Passing Through Darkness- The Complete Cycle

by Malcolm McKenzie

  Pious had lost two men, and another three were badly injured. My squads had suffered no casualties, taking only minor wounds. The enemy had abandoned the town at first light, limping away to the north. We had done some damage to the column as they retreated, but had not seriously attempted to reengage.

  “Still seems like a shame to burn the town,” I remarked. “I wouldn’t have minded a roof over my head for a change.”

  One of the staff officers glared at me, offended that a lieutenant had voiced an opinion in such august company.

  Royce harrumphed and replied, “If headquarters says to destroy it, we destroy it. Don’t want the enemy moving back in after we clear out, you know.”

  Colonel Royce struck me as a pompous idiot. He was a small man whose brain seemed empty of any original thought.

  “Just so, sir,” I agreed. “It just seems like a waste.”

  “War is always a waste,” Hake growled. “In any case, we’re moving on. The same courier that ordered us to fire the town had instructions that we’re to move north and continue to engage any Monolith forces we encounter.”

  “Any forces, sir?” asked a captain whose name I didn’t know. He was one of those that orbited the colonels, not a line commander. “What if the enemy forces are superior?”

  Hake gave him a wry smile. “We’re getting two additional battalions for reinforcements. And apparently we’ve now got a reputation back home.”

  He unfolded a sheet of paper and quoted from it. “‘Based on your spectacular successes to date, we are confident you can overcome any resistance you encounter.’”

  The colonel put the paper away. “We’re taking the fight to the Monolith this time.”

  7. Meeting Interesting People

  The Shadowed Hand had become strange. Even I could feel it. There was an almost mystical sense of invincibility in the platoon, which now included the survivors of Pious’ squad. The sergeant still detested me, but no longer let it show.

  We’d added a few more recruits, and there were almost forty of us now. We kept to ourselves. In theory we still reported to Captain Almet; in practice we were an independent reconnaissance company. Railes, Groff, Pious, and Sesk commanded my squads. When we were in the field, I used the finest threads of the Darkness to link them together. My senses were attenuated, but I could manage a radius of a hundred yards, and could relay simple messages to the squad leaders. If any of them objected to the Darkness touching their minds - and I’m sure at least Pious did - none of them complained.

  Other soldiers edged away from us. The attitude was a mix of awe and fear, especially from the new battalions, who had been fed completely exaggerated stories of the fall of Riverside. Whispers buzzed whenever I approached, faded away lest I hear, then started up again in my wake. I didn’t use Yoshana’s trick of enhancing my hearing with the Darkness. I didn’t really want to know what they were saying. It didn’t matter.

  So I was surprised when Luco approached me in camp accompanied by a solider I hadn’t seen before. The man was tall, but visibly nervous. Not the kind of killer who normally came looking to join the Shadowed Hand.

  “Got someone I thought you might like to meet, Minos. Anyway, he wanted to meet you.”

  The other soldier looked at the ground, not meeting my eyes. “Is it true you’re the one who took Genia north?” he asked softly.

  “Who?”

  “Genia. Genia Carter. Umm… calls herself Prophetess?”

  It was all I could do not to stagger back, struck by a wave of loss. Until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I missed the stubborn farm girl who’d decided she was on a mission from God. “Her name’s Genia? She wouldn’t tell me.”

  “She always was stubborn.” The man echoed my thoughts, then gave a nervous laugh. “She’s my little sister, you know.”

  “You’re… um…”

  “Kafer.”

  “Kafer. Right. She… she missed you.”

  He stared at his feet. “She didn’t like me going into the army. I didn’t want to write to her. I guess I was mad at first. Then I guess I didn’t want her convincing me to go home.”

  Was I still angry because she’d thrown me out of Our Lady? I didn’t think so. Did I want her convincing me to give up all that I’d become to go back? No. I understood Kafer well enough. “Like you said, she’s stubborn. And persuasive.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “As far as I know she is. She’s got her own army.” I spread my fingers and let the Darkness coil around them. “Not as good as ours, though.”

  “No one’s as good as you, sir.”

  It felt good to hear him say it. Almost as if Prophetess herself had. As if she had seen the value in what I’d become for her, instead of casting me aside.

  I shrugged. “There are fighters better than me. None on this side of the Muddy, though.”

  “I want to be part of that.”

  I hesitated. Prophetess would hunt me down and skin me if I got her brother killed.

  “Please,” Kafer said.

  And after all, why shouldn’t he? He was a grown man, older than Prophetess, older than me. His decision was his own. And I - I owed Prophetess no duties anymore.

  “Welcome to the Shadowed Hand.”

  “I don’t think they like us,” Kafer whispered, two weeks and hundreds of miles to the northwest.

  “Our reputation precedes us.”

  I didn’t even know the name of the town. Some insignificant village that had grown up around the main road into the Principalities. Most of the construction was recent, with almost none of the older and more advanced architecture from before the Fall. The place had probably developed after the Age of Fear, when commerce and travel began to slowly grow back from nothing to its current fitful trickle. They’d built a high, wooden palisade around the village, which not coincidentally blocked the road. They were used to collecting taxes from travelers.

  The negotiations with the Rockwall army had not gone to the villagers’ liking. We were compensating them for provisions, but rather than silver we paid in Rockwall scrip, which would be virtually useless here. They had initially demanded that the Shadowed Hand, and particularly its inhuman commander, remain outside the walls. I’d retorted that because I could sense an ambush or other treachery, not only would I be going in, I’d be going in first. That hadn’t made them feel any better about it - but with nearly four thousand men now in our force, we’d been in a position to insist.

  My senses ranged around me, but I wasn’t concerned. These people weren’t idiots. Our army was bigger than their entire population, and their gates were open. There was no chance they could resist us, unless they had a Monolith regiment stuffed into their primitive, dilapidated houses. And they didn’t.

  Still, I was the one leading the column, just in case. Most people peered out at us from behind shutters, but a few bolder citizens, children and adults alike, lined the narrow streets to stare. I gave them a show - a cloud of the Darkness around me thickened just enough to be visible. Luco, Kafer, and Cat were with me. The rest of the Shadowed Hand followed, each squad led by its sergeant, Railes, Groff, Sesk, and now Pious. The overall effect was intimidating.

  Luco was with me because he was my friend, and had a good head on his shoulders. He could help if we needed to talk rather than kill. Cat… Cat was there in case we needed to kill rather than talk. And Kafer was there because I couldn’t think of anywhere safer to put him than next to me.

  A bald man with a long white beard, wearing a coarse robe cinched with a cord, stepped into our path and struck the ground with his staff.

  “Brothers!” he cried. “For are we not all brothers? Do not make war on your brothers, for it is an abomination in the sight of God.”

  I reached back and put a hand on Cat’s shoulder. I had felt her tensing to spring. That would be a bad approach here - although slitting the old man’s throat would certainly be the fastest way to shut him up.

  The village would likely be un
der the control of Steel City, southernmost of the three city-states that made up the Principalities. That would make them allies of the Monolith.

  “Did you give the same speech to the Paladins when they came down to attack merchant ships on the Whitewater? You’re old enough to have been here when their army passed through and laid waste to Riverside. I heard from someone who was there that the murder and rape were enough to turn the most hardened soldier’s stomach. So did you lecture them too?”

  He met my eyes. His were a piercing gray, like Prophetess’. If he was perturbed by my black scleras - or the Darkness pulsing around me - he gave no sign.

  “I did.”

  “Didn’t work very well, did it?”

  “Their damnation is on their own heads. Just as your damnation will be on yours. It is not too late to repent.”

  The Darkness thickened. “Oh, I think it probably is.”

  “It is never too late.”

  Irritating old coot. It would have been easier if he’d just called me a hellspawn or a demon and gotten on with it.

  “How about you move before I have another death on my conscience?”

  I thought I saw the barest hint of a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “Far be it from me to lead a man to sin.”

  He stepped aside with an expression of absolute serenity.

  I glared at him and we resumed our march. But no sooner was I past him than he called out to the troops, “Repent! Lay down your weapons of war and return to the Lord. Though but one should turn aside from the path of destruction, there will be great celebration of all the choirs of angels. For did not the Lord say there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent?”

  “Stupid old…” I snarled.

  “Make quiet, me,” the paleo suggested.

  “Cat keeps her claws in her paws this time,” I said. Behind us, I could hear the preacher continuing to harangue our soldiers. I wondered if one of my legion of killers - maybe Pious himself - would shut him up by force. But from the sound of his voice continuing to echo behind, I could tell no one did.

  Luco came up to the fire where Cat and I sat late that night. I took a bite of hard bread and a sip of warm cider as he sank to the ground next to me.

  “Bothered me a little.” I knew he was talking about the old man.

  Most of the soldiers were hard men but some, like Luco, were new to this. I imagined being threatened with hell was uncomfortable even for a veteran. As a Select, I’d been called damned so many times it felt like part of my name.

  “It was meant to,” I said. “The Monolith’s not stupid. They can do their own psychological operations, just like we can. They know our men are decent people. They want to plant doubt. Easy enough when we’re far from home… and not everyone’s comfortable using the Darkness.”

  Luco’s mouth dropped open. “You mean he was a Monolith spy?”

  “Sure.”

  “Those…” he sputtered to an outraged halt, then sprang to his feet and hurried off to tell the others.

  “Spy?” Cat asked. “Not kill, why?”

  “He was no spy. He was a preacher trying to get people to stop killing each other. But the troops will feel better if they think he was a Monolith agent.”

  The paleo grinned, tapped her temple, and pointed at me. “Shadow warrior.”

  Yoshana would have been proud.

  Somewhere on the long march through the plains, another band of enemy rangers decided to take a run at us. There weren’t a lot of trees for cover, so they employed a tactic made famous centuries before by the land’s original inhabitants… and, centuries before that, by the Mongols on another continent entirely.

  They had two problems. First, the guys on the ground have an accuracy advantage over the guys jouncing along trying to fire their rifles from horseback. A good cavalry rush could have overcome that by letting them concentrate fire on us, except for the second problem - horses are easily spooked, and the Darkness is especially good at spooking them. The attackers left three dead comrades and four crippled mounts behind as they retreated. I felt bad for the horses. Cat butchered them with ruthless efficiency.

  That night my platoon bedded down a few hundred yards ahead of the main column, circled around a roaring campfire. The enemy charge hit my wards well after midnight. There were far too many to kill, but their mounts panicked even more readily in the dark than during the daylight - even with the Darkness extended in a radius too wide to efficiently kill, it could induce fear. My men picked off half a dozen of them before they escaped.

  I found one with his leg broken, his treacherous horse sidling nervously ten feet from where it had thrown him. I wrapped myself in the Darkness and picked him up.

  “The Shadowed Hand owns the night. Fear the darkness,” I told him. I marked his face to make the point, then I calmed his mount and slung him across its back.

  “They’ll wise up and hit somewhere further down the column behind us tomorrow,” Railes said as we watched the horse gallop away, its rider flopping like a grain sack in the saddle.

  “They might,” I agreed. But they didn’t.

  It had been raining for almost a week when the city loomed up in front of us out of the curtains of water. The men were all soaked, but didn’t seem to mind. The summer’s heat had faded as we climbed up the long, gradual slope to the Barrier Range, but it was still uncomfortably warm in our gear.

  I had figured out Yoshana’s technique of using the Darkness to turn water from my body and clothes. It was hot and I wouldn’t have objected to a good soaking, but the trick impressed the troops, so it seemed worth doing.

  I didn’t know how Steel City came by its name - Stone City would have been more appropriate. It was shielded by a massive wall of limestone, rising thirty feet to crenellations. Tall buildings within looked down on the wall, giving the inhabitants further lines of fire. The builders had taken defense seriously. The Shadowed Hand wouldn’t be getting in here the way we’d walked into Riverside.

  Of course, some cretins had built outside the wall. Most had fled. Apparently one had remained.

  General Hake - a promotion had accompanied his new orders - invited me to his tent and introduced me to a fat man with a thin weasel’s face that contrasted grotesquely with his bulk.

  “This is Roddib. He operates… let’s call it an inn… built up against the wall. Food, drink, accommodations, female companionship. Just the things an army far from home might want. Isn’t that right, Master Roddib?”

  There was an edge to Hake’s tone. An officer who cared as much about his troops as Hake did might not have much use for a brothel owner who exposed his employees to the mercy of an invading army. Or maybe he just didn’t care for pimps in general.

  Roddib’s eyes darted between us. He reminded me of an obscene cross between a rat and a swine. The Darkness stirred in me in response.

  Hake smiled a little, not pleasantly. “Master Roddib is willing to sell information, as well as food and flesh. So he’s a traitor, in addition to his other charming pursuits. Now it occurred to me that a man eager to sell out his own people might not be entirely trustworthy, which is why I asked you to join us, Lieutenant.”

  The general’s smile widened. “I assume word of the Shadowed Hand has reached you, Master Roddib. Lieutenant Minos commands it. In addition to his many other skills, the lieutenant can use the Darkness to sense the truth of any information given to us. Or pull that information directly from an uncooperative source’s mind. I understand the latter is quite excruciatingly painful.”

  Hake was making the last part up. I could read Roddib’s surface thoughts without hurting him at all. I didn’t know how to go deeper - although I could always torture him. The Darkness would be good at that. And would probably enjoy it. The problem would be stopping while Roddib was still alive.

  I grinned. And didn’t need the Darkness to see the fear running down the fat man’s narrow face in riv
ulets of sweat.

  Roddib was staring at me in horror. Hake added mildly, “Why don’t you tell Lieutenant Minos the secrets you were offering to retail to me? You’ll be paid if they’re true. If not… well…”

  I stretched my hand toward the weaselly face. The Darkness flowed out, moving over his skin. He gave a little squeak just like a rat and flinched away.

  I said, “There’s no reason this has to hurt. If you’re honest. And very, very forthcoming.”

  Roddib blinked back tears. I could almost feel sorry for him. Almost.

  “You’ll never take the city, sirs,” he choked out. It wasn’t defiance - he had none of that left in him, if there had ever been any. He was stating a fact. “The river brings in water, and there’s more than enough food stored from the early harvest.”

  “Rivers can be poisoned,” I said easily. “Give me facts. I’ll form the military judgments.”

  I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. Hake would be forming the military judgments, or at least he should be allowed to think so. I’d been careless in my words - and in my thoughts. The general let it pass without comment. There might or might not be an accounting later.

  Roddib was far too terrified to notice. Words spilled out of him in a torrent. “The defenses, sir, I mean, there’s the rangers, but you know that. That is, you’ve met them. Fought them. Killed them, that is. Mounted, all of them. Well armed, the Monolith gives them weapons. But only a few hundred, sir. Then mostly there’s the militia, that must be nearly five thousand men, but they’re catch as catch can when it comes to weapons. Not so much for training either, truth be told. No match for men like you, sir,” he whined, offering me a tentative, ingratiating smile.

  Hake and I exchanged glances. We had no siege engines. However poorly trained and equipped the militia might be, there was no way we would overrun five thousand armed men behind those high, stone walls.