We disappeared. I started snoring seconds after we went to ground. And I did not go anywhere else, or anywhen.
The smell of smoke wakened me. I sat up. Sindhu rose at almost the same instant. I found a crow studying me from so close I had to cross my eyes to focus on him. The Taglian who was supposed to be keeping watch was sleeping. So much for well-rested. I said nothing. Neither did Sindhu.
In moments my fears were confirmed. A southern voice called out. Another answered. Crows laughed. Sindhu whispered, “They know we are here?” It sounded like he had trouble believing that.
I lifted a finger, requesting silence. I listened, picked out a few words. “They know somebody is here. They don’t know who. They’re unhappy because they can’t just kill us. The Shadowmaster wants prisoners.”
“They aren’t trying to lure us out?”
“They don’t know any of us can understand some of their dialect.” The albino crow in front of me cawed and flapped its way up out of the brush. About twenty others joined it.
“If we cannot evade them we must surrender. We must not fight.” Sindhu was an unhappy young man.
I agreed. I was an unhappy young man myself. The Taglian soldiers were two more unhappy young men.
We evaded nothing and no one. The crows found our efforts amusing.
59
Time had no meaning. The Shadowmaster’s camp lay somewhere north of Dejagore. We four were among the earliest prisoners taken but more soon joined us in our pen. Lots of Mogaba’s guys wanted to leave town.
He would have less trouble feeding the ones who stayed behind.
One-Eye and Goblin seemed to hold our part of town together. Nobody I knew became a prisoner.
I did not send any more moths so they knew I had found trouble instead of Lady.
Even our guards had no notion how Spinner meant to use us. We were happier not knowing, probably.
I spent uncounted days in total misery. Piglets in a feed lot live better than we did. More and more prisoners arrived. The food was inadequate. After a few meals everybody got the runs. There were no sewage provisions, not even a simple slit trench. They would not let us dig our own. Maybe they did not want us getting too comfortable.
In fact our life was not much worse than that of the Shadowlander private soldiers. They had nothing anymore and could expect only nothing. They indulged in a ferocious desertion rate despite the Shadowmaster’s reputation. They hated Shadowspinner for putting them into such an awful state. They took their anger out on us.
I do not know how long we were there. I lost track. I was busy trying to die from dysentery. I noticed only that there was a sudden absence of crows one day. I was so used to having crows around that anymore I noticed them only when they were not there.
I faded in and out. I suffered a bunch of my spells. They were more frequent now and left me emotionally drained. The shits left me physically drained.
If I could only get some sleep...
Sindhu wakened me. I recoiled from his touch. It was astonishingly cold and seemed vaguely reptilian. I was the only man in the pen he knew so he wanted to be my pal. I was willing to do without a friend. He offered me a cup of water. It was a rather nice tin cup. Where did he get that? “Drink,” he said. “It’s clean water.” All around us prisoners lay in the mud twitching endlessly in haunted sleep. Some cried out. Sindhu continued, “Something is going to happen.”
“What?”
“I felt the breath of the goddess.”
For an instant I smelled something that was not the stink of vomit or unwashed bodies or dead men or pools of liquid shit, too.
“Ah,” Sindhu whispered. “It’s happening now.” I looked where he pointed.
The happening something was going on inside the big tent belonging to the Shadowmaster. Lights of strange color flickered and flared. “Maybe he’s getting something special ready for somebody.” Maybe he had Lady spotted.
Sindhu snorted. He seemed to thrive in these conditions.
The something went on a long time but attracted no attention. I became suspicious. I had Goblin’s ward against sleep spells set on me. Oh...? I dragged myself to the compound fence. When nobody smashed me back with the butt of a spear I was sure. The camp was under an enchantment.
Sindhu’s water gave me strength quickly and started my brain perking. It occurred to me that if no one was inclined to stop me this might be the perfect time to take leave of the Shadowmaster’s hospitality. I started worming my way between the fence rails.
My stomach rumbled in protest. I ignored it. Sindhu grabbed my arm. His grip was iron. He said, “Wait.”
I waited. What the hell? That was one of my favorite arms. I didn’t want to deprive myself of its company.
The moon began to rise, a big old squashed orange egg in the east. Sindhu continued to restrain me and continued to stare at the big tent.
A shriek drifted down from high above. “Holy shit,” I muttered. “Not him.”
Sindhu cursed, too. He was so startled that he let me go. He glared upward.
“That’s the Howler,” I told him. “Really bad news. Shadowspinner could take advanced cruelty lessons from him.”
The side of Spinner’s tent opened. Out rushed a bunch of people carrying what proved to be human body parts. I recognized some of them. The people, that is. Who could mistake Willow Swan with his wild yellow mane? Or Lady, who carried a severed head by its mangy hair? And Blade was only a step behind her, his ebony skin shiny in the moonlight. I did not recognize any of the others.
The sleep spell on the camp, laid rather poorly, unravelled. Southerners jumped up to ask what was happening. Metal clanged and jingled as weapons and mail were located.
One of Lady’s companions, a huge Shadar, started bellowing something about bowing down to the true Daughter of Night.
Sindhu chuckled. Nothing bothered him, it seemed. He could take anything.
He was not holding on to me but I no longer had the strength or inclination to go anywhere.
60
They pulled it off, Lady and her damnfool gang. Audacity pays. They slipped into the camp, murdered Shadowspinner, and when they got caught they convinced the southerners that it was all fated and they should not go doing anything because of that. I could not be much of a witness to their mass conversion. My bowels overruled my desire to observe. I spent most of my time making a worse mess of myself.
At some point our former guards decided to bring us to Lady’s attention in an effort to curry favor.
Blade recognized us as they brought us out of the pen.
Blade looks like he might have been born Nar. Like them he is tall, black and muscular, without an ounce of fat on him. He says little but has a strong presence. His background is shadowy. He ran with Willow Swan and Cordy Mather, who saved him from crocodiles several thousand miles north of Taglios. What everyone knew for sure, what Blade made no effort to hide, was that he hated priests, singly, collectively, and without any prejudice whatsoever where belief system was concerned. Once I thought he was an atheist who hated the whole idea of gods and religion, but after further exposure I decided it was only the retailers of religion he detested. That suggested sharp incidents in his past.
No matter now. Blade took Sindhu and I away from our guards. “Standardbearer, you stink.”
