Bleak Seasons

by Glen Cook

  Mogaba said, “Then let’s go to our posts. We don’t want to disappoint Shadowspinner.” You could see the edge on the man. He was eager. His excitement was almost unreasonable. He reviewed the tactics he wanted used to reduce friendly casualties.

  I left without a word. Without being dismissed.

  Mogaba knew I did not consider him Captain. We discuss it occasionally. I will not acknowledge him without a formal vote. He does not want an election yet, either, I suspect because he fears his popularity is not what a Captain’s should be.

  I will not force the issue. I might get elected by the Old Crew faction. And I don’t want the job. I am not qualified.

  I know my limitations. I am no leader. Hell, I don’t even handle these Annals very well. I don’t see how Croaker kept them up and did all the other stuff he had to do at the same time.

  I ran all the way to my section of wall.

  12

  Something hit me like a small, silent cyclone of darkness that dropped out of the night and nowhere. It devoured me, unseen by anyone around. It grabbed hold of my soul and yanked. I went into the darkness thinking, Boy, the Shadowmaster came back in a huge way, didn’t he?

  This was unlike anything I had encountered ever before. But why come after me? There were few players less significant than I was.

  13

  I was summoned. I could not resist. I fought, but soon I realized that a strong part of me did not want to win.

  I was confused. I had no idea what was happening. I was sleepy... Was all this just because I wasn’t getting enough sleep?

  A voice called my name. The voice seemed vaguely familiar. “Murgen! Come home, Murgen!” I felt violent motion, probably due to a blow I didn’t feel. “Come on, Murgen! You have to fight it.”

  What?

  “He’s coming. He’s coming back!”

  I groaned. A major accomplishment, apparently, because it generated more excitement.

  I groaned again. Now I knew who I was but not where I was or why, or who that voice belonged to. “I’m getting up!” I tried to say. Must be some kind of training. “I’m getting up, god-damnit!” And I tried. But my muscles would not lift me.

  They were rigid.

  Hands pulled on my arms.

  A new voice said, “Stand him up. Get him walking.”

  The original voice said, “We’ve got to find a way to head these seizures off before they happen.”

  “I’m open to suggestion.”

  “You’re the doctor.”

  “It’s not a disease, Goblin. You’re the sorcerer.”

  “It ain’t sorcery, either, Chief.”

  “Then what the hell is it?”

  “Anyway, it isn’t any sorcery like any I ever seen or heard of.”

  They had me upright now. My knees would not cooperate but these guys would not let me fall down.

  I opened an eye. I saw Goblin and the Old Man. But the Old Man was dead. I tried my tongue. “I think I’m back.” This time I had it. This time my words were slurred but understandable.

  “He is back,” Goblin said.

  “Keep him moving.”

  “He ain’t drunk, Croaker. He’s back. He’s aware. He can hang on here. You can hang on here now, can’t you, Murgen?”

  “Yeah. I’m here. I won’t drift away as long as I’m awake.” Where was here? I looked around. Oh. There. Again.

  “What happened?” the Old Man asked.

  “I got pulled into the past again.”

  “Dejagore?”

  “It’s always Dejagore. This was the day you came back. The day I met Sarie.”

  Croaker grunted.

  “It hurts less each time. This trip wasn’t bad. But you lose a lot besides the pain. I didn’t see half the horror I know was there.”

  “Maybe that’s good. Maybe if you can shed all of that you can break out of this.”

  “I’m not crazy, Croaker. I’m not doing this to myself.”

  Goblin said, “It’s getting harder to pull him back, not easier. This time he wouldn’t have made it without us.”

  My turn to grunt. I could get caught in a cycle of reliving the nadir of my life, over and over.

  Goblin had not guessed the worst. I was not back yet. They had dragged me up out of the deeps of yesterday but I was not home. This was my past, too, only this time I was aware of my dislocation. And I knew what evils lurked in my future.

  “What was it like?” Goblin stared like that every time. Like some facial tic of mine might be the one clue he needs to unravel the puzzle and rescue me. Croaker leaned against the wall, the way he does, satisfied now that I was talking.

  “Same as every other time. Just less painful. Although this time when I started out I wasn’t really me. That was different. I was just a disembodied voice, just a viewpoint giving a guide’s sort of speech to a faceless visitor.”

  “Also disembodied?” Croaker asked. This variation had him interested.

  “No. There was somebody there. A complete person but he had no face.”

  Goblin and Croaker exchanged troubled looks. At that time Otto and Hagop were still away. “What sex?” Croaker asked.

  “Wasn’t clear. It wasn’t the Faceless Man, though. I don’t think it was anybody from our past. Might just have been something out of my own head. I might have separated me into pieces so I wouldn’t have to deal with so much pain in such big blasts.”

  Goblin shook his head, not buying that. “It ain’t you, Murgen. Something is doing this. Besides who, we want to know why and why you. Did you catch any clues? How did it go? Try for specifics. It’s teeny details that will give us our handle.”

  “I was detached completely when it started. I went down into it gradually. Then I was the Murgen back then, living it all over again, trying to get it all down in the Annals, unaware of the future at all. You remember going swimming when you were a kid? When somebody would come up out of the water behind you to dunk you? He would jump in the air and put his hand on top of your head, then let his weight push you under? If you were in deep water instead of just going straight down you would sort of curve through the water and lay out flat? This whole thing went like that. Only once I was out flat I couldn’t float to the top. I forgot that I have done it all before, almost always the same way, who knows how many times? Maybe if I could remember the future back then I could change the way things went, or maybe at least I could make extra copies of my books so they don’t get...”

  “What?” Croaker was alert now. Mention the Annals and you have his undivided attention. “What was that?”

  Did he realize that I was remembering the future? In this time my volumes of the Annals are still safe.

  The fear and the pain swarmed in on me, then. The despair followed. Because despite all those plunges back there, and despite the visits here, I cannot stop anything from happening. No amount of willpower can divert the river from the horrors.

  For a moment I could not talk because I had so much to say. Then, obliquely, I managed, “You came here about the Grove of Doom. Right?” I knew this night. I have been through this country often enough to know its terrain well. Here the landscape varies slightly from visit to visit but afterward time becomes the same relentless river.

  If I squinted I could almost see the ghosts of other versions playing out alternate dialogs.

  Croaker was surprised. “The grove?”

  “You want me to take the Company out to the Grove of Doom. Right? It’s time for some Deceiver festival. You think Narayan Singh himself might show up for this one. You think there’s a good chance to catch him or to catch somebody who knows where he has your baby hidden. Worst chance, you think we’ll get the opportunity to kill lots of them and make them hurt more than they already do.”

  Croaker has been implacable in his resolve to exterminate the Deceivers. More so even than Lady has been, I think, and she was the more deeply insulted of the two. Once upon a time he wanted his legacy to be the completion of the Black Company’
s historical cycle. He wanted to be captain when the Company returned to Khatovar. He has the dream still but a nightmare shoved it aside. The nightmare demands satisfaction. Until its gossamer thread of terror, pain, cruelty and revenge has been spun, Khatovar is going to remain nothing but an excuse, not a destination.

  Croaker eyed me uncertainly. “How could you know about the grove?”

  “I came back knowing.” Which was true. But the two of us would not give the same meaning to “back.”

  “You’ll take the men out there?”

  “I can’t not.”

  Goblin eyed me weirdly, too, now.

  I would do it. And I knew how it would go but I could not tell them that. There were two minds inside my head. The one doing this thinking wasn’t the one heaving on the running lines and reefing the sails.

  “I’m all right now,” I told them. And, “I think there is a way to keep me from falling back. At least, to keep me from going so far back. But I can’t get it out.” I would have shared gladly. I did not want to keep stumbling off the edge of time to fall back into those too real dark dreams of Dejagore’s past. Not even if I tumbled into a viewpoint almost blind to the horror and cruelty everywhere then.

  Croaker started to say something.

  I interrupted. “I’ll be down for the staff meeting in ten minutes.”

  I could not tell them anything directly but maybe I could get something out sideways.

  But I knew nothing would change. The worst of all horrors was waiting up ahead and I was powerless to avert it.

  I’d still do my best in the grove. Just in case this time that would come out differently. If I could remember the future well enough to make the right moves.

  You. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. You keep dragging me to the wellsprings of pain. Why do you do that? What do you want? Who are you? What are you?

  As always, you give me no answers.

  14

  The goddamned wind had teeth. We huddled in our blankets, shivering, as unmotivated as guys get without hanging it up. Weren’t many of us wanted to be in that haunted grove in the first place.

  Yet something I could not quite catch, some elusive emotion deep inside me, told me this was critical, that this had to be done just right. That more than I could imagine hinged upon that.

  Unseen trees creaked and cracked. The wind groaned and whined. It was easy to let your imagination get away and brood on the fact that thousands had been tortured and murdered there. You might hear their moans inside the wind, their pleas for mercy ignored even now. You might expect to see broken corpses rising up to demand vengeance on the living.

  I faked being a hero. I could not stop shaking, though. I pulled my blanket tighter. That did not help, either.

  “Candyass!” One-Eye sneered. Like the little shit wasn’t about to have a seizure himself. “That bonehead Goblin don’t quit farting around and get his dead ass back here I’m gonna go strip him barebutt and nail him to a chunk of ice.”

  “That’s creative.”

  “Don’t be no wiseass, Kid. I’ll...”

  An especially exuberant gust took off with what he would.

  It wasn’t just the cold making us shake, though nobody would admit that. It was the place and the mission and the fact that heavy cloud cover robbed us of even the meager comradeship of starlight.

  It was goddamned dark. And these Stranglers might now be friends with the man who ran shadows. A little bird said. Actually, a big black bird said.

  “We spend too much time in town,” I grumbled. One-Eye didn’t respond. Thai Dei did, though, with a grunt. But that was a speech for this particular Nyueng Bao.

  The wind brought the creak of a stealthy footfall. One-Eye barked, “Goddamnit, Goblin! Quit stomping around. You want the whole damned world to know we’re here?” Never mind that Goblin could not be heard five feet away, dancing. One-Eye refuses to be constrained by mundane reason or consistency.

  Goblin drifted into place in front of me, squatted. His little yellow teeth chattered. “All set,” he murmured. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  “We’d better do it, then. Before I break out in a case of common sense.” I grunted as I rose. My knees crackled. My muscles did not want to stretch any more. I swore. I was getting too damned old for this shit, though at thirty-four I was the baby of the bunch. “Move out,” I said, loudly enough to be heard by most everyone. You couldn’t use hand signals in that darkness.

  We were downwind and Goblin had done his stuff. Noise was not a worry.

  The men drifted away, mostly so quietly that I had trouble believing I was alone suddenly except for my bodyguard. We moved, too. Thai Dei covered my back. The night didn’t bother him. Maybe he has eyes like a cat.

  I had plenty of mixed feelings. This was the first time I had run a raid. I was not sure I was over Dejagore enough to handle it. I shied at shadows and remained crazy suspicious of everybody outside the Company, for no reason I could understand. But Croaker insisted, so here I was sneaking around in a dark and evil forest with icicles hanging off my butt, directing the first purely Company op in years. Only it wasn’t so purely Company when you considered the fact that all my guys had bodyguards with them.

  I got over the self-confidence hurdle just by getting myself moving. Hell, it was too late to stop anything.

  I stopped worrying about me and went to work worrying about how we would look after the raid was over. If we blew it we could not blame that on Taglian treachery or factionalism or incompetence, the usual sand in the machine.

  I reached the crest of a low ridge. My hands were frozen but my body was wet inside my clothing. Light wavered ahead. The Deceivers, those lucky bastards, had a bonfire to keep them warm. I paused to listen. I heard nothing.

  How did the Old Man know the leaders of the Strangler bands would gather for this particular festival? It was downright spooky the way he knew stuff sometimes. Maybe Lady was rubbing off. Maybe he had some magical talent he never mentioned.

  I observed, “We’re about to find out if Goblin still has that talent.”

  Thai Dei did not spend a precious grunt. Silence was comment enough.

  There were supposed to be thirty to forty top Deceivers over there. We hunt them relentlessly and have done so since Narayan snatched Lady and Croaker’s baby. The Old Man has eliminated mercy from the Company vocabulary. And that fits Deceiver philosophy perfectly, though I would bet those guys up ahead would not think that way in a minute.

  Goblin still had the knack. The sentries were napping. Still, inevitably, all did not go as planned.

  I was fifty feet from the bonfire, sneaking along beside this especially big, ugly shelter when somebody went heeling and toeing out its end like all the devils in Hell were after him. He bent under the weight of a big bundle. That bundle wriggled and whimpered.

  “Narayan Singh!” I knew him instantly. “Stop!”

  Right, Murgen. Freeze him with your voice.

  The rest of the guys recognized him too. A yell went up. We could not believe our luck, though I had been warned that the big prize might be there to grab. Singh was the number one Deceiver, the villain Lady and the Captain want to spend long years killing, an inch at a time.

  The bundle had to be their daughter.

  I yelled orders. Instead of responding the men did whatever they thought of. Mostly they went after Singh. The racket wakened the rest of the Deceivers. The quickest tried to run.

  Luckily, some of the guys stayed on the job.

  “You warm now?” Goblin asked. I puffed heartily as I watched Thai Dei shove a skinny blade into the eye of a sleep befuddled Strangler. Thai Dei doesn’t cut throats. He doesn’t like the mess.

  It was over. “How many did we get? How many got away?” I stared the direction Singh had fled. The silence there was not promising. The guys would have raised a real hoorah had they caught him.

  Damn! I was excited for a while there. If only I could have dragged him back to Taglios. If wishes were fi
shes. “Keep some alive. We’ll want somebody to tell us bedtime stories. One-Eye. How the hell did Singh all of a sudden know we were here?”

  The runt shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe his goddess goosed him and told him to haul ass.”

  “Give me a break. Kina didn’t have anything to do with it.” But I wasn’t that sure. Sometimes it is hard to disbelieve.

  Thai Dei gestured.

  “Right,” I said. “Just what I was thinking myself.”

  One-Eye looked puzzled. Goblin grumbled, “What?” My wizards. Right on top of everything.

  “Sometimes I wonder if you guys could find your dicks without a map. The shelter, old-timers. The shelter. Don’t it seem like that’s an awful lot of shack for one runt killer and a kid barely tall enough to bite you on the kneecap? A bit big even for a living saint and the daughter of a goddess?”

  One-Eye developed a nasty grin. “Nobody else came out, did they? Yeah. You want I should start a fire?”

  Before I could answer him Goblin squealed. I whirled. A shapeless darkness, visible only because of the bonfire, reared out of the shelter entrance then I slammed into the ground, felled by Thai Dei. Fire blasted over my head. Lights crackled. Balls of flame darted in from all around.

  The killing darkness took on a moth-eaten look. Then it came apart.

  That darkness was why so many of us had been shivering before the attack. But we won this round.

  I sat up, crooked a finger. “Let’s see what we’ve caught. It ought to be interesting.” My guys knocked the shelter apart. Sure enough, they turned up a half dozen wrinkled little old men, brown as chestnuts. “Shadowweavers. Running with the Stranglers. Now isn’t that interesting?”

  The geezers gobbled their willingness to surrender.

  We had run into their kind before. They never were big on personal heroics.

  A soldier called Wishbone said, “These Shadowlanders are getting good at this ‘I surrender’ stuff.” He sneered. “Everybody down there must be practicing their handy Taglian phrases.”