Glen Cook - Black Company 3-4 - Soldiers Live

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Soldiers Live
SOLDIERS LIVE
by Glen Cook
The Ninth Chronicle of the Black Company
CONTENTS
* An Abode of Ravens: When No Men Died
* An Abode of Ravens: When the Baobhas Sang
* An Abode of Ravens: A Labor of Love
* The Grove of Doom: Night Songs
* An Abode of Ravens: Headquarters
* An Abode of Ravens: Suvrin's News
* An Abode of Ravens: Night Visitor
* Taglios: Trouble Follows
* An Abode of Ravens: The Invalid
* An Abode of Ravens: Recovery
* An Abode of Ravens: Exercise Session
* Glittering Stone: Steadfast Guardian
* The Land of Unknown Shadows: Traveling Hsien
* The Land of Unknown Shadows: Khang Phi
* The Land of Unknown Shadows: The Secret Masters
* Wastelands: Night's Children
* The Land of Unknown Shadows: The Abode of Ravens
* The Land of Unknown Shadows: Due South
* Glittering Stone: Sneak Away
* Glittering Stone: Mystic Roads
* Taglios: The Great General
* Khatovar: Invasion
* Glittering Stone: Fortress with No Name
* Khatovar: The Unholy Land
* Glittering Stone: The Revenant
* Khatovar: Hunkered Down
* Shadowlands: Breakout
* The Taglian Territories: The Blind Measures of Despair
* Khatovar: The Lords of the Upper Air
* Khatovar: Then Start the Fire
* Khatovar: The Opened Gate
* The Shadowlands: The Protector of All the Taglias
* Khatovar: Leave-taking
* The Shadowlands: Tobo's Chores
* Taglios: The Message
* The Nether Taglian Territories: The Barrens
* The Taglian Territories: Somewhere North of Charandaprash
* The Taglian Territories: The Dandha Presh
* Taglios: The Great General
* The Taglian Territories: Below Lake Tanji
* The Nether Taglian Territories: Leaves of Misfortune
* The Nether Taglian Territories: After Battle
* The Taglian Shadowlands: The Shadowgate
* The Shadowlands: Gate Repairs
* Nijha: The Stronghold Falls
* Nijha: The Darkness Always Comes
* The Shadowgate: The Repairmen
* The Shadowgate: The Warlords of the Air
* Nijha: Place of the Dead
* The Taglian Territories: The Palace
* The Taglian Territories: The Middle Ground
* The Nether Taglian Territories: Lady Made Grumpy Noises
* The Taglian Territories: A Haunted Wood
* The Taglian Territories: The Thing in the Cesspit
* The Nether Taglian Territories: Along the Viliwash
* The Nether Taglian Territories: The Manor at Gharhawnes
* The Nether Taglian Territories: The Resurrection
* Gharhawnes: The Traitor General
* With the Middle Army: When Guests Arrived
* Gharhawnes: Tobo and the Voroshk
* The Taglian Territories: Nightfliers in Dejagore
* Dejagore: The Occupation
* The Taglian Territories: The Middle Army
* Dejagore: The Orphaned Army
* Taglios: The Palace
* The Taglian Territories: Midway Between
* The Taglian Territories: Inside the Middle Army
* The Taglian Territories: Fire on the Middle Ground
* Midway Between: The Unanticipated
* Midway Between: The Capture
* Midway Between: Unpleasant Truth
* Midway Between: The Rescuers
* Midway Between: The Rescue
* Midway Between: Escape Artists
* Taglios: The Palace
* The Taglian Territories: Another Origin Story
* Above Ghoja: Seeking the One Safe Place
* Midway Between: Bad News
* The Taglian Territories: In Motion
* The Taglian Territories: In Camp
* The Shadowlander Military Cemetery: Laying To Rest
* With the Company: Going South
* Taglios: Decision
* Beside the Cemetery: Confusion
* The Grove of Doom: A Big Surprise
* Beside the Cemetery: More Confusion
* Glittering Stone: Fortress with No Name
* Fortress with No Name: Recruiting Excitement
* Beside the Cemetery: More Confusion
* By the Cemetery: Still More Confusion
* By the Cemetery: Even More Confusion
* By the Cemetery: Confusion Piled Higher
* Beyond the Grove of Doom: Confusion Grows
* Beside the Cemetery: Sorrows Gathering
* Fortress with No Name: Down Below
* The Shadowgate: Bad News, Bad News
* Beside the Cemetery: Among the Dead
* Above the Cemetery: Mogaba Accedes
* By the Military Cemetery: Missing Persons
* Taglios: The Palace
* Beside the Cemetery: Plans
* The Palace: Better Housekeeping
* Beside the Cemetery: Search for a Lost Soul
* Taglios: View from the Protector's Window
* The Palace: The Great General's Place
* The Palace: View from a High Place
* Taglios: Soldiers Live
* Taglios: Someone at the Door
* Taglios: No Excuses Accepted
* Taglios: Misfortunes
* Taglios: Sleepy Flew
* Taglios: Under Siege
* Taglios: Attack
* Taglios: Bad News, White Crow
* Taglios: The Special Team
* Taglios: Outrageous Fortune
* Taglios: Night and the City
* Taglios: A New Administration
* Taglios: Messenger
* Taglios: Thi Kim Was Always Here
* Taglios: Sleeping Beauty
* Taglios: Unknown Shadows
* Taglios: Crow Talk
* Taglios: The Sandbar
* Taglios: An Afternoon Off
* Taglios: Royal Return
* Taglios: And My Baby
* Taglios: Another Great General
* Taglios: Open Tomb, Open Eyes
* Taglios: Khadidas
* Around Taglios: Aerial Recon
* Taglios: Wife and Child
* Glittering Stone: A Dangerous Game
* Taglios: Best Served Cold
* Taglios: The Mad Season
* Fortress with No Name: Godstalking
* Taglios: The Melancholy Wife
* Taglios: The Lost Child
* Taglios: The Great General
* Taglios: Brain Surgery
* Taglios: Family Matters
* Glittering Stone: Bitter Desserts
* Fortress with No Name: Sleeping with the Demon
* Fortress with No Name: Arkana's Tale
* Glittering Stone: Then Shukrat Came
* The Voroshk World: Stronghold Rhuknavr
* Fortress with No Name: Putting the Pen Down
* Glittering Stone: And the Daughters of Time
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-chaotic
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 akeady 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, calls 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.
One-Eye made a noise, moved his head, tried to raise that hand again. He saw
the boy leave the room. His mouth opened. He managed to force out words in
little bursts. "Croaker. This is the . . . last . . . She's done. I feel it.
Coming. Finally."
I did not argue with him, did not question him. My error. We had been through
similar scenes a half dozen times. His strokes were never quite fatal. It
seemed fate had some last role for him in the grand design.
Whatever, he had to work his way through his standard soliloquy. He had to
warn me against hubris because he could not get it into his head that not only
am I no longer the Liberator, the military dictator of all the Taglias; I have
abdicated claim to captaincy of the Black Company. The Captivity did not leave
me rational enough for that task. Nor had my understudy, Murgen, come through
sufficiently unscathed. The burden now rests upon Sleepy's sturdy little
shoulders.
And One-Eye had to ask me to look out for Gota and Tobo. Over and over he
would remind me to watch out for Goblin's wicked tricks even though we had
lost Goblin years ago.
I suspect that, should there be any afterlife at all, those two will meet up
about six seconds after One-Eye croaks and they will pick up their feud right
where they left it in life. In fact, I am a little surprised Goblin has not
been around haunting One-Eye. He threatened to often enough.
Maybe Goblin just cannot find him. Some of the Nyueng Bao say they feel lost
because the shades of their ancestors cannot find them to watch over them and
give advice inside their dreams.
Kina cannot find us, either, apparently. Lady has not had a bad dream in
years.
Or maybe Goblin killed her.
One-Eye beckoned with one desiccated finger. "Closer."
Kneeling in front of him, opening my kit, I was about as close as I could get.
I took his wrist. His pulse was weak and rapid and irregular. I did not get
the impression that he had suffered a stroke.
He murmured, "I am not. A fool. Who doesn't know. When he is. And what. Has
happened. You listen! You watch out. For Goblin. Little Girl. And Tobo. Didn't
see him dead. Left him with. Mother of Deceit."
"Shit!" That never occurred to me. I was not there. I was still one of the
Captured when Goblin stuck the sleeping Goddess with the standard. Only Tobo
and Sleepy had witnessed that. And anything they knew had to be suspect. Kina
was the Queen of Deceivers. "A good idea, old man. Now, what do I have to do
to get you to get up and fetch me a drink?"
Then I started as something that looked like a small black rabbit peeked at me
from under One-Eye's chair. This was a new one. I could call Tobo. He would
know what it was. There are uncounted varieties of the things, huge and small,
some gentle and many definitely not. They just gravitate toward Tobo. In only
a few cases, generally involving the most disagreeable sorts, has he taken
Lady's advice and bound them to his personal service.
The Children of the Dead worry about Tobo. Having suffered a few hundred years
under the heels of the Shadowmasters they are paranoid about outsider
sorcerers.
So far the warlords have remained reasonable. None of them want to spark the
ire of the Soldiers of Darkness. That might cause the Company to align itself
with a rival. Status quo and balance of force are cherished and jealously
nurtured by the File of Nine. Terrible chaos followed the expulsion of the
last Shadowmaster. None of the warlords want the chaos to return, though what
Hsien has now resembles nothing so much as lightly organized anarchy. But not
a one is willing to yield a minimum of power to another authority, either.
One-Eye grinned, revealing dark gums. "Not going to. Trick me. Captain."
"I'm not the Captain anymore. I'm retired. I'm just an old man who pushes
paper as an excuse to keep hanging around with the living. Sleepy is the
boss."
"Still. Management."
"I'm about to manage your scruffy old ass . . . " I trailed off. His eye had
closed. He made a statement by beginning to snore.
Another hoot and holler arose outside, some close by, more far away toward the
shadowgate. The snail shells creaked and rustled and, though I never saw a one
touched by anything, rocked and spun around. Then I heard the distant bray of
a horn.
I rose and retreated, not turning my back. One-Eye's lone remaining pleasure -
- other than staying drunk -- was tripping the unwary with his cane.
Tobo reappeared. He looked ghastly. "Captain . . . Croaker. Sir. I
misunderstood what he tried to tell me."
"What?"
"It wasn't him. It was Nana Gota."
3
An Abode of Ravens:
A Labor of Love
Tobo's grandmother, Ky Gota, had died happy. As happy as the Troll could die,
which was drunker than three owls drowned in a wine cask. She had enjoyed a
vast quantity of extremely high-potency product before she went. I told the
boy, "If it's any consolation she probably didn't know a thing." Although the
evidence suggested she knew exactly what was happening.
I did not fool him. "She knew it was coming. The Greylings were here."
Something behind the still chittered softly in reponse to the sound of his
voice. Like the baobhas, the greylings are a harbinger of death. One of a
great many in Hsien. Some of the things that had been howling in the
wilderness earlier would have been, too.
I said the things you say to the young. "It was probably a blessing. She was
in constant pain and there was nothing I could do for her anymore." The old
woman's body had been a torment to her for as long as I had known her. Her
last few years had been hell.
For a moment Tobo looked like a sad little boy who wanted to bury his face in
his mother's skirt and shed some tears. Then he was a young man whose control
was complete again. "She did live a long life and a fulfilled one, no matter
how much she complained. The family owes One-Eye for that."
Complain she had, often and loudly, to everyone about everything and everyone
else. I had been fortunate enough to miss much of the Gota era by having
gotten myself buried alive for a decade and a half. Such a clever man am I.
"Speaking of family, you'll have to find Doj. And you'd better send word to
your mother. And as soon as you can you'll need to let us know about funeral
arrangements." Nyueng Bao funerary customs seem almost whimsical. Sometimes
they bury their dead, sometimes they burn them, sometimes they wrap them and
hang them in trees. The rules are unclear.
"Doj will make the arrangements. I'm sure the Community will demand something
traditional. In which case my place is somewhere out of the way."
The Community consists of those Nyueng Bao associated with the Black Company
who have not enlisted formally and who have not yet disappeared into the
mysterious reaches of the Land of Unknown Shadows.
"No doubt." The Community are proud of Tobo but custom demands that they look
down on him for his mixed blood and lack of respect for tradition. "Others
will need to know, too. This'll be a time of great ceremony. Your grandmother
is the first female from our world to pass away over here. Unless you count
the white crow." Old Gota seemed much less formidable in death.
Tobo's thoughts were moving obliquely to mine. "There'll be another crow,
Captain. There'll always be another crow. They feel at home around the Black
Company." Which is why the Children of the Dead call our town the Abode of
Ravens. There are always crows, real or unknown.
"They used to stay fat."
The unknown shadows were all around us now. I could see them easily myself,
though seldom clearly and seldom for more than an instant. Moments of intense
emotion draw them out of the shells where Tobo taught them to hide.
A renewed racket arose outside. The little darknesses stirred excitedly, then
scattered, somehow disappearing without ever revealing what they were. Tobo
said, "The dreamwalkers must be hanging around on the other side of the
shadowgate again."
I did not think so. This evening's racket was different.
An articulate cry came from the room where we had left One-Eye. So the old man
had been faking his snooze after all. "I'd better see what he wants. You get
Doj."
"You don't believe it." The old man was agitated now. He was angry enough to
speak clearly, without much huffing and puffing. He threw up a hand. One
wrinkled, twisted ebony digit pointed at something only he could see. "The
doom is coming, Croaker. Soon. Maybe even tonight." Something outside howled
as if to strengthen his argument but he did not hear it.
The hand fell. It rested for several seconds. Then it rose again, one digit
indicating an ornate black spear resting on pegs above the doorway. "It's
done." He had been crafting that death tool for a generation. Its magical
power was strong enough for me to sense whenever I considered it directly.
Normally I am deaf, dumb and blind in that area. I married my own personal
consultant. "You run into. Goblin. Give him. The spear."
"I should just hand it over?"
"My hat, too." One-Eye showed me a toothless grin. For the entirety of my time
with the Company he had worn the biggest, ugliest, dirtiest, most disreputable
black felt hat imaginable. "But you got. To do it. Right." So. He still had
one practical joke to pull even though it would be on a dead man and he would
be dead himself long before it could happen.
There was a scratch at the door. Someone entered without awaiting invitation.
I looked up. Doj, the old swordmaster and priest of the Nyueng Bao Community.
Associated with the Company but not of it for twenty-five years now. I do not
entirely trust him even after so long. I seem to be the only doubter left,
though.
Doj said, "The boy said Gota . . . "
I gestured. "Back there."
He nodded understanding. I would focus on One-Eye because I could do nothing
for the dead. Nor all that much for One-Eye, I feared. Doj asked, "Where is
Thai Dei?"
"At Khang Phi, I assume. With Murgen and Sahra."
He grunted. "I'll send someone."
"Let Tobo send some of his pets." That would get some of them out from under
foot -- and have the additional consequence of reminding the File of Nine, the
master council of warlords, that the Stone Soldiers enjoy unusual resources.
If they could detect those entities at all.
Doj paused at the doorway to the back. "There's something wrong with those
things tonight. They're like monkeys when there's a leopard on the prowl."
Monkeys we know well. The rock apes haunting the ruins lying where Kiaulune
stands in our own world are as pesky and numerous as a plague of locusts. They
are smart enough and deft enough to get into anything not locked up magically.
And they are fearless. And Tobo is too soft of heart to employ his
supernatural friends in a swift educational strike.
Doj vanished through the doorway. He remained spry although he was older than
Gota. He still ran through his fencing rituals every morning. I knew by direct
observation that he could defeat all but a handful of his disciples using
practice swords. I suspect the handful would be surprised unpleasantly if the
duel ever involved real steel.
Tobo is the only one as talented as Doj. But Tobo can do anything, always with
grace and usually with ridiculous ease. Tobo is the child we all think we
deserve.
I chuckled.
One-Eye murmured, "What?"
"Just thinking how my baby grew up."
"That's funny?"
"Like a broken broom handle pounded up the shit chute."
"You should. Learn to appreciate. Cosmic. Practical jokes."
"I . . . "
The cosmos was spared my rancor. The street door opened to someone even less
formal than Uncle Doj. Willow Swan invited himself inside. "Shut it quick!" I
snapped. "That moonlight shining off the top of your head is blinding me." I
could not resist. I recalled him when he was a young man with beautiful long
blond hair, a pretty face and a poorly disguised lust for my woman.
Swan said, "Sleepy sent me. There're rumors."
"Stay with One-Eye. I'll deliver the news myself."
Swan bent forward. "He breathing?"
With his eye shut One-Eye looked dead. Which meant he was laying back in the
weeds hoping to get somebody with his cane. He would remain a vicious little
shit till the moment he did stop breathing.
"He's fine. For now. Just stay with him. And holler if anything changes." I
put my things back in my bag. My knees creaked as I rose. I could not manage
that without putting some of my weight on One-Eye's chair. The gods are cruel.
They should let the flesh age at the rate the spirit does. Sure, some people
would die of old age in a week. But the keepers would hang around forever. And
I would not have all these aches and pains. Either way.
I limped as I left One-Eye's house. My feet hurt.
Things scurried everywhere but where I was looking. Moonlight did not help a
bit.
4
The Grove of Doom:
Night Songs
The drums had begun at sunset, softly, a dark whispering promise of a shadow
of all night falling. Now they roared boldly. True night had come. There was
not even a sliver of moon. The flickering light of a hundred fires set shadows
dancing. It appeared that the trees had pulled up their roots to participate.
A hundred frenzied disciples of the Mother of Night capered with them, their
passion building.
A hundred bound prisoners shivered and wept and fouled themselves, fear
unmanning some who had believed themselves heroic. Their pleas fell upon
unhearing ears.
A looming darkness emerged from the night, dragged by prisoners straining at
cables in the hopeless hope that by pleasing their captors they might yet
survive. Twenty feet tall, the shape proved to be a statue of a woman as black
and glistening as polished ebony. It had four arms. It had rubies for eyes and
crystal fangs for teeth. It wore a necklace of skulls. It wore another
necklace of severed penises. Each taloned hand clutched a symbol of her power
over humanity. The prisoners saw only the noose.
The beat of the drums grew more swift. Their volume rose. The Children of Kina
began to sing a dark hymn. Those prisoners who were devout began to pray to
their own favored gods.
A skinny old man watched from the steps of the temple at the heart of the
摘要：

SoldiersLiveSOLDIERSLIVEbyGlenCookTheNinthChronicleoftheBlackCompanyCONTENTS*AnAbodeofRavens:WhenNoMenDied*AnAbodeofRavens:WhentheBaobhasSang*AnAbodeofRavens:ALaborofLove*TheGroveofDoom:NightSongs*AnAbodeofRavens:Headquarters*AnAbodeofRavens:Suvrin'sNews*AnAbodeofRavens:NightVisitor*Taglios:TroubleF...

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