Campfires burned
on the far slopes, opposite Outpost. Those pesky rock apes had
emigrated. The flocks of crows were expanding. Choosers of the
slain, I heard them called somewhere. The File of Nine had pulled a
half-ass army together far faster than our bemused foreign minister
had believed possible.
“At last,” I said to Murgen, as he and I shared a
newly discovered jar of skullbuster. “To One-Eye.” The
stuff just kept turning up. We were doing our best to make sure it
did not fall into the hands of the soldiers. In their hands strong
drink was likely to cause indiscipline. “Your old lady talked
like it’d be next year before they tried anything. If they
ever got anything going at all.”
The advent of unfriendly forces had been no surprise, of course.
Not with Tobo handling intelligence.
“To One-Eye. She has been known to err, Captain.” He
was starting to slur already. The boy could not hold his liquor.
“Upon rare occasions.”
“Rare occasions.”
Murgen hoisted his cup in a salute. “To One-Eye.”
Then he shook his head. “I do love that woman,
Captain.”
“Uhm.” Oh-oh. I hoped we did not get maudlin here.
But I understood his problem. She got old. We spent fifteen years
in stasis, not aging a minute. A little payoff from the gods for
doing us so dirty the rest of the time, maybe. But Sahra, who meant
more to Murgen than life itself, who was the mother of his son, had
not been one of the Captured.
Which had been lucky for us. Because she had dedicated herself
to freeing Murgen. And eventually she succeeded. And freed me and
my wife and most of the Captured as well. But Sahra had grown and
had changed and had aged more than those fifteen years. And their
son had grown up. And even now, four years after our resurrection,
Murgen still had not adjusted completely.
“You can get by,” I told him. “Bless One-Eye.
Put it all out of your mind. Exist in the now. Don’t worry
about the then. That’s what I do.” In terms of
experience my wife had been ancient centuries before I was born.
“You did get to be the ghost that rode around with her and
shared her life, even if you couldn’t touch her.” I
live with ten thousand ghosts from my wife’s past, few of
whom ever got discussed. She just did not want to talk about her
olden days.
Murgen grunted, mumbled something about One-Eye. He was having
trouble understanding me even though I was articulating with
especial precision. He asked, “You never were much of a
drinker, were you, Captain?”
“No. But I’ve always been a good soldier. I’ve
always done what’s got to be done.”
“I gotcha.”
We were outside, of course, watching shooting stars and the
constellations of fires that marked the enemy encampment. There
seemed to be an awful lot of those fires. More than the reported
numbers deserved. Some genius of a warlord was playing games.
“They’re not going to come,” Murgen said.
“They’re just going to sit there. It’s all for
the benefit of the Nine. It’s showmanship.”
I blessed One-Eye and took another drink, wondered if Murgen was
repeating his wife’s assumption or his son’s. I cocked
my head in favor of my left eye. My night vision is questionable
even when I am sober.
Murgen said, “I don’t think you can imagine the
level of fear over there right now. The boy does something to
terrorize them every night. He hasn’t hurt a louse on one of
their heads yet but they’re not stupid. They get the
message.”
You got the Black Hounds strolling through your camp, eating out
of your cookpots, or maybe pissing in them, and you have dozens of
lesser night things pulling up tent pegs and starting fires and
stealing your boots and treasures, you have troubles that will
effect morale for sure. The soldiers will not believe the stories
you tell to soothe them, however clever you think you are.
“The thing is, if the leadership decides there’ll be
war, they’ll come.” I knew. I have been with the
Company forever. I have seen men fight under incredibly bad
conditions. And, admittedly, I have seen men lose heart when
conditions seemed ideal. “To One-Eye. He was a big part of
the glue that held us together.”
“One-Eye. You know the Fourth Battalion’s going up
tonight?”
“Up?”
’To the plain. They’re probably moving out right
now.”
“Suvrin can’t possibly have the shadowgate ready to
go yet.”
Murgen shrugged. “I’m just saying what I heard.
Sahra telling Tobo. She got it from Sleepy.”
Once again the Annalist had not been included in the planning
and decision-making. The Annalist was irked. In a former life he
had gained a lot of experience planning campaigns and managing
large groups of fractious people. The Annalist can contribute
still.
In a moment of clarity I understood why I was being left out.
Because of the thing that killed One-Eye. Its punishment was
unimportant to Sleepy. She did not want to waste time and resources
on it. Particularly the time needed to argue with me and those who
felt the way I do.
I mused. “Maybe I shouldn’t try to avenge
One-Eye.”
Murgen didn’t mind an unexplained shift in topic. He was
listening more closely to his own soul, anyway. He did say,
“What’re you talking about? It’s got to be
done.”
So he agreed with me. It occurred to me that he had known
One-Eye longer than anyone else but me. I still thought of him as
the new kid sometimes because he was almost the last man to join us
while we were still in service to the Lady, in that other world so
far away and so long ago that there were moments when I almost
waxed nostalgic for those bad old days.
“Here’s one more to One-Eye. And I want to know when
we’re going to start racking up some good old
days.”
“They’re in there, Captain. Here and there. They
just don’t stick out.”
I remembered one or two. But that only got me started thinking
about what might have been. About Booboo. And when I mix strong
spirits with thoughts of my daughter the weather turns maudlin
every time. And we see more and more of that weather as I get
older.
“You got any idea what Sleepy’s strategy is?”
I asked. She would have one. Scheming and planning is supposedly
her long suit. Long enough for her to have outwitted the Radisha
and my sister-in-law.
“Not a clue. I knew more about what was going on when I
was a ghost.”
“You don’t go out of body anymore?”
“I’m cured. At least in this world.”
Not good, I feared. His loose attachment to his flesh had been
the Company’s most potent weapon for years. What would we do
if we could no longer see what was happening in places we were not
at?
You do get spoiled fast.
Something chittered in the darkness. For a moment I thought it
was mocking me. But then a huge fireball rolled up into the night
across the valley. The unseen thing’s amusement was at the
expense of the soldiers over there.
“This jar’s gone empty,” I grumbled, leaning
back and shaking a last drop into the back of my mouth.
“I’m going to go see if I can’t make another one
turn up where we found this one.”
Campfires burned
on the far slopes, opposite Outpost. Those pesky rock apes had
emigrated. The flocks of crows were expanding. Choosers of the
slain, I heard them called somewhere. The File of Nine had pulled a
half-ass army together far faster than our bemused foreign minister
had believed possible.
“At last,” I said to Murgen, as he and I shared a
newly discovered jar of skullbuster. “To One-Eye.” The
stuff just kept turning up. We were doing our best to make sure it
did not fall into the hands of the soldiers. In their hands strong
drink was likely to cause indiscipline. “Your old lady talked
like it’d be next year before they tried anything. If they
ever got anything going at all.”
The advent of unfriendly forces had been no surprise, of course.
Not with Tobo handling intelligence.
“To One-Eye. She has been known to err, Captain.” He
was starting to slur already. The boy could not hold his liquor.
“Upon rare occasions.”
“Rare occasions.”
Murgen hoisted his cup in a salute. “To One-Eye.”
Then he shook his head. “I do love that woman,
Captain.”
“Uhm.” Oh-oh. I hoped we did not get maudlin here.
But I understood his problem. She got old. We spent fifteen years
in stasis, not aging a minute. A little payoff from the gods for
doing us so dirty the rest of the time, maybe. But Sahra, who meant
more to Murgen than life itself, who was the mother of his son, had
not been one of the Captured.
Which had been lucky for us. Because she had dedicated herself
to freeing Murgen. And eventually she succeeded. And freed me and
my wife and most of the Captured as well. But Sahra had grown and
had changed and had aged more than those fifteen years. And their
son had grown up. And even now, four years after our resurrection,
Murgen still had not adjusted completely.
“You can get by,” I told him. “Bless One-Eye.
Put it all out of your mind. Exist in the now. Don’t worry
about the then. That’s what I do.” In terms of
experience my wife had been ancient centuries before I was born.
“You did get to be the ghost that rode around with her and
shared her life, even if you couldn’t touch her.” I
live with ten thousand ghosts from my wife’s past, few of
whom ever got discussed. She just did not want to talk about her
olden days.
Murgen grunted, mumbled something about One-Eye. He was having
trouble understanding me even though I was articulating with
especial precision. He asked, “You never were much of a
drinker, were you, Captain?”
“No. But I’ve always been a good soldier. I’ve
always done what’s got to be done.”
“I gotcha.”
We were outside, of course, watching shooting stars and the
constellations of fires that marked the enemy encampment. There
seemed to be an awful lot of those fires. More than the reported
numbers deserved. Some genius of a warlord was playing games.
“They’re not going to come,” Murgen said.
“They’re just going to sit there. It’s all for
the benefit of the Nine. It’s showmanship.”
I blessed One-Eye and took another drink, wondered if Murgen was
repeating his wife’s assumption or his son’s. I cocked
my head in favor of my left eye. My night vision is questionable
even when I am sober.
Murgen said, “I don’t think you can imagine the
level of fear over there right now. The boy does something to
terrorize them every night. He hasn’t hurt a louse on one of
their heads yet but they’re not stupid. They get the
message.”
You got the Black Hounds strolling through your camp, eating out
of your cookpots, or maybe pissing in them, and you have dozens of
lesser night things pulling up tent pegs and starting fires and
stealing your boots and treasures, you have troubles that will
effect morale for sure. The soldiers will not believe the stories
you tell to soothe them, however clever you think you are.
“The thing is, if the leadership decides there’ll be
war, they’ll come.” I knew. I have been with the
Company forever. I have seen men fight under incredibly bad
conditions. And, admittedly, I have seen men lose heart when
conditions seemed ideal. “To One-Eye. He was a big part of
the glue that held us together.”
“One-Eye. You know the Fourth Battalion’s going up
tonight?”
“Up?”
’To the plain. They’re probably moving out right
now.”
“Suvrin can’t possibly have the shadowgate ready to
go yet.”
Murgen shrugged. “I’m just saying what I heard.
Sahra telling Tobo. She got it from Sleepy.”
Once again the Annalist had not been included in the planning
and decision-making. The Annalist was irked. In a former life he
had gained a lot of experience planning campaigns and managing
large groups of fractious people. The Annalist can contribute
still.
In a moment of clarity I understood why I was being left out.
Because of the thing that killed One-Eye. Its punishment was
unimportant to Sleepy. She did not want to waste time and resources
on it. Particularly the time needed to argue with me and those who
felt the way I do.
I mused. “Maybe I shouldn’t try to avenge
One-Eye.”
Murgen didn’t mind an unexplained shift in topic. He was
listening more closely to his own soul, anyway. He did say,
“What’re you talking about? It’s got to be
done.”
So he agreed with me. It occurred to me that he had known
One-Eye longer than anyone else but me. I still thought of him as
the new kid sometimes because he was almost the last man to join us
while we were still in service to the Lady, in that other world so
far away and so long ago that there were moments when I almost
waxed nostalgic for those bad old days.
“Here’s one more to One-Eye. And I want to know when
we’re going to start racking up some good old
days.”
“They’re in there, Captain. Here and there. They
just don’t stick out.”
I remembered one or two. But that only got me started thinking
about what might have been. About Booboo. And when I mix strong
spirits with thoughts of my daughter the weather turns maudlin
every time. And we see more and more of that weather as I get
older.
“You got any idea what Sleepy’s strategy is?”
I asked. She would have one. Scheming and planning is supposedly
her long suit. Long enough for her to have outwitted the Radisha
and my sister-in-law.
“Not a clue. I knew more about what was going on when I
was a ghost.”
“You don’t go out of body anymore?”
“I’m cured. At least in this world.”
Not good, I feared. His loose attachment to his flesh had been
the Company’s most potent weapon for years. What would we do
if we could no longer see what was happening in places we were not
at?
You do get spoiled fast.
Something chittered in the darkness. For a moment I thought it
was mocking me. But then a huge fireball rolled up into the night
across the valley. The unseen thing’s amusement was at the
expense of the soldiers over there.
“This jar’s gone empty,” I grumbled, leaning
back and shaking a last drop into the back of my mouth.
“I’m going to go see if I can’t make another one
turn up where we found this one.”