Soldiers Live

22

Khatovar: Invasion

Swan volunteered to slither down to the shadowgate with me. I demurred. "I think I'll take my sweetheart. We don't get many chances to get away together." And she would have a steadier hand than I would when it came to working on the shadowgate. Which, even from the head of the slope, could be seen to need restoration.

After examining the shadowgate from a closer vantage, I told my beloved, "Bowalk really tore it up getting through."

"She had shadows gnawing on her. According to what Sleepy says Shivetya showed her. Tell me you'd be gentle and not slam the door if you had those things after you."

"I don't even want to think about it. Are we safe? Is anything out there watching?"

"I don't know."

"What?"

"I have a little power here on the plain. A dim one-hundredth of what used to be. But outside the shadowgates I might as well be deaf, dumb and blind. All I can do is pretend."

"So Kina is alive, then?"

"Possibly. If I'm not just tapping Shivetya or some residual, ambient power. The plain is a place of many strange energies. They leak in from the different worlds."

"But you believe you're bleeding Kina again. Don't you?"

"If I am, she's not just sleeping, she's in a coma."

"There!"

"There what?"

"I thought I saw something move."

"That was just the breeze stirring the branches."

"You think so? I'm not inclined to take chances."

The sarky witch said, "You stand guard. I'll work on the gate."

If she did I could not tell. She was less active than I would have been.

We were through. Into Khatovar. I did not feel like I had found my way into paradise. I did not feel like I had come home. I felt the letdown I had expected almost from the moment I had become aware that my lust to find Khatovar had been imposed upon me from without. Khadi's Gate was a wasteland.

Clete and Loftus started laying out a camp close enough to the gate that we could make a quick getaway if that became necessary. I was still at the gate itself, surveying this world where the Black Company had been born.

Definitely the disappointment I had anticipated. Maybe even worse.

Something stirred the hair on the back of my neck. I turned. I saw nothing but had a distinct feeling that something had just come through the shadowgate.

I caught movement in the edge of my vision. Something dark. A shape both large and ugly.

One of the Black Hounds.

The back of my neck went cool again. Then again.

Maybe Tobo was coming after all.

The darker of my two ravens settled onto a nearby boulder. After a shower of hisses directed nowhere in particular, it cocked a big yellow eye my way and said, "There are no occupied human dwellings within fifty miles. The ruins of a city lie under the trees below the rocky prominence to the northeast. There are signs that humans visit it occasionally."

I gaped. That damned bird was better-spoken than most of my companions. But before I could strike up a conversation, it took to the air again.

So there were people in this world. But the closest were at least three days away.

The promontory the bird mentioned was the place where the fortress Overlook had stood in our own world. The ruins likely occupied the same site as Kiaulune.

Another chill on the neck. The Unknown Shadows continued to come through.

I went down to camp. The engineer brothers were old but efficient. It was livable right now—as long as we got no rain.

The rain would be along before long. It was clear it rained often here.

Fires were burning. Somebody had killed a wild pig. It smelled heavenly, roasting. Shelters were going up. Sentries were out. Uncle Doj had appointed himself sergeant of the guard and was making a circuit of the four guardposts.

I waited till Murgen found something to occupy him, beckoned Swan and Lady. "Let's think about what we do now." I looked my wife in the eye. She understood what I wanted to know. She shook her head.

There was no Khatovaran source of magical power she could parasitize.

I grumped, "I didn't expect towers of pearl and ruby beside streets of gold, but this is ridiculous." I checked Doj and Murgen. They showed no interest in us yet.

"Sour grapes." Swan sneered, heading straight for the critical point. "That's a whole world out there. Damned near empty, it looks like. How do you expect to find one insane killer monster?"

"I got to thinking about that while I was standing up there looking at all this. Amongst other things. And I think I've had an evil epiphany."

Lady contributed to the Annals and tried to keep up with her successors. She shook her head, said, "There isn't much in what she wrote."

Swan glanced around. Nobody was close. In a soft voice he said, "She hasn't been writing the histories since you came back, has she?"

I asked, "What's that mean?"

"Over the years Tobo and Suvrin and some of their cronies have visited most of the shadowgates. They visited the Khatovar gate several times."

"How do you know?"

"I sneak around. I listen when I'm not supposed to hear. I know Suvrin and Tobo came out here while you were wounded. Just the two of them. And later, while we were in Khang Phi, Suvrin went out again. Alone."

"Then I'm right. We've been jobbed. How come you didn't mention this before?"

"It had to do with Khatovar. I figured you were behind whatever was going on."

Lady made a growling, chuckling sound that told me she had a handle on the truth. "That devious little witch. You really think so?"

Swan asked, "What am I missing?"

I told him, "I think we're out here raiding Khatovar not because I'm so damned clever but because Sleepy wants us old farts out from under foot when she breaks out into the homeworld. I'll bet the whole damned force is moving right now. And Sleepy won't have a single one of us asking questions or giving advice or trying to do things our own way."

Swan took a while to think about it. Then he took a while to look around at the gang who had elected to defy the command authority to pursue revenge on One-Eye's killer. He said, "Either she is really an astute little bitch or we've been around so many sneaky people so long that we see machinations everywhere we look."

"Tobo knew," I said. Tobo had to be part of it. He let his father and Uncle Doj come out here... "You know, I'm so paranoid I'm going to put a guard on the gate from the other side. And I'll fill them up with lies about how a demon in the guise of one of our people might try to sabotage the gate so we can't get back out of Khatovar."

Neither Lady nor Swan argued. Swan did remark. "You are paranoid. You think Sahra would let Sleepy get away with leaving Thai Dei, Murgen and Doj trapped out here?"

"I think it's a mad universe. I think almost anything somebody can imagine happening can happen. Even the cruelest, blackest sin."

Lady asked, "And what do you intend to do about it?"

"I'm going to kill the forvalaka."

Swan said, "Murgen's noticed that something's going on. He's headed this way."

"I'm going to play the game. Tobo sent a bunch of his pets through after us. Let's make sure they can't get back out unless we let them go. We'll use them to find Bowalk. Then we'll kill her."