by Glen Cook
I swung down. “Frogface. Can you talk? Or are you as crazy as your boss?”
“He’s crazy, Cap, not me. But I got an indenture. I got to do what he says.”
“Yeah? Tell me this. What’s that thing growing out of Goblin’s pouch?”
“A kind of imp. In another form. Where’d he come up with it, Cap?”
“I wonder myself. Murgen, check these other guys out. See if we’ve got any real casualties. Mogaba, drag that little shit over here. I’m going to knock some heads together.”
We plunked them down side by side with Lady and Mogaba holding them sitting from behind. They began to come around. Murgen came to tell me none of the unconscious men were injured.
That was something.
One-Eye and Goblin looked up at me. I paced back and forth, smacking the baton into my hand. My dictator’s stalk. I whirled on them. “Next time this happens I’m going to tie you two into a sack, face-to-face, and drop you in the river. I don’t have the patience for it. Tomorrow, while your hangovers are still killing you, you’re going to get up and come down here and make good the damage. The expense will come out of your pockets. Do you understand?”
Goblin looked a little sheepish. He managed a feeble nod. One-Eye did not respond.
“One-Eye? You want another whack upside the head?”
He nodded. Sullenly.
“Good. Now. Goblin. That thing you brought back from the country. Chances are it belongs to the Shadowmasters. A plant. Before you go to bed I want it stuffed in a bottle or something and buried. Deep.”
His eyes bugged. “Croaker…”
“You heard me.”
An angry, almost roaring hiss filled the street. The snake thing came up off the paving and struck at me.
Frogface flung in from the side, deflecting it.
In a sudden, drunken, bug-eyed panic Goblin and One-Eye both tried to get it under control. I backed off. It was a wild three minutes before Goblin got it squished into his pouch. He stumbled into Swan’s place. A minute later he came out carrying a closed wine jar. He looked at me funny. “I’ll bury it, Croaker.” He sounded embarrassed.
One-Eye was getting himself together, too. He took a deep breath. “I’ll give him a hand.”
“Right. Try not to talk too much. Don’t get started again.”
He had the grace to look embarrassed, too. He gave Frogface a thoughtful look. I noted that he did not take the imp along to do the heavy work.
“What now?” Mogaba asked.
“Pains me all to hell, but now we count on their consciences to keep them in line. For a while. If I didn’t need them so much I’d make it a night they’d remember the rest of their lives. I don’t need this shit. What’re you grinning about?”
Lady did not stop. “It’s smaller scale, but this is what it was like trying to keep a rein on the Ten Who Were Taken.”
“Yeah? Maybe so. Murgen, you were out here boozing anyway, you finish picking up the pieces. I’m going to get some sleep.”
34
To Ghoja
It was worse than I thought it would be. The mud seemed bottomless. The first day out of Taglios, after a cheering parade, we made twelve miles. I did not feel desperate. But the road was better nearer the city. After that it got worse. Eleven miles the next day, nine each of the three days following. We made that good a time only because we had the elephants along.
The day I wanted to reach the Ghoja ford I was still thirty miles away.
Then Shifter came, wearing his wolf shape, prancing in out of the wilds.
The rains had ended but the sky remained overcast, so the ground did not dry. The sun was no ally.
Shifter came with a smaller companion. It looked as though his understudy had caught on to shifting.
He spent an hour with Lady before we moved out. Then he galloped away again.
Lady did not look cheerful.
“Bad news?”
“The worst. They’ve put one over on us, maybe.”
I did not betray the sudden tightness in my innards. “What?”
“Recall the map of the Main. Between Numa and Ghoja there’s that low area that floods.”
I pictured it. For twelve miles the river ran through an area flanked by plains that flooded whenever the river rose more than a few feet. At its highest stage it could be fourteen miles wide there, with most of the flooding on the southern side. That plain became a huge reservoir, and was the reason the Numa ford became crossable before the Ghoja. But the last I’d heard it was mostly drained.
“I know it. What about it?”
“Ever since they took the south bank the Shadowmasters have been building a levee, from the downriver end, right along the normal bank. It’s something that’s been talked about for ages. The Prahbrindrah wanted to do it, to claim the plain for farming. But he couldn’t afford the labor. The Shadowmasters don’t have that problem. They have fifty thousand prisoners on it, Taglians who didn’t get across the river last year and enemies from their old territories. No one’s paid any attention because the project is one of those things that anyone who could would do.”
“But?”
“But. They’ve gotten the levee run out eight miles to the east. That’s not as huge a deal as it sounds because it only needs to be about ten feet tall. Every half mile they put in a larger filled area, maybe a hundred fifty yards to a side, like towers along a wall. They keep the prisoners camped there and use the platforms for materials dumps.”
“I don’t see where you’re going.”
“Shifter noticed that they’d stopped extending the levee but they were still stockpiling materials. Then he figured it out. They’re going to dam the river, partially. Just enough to divert water into the flood plain so they can drop the level at the Ghoja ford sooner than we expect.”
I thought about it. It was a cunning bit of business, and entirely practical. The Company had done a trick or two with rivers in its time. All it had to do was give them a day. If they got across unchallenged we were sunk. “The sneaky bastards. Can we get there in time?”
“Maybe. Even probably, considering you didn’t wait to leave Taglios. But at the rate we’re going it’ll be just barely in time and we’ll be worn out from fighting the mud.”
“Have they started damming yet?”
“They start that this morning, Shifter says. It should take them two days to get the fill in and one more to divert enough water.”
“Will it affect Numa?”
“Not for a week. The water will keep dropping there for now. Shifter’s guess is they’ll cross at Numa the day before they do at Ghoja.”
We looked at each other. She saw what I saw. The Shadowmasters had robbed us of what we had in mind for the night before Ghoja. “Damn them!”
“I know. This mud being what it is, I’ll have to leave today to get there in time. I probably won’t get back to Ghoja. Use Sindawe in our place. That town is a waste, anyway.”
“I’ll have to move faster, somehow.”
“Abandon the wagons.”
“But…”
“Leave the engineers and quartermasters behind. Let them make the best time they can. I’ll leave them the elephants. They’re no good to me anyway. Have each man carry a little extra. Whatever is most practical. Even the wagons might get there in time if they skip stopping at Vejagehdya.”
“You’re right. Let’s get at it.” I gathered my people and explained what we were going to do. An hour later I watched Lady and the cavalry file away to the southeast. Mogaba’s grumbling infantrymen, each carrying an extra fifteen pounds, started slogging toward Ghoja.
Even the old warlord carried a load.
I was glad I had had the luck or foresight to send out the bulk of the stuff several days early.
I walked with the rest of them. My horse was carrying two hundred pounds of junk and looking humiliated by the experience. One-Eye grumbled along beside me. He had Frogface out scouting for lines of advance where the earth would leas
t resist our passage.
I kept one eye on Lady. I felt hollow, empty. We’d both come to think of the night before the Ghoja battle as the night. And now that would not be.
I suspected it would never be. There would always be something to stand in the way. Maybe there were gods who frowned on our admitting and consummating what we felt inside.
A pox on them and all their illegitimate children.
Someday, damnit. Someday.
But what then? Then we would have to give up a lot of pretense. Then we’d have to face some things, decide some things, examine the possibilities and implications of some commitments.
I did not spend a lot of time thinking about saving Taglios that day.
35
Before Ghoja
Take some ground and sog it real good, all the way down to the earth’s core. Bake it under a warm sun a few days. What do you get?
Bugs.
They rose in clouds as I slithered to the crest overlooking the Ghoja ford. The mosquitoes wanted to feed. The smaller guys just wanted to pitch camp in my nose.
The grass had grown since last time. It was two feet tall now. I slid my sword forward and parted it. Mogaba, Sindawe, Ochiba, Goblin, and One-Eye did the same. “Big mob over there,” One-Eye said.
We had known that beforehand. We could smell their campfires. My own troops were eating cold. If those guys over there didn’t know we were here yet, I wasn’t going to yell and let them in on it.
Mob was an operative word. That bunch was undisciplined and disorderly, camped in a sprawl that began at the fortress gate and stretched back south along the road.
“What you think, Mogaba?”
“Unless that’s show to fool us we have a chance. If we keep them that side of the crest.” He inched forward, looked at the ground. “You’re sure you want me on the left?”
“I’m assuming your legion is more ready. Put Ochiba’s on the right up the steeper ground. The natural tendency of an attack would be to push the direction that looks easiest.”
Mogaba grunted.
“If they push either one of you much without pushing the other, they open themselves up to heavier enfilading and quartering fire. If the artillery gets here, I’m going to plant some here and the rest down on that little hump there. Have them going both ways. Long as the hinge holds.” The join between legions would be at the road that split the field. “Should be good hunting for archers and javelins, too.”
Mogaba grumbled, “Plans are mayflies when the steel begins to sing.”
I rolled onto my side, looked at him directly. “Will the Nar stand fast?”
His cheek twitched. He knew what I meant.
Except for the thing on the river, which was a whole different show, Mogaba’s men had seen no real combat. I hadn’t found out till recently. Their ancestors had gotten Gea-Xle and its neighbors so tamed they just had to make noises to keep things in line. These Nar still believed they were the best that ever was, but that had not been proven on a field of blood.
“They will stand,” Mogaba said. “Can they do anything else? If terror turns their spines to water? They have made their brags.”
“Right.” Men will do damnfool things just because they said they would.
What about the rest of my mob? Most were veterans though few had been into this kind of thing. They had handled themselves on the river. But you can’t be sure what a man will do till he does it. I was not sure of myself. I have been in and out of battles all my life, but I have seen old veterans crack.
And I’d never been a general. Never had to make decisions sure to cost lives. Did I have the inner toughness it takes to send men to sure death to achieve greater goals?
I was as new to my role as the greenest Taglian soldier.
Ochiba grunted. I parted the grass.
A dozen men approached the ford on the south side. Well-dressed men. The enemy captains? “One-Eye. Time for Frogface to do a little eavesdropping.”
“Check.” He slithered away.
Goblin gave me a bland look that concealed intense irritation. One-Eye got to keep his toy and he didn’t. I was playing favorites. Children. What difference that that snake had damned near killed me?
Frogface came back.
They were coming in the morning. Early. They expected no resistance. They were gloating about what they were going to do to Taglios.
I had the word spread.
Wasn’t nobody going to get much sleep tonight.
Was my little army overprepared? I saw plenty of the anxiety that comes before the hour of blood, but also an eagerness unusual in virgins. Those Taglians knew the odds were long. So how come they were confident in the face of probable disaster?
I realized I did not understand their culture well enough.
Dip into the old trick bag, Croaker. Play the captain game. I went walking through the camp, attended by crows as always, speaking to a man here, a man there, listening to an anecdote about a favorite wife or toddler. It was the first time many had seen me up close.
I tried not to think about Lady. So naturally she would not get out of my mind.
They were coming tomorrow at Ghoja. That meant they had crossed at Numa today. She might be fighting right now. Or it might be over. She might be dead. Three thousand enemy soldiers might be racing to get behind me.
Late that afternoon the wagons began arriving. Sindawe came in from Vejagedhya. My spirits rose. I would get to try my little trick after all.
Stragglers kept coming in all night.
If we lost the fight the train was gone. There would be no getting it out in all that mud.
One-Eye kept Frogface flitting across the river. To little purpose. The enemy strategy was: cross that river. Nothing beyond it. Don’t worry about the mules, just load that wagon.
After nightfall I went up and sat in the damp grass and watched the fires burn on the other side. Maybe I dozed some, off and on. Whenever I glanced up I noticed that the stars had wheeled along.…
I wakened to a presence. A coldness. A dread. I heard nothing, saw nothing, smelled nothing. But I knew it was there. I whispered, “Shifter?”
A great bulk settled beside me. I amazed myself. I was not afraid. This was one of the two greatest surviving sorcerers in the world, one of the Ten Who Were Taken who had made the Lady’s empire all but invincible, a monster terrible and mad. But I was not afraid.
I even noticed that he did not smell as bad as he used to. Must be in love.
He said, “They come with the light.”
“I know.”
“They have no sorcery at all. Only the strength of arms. You might conquer.”
“I was sort of hoping I would. You going to chip in?”
Silence for some time. Then, “I will contribute only in small ways. I do not wish to be noticed by the Shadowmasters. Yet.”
I thought about what little things he could do that might mean a lot.
We had started to get some traffic nearby, Taglians lugging fifty-pound sacks of charcoal to the foreslope.
Of course. “How are you with fog? Can you conjure me up a little?”
“Weather is not my strength. Maybe a small patch if there’s reason. Explain.”
“Be real handy to have a chunk that would lie along the river and reach maybe two hundred feet up this slope. Bottled this side of the creek over there. Just so those guys would have to come through it.” I told him about my trick.
He liked it. He chuckled, a small sound that wanted to roar like a volcano. “Man, you were always sneaky, cold-blooded, cruel bastards, smarter than you looked. I like it. I’ll try. It should draw no attention and the results may be amusing.”
“Thank you.”
I was speaking to the air. Or maybe a nearby crow. Shifter had gone without a sound.
I sat there and tormented myself, trying to think of something more I might have done, trying not to think of Lady, trying to excuse myself the dying. The soldiers crossing the ridge made very little noise.
Later, I became aware of a few tendrils of mist forming. Good.
There was a bit of rose in the east. Stars were dying. Behind me, Mogaba and the Nar were wakening the men. Across the river, enemy sergeants did the same. A little more light and I could see the artillery batteries ready to be wheeled into position. They had arrived, but so far only one wagon loaded with missiles.
Shifter had managed a mist, though not all I wanted. Fifteen feet deep at the ford, two hundred fifty yards toward me, not quite reaching the band of charcoal, ten feet wide, that the men had laid out in the night, on an arc from the riverbank in the east around to the bank of the creek.
Time to go give the final pep talk. I slithered off the crest, turned.… And there was Lady.
She looked like hell but she was grinning.
“You made it.”
“Just got here.” She grabbed my hand in hers.
“You won.”
“Barely.” She sat down and told me. “The Shadar did good. Pushed them back across twice. But not the third try. It broke up into a brawl and chase before we could get into it. When we did, the Shadowmasters’ men formed up and held out almost all day.”
“Any survivors?”
“A few. But they didn’t get back across. I put some men over right away, caught them off guard, and took their fortress. Afterward I sent Jah on across.” She smiled. “I gave him a hundred men to scout and told him your orders were to circle around behind them here. He could be in position this afternoon if he pushes.”
“He take heavy losses?”
“Eight hundred to a thousand.”
“He’s dead if we blow it here.”
She smiled. “That would be terrible, wouldn’t it? Politically speaking.”
I lifted an eyebrow. I still had trouble thinking that way.
She said, “I sent a messenger to Theri telling the Gunni to seize the crossing. Another is headed for Vehdna-Bota.”
“You have the mercy of a spider.”
“Yes. It’s almost time. You’d better get dressed.”
“Dressed?”
“Showmanship. Remember?”