Glen Cook: Soldiers Live

I already wished I did not have to breathe. “Burns?”

“Lots of burns. Lots of banging around, too.”

Murgen’s voice said, “You look like they whipped your ass with a forty-pound ugly stick, then slow-roasted what was left over an open pit.”

“I thought you were at Khang Phi.”

“We came home.”

Tobo said, “We kept you unconscious for four days.”

“How is Lady?”

Murgen told me, “She’s in the other bed. In a lot better shape than you.”

“She ought to be. I didn’t shoot her. The cat get her tongue?”

“She’s asleep.”

“What about One-Eye?”

Tobo’s response was barely audible. “One-Eye didn’t make it, Croaker.”

After a while, Murgen asked, “You all right?”

“He was the last.”

“Last? Last what?”

“The last one who was here when I joined. The Company.” I was the real Old Man now. “What happened to his spear? I’ve got to have his spear in order to finish this.”

“What spear?” Murgen asked.

Tobo knew what spear. “I have it at my place.”

“Was it damaged by the fire?”

“Not much. Why?”

“I’m going to kill that thing. Like we should have a long time ago. You don’t let that spear out of your sight. I’ve got to have it. But right now I’m going to sleep for a while some more.” I had to go where the pain was not, just for a time. I had known One-Eye would leave us someday. I thought I was ready for that. I was wrong.

His passing meant more than just the end of an old friend. It marked the end of an age.

Tobo said something about the spear. I did not catch it. And the darkness came back before I remembered to ask what had become of the forvalaka. If Lady had caught or killed it I had gotten myself worked up for nothing... But I guess I knew it could not be that easy.

There were dreams. I remembered everyone who had gone before me. I remembered the places and times. Cold places, hot places, weird places, always stressful times, swollen with unhappiness, pain and fear. Some died. Some did not. It makes no sense when you try to figure it out. Soldiers live. And wonder why.

Oh, it’s a soldier’s life for me. Oh, the adventure and glory!

It took me longer to recuperate than it had that time I almost got killed outside Dejagore. Even with Tobo applying his own best healing spells, learned from One-Eye, and urging his edge-of-the-eye friends to help as well. Some of those were supposed to be able to bring a fossil back to life. I felt like a fossil, like I had not enjoyed the advantage of the stasis that had frozen the others while we were prisoners under the plain. There was a lot of confusion inside me. I could no longer figure out how old I am. My best guess is fifty-six, give or take a few years, plus all that time underneath the earth. And fifty-six years, brother, was a pretty damned good run—particularly for a guy in my racket. I ought to appreciate every second, including all the misery.

Soldiers live. And wonder why.

Two months had passed. I felt ten years older but I was up and around—and moving like a zombie. I had indeed been roasted well-done by a jet of almost pure alcohol blowing through the hole that had been drilled by Lady’s errant fireball. Everybody kept telling me how much the gods must love me, that I had no business being alive. That had I not been turned the way I was, with the forvalaka positioned perfectly to absorb a lot of the blast, there would not have been much left of me but bones.

I was not entirely convinced that that might not have been the better outcome.

Persistent pain does little to buoy one’s optimism or elevate one’s mood. I began to develop a certain sympathy for Mother Gota’s perspective.

I did manage a smile when Lady began to rub me down with healing unguents. “Silver linings,” she told me.

“Oh, yes indeed. Yes indeed.”

“Would you look at that? Maybe you’re not as old as you think.”

“It’s all your fault, wench.”

“Sleepy’s worried about you wanting to avenge One-Eye.”

“I know.” I did not have to be told. I had had to put up with people like me when I was Captain.

“Maybe you should tone it down.”

“It’s got to be done. It’s going to be done. Sleepy’s got to understand that.” Sleepy is all business. Her world does not include much leeway for emotional indulgence.

She thinks I just want to use One-Eye’s death as an excuse to visit the Khatovar shadowgate, basing her judgment on the fact that I had tramped through Hell for a decade trying to get to that place.

The woman is hard to fool. But she can also get fixed on one idea to the exclusion of other possibilities.

“She doesn’t want to make any more enemies.”

“More? We don’t have any. Not out here. They may not like us much but they all kiss our asses. They’re scared to death of us. And they get more scared every time another White Lady or Blue Man or wichtlin or whatnot lumbers out of folklore and joins Tobo’s entourage.”

“Uhn. Is that the spot? I saw something Tobo called a wowsey with the Black Hounds yesterday.” That is my honey. She can see those things clearly, even over here. “It’s as big as a hippo but looks like a beetle with a lizard’s head. A lizard with big teeth. To quote Swan, ‘It looks like it fell out of the ugly tree and hit every single branch on the way down.’”

Willow Swan seemed to be cultivating a new image as a churlish but colorful old man.

Somebody has to step in and take One-Eye’s place. Though I was sort of thinking about picking up the stick myself.

“What do we know about the forvalaka?” I asked. I had avoided asking for specifics before. I knew the damned thing got away. That was all I needed to know until I was prepared mentally to start planning the conclusion of its tale.

“It left its tail behind. It suffered severe burns and several deep wounds and I blinded it partially with my last fireball. It lost several teeth. Tobo has created a number of fetishes using those and bits of flesh torn off by the Black Hounds while it was fleeing toward the shadowgate.”

“But it did have what it takes to get back to Khatovar.”

“It did.”

“Then it’s going to be as hard to kill as the Limper was.”

“Not anymore. Not with what Tobo has.”

“He had your help?”

“I’m ancient in the ways of wickedness. Am I not? Didn’t you write something like that a time or two?”

“Especially after I got to know you... Ouch! Well... as long as you’re a bad girl like you’re being a bad girl right now...” I do not recall if I did write the exact words she claimed but I know I recorded those approximate sentiments many years ago. Without exaggerating. “I’m going to go after it.”

“I know.” She did not argue. They were humoring me. They wanted to keep me quiet. Sleepy was involved in touchy negotiations with the File of Nine. The Court of All Seasons and the monks of Khang Phi were behind us already. The warlords of the File remain unconvinced that it would be wise to give us what we want even though the Company has grown to the point where it has become a serious burden on Hsien’s economy. And poses a threat, if the notion of conquest happens to take root. I, myself, do not see one warlord, or even a cabal of warlords, out there, who would stand much more chance than smoke in a high wind if the notion did take us. Most of the warlords are clear on that, too.

They still want Maricha Manthara Dhumraksha—our Shadowmaster Longshadow—desperately. Their hunger for revenge borders on racial obsession. They are not forthcoming about the evils Longshadow visited upon their forbears but we have our sources inside Khang Phi. Longshadow’s cruelties had been as capricious as any wickedness of Soulcatcher’s but far more terrible for their victims. The need to haul the Shadowmaster up before a tribunal colored every consideration of the warlords, the legal and noble courts, even the several spiritual traditions of Hsien. Maricha Manthara Dhumraksha was the one thing they all agreed upon. Nor did I ever sense a hint of a chance some rogue would try to acquire control of Longshadow in an effort to amplify his own power.