Bleak Seasons

by Glen Cook

  “You did take shadows into account when you spelled the entrances to the underground?” I knew. They had. That was always our biggest concern. But I had to reassure myself. You keep checking on Goblin and One-Eye.

  Small groups were returning after long, dangerous journeys through the night, searching for rope that had survived.

  “Yeah. For what that’s worth. You ready to go down and start starving yet?”

  Bad signs followed ill omens. The situation was grim indeed if One-Eye and Goblin could spare no time to quarrel.

  A sudden susurrus swept the city and the plain beyond.

  A blazing diamond of light rose out of the Shadowlander camp. It spun slowly. A core of darkness centered it. From that, blackness pulsed out into the all spanning web it anchored.

  Nobody was looking at the hills when the pinkish light returned. No one noticed until it flared so brilliantly that it rivalled the brightness here at hand.

  It burned behind two bizarre mounted figures. It cast their hideous shadows upon the night itself. Crow shadows circled them. Two huge ravens perched upon the shoulders of the larger figure.

  Nobody breathed for a while. Not even Shadowspinner, I’d bet. And I was sure he had no more idea what was happening than I did.

  The pink flare faded. A cable of pink reached toward Dejagore, like a snake probing, stretching. As one end neared us the nether end broke loose. That whipped our way too fast for the eye to follow and in an instant screamed into Shadowspinner’s bright diamond. Sun brilliant flash splashed out of that sorcerous construct’s far side like suddenly flung barrels of burning oil.

  Immediately the dark web overhead began to shrink back into the remnants of the diamond.

  The air vibrated with the Shadowmaster’s anger. “Goblin! One-Eye! Talk to me, boys. Tell me what the hell just happened.”

  Goblin couldn’t talk. One-Eye burbled, “I ain’t got the faintest fucking idea, Kid. But we’re downwind of one seriously pissed-off Shadowmaster who’s probably going to blame you and me for his ulcers.”

  A tremor disturbed the night, more psychic than physical. I am magically deaf and dumb and blind, except for perceived effects, but I felt it.

  One-Eye was right.

  The pink light was gone. I saw no more sign of those bizarre riders. Who were they? What? How?

  I didn’t get a chance to ask.

  Little brown fellows carrying torches so they could see where they were running burst out of the Shadowlander camp. That could not bode well for me, my pals, or anyone else inside the wall.

  “Poor Spinner,” I cracked. “You got to feel for the man.”

  “Huh?” Sparkle was the only man close enough to hear.

  “Don’t you hate it when some no-brain vandalizes a work of art?”

  Sparkle didn’t get it. He shook his head, grabbed a javelin and threw it down at a short person with a torch.

  He missed.

  Around where those Shadowlanders had gained a foothold on the wall, and on the earthen approach ramps, a big racket began to develop. The Shadowmaster, piqued, had told his boys to get back to work. And don’t be so damned gentle anymore.

  “Hey, Bubba-do,” I shouted at a soldier, “who’s got tonight in the pool?”

  There is the Black Company for you. We’ve got a pool on what night the city will fall. I guess the winner gets to die with a smile on his ugly mug.

  24

  Goblin and One-Eye had chosen to stay close to me. The real Goblin and One-Eye. I checked every few minutes to make sure. Their attention was on the hills, not the excitement across town or any of their own schemes. Strange lights moved out there.

  A band of southerners sent out earlier returned at a gallop, half their number missing. They flew as though devils worse than their boss were after them. They dared ride the way they did only because Stormshadow had been obsessive when she leveled the plain and because there was light from the city.

  Fires were burning. Only a few so far, but fires.

  Sparkle told me, “They’re pulling out down below.”

  I leaned over and looked. Nobody tried to pick me off. Maybe they thought I was another ghost.

  Sure enough, the Shadowlanders were going, leaving us all those wonderful grapnels without ropes, for us to dump on our “maybe we can use these someday” pile.

  One-Eye said, “Guess we can put up our swords and go back to our tonk games now.”

  Overlooking the fact that Dejagore was being invaded elsewhere, I observed, “This is the second time you’ve come out with that silliness. What moron is going to play with you? Can’t be anybody that dumb still alive.” One-Eye cheats at cards. And he cheats badly. He gets caught every time. Nobody will play with him.

  “Hey, Murgen. Listen. I’ve reformed. Really. Never again will I dishonor my talent to...”

  Why listen? He’s said it all before, countless times. The first thing we do after we swear a recruit into the Company is warn him not to play cards with One-Eye.

  A party of Shadowlanders withdrawn from my sector headed for the hills. They all had torches. It looked like the Shadowmaster himself might be driving them.

  “Cletus! Longinus! You guys far enough along that you can drop a barrage on that crowd?” The brothers were repairing their engines as fast as they could. Two were ready, cocked and loaded. Not much of a barrage. One-Eye asked, “Why do that?”

  “Why not? We might get lucky. And can we piss off Shadowspinner more than he already is? He’s already vowed to kill us all.”

  The ballistas thumped. The shafts they hurled did not hit the Shadowmaster. Distractedly, he replied with a spear of energy that dissolved several cubic yards of wall far from any of my guys.

  The racket from across town kept getting louder. Some seemed closer than the far wall.

  “They’re inside,” Sparkle said.

  “A lot of them,” Bucket agreed. “This could get to be a big cleanup job.” I liked that positive thinking.

  I shrugged. Mogaba liked to keep the cleanups for himself and the Nar and their Taglians.

  Fine with me. Mogaba can eat all the pain he can swallow.

  I really wanted to take a nap. This long day just kept getting longer. Oh, well. Soon enough I would get to sleep forever.

  A short while later I got word that small groups of southerners were in the streets murdering anybody they could catch.

  “Sir?”

  “Sleepy. What’s up, youngster?” Sleepy was a Taglian Shadar we swore into the Company just before I decided to take up this pen. He always looked like he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He also looked like he was about fourteen years old, which was possible. He was paranoid in the extreme, apparently for good reason. He was a good-looking youth. And pretty boys are fair game amongst Taglian men of all three major religious groups. The Stranglers use their more attractive sons to lure victims to their deaths.

  Different land, different customs. You may not like them but you do have to live with them. Sleepy liked our ways better than his own.

  “Sir,” he said, “the Nar aren’t trying to keep the southerners from heading this way. They don’t bother them at all anymore after they get through and off the wall as long as they don’t head into Mogaba’s barracks area.”

  “Is that deliberate?” Bucket asked.

  Someone muttered, “Now ask a stupid question.”

  “What do you think?” One-Eye snapped. “This is the last straw. If that bigheaded, self-important dick shows his face around here...”

  “Save it, One-Eye.” This was hard to accept. But I could see Mogaba being capable of channeling the enemy our way so as to resolve questions of precedence inside the Company. His morality would allow him to picture it as a brilliant solution to several problems. “Instead of standing around bitching about it how about we do some thinking? Best way to fix Mogaba would be to shove his plan up his ass, no grease.”

  While the others tried to manage that difficult exercise — thinking —
I questioned Sleepy more closely. Unfortunately, he could not add much but the general routes the southerners were using to push deeper into the city.

  You couldn’t blame the Shadowlanders. Most soldiers of most times jump at the chance to go where resistance is weakest.

  Maybe we could use that to pull some into some sort of killing pocket.

  I even got a chuckle out of my predicament. “I bet Croaker would have seen this coming a month ago, as paranoid as he was about supposed friends and allies.”

  A nearby crow squawked agreement.

  I should have considered the possibility. I really should have. Farfetched is not the same as impossible. I should have had something planned.

  One-Eye became as serious as ever he gets. “You know what this means? If the kid is right?”

  “The Company is at war with itself?”

  The little guy waved that off like it was just another annoying gnat of reality. “Suppose Mogaba is giving them a golden bridge so they can get rid of us for him? They still have to get through the pilgrims to reach us.”

  I didn’t need to think long to see what he meant. “That asshole. He going to make them kill Shadowlanders in self-defense. He’s going to use them up killing his enemies for him.”

  “Maybe he’s a bigger snake than anybody thought,” Bucket growled. “It’s for sure he’s changed a lot since Gea-Xle.”

  “This ain’t right,” I muttered, although swords would enter the fight on our side whether or not they wanted to. Other than a few small skirmishes with lost invaders during past attacks the worst that had happened to the Nyueng Bao was that their pilgrimage had gotten them trapped in the middle of somebody else’s war. From the first clash of steel they had worked hard to maintain their neutrality.

  Shadowspinner has his spies in the city. He would know the Nyueng Bao had no interest in antagonizing him.

  “What do you think they’ll do?” Goblin asked. “The Nyueng Bao, I mean.” His voice sounded odd. How much beer had he put away?

  “How the hell would I know? Depends on how they see things. If they think Mogaba dragged them into it on purpose it might get unhealthy to belong to the Company. Mogaba could see this as a chance to squish us into a crack between a rock and a hard place. I’d better go see their Speaker and let him know what’s happening. Bucket. Make up a twenty man patrol and go looking for southerners. See if Sleepy is right. One-Eye, go with him. Spot for him and cover our guys. Sparkle, you watch things here. Send Sleepy after me if it gets too much to handle.”

  Nobody argued. When things get tight the guys do become less fractious.

  I descended the stairway to the street.

  25

  I played the game the way I thought the Nyueng Bao would want. Ever since childhood I have suspected you get along better if you respect people’s ways and wishes regardless of your apparent relative strengths.

  That doesn’t mean you let people walk on you. It doesn’t mean you eat their pain for them. You need to demand respect for yourself, too.

  Dejagore’s byways are close and fetid. Typical of a fortified city. I went to an obscure intersection where under normal circumstances I could expect to be seen by Nyueng Bao watchers. They are a cautious people. They watch all the time. I announced, “I would see the Speaker. Harm is headed his way. I would have him know what I know.”

  I didn’t see anybody. I didn’t hear anybody. I expected nothing else. Someone who strolled into my territory would see and hear nothing, either, but death would be nearby.

  The only sounds came from fighting several blocks away.

  I waited.

  Suddenly, in that instant when my attention finally wandered, Ky Dam’s son materialized. He made no more noise than a tiptoeing moth. He was a wide, short man of indeterminate age. He carried an unusually long sword but it remained sheathed across his back. He stared at me hard. I stared back. It cost me nothing. He grunted, indicated that I should follow. We walked no more than eighty yards. He indicated a doorway. “Keep smiling,” I told him. I couldn’t resist. He was always around somewhere, watching. I never saw him smile. I pushed the door inward.

  Curtains hung two feet inside. Very weak light slipped through a rent. I closed the door carefully once I understood that I would be entering alone, before I parted the curtains. Wouldn’t do to let light splash into the street.

  The place turned out to be about as pleasant as you can get in a city.

  The Speaker sat on a mat on a dirty floor near the one candle offering light. There were about a dozen people visible, of all ages and sexes. I saw four children, all small, six adults of an age to be their parents, and one old woman of granny age who glowered like she had a special bunk in Hell reserved for me even though she’d never seen me before. I saw nobody who could pass as her husband. Maybe he was the guy outside. Then there was a woman as old as Ky Dam, a fragile flower time-diminished to little more than skin-covered sticks, though an agile intelligence still burned in her eyes. You would get nothing past this woman.

  Of material things I saw little but the clothing the people wore, a few ragged blankets, a couple of clay cups and a pot maybe used for cooking. And more swords nearly as long and fine as that carried by the Speaker’s son.

  In the darkness beyond the candlelight someone groaned. It was the sound of someone delirious.

  “Sit,” Ky Dam invited. A second mat lay unrolled beside the candle. In the weak light the old man seemed more frail than when he visited the wall.

  I sat. Though I wasn’t used to it and my tendons weren’t supple enough, I tried to cross my legs.

  I waited.

  Ky Dam would invite me to speak when it was time.

  I tried to concentrate on the old man, not the people staring at me, nor the smell of too many folks living in too small a space, of their strange foods, nor even the odor of sickness.

  A woman brought tea. How she made it I don’t know. I never saw any fire. I didn’t think about that at the moment, though, so startled was I. She was beautiful. Even in dirt and rags, incredibly beautiful. I brought the hot tea to my lips and scalded them to shock myself back to business.

  I felt sorrow instantly. This one would pay dearly when the southerners took the town.

  A small smile touched Ky Dam’s lips. I noticed amusement on the face of the old woman, too, and recognized there a similar beauty only externally betrayed by time. They were used to my initial reaction. Maybe it was some kind of test, bringing her out of the shadows. Almost too softly to be heard, the old man said, “She is indeed.” Louder, he added, “You are wise beyond your years, Soldier of Darkness.”

  What was this Soldier of Darkness crap? Every time he addressed me he stuck me with another name.

  I tried a formal head bow of acknowledgment. “Thank you for that compliment, Speaker.” I hoped he would realize that I was incapable of keeping up with the subtleties of proper manners amongst the Nyueng Bao.

  “I sense in you a great anxiety held in check only by chains of will.” He sipped tea calmly but eyed me in a way that told me hastiness would be tolerated if I thought it really necessary.

  I said, “Great evils stalk the night, Speaker. Unexpected monsters have slipped their leashes.”

  “So I surmised when you were kind enough to permit me atop your section of wall.”

  “There is a new beast loose. One I never expected to see.” In retrospect I realize we were speaking of two different things. “One I do not know how to handle.” I strove to keep my Taglian pronunciations clear. Men conversing in a tongue native to neither sorely tempt the devils of misunderstanding.

  He seemed puzzled. “I do not understand you.”

  I glanced around. Did all his people live like this all the time? They were packed in way tighter than we were. Of course, we could enforce our claims to space with our swords. “Do you know about the Black Company? Do you know our recent history?” Rather than await an answer I sketched our immediate past. Ky Dam was one of those rare people w
ho listened with every ounce of his being.

  I finished. The old man said, “Time has, perhaps, made of you shadows of the Soldiers of Darkness. You have been gone so long and have journeyed so far that you have strayed from your Way completely. Nor are the followers of the warrior prince Mogaba hewing any nearer the true path.”

  I did not hide my thoughts well, Ky Dam and his woman found me amusing again. “But I am not one of you, Standardbearer. My knowledge has drifted far from the truth as well. Perhaps there is no real truth today because there is no one who knows it anymore.”

  I didn’t have a clue what the hell he was talking about. “You have wandered long and far, Standardbearer. But you may yet come home again.” His expression darkened momentarily. “Though you wish that you had not. Where is your standard, Standardbearer?”

  “I don’t know. It vanished during the big battle on the plain outside. I jammed its butt into the earth when I decided to put on my Captain’s armor in order to pretend that he had not fallen, so the troops would rally, but...”

  The old man raised a hand. “I think it may be very close tonight.”

  I hate this obscurity crap old people and wizards like to perpetrate. I am convinced that they do it only because it gives them a feeling of power. Screw the missing standard. It was not germane, now, tonight. I said, “The Nar chieftain wants to be Captain of the Black Company. He does not approve of the ways of those of us from the far north.”

  I paused but the old man had dried up. He waited. I said, “Mogaba is flawless as a warrior but he has shortcomings in some areas of leadership.”

  Ky Dam then proved to be less than the totally inscrutable and eternally patient old-timer you are led to expect in these situations.

  “You came to warn me that he has chosen to lessen his problems by letting southerners do his knifework, Standardbearer?”

  “Huh?”

  “One of my grandsons was in a position to overhear while Mogaba debated tonight’s actions with his lieutenants Ochiba, Sindawe, Ranjalpirindi and Chal Ghanda Ghan. Because Taglian conspirators were present the Nar failed to squabble in their native tongue though Mogaba showed limited facility with the Taglian.”