by Glen Cook
Those would make marvellous complements to our Widowmaker and Lifetaker armor.
Tobo and Shukrat, too, boasted the black and undefined look, Tobo having helped himself to Gromovol’s outfit.
It took only minutes to inter Gromovol, not far from the frozen corpses of several men who had been my friends. His final pleas still echoed when I told Lady, “I’m going down to the bottom of this hole. I want a look at that old bitch who’s been fucking up our lives for the last fifty years.”
“Are you crazy?” Tobo yelled. “I wouldn’t go down there. I’m nervous just being this close.”
“Then go back upstairs. Shukrat. Answer a couple of technical questions for me before you leave. Please?”
* * *
The black barrier that had frustrated Blade so was back in place. It put a terrible pressure on my mind. But the flying post did not notice it at all. The post kept moving. The Voroshk costume I wore stirred slightly, enclosing me more securely within its protection.
Although I know the names now I refuse to call post and costume by their proper, clunkily cumbersome Voroshk titles.
I passed through the barrier. Lady made a funny little sound as she came through behind me, like she did when we made love.
The scene was pretty much the way it had been described by others. What seemed to be a vast, open cavern without evident bounds, illuminated by no evident light source, and that extremely feeble. All that could be seen was a huge, ugly sprawl of flesh the color of polished eggplant. It did not move, even to breathe.
Kina looked like Shivetya’s homely big sister. Kina looked like the embodiment of all the dark attributes I had heard assigned her, under all her many names, since first I became aware of her existence. Kina looked like many dark things.
My memories of the next few minutes are completely unreliable.
Almost immediately the great hairless head turned our way. Kina’s mouth was open, exposing ugly dark fangs. She seemed to have a snake or lizard tongue. I did not recall that having been reported before in any of the conflicting myths, though her tongue was supposed to be long, the better to lap up demon blood.
The eyes of the Goddess began to open.
The immensity of her will smashed at me like a tidal wave breaking. The lights went out. For me.
* * *
“Looks like you were lucky this time,” Tobo told me. “Your post got you out of there.”
I wanted to tell him luck had nothing to do with it. I planned it that way. I set it up with the help of his girlfriend. But I barely had energy enough to keep breathing.
I did manage to gasp, “Lady?” Had to check on my honey.
“Better off than you are. Sleeping right now. Said to tell you to just rest. Here’s some Shivetya manna. It’ll give you a kick in the ass. If you can keep it down.”
I managed to roll my head until I could see the demon.
Shivetya was looking back at me. A white crow was strutting around on his shoulder. Not my white raven. The demon revealed a few teeth in what he might have thought was a smile. Bizarre. I did not recall him ever having moved before.
He must have seen the inside of my head. Must know I thought I had a notion about how to get to Kina.
I hoped the Goddess could not look inside my head, too.
Someday. Down the road. If I could get all the pieces to fall into place.
The white crow sneered. I believe they can do that, those birds.
Tobo understood that something was happening but did not catch on. I think my new daughters understood better than he did.
96
The Shadowgate: Bad News, Bad News
I was outside the Shadowgate gossiping with Panda Man and Spook, who were telling me that keeping an eye on the gate was the best duty they had ever endured. The work was easy and the locals were friendly. If the damned ugly spooks from the plain did not keep nagging you.…
Tobo and Shukrat came through.
Almost immediately Tobo let out a cry of despair. He shouted, “There’s been a battle!” A moment later he shot into the air, headed north, black cloth streaming behind him. An instant later still Shukrat shot off in his wake, gaining slowly.
Panting, Lady asked, “Does that mean we should be worried?”
“That would be my guess. The little shit must’ve gotten something from the hidden folk.”
“And it was bad enough to set him off like that.” She looked as troubled as I felt.
No good could come of any battle fought while we were away.
She asked, “Aren’t you going to rush off and see what happened, too?”
“Don’t see the point.” I jerked a thumb in the direction of the carpet, which was creaking and sagging under the weight of people we dared not trust. “There isn’t anything I could do, anyway. Look at that.” A ripple, a distortion in the fabric of reality, seemed to be running over the face of the earth, chasing after Tobo and Shukrat. “The hidden folk following their hero.”
“Why were they here?”
“Waiting around for Tobo.”
“But they should’ve been with Sleepy. They don’t do us any good hanging around the Shadowgate when … oh. They don’t care if they do us any good.”
“Exactly. What they care about is Tobo. Anything they do that benefits the rest of us they do just to please him. Which is why two-thirds of the time I don’t have the two ravens that’re supposed to be my permanent shoulder-ornaments and messengers and far-seeing eyes. They keep forgetting to stick with me. They wander off to find the kid. Bet you they turn up before we catch up with Sleepy, though.”
“Sounds like a sucker bet to me.”
* * *
After crossing the Dandha Presh I steered a course mimicking that Sleepy had followed heading north. When Lady asked why I was not heading straight north as fast as we dared push the carpet, I told her, “Because I thought I saw something I shouldn’t have on the way down. I have to check on it. I’m hoping it was my imagination.” But my brief conversation with the guards at the Shadowgate suggested that the nightmare might be real.
She was curious but did not ask. At the speeds we could make airborne a bit of circuitous flight would not delay us much.
I found what I was seeking on the path Sleepy had taken from Gharhawnes, at almost exactly the point where she had doubled back to get behind Dejagore. By then my confederates were extremely crabby.
“There!” I told Lady, catching just a glimpse of something moving fast inside a stand of scrubby oaks.
“There what?” She had not seen.
“The Nef.”
“The Nef? The Nef are in the Voroshk world. Trapped there.”
“Not according to Spook and Panda Man. They say the Nef come around every night.”
“All right. But how would they get through the Shadowgate?”
“I don’t know.” I was flying in a circle now, giving up altitude. Once down to treetop level I cruised back and forth. I spotted nothing. Nor did I find a sign when I descended lower still and began to glide between the tree trunks.
I never found a thing. Not even a hint of a thing.
People began to yell down at me.
All right. They had a point. There were things we needed to do way north of where we were now.
97
Beside the Cemetery: Among the Dead
It had been over for more than a day but the surgeons remained hard at work. Men still lay in long rows awaiting attention, moaning, screaming, some delirious. And some dead. A burial detail walked the rows, picking up those who had gone. Too many of those had died alone amidst the hundreds, without comfort.
The glory of war.
The ultimate fear. Mine, anyway.
I checked quickly to make sure that everyone was conforming to my decrees concerning cleanliness and sepsis. A few of the wounded would stand a better chance if the surgeons and their helpers cleaved to the rules. Even when they were exhausted, as they were now, and the temptation to cut corners becam
e overwhelming.
Beyond our wounded lay those from Mogaba’s army. They were likely to get no treatment at all, except what they could manage for themselves. I was sure that our medical supplies were as strained as our medical staff was. It looked like this was a much bigger fight than I had expected. Or, at least, a more desperate encounter with more casualties than expected in a short time.
* * *
Runmust Singh on crutches took me in to see Sleepy.
She appeared disoriented. I knew that look of old, having been there myself. She was on the edge of collapse. She had not done more than catnap since the fighting started. “You can’t do it all yourself, Captain. You’ll be a lot more effective if you just trust the rest of us to get things done and get yourself some rest. If Mogaba comes back now you won’t be able to think fast enough or straight enough to do anybody any good.”
She eyed me irritably but was too exhausted to squabble. “I take it you didn’t come here past the dead.”
“I came through the hospital area.” She knew that I would have to do that. After we talked I would, probably, go back to offer what little help an old man with a bum hand and a bad eye could.
“Then you don’t yet know that there isn’t anybody left for me to trust while I take a nap. Swan is dead, Croaker. Blade is dead. Iqbal Singh is dead. Riverwalker is dead. Add Pham Huu Clee, Li Wan, both the Chun brothers and your old engineers, Cletus and Loftus. There’s going to be a lot of opportunity for advancement. Name a name. Almost everybody is dead or injured. Hell, even Sahra may be dead. We haven’t been able to find her.”
“We’re back,” I said. That ought to take a load off her shoulders. “Successfully, I might add. What about Suvrin?”
“Suvrin made it through. Suvrin saved the day. Suvrin and I have agreed to take turns resting as soon as we’re sure Mogaba isn’t coming back. Right now we’re taking turns holding everything together.”
Based on what I had seen and heard already the Great General would not return any time soon—unless he came on his own. His soldiers had had enough.
Mogaba would have been back already had he had any troops he could use. Caution and procrastination were not sins you could pin on the Great General.
I heard Tobo’s voice outside, overhead. He was addressing the folk of the hidden realm. Before long we would know all we wanted to know about Mogaba’s current situation. In moments thousands of wraithlike things would be involved in the search for Sahra—and everyone else still missing.
The kid was taking charge.
Sleepy mumbled, “I shouldn’t have engaged him till Tobo came back.”
Unwittingly, I repeated comments she had heard from Suvrin already. “Mogaba wouldn’t have given you a choice. He doesn’t have our intelligence resources but he does make use of the tools he has. That was our failing. Not remembering that. We should’ve given at least the appearance of having left a sorcerer in camp.”
Sleepy nodded. “Water down the creek. Which I’ll thank you to remind me whenever I begin to feel sorry for myself and start picking the thing’s bones to indict myself for doing things differently.”
“You’re a strange bird, little girl.”
“What?”
“Sorry. One-Eye’s been on my mind lately.” I did not explain. As long as I kept my genius sealed up inside my head there was a fair chance Kina would not find out anything she would make me regret. I asked. “What about Goblin and the girl? If there was fighting in the grove…”
“We don’t know yet. I assume Tobo will inform us. I assume everything is going to be just peachy now that Tobo is back.” She was striving for sarcasm but it was not working. She did not have strength enough to speak in anything but a monotone.
“Lady and Murgen will be here in a few minutes. Let them manage the little shit while you get your rest.”
* * *
I went for an excursion amongst the unburied dead, to make good-byes. They were laid out in rows, awaiting disposal. The weather was cold and damp so putrefaction was not far advanced but there was stench enough of blood and open bowels. Flies were rare, it being the wrong season. And crows of any sort were a rarity these days. Buzzards circled but dared not come down because the welcome they received from the living tended to be discouraging.
Once someone identified one of the fallen, Taglian prisoners moved the body to the appropriate funeral procedure group. Recruits and additional prisoners were busy building ghats, burning corpses, digging graves and filling them, or erecting exposure platforms for the few whose fate it was to leave the earth that way.
A lot of corpses had been dealt with already but I could see that, despite the season, we were going to have to dig mass graves for the Taglian fallen. There would not be time to get each man a decent funeral. Although civilians who had had men serving with Mogaba had begun to show up already, hoping to reclaim their dead.
I wondered if, in some mystical fashion, new standing stones were materializing on the glittering plain, their faces crawling with golden memorial characters.
A subaltern from the Land of Unknown Shadows approached me. It was obvious he was not pleased about having been assigned to the funeral detail. He must have embarrassed himself during the fighting. The unpleasant duty would be his reward. “Sir,” he said, with a salute so crisp it should have gotten his sentence commuted, “it would be a great help if you could offer me the funerary preferences of your old comrades.” There was a mildly repulsive fawning edge to his otherwise businesslike demeanor.
He led me to a spot where he had isolated non-Taglians who did not hail from Hsien. My former henchmen and a couple of Nyueng Bao occupied that little square.
“Soldiers live,” I murmured. Now there was only Murgen and Lady left from the farther shore of the Sea of Torments. “Bury Swan and the engineer brothers. Inside that cemetery over there. Make sure that their graves are clearly marked. I’ll want to find them later in order to put up a proper memorial. They deserve more than a parting mention in the Annals.” I wondered what Swan would think of lying to rest beside all those Shadowlanders. He and Blade and Cordy Mather had helped put most of them there.
I had no idea what funeral customs obtained amongst Blade’s people. Neither I nor anyone else ever learned who those people actually were. “Lay the black man down in a grave near Swan. Maybe they can be buddies in the next world, too. Maybe they’ll finally get to start that brewery they always wanted.”
The subaltern was puzzled by that but did not comment. The soldiers of the Land of Unknown Shadows were growing accustomed to the religious absurdities of the new world. I walked on, across ground covered by the corpses of men Sleepy had recruited during the time of Captivity. Their number was disturbing. Before long she would be as isolated from her own generation as I was isolated from mine.
A great many excellent soldiers from the Land of Unknown Shadows lay upon that cold, hard ground, too. And, unsurprisingly, so did many men who had joined us recently, locally. Poorest trained, they had stood the least chance during the fighting.
I surveyed all that death and hoped Sleepy had reached a watershed here, that henceforth she would seek solutions that did not require headbutting until somebody staggered away and collapsed from concussion. Not that all this could be blamed on her. Based on information available I could fault none of her decisions. And she was a better tactician than I had been.
98
Above the Cemetery: Mogaba Accedes
Twenty-six hours after his order to break contact Mogaba abandoned all hope of pulling together an attack that would take advantage of the enemy’s despair and disarray. His own men had been too badly mauled to set aside their own despair and disarray. Only Aridatha Singh’s division retained its cohesion. Its reward was the task of screening the retreating army.
Which consisted mainly of survivors of the Second Territorial. Of Saraswati’s former right wing force not one man in ten could be accounted for anymore.
Enemy cavalry remained very activ
e. The Captain seemed disinclined to let him get near her again.
A pair of billowing black shapes passed low overhead. They radiated a chilling psychic scream. Suddenly, instinctually, Mogaba knew that he was being watched by something he could not turn fast enough to catch staring. He knew that his best opportunity had ended. He summoned his latest aide-de-camp, who had been in place only a few hours. The man’s several predecessors were still down there on the field. “Bring me the Deceiver prisoners.”
“Sir?”
“The prisoners General Singh captured in the Grove of Doom. I want to see them.” He thought he could offer them a deal. The girl could pretend to be the Protector for a while. Taglios would be less restive if the Protector appeared publicly sometime soon.
“Those prisoners were sent north, sir. Under special constraint because of the danger General Singh told us they present.”
“And he was right. That was the best thing to do. We don’t want them to fall into unfriendly hands.” Publicly, Mogaba insisted on treating the recent encounter as a triumph. He expected his officers to do the same.
Mogaba spent a moment considering what options he might have. It took only a minute to conclude that withdrawal toward Taglios was the best course.
Oh, but he hated that. No matter the true facts, rumor would call it a defeat and a retreat. That would cost.
The Great General considered his aide. He did not know the man well enough to be aware of his family status. “Tonjon, is it?”
“Than Jahn, sir. A remote male ancestor is reputed to have been Nyueng Bao. My family is Vehdna.”
“Excellent. Perhaps you can share religious anecdotes with the enemy Captain.”
“Sir?” Sounding both baffled and irked.
“I’m sending you south under a flag of truce. To arrange for an armistice. So we can collect our dead.” If anything the Great General ever did won him favor with the Taglian people, it was his effort to bring back the fallen sons so their families could honor them with all the appropriate last rites.