She Is The Darkness

39

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.