Glen Cook - Black Company 3-1 - Bleak Seasons

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Bleak Seasons
BLEAK SEASONS
by Glen Cook
The Sixth Chronicle of the Black Company
CONTENTS
* Prologue
* Chapter 1
* Chapter 2
* Chapter 3
* Chapter 4
* Chapter 5
* Chapter 6
* Chapter 7
* Chapter 8
* Chapter 9
* Chapter 10
* Chapter 11
* Chapter 12
* Chapter 13
* Chapter 14
* Chapter 15
* Chapter 16
* Chapter 17
* Chapter 18
* Chapter 19
* Chapter 20
* Chapter 21
* Chapter 22
* Chapter 23
* Chapter 24
* Chapter 25
* Chapter 26
* Chapter 27
* Chapter 28
* Chapter 29
* Chapter 30
* Chapter 31
* Chapter 32
* Chapter 33
* Chapter 34
* Chapter 35
* Chapter 36
* Chapter 37
* Chapter 38
* Chapter 39
* Chapter 40
* Chapter 41
* Chapter 42
* Chapter 43
* Chapter 44
* Chapter 45
* Chapter 46
* Chapter 47
* Chapter 48
* Chapter 49
* Chapter 50
* Chapter 51
* Chapter 52
* Chapter 53
* Chapter 54
* Chapter 55
* Chapter 56
* Chapter 57
* Chapter 58
* Chapter 59
* Chapter 60
* Chapter 61
* Chapter 62
* Chapter 63
* Chapter 64
* Chapter 65
* Chapter 66
* Chapter 67
* Chapter 68
* Chapter 69
* Chapter 70
* Chapter 71
* Chapter 72
* Chapter 73
* Chapter 74
* Chapter 75
* Chapter 76
* Chapter 77
* Chapter 78
* Chapter 79
* Chapter 80
* Chapter 81
* Chapter 82
* Chapter 83
* Chapter 84
* Chapter 85
* Chapter 86
* Chapter 87
* Chapter 88
* Chapter 89
* Chapter 90
* Chapter 91
* Chapter 92
* Chapter 93
* Chapter 94
* Chapter 95
* Chapter 96
* Chapter 97
* Chapter 98
* Chapter 99
* Chapter 100
* Chapter 101
* Epilogue
next
Incessant wind sweeps the plain. It mutters across grey pavements that sweep
from horizon to horizon. It sings around scattered black pillars, a chorus of
ghosts. It tumbles leaves and scatters dust come from afar. It teases the hair
of a corpse that has lain undisturbed for a generation, mummifying. Impishly,
the gale tosses a leaf into the cadaver's silently screaming mouth, tugs it
away again. The wind carries the breath of winter. Lightning leaps from pillar
to ebon pillar like a child skittering from base to base in a game of tag. For
a moment there is color on that spectral plain. The pillars might be mistaken
for relics of a fallen city. They are not. They are too few and too randomly
placed. Nor has a one ever fallen, though many have been gnawed deeply by the
teeth of the hungry wind.
Chapter 1
. . . fragments . . .
. . . just blackened fragments, crumbling between my fingers.
Browned page corners that reveal half a dozen words in a crabbed hand, their
context no longer known.
All that remains of two volumes of the Annals. A thousand hours of labor. Four
years of history. Gone forever.
Or are they? I do not want to go back. I do not want to relive the horror. I
do not want to reclaim the pain. There is pain too deep to withstand right
here, right now. There is no way to recapture the totality of that awfulness,
anyway. The mind and heart, safely over to the farther shore, simply refuse to
encompass the enormity of the voyage.
And there is no time. There is a war on.
Always there is a war on.
Uncle Doj wants something. Just as well to stop now. Teardrops make the ink
run.
He is going to make me drink some strange philtre.
Fragments . . .
. . . all around, fragments of my work, my life, my love and my pain,
scattered in this bleak season . . .
And in the darkness, shards of time.
Chapter 2
Hey, there! Welcome to the city of the dead. Don't mind those guys staring.
Ghosts don't see a lot of strangers, at least of a friendly persuasion. You're
right. They do look hungry. That happens during these siege things.
Try not to look too much like a lamb roast.
Think that's a joke? Stay away from the Nar.
Welcome to Dejagore, what the Taglians call this deathtrap. The teeny brown
Shadowlanders the Black Company grabbed it from call it Stormgard. People who
actually live here always called it Jaicur even when that was a crime. And who
knows what the Nyueng Bao call it. And who cares, eh? They aren't talking and
they aren't part of the equation anyway.
That's one of them. That rascal there, no meat on him and a skull face.
Everybody around here is some shade of brown but theirs is different. It has a
grey cast to it. Almost deathly. You won't mistake a Nyueng Bao for anything
else.
Their eyes are like polished coal no fire will ever warm.
That noise?
Sounds like Mogaba, the Nar and the First Legion rooting out Shadowlanders
again. Some get inside almost every night. They are like field mice. You just
can't get rid of them all.
Found some the other day that had been in hiding since the Company took the
city.
How about that smell out there? It was worse before the Shadowlanders started
burying the bodies. Maybe a shovel was a little too complicated a machine.
Those long mounds that radiate from the city like spokes have corpses stacked
like cordwood inside. Sometimes they didn't pile the dirt on deep enough and
the gasses of corruption burst the mounds open. That's when you hope the wind
is blowing their way.
You see how positively they are thinking, all the not-yet-filled-trenches they
are digging. A lot of the dirt goes into the ramps.
The elephants are the worst. They take forever to rot. They tried burning them
once, but all that did was irritate the buzzards. So where they could they
just dragged the bodies over and incorporated them into their ramps.
Who? The ugly little guy with the uglier hat? That is One-Eye. You must have
been warned about him.
How come One-Eye? On account of the eye patch. Clever, huh?
The other runt is Goblin. You should have been warned about him, too. No?
Well, stay out of their way. All the time is best, but especially if they are
arguing, and most particularly if they have been drinking. As wizards go they
are no earthshakers but they are more than you will be able to handle.
Puny as they are, they are the main reason the Shadowlanders have stayed out
there in the country roughing it, leaving the wallowable luxuries of the city
to the Taglian troops and Black Company.
No, now pay attention. Goblin is the white one. All right, you're right, he is
overdue for his annual bath. Goblin is the one who looks like a toad. One-Eye
is the one with the hat and the patch.
The guys in the once-upon-a-time-they-were-white tunics are Taglian soldiers.
Every day now every one of them asks himself what damned fool notion made him
enroll in the legions.
The folks wearing the colored sheets and unhappy expressions are locals.
Jaicuri.
Fancy this. When the Company and the legions swooped down from the north and
surprised Stormshadow they hailed the newcomers as liberators. They strew the
streets with rose petals and favorite daughters.
Now the only reason they don't stab their liberators in the back is that the
alternative is worse. Now they are alive enough to starve and be abused.
Shadowspinner is not famous for kindness and kissing babies.
The kids all over? Those almost happy and fat urchins? Nyueng Bao. All Nyueng
Bao.
The Jaicuri nearly stopped making babies after the Shadowmasters came. Most of
the few that were born failed to survive the hard times since. The handful
still breathing are protected more fiercely than any treasure. You won't find
them running naked through the streets, squealing and totally ignoring
strangers.
Who are the Nyueng Bao? You never heard of them?
It is a good question. And a hard one to answer.
The Nyueng Bao don't talk to outsiders except through their Speaker but the
word is that they are religious pilgrims who were on the homeward leg of a
once-in-a-generation hadj who got trapped by circumstance. The Taglian
soldiers say they hail from vast river delta swamps west of Taglios. They are
a primitive, minuscule minority abhorred by the majority Gunni, Vehdna, and
Shadar religions.
The whole Nyueng Bao people makes the pilgrimage. And the whole people got
caught right in the deep shit here in Dejagore.
They need to work on their timing. Or they should sharpen their skills at
appeasing their gods.
The Black Company cut a deal with the Nyueng Bao. Goblin and their Speaker
gobbled for half an hour and it was settled. The Nyueng Bao would ignore the
Black Company and Taglians for whom the Company is responsible. The Nyueng Bao
would be ignored in turn.
It works. Mostly.
Their men are a sort you don't want to upset. They don't take shit from
anybody.
They never start anything except, according to the Taglians, by being too
damned stubborn to do what they are told.
Sounds like One-Eye style reasoning at work there.
Chapter 3
Just kick those crows. They're getting too goddamn bold! Think they own the
place . . . Hey! You got one. Grab it! They aren't good eating but they are a
sight better than no eating at all.
Shit. Got away. Hell, that happens. Head for the citadel. You get your best
look at the layout from up there.
Those guys? They are Company. Never guess, huh? White guys down here? The one
with the wild hair is Big Bucket. He turned into a pretty fair sergeant. He is
just crazy enough. With him are Otto and Hagop. They have been around longer
than anybody but Goblin and One-Eye. Those two have been Old Crew for
generations. One-Eye ought to be sneaking up on two hundred.
That bunch is Company, too. Shirking work. The antique lunger is Wheezer. Not
much good for anything. How he got through the big brawl no one knows. They
say he busted heads with the best of them.
The other two black guys are the Geek and the Freak. No telling why. Nothing
wrong with them. Look like a couple of rubbed ebony statues, don't they?
You think these names just come out of a hat? They earn them the hard way.
Usually they come out from under One-Eye's hat, really. Yeah, they probably
have real names. But they have been called by nicknames so long even they have
trouble remembering.
Goblin and One-Eye are the main ones not to forget. And to remember not to put
behind you. They do not deal well with temptation.
This is Glimmers Like Dewdrops Street. Nobody knows why. A real mouthful,
right? You ought to hear it in Jaicuri. A jawbreaker. This is the route the
Company took coming in to snatch the tower. Maybe they will rename it Runs
With Blood Street.
Yeah, the Company charged through here in the heart of the night, killing
anything that moved, and jammed in there before they had any idea what was
happening. With Shapeshifter's help they roared on up the tower where they let
him help finish off Stormshadow before they tagged him.
It was an old Company grudge. They owed Shifter from another generation, when
Shifter, helping Soulcatcher break the city's resistance, murdered One-Eye's
brother Tom-Tom when the Company was in service to the Syndic of Beryl.
Croaker, One-Eye and Goblin, Otto and Hagop are the only guys left from those
days. Hell, Croaker is gone now. Isn't he? History-worshipping slob is buried
out there in one of those mounds. Fertilizing the plain. Mogaba is the Old Man
now. Sort of, in his own mind.
Those who form it come and go but the Company is forever. Every brother, great
or small, is a snack just not yet snapped up by the devouring maw of time.
Those big black monster men watching the gate are the Nar. They are
descendants of the Black Company of centuries ago. Scary beasts, aren't they?
Mogaba and a whole herd of his pals joined the Company quest at Gea-Xle. The
Old Crew have had no pleasure of them.
You mix the whole crowd up and squeeze them dry, you could not come up with
two ounces of sense of humor.
There used to be a lot more of them than there are now but they keep getting
themselves killed. They are bone crazy, the whole lot. For them the Company is
a religion. Only their Company is not the Black Company of the Old Crew. That
becomes more apparent almost by the hour.
All Nar stand more than six feet tall. All Nar run like the wind and leap like
gazelles. Mogaba chose only the most athletic and warriorly to join the quest
for Khatovar. All the Nar are quick as cats and strong as gorillas. All the
Nar use their weapons like they were born with them in their hands.
The rest? The ones who call themselves the Old Crew? Yeah. It is true. The
Company is more than a job. If it was just a job, just selling swords to
whoever would pay, the Black Company would not be in this part of the world.
There was work a plenty in the north. The world never lacks for potentates who
want to bully their subjects or neighbors.
The Company is family for those who belong. The Company is home. The Company
is a nation of outcasts, alone and defying the whole world.
Now the Company is trying to complete its cycle of life. It is on a quest in
search of its birthplace, fabled Khatovar. But all the world seems determined
that Khatovar shall be unattainable, a virgin forever hidden behind a veil of
shadow.
The Company is home, sure, but Croaker was the only one who ever went
completely misty-eyed over that damned angle.
For him the Black Company was a mystery cult though he never went as far as
Mogaba and made it a holy calling.
Watch your step. They still don't have all the mess cleaned out from the last
attack. If you couldn't tell by the smell. The Jaicuri don't help much
anymore. Maybe it is lack of civic pride.
The Nyueng Bao? They are just here. They stay out of the way. They have this
notion that they can stay neutral. They will learn. Shadowspinner is going to
teach them. Nobody stays neutral in this world. The best you can do is choose
your spot to jump in.
Little out of shape? You will come around. A few weeks running hither and yon,
blunting Shadowspinner's probes and hustling out on Mogaba's spoiling raids,
will get you as sharp as a Nyueng Bao sword.
You thought sieges were all just laying around relaxing and waiting the other
guy out?
Man, this other guy is a foamy mouth lunatic.
And not just nuts. He is a sorcerer. A major player, though he hasn't shown
much here. Before the Old Man got himself offed in the big slugfest that
trapped everyone here he hurt Spinner real bad. The old devil just hasn't been
himself since. Poor baby.
This is it. Top of the tower. And there is the whole stinking burg, laid out
like it is on one of those sand tables Lady always liked.
Oh, yeah. Those rumors have made it here, too. They started with some
Shadowlander prisoners. Maybe that was Kina up north. Or something. But it
could not have been Lady. She died right out there. Fifty guys saw her taken
down. Half of them got killed trying to rescue her.
How can you say that? You can't be sure? How many eyewitnesses does it take?
She is dead. The Old Man is dead. They're all dead, them what did not get
inside before Mogaba sealed the gates.
The whole mob is dead. All but the crowd in here. And they are caught between
lunatics. It's a tossup who is crazier, Mogaba or Shadowspinner.
You see it all? That is it. Dejagore enduring the siege of the Shadowmasters.
Not real impressive, is it? But every one of those burned areas memorializes a
ferocious hand to hand, house to house negotiation with the Shadowlanders.
Fires start easily in Dejagore.
Hell is supposed to be hot, isn't it?
Chapter 4
. . . who I am, on the improbably remote chance that my scribblings do
survive. I am Murgen, Standardbearer of the Black Company, though I bear the
shame of having lost the standard in battle. I am keeping unofficial Annals
because Croaker is dead, One-Eye won't, and hardly anyone else can read or
write. I was the heir Croaker trained. I will do it even without official
sanction.
I will be your guide for a few months or weeks or days, however long it takes
the Shadowlanders to force our present predicament to its inevitable end.
Nobody inside these walls is going to get out of this. There are too many of
them and too few of us. Our sole advantage is that our commander is as mad as
theirs. That makes us unpredictable. Don't add much hope, though.
Mogaba will not give up as long as he personally is capable of hanging onto
something with one hand while he throws rocks with the other.
I expect my writings to blow away on a dark wind, never to be touched by
another eye. Or they might become the tinder Shadowspinner uses to light the
pyre under the last man he murders after taking Dejagore.
If anyone does find this, brother, we begin. This is the Book of Murgen, last
of the Annals of the Black Company. The long tale winds down.
I will die lost and frightened in a world so alien I cannot understand a tenth
of it when I focus all my soul. It is so old.
Times lies heavily here. Two thousand-year-old traditions underpin incredible
absurdities taken completely for granted. Dozens of races and cultures and
religions exist in a mix that should be volatile but has persisted so long
that conflicts are just reflexive twitches in an ancient body mostly too tired
to bother anymore.
Taglios is only one large principality. There are scores more, mostly now in
the Shadowlands, all pretty similar.
The major peoples are the Gunni, the Shadar, and the Vehdna, names which which
define religion, race and culture all at once. The Gunni are the most numerous
and widespread. Gunni temples, to a bewilderingly broad pantheon, are so
numerous you're seldom out of sight of one.
Physically, Gunni are small and dark but not black like the Nar. Gunni men
wear toga-like robes, weather permitting. Their bright mix of colors declare
caste, cult, and professional alliances. Women, too, dress brightly, but in
several layers of wraparound cloth. They veil their faces if unmarried, though
marriages are made early. They wear their dowries as jewelry. Before they go
out they illustrate their foreheads with the caste/cult/professional markings
of both their husbands and their fathers. I will never decipher those
hieroglyphs.
Shadar are paler, like heavily tanned whites from the north. They are big,
usually over six feet. They do not shave or pluck their beard, unlike the
Gunni. Some sects never cut their hair. Bathing is not forbidden but it is a
vice seldom indulged. Shadar all dress in grey and wear turbans to define
their status. They eat meat. Gunni do not. I have never seen a Shadar woman.
Maybe they find their babies under cabbage leaves.
The Vehdna are the least numerous of the major Taglian ethnic groups. They are
as light as the Shadar but smaller, more lightly built, with ferocious
features. They share none of the Shadar's spartan values. Their religion
forbids almost everything, rules honored in the breach quite often. They like
a little color in their costume, though not bright like the Gunni. They wear
pantaloons and real shoes. Even the poorest conceal their bodies and wear
something atop their heads. Low-caste Gunni wear nothing but loincloths.
Married Vehdna women wear only black. You can see nothing but their eyes.
Unmarried Vehdna women you don't see at all.
Only the Vehdna believe in an afterlife. And that only for men except for a
few female warrior saints and daughters of prophets who had balls big enough
to be honorary men.
Nyueng Bao, rarely seen, usually wear loose-fitting long-sleeve pullover
shirts and baggy lightweight pants, generally black, men and women alike.
Children go naked.
Any city down here is glorious chaos.
It is always a holy day for somebody.
Chapter 5
From the citadel tower it is obvious that Dejagore is a complete contrivance.
Of course, most walled cities are shaped by the probability that, part of the
time, neighboring states will be managed by thugs. Your own city's masters
will never be worse than benevolent despots, of course, and their worst
ambition will be to heighten the hometown's glory.
Until the appearance of the Shadowmasters one short generation ago war was an
alien concept throughout this part of the world. It had seen neither armies
nor soldiers in all the centuries since the Black Company's departure.
Into this improbable paradise came the Shadowmasters, lords of darkness from
the far reaches of the earth who brought with them all the wolves of the old
nightmare. Soon inept armies were about. They stalked unprepared kingdoms like
great cruel behemoths even the gods could not stay. The dark tide spread.
Cities crumbled. A lucky few the Shadowmasters chose to rebuild. The peoples
of the newly-founded Shadowlands were given their options: obedience or death.
Jaicur was reborn as Stormgard, seat of the Shadowmaster Stormshadow, she who
could bring the winds and thunder howling and bellowing in the darkness. She
who had borne the name Stormbringer in another age and place.
First Stormshadow raised a mound forty feet high on top of the ruins of
captured Jaicur, at the heart of a plain she had flattened absolutely by
slaves and prisoners of war. Earth for the mound came from the ring of hills
completely surrounding the plain. With the mound complete and faced on its
outer sides with several layers of imported stone, Stormshadow built her new
city up top. And that she surrounded with walls another forty feet high. She
did not overlook the latest theories about towers for enfilading fire and
barbicans to protect her elevated gates.
All the Shadowmasters seemed driven by a paranoid need to make themselves safe
in their home places.
Never once in her planning, though, did she take into account the possibility
that she might have to resist the onslaught of the Black Company.
I wish we were half as wicked as I talk.
Dejagore has four gates. Each stands at one point of the compass rose. Each is
at the end of a paved highway running straight in from the hills. Only the
road from the south carries any traffic these days.
Mogaba has sealed three gates, leaving only sally ports which are guarded by
his Nar at all times. Mogaba is determined to fight. He is just as determined
that not one of our raggedy-ass Taglian legionnaires will run off and not go
down with him.
None of us, be we Black Company Old Crew, Nar, Jaicuri, Taglian, Nyueng Bao,
or someone else who had the bad luck to get caught here, is going to get out
alive. Not unless Shadowspinner and his gang get so bored they go looking for
someone else to bully. Right. You've got the eight and ten of swords and to go
down you're going to bet your ass on pulling the nine.
Your chances of pulling that nine are better than ours of getting out of here.
The fortified encampment of the Shadowlanders stands south of the city. It is
so close we can reach it with our heavy artillery. You can see charred timbers
where we tried to burn them out the day of the big battle. We have raided them
a few times since then, too, but no longer have the strength to risk.
We can't seem to discourage Shadowspinner, though.
Like most warlords he doesn't let reality get in the way of his doing whatever
he wants to do.
The artillery gives them a wake-up five nights out of five, pick a random
time. That keeps them cranky and tired and a lot less effective whenever they
attack. Trouble is, so much effort keeps us tired and cranky, too. And we have
other projects going as well.
Shadowspinner is a puzzle. He is not the first of his kind in Company
experience. The heavyweight killers in our past, though, when faced with a
situation like this, would have stomped on Dejagore like jumping on an anthill
before looking for a real challenge. But here lightweights Goblin and One-Eye
摘要：

BleakSeasonsBLEAKSEASONSbyGlenCookTheSixthChronicleoftheBlackCompanyCONTENTS*Prologue*Chapter1*Chapter2*Chapter3*Chapter4*Chapter5*Chapter6*Chapter7*Chapter8*Chapter9*Chapter10*Chapter11*Chapter12*Chapter13*Chapter14*Chapter15*Chapter16*Chapter17*Chapter18*Chapter19*Chapter20*Chapter21*Chapter22*Cha...

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