Bleak Seasons (24 page)

Getting into the citadel, then, was no problem, though it required some
crawling. The architects had not been concerned with Stormshadow’s dignity. It
was tough for me. I was not yet back to my best.

We came to a small open space beneath a ladder. That rose straight up into
infinity, so far as I could see by the light of one feeble candle. I had a
feeling the candle was a luxury laid on for me, that the Nyueng Bao made this
journey entirely in darkness.

I could not have endured that. I dislike enclosed places intensely despite
having lived in them. Close places, darkness, recurring spells and visions were
not a combination I wanted to tempt.

I did seem more stable lately, I reflected. I set a hand and foot on the ladder.

Uncle Doj grabbed my wrist, shook his head.

“What? Isn’t that the way to the council chamber?” My whisper rattled off like
the scurry of mice.

“Not what the Speaker wants you to see.” Doj used almost no air when he
whispered. “Come.”

There was no crawling now, just a lot of easing along sideways in an airspace
almost too narrow for Uncle. His belly was going to ache from rubbing against
stone.

I learned that there was a lot more to Stormshadow’s citadel than I had seen in
the little time I spent there these past few months. Down below there, beneath
the surrounding plazas, were countless unsuspected storerooms and prison cells,

armories and barracks rooms, cisterns and smithies. I whispered, “They have
supplies down here to hold out for years.” Meaning the Nar and their favorites,

holed up inside the citadel. Stormshadow had laid in a great store against the
evil day.

Mogaba had lied to me, just trying to find out how well off we Old Crew were.

Was that what the old man wanted me to know?

Was this why the Nyueng Bao had seemed to prosper while everyone else became
gaunt? Were they nibbling at these stores like mice, taking just a little here
and there so their predations would go unnoticed?

Uncle Doj beckoned. “Hurry.”

Soon I began to hear a distant chanting. “We may not be in time, Bone Warrior.

Hurry.”

I didn’t slug him mostly because the racket would have alerted the singing men.

I knew they were Nar before I saw a thing. I had heard the rhythms and style
before, though not these particular lyrics. Always before, though, there had
been joy in their work songs and celebrations. This song was cold and grim.

Uncle Doj left the candle, tugged my elbow. We continued to step sideways until,

suddenly, we were in an ordinary passageway, not some tight, secret squeeze
behind a wall. Nothing concealed the entrance to the hidden ways. That was just
a shadowed corner unlikely to entice a closer look.

There was light out there, from candles in sconces widely spaced. The people in
charge were frugal despite their wealth.

Uncle Doj placed a finger to his lips. We were near dangerous people who might
detect us in an instant. He dropped to his knees and led me right into a large
chamber where most of the Nar had gathered. Lighting was nonexistent except down
where they were. Doj got behind a pillar. I squatted behind a low, dusty table
just inside the doorway. I wished I was as dark as the Nar. My forehead must be
shining like a little half moon.

This life hardens you. Too soon you have seen so much that when you encounter
another something terrible you don’t howl and run in circles, snapping at your
tail. But most of us still appreciate horror if horror is there. Horror was
there.

There was an altar. Mogaba and Ochiba were involved in something ceremonial.

Above the altar stood a small statue of dark stone, a four-armed woman dancing.

I was too far away to make out details but I was pretty sure sure she had
vampire fangs and six teats. She might be wearing a necklace of baby skulls. The
Nar might give her another name but she was Kina. The worship offered by the Nar
was not that described in the Jaicuri scriptures, though.

The Deceivers do not want to spill blood. That is why they are called
Stranglers.

The Nar not only spilled blood on behalf of their goddess, they drank it. And it
looked like they had been doing so for some time down there. Drained corpses
hung to one side. Their latest sacrifice, a hapless Jaicuri, got hoisted up with
those soon after I arrived.

The Nar were practical in their religion. After the grim ceremony ended they
began butchering one of the bodies.

I got down and crawled out of there. I did not give one rat’s ass what Uncle Doj
thought.

I have seen a lot with the Company, including tortures and cruelties almost
beyond comprehension and inhumanities I do not have the capacity to fathom, but
never had I encountered socially-sanctioned cannibalism.

I did not puke or boil over in outrage. That would be silly. I just put distance
between me and that till I could speak without worrying about who might
overhear. “I have seen enough. Let’s get out of here.”

Uncle Doj responded with a thin smile and lifted eyebrow.

“I have to relay this. I have to write it down. We may not survive this siege.

They will. Word of what they are has to survive, too.” He watched me closely.

Was he wondering if the rest of us also enjoyed the occasional long pig roast as
well?

Probably.

This sort of thing might go some toward explaining our ambiguous reception in
these parts.

Mogaba could not read. If it did not occur to him that the dark side of the Nar
was no secret anymore I could leave word in my Annals, to be salvaged by Lady or
the Old Man.

“They are all down there,” Uncle said. “So we will return by a swifter path.” By
which he meant we would stroll through regular passageways just like we belonged
there.

“What’s that noise?” I asked.

Uncle gestured for silence. We stole forward.

We discovered a group of Taglian soldiers bricking up a sallyport we could have
used to leave. Why were they doing that? That door could not be broken open from
the outside. It still had Stormshadow’s spells protecting it.

Uncle pulled me back, headed another direction. Obviously he knew the citadel
quite well. And I had no difficulty imagining him roaming around in there all
the time, just for the hell of it. He seemed like that kind of guy.

You look like somebody ate your favorite puppy,” Goblin told me. Cracks like
that could be heard all the time now that there were no more dogs. There were
just two sources of meat left. The Nar exploited both. We restricted ourselves
to stupid crows.

I told Goblin and One-Eye what I had seen. Uncle Doj stood behind me, quietly
disgruntled because I wanted to see my own people before I visited the Speaker.

I was barely halfway through it when One-Eye interrupted. “You got to tell the
whole Company this one, Kid.” For once he was as serious as a spear through the
gut.

And for once Goblin agreed with One-Eye without any big groan and moan about the
unfairness of it all. “You need to get this word out exactly the way you want it
known to everybody. There’s going to be a lot of talk. You don’t want anybody
building it up worse than it is when they pass it along.”

“Get them together, then. While I’m waiting I’m going to skim those Jaicuri
books. There may be something else I need to tell them.”

“May I join you?” Uncle Doj asked.

“No. Go tell the old man that I’ll be there as soon as I can. This is family.”

“As you will.” He said something to Thai Dei, stalked away.

Bucket interrupted my reading. “Got them together, Murgen. All but Clete. He’s
off somewhere whoring and even his brothers don’t know where to find him.”

“All right.”

“It something bad? You got that look.”

“Yeah.”

“It can get worse than it already is?”

“You’re going to hear all about it in just a little bit.”

In five minutes I got up in front of sixty men and told my tale, marvelling as I
did that a band so frail and few could be so feared. More, I marvelled that
there were so many of us when, hardly more than two years ago, there were just
seven of us pretending to be the Black Company.

“You guys want to keep it down until I’m done?” The news had them excited in a
grim way. “Listen up. That is the word. They’re making human sacrifices and
eating the corpses. But that ain’t the whole story. Ever since they joined us at
Gea-Xle they’ve been hinting and even saying right out that us northern guys are
heretics. That means they think the whole Company used to do things their way.”

That started everybody talking and yelling.

I pounded a mason’s hammer on a block of wood. “Shut up, you morons! It ain’t
the way the Company ever was. The Nar never kept any Annals. They would know
that if they had. But they can’t even read.”

I could not be absolutely sure that human sacrifice was never a Company rite. We
were missing several early volumes of the Annals and I now suspected strongly
that our earliest forebrethren did follow a dark and hungry god with breath so
foul and cruel that even oral histories were enough to keep the native people
terrified.

Most of the guys did not care about the implications. They were just angry
because the Nar were going to make life harder for them.

I told them, “This is one more thing to make trouble between us and them. I want
you all to realize that we might have to fight them before we get out of here.

“Tonight I’m bringing back some traditional business that we have let slide
since Croaker got to be Captain. We are going to have regular readings from the
Annals so you all know what you have become part of. This first reading is from
the Book of Kette, this part probably set down by the Annalist Agrip when the
Company was in service to the Paingod of Cho’n Delor.” Our forebrethren endured
a long and bitter siege then, though there had been a lot more of them to
suffer. Additionally, I planned readings from books Croaker recorded on the
Plain of Fear, when the Company lived underground for so long.

I dismissed the men to supper. “One-Eye. No more groaning when I announce a
reading. All right? These guys didn’t live through that stuff.”

“Cho’n Delor was way before my time, too.”

“Then you need to hear about it.”

“Kid, I been hearing about it for two hundred years. Every damned Annalist that
ever was wallowed in the horrors of Cho’n Delor. I wish I could get my hands on
those guys who did the Book of Kette. You know Kette wasn’t even the Annalist?