Bleak Seasons

by Glen Cook

  “Except Longshadow,” I reminded. I told Thai Dei, “Thanks.”

  He shrugged, a gesture foreign to the Nyueng Bao. The world did touch him occasionally. “Sahra would expect it.”

  And that was very Nyueng Bao. He would blame his actions on his sister’s expectations rather than on any notion of duty or obligation or even friendship.

  “What are we supposed to do with these guys?” Wishbone asked. “We got any use for them?”

  “Save a couple. The oldest and one other. Goblin. You never said how many got away.”

  “Three. That counts Singh but not the kid. But we’re going to get one of them three back on account of he’s hiding in the bushes right over there.”

  “Collect him. I’ll give him to the Old Man.”

  Sarky One-Eye cracked, “Give them a little authority, they turn into field marshals. I remember this kid when he was so green he still had sheep shit between his toes. He didn’t know what shoes were for.” But the humor wasn’t in his eye. Every move I made he watched like a hawk. Like a crow, in fact, although we had no crows hanging around tonight. Whatever experiment Goblin and One-Eye had going in that area was a complete success during this outing.

  Goblin suggested, “Ease up, Murgen. We’ll get the job done. How about some of you lazy asses toss a couple logs on the fire?” He began to circle the hidden Deceiver in the direction opposite that taken by One-Eye.

  They were right. I get too serious under stress. I was a thousand years old already. Surviving Dejagore had not been easy. But all the rest of these guys had come through that, too. They had seen Mogaba’s slaughters of innocents. They had suffered the pestilences and plagues. They had seen the cannibalism and human sacrifices, the treacheries and betrayals and all the rest. And they had come away without letting the nightmares rule them.

  I have to get a handle on it. I have to get some emotional distance and perspective. But there is something going on inside me that is beyond my control or understanding. Sometimes I feel like there are several of me in there, all mixed up, sometimes sitting behind the real me watching, watching. There may be no chance for me to recover complete sanity and stability.

  Goblin came strutting back. He and One-Eye accompanied a man who was not much more than skin and bones. Few Deceivers are in good shape these days. They have no friends anywhere. They are hunted like vermin. Huge bounties ride on their shoulders.

  Goblin flashed his toadlike grin. “We’ve got us a red-hand man here, Murgen. A genuine black rumel guy with the red palm. What do you think of that?”

  The thought lightened my heart. The prisoner was truly a top Strangler. The red hand meant that he had been there when Narayan Singh tricked Lady into thinking she was being inducted into the Strangler cult when in fact the Deceivers were really consecrating her unborn child as daughter of their goddess Kina.

  But Lady had employed a trick of her own, marking every Strangler there with the red hand that could not be denied later. Nothing they tried would take the color away, short of amputation. And a one-handed Strangler could not manage the rumel, the strangling scarf, that was the tool of the Deceivers’ holy trade.

  “The Old Man will be pleased.” A red-hand man would know what was going on inside his cult.

  I crowded closer to the fire. Thai Dei, done helping dispose of redundant shadowweavers, eased in beside me. How much had Dejagore changed him? I could not imagine him ever being anything but dour, taciturn, remorseless and pitiless, even as a toddler.

  Goblin, I noted, was doing that thing he did lately where he watched me from the corner of his eye while pretending to do something else. What were he and One-Eye looking for?

  The runt held his hands out. “Fire feels good.”

  15

  Paranoia has become our way of life. We have become the new Nyueng Bao. We trust no one. We let no one outside the Black Company know what we are doing until we are sure what the response will be. In particular we prefer keeping the Prahbrindrah Drah and his sister, the Radisha Drah, our employers, way back there in the deep dark shadows.

  They are not to be trusted at all, ever, except to serve their own closest interests.

  I smuggled my prisoners into the city and hid them in a warehouse near the river, a Company friendly Shadar fish place possessed of a very distinctive air. My men scattered to their families or someplace where they could drink beer. I was satisfied. With one quick, nasty stab we had decimated the surviving Deceiver leadership. We almost got that fiend Narayan Singh. I got within spitting distance of Croaker’s baby. In all honesty I could report that she seemed all right.

  Thai Dei knocked the prisoners to their knees, wrinkled his nose.

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “But this place don’t stink half as bad as your swamp does.” Taglios claims the river delta but the Nyueng Bao disagree.

  Thai Dei grunted. He could take a joke as well as the next guy.

  He does not look like much. He is a foot shorter than I am. I outweigh him by eighty pounds. And I am far prettier. He has crudely cropped black hair that sticks out in unkempt spikes. Skinny, lantern-jawed, taciturn and surly, Thai Dei is entirely unappetizing. But he does his job.

  A Shadar fishmonger brought the Captain to us. Croaker was getting old. We were going to have to call him Boss or Chief or something. You cannot call the Captain the Old Man once he’s really old, can you?

  He was dressed like a Shadar cavalryman, all turban, beard and plain grey clothing. He eyed Thai Dei coolly. He did not have a Nyueng Bao bodyguard himself. He loathed the idea despite his having to disguise himself whenever he wanted to walk the streets alone. Bodyguards are not traditional. Croaker is stubborn about Company traditions.

  Hell, the Shadowmaster’s officers all employ bodyguards. Some have several. They could not survive without them.

  Thai Dei reflected Croaker’s gaze impassively, unimpressed by the presence of the great dictator. He might say, “He is one man. I am one man. We begin even.”

  Croaker examined my prizes. “Tell it.”

  I told it. “But I missed Narayan. I was this close. That bastard has a guardian angel. There’s no way he should have slipped Goblin’s sleep spell. We chased him for two days but even Goblin and One-Eye couldn’t hang onto his track forever.”

  “He had help. Maybe from his guardian demon. Maybe from his new buddy the Shadowmaster, too.”

  “How come they went back to the grove? How did you know they would be there?”

  I thought he would say a big black bird told him.

  They are less numerous these days but the crows still follow him everywhere. He talks to them. Sometimes they talk to him, too. So he says.

  “They had to come someday, Murgen. They are slaves to their religion.”

  But why this particular Festival of Lights? How did you know?

  I did not press. You don’t press Croaker. He has grown cranky and secretive in his old age. In his own Annals he did not always tell the whole truth about personal things, his age especially.

  He kicked the shadowweaver. “One of Longshadow’s pet spook doctors. You’d think he wouldn’t have enough left to waste them anymore.”

  “I don’t reckon he expected us to jump them.”

  Croaker tried to smile. He produced a nasty, sarcastic sneer instead. “He’s got lots of surprises coming.” He kicked the Deceiver. “Let’s don’t hide them. Let’s take them to the Palace. What’s the matter?”

  Ice had blasted my back, like I was out on the wind of the Grove of Doom again. I didn’t know why but I had a grim sense of foreboding.

  “I don’t know. You’re the boss. Anything special you want in the Annals?”

  “You’re the Annalist now, Murgen. You write what you have to write. I can always bitch.” Unlikely. I send everything over but I don’t think much gets read. He asked, “What was special about the raid?”

  “It was colder than a well digger’s ass out there.”

  “And that walking sack of camel sn
ot Narayan Singh got away from us again. So that’s what you write. Him and his kind are going to get back into our story before we’re done. When we’re roasting him, I hope. Did you see her? Was she all right?”

  “All I saw really was a bundle that Singh carried. I think it was her.”

  “Had to be. He never lets her out of his sight.” He pretended he did not care. “Bring them to the Palace.” That chill hit me again. “I’ll make sure the guards know you’re coming.”

  Thai Dei and I exchanged looks. This might get tough. People in the streets would recognize the prisoners. And the prisoners might have friends. And for sure they did have enemies by the thousand. They might not survive the trip. Or we might not.

  The Old Man said, “Tell your wife I said hello and I hope she likes the new apartment.”

  “Sure.” I shivered. Thai Dei frowned at me.

  Croaker produced a sheaf of papers rolled into a tube. “This came in from Lady while you were gone. It’s for the Annals.”

  “Someone must have died.”

  He grinned. “Bang it around and fit it in. But don’t polish it so much she gets all righteous again. I can’t stand it when she flays me with my own arguments.”

  “I learned the first time.”

  “One-Eye says he thinks he knows where he left his papers from when he thought he was going to have to keep the Annals.”

  “I’ve heard that one before.”

  Croaker grinned again, then ducked out.

  16

  Four hundred men and five elephants swarmed around an incomplete stockade. The nearest friendly outpost lay a hard day’s march northward. Shovels gnawed the earth. Hammers pounded. Elephants swung timbers off wagons and helped set them upright. Only the oxen stood around, lazing in their harnesses.

  This nameless post was barely a day old, the newest point in the relentless Taglian leapfrog into the Shadowlands. Only its watchtower was complete. The lookout there scanned the southern horizon intently. There was an electric urgency in the air, a heaviness like the smell of old death, a premonition.

  The soldiers were all veterans. Not a one considered fleeing his nerves. Each had developed the habit and expectation of victory.

  The sentinel began to gaze fixedly. “Captain!”

  A man distinct for his coloring dropped a shovel, looked up. His true name was Cato Dahlia. The Black Company called him Big Bucket. Wanted for common theft in his home city, he had become advisor commander of a battalion of Taglian border rangers. He was a hardass leader with a reputation for getting his jobs done and bringing his people back alive.

  Bucket scrambled onto the observation platform, puffing. “What have you got?”

  The lookout pointed. Bucket squinted. “Help me out here, son. These eyes ain’t what they used to be.” He could see nothing but the low humped backs of the Loghra Hills. Scattered clouds hung above those.

  “Watch.”

  Bucket trusted his soldiers. He selected them carefully. He watched.

  One small cloud hung lower than the others, dragging a slanting shadow. This rogue thunderhead did not travel the same direction as the rest of its family.

  “Headed right for us?”

  “Looks like it, sir.”

  Bucket relied on his intuition. It had served him well during this war without major battles. And intuition told him that cloud was dangerous.

  He descended, spread word to expect an attack. The men of the construction company, although not combat soldiers, did not want to withdraw. Sometimes Bucket’s reputation worked against him. His rangers had prospered, freebooting across the frontier. Others wanted a share.

  Bucket compromised. He sent one platoon north with the animals, which were too valuable to risk. The other workers stayed. They overturned their wagons in the gaps in the stockade.

  The cloud advanced steadily. Nothing could be seen inside its shadow and tail of falling rain. A chill ran before it. The Taglian soldiers shivered and pranced to keep warm.

  Two hundred yards beyond the ditch, teams of two men shivered in covered, concealed pits lighted by special candles. One man maintained a watch.

  Rain and darkness arrived. Behind the initial few yards of downpour the rain slackened to a drizzle. Men appeared. They looked old and sad, ragged and pale, vacant and hopeless, hunched against the chill. They looked as though they had spent their entire lives in the rain. They bore their rusting weapons without spirit. They could have been an army raised from the dead.

  Their line passed the pits. Behind them came horsemen of the same sort, advancing like zombies. Next came massed infantry. Then came the elephants.

  The men in the pits spied the elephants. They used crossbows to speed poisoned shafts. The elephants wore no belly armor. The poison caused intense pain. The maddened beasts rampaged through their own formations. The Shadowlanders had no idea why the animals were enraged.

  Little shadows found the pits. They tried to slither inside. Candlelight drove them back. They left a deeper chill and a smell of death behind.

  The shadows found a pit where rain had gotten to the candle. They left shrieking, grimacing death in a grave already dug.

  Lady encountered the northbound laborers. She questioned them, considered the cloud in the distance. “This may be what we’re after,” she told her companions. “Ride!” She urged her stallion to a gallop. Foaled in sorcerous stables when she was empress of the north, that giant black outdistanced the rest of her party quickly. Lady studied the cloud as she galloped. Three similar clouds had been reported near sites where ranger companies had been overrun. This was exactly what she had come to investigate. It took only minutes to fathom how the raids were managed. Lines of dark power had been laid down long before the Shadowlanders withdrew from this region. The attackers were controlled through those. They would fight without wills of their own while run by those lines.

  She could scramble the lines easily now that she sensed them but chose not to do so. Let the attack proceed. These things cost the Shadowlanders more dearly than they cost Taglios.

  Longshadow must realize that. So why did he find the exchange worthwhile?

  She entered the ranger encampment by leaping her mount over an upturned wagon. She dismounted as an amazed Bucket ran to meet her. He looked like a condemned man granted a last minute reprieve. “It’s the Howler, I think,” he said.

  “Why?” Lady dragged her gear down from behind her saddle, started changing right there. “What can he hope to accomplish?”

  “I think it ain’t what they’re doing but who they’re doing it to that matters, Lieutenant.” Though she commanded armies, Lady’s Company title remained Lieutenant.

  “Who they’re doing it to? Yes! Of course.” Every unit lost had been led by Company men. Seven brothers had fallen. “They’re picking us off.” The belief that the Company is invincible is the backbone of Taglian military morale and the black beast of Taglian politics. “That’s crafty. Must be Howler’s idea. He does love to blindside you.”

  Bucket helped her with her armor. That was gothically ornate, black and shiny, too pretty to be much use in close combat. But her job was to fight sorcery, not soldiers. Her armor was surfaced by layer upon layer of protective spells.

  Rain began to fall as she donned her helmet. Threads of fire snaked along channels etched into the surface of her armor. She followed Bucket up the watchtower.

  Rain roared down. Sounds of combat grew louder, nearer. Lady ignored those, extended sorcerous senses in a search for the sorcerer known as the Howler. That ancient and evil being did not betray himself but he was out there somewhere. She could smell him.

  Was it possible he had learned to control his screaming?

  “I’ll catch up with you, you little bastard. Meantime...” She reached down. A fog formed, became dense, slithered between the raindrops, gained color. Pastels swirled, deepened, darkened. Soon the entire storm glowed as though some mad artist had splash-painted it with watercolors.

  There we
re screams inside the storm.

  The weather stopped moving. The shrieks of lost soldiers peaked, faded. The Shadowmaster’s lines of power, twisting and mutating, had turned lethal.

  Lady resumed searching for the Howler. She discovered him stealing southward, flying low and timidly, fleeing the pastel death that had begun eating its way back along the lines of power. She flung a hastily concocted killing spell. It failed. Howler’s lead was too great. But he did abandon stealth to run hard. Lady cursed like any line trooper frustrated.

  The rain faded away. The Taglian survivors appeared one by one, at first awed by the carnage, then grumbling about all the graves that needed digging. Few Shadowlander survivors were found.

  Lady told Bucket, “Tell them to look at the bright side. There will be prize money for the captured animals.” The Shadowlander animals, excepting the elephants, had not suffered badly.

  Lady glared southward, unforgiving. “Next time, old friend.”

  17

  ... falling... again...

  Trying to hang on. So tired. When I get tired the present gets slippery.

  Fragments.

  Not even fragments of today.

  The past. Not so long ago.

  Freezing my ass off. Failing to catch the great villain Narayan.

  Lady at play down south.

  Fish stench.

  The sleeping man. The screaming Deceiver. Dead men.

  Only memories but happier than tonight. There is too much pain here.

  It is my apocalypse.

  Slipping.

  Can’t keep my eyes from closing. The summons is too damned powerful.

  The pillars might be mistaken for relics of a fallen city. They are not. They are too few and too randomly placed. Nor has a one ever fallen, though many have been gnawed deeply by the teeth of the hungry winds.

  In the lightning flares, or in the dawns and sunsets when light steals beneath the edges of the sky, tiny golden characters blaze upon the faces of the columns.