Soldiers Live

60

Gharhawnes: Tobo and the Voroshk

The Howler certainly kept busy. He completed his first functional four-passenger flying carpet two days after the soldiers marched westward. Gharhawnes seemed deserted, though there were enough of us around to bloody a bunch of noses the morning the former tenant took a notion to steal his home back.

Sleepy had a dozen carpets on order, from single-rider scouts to a monster she hoped would carry twenty soldiers. I do not know who she expected to fly them. Only Howler and Tobo—and, possibly, the Voroshk—had the power to manage the things.

I insisted that we have a couple of modest-sized carpets first. Those should not take too long to make and would be the size most useful to us right away. And since I was in charge of the left-behinds and the Dejagore strike I got what I wanted. Well, I got the one carpet.

Tobo had the flying post thing figured out, too. Both Shukrat and Arkana seemed eager to get along now. One or the other would allow Tobo to borrow her post when he wanted to run out to visit Sleepy, which he did by night so he would not be seen from the ground. I never felt comfortable when he did that. We had too many potentially unpleasant and unfriendly people back here in the manor. Including a lot of hostages from the leading families of the region.

Both Magadan and Gromovol were increasingly determined not to be won over, each for his own reasons. I told Magadan, "I'd be tempted to send you two home just so I don't have to worry about what's going on behind my back," I was not worried, really. Tobo's supernatural friends saw everything.

Magadan told me, "I don't want to go home. Home no longer exists. I want to be free."

"Sure. You Voroshk showed what you can do when you're free. I've spent my life killing people like you. That's people who believe it's their destiny to make slaves out of people like me. I'm in a war with another one of them right now. I'm not about to cut you loose and let you start making peoples' lives miserable, too."

None of which was absolutely true but it did sound good. And Magadan bought it. Some. The part that really was true. That I would kill him before I turned him loose on the world.

That was the moment when he decided he might want to go home after all. From then on he brought that possibility up each time we crossed paths. The hidden folk said he was sincere. He was trying to get the other kids to go along with swapping what knowledge they had for an escort back across the place of glittering stone.

Lady did not believe it. She thought we should put him and Gromovol down because of the trouble they could cause.

My sweetie has a very direct approach to problem-solving.

Sometimes I do find what little conscience I retain a damnable handicap.

Howler, though, did successfully work his way out of the top ten on my shit list. Tobo's appeal to Shivetya had resulted in word from the golem saying he did have the ability to intervene in Howler's screaming and shrinking problems. Shivetya did not have much of a reputation as a liar so even Howler took him at his word. After which the smelly little wizard became extremely cooperative.

Though we still had no cause to trust his long run intentions. Nor he any call to trust ours, either.

Lady cornered Tobo. "We have a dangerous situation, here. And like a pet cobra it's going to bite us someday. We have to do something."

The boy sounded puzzled. "What're you talking about? Something about what?"

"Those Voroshk. They aren't as strong or as bright as we first thought but there are four of them and only one of you."

"But they're not going to... "

"Pardon me for being an old cynic," I said. "Magadan keeps telling me, in so many words, that he wants to be anywhere that isn't here with us. And there's at least the implication that he'll do whatever it takes if we don't help him go home. And Gromovol is going to be trouble eventually because his personality requires it. If you go out to visit Sleepy or just on a flying date the rest of us are stuck here with no better hope than the Howler."

"And speaking of flying," Lady said, "don't you ever go out with both of those girls again. Hush! You're only familiar with the women you've grown up around. I'm telling you right now that Arkana is exactly like Magadan. But she has one more weapon than he does and she means to use it to cloud your mind."

"But... "

"Shukrat I'm not sure about. There's a chance Shukrat is exactly what she seems."

I agreed. The kid was likable. And according to Tobo the hidden folk agreed. They offered no reason not to trust her.

Tobo was not used to arguing with anybody but his mother, even when he thought he was right. He did not want to think ill of Arkana but would not fight us.

Lady demanded, "So how do we make sure of them? You have to think of something before we move against Dejagore. We'll be scattered, distracted and extremely vulnerable then. And because you spend time with the girls, out amongst the rest of us, all four will know what's going on. They can plan accordingly."

Again Tobo did not get a word in before I said, "I would be."

Lady reminded him, "You've never been a prisoner."

"Now there's a joke. I was born a prisoner. A prisoner of a prophecy by an old woman who died years before I was born. A prisoner of the expectations of all you people. Gods, I wish Hong Tray was wrong and I could've been a normal kid."

"There aren't any normal kids, Tobo," I told him. "Just kids who fake it better than the rest of us do."

"And that name. Tobo. That was my baby name. Why does everybody still call me that? Why didn't we ever have a ceremony to give me a grown-up name?"

Nyueng Bao do that. And Tobo was years past the appropriate birthday.

Lady told him, "You'll have to take that up with Uncle Doj. Meantime, the other thing needs addressing right now. Blade is moving already. In three more days Sleepy will curl back to the northeast and it'll be too late to stop anything. I want to be sure that we won't get stabbed in the back just when things get exciting."

An hour after we nagged him Tobo asked Shukrat to go flying. He borrowed Arkana's log. Arkana was not pleased. When an hour later she told me Magadan had said he did not mind if she used his post to join Shukrat and Tobo I told her, "But I mind. If you need to talk to Tobo do it when he gets back."

Arkana was the brightest of the Voroshk. She recognized that things were tightening up.

When Tobo did return he stayed just long enough to round up Magadan. He took Magadan flying. It was the first time Magadan had been aloft since he had entered our keeping. He did not appear excited, which I would have expected.

They returned within a half hour. Magadan's hand-me-downs, appropriated from Gharhawnes' former occupants, were ragged. He looked like he had been in a fight and the other guy had kicked his butt. A good long way.

Tobo gave instructions for Magadan to be isolated, then found Arkana and took her for a fly.

The ice queen, I noted, had replaced her confiscated robes with native garb that served her to considerable visual advantage.

"Down, boy!" Lady said.

"It's a good thing I didn't run into her before I met you, isn't it?"

That earned me a not entirely playful swat.

Arkana came back looking rougher than Magadan had. And she was not smiling.

Tobo had Arkana put in with Magadan. He collected Gromovol.

Gromovol was not interested in going anywhere with Tobo. Tobo insisted. They were not gone long. Once they returned Tobo had the Voroshk returned to their quarters. He gathered their flying posts in the main hall. Lady and I joined him.

I asked, "What was that all about?"

"I took them out and dueled with them. Except for Shukrat."

I stopped Lady before she explained—probably at great length—how unsmart doing that could have proven. Sometimes she could fuss as much as Sahra. I said, "I'm sure there was a reason."

"I wanted to find out just how much we really do have to fear from them."

"And?"

"They're frauds. The only power they really have is what they draw from their post and their clothing. Without those even Shukrat isn't as powerful as One-Eye was at the end. Gromovol is about Uncle Doj's equal. Lady, even as weak as you are right now, you could manage any of them but Shukrat."

I snorted. "I guess that would explain why Gromovol's pop was anxious to get the kids back. Were most of the Voroshk limited talents? Were most of them carried by a few strong members of the clan?"

"I'd guess that's likely. The point, though, is that for right now there's a better chance our Voroshk will attack us with knives than with sorcery." He looked at us, saw no obvious eagerness to embrace his theory. "Don't you think that if they had any real power they would've used it to try to escape?"

I realized that he was upset. He had believed he was making friends with the Voroshk. Our worries had led him to test that and he had learned that his friends were not as close as he had hoped.

"You're telling us we don't have to kill them to be safe," Lady said.

"That, too."

"You have the Unknown Shadows at your command and you didn't figure this out until today?" Lady can find something to suspect in everything. I would suggest we retire and settle down somewhere where we do not have to worry all the time but she would suspect me of ulterior motives.

"I've thought it for a long time," he admitted sullenly. "But the hidden folk can't report things that they don't hear. The Voroshk don't discuss their weaknesses. Or much of anything else, actually. Because of their present situation nobody likes anybody very much anymore."

I said, "I didn't want to kill them, anyway. Maybe I'd like to thump Gromovol a little, now and then, but... "

"So that's settled. Heck, turn them loose if you want. Once they've had a dose of the real world they'll come back. Meantime, let me get to work on these things."

Lady asked, "You've finally found their secret? You can make more?"

"I've learned how to change who they recognize as their master. None of the Voroshk know how the posts are made. They're not even sure of the theory behind them. I know more than they do just because I've studied the things. I don't yet know how they pull their magical power. But I don't know how I do that, either. Someday I will know. But it'll be a long, slow, dangerous process, finding out. They're booby-trapped."

I told him, "Life is booby-trapped, kid."

As we left the hallway Lady was speculating on whether the original Voroshk had invented their magics or if they had just stolen them from an ingenious but unwary predecessor. I did not care, so long as no Voroshk made my life more difficult than it already was.