The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Chronicle of the Black Company) (114 page)

The stair was crowded. No one wanted to be there in that darkness, though only Lady, Murgen and I were old enough to remember when darkness was our determined foe. I tried to stay close to Lady, my foolish mind somehow afflicted with the notion that I had to protect her.

There went a joke of cosmic proportion.

We made it down the stairwell without mishap. And, despite a horrendous racket, without causing any alarm. Lady murmured, “Mogaba must be sleeping the sleep of the innocent. All that noise should’ve raised the dead.”

“Uhn?”

“His quarters are straight ahead.”

I knew that. We had rehearsed this raid before we left. In a half-ass sort of way. Which means not thoroughly enough to satisfy me.

“He’s a heavy sleeper,” I said. That was one of the few knocks against him before his defection. That and an intensity even his brother Nar had found oppressive. But I was speaking to the night. She was pulling ahead.

Someone generated a light, a feeble glowball that drifted above our heads. It had an alien feel so I assume one of the Voroshk was responsible. As the light grew so did a sense of relaxation, of confidence.

Maybe one of those cranky old men was not as dim as he let on.

“The light is my familiar,” someone murmured in one of the dialects of Hsien. The phrase possessed the rhythm of ritual. Later I would learn that it was part of an incantation meant to repel the Unknown Shadows, those being disliked by everyone but Tobo.

The hidden realm was there, too, all around us. And so troubled that even I could feel it.

Tobo whispered, “There’s something strange here. I had hundreds of the hidden folk put into the Palace. But none of them are reporting. As far as I can tell they aren’t here anymore.” He whispered to the creepy darkness. Things unseen moved around us, jostling us from directions we were not looking. Some of the stress oppressing me went away.

Lady beckoned soldiers forward. It was time to break into Mogaba’s quarters. Though that implies more force than was needed. His door was not locked. Nor had it ever been before, according to Lady.

She and Shukrat took point. They knew their ways around. Unless clever Mogaba had rearranged his furniture.

Soldiers followed. The Voroshk and Howler crept inside. Murgen followed them. Lady and Shukrat began to argue sharply, in whispers, about who should find a lamp. Somebody stumbled into somebody else. Somebody fell down. Another somebody crashed into something. Then somebody else stated categorically, “Oh, shit!”

Arkana was just sliding into the room, a step ahead of me, when Tobo echoed those sentiments from behind me. He started to push. “Out of the way, damnit!”

A huge crash of breaking pottery. I had not known that Mogaba was a collector, though there were some marvellous craftsmen in this part of the world.…

A man screamed.

Before his lungs were empty other screams joined his. And fireballs leapt from small projectors. And I knew why so many men were screaming and why they were so panicky they were blowing holes through one another.

Shadows.

The old evil. Killer shadows.

Deadly shadows off the glittering plain. Shadows, the exploitation of which had given the Shadowmasters their name. Shadows of the sort Soulcatcher had used to prop up her Protectorate until the coming of Tobo’s allies from the Land of Unknown Shadows.

I had the answer to the question I had addressed to Lady and Tobo.

People panicked completely. Fireballs flew everywhere, caused far more carnage than mere starving mad shadows. One of those ripped through my Voroshk cloak. The cloak seemed to whine but pulled itself together around me. A shadow hit me. My apparel repelled it, a fact I did not fail to note despite the rising chaos. It also shed the next fireball that found me.

I saw Lady hit several times, rapidly. I saw one of the Voroshk succumb to shadows.

I tried to bellow into the madness, to calm them down, but the panic had them all. Even Howler and Lady caught it.

But Shukrat did keep her wits about her. She crouched in a corner and let her cloak form a barrier impervious to fireballs and shadows alike.

Men fought to get out the door. Howler loosed a spell that flashed so brightly it blinded everyone not in Voroshk protective clothing, including the little sorcerer himself. His effort did not avail. A moment later he screamed with more enthusiasm than ever he had before his cure.

“Get out of my way!” Tobo bellowed. He hurled me aside. His father was inside that room.

Before I regained my feet the tower was creaking under the psychic mass of Tobo’s unseen friends. Their battle with the invisible killers was brief but belated. And, probably, needless, because the fireballs ate shadows alive. Unknown Shadows as well as the traditional lurkers in darkness.

I did not know if I wanted to get off the floor. It was very still in that other room now, except for Arkana crying. But I had to get up. We had to get moving. The rest of the palace was not silent anymore. An alarm had been sounded. People with sharp instruments would be coming to get us.

*   *   *

It was impossible to tell who was dead, who was dying, and who was only mildly injured. For a while it was too dark.

I got Tobo to provide another light. Then I started getting the fallen moved back to the tower top. Arkana and Shukrat and Tobo’s hidden allies kept the Palace Guard at bay. I kept my emotions turned off while I lugged bodies. At the moment I could not afford to indulge.

“How are we going to get these posts and the carpet out of here?” I demanded. Lady, both of the elder Voroshk, Howler, Murgen were all out of action. So were most of the commandos.

“Shukrat and I can handle the carpet. You and Arkana will have to tow the posts.”

“You hear that, new daughter?” Minutes earlier I had been about to slap the girl around to crack her shock. But she had solid stuff inside her. She was dragging the dead and injured now, calmer than most of the others.

“I know. I’ll need something to use for tethers.”

“Find it fast. I’ll lug bodies.”

A crossbow bolt buzzed past without doing any harm. An instant later the section of wall whence it had come was shattered rock and boiling flame.

Tobo was not in a kindly mood.

I told Arkana, “You get those posts out of here right now. All but mine.” She had gotten some rope from aboard the carpet.

Good girl, Arkana. She got busy. Like Shukrat, she focused on the task at hand.

Funny, I thought, how the Company seemed to attract good women.

The Palace Guards and a surprising number of Greys responded to the alarm. And they refused to be intimidated by Tobo’s violence and by Tobo’s half-seen friends. Brave men, they. There are always brave and honorable men amongst one’s enemies. Missiles filled the air. A few found targets.

I began to wonder if this would not be a good time to reconsider my lifelong determination never to leave Company people behind.

But I was incapable of leaving without my wife. And I needed the old Voroshk. Even if they were dead.

106

The Palace: View from a High Place

Mogaba felt no elation as he watched the disaster unfold. In fact, he became more troubled. He could see that there would be survivors. Those people were still strong enough to hold off the Guards and Greys while they evacuated their casualites. That meant that, unless he enjoyed a gargantuan turn of luck and they were all killed by missiles before they could get away, he still faced a final battle.

He had no tricks left in his bag.

The shadows had not been completely effective. Which proved what he had suspected for some time. The enemy had a similar force at his disposal. And that force had responded in time to save some of the raiders.

He watched crossbow bolts, arrows and even javelins bounce off the creatures in the great seething black cloaks. Only one of those people got hurt.

A fireball’s flare, as the big carpet backed away from the parapet, gave just enough light for Mogaba to distinguish the Lifetaker armor.

“Lady,” he murmured. Awed.

That same flash must have reflected off his eyeballs or teeth, betraying him somehow. Because when he glanced at the post riders he found the one in the Widowmaker armor hurling straight at him, black cape expanding to shut out the sky.

107

Taglios: Soldiers Live

I saw Mogaba behind the window. Rage devoured me. I drove straight at him, accelerating. And even as I did some tiny remnant of rationality wondered if what I had glimpsed was real, not my mind seeing what it wanted because I needed somebody else to hurt as much as I had begun to do.

If the Mogaba I saw was my own creation it vanished before I smashed into the window glazing.

The glass did not break. It did not yield at all. My post stopped dead. I did not. The post rebounded. I smacked into the glass. Then I bounced back. And fell. I had time for one very enthusiastic howl before I reached the end of my tether, then I was flailing around ten feet below my post.

The post kept driving forward, kept rebounding. I tried to climb back up but could get nowhere with only one reliable hand. The motion of the post got me swinging like the weight on a pendulum. One end of each swing brought me into intimate contact with the Palace wall.

The Voroshk cloak protected me well, but unconsciousness eventually came.

*   *   *

I was still dangling when I recovered. The ground was only a few yards below and moving slowly. I seemed to be flying along above the Rock Road, barely clearing the heads of travelers. I tried twisting so I could look up but could not manage. The tether was attached to me in the back, just above my waist. I did not have strength enough to twist around.

I did have a bit of pain when I struggled.

I lost consciousness again.

*   *   *

I was back in mankind’s natural state, on the ground, when I wakened again. A pointy hunk of chert was trying to gouge a hole through my back. Somebody said something in one of the dialects of Hsien, then repeated himself in bad Taglian. Arkana materialized overhead, face somber. “You going to live, Pop?”

“All the aches and pain I’ve got, it’s a sure thing. What happened?”

“You did something stupid.”

“What else is new?” a second voice demanded. Sleepy’s face materialized opposite Arkana. “How soon you going to get off your back, part-time? I need some help. This disaster show you guys engineered is about to put us out of business.”

“Be right with you, Boss. Soon as I get my leg bones unbraided and my feet hooked back onto my ankles.”

The effort of trying to get up, because I wanted to find my wife, pushed me over into the darkness again.

*   *   *

Rain in my face wakened me the next time. My physical pains had turned to dull aches. They had gotten something into me. Cataloging, I decided I had a lot of bruises but nothing was broken or permanently damaged.

Just when I started to make an effort to get up I floated upward. After a momentary panic I realized that I was on a litter, being moved in out of the rain. Being lifted onto the litter was what had interrupted my sleep, not those first few misty raindrops.

I got a better grip this time. I remained rational when Sleepy turned up. “How’s my wife?” I asked, with only a small squeak in my voice.

“She’s still alive. But her situation isn’t good. Though it’s better than it would’ve been if she hadn’t been wearing the Voroshk outfit. I’d guess she might recover. If we can get Tobo to stay focused long enough to help.”

I heard the unspecified offer of a job assignment in there somewhere. “What’s the kid’s problem?”

“His father got killed. Where were you?”

I grunted. “I was afraid of that.” Maybe I had tried to shut it out. It was going to hurt.

Sleepy seemed to think we did not have time for pain.

I had begun to trust her instincts.

“You had it right, Croaker. Soldiers live. Only three people got out of that scrape unhurt. Tobo, Arkana and a very lucky soldier named Tam Do Linh. Howler, the First Father, Nashun the Researcher, Murgen and all the other soldiers, didn’t. The rest of you are hurt. Tobo feels guilty. He thinks he should’ve done more. He thinks he should’ve realized it was a trap.”

“I understand. What about Shukrat?”

“Bruises and abrasions and emotional distress. The Voroshk clothing took good care of her. It knew her so well it adapted faster than Lady’s could. As I understand it.”

“Murgen could’ve worn Voroshk protection.” But he had refused. Damn him.

There had not been much fight in him since Sahra’s disappearance.

“I want you to straighten Tobo out. We need him back. We need the Unknown Shadows. If I was in Mogaba’s boots I’d have another attack force headed our way already.”

“I don’t think so.”

“The man doesn’t wait around, Croaker. His gospel is, seize the initiative.”

I could only make an ass of myself arguing with a woman who had fought the Great General more years than I had known him. Who had lived in Taglios for as many years as I had, much more recently. Evidently I was just another cranky old man raising a fuss for the attention. Except when she needed something. “Then we’d better arrange for it to get really dangerous for him personally if anything happens to any of us.”

I felt stupid before I finished saying that. For Mogaba there was little chance life would ever be more dangerous than it was already.

I had forgotten an early lesson. Try to reason like the enemy. Study him until you can think just like him. Until you can
become
him.

Sleepy told me, “You need to find yourself an apprentice, too. If you’re going to keep getting involved in lethal stuff.”
At your age
was implied—until the Captain actually said, “You’re too long in the tooth to be out there right where it’s happening. It’s time you eased up and started passing your secrets along.”

Sleepy went away, leaving me wondering. Who was I supposed to tap? I was inclined to pick her buttboy, Mihlos Sedona, except that the kid had one huge shortcoming. He was totally illiterate. And I did not have any inclination to put in all the hours needed to alter that condition.