Bleak Seasons

27

There was no night now. Fires burned everywhere. They burned in the Shadowlander camp, set by Mogaba's beleaguered artillerymen. They burned in the city, set by the Shadowmaster's soldiers. Conflagrations blazed in the hills, hinting of surprise volcanos or powers of a magnitude unseen since the Company went up against the dark lords of Lady's empire. It was too much light for the middle of the night. "How long till dawn? Anybody know?"

"Too long," Bucket grumbled. "You really think anybody is actually worrying about keeping time tonight?"

Way back, centuries earlier in the evening, One-Eye or Goblin or somebody expressed dawn as a goal too remote for hope. The general level of optimism remained that low.

Reports came in, none of them good. Innumerable southern soldiers were inside the city. They had orders to drive toward us, wipe us out, then continue on around inside and atop the wall, the long way, till they got back where they had started. But the Nyueng Bao were not cooperating. Neither were my guys. So the invaders were blundering around doing any damage they could till somebody killed them.

Against the Jaicuri, cowering in their homes hoping to be overlooked despite all their experience with the Shadowmasters, the southerners enjoyed some success.

You could not fault them for not going all out after us. They did not want to get killed either. And Mogaba should not have been surprised when some of the villains he let through turned on him.

Our guys held their positions. The doppelgangers and illusions drove the southerners crazy. They never knew which threat was real. But the big reason our side held up well was that there was no choice. We had nowhere to run.

Shadowspinner was no help to his people. He was out in those hills intent on undoing that mystery personally. Clearly he regretted having made the choice.

Once again a band of riders came flying back, silhouetted by pink light. The Shadowmaster did not appear to be with them. "Goblin! One-Eye! Where the hell are you now, you little shits? Has something happened to Shadowspinner?"

Goblin materialized, his breath heavy with the smell of beer. He and One-Eye had a few gallons stashed somewhere nearby, then. He dashed my hopes. "The Shadowmaster is alive, Murgen. But maybe he's messed his drawers." He giggled.

"Oh, shit," I muttered. The little toad had gotten deep into the home brew. If One-Eye had, too, I might have one truly interesting rest of the night. It was possible those two would forget everything and pick up the feud they have had going for a hundred years. Last time they got drunk and went after each other they tore up a whole city block in Taglios.

All the while the Speaker's grandson hung back in the shadows and watched like one of those goddamned crows. There were a lot more of those around now.

Old Wheezer came puffing up from the street. He had to take a break before he got to the top. He hacked and coughed and spat blood. He was from the same part of the world as One-Eye. They have nothing else in common except a taste for beer. Wheezer had been to the barrel a few times, too. He came on up top as I surveyed the city and tried to guess how bad things really were. We were getting very little pressure right then.

Wheezer hacked and wheezed and spat. A new generation of pink lights erupted at the feet of the hills. They cast two shadows against the sky. There was no doubt they were shadows of Widowmaker and Lifetaker, the dread alter egos Lady created for herself and Croaker so they could scare shit out of Shadowlanders.

"This isn't possible," I told my tame wizards. One-Eye was back. He used one hand to support Wheezer, who seemed to be suffering an asthma attack along with the effects of his tuberculosis. In his other hand One-Eye clutched something polelike wrapped in rags. I continued, "That can't be Croaker and Lady because I saw them go down with my own eyes."

A handful of horsemen drifted toward town. Among them was a blob of darkness that had to be Shadowspinner. He was staying busy. Pink fireflies swarmed around him. He had trouble fending them off.

As though they realized their boss would be in a foul temper when he got back, the southerners' attack suddenly picked up.

"I'm not sure," Goblin mused. He sounded like he had been scared sober. "I can't get any sense of the one in the Lifetaker armor. There's a shitload of power there, though."

"Lady had no power left," I reminded him.

"The other one does feel like Croaker."

Couldn't be.

Wheezer finally gasped, "Mogaba... "

Several men spat at mention of the name. Everybody had an opinion about our fearless war chief. Listening to them you might have concluded that Mogaba was the most lusted after man in town.

A writhing pink thread reached for Shadowspinner's party. The Shadowmaster batted it away from himself but it slew half his party. Parts of bodies flew in all directions.

"Shee-it!" somebody said, pretty much capturing the popular feeling.

Wheezer barked, "Mogaba wants to know if we can free up a few hundred men to counterattack the enemy who are inside the city."

"How stupid does that bastard think we are?" Sparkle grumbled.

Goblin asked, "Don't that camel's wife know we're on to him?"

"Why should he think we might suspect him? He's got such a tall opinion of his own brain... "

"I think it's funny," Bucket crowed. "He tried to screw us and only ended up with his own ass in a sling. Even better, maybe the only way he can pry it out is to have us do it for him."

I asked Goblin, "What's One-Eye up to?" One-Eye looked like he was praying over one of the ballistas with Loftus. Rags lay scattered around their feet. A gruesome black spear lay in the engine's trough.

"I don't know."

I checked the nearest gate. The Nar there could see us. Mogaba would know I was lying if I claimed we were too beat up to send help. I asked, "Anybody think of a reason we should help Mogaba?" To hold my sector, besides the Old Crew itself, I had six hundred Taglian survivors from Lady's division and an uncertain and changeable number of liberated slaves, former prisoners of war and ambitious Jaicuri.

Everyone replied in the negative. Nobody wanted to help Mogaba. As I approached the engines I asked, "How about if we do it just to save our own butts? If we let Mogaba get stomped we could end up facing the rest of the Shadowlander mob by ourselves." I glanced at the gate. "And those people over there can see everything we do."

Goblin looked, too. He shook his head to lessen the beer buzz. "We'll have to think about that."

"What are you doing, One-Eye?" I was beside him now.

One-Eye indicated the spear proudly. "Little something I've been working on in my spare time."

"It's ugly enough." Nice to know he could do something useful without being told.

He had begun with a black wooden pole and had worked it for a lot of hours. It was covered with incredibly ugly miniature scenes along with writing in an unfamiliar alphabet. Its head was as black as its shaft, darkened iron finely traced with silver runes. There was some color on the shaft, too, although so fine as to be almost invisible. "Very nice."

"Nice? Sigh. You heathen." He pointed. Loftus looked. So did I.

Shadowspinner's party, sadly depleted, surrounded by swarms of pink sparkles and mocking crows, was getting close.

One-Eye snickered. "This here is my Shadowmaster blaster, bastar'!" He howled. He must have put away a lot of that beer. "Nothing he couldn't stop on a lazy afternoon, but this ain't no lazy afternoon, is it? Loftus shoots, this stick won't be in the air five seconds. That's all the time he'll have to figure out what's coming and what to do to unravel the spells that are there to keep him from turning it. And look how busy that asshole is already. Loftus, my man, get ready to carve you a big victory notch on this thing."

As anybody with any sense does, Loftus ignored One-Eye. He laid his weapon with an artist's care.

One-Eye babbled, "Most of the spells are designed to penetrate his personal protection, counting on him not having time to do anything actively. Because I wanted to concentrate on piercing one point in a passive... "

I shut him out. "Goblin. Any chance this will work? The runt's not exactly a heavyweight."

"It's workable, tactically. If he really worked that hard on it. Say One-Eye is an order of magnitude weaker than Shadowspinner. That really only means that it takes him ten times as long to get the same work done."

"An order of magnitude?" So that was One-Eye's problem.

"More like two orders really, probably."

He lost me. And I didn't have time to wring an explanation out of him.

Loftus was satisfied he was leading his target perfectly, he had the range, whatever. "Time," he said.