically. Then I reconsidered. Mogaba might be correct.

Croaker had been forgiving, once upon a time.

“Maybe Senjak wants the example made.”

“Possibly, She is that hard. But her influence doesn’t explain Croaker’s having
spent seven thousand lives trying to get Blade.”

What? This was news. “Blade deserted him.”

“I deserted him. And I was Company. Blade was only an adventurer, not a brother.

He hasn’t come after me that way. With Blade he’s fighting a personal war.”

The falling out with Blade and Blade’s subsequent flight and defection baffled a
lot of people, especially his buddies Cordy and Willow. And my name can go to
the top of the list. Whispers were that Croaker stumbled onto something real
going on between Lady and Blade. Whatever, it was certain that he was as
obsessive about Blade as he was about Narayan Singh.

Lady did not interfere in Croaker’s vendetta. Neither did she help.

“That troubles you?”

“Croaker confuses me. In some ways he has become dangerously unpredictable. At
the same time he becomes more and more the high priest of the Black Company
legend, admitting no other gods before his precious Annals.”

That was not true. Croaker grew less interested all the time. But allow Mogaba
his hyperbole. He wanted to sell something.

Mogaba continued, “I fear he may become so skewed he’ll attack in a way so novel
we won’t recognize it until it’s too late.”

“As long as he comes. Only disaster awaits him.”

“He’ll come. But is the overall outcome so certain?” I got the feeling both men
nurtured major doubts, but each mostly about the other.

“You circle back upon my constraints. Desist. You fear him?”

“I dread him. More than I dread Lady. Lady is straightforward in her enmity. She
comes right at you with everything she has. Croaker is determined to flim-flam
you into looking somewhere else while he sticks a knife in your back. He will
come at you with everything he has, too, but how will he use it? He is not a man
of honor.”

Mogaba didn’t really mean that Croaker was dishonorable but that he was not a
gentleman in the sense that meant so much to Mogaba—who could not be considered
a cavalier himself anymore.

Mogaba continued, “He is no longer sane. I do not believe he is sure what he is
doing himself. These days he has to face much for which there is no precedent in
his Annals.”

Wrong again, chappie. After four hundred years there is a precedent for
everything in the Annals somewhere. The trick is knowing how to look.

“He has limits, General.”

“Of course. Those Taglians are factious and divisive.”

“And that could be his undoing. Politically he will have no option but to try
his luck at Charandaprash soon. Where we will crush him.”

“And if I do? We should consider the possibilities of life unplagued by this
disease called the Black Company.”

“Oh?”

“Winning one battle will not be enough. If even one of them survives and
maintains possession of the Lance of Passion new armies will rise against us.

Lady proved that.”

“Then you will have the pleasure of crushing them again.” Mogaba wanted to argue
but elected not to bark into the wind.

“Once Overlook is complete you can hare off on any adventure you like, with my
approval and with my total support.”

“Adventure?”

“I understand you better than you suppose. You were Gea-Xle’s greatest warrior
but you could not prove that to yourself. In the Black Company you were
overshadowed by your captain and Senjak. It was necessary for you to have
command in order to demonstrate your scope and genius. When you did have an
opportunity all your efforts were sabotaged and suborned. You came to me because
the Black Company would not allow you the opportunity you need.”

Mogaba nodded. He did not seem pleased with himself, though. And that surprised
me. I had thought him too self-centered to entertain moral doubts.

“Go. Conquer the world, General. I’ll enjoy helping you. But you have to crush
the Black Company first. You have to stop the Taglians. Because you will have
nothing if I fall. Will the Strangler be much help, really?”

“He could be. He talks big about his goddess getting involved but I won’t count
on that. I’ve never seen the gods actually take a hand in mortal affairs.”

Odd. Mogaba’s god was Narayan’s goddess, more or less. Had Mogaba lost his
faith? Maybe Dejagore had scarred him deeply, too.

“Use them up. Leave none over to turn on us later.” In my imagination the
Shadowmaster was always this huge stinking devil incarnate, a colorful lunatic
the magnitude of the worst Taken back in the north. But the real Longshadow was
just a mean-spirited old man blessed with too much power.

He told Mogaba, “If this becomes the Year of the Skulls I want it to be our
year. Not theirs.”

“Understood. What do you think of the child?”

Longshadow grunted uncomfortably.

“Spooky, right? A thousand years old. Her mother in miniature, only worse. More
intense, with a deeper darkness inside.”

He could be right. The kid definitely looked weird and evil from my ghost’s eye
view.

The Shadowmaster mused, “We may have to hurry her into the embrace of her
goddess.”

Mogaba shrugged. He turned to go. “Anyone else you want to see alone?”

“Howler. Wait!”

“What?”

“Where is the Lance of Passion?”

“Wherever Croaker is, I imagine. Or the Standardbearer. That’s still that
serpent Murgen, I believe.”

I love you too, Mogaba.

“We must take possession. Might that not be a task for the Deceivers? Even
destroying the Black Company may not be enough in the long run. And one other
thing for the Deceivers. Have them find out why Senjak wants all that bamboo.”

“Bamboo?”

Was there an echo?

“She has been stripping the Taglian territories for months. Wherever her
soldiers go they loot bamboo.”

“That is curious. I will find out.” I followed Mogaba for a moment. Once he was
clear of the parapet he muttered, “Bamboo. I have to humor a lunatic.”

I tried to travel south of Overlook. Smoke went only a short way before he
balked. Well.

I would find out sooner than I wanted, I supposed. After we settled Longshadow
and Overlook the plain was next on the list of obstacles blocking our path to
Khatovar.

I returned to the chamber with Smoke and our stinky pet Strangler. I was hungry
and thirsty but also so excited I shook. I had not uncovered much of resounding
import, but, gods! The potential!

I drank from the pitcher, cleared my throat, lifted the corner of the cloth
covering the prisoner. “You in there? Want a drink? Want to tell me?” He was
asleep. “Be that way.”

So what now? Help had not arrived. I gnawed on one of Mother Gota’s stones. That
eased my hunger. That was all I wanted at the moment.

What now? Keep going out until somebody came to reclaim me? See Lady? Look for
Goblin? Hunt for Blade? How about finding out where Soulcatcher was hiding? She
had to be out there somewhere, though we had not stubbed our toes on her lately.

No place was free of crows if a member of the Company was around.

Soulcatcher is patient. That is her scariest trait.

It was kid-in-the-candy-shop time.

I decided to look for Soulcatcher. She was the oldest mystery going right now.

Smoke jumped right out, but then he stalled. His soul, or ka, or whatever,

became more agitated as I grew more insistent. “All right! She always was more
trouble than I want to deal with, anyway. Let’s find her goofy sister.”

Lady did not intimidate Smoke at all.

I found her in the citadel at Dejagore, in the conference chamber with four men,

leaning over a map. The frontier markings on the map lay far south of Dejagore.

Earlier boundaries were noted and identified by date.

She needed a new map. Her old one was too busy. She had won too many skirmishes.

Lady is a beauty even fresh from the field. She looks way too young for Croaker
although she is far older than One-Eye. One-Eye never mastered any youth
sorcery.

Two of Lady’s companions were Company men, Gea-Xle Nar anxious to show the world
that Mogaba and his traitors were mutants, that their like would not be seen
again. I did not buy that. Neither did Lady or the Old Man. We were confident
that Mogaba had left somebody behind. Croaker once told me, “Watch out for
somebody to start pointing fingers. That’ll be the traitor.”

A third man was the Prahbrindrah Drah, the ruling Prince of Taglios. He was
about as nondescript, for a Taglian, as a man could be and still be breathing.

He put in the last four years learning the arts of war. He commanded a full
division now, the right wing of the field army. Lady and the Old Man took pains
to entangle him deeply in their war machine so he had a personal stake to
maintain there.

The last man was the improbable Willow Swan. When I focused on him Smoke became
agitated, which proved to me Smoke’s self was partially aware on some plane. He
and Swan had gotten on like rats and mice.

These days Swan is the captain of the Royal Guards detachment assigned to
Dejagore.

Swan wears his cornsilk hair longer than Lady does her shoulder-length black
hair. Sometimes Willow braids his but at the moment it was pulled back into a
ponytail. Lady’s hair was back in a tail, too. Usually she lets it hang free.

She did keep it combed and clean when she could.

A soldier by accident, Swan did not want to be a hero. His Guards existed
outside the army and functioned mainly as military police. He and they owed
their allegiance directly to the Prince and his sister.

Lady said, “Howler has quit attacking outposts.”

“You said he ain’t stupid,” Swan replied.

“I got too close when I missed him. That scared him off for good.”

One of the Nar observed, “Our raids must trouble them.”

“They trouble me, Isi. And I authorized them.” Lady shivered momentarily.

“They are effective.”

“Beyond a doubt.”

The Prince asked, “But would the Liberator approve?”

Lady’s smile revealed glistening white teeth that were almost too perfect. She
had mastered the cosmetic sorceries early. “He doesn’t approve. Definitely. But
he won’t interfere. I’m the one who is here and I’m relying on my own
experience.”

The Prince asked, “Will Longshadow unleash Mogaba?” The Nar brigadiers tensed.

Mogaba shamed them greatly by letting pride and vanity seduce him away from the
ancient ideals of the Nar. Not to mention he was going to be blue-assed hell in
a fight.

Swan asked, “You take any prisoners down there?”

“Yes. And what they knew would fit into a thimble with room left for a stork’s
nest. Nobody responsible down there ever sits around the campfire swapping
secrets with the troops.”

Swan stared at her while her gaze was directed elsewhere. He saw a woman five
and a half feet tall, blue-eyed, 110 perfectly arranged pounds. She was big for
this part of the world. She looked like she might turn twenty soon. That old
black magic. Swan was transparent.