protest.
Less than a week later I received the identical message as a handwritten note that looked like it had been inscribed by a six-year-old. One of Cordy Mather’s Guards brought it up. I read it, told him, “Give the old fool a beating and tell him not to bother me again.”
The Guard gave me a funny look. He glanced at Thai Dei, then whispered, “Ain’t old, ain’t a him, but probably is a fool, Standardbearer. Was I you I’d take the time.”
I got it. At last. “I’ll just box his ears myself, then. Thai Dei, try to keep the bad guys out. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He did not listen, of course, because he could not bodyguard me from a distance, but I did confuse him long enough to get a headstart. I got down there and got my hands on Sahra before he caught up or got ahead of me. After that he had little say. And my clever lady had brought To Tan to distract him.
Thai Dei did not talk much but that did not make him stupid. He knew he could not win with the cards he held right now. “Clever,” I told Sahra. “I thought I’d never see you again. Hi, kiddo,” I said to To Tan, who did not remember me. “Sahra, honey, you gotta promise me. No more of that cryptic stuff like Grandpa Dam. I’m just a simpleminded soldier.”
I led Sahra inside and up to my little hole in the wall. For the next three years I marvelled every morning when I wakened to find her beside me and almost every time I saw her during the day. She became the center of my life, my anchor, my rock, my goddess, and every damned one of my brothers envied me almost to the borders of hatred though Sahra converted them all into devoted friends. She could give Lady lessons on softening the hearts of hard men.
Not till Uncle Doj and Mother Gota came to visit did I find out that Sahra had done more than just defy the customs of the Nyueng Bao. She had ignored the express orders of her tribal elders to come make herself the wife of a Soldier of Darkness. Confident little witch.
Those toothless old men put no value on the wishes of the “witch” Ky Hong Tray.
I think I have a realistic picture of who and what I am so I am amazed that Sahra ever thought as much of me as I thought of her.
98
I sipped water, ate, and reflected that this was one time when I had no trouble leaving Smoke’s world. There was no attenuation of the pain if I went out there to see Sarie. What was I doing here?
There was one mystery yet to be illuminated before I allowed Croaker to drag me off into the next fun phase of our great adventure. I wanted to know what had happened between him and Blade.
Smoke and I zigzagged back and forth through time, quartering the temporal reaches, tacking into the winds of time, following a search pattern, looking for anomalies in the relationship between Blade and my boss. I knew about when the blowup happened so, instead, for the time being, I sought contributory evidence.
You can cover a lot of time fast riding Smoke. It did not take long to establish, beyond a doubt, that Blade’s relationship with Lady was never anything but proper, however charged with wishful thinking on his end. Lady never acknowledged Blade’s mooneyes nor those of anyone else. She seemed too accustomed to them to pay them any mind.
So what did happen?
I worried it like a wild dog trying to dig a rodent out of its hole. Smoke was no help at all. There were places, times, angles that he just refused to go see. I tried tricking him several ways, just to find out why he could not or would not go where I wanted him to go. None of that did any good.
Maybe I was baying down the wrong trail.
The actual headbutting had been less than wildly explosive and made only marginal sense when viewed from another point in time. All I could find out that made sense was that Blade and Croaker were sipping some potent home brew before they started getting crazy.
Verbal sniping turned into angry implications which became threats on the Old Man’s part. And the beer continued to flow.
I have to say that Croaker was definitely the bad guy. Or fool. He kept on and on while Blade did his best not to let himself be baited.
That only infuriated Croaker. He spouted threats that left
Blade no choice but to run.
I backed away, embarrassed for my Captain. I had not thought that he could be such a complete asshole. I did not understand why he was so insecure about Lady. I felt for Blade, deeply, and had to think less of one of my heroes.
Now that I reflected on it, I recalled occasional bestowals of unpleasantries upon Willow Swan that had not gotten out of hand. And Croaker had even exchanged cross words with the Prahbrindrah Drah once.
I sensed a pattern. It was not one I wanted to see. But it was obvious if you looked for it.
Croaker was obsessed with his woman. He would alienate anyone who offered her too much attention, however costly that might be.
Shit. Why? She was not Sarie.
We had lost Blade already. I do not have a lot of use for Willow Swan, who is much too pretty and too blond, but I would really hate to have the Company on the wrong side of the Prince just because one man could not be sure of his woman.
More scales fell from my eyes, leaving disappointment behind.
I needed to take this up with the brain trust, the oldest of the old, One-Eye, Otto and Hagop. Goblin was too far away and Lady both too far and disqualified by being too intimately involved. A Captain who thought with his balls instead of his brains could get a lot of people killed.
I do not worship any gods myself, though I guess some are real in their own ways. I have to believe that all of them get regular belly-laughs because one of them was ingenious enough to create human sexuality. Even greed and lust for power do not come close to generating the stupidities that us being male and female do.
But by giving it half a thought I can think of as many glories that spring from the same dichotomy.
Say, Ky Sahra.
Gods, Murgen. You need to get away from this half-dead old man. You are a hired sword. A soldier. You should not be playing philosophical games. Not even with yourself.
99
I popped out of contact with Smoke. “It’s time, One-Eye. She’s gone.”
The little wizard tossed a friendly miniature owl into the darkened hallway. Untouched by confusion spells it headed for that part of town where it imagined it nested. It did not look for any particular human. That was not its mission. But plenty of humans looked for it. When it fluttered past them two dozen Black Company veterans and their Nyueng Bao bodyguards rushed a building that had deserved razing a generation before the Shadowmasters entered this quarter of the world.
I had tracked Soulcatcher back to that building from her raid on Smoke’s library. She felt so safe there she was almost contemptuous of security precautions. She had managed to get by undisturbed there for years.
She was going to be one unhappy player when she discovered that she was less in control than she imagined.
I watched, pleased, while Black Company soldiers took the building by the numbers and in a manner so professional that not one Captain ever would have found cause for complaint.
The men now even had the knack of getting their jobs done without stumbling over the Nyueng Bao, who were worse than a herd of cats when it came to getting underfoot. You just had to use them like they were your shadows.
