Bleak Seasons

by Glen Cook

  “Goody for Mogaba. Even he deserves a little happiness in life.” We were approaching the tenement that masqueraded as Company headquarters. I invited everybody in. The boys got a fire going. When One-Eye showed up I suggested he see if he could not scare up some beer, that I had heard there was some floating around and we sure could use a drink.

  Grumbling, One-Eye returned to the night. Before long he and Goblin turned up lugging a barrel. “On me,” I told everybody. One-Eye made a whining noise.

  I stripped down and flopped onto a table. Which is why the fire. To take the edge off the chill. “How do I look, One-Eye?”

  His tone was that of a man responding to a stupid question. “Like a guy that’s been tortured. You don’t know how you ended up in the street?”

  “My guess is they heard you coming and tossed me out to distract you while they got away.”

  “Didn’t work. Roll onto your side.”

  I spotted a face outside the open door. “Come in here. Have a beer with us.”

  The outsider Sindhu joined us. He accepted a mug but appeared to be very uncomfortable.

  I noted how closely Uncle Doj watched him.

  58

  It was still that same adventurous night. I was still disoriented, still hurting and definitely still exhausted but here I was wrapping a rope around me so I could rappel down the outside of the wall. “You sure the Nar can’t see us from the gate tower?”

  “Damn it, Kid, will you just go? You fuss worse than a mother-in-law.”

  One-Eye might know. He has had several.

  I started down. Why did I let Goblin and One-Eye con me into this?

  Two Taglian soldiers were waiting when I reached the crude raft. They helped me board. I asked, “How deep is the water?”

  “Seven feet,” the taller man replied. “We can pole across.”

  The rope stirred. I held it. Soon the outsider Sindhu dropped onto the raft. Mine was the only help he got. The Taglians wouldn’t even acknowledge his existence. I tugged the rope three times hard to let the top end know we were going. “Start poling.”

  The Taglians were volunteers chosen in part because they were well rested. They were quite happy to be leaving the city and depressed because they would not get to stay gone.

  They considered this crossing an experiment. If we made it over, slipped through the southerners, then got back to Dejagore tomorrow night or the next soon whole fleets would hazard the crossing.

  If we got back. If Shadowspinner’s men did not intercept us. If we found Lady at all, which the soldiers did not know to be part of the mission...

  One-Eye and Goblin browbeat me into looking for Lady. Never mind them injuries, Kid. They ain’t shit. Sindhu was along because Ky Dam thought it was a good idea to get him out of Dejagore. Sindhu’s opinion had not been asked. The Taglians were supposed to guard me and provide strong backs. Uncle Doj had wanted to come but had failed to convince the Speaker.

  The crossing was uneventful. Once we stepped ashore I retrieved a tiny green wooden box from my pocket and released the moth inside. It would fly back to Goblin, its arrival announcing my safe arrival.

  I had several more boxes, each a different color and each containing a moth to be released in a particular circumstance. As we started to move up a ravine Sindhu quietly volunteered to take the point. “I am experienced at this sort of thing,” he told me. And I believed him within minutes. He moved very slowly, very carefully, making no sound.

  I did all right but not as well. The two Taglians might as well have worn cowbells.

  We had not gone far before Sindhu hissed a warning. We froze while grumbling Shadowlanders filed across our track twenty yards uphill. I caught only enough conversation to understand that they prefered a warm blanket to a night patrol through the hills. Surprise. You would think things would be different in somebody else’s army.

  We encountered another patrol an hour later. It, too, passed without detecting our presence.

  We were past the ridgeline when dawn began creeping in from the east, extending visibility to the point where it was too dangerous to keep moving. Sindhu told me, “We must find a place of concealment.”

  Standard procedure in unfriendly territory. And it was no problem. The ravines out there were choked with brush. A man could disappear underneath easily as long as he remembered not to wear his orange nightshirt.

  We disappeared. I started snoring seconds after we went to ground. And I did not go anywhere else, or anywhen.

  The smell of smoke wakened me. I sat up. Sindhu rose at almost the same instant. I found a crow studying me from so close I had to cross my eyes to focus on him. The Taglian who was supposed to be keeping watch was sleeping. So much for well-rested. I said nothing. Neither did Sindhu.

  In moments my fears were confirmed. A southern voice called out. Another answered. Crows laughed. Sindhu whispered, “They know we are here?” It sounded like he had trouble believing that.

  I lifted a finger, requesting silence. I listened, picked out a few words. “They know somebody is here. They don’t know who. They’re unhappy because they can’t just kill us. The Shadowmaster wants prisoners.”

  “They aren’t trying to lure us out?”

  “They don’t know any of us can understand some of their dialect.” The albino crow in front of me cawed and flapped its way up out of the brush. About twenty others joined it.

  “If we cannot evade them we must surrender. We must not fight.” Sindhu was an unhappy young man.

  I agreed. I was an unhappy young man myself. The Taglian soldiers were two more unhappy young men.

  We evaded nothing and no one. The crows found our efforts amusing.

  59

  Time had no meaning. The Shadowmaster’s camp lay somewhere north of Dejagore. We four were among the earliest prisoners taken but more soon joined us in our pen. Lots of Mogaba’s guys wanted to leave town.

  He would have less trouble feeding the ones who stayed behind.

  One-Eye and Goblin seemed to hold our part of town together. Nobody I knew became a prisoner.

  I did not send any more moths so they knew I had found trouble instead of Lady.

  Even our guards had no notion how Spinner meant to use us. We were happier not knowing, probably.

  I spent uncounted days in total misery. Piglets in a feed lot live better than we did. More and more prisoners arrived. The food was inadequate. After a few meals everybody got the runs. There were no sewage provisions, not even a simple slit trench. They would not let us dig our own. Maybe they did not want us getting too comfortable.

  In fact our life was not much worse than that of the Shadowlander private soldiers. They had nothing anymore and could expect only nothing. They indulged in a ferocious desertion rate despite the Shadowmaster’s reputation. They hated Shadowspinner for putting them into such an awful state. They took their anger out on us.

  I do not know how long we were there. I lost track. I was busy trying to die from dysentery. I noticed only that there was a sudden absence of crows one day. I was so used to having crows around that anymore I noticed them only when they were not there.

  I faded in and out. I suffered a bunch of my spells. They were more frequent now and left me emotionally drained. The shits left me physically drained.

  If I could only get some sleep...

  Sindhu wakened me. I recoiled from his touch. It was astonishingly cold and seemed vaguely reptilian. I was the only man in the pen he knew so he wanted to be my pal. I was willing to do without a friend. He offered me a cup of water. It was a rather nice tin cup. Where did he get that? “Drink,” he said. “It’s clean water.” All around us prisoners lay in the mud twitching endlessly in haunted sleep. Some cried out. Sindhu continued, “Something is going to happen.”

  “What?”

  “I felt the breath of the goddess.”

  For an instant I smelled something that was not the stink of vomit or unwashed bodies or dead men or pools of liquid shit, too. />
  “Ah,” Sindhu whispered. “It’s happening now.” I looked where he pointed.

  The happening something was going on inside the big tent belonging to the Shadowmaster. Lights of strange color flickered and flared. “Maybe he’s getting something special ready for somebody.” Maybe he had Lady spotted.

  Sindhu snorted. He seemed to thrive in these conditions.

  The something went on a long time but attracted no attention. I became suspicious. I had Goblin’s ward against sleep spells set on me. Oh...? I dragged myself to the compound fence. When nobody smashed me back with the butt of a spear I was sure. The camp was under an enchantment.

  Sindhu’s water gave me strength quickly and started my brain perking. It occurred to me that if no one was inclined to stop me this might be the perfect time to take leave of the Shadowmaster’s hospitality. I started worming my way between the fence rails.

  My stomach rumbled in protest. I ignored it. Sindhu grabbed my arm. His grip was iron. He said, “Wait.”

  I waited. What the hell? That was one of my favorite arms. I didn’t want to deprive myself of its company.

  The moon began to rise, a big old squashed orange egg in the east. Sindhu continued to restrain me and continued to stare at the big tent.

  A shriek drifted down from high above. “Holy shit,” I muttered. “Not him.”

  Sindhu cursed, too. He was so startled that he let me go. He glared upward.

  “That’s the Howler,” I told him. “Really bad news. Shadowspinner could take advanced cruelty lessons from him.”

  The side of Spinner’s tent opened. Out rushed a bunch of people carrying what proved to be human body parts. I recognized some of them. The people, that is. Who could mistake Willow Swan with his wild yellow mane? Or Lady, who carried a severed head by its mangy hair? And Blade was only a step behind her, his ebony skin shiny in the moonlight. I did not recognize any of the others.

  The sleep spell on the camp, laid rather poorly, unravelled. Southerners jumped up to ask what was happening. Metal clanged and jingled as weapons and mail were located.

  One of Lady’s companions, a huge Shadar, started bellowing something about bowing down to the true Daughter of Night.

  Sindhu chuckled. Nothing bothered him, it seemed. He could take anything.

  He was not holding on to me but I no longer had the strength or inclination to go anywhere.

  60

  They pulled it off, Lady and her damnfool gang. Audacity pays. They slipped into the camp, murdered Shadowspinner, and when they got caught they convinced the southerners that it was all fated and they should not go doing anything because of that. I could not be much of a witness to their mass conversion. My bowels overruled my desire to observe. I spent most of my time making a worse mess of myself.

  At some point our former guards decided to bring us to Lady’s attention in an effort to curry favor.

  Blade recognized us as they brought us out of the pen.

  Blade looks like he might have been born Nar. Like them he is tall, black and muscular, without an ounce of fat on him. He says little but has a strong presence. His background is shadowy. He ran with Willow Swan and Cordy Mather, who saved him from crocodiles several thousand miles north of Taglios. What everyone knew for sure, what Blade made no effort to hide, was that he hated priests, singly, collectively, and without any prejudice whatsoever where belief system was concerned. Once I thought he was an atheist who hated the whole idea of gods and religion, but after further exposure I decided it was only the retailers of religion he detested. That suggested sharp incidents in his past.

  No matter now. Blade took Sindhu and I away from our guards. “Standardbearer, you stink.”

  “Call out the ladies in waiting. Let them give me a bath.” I could not remember my last bath. In Dejagore we did not waste water on trivialities.

  Of course, now we could bathe all we wanted although the water would be unclean.

  Blade obtained fresh clothing by the expedient of robbing some southern officers, had us clean up and visit the inadequate field physicians Croaker had tried to train for the Taglian forces.

  They knew less about stopping the drizzling shits than I did.

  It was daylight when Lady saw me. She already knew the prisoners were deserters from the city. She was blunt. “Why did you run out, Murgen?”

  “I didn’t. We decided somebody had to come find you. I lost the election... Uh.” She was in a bleak mood, apparently pretty sick herself. Never mind the humor, Murgen. “One-Eye and Goblin figured I was the only trustworthy guy who had any chance of getting through. They couldn’t leave. I didn’t make it, though.”

  “Why did you feel the need to send someone?”

  “Mogaba elected himself god. With the water around us, keeping the southerners back, he doesn’t need to get along with anybody who doesn’t agree.”

  Sindhu said, “The black men believe they serve the goddess, mistress. But their heresies are grotesque. They have become worse than unbelievers.”

  I pricked up my ears. Maybe I would learn something about Sindhu’s bunch. I had bones to pick with them. I had not yet found any evidence to suggest that it was not them who kidnapped me and took a crack at murdering Mogaba.

  Still, I could not imagine why they would bother.

  Sindhu and Lady talked. Her questions sounded vaguely doctrinal. Sindhu’s replies made no sense.

  Once Lady interrupted the interview to be sick. A skinny little gink named Narayan, who kept hanging around, seemed inordinately pleased. I noted that Sindhu showed him considerable deference.

  I was not happy. The little I knew of their cult assured me that I did not want them influencing my captains.

  The interview ended. Blade’s cronies took me away. I got to hang out with Swan and Mather, meaning I had somebody to speak a reasonable language with for a while, but soon I felt like a forgotten man.

  “What are we doing?” I asked Swan.

  “I don’t know. Cordy and I just tag along behind Her Lordship pretending not to be watching her for the Prabrindrah Drah and Radisha.”

  “Pretending?”

  “Ain’t much good being a spy if everybody knows it, is there? Anyway, Cordy gets to do all the worrying. He’s the one playing pattycake with the Woman.”

  “You mean that ain’t just a vicious rumor? He’s really plooking the Radisha?”

  “Hard to believe, ain’t it? She’s got a face like... Hey! Cordy! Where’s them cards? We got us a pigeon here thinks he can play tonk.”

  “Thinks? Swan, you’re gonna think I invented the game if you get into it with me.”

  Mather was a nondescript character of average height with ginger hair who stood out only because he was white in a land where nobody but harem girls, kept out of the sun from birth, had fair skin. He asked, “Willow’s mouth running away with him again?”

  “Maybe. I’ve made a career of playing tonk. Hell, they boot you out of the Black Company if you don’t make journeyman player.”

  Mather shrugged. “Then you’ll twist Willow’s head back around straight for him. Here. Deal. I’ll see if the mighty general Blade wants to sit in.”

  Swan grumbled, “That would take him out of sight of Lady.” Sounded like some sour grapes there. Mather showed him a smirk that confirmed my guess.

  “What is it about her?” I asked. “Every damned guy that walks on his hind legs gets near her for five minutes, he starts floating around with his tongue hanging down, banging into things. But I’ve been around her for years. I can see she’s got the right stuff in the right places put together about as good as you could want but I don’t think I could get excited even if she didn’t used to be the Lady and she wasn’t married to the Old Man.” Not that that was literally true. They had not even bothered to jump over a sword.

  Swan shuffled. “Cut?”

  I cut. I always cut. One-Eye taught me that.

  Swan asked, “You really don’t feel it? Man, she comes around me and my br
ain goes south. And she’s a widow now so...”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What?”

  “She ain’t no widow. Croaker is still alive.”

  “Shit. That’d be my luck, too. You want to stack Cordy a hand, make him think he’s got a winner, then skunk him?” As soon as I shook my head he wanted to know how come I thought Croaker was alive. I evaded a definitive answer for the few moments it took Mather to return.

  “Blade’s too busy looking for an angle to use while he’s close to the magic. You load me up again, Willow? No? Bullshit. Let’s just pick them up and deal them over.”

  “Ain’t this the story of my life?” I grumbled. “Look here.” I had two aces, a pair of deuces and a trey. An automatic winner, damned near couldn’t be beat. “And that’s a true natural, no help.”

  Swan snickered. “Don’t matter. You don’t got anything to do anyway.”

  “You got a point. Why don’t you guys come over to Dejagore? I’ll buy you a mug of One-Eye’s home brew.”

  “Ha! Competition, huh?” Swan and Mather had gone into the brewing business back when they first came to Taglios. They were out of the racket now, among their reasons the fact that the priests of all the native religions condemned the use of alcohol.

  “I doubt it. The only thing good about their brew is it gets you skunked.”

  “That was the only good thing about the rat piss we made,” Mather said. “My dear old daddy the brewmaster rolled over every time we tapped another keg.”

  “We never laid any beer up,” Swan countered. “Soon as it was ripe we skimmed the scum off and poured it down Taglian throats. And don’t buy that shit about his daddy, neither. Old Man Mather was a tax assessor who was so dumb he didn’t take bribes.”

  “Shut up and deal.” Mather snatched up his cards. “He did brew his own beer. And Swan’s old man was a hod carrier.”

  “But a handsome one, Cordy. And a lover. I inherited his good looks.”

  “You take after your mother. And if you don’t do something about that hair pretty soon you’re going to wind up in somebody’s harem.”