Glen Cook: Soldiers Live

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.”

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.