Soldiers Live

82 With the Company: Going South

Sleepy always saw idleness as a vacuum in need of filling. No way was she going to put up with ten thousand men sitting around, maybe spending an hour or two each day training. When they were feeling particularly ambitious.

Just miles away stood a perfectly ugly wood desperately in need of clear-cutting.

You put a whole lot of people to work on a place like that, starting from the outside and working inward, making sure you get even the tiniest twigs and shoots, you can get some great bonfires burning. The evening of the second day the soldiers had one entire horizon hidden behind ramparts of smoke.

Sleepy was daring Goblin and the girl to come show us what they had.

I had doubts about the wisdom of that. Sleepy was not impressed enough with the fact that Goblin had a slice of Kina stuffed inside him. And Kina’s bad-ass reputation was well-deserved.

But I was not the boss. I could advise but I could not make anyone listen. My worries just earned me one of Sleepy’s enigmatic smiles.

“You ready to go for a fly?” Lady asked. “Howler’s got a carpet ready.”

“You in a hurry?”

“You told me Sileth’s only got a week. That was three days ago.”

“I did, didn’t I? How big is that carpet?”

“Big enough.”

“I mean it, hon. It’s got to have room for six people.”

She stared. After several seconds she said, “I don’t think I’m even going to ask. Except maybe who.”

“You and Soulcatcher. Howler. Gromovol. Arkana if she wants to go.”

“Still playing games, Love?”

“No game. Progress. We lost the most promising one of those kids when Magadan got killed. That was a bad career move on his part. Gromovol is as useless as teats on a bull. I’d just as soon kill him. But if we give him back to those two old Voroshk demons Shivetya’s got tied up down there we might score a point or two.”

She frowned.

“Thought you were the master manipulator of the greatest empire...” She pointed a finger. An invisible darning needle began to sew my lips together. She was getting the power back. “I’ll just explain then, shall I?”

“There’s the man I married.”

Bullshit. But I was not going to argue. “We got the top two Voroshk locked up out there on the plain. They’ve got no home anymore, far as we know. As far as Shivetya is letting anybody know. They have no future, nowhere to go. An apparent act of kindness might add a couple of heavyweights to our ranks just when it would be handy to have them.”

“You’re evil.”

“I try. Let me go blow in Arkana’s ear.”

“You do and you’ll wake up in the morning wondering how long before you get your first hot flash.”

Well, well. Maybe that explained some recent crankiness. Hers. Mine was caused by the iron-strapped, rock-headed obtuseness of the people who insisted on tangling my feet. That was a whole different hunk of monkey meat.

I went to blow in Arkana’s ear. Verbally.

“I’m not going to give Gromovol a choice,” I told Arkana. “This is a chance for me to maybe make peace with his old man. Which is the only good that can ever come of the idiot. If I keep him here he’ll eventually do something stupider than anything he’s done already. I’ve told you before, I’ve been in this racket a long time. When you come up with a liability as big as Gromovol you look for a way to use him. Or you kill him. I’ve been getting soft in my twilight years.”

Her skeptical expression told me how well I had sold that fairy tale.

“You, you’re special. You get choices. You can go back if you want. You can tag along for the visit and stay with us when we’re done. Or you can hang around here and not go at all.”

“Oh, I’ll go. I can’t not. I’ll decide what else I need to do after we get there.”

We went aloft by night, under the light of a full moon, with Lady, Soulcatcher, Gromovol and Arkana aboard Howler’s new carpet. Tobo, Shukrat, Murgen and I witched along on flying posts. Despite Sleepy’s objections, and Tobo’s aches and pains, Tobo insisted on coming along because Shukrat was coming. So Murgen rode with me because Sahra refused to fly. The youngsters larked about us fearlessly, engaged in some dragonfly mating ritual.

Murgen and I dropped out briefly at Dejagore. Sleepy insisted we check up on Blade and his occupation force.

Drifting down toward Dejagore’s citadel, I asked, “You think Sahra’s been having visions or something?”

“Huh?” Murgen’s thoughts had been wandering.

“This frantic mother stuff. I swear she keeps getting worse. I thought you might have noticed her having psychic seizures. Or something.”

“She don’t talk about it. If she does.”

“What do you think?”

“I think that if she hasn’t she’s definitely afraid that she might start.”

“Yeah?”

“When we were young she worried about turning into her mother.”

“Sometimes she’s damned crabby.”

“She’s no Gota the Troll, though. Her body doesn’t hurt her enough. So now she’s terrified she’s going to turn into Hong Tray. Her grandmother.”

“And?”

“And maybe she will. She’s started to look like the old woman did. Whenever she starts cranking about it I remind her how calm and accepting Hong Tray always was. Like a solid rock in a wild river.”

“Doesn’t work, does it?”

“Not for a second. Well. Somebody must’ve smelled us coming.”

We had not yet settled to the top of the citadel tower, but Blade and his chief lieutenants were there to meet us. Blade called up, “We were expecting Tobo, the way the shadows were all spooked up.”

“You got lucky. The kid’s hurt so you get the old farts instead. Captain wants us to check up on you. So you give us a couple of good drinks, we’ll tell her you’re doing a kickass job, no need to even think about you guys.”

“I think we can handle that.”