Dreams Of Steel Part 8

The racket started up in Narayan's sector as I watched Swan go. I wondered how Jah was taking it.

Swan was back within the hour. "She wants to see you."

"Why am I not surprised? Ram, get Narayan and Blade. Sindhu, too."

I took Narayan and Blade with me. Sindhu I left in charge, hinting that I'd be pleased if the camp was finished when I got back.

I paused at the gate of the Ghoja fortress, glanced back. It was an hour short of noon. We had been here six hours. Already my camp was the most complete, best protected, most military.

Professionalism and preparedness are relative, I suppose.

Chapter Sixteen.

Croaker hobbled to the temple door, looked out. Soulcatcher was nowhere around. He hadn't seen her for days. He wondered if he'd been abandoned. He doubted it. She'd just waited till he was able to care for himself, then had hurried off on some arcane business.

He thought of making a run for it. He knew the surrounding country. There was a village he could reach in a few hours, even at the pace he could make. But that escape would be no escape.

Soulcatcher was away but the crows had stayed to watch. They would stay with him. They would lead her to him. She had the horses. Those beasts could run forever without tiring. She could spot him a week's lead and catch him.

Still...

This place was like an island outside the world. It was dark and depressing.

He started walking, going nowhere, moving for the sake of movement. The crows nagged at him. He ignored them, ignored the ache thumping in his chest. He strolled through the woods, to the countryside beyond, emerging near the half-dead tree.

He recalled it now. Before Dejagore and Ghoja he had come south to scout the terrain, had spied Soulcatcher watching, had chased her into these woods. He'd stood by that tree trying to decide what to do next-and an arrow had hit it, nearly taking off his nose. It had carried a message, telling him it wasn't time for him to catch whomever he was chasing.

Then the Shadowmasters' men had come after him and he'd been too busy running to give the place any more thought.

He walked up to the tree. Crows burdened its branches. He fingered the hole where the arrow had hit. She'd been watching over him then, hadn't she? Not interfering but there just in case, maybe laying on a nudge or two to make sure he was around for her revenge.

A long, lazy hill lay before. He decided to ignore the crows. He kept walking.

The pain in his chest became insistent. He wasn't ready for so much exercise. He couldn't have gone far even without the crows keeping track.

As he paused to rest he wondered how much Soulcatcher had intruded on his affairs. Could she have had some hand in the outcome at Dejagore?

Destroying Stormbringer, who had worn the alias Stormshadow, had been easier than he'd expected. And getting Shapeshifter had been a breeze, too- though there'd been a little treachery to that, since Shifter had been helping Lady. Which reminded him. That girl. Shifter's apprentice. She'd gotten away. She could be thinking of evening scores. Did Soulcatcher know about her? Better mention her next chance he got.

His heartbeat had fallen off toward normal. The pain had waned. He resumed walking. He reached the ridgeline and stood leaning against a gnarly grey piece of exposed rock, panting while crows circled and nattered. "Oh, shut up! I'm not going anywhere."

Another outcrop nearby vaguely suggested a chair. He shuffled over and sat, surveyed his kingdom.

All Taglios could have been his if he'd won at Dejagore, had that been his ambition.

A flight of three crows arrowed in from the north, coming like racing pigeons, swirled into the flock, cawed some. The whole mob scattered. Odd.

He leaned back, thought about the battle's aftermath. Mogaba was alive and holding the city against besieging Shadowmasters, according to Soulcatcher. Maybe a third of the army had managed to get inside the walls. Fine. A stubborn defense would keep them away from Taglios. But he didn't care that much about Taglios. Nice people, but anybody who was anybody was thoroughly treacherous.

He was concerned about the few friends he'd left down south. Had any survived? Had they salvaged the Annals, those precious histories that were the time link cementing the Company? What had become of Murgen and the standard and his Widowmaker armor? Legend said the standard had been with the Company since the day it had marched from Khatovar.

What were those d.a.m.ned crows up to? Moments ago there had been a thousand of them. Now he couldn't see a dozen. Those all glided at high alt.i.tude, drifting back and forth over something up the valley.

Had Khatovar become a hopeless dream? Had the last page of the Annals been written just four hundred miles from home?

Sudden memory from the first hours of their journey away from Dejagore. Just an image, of a man floating, writhing upon a lance. Moonshadow? Yes. And Moonshadow had been skewered upon that lance during the fighting. Skewered on the lance that supported the standard. It wasn't lost! That heirloom more important than the Annals themselves was down there in the temple somewhere. He hadn't seen it. She must have hidden it.

He glanced at a sky where c.u.mulus marched across a turquoise field. The crows were closer, those few still aloft. He jerked, startled. One was headed his way like a winged missile.

It flapped, fluttered, very nearly suicided, making a landing on a rock pinnacle inches from his left hand. The bird said, "Don't move!" in a perfectly intelligible voice.

He didn't move, though instantly he had a dozen questions. It took no genius to understand that something significant was happening. The birds didn't speak to him otherwise. In fact, they had only once before, bringing the warning that had allowed him to move in time to whip the Shadowmasters at Ghoja ford.

The crow hunkered down and became part of the rock. Croaker eased down a little himself, so he'd present no obviously human form against the skyline, then froze. Moments later he spied movement in the shallow valley before him.

It darted from cover to cover. Then there was more movement, and more. His heart hammered as he remembered the shadows the minions of the Shadowmasters had brought north.

These were no shadows. They were small brown men, but not of the race of the small brown men who had managed the shadows. Those had been cousins of the Taglians. Something familiar about these. But they were so far away.

It didn't occur to them to look up where he was seated. Or if they did they couldn't see him. They moved on down the valley.

Then there were more of them, maybe twenty-five, not sneaking like the others, who must have been scouts. He saw this bunch well enough to recall where he'd seen their kind before. On the great river that ran from the heart of the continent down past Taglios to the sea. He had fought them a year ago, two thousand miles north of here. They had blockaded the river against all commerce. The Company had opened the way, crushing them in a wild night-time battle where sorceries flashed and howled.

The Howler!

The main party was in sight. Eight men carried a ninth on a sedan of sorts. The ninth was a small figure so covered with clothing it looked like a pile of rags. As it came abreast of Croaker it let out a prolonged moan.

The Howler. One of the Ten Who Were Taken who had been servants of the Lady in her northern empire, a terrible wizard, thought slain in battle till that night on the river when he'd tried to even old scores against his former empress. Only the intercession of Shifter had driven him off.

Another moan escaped the sorcerer. It was a feeble shadow of the Howler's usual wails. Probably trying to control his cries to avoid attracting attention.

Croaker sat so still his heart almost stopped. There was little in the world he wanted less than to attract attention now. His concentration was so intense he felt no discomfort from rock or chill breeze.

The party pa.s.sed on, with more small brown men trailing behind, in rearguard. It was an hour before Croaker was confident that he had seen the last of them.

He had counted one hundred twenty-eight swamp warriors, plus the sorcerer. The warriors wouldn't be much use so far out of their element. This terrain was alien to them. But the Howler... Terrain and climate and whatnot meant nothing to him.

Where was he headed? Didn't take much to guess. Down to the Shadowlands. Why was more of a mystery, but probably not so great a one.

The Howler had been one of the Taken. Some of the Shadowmasters had been fugitive Taken, too. It seemed likely the survivors had made contact with their Former comrade and had negotiated some compact whereby he would replace the Shadowmasters who had fallen.

Lady was alive and at Ghoja, if Soulcatcher hadn't lied. Not forty miles away. He wished he could make that journey. He wished there was some way he could get a message to her. She needed to know about this.

"Crow, I don't know if you know what we just saw, but you'd better get word to your boss. We got trouble." He got up and walked back to the temple, where he amused himself by trying to find the hidden Company standard.

Chapter Seventeen.

The everyday business of sorcery is as much stage magic as it is witchcraft. It's misdirection, deceit, what-have-you. I kept an eye on Smoke, expecting him to pa.s.s information to the Radisha in some subtle fashion. But if he did he was too crafty for me. Which I doubt.

When you encounter the Radisha you know you're in the presence of a powerful will. It was a shame she was trapped in her culture and had to pretend to be her brother's creature. She might have done interesting things.

"Good afternoon," she said. "We're pleased that you survived."

Was she? Maybe, because there were still Shadowmasters to be conquered. "So am I."

She noted that Blade stood with me instead of his friends. She noted Narayan, of obvious low caste and no cleaner than the day we'd met-though I had no room to criticize. A shadow crossed her brow. "My battalion commanders," I said. "Blade you know. Narayan, who has been helpful pulling the men together."

She looked at Narayan intently, maybe because of his unusual name and the fact that I'd added no other. I didn't know any other name for him. Narayan was a patronym. We had six more Narayans among the Shadar troops. Every one of them carried the personal name Singh, which means Lion.

She caught something with that closer look, started slightly, glanced at Smoke. The wizard replied with a tiny nod. She looked at Blade. "You choose to leave me?"

"I'm going with somebody who can get something done besides talk."

That was a long speech for Blade and one that won him no sympathy. The Radisha glared.

"He's got a point," Swan said. "You and your brother just keep fiddling."

"We're more exposed." People in positions like theirs do have to act within constraints or get pulled down. But try to explain that to men who have never been anything but momentary captains and didn't want that power when they had it.

The Radisha rose. "Come," she told us. As we walked, she told me, "I am pleased that you survived. Though you may find it difficult to continue doing so."

That didn't sound like a threat, exactly. "What?"

"You're in a difficult position because your Captain didn't survive." She led us up a spiral stair to the parapet of the fortress's tallest tower. My companions were as puzzled as I. The Radisha pointed.

Beyond the trees and construction across the river there was a large, ragtag encampment. The Radisha said, "Some fugitives crossed elsewhere and carried word north. People started arriving the day after Swan rode south. There are about two thousand already. There'll be thousands more."

"Who are they?" Swan asked.

"Families of legionnaires. Families of men the Shadowmasters enslaved. They've come to find out what happened to their menfolk." She pointed upstream.

Scores of women were stacking wood. I asked, "What are they doing?"

"Building ghats." Narayan sounded nonplussed. "I should have considered that."

"What are ghats?"

"Funeral pyres," Mather said. "The Gunni burn their dead instead of burying them." He looked a little green.

I didn't follow. "There aren't any dead here. Unless somebody makes some." A symbolic gesture? Funerals in absentia?

"The practice is called suttee," Smoke said. I looked at him. He stood straight up and wore a slimy grin. "When a man dies his wife joins him on his ghat. If he dies away from home she joins him in death when she learns of it."

Oh? "Those women are building pyres where they can commit suicide if their husbands have been killed?"

"Yes."

"A d.a.m.nfool thing to do."

Smoke's smile grew. "It's a custom as old as Taglios. With the force of law."

I didn't like the way he was getting happy. He thought he had a tool to use against me.

"A waste. Who takes care of the children? Never mind. I don't care." The concept was so alien I discounted it. I'm not sure I even believed him.

The Radisha said, "The custom is revered by everyone, even those who aren't Gunni."

"There are crazies everywhere. It's a hideous practice. It should be abolished. But I'm not here to change any social sillinesses. We're at war. We've suffered a setback. A lot of our men are trapped in Dejagore. It's not likely we can save them. More are in flight. We can save some of those. And we have to raise new levies so we can cling to what we've gained."

Swan said, "Sweetie, you're missing the point."

"I got the point, Swan. It's irrelevant." The Radisha said, "You're a woman. You have no friends. Every man of any substance in every priesthood is going to make a point of your relationship with your Captain. A large point of your failure to commit suttee. That will weigh heavily with a large portion of the population."

"It may be the custom. It's an idiot custom and I'll bet it's not universal. I shan't dignify the suggestion-unless I decide that for bringing it up the suggester will be delivered to his suggestion." Smoke's grin faded.

His eyes narrowed and clouded. His jaw dropped for a second. He was staring at my hand. I realized I'd picked up Narayan's tic, was fingering the bit of yellow cloth peeping from my waist. Smoke's color turned ghastly. I said, "Radisha, ask these two about my background." I indicated Swan and Mather. They'd emigrated from my empire while I was at the pinnacle of my power. "Some of the Company have fallen but our contract remains in force. I intend to execute the undertaking."

"Admirable. But you'll find that a lot of people won't want to let you do that."

I shrugged. "What they want doesn't matter. The contract has been made. Better understand that. You people think you know more about us than we do. You must know we don't let anybody back out on a contract."

The Radisha looked at me intently, unafraid, curious about my confident att.i.tude here alone in a sea of enemies.

I said, "I'll present a list of needs tomorrow. Manpower, drayage, animals, weapons, equipment." Half of confidence is the appearance of confidence.

Somebody shouted from the stairwell. The Radisha signalled Mather, who checked it. He came back, said, "Jah's kicking up a fuss. Wants to see you. Guess that means he knows you're here." I said, "Might as well meet him head on."

"Tell them to bring him, Mather."

Mather pa.s.sed the word. We waited. The Radisha and I eyed one another like she-leopards. I asked, "Why are you afraid of the Company?"

She didn't bat an eye. "You know quite well."

"I do? I've studied the history of the Company in detail. I don't recall anything that would explain your att.i.tude."

Smoke whispered something. I think he accused me of lying. I was developing an intense dislike for him.