The Many Deaths of the Black Company

by Glen Cook

  A new order came into being.

  It had to be.

  Someday we will cross the plain again.

  Water sleeps.

  * * *

  For now, I just rest. And indulge myself in writing, in remembering the fallen, in considering the strange twists life takes, in considering what plan God must have if the good are condemned to die young while the wicked prosper, if righteous men can commit deep evil while bad men demonstrate unexpected streaks of humanity.

  Soldiers live. And wonder why.

  99

  The Great General started south through the Dandha Presh moments after the Protector abandoned him so she could make more speed. Consequently he met Soulcatcher on the southern side of the summit just a week later. She talked to herself continuously in a committee of voices while she was awake and gibbered in tongues during her brief bouts of sleep. Mogaba thought the Daughter of Night seemed smugly pleased in the moment before she collapsed from exhaustion.

  “Kill them,” Mogaba urged the moment he had Soulcatcher’s ear and a bit of privacy. “Those two can be nothing but trouble and there’s no way you can profit from keeping them around.”

  “Possibly true.” The Protector’s voice was a sly one. “But if I’m clever enough I can use the girl to tap into Kina’s power the way my sister did.”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from a life noteworthy for its regiments of disappointments, it’s that you can’t rely on cleverness. You’re a powerful woman now. Kill them while you can. Kill them before they find a way to turn the tables. You don’t need to become any stronger. There’s no one in this world capable of challenging you.”

  “There’s always someone, Mogaba.”

  “Kill them. They sure won’t waste a second on you.”

  Soulcatcher approached the Daughter of Night, who had not moved since her collapse. “My dear sweet niece wouldn’t harm me.” The voice she chose could have been that of a naive fourteen-year-old responding to the charge that her twenty-five-year-old lover was interested in only one thing. Then she laughed cruelly, kicked the Daughter of Night viciously. “You even think about it, bitch, and I’ll roast and eat you one limb at a time. And still make sure you live long enough to see your mother die first.”

  The Great General neither moved nor made any remark. His face betrayed nothing, not even to Soulcatcher’s acute eye. But in his sinking heart he understood that yet again he had allied himself with complete and unpredictable insanity. And yet again he had no option but to ride the tiger. He observed, “Perhaps we should give thought to how to guard our minds against intrusion by the Queen of Terror and Darkness.”

  “I’m ahead of you, General. I’m the professional.” This voice was that of a self-important little mouse of a functionary. It became that of a self-confident woman being conversational, the voice Mogaba suspected was Soulcatcher’s own. It resembled closely the voice of her sister, Lady. “For the last week I’ve had nothing to do but nurture the blisters on my feet and think. I conceived marvelous new torments to practice upon the Black Company—too late to enjoy them. Isn’t that the way it always goes? You always think of the perfect comeback about an hour too late for it to do any good? I suppose I’ll find other enemies and my innovation won’t be wasted. Most of the time, though, I considered how best to circumvent Kina’s power.” She did not fear naming the goddess directly. “We can do it.”

  The Daughter of Night stirred slightly. Her shoulders tightened. She glanced up for an instant. She looked a little uncertain, a little troubled.

  For the first time since her birth she was completely out of touch with her soul-mother. She had been out of touch for several days. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

  Soulcatcher eyed Narayan Singh. That old man was not much use anymore. She could test her new torments on him once she had him back in Taglios, before a suitable audience.

  “General, if I get caught up in one of those byways that distract me so often, I want you to nudge me back to the business at hand. Which will be empire building. And, in my spare time, the creation of a new flying carpet. I think I know enough of the Howler’s secrets to manage. This past week has forced me to admit to myself that I have no innate fondness for exercise.”

  Soulcatcher prodded the Daughter of Night again, then settled on a rotten log and removed her boots. “Mogaba, don’t ever tell anyone that you’ve seen the world’s greatest sorceress stumped for a way to handle something as trivial as blisters.”

  Narayan Singh, who had been snoring fitfully, suddenly rose up and gripped the bars of his cage, his face contorted in terror, its butternut color all but gone. “Water sleeps!” he screamed. “Thi Kim! Thi Kim is coming!” Then he collapsed, unconscious again, though his body continued to spasm.

  Soulcatcher growled softly. “Water sleeps? We’ll see what the dead can do.” They were all gone this time. It was her world now. “What else did he say?”

  “Something that sounded like a Nyueng Bao name.”

  “Uhm. Yes. But not a name. Something about death. Or a murder. Thi Kim. Coming. Hmm. Maybe a nickname? Murder walker? I should learn the language better.”

  The Daughter of Night, she noted, was shaking more than Singh.

  * * *

  The wind whines and howls through fangs of ice. It races furiously around the nameless fortress but tonight neither the lightning nor the storm has any power to disturb. The creature on the wooden throne is relaxed. He will rest comfortably through a night of years for the first time in a long millennium. The silver daggers are no inconvenience at all.

  Shivetya sleeps and dreams dreams of immortality’s end.

  Fury crackles between the standing stones. Shadows flee. Shadows hide. Shadows huddle in terror.

  Immortality is threatened.

  Soldiers Live

  Book Four of Glittering Stone

  For Russell Galen, #40, at a quarter century.

  It hasn’t been a perfect marriage, but close enough

  to keep me smiling. Let’s see if we can’t make it to silver.

  (Diamond? Whatever a 50th anniversary is.)

  1

  An Abode of Ravens: When No Men Died

  Four years passed and no one died.

  Not of violence or hazard of the calling, anyway. Otto and Hagop did pass on within days of each other, of natural causes associated with aging, last year. A few weeks ago one Tam Duc, recruit in training, perished of the overconfident exuberance of youth. He fell into a crevasse while he and his lance brothers were riding their blankets down the long slick slope of the Tien Myuen glacier. There were a few others. But not a one by an unfriendly hand.

  Four years has to be a record, though not the sort often recalled in these Annals.

  That much peace is impossible to believe.

  Peace that prolonged becomes increasingly seductive.

  Many of us are old and tired and retain no youthful fire in the belly. But us old farts are not in charge anymore. And though we were prepared to forget horror, horror was not as accomodating toward us.

  * * *

  In those days the Company was in service to its own name. We recognized no master. We counted the warlords of Hsien as our allies. They feared us. We were supernatural, many recalled from the dead, the ultimate Stone Soldiers. They dreaded the chance that we might take sides in their squabbles over the bones of Hsien, that once-mighty empire the Nyueng Bao recall as the Land of Unknown Shadows.

  The more idealistic warlords have hopes of us. The mysterious File of Nine provide arms and money and let us recruit because they hope we can be manipulated into helping them restore the golden age that existed before the Shadowmasters enslaved their world so cruelly that its people still call themselves the Children of the Dead.

  There is no chance we will participate. But we permit them the hope, the illusion. We have to get strong. We have a mission of our own.

  By standing still we have caused the blossoming of a city. A once-cha
otic encampment has become ordered and has acquired names, Outpost or the Bridgehead among those who came from beyond the plain and what translates as Abode of Ravens amongst the Children of the Dead. The place keeps growing. It has generated scores of permanent structures. It is in the processing of acquiring a wall. The main street is being paved with cobblestones.

  Sleepy likes to keep everyone busy. She cannot stand a loafer. The Children of the Dead will inherit a treasure when we finally go away.

  2

  An Abode of Ravens: When the Baobhas Sang

  Boom! Boom! Somebody hammered on my door. I glanced at Lady. She had stayed up late last night and so had fallen asleep while studying this evening. She was determined to discover all the secrets of Hsien magic and to help Tobo harness the startlingly plentiful supernatural manifestations of this world. Not that Tobo needed much help anymore.

  This world has more real phantoms and marvellous beings hiding in the bushes and behind the rocks and trees and on the edge of night than any twenty generations of our own frightened peasants could imagine. They gravitate toward Tobo as though he is some sort of nightside messiah. Or amusing pet, maybe.

  Boom! Boom! I would have to get off my butt myself. That looked like a long, hard trek over there.

  Boom! Boom! “Come on, Croaker! Wake up!” The door swung inward as my visitor invited himself inside. The very devil of my thoughts.

  “Tobo…”

  “Didn’t you hear the baobhas singing?”

  “I heard a racket. Your friends are always kicking up a fuss about something. I don’t pay any attention anymore.”

  “When the baobhas sing it means somebody is going to die. And there’s been a cold wind off the plain all day and Big Ears and Golden-Eye have been extremely nervous and … it’s One-Eye, sir. I just went over to talk to him. He looks like he’d had another stroke.”

  “Shit. Let me get my bag.” No surprise, One-Eye suffering a stroke. That old fart has been trying to sneak out on us for years. Most of the vinegar went out of him back when we lost Goblin.

  “Hurry!”

  The kid loved that old shit-disturber. Sometimes it seemed like One-Eye was what he wanted to be when he grew up. In fact, it seemed Tobo venerated everybody but his own mother, though the friction between them diminished as he aged. He had matured considerably since my latest resurrection.

  “I’m hurrying as fast as I can, Your Grace. This old body doesn’t have the spring it did in the olden days.”

  “Physician, heal thyself.”

  “Believe me, kid, I would if I could. If I had my druthers I’d be twenty-three years old for the rest of my life. Which would last another three thousand years.”

  “That wind off the plain. It has Uncle worried, too.”

  “Doj is always worried about something. What does your father say?”

  “He and Mom are still at Khang Phi visiting Master Santaraksita.”

  At a tender twenty Tobo is already the most powerful sorcerer in all this world. Lady says he might possibly become a match for her in her prime. Scary. But he has parents he calls Mom and Dad still. He has friends he treats like people, not objects. He accords his teachers respect and honor instead of devouring them just to prove that he is stronger. His mother raised him well, despite having done so in the environment of the Black Company. And despite his innate rebellious streak. I hope he will remain a decent human being once he comes into his full powers.

  My wife does not believe that is possible. She is a pessimist about character. She insists that power corrupts. Inevitably. She has only her own history by which to judge. And she sees only the dark side of everything. Even so, she remains one of Tobo’s teachers. Because, despite her bleak outlook, she retains the silly romantic streak that brought her here with me.

  I did not try to keep up with the boy. Time definitely has slowed me. And has left me with an ache for every one of the thousands of miles this battered old corpse has trudged. And it has equipped me with an old man’s talent for straying off the subject.

  The boy never stopped chattering about the Black Hounds, fees, hobs and hobyahs and other creatures of the night that I have never seen. Which is all right. The few he has brought around have all been ugly, smelly, surly and all too eager to copulate with humans of any sex or sexuality. The Children of the Dead claim that yielding is not a good idea. So far discipline has held.

  The evening was chill. Both moons were up. Little Boy was full. The sky was totally clear except for a circling owl being pestered by what appeared to be a brace of night-flying rooks. One of those, in turn, had some smaller black bird skipping along behind it, darting in and out as it prosecuted reprisals for some corvine trangression. Or just for the hell of it, the way my sister-in-law would do.

  Likely none of the flyers were actual birds.

  A huge something loomed beyond the nearest house. It made snorting noises and shuffled away. What I made out looked vaguely like the head of a giant duck. The earliest of the conquering Shadowmasters had possessed a bizarre turn of humor. This big, slow, goofy thing was a killer. Among the worst of the others were a giant beaver, a crocodile with eight legs and a pair of arms and many variations of the themes of killer cattle, horses and ponies, most of which spend their daytimes hiding underwater.

  The most bizarre beings were created by the nameless Shadowmaster now recalled as the First One or the Master of Time. His raw material had consisted of shadows off the glittering plain, which in Hsien are known as the Host of the Unforgiven Dead. It seems appropriate that Hsien be called the Land of Unknown Shadows.

  A long feline roar ripped the night. That would be Big Ears or his sister Cat Sith. By the time I reached One-Eye’s place the Black Hounds had begun to vocalize, too.

  One-Eye’s house was scarcely a year old. The little wizard’s friends raised it after they completed their own places. Before that One-Eye and his girlfriend, Tobo’s grandmother Gota, lived in an ugly, smelly little stick-and-mud hut. The new place was of mortared stone. It had a first-rate thatch roof above its four large rooms, one of which concealed a still. One-Eye might be too old and feeble to weasel his way into the local black market but I am sure he will continue distilling strong spirits till the moment his own spirit departs his wizened flesh. The man is dedicated.

  Gota kept the house spotless via the ancient device of bullying her daughter Sahra into doing the housework. Gota, still called the Troll by the old hands, was as feeble as One-Eye. They were a matched pair in their passion for potent beverages. When One-Eye gave up the ghost he would be drawing a gill of the hard stuff for his honey.

  Tobo poked his head back outside. “Hurry up!”

  “Know who you’re talking to, boy? The former military dictator of all the Taglias.”

  The boy grinned, no more impressed than anyone else is these days. “Used to be” is not worth the breeze on which it is scribbled.

  I tend to philosophize about that, probably a little too much. Once upon a time I was nothing and had no ambition to be anything more. Circumstance conspired to put immense power into my hands. I could have ripped the guts out of half a world had that been my inclination. But I let other obsessions drive me. So I am here on the far side of the circle, where I started, scraping wounds, setting bones and scribbling histories nobody is likely to read. Only now I am a lot older and crankier. I have buried all the friends of my youth except One-Eye.…

  I ducked into the old wizard’s house.

  The heat was ferocious. One-Eye and Gota had trouble keeping warm even in summer. Though summers in southern Hsien seldom become hot.

  I stared. “You sure he’s in trouble?”

  Tobo said, “He tried to tell me something. I didn’t understand so I came for you. I was afraid.” Him. Afraid.

  One-Eye was seated in a rickety chair he had built for himself. He was motionless but things stirred in the corners of the room, usually only visible at the edge of my eye. Snail shells cluttered the floor. Tobo’s father, Murgen, c
alls them brownies after little folk recalled from his youth. There had to be twenty different races of them around, from no bigger than a thumb to half a man high. They really did do work when nobody was looking. That drove Sleepy crazy. It meant she had to work harder to think up chores to keep the Company’s villains out of trouble.

  An overpowering stench pervaded One-Eye’s house. It came from the mash for his still.

  The devil himself looked like a shrunken head the shrinker had not bothered to separate from its body. One-Eye was a little bit of a thing. Even in his prime he had not been big. At two hundred and some years old, with both legs and most of one arm in the grave, he looked more like a shriveled monkey than a human being.

  I said, “I hear tell you’re trying to get some attention again, old man.” I knelt. One-Eye’s one eye opened. It focused on me. Time had been kind in that respect. His vision remained good.

  He opened his toothless mouth. At first nothing came out. He tried to raise a mahogany spider of a hand. He did not have the strength.

  Tobo shuffled his feet and muttered at the things in the corners. There are ten thousand strange things infesting Hsien and he knows every one by name. And they all worship him. For me this intersection with the hidden world has been the most troubling development of our stay in the Land of Unknown Shadows.

  I liked them better when they were still unknown.

  Outside Skryker or Black Shuck or another Black Hound began raising a racket. Others replied. The uproar moved southward, toward the Shadowgate. I willed Tobo to go investigate.

  He stayed put, all questions and nags. He was about to become a major pain in the ass. “How’s your grandmother?” I asked. Preemptive strike. “Why don’t you check?” Gota was not in the room. Usually she was, determinedly trying to do for One-Eye even though she had grown as feeble as he was.