“What things?” He did not have much but the clothes he wore. And those were rags.
“Whatever you have to take with you. She’s leaving in an hour.”
He did not argue. That was as futile as arguing with a stone. His wants and interests did not count. He had less freedom than a slave.
“Take it easy, Cap,” the imp said. And vanished.
* * *
They rode till Croaker collapsed. They rested, then rode again. Soulcatcher ignored such niceties as restricting travel to daylight hours. She permitted a third halt only after they entered the hills northwest of Dejagore. She spoke seldom except to her crows, and to Frogface briefly after they arrived, while Croaker was sleeping.
She wakened him as the sun rose. “We reenter the world today, my love. Sorry I haven’t been as attentive as I should.” He could tell nothing from her choice of voices. This one he thought was her own, much like her sister’s, always neutral. “I’ve had a lot on my mind. I should bring you up to date.”
“That would be nice.”
“Your flair for sarcasm hasn’t disappeared.”
“It keeps me going.”
“Maybe. This is how things stand. Last week Spinner attacked Dejagore in force. He was thrown back. He would have succeeded if he’d used all his skills. But he couldn’t without Longshadow finding out he’s not as feeble as he pretends. He’ll try again tonight. He could succeed. Your One-Eye and Goblin have broken with their commander.
“My beloved sister has obtained a strong position in and around Taglios. She has five or six thousand men, none of them worth a damn.
“She left the man Blade at Ghoja when she headed north. He has the same problems and none of her expertise but some of the men he has have legionary experience. He’s decided to let them learn the hard way. He’s begun occupying surrounding territories, especially southward along the road to Dejagore.”
“Makes it easier to feed his men, probably.”
“Yes. He has a force exceeding three thousand men now. His scouts have skirmished with Shadowspinner’s patrols.
“And the big news, of course, is that the wizard Smoke has been seduced by Longshadow.”
“Say what? That little bastard. I never did trust him.”
“Longshadow appealed to his idealism. And to his fear of my sister and the Black Company. Offered him assurances he couldn’t help but believe, made him think he could become a hero by saving Taglios from its supposed saviors while he made peace with the Shadowlands.”
“That man is a fool. I thought you had to be smart to be a wizard.”
“Smart doesn’t mean sensible, Croaker. And he isn’t a complete fool. He didn’t trust Longshadow. He used every device he could to make Longshadow keep his word. His real mistake was going to visit Longshadow at Shadowcatch.”
“What?”
“The Howler and Longshadow combined their talents to create a flying carpet like those we had back when, before they were destroyed. It’s a puny one but good enough for Howler to fly the wizard to Shadowcatch and to drop spies into Taglios. Smoke is down there now. Frogface is watching him. Longshadow is trying to do a poor man’s Taking of Smoke. He’ll go back to Taglios as Longshadow’s creature.”
Croaker did not like the sums he came up with. Three major wizards against Taglios now, and Taglios’ only magical defender was a creature of the enemy. Lady might be doing well but could not be doing as well as she must to manage both the Shadowmasters and her enemies behind her.
Doom would be stalking Taglios long before anyone expected it.
Khatovar was farther away than ever.
He could not manage that mission on his own. Taking the Annals back … He did not have them. They were trapped inside Dejagore. He could not get to them.
Was Murgen keeping them up? He’d better be.
“You haven’t said anything about our part in all this.”
“But I have. Often. We’re just going to have fun with it. We’re going to kick the props out from under people. Tonight we’ll have this whole end of the world wondering what’s going on and who’s doing what to who.”
* * *
He began to understand soon after she told him to start getting ready.
“Ready how?”
“Get your armor on. It’s time to scare the shit out of Spinner’s men and save Dejagore.”
He just stood there, puzzled. She asked, “Would you rather let them be wiped out?”
“No.” The Annals were in the city. They had to be preserved. He unpacked the armor they had lugged all the way from the temple. “I can’t get this on by myself.”
“I know. You’ll have to help me with mine, too.”
With hers? He had assumed she would use her old Soulcatcher guise. He began to see her subtlety.
The armor she had made at the temple was a copy of Lady’s Lifetaker rig. Their appearance would leave all the principals completely confused. His Widowmaker was supposed to be dead. Lady’s Lifetaker was supposed to be in Taglios. Neither was supposed to amount to anything in sorcerous terms. The besieged would be stunned. Spinner’s men would be dismayed. Longshadow might suspect the truth but would not be sure. Smoke and the Taglian prince and his sister would be baffled. Even Lady would be confused.
He was sure she believed him dead.
“Damn you,” he said as he settled her helmet over her head. “Damn you to hell.” He could not refuse to cooperate. Dejagore would fall and its defenders would be massacred if he and she did not intercede.
“Relax, my love. Relax. Put emotion aside. Have fun with it. Look. The lance.” She pointed.
It was the lance that had carried the Company standard for centuries. He had searched in vain for it at the temple. He had not seen it coming down. Now it stood beyond the fire they had lighted for illumination. It glowed gently. A banner hung from it but he could not make it out.
“How did you…?” To hell with her. Sorcery. He would play her game only as far as he had to. He would give her no pleasure.
“Get it, Croaker. Mount up. It’s time.” She’d even conjured the armor that went with the stallions, baroque and beginning to show highlights of witchfire.
He did as he was told. And was startled. Her armor had a subtly different look from that which Lady had created for her Lifetaker character. This was more intimidating. It radiated menace. It had the feel of an archetypal doom.
Two huge black crows settled on his shoulders. Their eyes burned red. More crows circled Catcher. Frogface materialized on the neck of her horse, chattered briefly, vanished. “Come. We should arrive just in time to save the day.” The voice she used was that of a happy kid contemplating a prank.
34
Mather stuck his head into the room. “He’s on his way, Willow.”
Swan grunted, opened shutters for more light. He looked out at Blade’s camp and its satellites. The gods themselves were on Blade’s team. Recruits had been arriving in droves. None of them wanted to enlist in the Radisha’s guard. He’d had high hopes when he had invented that. But the Radisha’s name carried less weight here than Blade’s. And, damn him, he was as stubborn about sticking with Lady as Cordy was about the Radisha.
“Cordy, Cordy, why the hell don’t we just go home?” he muttered to himself.
Blade came in, escorted by Mather. That human stump Sindu was right behind them. He was like Blade’s shadow, anymore. Swan did not like the man. He was creepy.
Blade said, “Cordy says you have something.”
“Yeah. We finally got one up on you.” He had begun fielding patrols of his own after Blade started expanding southward. “Our boys grabbed some prisoners.”
“I know.”
Of course he did. There was no hiding from each other here. They did not try. They remained friends, however much they disagreed. Blade did most of his planning in that room, on the map table there. Anything Swan wanted to know he could see right there.
“There was a big dust-up at Dejagore the other
night. Shadowspinner hit the burg with everything he had. He grabbed our friends by the short hairs. Then what should pop up but two giant fire-breathing riders in black armor flinging thunderbolts around and kicking ass wholesale. When the smoke cleared away it was the Shadowlanders that got whupped. One of the prisoners saw it with his own eyes. He said Shadowspinner had to yank everything out of his trick bag to hold those two off. Here’s the way they say it went down.”
Swan kept a close eye on Blade while he chattered. There was some emotion showing through that bland facade.
He finished his tale. “What you think, old buddy? Those two miracle visitors sound like anybody we know?”
“Lady and Croaker. In their costume armor.”
“Bingo! But?”
“He’s dead and she’s in Taglios.”
“Two in a row. Give the man a prize. I think. So what the hell really went down? Sindhu. What you grinning about, man?”
“Kina.”
The others looked hard at the broad man. Mather said, “Descriptions again, Willow.”
Swan repeated.
Mather said, “Kina. The way she’s described by people who know her.”
“Not her,” Sindhu said. “Kina sleeps. The Daughter is bound in flesh.” Sindhu’s association with the Deceivers was an open secret. But he was not much help. Usually it was like this. He would say one thing, then contradict himself.
Swan said, “I’m not going to try to figure that out, buddy. Somebody fits the description went in and tore them new buttholes down there. Kina or not-Kina, I don’t care. Somebody wanted people to think Kina. Right?”
Sindhu nodded.
“So who was that with her? That fit anywhere?”
Sindhu shook his head. “This confuses me.”
Mather hoisted himself to a seat in the window. Swan shuddered. Cordy had a forty-foot drop behind him. He said, “Be quiet. Let me think.”
Swan echoed, “Quiet. Let him.” Cordy was a genius when he took the trouble.
They waited. Swan paced. Blade studied the map. He let no time waste. Sindhu remained impassive and still, yet seemed shaken.
Mather said, “There’s another force in the field.”
“Say what?” Swan chirped.
“Only way it adds up, Willow. The Shadowmasters are out to get each other but they wouldn’t go that far. Helps us too much. Our side doesn’t have anybody who could pull off the sorcery angle. So somebody else did it.”
“What the hell for?”
“To confuse things?”
“They did that. Why?”
“I couldn’t guess.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know. Just like everyone else won’t know, and will be chasing their tails trying to figure it out.”
Was Blade listening? Didn’t seem like it. He asked, “How bad were the Shadowlanders hurt?”
“Huh?”
“Shadowspinner’s armies. How bad off are they?”
“Bad enough they can’t take a crack at Dejagore again till they get replacements. But not so bad our guys have a crack at breaking out.”
“Just enough interference to keep the balance, then.”
“Our guys got cut up bad, way the prisoners talked. As many as half of them killed. Meaning the Shadowmasters’ men really got mauled.”
“But they could still send out patrols for you to catch?”
“Shadowspinner is scared we’ll move on him. He doesn’t want any more surprises.”
Blade paced. He returned to the map, tapped out the garrisons and posts he had established as much as a hundred fifty miles south. He paced. He asked Mather, “Is it true? Or is it something they want us to believe? Bait for a trap?”
Swan said, “The prisoners believed it.”
Blade said, “Sindhu, why haven’t we heard from Hakim? Why did this news reach us this way?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out. Go talk to your friends right now. If this is true we should have known before their patrol got here with the prisoners.”
Sindhu departed, disturbed.
Swan said, “Now you got rid of him, what’s on your mind?”
“Is the story true? That’s what’s on my mind. Sindhu has people babysitting Dejagore. They should’ve had a messenger moving the minute the dust-up started. Another should’ve brought a complete report when it was over. One might not have gotten through but two wouldn’t have failed. We made that road safe. We enlisted most of the bandits and feistier peasants.”
“You think the prisoners are plants?”
Blade paced. “I don’t know. If they are, why on you? Mather?”
Cordy thought. “If they’re a plant we shouldn’t have been the captors. Unless their purpose is to cause confusion. Or they don’t know the difference. It could be they’re telling the truth but we’re not supposed to believe it because you haven’t heard from your scouts. It could be a device to buy time.”
“Illusion,” Swan said. “You remember what Croaker used to say? That his favorite weapon was illusion?”
“That’s not quite what he said, Willow,” Mather corrected. “But close enough. Somebody wants us to see something that isn’t there. Or to ignore something that is.”
Blade said, “I’m moving.”
Swan squawked. “What do you mean, moving?”
“I’m heading down there.”
“Hey! Man! What are you, crazy? You’re getting a little carried away, chasing that tail.”
Blade walked out.
Willow spun on Mather. “What do we do, Cordy?”
Mather shook his head. “I don’t know about friend Blade anymore. He’s looking to get killed. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken him away from those crocs.”
“Yeah. Maybe. But what do we do now?”
“Send a message north. Then go with him.”
“But…”
“We’re in charge. We can do whatever we want.” Mather hustled out.
“They’re both crazy,” Swan muttered. He looked at the map a minute, went to the window, watched the excitement in Blade’s camp, eyed the ford and the swarming engineers setting wooden pylons for Lady’s temporary bridge. “Everybody’s gone crazy.” He laid a finger between his lips and wiggled it furiously while saying, “Why the hell should I be any different?”
35
“That’s it,” I said. “I’ve had it.” I’d just gotten word that a Vehdna priest, Iman ul Habn Adr, had ordered Vehdna construction workers to abandon my camp and report for work on that absurd city wall. It was the second defection of the day. The Gunni contingent had walked an hour after starting time. “The Shadar won’t show tomorrow. They’ve finally decided to test me, Narayan. Assemble the archers. Ram, send those messages I had the scribes prepare.”
Narayan’s eyes got big. He could not get himself moving. He did not believe I would do it. “Mistress?”
“Move.”
They went.
I prowled, trying to walk off my anger. I had no reason to be mad. This was no surprise. The cults had given me no grief since I had taken care of Tal. That meant they were working things out between them before they tested me again.
I took advantage of the respite, recruiting two hundred men a day. I got the camp established in temporary form. The stonework of the fortress, meant to replace it, was well started. I’d gotten some of the men through the first stages of their training. I had cajoled or extorted weapons and animals and money and materials from the Prahbrindrah Drah. In that area I had more than I needed.
I had stretched my talent considerably. I was still no threat even to Smoke but my progress excited me.
The big negatives were the dreams and an incessant mild nausea I could not shake. It might be the water at the campsite though it persisted when I returned to the city. Probably it was mostly reaction to lack of sleep.
I refused to yield to the dreams. I refused to pay attention. I made them something to be suffered through, like boils. Someday I would ha
ve the chance to do something about them. Then balances would be redressed.
I watched my messengers trot toward town. Too late to back down now.
Succeed or fail, I would get their attention.
* * *
Ram helped me don my armor. A hundred men watched. The barracks remained as overcrowded as ever, though I had moved five thousand men to the campsite. “More volunteers than I know what to do with, Ram.”
He grunted. “Lift your arm, Mistress.”
I raised both. And spied Narayan pushing through the press. He looked like he had seen a ghost. “What is it?”
“The Prahbrindrah Drah is here. By himself. He wants to see you.” He tried to whisper but men heard. Word spread.
“Quiet! All of you. Here? Where?”
“I told Abda to bring him around the long way.”
“That was thoughtful, Narayan. Keep working, Ram.”
Narayan fled before Abda brought the prince. I started in on the appropriate public courtesies. He said, “Forget that. Can you clear this out some? I’d like a little privacy.”
“Fire drill. Something. You men, outside. Abda, see to it.”
The crowd started moving reluctantly. The prince eyed Ram. I said, “Ram stays. I can’t get dressed without him.”
“Surprised to see me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. It’s time somebody surprised you.”
I just looked at him.
He demanded, “What’s all this bull about you quitting?”
“Quitting what?”
“Resigning. Going away. Leaving us to the Shadowmasters.”
That had been the implication but not the substance of the messages I’d had delivered. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m going to make a speech to some priests. Just to straighten them out. Where did you get the idea I was deserting?”
“That’s the talk. They’re all excited. They think they’ve beaten you. That they just stood up to you, stopped letting you walk over them, and you’re going to say good-bye.”
Exactly what I wanted them to think. What they wanted to think. “Then they’re going to be disappointed.”
He smiled. “I’ve had nothing but trouble from them all my life. I’ve got to see this.”