Tobo was
distraught. Murgen was distracted. He walked around bumping into
things, trapped inside his own interior world. I had not seen him
so lost since his Annalist days.
No trace of Sahra had surfaced, even with the Unknown Shadows
hunting. So far Tobo had determined only that she had not fallen
into enemy hands. The Taglians were not looking. They were unaware,
even, that they ought to bear the woman a grudge.
Sahra always had had a knack for going unnoticed.
“She’s dead,” Lady told me. “She was
hurt, she crawled in somewhere to hide, and she died there.”
Which was plausible enough. Several bodies had been discovered in
circumstances that fit the scenario. And Sahra was not alone in
being missing. Every company in the force was unable to account for
someone. Most, probably, had run away or were prisoners of war. But
the hidden folk kept finding others dead in places where no one had
yet thought to look.
I hoped Lady’s simple explanation was the correct one. I
dreaded the chance that Sahra had been captured by somebody who
would use her to manipulate Tobo.
The up side was that there was a paucity of villains who might
be interested. Mogaba was exonerated. Soulcatcher was buried.
Booboo and the Khadidas were entombed in the big fortress guarding
the southern approaches to Taglios, behind a door that could not be
opened by any key still within the stronghold. Others who might
have tried something sly—say the Howler or the Voroshk—had perfect
alibis.
So it came down to Sahra being dead and lost or lost and
wandering around in a shock so profound that she
could not recall who she was or where she belonged.
Sleepy posted a huge reward for “the capture of an older
Nyueng Bao woman wanted for questioning in regard to espionage
against agents of the Prahbrindrah Drah.” Murgen provided a
description that included the shapes and locations of moles and a
birthmark unfamiliar to anyone else.
“It doesn’t make much sense, does it?” my
darling whispered to me. “People go at the oddest times and
from the oddest causes.”
“Soldiers live,” I murmured.
“You’re turning that into a mantra.”
“You feel guilty. You wonder why him and not me, then
you’re glad it was him and not you, then you feel guilty.
Soldiers live. And wonder why.”
“One soldier lives because the gods know that I still
haven’t gotten my fair share of loving. Put that pen away and
come on over here.”
“You’ve sure turned into a pushy broad in your old
age.”
“Yeah? You should’ve seen me four hundred years
ago.”
Tobo announced, “Mogaba’s had the Khadidas and the
Daughter of Night moved to the palace. In a remarkable coincidence
the Protector was seen publicly for the first time in months only a
few hours later. She was extremely angry with the Taglians and
brought one of her punishments down on their heads.” He
grinned. “Most likely that had something to do with all the
graffiti that’s begun appearing. All the good old stuff.
‘Water sleeps.’ ‘My brother unforgiven.’
And even some that aren’t my doing. ‘You shall lie in
the ashes ten thousand years, eating only wind.’ I love that
one.”
That one caught my attention. I had heard it before, somewhere.
But I had heard them all before.
“Rajadharma is everywhere. Anyone who can write seems to
put that one up. Then there’s ‘Madhuprlya’ which means
‘A Friend of the Wine’ and is a popular nickname for
Ghopal
Singh. Seems the lord of the Greys has a taste for the grape.
The one I don’t get, and which seems to trouble the Greys
more than ‘Madhupriya,’ is, ‘Thi Kim is
coming.’ It doesn’t make sense. Everybody assumes
Nyueng Bao are involved because Thi Kim is translatable only from
Nyueng Bao. As ‘death walk.’ Except that here
it’s written as a proper name.”
I said, “If it’s used as a name or title it would
more properly come through as ‘Deathwalker’ or
‘Death Walking.’ Not so? In olden times a Deathwalker
was a suspected plague carrier.”
“Goblin,” Lady said. “It’s Deceivers
announcing the coming of the Khadidas. A dead man still walking
around. By the grace or curse of Kina. And a plague carrier, too,
if you count the religious side.”
“Maybe.” Tobo did not seem convinced. I did not
blame him. I had a feeling it was something more sinister myself.
Based on nothing whatsoever, because Lady’s suggestion ought
to be true.
I nodded in the general direction of where Sleepy should be.
“She said anything about what she’s
planning?”
“Not unless you count her complaining about the
headbutting she’s been doing with our friends from the Land
of Unknown Shadows. Every brigade commander is whining about
needing replacements. But none of them want local recruits—because
of the language problem more than because of their lack of
equipment and training—but none of them wants to see their own
brigade disbanded so its soldiers can fill open slots
elsewhere.”
But there was no choice and everyone recognized that fact. The
best answer was simple enough. And Sleepy found it without
consulting me.
Instead of disbanding the hardest hit units she took the one
least distressed and distributed its people amongst the others,
keeping whole groups together. Being with people you know and trust
is critical to a soldier. She made sure the officers got better
jobs whenever possible. The displaced brigade commander became her
chief of staff, with the assurance that he would be given command
of all the native troops we raised, however numerous they might
become.
Maximum result with least distress to oversized egos. Only a few
men ended up completely disappointed.
Life has turned into a preoccupation with administrative
detail.
Is that what happens when you get old? You worry more about
people and their interaction than you do about drama and the
violence and the wicked deeds those people do?
That is us. The Black Company. Wicked deeds done dirt cheap. But
by damn! You had better pony up when payment is due. Otherwise, if
we must, we will come back from the grave itself to make sure our
accounts are properly balanced.
I said some of that aloud one afternoon. Tobo told me,
“You’re mad, old man.”
“As a hatter.” A reflection. “Speaking of
which. You know whatever happened to One-Eye’s old
hat?” I was going to need that disgusting flea farm one day
soon. Desperately. One-Eye had told me I would but I had not
listened closely enough. I had listened and understood that
One-Eye’s wondrous spear would have to be employed in ways
that the little wizard had defined well back into his healthier
days. But that hat had been such a commonplace, and so foul, that
it had not clung to its place in my mind.
“It may be in my junk wagon,” Tobo told me.
“If it’s not there it’ll be with mom’s
stuff.” He winced. Sahra remained missing. “We took
everything of his and Nana Gota’s when we left
Hsien.”
“I need to find it. Fairly soon.”
Tobo wondered why but did not ask. What a good boy. He did say,
“If I was you I’d think about getting my stuff
together, ready to move.” For this Annalist all the junk and
paper and pens and ink and notes and whatnot can build into piles
that threaten to swamp. “Sleepy would rather stay here and
spend some treasure refitting and recruiting and training and
getting stronger but I convinced her that won’t work. Things
aren’t going to slow down anywhere else. Right now we have
more sorcery available than ever before in the Company’s
history.”
“I’ve said so myself.” More than once, in
jeremiads about counting too much on powers and skills not part of
the traditional Company arsenal.
“Yes, you did. But you didn’t say anything about it
fading away.”
“Sure I did.”
“You want it to go away. And it will. Because these
aren’t the kind of people who’re likely to be content
to do what we’ve got them doing. So we ought to use them up
while we can.”
“Meaning?”
“We need to go after Taglios while we have the power to
hit it hard.”
Was he starting to sound just the slightest bit bigheaded? Like
he might know better than the Captain what we ought to do? Was it
going to be squabble on with Sleepy now that his mother was no
longer around?
Might better keep an eye on our baby boy. He was overdue to
outgrow all that.
I said, “You could be right.”
Tobo was
distraught. Murgen was distracted. He walked around bumping into
things, trapped inside his own interior world. I had not seen him
so lost since his Annalist days.
No trace of Sahra had surfaced, even with the Unknown Shadows
hunting. So far Tobo had determined only that she had not fallen
into enemy hands. The Taglians were not looking. They were unaware,
even, that they ought to bear the woman a grudge.
Sahra always had had a knack for going unnoticed.
“She’s dead,” Lady told me. “She was
hurt, she crawled in somewhere to hide, and she died there.”
Which was plausible enough. Several bodies had been discovered in
circumstances that fit the scenario. And Sahra was not alone in
being missing. Every company in the force was unable to account for
someone. Most, probably, had run away or were prisoners of war. But
the hidden folk kept finding others dead in places where no one had
yet thought to look.
I hoped Lady’s simple explanation was the correct one. I
dreaded the chance that Sahra had been captured by somebody who
would use her to manipulate Tobo.
The up side was that there was a paucity of villains who might
be interested. Mogaba was exonerated. Soulcatcher was buried.
Booboo and the Khadidas were entombed in the big fortress guarding
the southern approaches to Taglios, behind a door that could not be
opened by any key still within the stronghold. Others who might
have tried something sly—say the Howler or the Voroshk—had perfect
alibis.
So it came down to Sahra being dead and lost or lost and
wandering around in a shock so profound that she
could not recall who she was or where she belonged.
Sleepy posted a huge reward for “the capture of an older
Nyueng Bao woman wanted for questioning in regard to espionage
against agents of the Prahbrindrah Drah.” Murgen provided a
description that included the shapes and locations of moles and a
birthmark unfamiliar to anyone else.
“It doesn’t make much sense, does it?” my
darling whispered to me. “People go at the oddest times and
from the oddest causes.”
“Soldiers live,” I murmured.
“You’re turning that into a mantra.”
“You feel guilty. You wonder why him and not me, then
you’re glad it was him and not you, then you feel guilty.
Soldiers live. And wonder why.”
“One soldier lives because the gods know that I still
haven’t gotten my fair share of loving. Put that pen away and
come on over here.”
“You’ve sure turned into a pushy broad in your old
age.”
“Yeah? You should’ve seen me four hundred years
ago.”
Tobo announced, “Mogaba’s had the Khadidas and the
Daughter of Night moved to the palace. In a remarkable coincidence
the Protector was seen publicly for the first time in months only a
few hours later. She was extremely angry with the Taglians and
brought one of her punishments down on their heads.” He
grinned. “Most likely that had something to do with all the
graffiti that’s begun appearing. All the good old stuff.
‘Water sleeps.’ ‘My brother unforgiven.’
And even some that aren’t my doing. ‘You shall lie in
the ashes ten thousand years, eating only wind.’ I love that
one.”
That one caught my attention. I had heard it before, somewhere.
But I had heard them all before.
“Rajadharma is everywhere. Anyone who can write seems to
put that one up. Then there’s ‘Madhuprlya’ which means
‘A Friend of the Wine’ and is a popular nickname for
Ghopal
Singh. Seems the lord of the Greys has a taste for the grape.
The one I don’t get, and which seems to trouble the Greys
more than ‘Madhupriya,’ is, ‘Thi Kim is
coming.’ It doesn’t make sense. Everybody assumes
Nyueng Bao are involved because Thi Kim is translatable only from
Nyueng Bao. As ‘death walk.’ Except that here
it’s written as a proper name.”
I said, “If it’s used as a name or title it would
more properly come through as ‘Deathwalker’ or
‘Death Walking.’ Not so? In olden times a Deathwalker
was a suspected plague carrier.”
“Goblin,” Lady said. “It’s Deceivers
announcing the coming of the Khadidas. A dead man still walking
around. By the grace or curse of Kina. And a plague carrier, too,
if you count the religious side.”
“Maybe.” Tobo did not seem convinced. I did not
blame him. I had a feeling it was something more sinister myself.
Based on nothing whatsoever, because Lady’s suggestion ought
to be true.
I nodded in the general direction of where Sleepy should be.
“She said anything about what she’s
planning?”
“Not unless you count her complaining about the
headbutting she’s been doing with our friends from the Land
of Unknown Shadows. Every brigade commander is whining about
needing replacements. But none of them want local recruits—because
of the language problem more than because of their lack of
equipment and training—but none of them wants to see their own
brigade disbanded so its soldiers can fill open slots
elsewhere.”
But there was no choice and everyone recognized that fact. The
best answer was simple enough. And Sleepy found it without
consulting me.
Instead of disbanding the hardest hit units she took the one
least distressed and distributed its people amongst the others,
keeping whole groups together. Being with people you know and trust
is critical to a soldier. She made sure the officers got better
jobs whenever possible. The displaced brigade commander became her
chief of staff, with the assurance that he would be given command
of all the native troops we raised, however numerous they might
become.
Maximum result with least distress to oversized egos. Only a few
men ended up completely disappointed.
Life has turned into a preoccupation with administrative
detail.
Is that what happens when you get old? You worry more about
people and their interaction than you do about drama and the
violence and the wicked deeds those people do?
That is us. The Black Company. Wicked deeds done dirt cheap. But
by damn! You had better pony up when payment is due. Otherwise, if
we must, we will come back from the grave itself to make sure our
accounts are properly balanced.
I said some of that aloud one afternoon. Tobo told me,
“You’re mad, old man.”
“As a hatter.” A reflection. “Speaking of
which. You know whatever happened to One-Eye’s old
hat?” I was going to need that disgusting flea farm one day
soon. Desperately. One-Eye had told me I would but I had not
listened closely enough. I had listened and understood that
One-Eye’s wondrous spear would have to be employed in ways
that the little wizard had defined well back into his healthier
days. But that hat had been such a commonplace, and so foul, that
it had not clung to its place in my mind.
“It may be in my junk wagon,” Tobo told me.
“If it’s not there it’ll be with mom’s
stuff.” He winced. Sahra remained missing. “We took
everything of his and Nana Gota’s when we left
Hsien.”
“I need to find it. Fairly soon.”
Tobo wondered why but did not ask. What a good boy. He did say,
“If I was you I’d think about getting my stuff
together, ready to move.” For this Annalist all the junk and
paper and pens and ink and notes and whatnot can build into piles
that threaten to swamp. “Sleepy would rather stay here and
spend some treasure refitting and recruiting and training and
getting stronger but I convinced her that won’t work. Things
aren’t going to slow down anywhere else. Right now we have
more sorcery available than ever before in the Company’s
history.”
“I’ve said so myself.” More than once, in
jeremiads about counting too much on powers and skills not part of
the traditional Company arsenal.
“Yes, you did. But you didn’t say anything about it
fading away.”
“Sure I did.”
“You want it to go away. And it will. Because these
aren’t the kind of people who’re likely to be content
to do what we’ve got them doing. So we ought to use them up
while we can.”
“Meaning?”
“We need to go after Taglios while we have the power to
hit it hard.”
Was he starting to sound just the slightest bit bigheaded? Like
he might know better than the Captain what we ought to do? Was it
going to be squabble on with Sleepy now that his mother was no
longer around?
Might better keep an eye on our baby boy. He was overdue to
outgrow all that.
I said, “You could be right.”