Freezing my ass off. Failing to catch the great villain Narayan.
Lady at play down south.
Fish stench.
The sleeping man. The screaming Deceiver. Dead men.
Only memories but happier than tonight. There is too much pain here.
It is my apocalypse.
Slipping.
Can’t keep my eyes from closing. The summons is too damned powerful.
The pillars might be mistaken for relics of a fallen city. They are not. They are too few and too randomly placed. Nor has a one ever fallen, though many have been gnawed deeply by the teeth of the hungry winds.
In the lightning flares, or in the dawns and sunsets when light steals beneath the edges of the sky, tiny golden characters blaze upon the faces of the columns.
It is immortality of a sort.
After dark the wind dies. After dark silence rules the glittering stone.
18
... sliding away...
A vast whirlpool pulling me down.
Perhaps a force pushing. Was that a lying promise of an end to pain?
I cannot resist.
All lies. Endless lies.
Brown pages, torn pages stiff with blood. Agony. Hard to ride that anchor through the storm.
19
There you are! Were you lost? Welcome back. Come! Come! The great adventure is about to begin. The players are all in place. The engines are wound tight. The spells are collected and ready, in arsenal number. Oh, it will be a grand night of doom.
Look there! Look there. Remember them? Goblin and One-Eye, the wizards? But is that really them? There are two more just like them right over there. And see this. And that. And there. One, two, three Murgens.
No. Definitely not. You can’t teach those two to suck eggs. They have been in the fooled you business since your granny’s greatgranny was a stinky little surprise for your however-many-greats grandpa. They have set glamors all over this part of the city. If you are a Shadowlander soldier you won’t be able to tell the figments from the real thing till one of them sticks a knife in you.
Look there! Raven and Silent. They have been gone for years. And there. That is the old Captain, dead since Juniper. No, they won’t scare any Shadowlanders with who they might be. Not right away. The southerners never heard of them.
What?
You are right. Absolutely right. Nobody here but Otto and Hagop will know them, either. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is they can be seen and hardly anyone will know which ones are dangerous and which are illusions.
This is a first trial. A big experiment, saved up special for the night of Shadowspinner’s big attack.
Yes. Yes. He did hit hard not that long ago. But he wasn’t really going for a knockout then. He would have taken it, but that was really a reconnaissance in force, meant to support planning for this attack.
It is going to be a grand show.
Oh, no, there isn’t one ghost anywhere else in Dejagore. Mogaba wouldn’t have it. He has no grasp of illusion as a weapon. He has no idea how the Company really worked. He clings to his grand notion of chivalrous warfare, the great deadly game, all honor and set rules. He would settled this mess in a trial by combat between him and any champion the Shadowlanders care to send out.
Oh! Look! That one is interesting. That ugly sucker is Toad-killer Dog. He was a real nasty devil dog. And the Limper! Oh, yes. Brilliant. If the man behind Shadowspinner’s mask is anyone the Company has faced before those illusions are provocations he will have to test. He will betray himself.
No, of course the Shadowmasters would not risk an entire kingdom on the outcome of a fight between two men. Their champion might lose.
Yes. Mogaba is naive about some things. He is an arrogant, cruel, unsympathetic general, too.
Ooh. Hear those trumpets. The Company has its own personal bunch of bad guys down front. Let’s go to the ramparts and watch from close up.
No. They aren’t really bright. Well, you could say that if they were bright they wouldn’t be in that army in the first place but that wouldn’t be fair. Not many of those guys had a choice about signing up. Their only real motivation is their fear of the Shadowmasters.
Sure. No argument. That makes them no less deadly. Hell, a rock can fall out of the sky and kill you.
Yes, this definitely is the big one. Shadowspinner is set to send every man. Maybe shadows have come up from Overlook to help.
Bats! Ha. And crows. Which is chasing which? Duck! Almost got you. They are all over. Never been this many around before.
What is that racket? Oh. Bucket yelling at one of the Murgens to get behind something because he don’t want to carry no bodies down no goddamn stairs.
And here comes the first barrage. And if that racket across town means anything the Shadowlanders are hitting hard about where the third and fourth cohorts of the First Legion are stationed. Those are good regiments. They will put up a fight.
20
Like a regular hailstorm, isn’t it? Makes you wonder where they got all the goddamned arrows and javelins for their engines. Just stay under the mantlet, you’ll be fine. They aren’t good at laying plunging fire onto elevated targets.
If they let up before they attack the Jaicuri will come out and collect the missiles and bring them to the soldiers. The Shadowlanders will get them back business end first.
No, the Jaicuri do not love Mogaba. They don’t love the Taglians or the Black Company, either. They wish the whole mob was gone. But they have some dark suspicions about what will happen if Shadowspinner recaptures this burg. So they sort of try to help, but not much. Not yet.
They help some, they figure maybe Mogaba might be less likely to kick them out next time he is in one of his moods.
The sky? Dark as the inside of a priest’s heart, isn’t it? Oh. Yes. You’re right. It isn’t an auspicious sort of night. Never is then they attack without benefit of a full moon. It’s devil’s work for sure, then. Usually it means the Shadowmasters want the darkness so they can run their pets to their best advantage. Or they want everybody terrified that there are shadows to come. Look at them scurry! Those Jaicuri are motivated tonight, If they become involved in actually fighting it could be closer than Mogaba or Shadowspinner expect. Whoa! What was that? Look at that. What the hell is it? That rosy light over the hills. Here they come. Going to take their whack at breaking the Company. You don’t think so? Maybe you are right. This could be meant to keep the Company pinned while Spinner concentrates somewhere softer.
Look at them down there, though. Like maggots. And no covering fire now.
