Bleak Seasons (9 page)

“I don’t know,” I told Goblin when he asked about my Nyueng Bao shadow. “He
don’t talk much.” I had not gotten a word out of him yet. “His all-purpose
vocabulary seems to be the noncommittal grunt. Anyway, the visit wasn’t
necessary. The Nyueng Bao know more about the coming shit rain than we do. The
old man admits it’s all Mogaba’s fault and says we’re off the hook.”

Goblin made as though to look over his shoulder like he was trying to check his
own behind.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Strap on your chastity belt. What’s happening?” I didn’t see
Bucket or Sparkle.

“Not much yet. Spinner and his bunch just got to the hills.”

And all kinds of excitement broke out out there. A strong pink light cast
silhouettes on the night again. Goblin said, “They look exactly like the
Lifetaker and Widowmaker costumes Lady made for her and Croaker. Hey! How come
you look like you got bit on the ass by a ghost?”

“Because maybe I did. They do look exactly like what you say. Only if you
remember I took the Widowmaker armor off Croaker after that arrow got him. I put
it on and pretended to be him. And failed because I started too late.”

“So?”

“So last week somebody stole the Widowmaker armor. Right out of my quarters
while I was laying there asleep. I thought I had it hidden where nobody but me
could ever find it. But somebody came in, stepped over me, got it dug out, and
got out of there with the load and I never saw or heard a thing. And neither did
anybody else.” And that was definitely scary.

“Is that why you were asking all those weird questions the other day?” Goblin
squeaked. He could sound like a stomped mouse when he was distressed.

“Yeah.”

“How come you never said anything?”

“Because whoever took the armor had to use sorcery to get past me. I figured it
was one of you guys and I wanted to find out which one so I could cut him off at
the ankles before he knew it was coming.”

One-Eye came puffing up the stairs. Not bad for a guy two hundred years old.

“What gives? How come the grim faces?”

Goblin filled him in.

The little black wizard grumped, “You should have told us, Murgen. We might have
picked up a hot trail.”

Not likely. The only evidence I had found was one small white feather and a glob
of what looked like bird shit. “It don’t matter now. I know where the armor is.

Out there.” I pointed at the hills, which lay beneath what looked like a
premature pink dawn. “What did you do?”

“We killed off a bunch of goddamned southerners, that’s what we did. Mogaba must
be selling them tickets over there. The little suckers are thicker than lice.

Anyway, we got out before we used up our luck. Them Nyueng Bao are really going
bug fuck.” He gave Thai Dei the fish-eye. “Looks like they’re trying to make the
Shadowlanders want to go chomp on Mogaba’s rear. Serve the asshole right, he
gets ate up by his own plot. What the hell is going on out there?” He meant the
pink-soaked hills.

Goblin replied, “That’s something we weren’t looking for.”

A gout of darkness reared against the pink. Human figures tumbled within it.

They flared, burned like bright, brief-lived stars. Moments later an earth
tremor rocked the city. I lost my footing briefly.

One-Eye observed, “For once you’re right, runt. There’s a player in the game we
didn’t know about.”

A pair of crows a few yards off went into hysterics. They jumped into the
darkness, kept laughing as they flapped away.

“Surprise, surprise,” I muttered. “What with all that booming and crashing and
crap in those hills. Come on, guys! Tell me who. The rest even a dummy like me
can figure out. So just tell me who.”

“We’re gonna work on that,” One-Eye promised. “Maybe we’d even start now if you
went away and left us alone. Come on, runt.”

While him and his frog-faced buddy got to work I turned my attention to the
excitement still festering inside Dejagore.

Possibly thousands of Shadowlanders had crossed the wall now. A lot of fires
were burning. I asked Ky Dam’s grandson, “Will the light be trouble for your
people?”

He shrugged.

This fellow was no gossip.

There was no night now. Fires burned everywhere. They burned in the Shadowlander
camp, set by Mogaba’s beleaguered artillerymen. They burned in the city, set by
the Shadowmaster’s soldiers. Conflagrations blazed in the hills, hinting of
surprise volcanos or powers of a magnitude unseen since the Company went up
against the dark lords of Lady’s empire. It was too much light for the middle of
the night. “How long till dawn? Anybody know?”

“Too long,” Bucket grumbled. “You really think anybody is actually worrying
about keeping time tonight?”

Way back, centuries earlier in the evening, One-Eye or Goblin or somebody
expressed dawn as a goal too remote for hope. The general level of optimism
remained that low.

Reports came in, none of them good. Innumerable southern soldiers were inside
the city. They had orders to drive toward us, wipe us out, then continue on
around inside and atop the wall, the long way, till they got back where they had
started. But the Nyueng Bao were not cooperating. Neither were my guys. So the
invaders were blundering around doing any damage they could till somebody killed
them.

Against the Jaicuri, cowering in their homes hoping to be overlooked despite all
their experience with the Shadowmasters, the southerners enjoyed some success.

You could not fault them for not going all out after us. They did not want to
get killed either. And Mogaba should not have been surprised when some of the
villains he let through turned on him.

Our guys held their positions. The doppelgangers and illusions drove the
southerners crazy. They never knew which threat was real. But the big reason our
side held up well was that there was no choice. We had nowhere to run.

Shadowspinner was no help to his people. He was out in those hills intent on
undoing that mystery personally. Clearly he regretted having made the choice.

Once again a band of riders came flying back, silhouetted by pink light. The
Shadowmaster did not appear to be with them. “Goblin! One-Eye! Where the hell
are you now, you little shits? Has something happened to Shadowspinner?”

Goblin materialized, his breath heavy with the smell of beer. He and One-Eye had
a few gallons stashed somewhere nearby, then. He dashed my hopes. “The
Shadowmaster is alive, Murgen. But maybe he’s messed his drawers.” He giggled.

“Oh, shit,” I muttered. The little toad had gotten deep into the home brew. If
One-Eye had, too, I might have one truly interesting rest of the night. It was
possible those two would forget everything and pick up the feud they have had
going for a hundred years. Last time they got drunk and went after each other
they tore up a whole city block in Taglios.

All the while the Speaker’s grandson hung back in the shadows and watched like
one of those goddamned crows. There were a lot more of those around now.

Old Wheezer came puffing up from the street. He had to take a break before he
got to the top. He hacked and coughed and spat blood. He was from the same part
of the world as One-Eye. They have nothing else in common except a taste for
beer. Wheezer had been to the barrel a few times, too. He came on up top as I
surveyed the city and tried to guess how bad things really were. We were getting
very little pressure right then.

Wheezer hacked and wheezed and spat. A new generation of pink lights erupted at
the feet of the hills. They cast two shadows against the sky. There was no doubt
they were shadows of Widowmaker and Lifetaker, the dread alter egos Lady created
for herself and Croaker so they could scare shit out of Shadowlanders.

“This isn’t possible,” I told my tame wizards. One-Eye was back. He used one
hand to support Wheezer, who seemed to be suffering an asthma attack along with
the effects of his tuberculosis. In his other hand One-Eye clutched something
polelike wrapped in rags. I continued, “That can’t be Croaker and Lady because I
saw them go down with my own eyes.”

A handful of horsemen drifted toward town. Among them was a blob of darkness
that had to be Shadowspinner. He was staying busy. Pink fireflies swarmed around
him. He had trouble fending them off.

As though they realized their boss would be in a foul temper when he got back,

the southerners’ attack suddenly picked up.

“I’m not sure,” Goblin mused. He sounded like he had been scared sober. “I can’t
get any sense of the one in the Lifetaker armor. There’s a shitload of power
there, though.”

“Lady had no power left,” I reminded him.

“The other one does feel like Croaker.”

Couldn’t be.

Wheezer finally gasped, “Mogaba . . . ”

Several men spat at mention of the name. Everybody had an opinion about our
fearless war chief. Listening to them you might have concluded that Mogaba was
the most lusted after man in town.

A writhing pink thread reached for Shadowspinner’s party. The Shadowmaster
batted it away from himself but it slew half his party. Parts of bodies flew in
all directions.

“Shee-it!” somebody said, pretty much capturing the popular feeling.

Wheezer barked, “Mogaba wants to know if we can free up a few hundred men to
counterattack the enemy who are inside the city.”

“How stupid does that bastard think we are?” Sparkle grumbled.

Goblin asked, “Don’t that camel’s wife know we’re on to him?”

“Why should he think we might suspect him? He’s got such a tall opinion of his
own brain . . . ”

“I think it’s funny,” Bucket crowed. “He tried to screw us and only ended up
with his own ass in a sling. Even better, maybe the only way he can pry it out
is to have us do it for him.”

I asked Goblin, “What’s One-Eye up to?” One-Eye looked like he was praying over
one of the ballistas with Loftus. Rags lay scattered around their feet. A
gruesome black spear lay in the engine’s trough.

“I don’t know.”

I checked the nearest gate. The Nar there could see us. Mogaba would know I was
lying if I claimed we were too beat up to send help. I asked, “Anybody think of
a reason we should help Mogaba?” To hold my sector, besides the Old Crew itself,

I had six hundred Taglian survivors from Lady’s division and an uncertain and
changeable number of liberated slaves, former prisoners of war and ambitious
Jaicuri.

Everyone replied in the negative. Nobody wanted to help Mogaba. As I approached
the engines I asked, “How about if we do it just to save our own butts? If we
let Mogaba get stomped we could end up facing the rest of the Shadowlander mob
by ourselves.” I glanced at the gate. “And those people over there can see
everything we do.”

Goblin looked, too. He shook his head to lessen the beer buzz. “We’ll have to
think about that.”

“What are you doing, One-Eye?” I was beside him now.

One-Eye indicated the spear proudly. “Little something I’ve been working on in
my spare time.”

“It’s ugly enough.” Nice to know he could do something useful without being
told.

He had begun with a black wooden pole and had worked it for a lot of hours. It
was covered with incredibly ugly miniature scenes along with writing in an
unfamiliar alphabet. Its head was as black as its shaft, darkened iron finely
traced with silver runes. There was some color on the shaft, too, although so
fine as to be almost invisible. “Very nice.”

“Nice? Sigh. You heathen.” He pointed. Loftus looked. So did I.

Shadowspinner’s party, sadly depleted, surrounded by swarms of pink sparkles and
mocking crows, was getting close.

One-Eye snickered. “This here is my Shadowmaster blaster, bastar’!” He howled.

He must have put away a lot of that beer. “Nothing he couldn’t stop on a lazy
afternoon, but this ain’t no lazy afternoon, is it? Loftus shoots, this stick
won’t be in the air five seconds. That’s all the time he’ll have to figure out
what’s coming and what to do to unravel the spells that are there to keep him
from turning it. And look how busy that asshole is already. Loftus, my man, get
ready to carve you a big victory notch on this thing.”

As anybody with any sense does, Loftus ignored One-Eye. He laid his weapon with
an artist’s care.

One-Eye babbled, “Most of the spells are designed to penetrate his personal
protection, counting on him not having time to do anything actively. Because I
wanted to concentrate on piercing one point in a passive . . . ”

I shut him out. “Goblin. Any chance this will work? The runt’s not exactly a
heavyweight.”

“It’s workable, tactically. If he really worked that hard on it. Say One-Eye is
an order of magnitude weaker than Shadowspinner. That really only means that it
takes him ten times as long to get the same work done.”

“An order of magnitude?” So that was One-Eye’s problem.

“More like two orders really, probably.”

He lost me. And I didn’t have time to wring an explanation out of him.

Loftus was satisfied he was leading his target perfectly, he had the range,

whatever. “Time,” he said.

“Loose,” I suggested. The ballista offered its distinctive thump. Silence spread
along the wall. The black shaft darted across the night. The occasional spark
floated behind it. One-Eye said five seconds of flight. The truth was more like
four but they took forever.

There was ample firelight to illuminate the Shadowmaster. Shortly he would
disappear behind one of the enfilading towers. He stared back at the hills as he
rode. Those bizarre riders out there were on the plain now, daring someone,

anyone, to answer their challenge.

I gasped.

Widowmaker carried the Lance. The standard itself was not apparent but that was
the lance on which it had ridden from the day the Black Company left Khatovar.

Every single Annalist has kept close track although the reason for doing so has
been forgotten. I focused on Shadowspinner in time to see One-Eye’s treasure
arrive.

Later Goblin told me Spinner sensed the threat as the missile hit the peak of
its arc. Whatever he did then, it was the right thing. Or he was lucky. Or a
higher power decreed that this was not his night to die.

The spear changed course by scant inches. Instead of striking Shadowspinner it
hit his mount’s shoulder. And ripped through the beast as though it was no more
substantial than air. The wound glowed red, flickered. The red spread.

Shadowspinner bellowed in rage as the animal threw him. He fell in a heap, lay
there twitching long enough for One-Eye to start nagging Loftus about hitting
him with a barrage of regular shafts, then he scuttled off like a crab to escape
the stallion’s pounding hooves.

I recognized that animal then. It was one of those magically bred monster horses
Lady brought south with the Company, out of her old empire. They vanished during
the battle.

The horse screamed and screamed.

A normal animal would have perished in moments.

I stared at those two riders out there. They walked toward the city slowly,

offering their challenge. Now I could see that they, too, were mounted on Lady’s
stallions. I told Goblin, “But I saw them killed.”

One-Eye grumbled, “We got to check this boy’s eyes.”

Goblin said, “I told you before, that’s not Lady. You look real close, you can
see differences in the armor.”

The troops were seeing that. There was a stir among the Taglians.

“And you don’t know about the other one? What’re they talking about over there?”

“No. It could be the Old Man.”

Sparkle went to see why the Taglians were excited.

Shadowspinner’s horse collapsed but continued screaming and kicking. Wisps of
greenish steam rose from its wound. That continued to grow. The beast’s death
was a long time coming.

The sorcerer would have died more slowly and gruesomely still had One-Eye’s
shaft struck home.

Sparkle came to say, “They’re all excited because that armor is an exact match
for some goddess named Kina in her battle avatar. That’s the way she’s always
portrayed in paintings about her war with the demons.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, only that Kina was some sort of death
goddess in these parts.

I wondered when the Shadowmaster would snipe back at One-Eye.

“He won’t,” Goblin assured me. “The moment he gave it attention enough to be
effective those two out there would cut his legs off.”

I watched Shadowspinner limp out of sight.

His embarrassment spurred his soldiers to increase their efforts again. Somebody
would pay for his indignity in pain. Understandably they preferred that we pick
up that tab.

Some of them seemed to recognize the Lifetaker armor, too. I heard the name Kina
shouted more than once below the wall.

“Thai Dei. Time for a message to your grandfather. I want to bring part of my
force through his area so I can help drive the southerners out of the city.”

The Nyueng Bao stepped out of the shadows just long enough to listen. He stared
at those riders, troubled. Then he grunted, descended to the street and trotted
off into the night.

“Listen up, people. We’re going to go save our fearless dick-head leader. Bucket
. . . ”