Soldiers Live

43 The Taglian Shadowlands: The Shadowgate

“Seem like there’s much point dragging my weary ass over there?” I asked Lady. There was just enough dawn-light to show the vague outline of the slope leading up to the shadowgate. Which was still miles and miles from where we had spent the night. This part of the journey was one of those where you spend the whole day trying not to look ahead because every time you do it seems you have not gotten ten feet closer. Way to our left a smoky haze concealed the New City and the lower half of ruined Overlook. A lot of unpleasant memories connected us with those places.

“What do you mean?” My sweetheart was as tired and morning-cranky as I was. And her bones were a lot older than mine.

“Well, we didn’t get killed last night. That means the gate hasn’t collapsed yet. Old Longshadow’s still holding out.”

“Evidently.”

“Wouldn’t that mean Tobo’s got everything under control? So why beat ourselves up getting on over there?”

Lady smirked at me. She did not have to tell me. We would cross the valley because, in the end, I would want to see everything for myself. Because I would want to get it all into the Annals, right. She had chided me fifty times during the ride south because I was trying to work out a way to write on horseback. I could get so much more done if I could do it while we were traveling.

Then she chirped, “You are getting old.”

“What?”

“A sign of advancing age. You start obsessing about how much you have to get done in the time that you have left.”

I made noises in the back of my throat but did not argue. That kind of thinking was familiar. So was being unable to fall asleep because I was tracking my heartbeat, trying to tell if something was wrong.

You would think a guy in my line of work would make his peace with death at an early age.

We ran into several locals while crossing the valley, the bottom land of which was decent farmland and pasture. We did not receive one friendly greeting. I did not see one welcoming smile. Nobody raised a hand in defiance but I had no trouble feeling the abiding resentment of a tormented nation. There had been no serious fighting in these parts for years but the adult population were all survivors of the terrible times, whether they were natives or immigrants who had come in to settle the depopulated lands and to escape even worse horrors elsewhere. They did not want the evils of the past to return.

This land had suffered grotesquely under the Shadowmaster Longshadow. It had continued to suffer after his defeat. The Kiaulune wars devoured most everything that Longshadow and the Shadowmaster wars had not. And now the Black Company had returned. Out of the place of glittering stone, an abode of devils. The season of despair appeared to be threatening again.

“Can’t say I blame them,” I told Lady.

“What?”

I explained.

“Oh.” Indifferently. Some attitudes never wither. She had been a powerful lord a lot longer than she had been just another tick on the underbelly of the world. Compassion is not one of the qualities that endeared her to me.

We found Tobo impatient with our dawdling. “I see the old gal’s still here,” I said of the shadowgate. Lady and I produced our keys and let the crew cross over, Murgen first so he could make sure his boy still had all his arms and legs and fingers and toes.

“It is,” the wonder child confessed. “But probably only because Longshadow still hasn’t left the plain.”

“What?” Lady was irritated. “We made promises. We owe the Children of the Dead.”

“We do,” Tobo said. “But we won’t be allowed to kill ourselves. Shivetya knew we forgot to disarm Longshadow’s booby trap so he kept Longshadow from leaving.”

“How do you know that?”

“I sent messengers. That was the news they brought back.”

Lady’s mood had not improved. “The File of Nine will be smoking. We don’t need them as enemies. We may have to flee to the Land of Unknown Shadows again.”

“Shivetya will release Longshadow the second we finish refurbishing our gate.”

My companions were nervous. Willow Swan was pale, sweating, dancing with anxiety and, most of all, un-Swanlike, silent. He had not, in fact, spoken all day.

Thinking about the shadows can do that to you if you have witnessed one of their attacks.

Tobo asked, “You two ready to go to work?”

I shook my head. “Are you kidding?”

Lady said, “No.”

Tobo told us, “I can’t finish this alone.”

I replied, “And you can’t finish it with assistants so tired they’re guaranteed to make mistakes. I have a premonition. Longshadow will keep till tomorrow.”

Tobo admitted that he would. Shivetya would see to it. But he did so with poor grace.

Lady said, “Let’s go set up camp.” Murgen, Swan and the others probably should have been doing that instead of standing around being anxious.

Once we crossed the barrier Lady wondered, “Why is Tobo in such a hurry?”

I snickered. “I think it might have to do with Booboo. He hasn’t seen her for a long time. Sleepy says he was completely smitten.”

While I spoke her expression transformed from curious to completely appalled. “I’d hope not.”

Murgen suggested, “There were two rather attractive Voroshk girls. One of them might have something to do with it.”