She Is the Darkness: Book Two of Glittering Stone: A Novel of the Black Company (15 page)

Croaker took the cavalry and me and raced ahead of the army. Fleeing
Shadowlanders fell to our lances. Opposition was spotty. Our foragers spread
out. The idea was to scavenge whatever supplies were available quickly so we
could keep the main force concentrated once it came out of the mountains.

I kept thinking how we had done this same thing after our unexpected victory at
Ghoja Ford years ago. But when I mentioned that to Croaker he just shrugged and
said, “This is different. There aren’t any armies they can bring up. There
aren’t any new sorcerers they can bring out of the woodwork. Are there?”

“They don’t need to. Between them Longshadow and the Howler can eat us alive. If
they decide to do it.”

We entered a moderate sized town that was absolutely empty of people. Nor had
there been many there before our appearance in the region. The earthquake had
not been kind.

We did find enough shelter to get in out of the cold. We got fires going, which
was maybe not a brilliant idea tactically. Nobody warm wanted to go outside
again.

This was a problem that would be universal among our troops. Hunger would be the
only force capable of keeping the men moving.

It had been a week since I parted with Smoke. I missed him more than I had
thought possible a week ago. I had convinced myself that I no longer needed him
to deal with my pain. But that had been while he was always there and I was
always out roaming the ghostworld.

When you are riding around the east end of hell, trying to keep your mind off
the fact that you are freezing your ass off while starving to death, you tend to
think about your other troubles.

My big one came back with a vengeance.

The only good of the venture, so far, was the humor to be found in watching Thai
Dei try to keep up on that ridiculous swaybacked grey. The man was one stubborn
little shit.

At least once every four hours Croaker asked me about my in-laws. I did not know
anything. Thai Dei claimed he knew nothing. I reserved judgment on his veracity.

Croaker took a jaundiced view toward mine.

Word came in that a Shadowlander deserter had been picked up who knew the
location of an ice cave stuffed with edibles.

“You buy it?” I asked.

“Sounds like somebody thought he was going to get his throat cut and made up a
story. But we’ll check it out.”

“Just when I was getting used to being warm.”

“You used to being hungry, too?”

Out we rode, and onward and onward we rode, day after day, through fields and
forests and hills marred by quake effects and abandoned by the population. The
Captain and I rode those giant black stallions, him outfitted in his cold
Widowmaker armor and me lugging the bloody standard while Thai Dei tagged along
behind like he was trying to become some sort of clown sidekick. We found the
prisoner’s ice cave. Near as we could tell, it was a real treasure trove. The
earthquake had dropped an avalanche down its throat. The good people of the
province had been trying to open it back up. We relieved them of all that hard
work and left a troop to await the coming of reinforcements hungry enough to dig
for their supper. We continued on toward Kiaulune and Overlook, managing to
sustain ourselves and avoid trouble until we were just forty miles north of the
stricken city.

The countryside there was unmarred by disaster, quiet, orderly, almost pretty
but a little too wintry for my taste. Suddenly, without warning, despite the Old
Man’s crows, we ran into Shadowlander cavalry and not a man among them was in a
good mood. Their charge broke us into half a dozen clumps. Whereupon a horde of
infantry types tried to horn in. Lucky for us they were regional militia, poorly
armed, completely inexperienced peasants. Unfortunately, it is true that some
totally untrained and inexperienced dickhead can get lucky and kill you just as
dead as a martial arts priest like Uncle Doj can.

I managed to get the standard set atop a knoll, the Old Man there with me inside
a circle of friendly folks. “The one day you don’t wear the damned costume,” I
yelled. ’They wouldn’t have had the balls for this shit if you’d dressed up.”

Who knows? It might have been true.

“It was getting heavy. And it’s cold and it stinks.” He shrugged into the
hideous, grotesque armor. As he lowered the nasty winged helmet onto his head a
pair of monster crows dropped onto his shoulders. Traceries of scarlet fire
began crawling all over him. A few thousand more crows began zooming around
overhead, every one bitching his little heart out.

After a chance to take in the crows, Widowmaker and the Company standard most of
our attackers decided to take the rest of the day off.

The stories had to be really bad down here.

The cavalrymen were made of sterner stuff. They continued fighting. They were
veterans. And Longshadow probably had them convinced we were going to roast
their wives and rape their babies, then turn the rest of them into dog food and
shoe leather.

But we scattered them. Before the soldiers could get carried away chasing them,

the Old Man headed south again, declaring, “We have bridges to capture and
chokepoints to clear.”

A few men did not heed the recall. I asked, “What about them?”

“They have a chance to serve as a valuable object lesson. Those that survive can
catch up.” He was feeling hard.

He did not think about arranging care and protection for the wounded. That was
not something he had overlooked ever before.

It might be that there were no Company brothers among the wounded even though we
had nearly a dozen with us.

That consideration often seemed to lie at the root of his decisions, yet never
so blatantly that outsiders were conscious of it. I hoped he would keep it low
key. We had troubles enough.

I had seen Shadowcatch a hundred times in Smoke’s dreams. I had spent cumulative
days prowling Overlook. I thought I knew the city and the fortress about as well
as anyone who lived there. But I was not prepared for a reality unfiltered by
Smoke’s thoughtless mind.

The remains of Kiaulune were plain hell. Famine and disease had claimed almost
everyone who had not been killed by the earthquake. Longshadow, taking unwanted
advice, had tried to help. Too late. But he had allowed refugees to establish
themselves in the shadow of Overlook and had been making provision to care for
them. In turn, those people were replacing the lost workers who had been
building Overlook before the earthquake.

Very little work had gotten done since the disaster. Even Longshadow had been
forced to stipulate that survival demands superseded his desire to complete his
invulnerable fastness.

There were no children. Some arrangement had been made to care for them
elsewhere. A clever step, uncharacteristic of the Shadowmaster. That idea had to
have originated with someone else. In fact, I could think of no one in
Longshadow’s coterie to whom such a thing would occur.

It looked as though the little construction effort put out lately had been
directed principally at providing housing.

This would not keep up once the pressure was off. To Longshadow all the people
of the Shadowlands were his to use and dispose of as he saw fit. He just wanted
to keep them alive long enough to be used.

“Hell really is leaking into the world,” Croaker observed. He stared at the
bleak, stinking, unwalled remains of Kiaulune. He paid no attention to the
gleaming magnificence beyond the city.

I did. “We’re too damned close here, boss. We don’t have Lady to cover us.”

That did not seem to trouble him. The only time he paid Overlook any attention
was when he paused once to glare and say, “You didn’t get it done in time, did
you, you son of a bitch?”

From the limited point of view of someone seeing the fortress with mundane eyes
the place seemed immeasurably huge. Mostly the towering walls had been
constructed of a grey-white stone but in places blocks of different colors had
been worked in, along with silver, copper and gold, to scrawl the whole with
cabalistic patterns.

What forces had Longshadow gathered to defend those ramparts since last I walked
with the ghost? Did it matter? Could any army scale those incredible walls if
the construction scaffolding was cast down?

Most of that was still in place.

Croaker mused, “You may be right. I shouldn’t rub their noses in the fact that
I’m out here personally.” He turned a little more and looked past Overlook, at
the escarpment in the distance. “Have you ever gotten up there?”

I looked around. No one was there to hear. Not even a crow. “No. I can get about
halfway across the space between Overlook and a place on the road where there’s
a landslide that seems to be what they call the Shadowgate around here. Not much
to look at. But that’s all the farther Smoke will go.”

“I’ve never done better. Let’s get out of here.”

We withdrew and pitched camp north of Kiaulune. The soldiers were not
comfortable there. None of them wanted to set up housekeeping so close to the
last and craziest Shadowmaster.

I tended to agree.

Croaker said, “You could be right. I’d feel better myself if Smoke was down here
and you could do some scouting.” Then he grinned. “But I do believe that we have
a guardian angel better than Lady looking out for us.”

“What? Who?”

“Catcher. She’s as goofy as a squirrel with three nuts but she’s predictable.

You been able to get close to her?” Like he was sure I would try.

“Not really. Smoke won’t go.”

“You have to remember how determined she is to use me to get even with Lady for
having kept her from getting even before. That means she has to take care of
me.”

“Oh.” Dumb me. I had not thought about how he could be using Catcher. “You’re
willing to bet your life on Catcher?”

“Hell no. She’s still Soulcatcher. She could get interested in something else
and just walk out on everything here.”

“But she does have a score to settle with Longshadow, too.”

“That she does.” He grinned. He was pleased about the way things were going.

I was worried about Soulcatcher. She seldom did anything overt but in her own
mind she would be one of the major players. Eventually she would do something
dramatic.

Was there anything Croaker had not foreseen and made part of his plan? He did
not think so, I am sure.

I did not agree. Because I had rock-hard evidence that he was not ready for
everything. There is no way he could have anticipated me starting to have the
same sort of nightmares as Lady though I am just as certain that he did expect
hers to continue.

Here near Kiaulune my nightmares were powerful and frequent. I could not take a
nap without a visit to the cavern of the old men. Frequently I went to the plain
of bones and corpses. On occasion I slipped off to the land of myth. Or so I
interpreted it. It was a vast grey place where gods and devils met in divine
battle and the most ferocious thing on the field was a gleaming black monster
whose footfalls shook the earth, whose claws rent and tore, whose fangs . . .

The hideous cold place with the slimy old men was there every time, though.

Every time. It was repellent in the extreme, yet attractive. Each time, as I
walked the cold shadows, I found another familiar face among the old men.

I thought I had it handled. I really did. But that was because I did not think
Kina would bother being subtle with a dim candle like me. I ignored the fact
that she was the goddess of Deceivers. And forgot that Lady had told me that all
that appeared to be Kina did not have to be Kina.

The dead place came to smell sweeter. It became more relaxing, safer, more
comfortable, just as walking with the ghost had become comforting. I had a
suspicion my enjoyment of that comfort was one reason the Old Man brought me
down here ahead of everyone. He wanted me to go cold turkey.

I wanted to tell him I had it handled because I believed I did. But as we lay
there in the hills waiting for the rest of the army to trudge up the road I
spent a lot of cold days and colder nights huddled by a fire, spooking out Thai
Dei, fiddling with my notes and napping. A lot. Because when I slept I could go
away from the center, where the pain remained in a hard little core that would
not die. Sometimes I even seemed to fly the way I had with Smoke, though not
far, nor to anywhere interesting. I was the opposite of Lady, who fought her
dreams all the way.

It was a gentle seduction. Kina gradually replaced Smoke.

I noticed that the Captain watched me sidelong in the mornings, warily, when I
arose reluctantly. Thai Dei did not say anything but he seemed worried.

The men were singing around the campfires even though it had snowed. Morale was
up. We were finding enough to eat. We had halfway decent shelter. The enemy was
making no attempt to discomfit us. Lead elements of the main force were in the
province and scattering in a wide arc around Kiaulune, settling in to await the
final phase of the campaign. But even when the mob is sitting around, playing
tonk, somebody has to do something to keep things moving. The Old Man reached
into his trick bag and pulled the straw with my name on it.

I think he rigged the draw.

I got the job of taking a patrol north to meet a quartermaster crew inbound to
begin surveys for camp layouts once we got serious about besieging Overlook.

They were bringing in some prisoners Lady thought the Captain would find
interesting.

Three times outbound we had brushes with partisans. We had another coming back.

The tension was draining. I was exhausted. Still not a hundred percent despite
his protests to the contrary, Thai Dei was used up, too. “Message from your
honey,” I told the Old Man, tossing him a leather packet that was heavy enough
to have a couple bricks inside. “Clete and his brothers are with this bunch.

They’re already talking about building a ramp to get over Overlook’s wall.”

“Fat chance. You all right?”

“Dead tired. We ran into partisans again. Mogaba’s changing his style.”

He gave me a hard look but told me, “Get some rest. The guys have found a house
I want you to look over tomorrow. You might grab Clete and them and have them
tell you how much work the place needs.”

I grunted. I had a nice place now, dug out of the side of a hill, a real blanket
hanging in front to keep out the wind and contain the warmth of my fire. Our
fire. My brother-in-law holed up there with me. We were turning the place into a
manor house in our spare time. Compared to anything we had had since leaving
Dejagore.

Between us we had just about enough energy left to grunt at one another over
some hard bread while we got the fire built up, then collapsed into piles of
rags we had harvested from the ruins of Kiaulune.

I fell asleep wondering how bad the guerrilla problem could get. This time of
year we could starve them into submission simply by keeping a lot of foragers
out. But if they survived the winter we would have big trouble with them in the
spring, when we would have to plant our own crops, then would have to work and
protect them through the harvest.

I did not worry about it long. Sleep jumped up and grabbed me. And the dreams
were waiting for me.

This time it started with the dead waste, the expanse of corpses and bones, but
it was not quite the night land it had been before. The stench was absent. The
corpses looked like corpses in paintings, pale, with little blood showing. There
was none of the corruption that finds us after we have lain in the sun for a few
days. There were no flies, no maggots, no ants, no scavengers tearing at the
bodies.

This time some of the corpses opened their eyes as I passed. A few looked
vaguely like people I knew long ago. My grandmother. An uncle I had liked.

Childhood friends and a couple friends from early days in the Company, now long
dead. Most of those seemed to smile at me.

Then I encountered the face that I should have expected, the one the whole
series of dreams must have been choreographed to throw at me. Yes, I should have
expected it but it did take me completely by surprise. “Sahra?”

“Murgen.” Her response was no more than the stir of a faint breeze. A ghost’s
whisper. As you would expect. As I would expect, anyway, being naive about such
things.

I saw the trap instantly. Kina was going to offer me back my dead. What she had
taken away she would ransom. At that moment I did not care. Of course.

I could get my Sarie back.

I had my Sarie for as long as it took for my emotions to become totally engaged.

Then I was in a dark, cold, terrible place I was meant to believe was where
Sarie went when I was not there to pull her into the light.

Not real subtle.

I guess Kina never needed subtlety.

The gimmick tore me right up. But . . .

The outside influence quickened my reason as well as my emotions. I realized
Kina was playing to a native audience, as though I was Taglian or from one of
Taglios’s cousin states, where the religions are closely related. She could not
encompass the fact that I had not been raised up steeped in southern
mythologies. Even this touching of me in my dreams did not convince me that she
was divine. Her scheme was something Lady could have pulled off at the peak of
her powers, something her dead husband could have managed from his grave.

I did not let her set the hook, sweetly baited as it was.

So she grabbed the pain of my soul and dragged it naked and screaming through
the briars.

I wakened with Thai Dei shaking me violently. I yelled, “Take it easy, man!

What’s wrong?”

“You were screaming in your sleep. You were talking to the Mother of Night.”

I remembered. “What did I say?”

Thai Dei shook his head. Lying. He had understood. And what he had heard had
upset him.

I put my mind and face in order, dragged my dead ass over to the Captain’s
place.

Something was wrong with that man. I mean, I have pretty spartan tastes myself
but I can think of a few luxuries I would demand if I were dictator to a vast
empire, a powerful warlord, Captain of the Black Company, and there were people
around who would be just thrilled to make me more comfortable. But he was living
in a half tent, half lean-to thing, partly a sod hut, just like the meanest
groom. It kept him out of the wind. His only claim to status was that he did not
share.

He did not have sentries hulking around him despite our presence deep in enemy
territory, despite our suspicion that a few dedicated Stranglers still lurked
within our ranks.

Maybe he did not believe he needed guards because an old dead tree loomed above
his shelter. That almost always boasted a crew of bickering crows.

I let myself in. “You’re counting on Catcher’s obsession way too much, boss.”

Though I had had the feeling that I was being examined closely as I approached.

Maybe Croaker had cause to feel confident.

He was asleep. He had left a lamp burning. I turned it up a bit, went to work
trying to wake him. He came around but he was not pleased. Seldom did he get a
chance to sleep as much as he wanted. “This better be good, Murgen.”

“I don’t know if it is or not but I do have a point,” I assured him. “I’ll try
to get through it fast.” I told him about the dream. And about the dreams that
had gone before it.

“Lady told me you might be vulnerable. Not knowing about Smoke, though, she
didn’t see how you could be.”

“I’m sure there’s a reason,” I said. “I think I know what she’s trying to do.

What I can’t figure is why.”

“That tells me you really haven’t thought it through.”

“What?”

“You know exactly why but you’re too lazy to figure it out for yourself.”

“Bullshit.” But I capped my temper. I sensed that I was about to enjoy one of
his lectures.

“You’re of interest because you’re the standardbearer, Murgen. You’ve spent the
last several years backfilling new material into my Annals and Lady’s so you
know them pretty well. By now you ought to suspect that there’s something
special about the standard.”

“The Lance of Passion?”

“According to the Shadowmasters. We don’t know what that means. Maybe the answer
is in those old Annals you squirreled away at the Palace. Whatever, it’s clear
that some people would like to lay hands on the standard.”

“Including Kina. That what you’re saying?”

“Evidently. You studied the Kina myth while you were trapped in Dejagore.

Weren’t the standards of the Free Companies of Khatovar supposed to be the
pizzles of demons or something?”

That led to an exchange of crude speculations about why Kina wanted the
standard, a couple of chuckles, then the Captain said, “You did the right thing,

letting me know. We’ve all got these things going on inside us. We’re keeping
them locked up and secret and we’re getting used. I think. Look, hang in there.

Stay aware. One-Eye will be here tomorrow or the next day. You talk to him then
you do exactly what he tells you. Understand?”

“I got it. But what do I do about it?”

“Gut it out.”

“Gut it out. Right.”

“On your way back to your den take a look at Kiaulune and ask yourself if you’re
the first guy in this world who ever lost somebody he loved.”

Oh oh. He was getting impatient with my refusal to heal.

“Right. Good night.” I wished. It was more like hell night for a while. Every
time I slipped off I fell right into the plain of death. Not once did I get to
the cavern of the old men. As soon as it got bad I awakened, usually on my own
but twice with help from Thai Dei. Poor guy. No telling what he really thought
about me after four years of watching me go through these bizarre behaviors.

Finally, apparently baffled by my lack of receptivity, Kina abandoned me
trailing more than a hint of exasperated threat behind her.

And when it was over I was not quite sure the whole thing had not been some
monster entirely of my own imagining.

I slept. I awakened. I crawled out of my shelter. As another privileged
character I could have gotten by without sharing, too, if I had wanted. In fact,

as Annalist, I rated a tent of the sort used for small conferences, a veritable
canvas palace where I could spread out and work.

I rated it but I would never see it.

The standard stood outside. It did not look like something that ought to excite
the envy of a blacksmith, let alone great powers. It was nothing but one rusty
old spearhead atop a long wooden shaft. Five feet down from the head there was a
cross-piece four feet long tied to the shaft. From that hung the black banner
bearing the device we had adopted in the north, the silver skull exhaling golden
flames that originated as Soulcatcher’s personal seal. The skull was not human
because it had exaggerated canine teeth. No lower jaw was present. One
eye-socket was scarlet. In some representations that was the right eye, in some
the left. I have been assured there is significance to that but nobody ever told
me what. It may have had something to do with Soulcatcher’s changeable nature.

Every Company man wore a silver badge bearing a similar design. We have them
made where we can. Some we take off our own dead. Some men are carrying three or
four as part of Croaker’s thing about returning to Khatovar. In fact, I think
Otto and Hagop have several dozen of them they brought down from the north.

The skull device is not that intimidating in itself. It is scary because of what
it represents.

Everyone in this end of the world at least pretends to be spooked by how nasty
the Company was the last time it passed through. Hard to believe that anybody
could have been so cruel that the fear would persist for four centuries. There
is nothing so terrible that it does not get forgotten in a few generations.

Kina had to be responsible somehow. She had been manipulating these people for
an age. sending out her dreams. Four centuries was plenty of time to create an
enduring hysteria. In fact, if you assumed the great black goddess was behind
that you could explain a lot that never made sense before. It even explained why
there were so many crazed people involved, great and small.

Might it be that Kina’s departure from the play would cause an outbreak of
sanity at all levels?

But how do you get rid of a god? Is there any religion where they teach you
that? How to get your god off your back if he gets too damned obnoxious? No. All
you ever get is advice on how to bribe them to leave you alone for a few
minutes.