Glen Cook - Black Company 2-2 - Dreams of Steel

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Dreams of Steel
By Glen Cook
SECOND BOOK OF THE SOUTH
THE FIFTH CHRONICLE OF THE BLACK COMPANY
There were only five candidates now. The idol had moved. Its raised foot had
fallen, crushing one of the heads. Its other foot had risen. The body of the
man who had been two to my left lay beneath it. His head, held by the hair,
dangled from one of the idol's hands. Before the lights had gone out that hand
had clutched a bunch of bones. Another hand that had clutched a sword still
did so, but now that blade glistened. There was blood on the idol's lips and
chin and fangs. Its eyes gleamed.
How had they managed it? Was there some mechanical engine inside the idol? Had
the priest and his assistant done the murder? They would have had to move
fast.
The priests seemed startled, too.
This book is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in it
are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely
coincidental.
DREAMS OF STEEL Copyright (c) 1990 by
Glen Cook
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions
thereof, in any form.
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
49 West 24th Street
New York, N.Y. 10010
Cover art by Keith Berdak
ISBN: 0-812-50210-8
First edition: April 1990
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Keith, because I like his style
Chapter One
Many months have passed. Much has happened and much has slipped from my
memory. Insignificant details have stuck with me while important things have
gotten away. Some things I know only from third parties and more I can only
guess. How often have my witnesses perjured themselves?
It did not occur to me, till this time of enforced inactivity befell me, that
an important tradition was being overlooked, that no one was recording the
deeds of the Company. I dithered then. It seemed a presumption for me to take
up the pen. I have no training. I am no historian nor even much of a writer.
Certainly I don't have Croaker's eye or ear or wit.
So I shall confine myself to reporting facts as I recall them. I hope the tale
is not too much colored by my own presence within it, nor by what it has done
to me.
With that apologia, herewith, this addition to the Annals of the Black
Company, in the tradition of Annalists before me, the Book of Lady.
-Lady, Annalist, Captain
Chapter Two
The elevation was not good. The distance was extreme. But Willow Swan knew
what he was seeing. "They're getting their butts kicked."
Armies contended before the city Dejagore, at the center of a circular, hill-
encompassed plain. Swan and three companions watched.
Blade grunted agreement. Cordy Mather, Swan's oldest friend, said nothing. He
just tried to kick the stuffing out of a rock.
The army they favored was losing.
Swan and Mather were whites, blond and brunette, hailing from Roses, a city
seven thousand miles north of the killing ground. Blade was a black giant of
uncertain origins, a dangerous man with little to say. Swan and Mather had
rescued him from crocodiles a few years earlier. He had stuck. The three were
a team.
Swan cursed softly, steadily, as the battle situation worsened.
The fourth man did not belong. The team would not have had him if he
volunteered. People called him Smoke. Officially, he was the fire marshall of
Taglios, the city-nation whose army was losing. In reality he was the Taglian
court wizard. He was a nut-brown little man whose very existence annoyed Swan.
"That's your army out there, Smoke," Willow growled. "It goes down, you go
down. Bet the Shad-owmasters would love to lay hands on you." Sorceries yowled
and barked on the battlefield. "Maybe make marmalade out of you. Unless you've
cut a deal already."
"Ease up, Willow," Mather said. "He's doing something."
Swan looked at the butternut-colored runt. "Sure enough. But what?"
Smoke had his eyes closed. He mumbled and muttered. Sometimes his voice
crackled and sizzled like bacon in an overheated pan.
"He ain't doing nothing to help the Black Company. You quit talking to
yourself, you old buzzard. We got a problem. Our guys are getting whipped. You
want to try to turn that around? Before I turn you over my knee?"
The old man opened his eyes. He stared across the plain. His expression was
not pleasant. Swan doubted that the little geek's eyes were good enough to
make out details. But you never knew with Smoke. With him everything was mask
and pretense.
"Don't be a moron, Swan. I'm one man, too little and too old. There are
Shadowmasters down there. They can stomp me like a roach."
Swan fussed and grumbled. People he knew were dying.
Smoke snapped, "All I can do-all any of us can do-is attract attention. Do you
really want the Shadowmasters to notice you?"
"They're just the Black Company, eh? They took their pay, they take their
chances? Even if forty thousand Taglians go down with them?"
Smoke's lips shrank into a mean little prune.
On the plain a human tide washed around a mound where the Black Company
standard had been planted for a last stand. The tide swept on toward the
hills.
"You wouldn't be happy about the way things are going, would you?" Swan's
voice was dangerous, no longer carping. Smoke was a political animal, worse
than a crocodile. Crocs might eat their young but their treacheries were
predictable.
Though irked, Smoke replied in a voice almost tender. "They have accomplished
more than we dreamed."
The plain was dense with the dead and dying, man and beast. Mad war elephants
careened around, respecting no allegiance. Only one Taglian legion had
maintained its integrity. It had fought its way to a city gate and was
covering the flight of other Taglians. Flames rose beyond the city from a
military encampment. The Company had scored that much success against the
apparent victors.
Smoke said, "They've lost a battle but they saved Taglios. They slew one of
the Shadowmasters. They've made it impossible for the others to attack
Taglios. Those will spend their remaining troops recapturing Dejagore."
Swan sneered. "Just pardon me if I don't dance for joy. I liked those guys. I
didn't like the way you planned to shaft them."
Smoke's temper was strained. "They weren't fighting for Taglios, Swan. They
wanted to use us to hammer through the Shadowlands to Khatovar. Which could be
worse than a Shadowmasters' conquest."
Swan knew rationalization when he stepped in it. "And because they wouldn't
lick your boots, even if they were willing to save your asses from the
Shadowmasters, you figure it's handy, them getting caught here. A pity, say I.
Would've been some swell show, watching your footwork if they'd come up
winners and you had to deliver your end of the bargain."
"Ease up, Willow," Mather said.
Swan ignored him. "Call me a cynic, Smoke. But I'd bet about anything you and
the Radisha had it scoped out to screw them from the start. Eh? Wouldn't do to
have them slice through the Shadowlands. But why the hell not? I never did get
that part."
"It ain't over yet, Swan," Blade said. "Wait. Smoke going to get his turn to
cry."
The others gawked at Blade. He spoke so seldom that when he did they knew it
meant something. What did he know?
Swan asked, "You see something I missed?"
Cordy snapped, "Damn it, will you calm down?"
"Why the hell should I? The whole damned world is swamped by conniving old
farts like Smoke. They been screwing the rest of us since the gods started
keeping time. Look at this little poof. Keeps whining about how he's got to
lay low and not let the Shadowmasters find out about him. I think that means
he's got no balls. That Lady... You know who she used to be? She had balls
enough to face them. You give that half a think you'll realize how she laid
more on the line than this old freak ever could."
"Calm down, Willow."
"Calm down, hell. It ain't right. Somebody's got to tell old farts like this
to go suck rocks."
Blade grunted agreement. But Blade didn't like anyone in authority.
Swan, not as upset as he put on, noted that Blade was in position to whack the
wizard if he got obnoxious.
Smoke smiled. "Swan, once upon a time all us old farts were young loudmouths
like you."
Mather stepped between them. "Enough! Instead of squabbling, how about we get
out of here before that mess catches up with us?" Remnants of the battle
swirled around the toes of the foothills. "We can gather the garrisons from
the towns north of here and collect everybody at Ghoja."
Swan agreed. Sourly. "Yeah. Maybe some of the Company made it." He glowered at
Smoke.
The old man shrugged. "If some get out they can train a real army. They'd have
time enough now."
"Yeah. And if the Prahbrindrah Drah and the Radisha was to get off their butts
they might even line up a few real allies. Maybe come up with a wizard with a
hair on his ass. One who wouldn't spend his whole life hiding out in the
weeds."
Mather started down the back of the hill. "Come on, Blade. Let them bicker."
After several seconds Smoke confessed, "He's right, Swan. Let's get on with
it."
Willow tossed his long golden hair, looked at Blade. Blade jerked his head
toward the horses below the hill. "All right." Swan took a last look at the
city and plain where the Black Company had died. "But what's right is right
and what's wrong is wrong."
"And what's practical is practical and what's needful is necessary. Let's go."
Swan walked. He would remember that remark. He was determined to have the last
word. "Bullshit, Smoke. That's bullshit. I seen a new side of you today. I
don't like it and I don't trust it. I'm going to watch you like your
conscience."
They mounted up and headed north.
Chapter Three
In those days the Company was in service to the Prahbrindrah Drah of Taglios.
That prince was too easygoing to master a numerous, factious people like the
Taglians. But his natural optimism and forgiving nature were offset by his
sister, the Radisha Drah. A small, dark, hard woman, the Radisha had a will of
sword steel and the conscience of a hurtling stone.
While the Black Company and the Shadowmasters contested possession of
Dejagore, or Stormgard, the Prahbrindrah Drah held an audience three hundred
miles to the north.
The prince stood five and a half feet tall. Though dark, his features were
caucasic. He glowered at the priests and engineers before him. He wanted to
throw them out. But in godridden Taglios no one offended the priesthoods.
He spied his sister signalling from the shadowed rear of the chamber. "Excuse
me." He walked out. Bad manners they would tolerate. He joined the Radisha.
"What is it?"
"Not here."
"Bad news?"
"Not now." The Radisha strode off. "Majarindi looked unhappy."
"He got his hand caught in a monkey trap. He insisted we build a wall because
Shaza has been having holy visions. But once the others demanded a share he
sang a different song. I asked if Shaza had begun having unvisions. He wasn't
amused."
"Good."
The Radisha led her brother through tortuous passages. The palace was ancient.
Additions were cobbled on during every reign. No one knew the labyrinth whole
except Smoke.
The Radisha went to one of the wizard's secret places, a room sheltered from
eavesdroppers by the old man's finest spells. The Prahbrindrah Drah shut the
door. "Well?"
"A pigeon brought a message. From Smoke."
"Bad news?"
"Our mercenaries have been defeated at Stormgard." The Shadowmasters called
Dejagore Stormgard.
"Badly?"
"Is there any other... ?"
"Yes." Before the appearance of the Shadowmasters Taglios had been a pacifist
state. But when that danger first beckoned the Prahbrindrah had exhumed the
ancient strategikons. "Were they annihilated? Routed? How badly did they hurt
the Shadowmasters? Is Taglios in danger?"
"They shouldn't have crossed the Main."
"They had to harry the survivors from Ghoja ford. They're the professionals,
Sis. We said we wouldn't secondguess or interfere. We didn't believe they
could win at Ghoja, so we're way ahead. Give me details."
"A pigeon isn't a condor." The Radisha made a face. "They marched down with a
mob of liberated slaves, took Dejagore by stealth, destroyed Stormshadow and
wounded Shadowspinner. But today Moonshadow appeared with a fresh army.
Casualties were heavy on both sides. Moonshadow may have been killed. But we
lost. Some of the troops retreated into the city. The rest scattered. Most of
the mercenaries, including the captain and his woman, were killed."
"Lady is dead? That's a pity. She was exquisite."
"You're a lustful ape."
"I am, aren't I? But she did stop hearts wherever she went."
"And never noticed. The only man she saw was her captain. That Croaker
character."
"Are you miffed because he only had eyes for her?"
She gave him a savage look.
"What's Smoke doing?"
"Fleeing north. Blade, Swan, and Mather will try to rally the survivors at
Ghoja."
"I don't like that. Smoke should've stayed down there. Rallied them there, to
support the men in the city. You don't give away ground you've gained."
"Smoke is scared the Shadowmasters will find out about him."
"They don't know? That would surprise me." The Prahbrindrah shrugged. "What's
he saving himself for? I'm going down there."
She laughed.
"What?"
"You can't. Those idiot priests would steal everything but your eyes. Stay.
Keep them occupied with their idiot wall. I'll go. And I'll kick Smoke's butt
till he gets off it and does something."
The prince sighed. "You're right. But go quietly. They behave better when they
think you're watching."
"They didn't miss me last time."
"Don't leave me twisting in the wind. They're hard to deal with when they know
more than I do."
"I'll keep them off balance." She patted his arm. "Go shock them with your
turnaround. Work them into a wall building frenzy. Get benevolent toward
whichever cult shows the most productivity. Get them cutting each other's
throats."
The Prahbrindrah grinned boyishly. That was the game he loved. That was the
way to accumulate power. Get the priests to disarm themselves.
Chapter Four
It was a bizarre little parade. At its head was a black thing that could not
decide if it was a tree stump or someone weirdly built carrying a box under
one arm. Behind that a man floated a yard off the ground, feet foremost,
inelegantly sprawled. An arrow had pierced his chest. It still protruded from
his back. He was alive, but barely.
Behind the floating man was another with a lance through him. He drifted a
dozen feet up, alive and in pain, sometimes writhing like an animal with a
broken spine. Two riderless horses followed him, both black stallions bigger
than any war charger.
Crows by the hundred circled above, coming and going like scouts.
The parade climbed the hills east of Stormgard, moving in twilight. Once it
paused, remained motionless twenty minutes while a scatter of Taglian
fugitives passed. They saw nothing. There was magic at work there.
The column continued moving by night. The crows continued flying, formed a
rearguard, watched for something. Several times they cawed at shifting
shadows, but settled down quickly. False alarms?
The party halted ten miles from the beleaguered city. The thing leading spent
hours collecting brush and deadwood, piled it in a deep crack in a granitic
hillside. Then it seized the floating lance, dragged its victim off, stripped
him down.
A bitter, remote, whispering voice exclaimed, "This isn't one of the Taken!"
when the man's mask came off.
The crows became raucous. Discussing? Arguing? The leader asked, "Who are you?
What are you? Where did you come from?"
The injured man did not respond. Maybe he was beyond communication. Maybe he
did not speak that language. Maybe he was stubborn.
Torture produced no answers.
The inquisitor tossed the man into the woodpile, waved a hand. The pile burst
into flame. The stump thing used the lance to keep its victim from escaping.
The burning man had a bottomless well of energy.
There was sorcery at work here.
The burning man was the Shadowmaster Moonshadow. His army had triumphed
outside Stormgard but his own fortune had been inglorious.
The party did not move on till the Shadowmaster was consumed, the fire burned
to ashes and the ashes cooled. The stump thing gathered the ashes. As it
travelled it disposed of those pinch by pinch.
The man with the arrow in him bobbed in the stump thing's wake. The stallions
brought up the rear.
The crows maintained their patrols. Once a large catlike thing came too near
and they went into paroxysms. The stump did something mystical. The black
leopard wandered away, absent of mind.
Chapter Five
A slight figure in ornate black armor strained savagely. A corpse toppled off
the heap of corpses piled upon the figure. The shift in weight made it
possible to wriggle out of the heap. Free, the figure lay motionless for
several minutes, panting inside a grotesque helmet. Then it pulled itself into
a sitting position.
After another minute the figure struggled out of its gauntlets, revealed
delicate hands. Slim fingers plucked at the fastenings holding its helmet.
That came away, too.
Long black hair fell free around a face to stun a man. Inside all that ugly
black steel was a woman.
I have to report those moments that way because I don't recall them at all. I
remember a dark dream. A nightmare featuring a black woman with fangs like a
vampire. Nothing else. My first clear recollection is of sitting beside the
heap of corpses with my helmet in my lap. I was panting, only vaguely aware
that I had gotten out of the pile somehow.
The stench of a thousand cruel gut wounds filled the air like the stink of the
largest, rawest sewer in the world. It was the smell of battlefields. How many
times had I smelled it? A thousand. And still I wasn't used to it.
I gagged. Nothing came up. I had emptied my stomach into my helmet while I was
under the pile. I had a vague recollection of being terrified that I would
drown in my own vomit.
I started shaking. Tears rolled, stinging, hot tears of relief. I had
survived! I had lived ages beyond the measure of most mortals but I had lost
none of my desire for life.
As I caught my breath I tried to put together where I was, what I was doing
there. Besides surviving.
My last clear memories weren't pleasant. I remembered knowing that I was about
to die.
I couldn't see much in the dark but I didn't need to see to know we had lost.
Had the Company turned the tide Croaker would have found me long ago.
Why hadn't the victors?
There were men moving on the battlefield. I heard low voices arguing. Moving
my way slowly. I had to get out of there.
I got up, managed to stumble four steps before I fell on my face, too weak to
move another inch. Thirst was a demon devouring me from the inside out. My
throat was so dry I couldn't whine.
I'd made noise. The looters were quiet now.
They were sneaking toward me, after one more victim. Where was my sword?
I was going to die now. No weapon and no strength to use one if I found one
before they found me.
I could see them now, three men backlighted by a faint glow from Dejagore.
Small men, like most of the Shadowmasters' soldiers. Neither strong nor
particularly skilled, but in my case they needed neither strength nor skill.
Could I play dead? No. They wouldn't be deceived. Corpses would be cool now.
Damn them!
Before they killed me they would do more than just rob me.
They wouldn't kill me. They would recognize the armor. The Shadowmasters
weren't fools. They knew who I'd been. They knew what I carried inside my
head, treasures they dreamed about getting out. There would be rewards for my
capture.
Maybe there are gods. A racket broke out behind the looters. Sounded like a
sally from Dejagore, some kind of spoiling raid. Mogaba wasn't sitting on his
hands waiting for the Shadowmasters to come to him.
One of the looters said something in a normal voice. Someone told him to shut
up. The third man entered his opinion. An argument ensued. The first man
didn't want to investigate the uproar. He'd had enough fighting.
The others overruled him.
The fates were kind. Two responsible soldiers handed me a life.
I lay where I'd fallen, resting for several minutes before I got onto hands
and knees and crawled back to the mound of bodies. I found my sword, an
ancient and consecrated blade created by Carqui in the younger days of the
Domination. A storied blade, but no one, not even Croaker, had heard its tale.
I crawled toward the hummock where, when I'd seen him last, my love had been
making his final stand, just him and Murgen and the Company standard, trying
to stem the rout. It seemed an all night trek. I found a dead soldier with
water in his canteen. I drained it and went on. My strength grew as I crept.
By the time I reached the hummock I could totter along upright.
I found nothing there. Just dead men. Croaker was not among them. The Company
standard was gone. I felt hollow. Had the Shadowmasters taken him?
They would want him badly for crushing their army at Ghoja, for taking
Dejagore, for killing Stormshadow.
I could not believe they had him. It had taken me too long to. find him. No
god, no fate, could be so cruel.
I cried.
The night grew quiet. The sortie had withdrawn. The looters would return now.
I started moving, stumbled into a dead elephant and almost shrieked, thinking
I had walked right into a monster.
The elephants had carried all kinds of clutter. Some might be useful. I
scrounged a few pounds of dried food, a skin of water, a small jar of poison
for arrowheads, a few coins, whatever caught my fancy. Then I walked
northward, determined to reach the hills before sunrise. I discarded half my
plunder before I got there.
I hurried. Enemy patrols would be out looking for important bodies come first
light.
What could I do now, besides survive? I was the last of the Black Company.
There was nothing left.... Something came into me like a lost memory
resurfacing. I could turn back time. I could become what I had been.
Trying not to think did not help. I remembered. And the more I remembered the
more angry I became. Anger shaped me till all my thoughts were of revenge.
As I started into the hills I surrendered. Those monsters who had raped my
dreams had written their own decrees of doom. I would do whatever it took to
requite them.
Chapter Six
Longshadow paced a room ablaze with light so brilliant he seemed a dark spirit
trapped in the mouth of the sun. He clung to that one crystal walled, mirrored
chamber where no shadow ever formed unless called forth by dire exigency. His
fear of shadows was pathological.
The chamber was the highest in the tallest tower of the fortress Overlook,
south of Shadowcatch, a city on the southern edge of the world. South of
Overlook lay a plateau of glittering stone where isolated pillars stood like
forgotten supports for the sky. Though construction had been underway for
seventeen years, Overlook was incomplete. If Longshadow did finish it, no
force material or supernatural would be able to penetrate it.
Strange, deadly, terrifying things hungered for him, lusted for freedom from
the plain of glittering stone. They were shadow things that could catch up
with a man as suddenly as death if he didn't cling to the light.
Longshadow's sorcery had shown him the battle at Stormgard, four hundred miles
north of Shadowcatch. He was pleased. His rivals Moonshadow and Stormshadow
had perished. Shadowspinner had been injured. A touch here, a touch there,
subtly, would keep Shadowspinner weak.
But he couldn't be killed. Oh, no. Not yet. Dangerous forces were at work.
Shadowspinner would have to be the breakwater against which the storm spent
its energies.
Those mercenaries in Stormgard should be given every chance to sap Spinner's
troop strength. He was far too strong now that he had possession of all three
northern Shadow armies.
Subtlety. Subtlety. Each move had to be made with care. Spinner wasn't stupid.
He knew who his most dangerous enemy was. If he rid himself of the Taglians
and their Free Company leaders he'd turn on Overlook immediately.
And she was out there somewhere, shuffling counters in her own game, not in
the ripeness of her power but deadly as a krite even so. And there was the
woman whose knowledge could be invaluable, alone, a treasure to be harvested
by any adventurer.
He needed a catspaw. He couldn't leave Overlook. The shadows were out there
waiting, infinitely patient.
He caught a flicker of darkness from the corner of his eye. He squealed and
flung himself away.
It was a crow, just a damned curious crow fluttering around outside.
A catspaw. There was a power in the swamps north of that miserable Taglios. It
festered with grievances real and imagined. It could be seduced.
It was time he lured that power into the game.
But how, without leaving Overlook?
Something stirred on the plain of glittering stone.
The shadows were watching, waiting. They sensed the rising intensity of the
game.
Chapter Seven
I slept in a tangle of brush in a hollow. I'd fled through olive groves and
precariously perched hillside paddies, running out of hope, till I'd stumbled
onto that pocket wilderness in a ravine. I was so far gone I'd just crawled
in, hoping fate would be kind.
A crow's call wakened me from another terrible dream. I opened my eyes. The
sun reached in through the brush. It dappled me with spots of light. I'd hoped
nobody could see me in there but that proved a false hope.
Someone was moving around the edge of the bushes. I glimpsed one, then
another. Damn! The Shadowmasters' men. They moved back a little and whispered.
I saw them for just a moment but they seemed troubled, less like hunters than
the hunted. Curious.
They'd spotted me, I knew. Otherwise they wouldn't be back there behind me,
murmuring too low for me to catch what they said.
I couldn't turn toward them without showing them I knew they were there. I
didn't want to startle them. They might do something I'd regret. The crow
called again. I started turning my head slowly.
I froze.
There was another player here, a dirty little brown man in a filthy loincloth
and tattered turban. He squatted behind the brush. He looked like one of the
slaves Croaker had freed after our victory at Ghoja. Did the soldiers know he
was there?
Did it matter? He wasn't likely to be any help.
I was lying on my right side, on my arm. My fingers tingled. My arm was asleep
but the sensation reminded me that my talent had shown signs of freshening
since we'd come down past the waist of the world. I hadn't had a chance to
test it for weeks.
I had to do something. Or they would. My sword lay inches from my hand....
Golden Hammer.
It was a child's spell, an exercise, not a weapon at all, just as a butcher
knife isn't. Once it would have been no more work than dropping a rock. Now it
was as hard as plain speech for a stroke victim. I tried shaping the spell in
my mind. The frustration! The screaming frustration of knowing what to do and
being unable to do it.
But it clicked. Almost the way it had back when. Amazed, pleased, I whispered
the words of power, moved my fingers. The muscles remembered!
The Golden Hammer formed in my left hand.
I jumped up, flipped it, raised my sword. The glowing hammer flew true. The
soldier made a stabbed-pig sound and tried to fend it off. It branded its
shape on his chest.
It was an ecstatic moment. Success with that silly child's spell was a major
triumph over my handicap.
My body wouldn't respond to my will. Too stiff, too battered and bruised for
flight, I tried to charge the second soldier. Mostly I stumbled toward him. He
gaped, then he ran. I was astonished.
I heard a sound like the cough of a tiger behind me.
A man came out of nowhere down the ravine. He threw something. The fleeing
soldier pitched onto his face and didn't move.
I got out of the brush and placed myself so I could watch the killer and the
dirty slave who had made the tiger cough. The killer was a huge man. He wore
tatters of Taglian legionnaire's garb.
The little man came around the brush slowly, considered my victim. He was
impressed. He said something apologetic in Taglian, then something excited,
rapidly in dialect I found unfamiliar, to the big man, who had begun searching
his victim. I caught a phrase here and there, all with a cultish sound but
uncertain in this context. I couldn't tell if he was talking about me or
praising one of his gods. I heard "the Foretold" and "Daughter of Night" and
"the Bride" and "Year of the Skulls." I'd heard a "Daughter of Shadow" and a
"Year of the Skulls" before somewhere, in the religious chatter of god-ridden
Taglians, but I didn't know their significance.
The big man grunted. He wasn't impressed. He just cursed the dead soldier,
kicked him. "Nothing."
The little man fawned. "Your pardon, Lady. We've been killing these dogs all
morning, trying to raise a stake. But they're poorer than I was as a slave."
"You know me?"
"Oh, yes, Mistress. The Captain's Lady." He emphasized those last two words,
separately and heavily. He bowed three times. Each time his right thumb and
forefinger brushed a triangle of black cloth that peeped over the top of his
loincloth. "We stood guard while you slept. We should have realized you would
need no protection. Forgive us our presumption."
Gods, did he smell. "Have you seen anyone else?"
"Yes, Mistress. A few, from afar. Running, most of them."
"And the Shadowmasters' soldiers?"
"They search, but with no enthusiasm. Their masters didn't send many. A
thousand like these pigs." He indicated the man I had dropped. His partner was
searching the body. "And a few hundred horsemen. They must be busy with the
city."
"Mogaba will give them hell if he can, buying time for others to get clear."
The big man said, "Nothing on this toad either, jamadar."
The little man grunted.
Jamadar? It's the Taglian word for captain. The little man had used it
earlier, with a different intonation, when he'd called me the Captain's Lady.
I asked, "Have you seen the Captain?"
The pair exchanged looks. The little man stared at the ground. "The Captain is
dead, Mistress. He died trying to rally the men to the standard. Ram saw it.
An arrow through the heart."
I sat down on the ground. There was nothing to say. I'd known it. I'd seen it
happen, too. But I hadn't wanted to believe it. Till that instant, I realized,
I'd been carrying some small hope that I'd been wrong.
Impossible that I could feel such loss and pain. Damn him, Croaker was just a
man! How did I get so involved? I never meant it to get complicated.
This wasn't accomplishing anything. I got up. "We lost a battle but the war
goes on. The Shadowmasters will rue the day they decided to bully Taglios.
What are your names?"
The little man said, "I'm Narayan, Lady." He grinned. I'd get thoroughly sick
of that grin. "A joke on me. It's a Shadar name." He was Gunni, obviously. "Do
I look it?" He jerked his head at the other man, who was Shadar. Shadar men
tend to be tall and massive and hairy. This one had a head like a ball of
kinky wire with eyes peering out. "I was a vegetable peddler till the
Shadowmasters came to Gondowar and enslaved everyone who survived the fight
for the town."
That would have been before we'd come to Taglios, last year, when Swan and
Mather had been doing their inept best to stem the first invasion.
"My friend is Ram. Ram was a carter in Taglios before he joined the legions."
"Why did he call you jamadar?"
Narayan glanced at Ram, flashed a grin filled with bad teeth, leaned close to
me, whispered, "Ram isn't very bright. Strong as an ox he is, and tireless,
but slow."
I nodded but wasn't satisfied. They were two odd birds. Shadar and Gunni
didn't run together. Shadar consider themselves superior to everyone. Hanging
around with a Gunni would constitute a defilement of spirit. And Narayan was
low-caste Gunni. Yet Ram showed him deference.
Neither harbored any obviously wicked designs toward me. At the moment any
companion was an improvement on travelling alone. I told them, "We ought to
get moving. More of them could show up.... What is he doing?"
Ram had a ten-pound rock. He was smashing the leg bones of the man he'd
killed. Narayan said, "Ram. That's enough. We're leaving."
Ram looked puzzled. He thought. Then he shrugged and discarded the rock.
Narayan didn't explain his actions. He told me, "We saw one fair-sized group
this morning, maybe twenty men. Maybe we can catch up."
"That would be a start." I realized I was starving. I hadn't eaten since
before the battle. I shared out what I'd taken off the dead elephant. It
didn't help much. Ram went at it like it was a feast, now completely
indifferent to the dead.
Narayan grinned. "You see? An ox. Come. Ram, carry her armor."
Two hours later we found twenty-three fugitives on a hilltop. They were beaten
men, apathetic, so down they didn't care if they got away. Few still had their
weapons. I didn't recognize any of them. Not surprising. We'd gone into battle
with forty thousand.
摘要：

DreamsofSteelByGlenCookSECONDBOOKOFTHESOUTHTHEFIFTHCHRONICLEOFTHEBLACKCOMPANYTherewereonlyfivecandidatesnow.Theidolhadmoved.Itsraisedfoothadfallen,crushingoneoftheheads.Itsotherfoothadrisen.Thebodyofthemanwhohadbeentwotomyleftlaybeneathit.Hishead,heldbythehair,dangledfromoneoftheidol'shands.Beforeth...

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