themselves was down there in the temple somewhere. He hadn’t seen it. She must have hidden it.
He glanced at a sky where cumulus marched across a turquoise field. The crows were closer, those few still aloft. He jerked, startled. One was headed his way like a winged missile.
It flapped, fluttered, very nearly suicided, making a landing on a rock pinnacle inches from his left hand. The bird said, “Don’t move!” in a perfectly intelligible voice.
He didn’t move, though instantly he had a dozen questions. It took no genius to understand that something significant was happening. The birds didn’t speak to him otherwise. In fact, they had only once before, bringing the warning that had allowed him to move in time to whip the Shadowmasters at Ghoja ford.
The crow hunkered down and became part of the rock. Croaker eased down a little himself, so he’d present no obviously human form against the skyline, then froze. Moments later he spied movement in the shallow valley before him.
It darted from cover to cover. Then there was more movement, and more. His heart hammered as he remembered the shadows the minions of the Shadowmasters had brought north.
These were no shadows. They were small brown men, but not of the race of the small brown men who had managed the shadows. Those had been cousins of the Taglians. Something familiar about these. But they were so far away.
It didn’t occur to them to look up where he was seated. Or if they did they couldn’t see him. They moved on down the valley.
Then there were more of them, maybe twenty-five, not sneaking like the others, who must have been scouts. He saw this bunch well enough to recall where he’d seen their kind before. On the great river that ran from the heart of the continent down past Taglios to the sea. He had fought them a year ago, two thousand miles north of here. They had blockaded the river against all commerce. The Company had opened the way, crushing them in a wild night-time battle where sorceries flashed and howled.
The Howler!
The main party was in sight. Eight men carried a ninth on a sedan of sorts. The ninth was a small figure so covered with clothing it looked like a pile of rags. As it came abreast of Croaker it let out a prolonged moan.
The Howler. One of the Ten Who Were Taken who had been servants of the Lady in her northern empire, a terrible wizard, thought slain in battle till that night on the river when he’d tried to even old scores against his former empress. Only the intercession of Shifter had driven him off.
Another moan escaped the sorcerer. It was a feeble shadow of the Howler’s usual wails. Probably trying to control his cries to avoid attracting attention.
Croaker sat so still his heart almost stopped. There was little in the world he wanted less than to attract attention now. His concentration was so intense he felt no discomfort from rock or chill breeze.
The party passed on, with more small brown men trailing behind, in rearguard. It was an hour before Croaker was confident that he had seen the last of them.
He had counted one hundred twenty-eight swamp warriors, plus the sorcerer. The warriors wouldn’t be much use so far out of their element. This terrain was alien to them. But the Howler... Terrain and climate and whatnot meant nothing to him.
Where was he headed? Didn’t take much to guess. Down to the Shadowlands. Why was more of a mystery, but probably not so great a one.
The Howler had been one of the Taken. Some of the Shadowmasters had been fugitive Taken, too. It seemed likely the survivors had made contact with their Former comrade and had negotiated some compact whereby he would replace the Shadowmasters who had fallen.
Lady was alive and at Ghoja, if Soulcatcher hadn’t lied. Not forty miles away. He wished he could make that journey. He wished there was some way he could get a message to her. She needed to know about this.
“Crow, I don’t know if you know what we just saw, but you’d better get word to your boss. We got trouble.” He got up and walked back to the temple, where he amused himself by trying to find the hidden Company standard.
Chapter Seventeen
The everyday business of sorcery is as much stage magic as it is witchcraft. It’s misdirection, deceit, what- have-you. I kept an eye on Smoke, expecting him to pass information to the Radisha in some subtle fashion. But if he did he was too crafty for me. Which I doubt.
When you encounter the Radisha you know you’re in the presence of a powerful will. It was a shame she was trapped in her culture and had to pretend to be her brother’s creature. She might have done interesting things.
“Good afternoon,” she said. “We’re pleased that you survived.”
Was she? Maybe, because there were still Shadowmasters to be conquered. “So am I.”
She noted that Blade stood with me instead of his friends. She noted Narayan, of obvious low caste and no cleaner than the day we’d met-though I had no room to criticize. A shadow crossed her brow. “My battalion commanders,” I said. “Blade you know. Narayan, who has been helpful pulling the men together.”
She looked at Narayan intently, maybe because of his unusual name and the fact that I’d added no other. I didn’t know any other name for him. Narayan was a patronym. We had six more Narayans among the Shadar troops. Every one of them carried the personal name Singh, which means Lion.
She caught something with that closer look, started slightly, glanced at Smoke. The wizard replied with a tiny nod. She looked at Blade. “You choose to leave me?”
“I’m going with somebody who can get something done besides talk.”
That was a long speech for Blade and one that won him no sympathy. The Radisha glared.
“He’s got a point,” Swan said. “You and your brother just keep fiddling.”
“We’re more exposed.” People in positions like theirs do have to act within constraints or get pulled down. But try to explain that to men who have never been anything but momentary captains and didn’t want that power when they had it.
The Radisha rose. “Come,” she told us. As we walked, she told me, “I am pleased that you survived. Though you may find it difficult to continue doing so.”
That didn’t sound like a threat, exactly. “What?”
“You’re in a difficult position because your Captain didn’t survive.” She led us up a spiral stair to the parapet of the fortress’s tallest tower. My companions were as puzzled as I. The Radisha pointed.
Beyond the trees and construction across the river there was a large, ragtag encampment. The Radisha said, “Some fugitives crossed elsewhere and carried word north. People started arriving the day after Swan rode south. There are about two thousand already. There’ll be thousands more.”
“Who are they?” Swan asked.
“Families of legionnaires. Families of men the Shadowmasters enslaved. They’ve come to find out what happened to their menfolk.” She pointed upstream.
Scores of women were stacking wood. I asked, “What are they doing?”
“Building ghats.” Narayan sounded nonplussed. “I should have considered that.”
“What are ghats?”
“Funeral pyres,” Mather said. “The Gunni burn their dead instead of burying them.” He looked a little green.
I didn’t follow. “There aren’t any dead here. Unless somebody makes some.” A symbolic gesture? Funerals in absentia?
“The practice is called suttee,” Smoke said. I looked at him. He stood straight up and wore a slimy grin. “When a man dies his wife joins him on his ghat. If he dies away from home she joins him in death when she learns of it.”
Oh? “Those women are building pyres where they can commit suicide if their husbands have been killed?”
“Yes.”
“A damnfool thing to do.”
