Soldiers Live

3

An Abode of Ravens: A Labor of Love

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.

Doj paused at the doorway to the back. "There's something wrong with those things tonight. They're like monkeys when there's a leopard on the prowl."

Monkeys we know well. The rock apes haunting the ruins lying where Kiaulune stands in our own world are as pesky and numerous as a plague of locusts. They are smart enough and deft enough to get into anything not locked up magically. And they are fearless. And Tobo is too soft of heart to employ his supernatural friends in a swift educational strike.

Doj vanished through the doorway. He remained spry although he was older than Gota. He still ran through his fencing rituals every morning. I knew by direct observation that he could defeat all but a handful of his disciples using practice swords. I suspect the handful would be surprised unpleasantly if the duel ever involved real steel.

Tobo is the only one as talented as Doj. But Tobo can do anything, always with grace and usually with ridiculous ease. Tobo is the child we all think we deserve.

I chuckled.

One-Eye murmured, "What?"

"Just thinking how my baby grew up."

"That's funny?"

"Like a broken broom handle pounded up the shit chute."

"You should. Learn to appreciate. Cosmic. Practical jokes."

"I... "

The cosmos was spared my rancor. The street door opened to someone even less formal than Uncle Doj. Willow Swan invited himself inside. "Shut it quick!" I snapped. "That moonlight shining off the top of your head is blinding me." I could not resist. I recalled him when he was a young man with beautiful long blond hair, a pretty face and a poorly disguised lust for my woman.

Swan said, "Sleepy sent me. There're rumors."

"Stay with One-Eye. I'll deliver the news myself."

Swan bent forward. "He breathing?"

With his eye shut One-Eye looked dead. Which meant he was laying back in the weeds hoping to get somebody with his cane. He would remain a vicious little shit till the moment he did stop breathing.

"He's fine. For now. Just stay with him. And holler if anything changes." I put my things back in my bag. My knees creaked as I rose. I could not manage that without putting some of my weight on One-Eye's chair. The gods are cruel. They should let the flesh age at the rate the spirit does. Sure, some people would die of old age in a week. But the keepers would hang around forever. And I would not have all these aches and pains. Either way.

I limped as I left One-Eye's house. My feet hurt.

Things scurried everywhere but where I was looking. Moonlight did not help a bit.